I had a car accident years ago. When I gained consciousness I had no recollection of any events for 2 weeks prior and 2 weeks after the accident. I only know what people had told me - I use that information in place of my memories. The doctors suggest that I was fully aware of the trauma of the accident and the mind just shut it down to protect me. At the jury trial the defending lawyers wanted to hypnotize me into remembering but the judge went with the decision that if my mind didn't voluntarily want to remember it shouldn't have too (of with I'm glad). I used to wake up screaming - knowing that I was reliving the accident - but the second I wake it was gone...
I have epilespy, and have had some interesting events: once I had a seizure, and smash the drivers side window from my car with my head. With no window, I for some reason, on auto-pilot, drove 3 hours to New York City in the middle of the night, then I snapped out of it and realized that I was covered with blood and had been driving for hours----no clue why I went to NYC. It gave me some insight as to what it is like being awake, but not really conscious.
Interesting. May I ask how long does it normally take you to "regain" consciousness after a seizure? Also what are the laws in America? I know in some European countries you have to be seizure free for two years before being able to get a driving license
Silver lining of having a disease that destroys my memory is I now get to go through your entire catalouge of videos again, like watching for the first time, but feeling familiar and comfy. Love your videos, they really help get me by some days.
Lol, that's one of the advantages of our amnesia too. We can have a "first" experience with a favorite show or book multiple times. Of course it's not so useful at work...
@@solsystem1342 Assuming you have DID, can you share those experiences amongst yourselves? Or does every alter experience the show or book once for the first time? Can you tell the others in your inner world about this great show you've seen that the others have to check out, or do you guys leave notes to each other? Maybe these are silly questions, idk xD
Had one super scary moment of amnesia. I had just started taking a drug called Lipitor for high cholesterol. I was driving home from the grocery store when suddenly I was convinced I was driving on the wrong side of the road. I thought that I must be driving in England but couldn’t figure out how in the hell I had gotten from my home in Canada to England. I panicked then looked at the other cars and decided I must be doing it right. Then I realized I didn’t know where I was or how to get home. I was only able to get home by noticing familiar trees, signs and objects along my route home. Once I got home, I flushed the Lipitor. At my next appointment, my doctor explained that it was a very rare side effect of the medication and that some people had suffered full amnesia from the drug. Strangest experience ever!
"looked at the other cars" Well at least it did not impair your (sound) judgment. Some people would never consider they could be wrong, and prefer causing accidents.
Wow! If it makes you feel better, this is EXTREMELY rare. In over a year of working with Social Security claimants I’ve never once heard one of them say their Lipitor (aka atorvastatin) did this - and it’s very commonly prescribed! I hope you and your doctor found a reasonable solution - without all the scary amnesia. ♥️
I find the thing that helps me sleep the most is listening to your videos. That’s not a jab, it’s your voice, I find it soothing. You’ve helped me go to sleep every night for about two years now.
The summer before I turned 6 I was apparently playing on the railing of our front porch. It was one of those wide concrete ones. I slipped and fell backwards. Landed on the pavement and was blacked out for a few minutes. My brother dumped water on me and slapped me in the face (he was only 12 at the time). I don't remember any of this but I do remember regaining consciousness. It's one of my strongest memories still. I remember being cold, wet, my face hurting, the back right side on my head hurting, and seeing a clear blue sky with a small puffy cloud in the top right of my vision. I didn't remember anyone, any events, or places. According to my mind that was the moment I started existing. After that I ended up having frequent seizures that tapered off as a got older. In my early 20s they turned into cluster headaches and that went away in my mid 30s. Also, my family said there was a massive change in me after. I suddenly became great with math and started taking things apart to figure out how it worked.
@@josburn6768 I've never been able to quantify it but the best I can do is imagine brain freeze on one side of your head about a few hundred times more intense, lasting 2 to 4 hours, and repeating up to 4 times in a day. For me this happened on average once every 3 days for 3 months every year. Medications did absolutely nothing to help.
systematic101 have you heard about or tried qsylicibin mushrooms? I’ve heard that works wonders. You can order some spores and cultivate your own it’s not hard. But you don’t have this problem anymore you said right?
