this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2023
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Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.

Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:

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Art by smbc-comics

Consciousness is often said to disappear in deep, dreamless sleep. We argue that this assumption is oversimplified. Unless dreamless sleep is defined as unconscious from the outset there are good empirical and theoretical reasons for saying that a range of different types of sleep experience, some of which are distinct from dreaming, can occur in all stages of sleep.

Pubmed Articles

Does Consciousness Disappear in Dreamless Sleep?

Sciencealert Article We Were Wrong About Consciousness Disappearing in Dreamless Sleep, Say Scientists

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[–] LanternEverywhere@kbin.social 187 points 2 years ago (8 children)

Sleep is NOTHING like death. You're still experiencing lots of stuff, you still very much have a sense of self, you're still thinking things, your brain is still processing lots of information.

General anesthesia - now THAT is a real close period to what being dead is.

[–] Manifish_Destiny@lemmy.world 108 points 2 years ago

You sound a lot like a guy who isn't dead. Not sure if I should trust your opinion.

[–] Lorindol@sopuli.xyz 68 points 2 years ago (9 children)

I've had general anesthesia, it was just like falling into a deep, dreamless sleep.

If death is like that, then there's absolutely nothing to be afraid of.

[–] Vigge93@lemmy.world 26 points 2 years ago

Probably is. If they gave you a little too much anesthesia so you didn't wake up, you would probably drift off the same, and then just not wake up.

[–] TrustingZebra@lemmy.one 24 points 2 years ago

It's not sleeping I'm worried about, it's not waking up.

[–] Ultraviolet@lemmy.world 19 points 2 years ago (2 children)

I've also been dead for 13.8 billion years before I was born, and I didn't mind it then.

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[–] BastingChemina@slrpnk.net 15 points 2 years ago (1 children)

For me when I had anesthesia I quickly closed my eyes with the surgeon talking, when I opened my eyes the surgeon was still talking so I was wondering when the surgery would start.

Of course when I opened my eyes it was 5 hours later and after the surgery but it took me a while to realized that.

[–] PixxlMan@lemmy.world 5 points 2 years ago

It's pretty cool that you could just continue your thought after basically pausing your brain for five hours. Kind of like hibernation for a pc I guess.

[–] IWantToFuckSpez@kbin.social 12 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

Except the agonizing pain which precedes death

[–] FaceDeer@kbin.social 28 points 2 years ago (1 children)
[–] Agent641@lemmy.world 18 points 2 years ago

Saying "you too" to the waiter after he says "enjoy your meal sir"

[–] JackGreenEarth@lemm.ee 8 points 2 years ago

If it's death from too much anaesthesia (or, apparently, freezing), there is none.

[–] SpaceCadet@feddit.nl 8 points 2 years ago (3 children)

I’ve had general anesthesia, it was just like falling into a deep, dreamless sleep.

What if anesthesia actually just blocks your memories and physical reactions, but you actually experience everything that happens to you in absolute terror?

[–] CeeBee@lemmy.world 11 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

What if anesthesia actually just blocks your memories and physical reactions, but you actually experience everything that happens to you in absolute terror?

Latest studies with FMRIs and other tools have found that general anesthesia decouples the sections of the brain from each other. All the various parts of the brain stop communicating. It's an entities different state than sleep based on the brain activity.

Normally when we have various stimuli or are asleep, neural activity "flows" around from one section to the other. When under general anesthesia those flows are isolated and don't connect to other sections of the brain.

This has actually given us a huge clue as to where consciousness comes from and what makes it a thing.

It also helps explain why going under is just lights out and no drama or anything. It's like an off switch for the "person".

[–] kevinbacon@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Thats exactly what some do, depends on the anesthetic, but it doesn't matter because if a memory never forms it may as well not have happened.

[–] SpaceCadet@feddit.nl 4 points 2 years ago (5 children)

if a memory never forms it may as well not have happened

That is an interesting philosophical question.

If suffering is not remembered, was there even suffering? And if there was, does it matter? I can think of a few counterexamples of that, for example: a killer who tortures his victim before killing them.

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[–] PixxlMan@lemmy.world 8 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I'm genuinely surprised that the idea that something bad might happen to you when you're dead or that it could be painful etc is anywhere near as prevalent as it is. To me, that makes absolutely no sense. Of course dying might be painful... But death? Once you brain no longer works? Feels obvious to me that you won't feel, well, anything. The thing that frightens me about death wouldn't be the experience of being dead, but rather not being able to do any more things and not existing anymore.

[–] Anamnesis@lemmy.world 4 points 2 years ago

This reasoning goes all the way back to Epicurus. With regard to your latter points, Epicurus thought they were also solved by being dead. For someone to miss out on something, they have to exist in the first place. No person, no missing out. And for not existing to be bad, a person must be around to be upset about it.

[–] zeppo@lemmy.world 6 points 2 years ago (1 children)

What’s hard for me to accept is the idea of never waking up. It seems like it has to end sometime.

[–] jdsquared@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years ago (2 children)

See for me I'm not sure why that's hard to accept. I think I first heard it from Alan Watts, that there were billions of years of space before I was conscious, so why am I afraid of billions of years of nothing after I'm gone?

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[–] Kodemystic@lemmy.kodemystic.dev 6 points 2 years ago (8 children)

But isn't there a fear anyway? Because its forever. Also not seeing loved ones ever again. Not enjoying the nice things ever again.

