this post was submitted on 26 Feb 2026
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Basically, there are reliable, repeatable and measurable effects that are best explained by people ‘surviving’ their own death. A good example of this is near death experiences. People come back from having been clinically dead and can tell you things that they shouldn’t know. For example like where items are placed on the roof of the hospital or events that transpired when they had no brain activity. These people would have no way of having knowing this stuff unless they’ve seen it for themselves, which would have been physically impossible. So this makes their own fist-person accounts of what happened (“I was out of my body and literally floating around”) start to seem more credible.
The power of the book is the sheer volume of cases it presents for these sorts of events and other related phenomena. It shows you that events like these do occur reliably and repeatably and are quite literally scientific in that people can and do study them scientifically (and more of this study should occur, but that can only happen if we get past the current social stigma).
The power of the book is that it just inundates you with credible stories (and credible science!) from credible people, all of which is suggestive of the supernatural. It might be possible to talk yourself into dismissing one or two of these cases, but when you have several hundred of them compiled back-to-back-to-back it becomes harder and harder to find the willpower required to muster up a skeptical response. After a while you have to admit “okay, theres something more going on here, and I don’t understand it”. At least, thats what happened to me.
It’s a great book though, and I’m not doing it justice. I highly recommend giving it a read.
Thanks for explaining. To be honest I'm still not sure why that convinced you. If you wrote a book with a few hundred, even a few thousand anecdotes about people levitating I would still believe in gravity.
That is the part I doubt the most. Because if that was true, if this so called credible science in your book wasn't misinterpreted or simply faked, the scientists responsible would have gotten a nobel price and world wide recognition. But they didn't. If ghosts (or near death experiences, for that matter) were measurable in a repeatable or otherwise credible way it would be done on a wide scale. Scientists basically live for the chance to be the one who challenges a paradigm - and this one would shake everything we know about the material world, every scientific discipline, religions even.
There's simply no good reason for such "credible science" to go unnoticed. There is at least one very good reason for faking it: It makes money.
I believe in helium balloons too. Does that mean I don’t believe in gravity?
Why do you assume that these scientists would get nobel prizes? Science is still a cultural phenomenon and people have their prejudices. Stigmas exist (as this thread amply reveals). Einstein didn’t even get a nobel prize for special relativity because it was considered too radical at the time.
And why do you assume this science has gone ‘unnoticed’? We’re talking about it, aren’t we? People have spent their lives studying it, and an entire university department at Princeton is devoted to studying these sorts of things. This sort of stuff is frequently brought up and debated in reputable journals such as the Journal of Consciousness Studies (which recently devoted an entire issue to debating the topic of near death experiences iirc). That doesn’t sound very unnoticed to me. Controversial? Sure. But not unnoticed.
Well then you should read the book. Like I said I’m not doing it justice. If you’re actually interested in this topic, and not just interested in taking cheap shots on Lemmy, then read the book.
He shouldn't have gotten one for SR specifically anyways because Hendrik Lorentz had already developed a theory that was mathematically equivalent and presented a year prior to Einstein.
The speed of light can be derived from Maxwell's equations, which is weird to be able to derive a speed just by analyzing how electromagnetism works, because anyone in any reference frame would derive the same speed, which implies the existence of a universal speed. If the speed is universal, what it is universal relative to?
Physicists prior to Einstein believed there might be a universal reference frame which defines absolute time and absolute space, these days called a preferred foliation. The Michelson-Morley experiment was an attempt to measure the existence of this preferred foliation because most theories of how it worked would render it detectable in principle, but found no evidence for it.
Most physicists these days retell this experiment as having debunked the idea and led to its replacement with Einstein's special relativity. But the truth is more complicated than that, because Lorentz found you could patch the idea by just assuming objects physically contract based on their motion relative to preferred foliation. Lorentz's theory was presented in 1904, a year before Einstein, and was mathematically equivalent, so it makes all the same predictions, and so anything Einstein's theory would predict, his theory would've also predicted.
The reason Lorentz's theory fell by the wayside is because, by being able to explain the results of the Michelson-Morley experiment which was meant to detect the preferred foliation, it meant it was no longer detectable, and so people liked Einstein's theory more that threw out this undetectable aspect. But it would still be weird to give Einstein the Nobel prize for what is ultimately just a simplification of Lorentz's theory. (Einstein also already received one for something he did deserve anyways.)
But there are also good reasons these days to consider putting the preferred foliation back in and that Lorentz was right. The Friedmann solution to Einstein's general relativity (the solution associated with the universe we actually live in) spontaneously gives rise to a preferred foliation which is actually empirically observable. You can measure your absolute motion relative to the universe by looking at the cosmic dipole in the cosmic background radiation. Since we know you can measure it now and have actually measured our absolute motion in the universe, the argument against Lorentz's theory is much weaker.