In 2011 I was in a car accident. It was the last memory I have for about a year. During that time I kept copious notes and journals about everything going on. I had to learn to walk and read again, I had to learn how to THINK again! Now the journal entries are almost indistinguishable from real memories, at least until I try for details. Other than that it's like I skipped a year in my life. As time goes on, memories of my life before the accident have slowly started fading. Not disappearing but getting fuzzy and indistinct. In the TBI survivor community we say we are different people and we mourn the loss of that old self while accepting who we are now. It's like dying and coming back. I have a different personality, different strengths, different weaknesses.
I have a set of boring stories kept in the back of my mind where I'm the main character. Whenever I have trouble falling to sleep I try to add another chapter. But, it's so mundane that I fall asleep after a couple of chapters. One of the stories involves backpacking in the woods going from one camp to another where nothing happens in between. Works well for when I can't shut my mind off from the happenings of the day.
I have a similar process but I describe very boring things to myself in great great detail. Like let’s think of my shoes, let’s visually describe them and where I wear them and when I wear them how long have I had them…. Etc what they look like also
about 3 months ago i got knocked unconscious in a workplace accident, and after waking up my brain operated on an autopilot-like loop for several hours until i started to actually recover. it went something like this (explained the exasperated paramedic for about the 20th time): [seeing concerned faces] hey what happened? [situation explained] i'll be fine, it's just a little bump [realising i'm not fine, there is blood, i can't stand and have zero balance] * insert lighthearted joke * (apparently i have many) [ppl saying to take it easy, just rest, try not to move] me checking for injuries (cut & bruised head, arms, shoulder, are my teeth still in? etc..) ow i really hurt [seeing concerned faces] hey what happened?.... i have zero memories from the moment of the incident until several hours later when i was getting x-rays at the hospital, so i guess my brain was defaulting back to some starting condition until it could properly write memories again and get on with the task of being me! thankfully my default settings are pretty mild mannered
This is a typical reaction after a trauma. I have seen it: a friend of mine had a car accident. She was physically ok but kept asking what happened every 5 minutes. It lasted for 2 days. Then she woke up perfectly normal with zero recognition of what happened from 1 minute before the accident to that moment.
Sounds like global transient amnesia. It can even happen without a discernable trauma of any kind. Radiolab did a fascinating look at it, and the woman featured had an episode extremely similar to yours and it was recorded. www.wnycstudios.org/story/did-i-miss-my-birthday-darn
I'm a nurse and a while back I spent some time working with a guy who had a hypoxic brain injury. He was a very difficult patient, being verbally and physically abusive. After months of rehab he eventually came around and was mortified to learn of his recent behaviour.
We had a very famous case of that type of amnesia in my country, a guy had an accident with his bike and then just started asking for his bike and his daughter over and over again, its been like 12 years and you can still sometimes hear people quote him in moments of funny confusions. If you wanna watch it just search for "y la moto y candela?"
I once went into a chemistry exam, looked at my paper and all I could think was, “the brain you are requesting is not available, please try again later” ...
As someone who's gone thru retrograde amnesia and multiple fugue states I love these ideas about the brain and memory and how that constructs who we are as people. Are we only are memories or are we constantly recreating ourselves moment to moment? One of my fugue states lasted a little over a month. One day I woke up and a month had gone by and I had no memory of any of it. I actually "woke up" in the middle of a conversation 1000 miles away from where my last memory started. Crazy cool stuff.
And Zhuangzi (~ 370 BC) once wrote, he dreamt he a butterfly, but upon awakening, he didn't know if he was a human having dreamt he was a butterfly, or butterfly dreaming he was a human.