[–] jarfil@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years ago

Add constant pain, and that's what I call life.

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[–] hark@lemmy.world 57 points 2 years ago (1 children)

There's still brain activity in sleep.

[–] Agent641@lemmy.world 30 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Brain activity isnt nessecarily consciousness.

[–] CeeBee@lemmy.world 40 points 2 years ago

Right? I've met so many of those people.

[–] echodot@feddit.uk 8 points 2 years ago (1 children)
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[–] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 39 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Do you really have dreamless sleep or do you simply not remember the dream?

[–] brygphilomena@lemmy.world 17 points 2 years ago (2 children)

For a long time, mine was dreamless. It wasn't until I turned off the TV before going to bed that I started to have dreams. I theorize that the external stimuli hindered my brain from creating dreams.

It was a super weird period because my dreams started as nightmares, like my brain didn't know what the hell was going on. Then I drifted through a period of recurring dreams and then lucid dreams. They've settled down into more normal dreams, but I'm still super excited to dream each and every night. It feels like I found music after being deaf or seeing colors for the first time after being blind.

[–] FaceDeer@kbin.social 14 points 2 years ago (1 children)

It wasn't dreamless, you just weren't remembering your dreams. If your sleep was truly dreamless for a lengthy period of time you'd be dead.

Often simply changing your sleeping habits in any significant way is enough to get you to start remembering dreams. That's because you need to wake up "unexpectedly" in the middle of a REM sleep phase to have a chance to form memories of them. Normally your brain has its memory-forming mechanism disengaged during REM sleep because there's no good reason to remember that stuff - it's just a side effect of a mental housekeeping routine.

You can also "train" yourself to remember dreams more often, to some degree, by trying to record a dream journal or otherwise forcing your brain to lay down some memories of those dreams the moment you wake up and they're still present in your short-term memory.

[–] odbol@lemmy.world 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

You're not supposed to remember your dreams. When you remember your dreams it's when you were woken unexpectedly, or when you consciously or unconsciously fled the dream before returning it to the Dreammaster.

We only borrow our dreams from him every night, but when we leave a dream prematurely we are stealing that dream - bringing it into our reality and hiding it away in our memories.

However precious or horrid your stolen dreams may be, remember that the Dreammaster will claim them back from you. He always does, in the end.

[–] PixxlMan@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years ago

Thank you. The only scientific answer in this thread.

I for one welcome my sleep overlord.

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[–] Zorque@kbin.social 14 points 2 years ago

The majority of sleep is dreamless, I believe it's just during REM that you dream, which I believe is usually 15-20% of normal sleep.

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[–] mojo@lemm.ee 29 points 2 years ago

Your brain is still very much active. It's more like running a computer with the display turned off.

[–] Alexstarfire@lemmy.world 25 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Wonder how the robot feels about rebooting.

[–] nucleative@lemmy.world 6 points 2 years ago

He might not feel much if the save state doesn't get reloaded on startup!

[–] severien@lemmy.world 20 points 2 years ago (4 children)

It's pretty terrifying when you think about it, yet completely normalized.

My pet peeve regarding all these discussions is that we throw around "consciousness", but we have no good definition for it ...

[–] duckington@lemmy.world 34 points 2 years ago (2 children)

I mean to be honest I wouldn’t say that we “die” at all when you sleep… your mind is extremely active while sleeping, it’s just disconnected from motor control.

[–] pjhenry1216@kbin.social 7 points 2 years ago (10 children)

I mean, without defining what the self is and consciousness, it's difficult to even define what death is from a consciousness point of view. A living meat bag doesn't require brain activity either. There's a whole range of things. So even assuming we have a good meaning of "death" is oversimplifying things.

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[–] nevemsenki@lemmy.world 6 points 2 years ago

Not even that sometimes. I'm told I can do some pretty mean kicks while I sleep.

[–] TwilightVulpine@lemmy.world 13 points 2 years ago

It's terrifying at first, but if you reflect over it further it becomes natural. Sure, we can't guarantee that we are the same continuous individual, but "not sleeping" would only see us have a more profound and permanent discontinuity. It's not a possibility for us. Still, we do carry something of the people we used to be regardless. Consciousness vanishes and recreates itself, as do most of our cells. We are evolving entities, as is everyone around us.

This existential fear is rooted on a desire for permanence that we never had to begin with. There was never a fixed self that we could possibly know.

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[–] paddirn@lemmy.world 12 points 2 years ago

Death is 'Long Death', Sleep is 'Short Death', and Naps are 'Power Death'.

[–] callyral@kbin.social 11 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

what a suspicious comic

[–] evatronic@lemm.ee 9 points 2 years ago

To die

To sleep

To sleep, perchance to dream...

[–] popemichael@lemmy.sdf.org 7 points 2 years ago (12 children)

I mean, I lucid dream every night. So my consciousness is rarely off.

I've been practicing for almost 20 years to be able to switch it on and off so its kinda nice that I get to be a god 6 to 8 hours a day

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[–] Corndog@ttrpg.network 4 points 2 years ago (2 children)
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[–] Vilm@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

What is the door looking thing with legs supposed to represent?

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[–] HughJanus@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 years ago

When people ask me what happens when you die, I say:

"Remember what it was like before you were born? Well it's a lot like that."

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