An even stronger argument, however, comes from quantum mechanics. A famous theorem by the physicist John Bell proves the impossibility of "local realism," and in this case locality means locality in terms of special relativity, and realism means belief that particles have real states in the real physical world independently of you looking at them (called the ontic states) which explain what shows up on your measurement device when you try to measure them. Since many physicists are committed to the idea of special relativity, they conclude that Bell's theorem must debunk realism, that objective reality does not exist independently of you looking at it, and devolve into bizarre quantum mysticism and weirdness.
But you can equally interpret this to mean that special relativity is wrong and that the preferred foliation needs to put back in. The physicist Hrvoje Nikolic for example published a paper titled "Relativistic QFT from a Bohmian perspective: A proof of concept" showing that you can fit quantum mechanics to a realist theory that reproduces the predictions of relativistic quantum mechanics if you add back in a preferred foliation.
Thank you for this haha. Its very interesting and a nice break from arguing with everyone here
Near death experiences are a tricky thing to study. There are physiological explanations for much of it, such as weird brain activity is likely to be interpreted as a weird experience.
The problem of this argument is confirmation bias. An anecdote of seeing information you couldn’t have seen and being right is going to be more memorable than seeing information and being wrong.
The scientific method involves looking at both the cases where it seems like something happened and the cases where nothing happened (e.g. someone said they had an experience but it clearly didn’t match reality). If you cherry pick just the events that “showed” what you want, that’s confirmation bias.
I did some googling of my own and found some studies on the topic from seemingly reputable sources that suggested physiological explanations might not be sufficient to explain the patterns they saw. Several of these had the same first author. I also found plenty of studies suggesting physiological explanations can be sufficient, as well as some specific criticisms of the couple studies that suggested they weren’t sufficient.
It’s interesting for sure that there is a doctor or two who seem to believe in the supernatural. The topic of near death experience seems to be of research interest regardless of any supernatural theories because of what it tells us about the brain.
It seems we will likely arrive at scientific consensus about near death experience in the future. I wouldn’t hold my breath that supernatural theories will survive that process.
I think I saw the case this was talking about during my googling. It said “brain activity was not expected” which is not the same as “there was no brain activity”.
That’s the problem with a book like the one you are describing. It’s deliberately cherry picked, exaggerated, and biased to drive you to a certain conclusion.
I instead urge you to go read scientific papers on the topic, and specifically not just the ones that seem to suggest the outcome you want to hear.
Here’s a place to start.
Thanks for your response. If you and I agree on anything it's that we should do more science to understand this stuff better.
Confirmation bias is real, but this isn't it. If I believe that all swans are white , and then I come across a black swan, should I just dismiss that data point because it would confirmation bias (perhaps people would accuse me of wanting this outcome)? No. Ignoring the black swan isn't the way to go here. It wouldn't be ridding ourselves of confirmation bias, it would be ridding ourselves of critical data that contradicts our starting hypothesis.
Similarly: even if supernatural stuff that is hard to explain happens in only a percentage of cases, discarding that data isn't ridding ourselves of confirmation bias; it's simply choosing to ignore critical data. That's not good science.
This is what I started with, so for the longest time I was very skeptical, just like most people in this thread. It is my belief that anyone with an open mind who takes in all the information on this topic (including the studies that suggest supernatural outcomes and those that don't; the first-hand accounts and the skeptical rebuttals) will inevitably come to the same conclusion that I have. That was my experience, anyway. This is not a conclusion I was looking for; I was really stubbornly against this stuff for the longest time, but I was forced to change my mind.
It's also worth noting that the book talks about more than just near-death experiences; I just used them as an example.
Confirmation bias is when the outcome could be adequately explained by luck.
In the topic of near death experiences, if there are 1,000,000 near death experiences and 100 involve someone “knowing something they shouldn’t be able to”, those 100 cases are more likely to be remembered or recorded as significant than the other 900,000 cases. This can lead to an apparent statistical significance in correctly knowing “unknowable” information, when really it’s just people “guessing” correctly.
The “black swan” scenario is a bit different but it would be something like if you are more likely to record a swan sighting if the swan is black, you will significantly overestimate the frequency of black swans.
Im not saying the cases of apparent supernatural effects should be ignored, I’m saying they need to be taken in the context of all similar events, including the mundane, to understand if there even is an effect (knowing something that shouldn’t be possible) or if it’s just a handful of lucky guesses.