Zac Tiner When the Celestine Prophecy came out, I was with a buddy that purchased it. I didn’t pay any attention to what it was, what it was about, or anything. I was just running errands with a buddy for something to do. But the book title, for some reason, stayed with me. Maybe 5 or 6 years later, I was thinking about that title, as I often had, and I thought, damnit, I’m going to buy that book finally. Just as I was walking out the door, my phone rang, and it was this girl I met at college (I was in my college days here), and we chit chat and she asks what I’m doing. I tell her that I’m going to get some book I’ve been thinking about for years, but had no idea what it was about. Being home from college, I tucked myself in my parent’s den to talk on the phone. So as I’m talking to her about this book I knew nothing about, I’m facing the bookshelves in the room when I see it... there it was on the shelf...the Celestine Prophecy sitting on the bookshelf of my parent’s house. Thinking what a weird coincidence, I ask my parents about it...they knew nothing of the book, or how it got there. I asked my brother....he had no idea. Then I read the book over the next couple of days, and was tingling with the strangeness of the entire ordeal that lead me to remember the title, think about it for years, finally deciding to buy it, getting a call as I’m walking out the door, telling the girl I met about going to get the book, noticing the book on the shelf as I’m telling her about it, asking my family to which they have no idea where it came from, how it got there, or what it’s even about, only for me to read it and realize the book is about meaningful coincidences. What a weird ride that was. Sure, maybe subconsciously I saw it there, and that’s why i thought of it and never forgot it. But no one in my family knew how the book got there, and none of them read it. Someone put it there, but who? My buddy? He said he didn’t. So I have no idea. All I know is that the whole thing was truly a meaningful coincidence.
"There is no knowledge without sacrifice. To gain everything, you must lose everything." -Gautama Buddha Interesting that these two lived in about the same period. Coincidence?
I understand your struggle my friend, my inner voice never stops either. It's silly but a trick that helps me is to use my endless train of thoughts to my advantage. I imagine a fantastical reality and the crazier I get the more I drift off to sleep and before I know it... morning. Good luck🤗
One of my brothers could fall asleep quickly. One moment wide awake the next sound asleep. Always amazed me. The bout of amnesia, anyone who has over drank has had a bout of amnesia.
yep. and the interesting thing about this sort of 'context switching amnesia', is that if you get close enough to shitfaced again you can generally recall blackout stuff that you cannot remember sober.
@@homelessrobot Yeah even studies have covered that. I even read about one that found if someone had a small amount of alcohol while they learned something they could remember it a little better the next day if they had a small amount of alcohol again. It was a very small amount of alcohol tho. iirc 1-2 drinks.
Only a Joe Scott video can make me almost spit out my coffee at a Demolition Man three seashells reference, while simultaneously making me ponder aspects of consciousness (which I think about often enough anyway) that I have never contemplated. Well done good sir.
Dude thinking about dying one day has definitely kept me up at night. I’ve even had a panic attack once because of it. It’s nice to know that I’m not the only one.
@@MrStringybark oh this is old, I don't think I meant my interpretation of hell in fact I'm an atheist so I don't believe there is even a hell, but if I was to believe in a place like hell id say we are already living in it, this world is horribly dangerous and cruel, everyone regardless of there background or how they are raised has the capacity to commit untold acts of evil and violence.
@@BJL2142 My comment was to point out comically that your idea of eternal misery was something only a very privileged person would casually remark on as being the worst thing that came to their mind.
@@MrStringybark well I never claimed it was the worst thing, I live with chronic neuropathic pain so I'm well aware of torture that never ends or feels like it won't end, I imagine the worst case would be for all eternity to feel like jumper leads are connected to your nervous system electrocuting you endlessly, that would be hell
@@BJL2142 I once had a nightmare about being electrocuted. I fell down and lay on the kitchen floor unable to move, completely paralysed and rigid as I had hold of the electric cord and couldn't let go but still feeling the electric shock at the same time The electric cord then turned into a dynamite fuse which burned quickly away from me making it impossible, if I could, to somehow pull the cord out of the wall. With despair, I knew this was the end and just gave up. This of course is when I woke up.
Sometimes if my wife wakes me up out of a deep sleep, I'll catch myself having a conversation with her and then I'll really wake up and realize that I don't know wth I just said to her and I need to figure out who am I or where am I or what day of the week it is or what year is lol🤣😂😅
Imagine having that same experience, only 'waking up' during the day and while standing and talking. That happens to me far more than I'd like. Not sure which category it fits into
When I was younger I had two moments of amnesia. the first came when I slipped on gravel and hit my head on some stones. My memory blinked out for a second and I was dazed but nothing major. The second and bigger one came when I was 15 playing ice hockey. After receiving a nasty hit to the head I was concussed but played it off to the coach so I could keep playing. I don't remember anything after that for about an hour. I only know how long it was because my father got me off the ice and undressed me. I "woke" up in the car on the way home. time had passed for me instantaneously. No memory also means no perception of time. I still remember the eery feeling of being in one place and then instantly being in another. My memory of the incident never returned and 20 years later I only know what my father told me happened. But other than That I am great. Thanks for asking Casey Neistat I love your channel ;) P.s. I fall asleep instantly at night. Not caring about anything works wonders for your sleep. Waking up tired sucks but oh well.
I fell off a skateboard and hit my head when J was a kid. I woke up when somebody came to help. The went to call an ambulance but I walked off in the meantime. The problem was, halfway home I went blind for a few minutes.
similar experience with hockey, all I knew is I lost an edge and then I on my back on the ice looking up at the rinks medical staff, apparently a few minutes went by that i was unaware of.
If at that time your brain was not able to transfer the short-term memory to the long-term storage, you never will have access to that memory. It is like erased. Of course, you could access it if hypnotised! Because even if the brain couldn't store it, consciousness still has access to everything that happened in your life. Something to think about, eh!
It’s weird commenting on a video from 3 years ago. I’m not surprised you have a hard time falling asleep, just watching how fast you have to talk in order to keep up with your brain in these videos says it all. Started watching your most recent videos and am working my way back, so doubt you’ll ever see this, oh well.
Joe - you mention at the end that digital consciousness will not end or have lapses in memory. That could be a living hell - imagine being able to recall in high def all your worst moments? Memory loss can also be a blessing...
Only you don't get to choose which things you will forget. I remember a whole lot of shitty things that happened to me, but I get on with living here and now, because that's what you do.
@@shariwelch8760 Yup... If some incident is traumatic, I remember it vividly and constantly. Mundane things, can't remember at all. Like just now I burnt the food because I forgot I was cooking!!
All of you only exist because I bothered to spare my time of day to write this out. So enjoy. Now I'm off to join the rest of us nonexisting people that only exist when an organism of intelligence reads and understands our comments.
I had a gf once who temporarily lost her memory after being in a car accident. We were broken up at the time, she couldn’t remember who i was or our past relationship. We were still friends before the accident. She was so confused/scared when i came up to her saying hello at school, as one would after being approached by a stranger. After her friends explained what happened i felt so bad i did everything i could to help her regain her memory. It took about 3 months for her to regain most of her lost memories but never fully recuperated all. It was tough in the beginning but quickly became a blessing, It’s special to fall in love and we’re bound to love more than one thing but to love someone twice is twice as special.