These are nowhere near the real numbers. No one could realistically conduct a study on near death experiences that included 1,000,000 participants
That’s a number I threw out there to estimate how many near death experiences might have happened, studied or not, and that’s why it’s such a problem to only focus on the anecdotal cases that get recorded because they are interesting.
A proper study doesn’t need to include 1,000,000 cases, but it does need to ensure that it doesn’t have bias in the cases it does include.
Okay. Thanks for your comment. This discussion we're having here is one of the few threads that hasn't devolved into name-calling so I appreciate that.
I have two responses to this.
The first is that I'm still not so sure I agree with the framing here regarding cherry-picking or bias. Your concern seems to be (and correct me if I'm wrong) something like this: in most cases nothing out of the ordinary happens, so if we only focus on the few cases where something paranormal seems to have happened then we disregard the vast majority of the data and are only focusing on anecdotes. It's more scientific to focus on the bulk of the data, where nothing interesting happens. (Again, please correct me if this is a misrepresentation.)
I don't agree with this characterization because important data is often few and far between. But we shouldn't discount it simply because it is rare. For example, consider Hawking radiation. From what I hear it's an important concept in theoretical physics. But Hawking radiation is very hard to observe. In fact, it's only been observed once, and the observation wasn't even in the wild; it was in a lab. This was an important observation; it provided experimental support for an important concept. Say I was a physicist and I was sceptical of Hawking radiation. What should I do with this information? Should I say "well, this data doesn't matter, most of the time we can't observe Hawking radiation anyway so this data is just anecdotal"? No, that would be an improper response. Sure, this data is rare, but that doesn't mean I can just label it as anecdotal and reject it on that basis. Because the data, though rare, still is very hard to explain without the concept of Hawking radiation. Similarly: it is possible that interesting data regarding near-death experiences are rare. Does that mean that this data is anecdotal and should be ignored? No. So long as we have cases that are genuinely hard to explain without supernatural explanations (and, I believe, we do) then that data will be very important. Because we still have to explain what was going on in those cases.
Another example of this is in the Earth sciences, where the large portion of the field is literally trying to create theories to explain one-time events. For example, the extinction of the dinosaurs. Should we reject the theory that they were killed by an asteroid or meteor or whatever simply because that event only happened once, and the event is therefore merely anecdotal? No. Even events that only occur once may require us to construct novel theories. So long as we cannot explain the event with current theoretical frameworks then it is our duty to invoke a new framework. As it is with dinosaurs so too with NDEs: even if there was just one, spectacular event that was difficult to explain with current frameworks, then it is our duty to invoke novel theoretical frameworks (so long as we actually want to know what's going on). If the data leads us to theories that are paranormal in their character then, oh well, that's just where we'll have to go. If we want to follow the data to where it leads, then we cannot rule out certain destinations ahead of time.
It's also worth pointing out that focusing on single cases is common practice in psychology and medicine. Sure, it's not a replacement for theoretical understanding or large-scale studies, but it is still informative (for the reasons mentioned above). When researchers document and discuss a single interesting case it is known as a case study.
The second thing I wanted to say was regarding your estimates of total NDEs versus potentially paranormal NDEs. You seemed to be trying to aggregate over all the NDEs that have every happened and tried to find the ratio between the NDEs that are interesting versus the one that are amenable to mundane explanations. But I don't know if this is super helpful. Because, for one thing, we're largely left guessing at the numbers (how do we how many were interesting? how do we know how many were mundane? there's literally no way to know). Even if we only look at all the data that we do have then we have to do that in a controlled manner, otherwise we'll run into issues. If we only run thing haphazardly, back of the envelope style then we don't know our scope (how many cases are we dealing with?) and we cannot control for any confounding variables (is this data interoperable?) or trace the data chain-of-custody (how did we even get this data to begin with, and how did that colour its presentation?). In short, it's too messy.
So what we need, instead, is something more controlled. Ideally for something like this we'd want to look at a meta-analysis. But unfortunately I don't know if anything with the required scope exists (if you can find one though, let me know). So the second-best thing to look at is an individual study. You mentioned earlier that you were looking at some studies. If you found any that you thought were interesting then it would probably be more productive to poke holes in that study specifically. I would be happy to discuss the merits of any study of your choosing and then take things from there.
But if we do that then I think the ratios you were discussing in your message would dissolve. This is because its practically impossible to conduct an NDE study with a large sample size (it's hard to predict if/when/how/where someone will die, and the vast majority of those that do die don't come back to talk about it). And with small studies even a single hard-to-explain NDE would be a relatively large percentage of the total sample (which should, I think, mitigate the concerns you expressed in your earlier message; but correct me if I'm wrong on that).