PRO TIP! I've got some serious insomnia issues. Throughout high school I would often toss and turn until the early AM and then be up ungodly early (passing out at 2-4 was common, 6AM was go time). I tried all the old tricks like melatonin, soft music, even counting sheep! After a particularly rough 3 day stretch of consciousness I decided enough was enough. It was time to scratch this nut. I started by analyzing my approach to the problem and realized that in essence I'd only tried one thing: I'd tried to relax to the point of unconsciousness. I mean that makes sense on the surface. What could be more relaxing than a good nights sleep? Thing is it wasn't working. That's when it dawned on me: conscious intent interrupts natural flow. By trying to will myself to sleep I'd been disrupting my own ability to sleep... I s'pose it could be equatid to walking and then trying to control all the subtle movements your body makes as you walk. In one case your able to simply move, the other you get mired down in the technical aspects and wind up on your arse. I concluded that my best approach would be totally contrary to my intuition. If focusing on the issue exasperated it then ignoring it might be my ticket out. Sure does sound like a conundrum, hell it sounds nearly paradoxical. I mean how can someone ignore their state of consciousness? The secret is distraction. That's the common thread in all the non medicinal solutions, they are an attempt to yet your mind off your problem without demanding any effort. That's the secret: devote your mind to something that will take 100% of your focus but doesn't require much thought. For me it was audiobooks. I'd start one on my headphones and totally devote myself to the story. I had modest results at first, but within a month I'd had a distinct improvement. My 2-5 hours of actual sleep became .5-1 hour to pass out. Next I altered me eating schedule. I forced myself to have a good, wholesome breakfast at 6:30, no exceptions. Dinner was at 6, no exceptions. That also helped improve my situation. Where I found the most luck was I incorporated our pattern seeking behavior into the mix. I've finished the Harry Potter series, the Sword of truth, and the Kingkiller Chronicles at least a dozen times... well that's not quite true for the Kingkiller Chronicles. I've listened to those at least 30 times, no joke.... and I may or may not own 3 compies of all the books. Allegedly one is pristine, one is for lending, and miiiight have a few (thousand) notes.......... there're kinda the best thing ever. I mean seriously, if I'm not careful that'll become a fanboy post. I'll content myself by saying it's my single most favorite entertainment media. Of every book, show, movie, videogame, you name it. The Kingkiller Chronicles hold stop number one, two, and three. Seriously, do yourself a favor and read them.
My Aunt has some form of memory loss. She doesn't remember new people or events. She's always asking where her husband is and when her daughter reminds her that he's dead she relives the loss all over again and cries.
My best friend recently suffered from total retrograde amnesia, we had known each other from Kindergarten and he didn‘t recognize me at first. Thankfully he appears to be recovering pretty well.
I met a guy once who had a brain trauma and amnesia. He does remember people from before the incident, but only if he met them again in the week immediately after the accident.
@Niji Same here. Not about the exact same stuff, but still my brain is thinking about writing dialogue ideas for my book or future tech or film music or... You get the idea. But I still fall asleep eventually.
I once got so sick that I fell asleep before Christmas and from my perspective, woke up after New Year’s Day. I’m told that despite sleeping most of the time, I got out of bed and went to the bathroom repeatedly, had brief conversations, and drank water and juice a few times a day.
When I had the flu a couple of years ago, I was blacking out while standing up so I fell flat on my face. In that instance everything had gone, myself my memory, the world. The first and only thing I was aware of was just all encompassing, mindnumbing pain. Then, as the pain subsided after a few moments, I sort of became aware of the world. Then I became aware of my self but I didn't know who I was nor did I remember anything I've ever experienced. That moment was profoundly frightening. Then my memories and my personality gradually came back. It all only took probably less than 30 seconds but it was a really unsettling experience. Basically as if you pulled the plug on a running computer and then plugged it back in and rebooted it.
I’ve had several concussion over the last two years. Sometimes I can feel my brain getting heavy. Like it’s filled with electrically-charged cotton that gets heavier and heavier through the day and at night is cleared out. My memory is so spotty. I can rewatch movies and tv shows and it’s like watching them for the first time every time. I forget things all the time yet some memories I retain and some events I remember. Honestly, it’s quite frustrating for myself and others when I can’t remember something that may have happened moments before or even the day before. Things that I once deemed as my favorite show or place, I can’t remember what makes it a favorite. I can’t predict what memories will stick. It’s been an interesting time in this post-concussive life. It involves a ton of notebooks and lists.
My sister has memory problems following an accident and has to live her life by her calendar and reminders in her phone. She gets on just fine unless she forgets to charge her phone!
I had memory problems almost constantly because of congenital anaemia. So, for instance, if we were asked to read something at home and the teacher asked questions the next day, I knew I'd read it, but couldn't for the life of me remember the answer. So in one instance what happened was that I needed to give a one-word answer, and could only remember the first letter of the word (proper noun). But that incident where the teacher humiliated me in front of the whole class (over three decades ago) and then announced the answer has stuck with me till date. I still remember that answer (and the question) now. So if you are in an emotionally charged situation, you will remember it in detail. But mundane things, you'll forget. Also, for almost every joke, if I hear it or read it again, I am completely blank about the punch line, and am as curious about it as the first time I was listening to it. And I mean even the fifth or tenth time I hear the same joke!
I have the problem you described with sleep. I like to put hour long talks/presentations/lectures on things I am mildly interested in. They help guide my thinking, and I eventually fall asleep as I'm processing what's being said. Just make sure it's not something you're very interested in, it will likely keep you up. Even if it doesn't, you'll miss out on many details.
I do this but also sometimes just listen to familiar t.v. comedies... works great as a psychic numbing agent. The further intersection with this topic is that sometimes I come back partly into consciousness while the sound is still on, and I hear a joke I've heard many times before, but in that moment I hear it as if for the first time -- I recognize the context of the show (like, I recognize it's "Jack Donaghy"), but the joke (e.g. "what am I, a farmer?") is received as new information. Awareness, language processing, contextual recognition, perception of humor -- all that is at least partially online, but access to memory that would allow me to re-experience it as a familiar joke instead of hearing it fresh? Not online. Maybe it's just kind of an example of modular consciousness. The funny twist is that I am forming new memories at the time (obviously, since I'm able to recall these events) but full memory retrieval is not functional.
Ah, amnesia, it happened to me few years ago when working very intensely on code. After few weeks on not sleeping much, working 16 hours daily in one particular moment I realised that I didn't understand any line of my own code and of what purpose that whole library of functions had. I went completely terrified as I was going to have a meeting with the client paying for that project the very next day. I tried many times to recall and couldn't .. otherwise everything was all right, I was thinking straight, remembered details of meeting, telephone numbers, etc.. but couldn't remember and even understand my own comments for code that I was writing 15 minutes earlier! Struggling with panic, I forced myself into leaving everything and getting out for a walk and later having a short nap... after which I started feeling better.. It took me the whole day before everything returned... but it did lucky me :-) It never happened to me earlier, and I felt so strange, machine-like or like a computer when you disconnect power cable of one of hard disks.. I have goosebumps when thinking about it even now.
Been knocked out playing rugby and “lost” an afternoon on strong painkillers. Both made me a little “emotional” I would say. Very disconcerting to loose your mind... even if it is temporary
Hello from 2021! This happens to me every single night, no matter what it takes me like 20-30 minutes each night to fall asleep. I just literally started like imagining what I would like to dream about and like actively making a dream. To this day that is how I fall asleep.
Do not watch or read Ghost in the Shell... unless you wanna go down that rabbit hole. Despite being a futuristic sci-fi, what Ghost in the Shell really is about is the dualism between body and mind. The sci-fi action and investigative story is the pretext to go round and round in an exploration of the concept. Self identity, mind upload, memory interference, memory loss, creation of an entire persona, conciousness, hivemind, rise of conciousness from machines, plus a bunch of topics are peppered around the manga and anime plot. The english name came from Koestler's The Ghost in the Machine, several of the TV anime episodes makes reference to books and philosophy works around the concept of the mind/body dualism. And THIS is what most fans feel is missing from the live-action... but that's a whole other discussion.
Reminds me of Homer Simpsons dialogue; 'OK Brain, you don't like me and I don't like you...but let's just get through this for both our sakes....' Perhaps have that conversation as a prelude to sleep. Sweet dreams!
Love you Joe, thank you for the brain stimulation as always. I love temporary amnesia, I had a bout of it the other morning at a friend's place. I was pretty waisted on a number of different substances and it was an all nighter, so I put my head onto the table in front of me and closed my eyes, almost as soon as I did this I forgot everything, who I was, where I was or who I was with. I could have just opened my eyes and found out but that would have spoiled the fun. It took me a good minute I reckon to figure out where I was. I've had the same sensation many times upon waking, but it only lasts 10 or 20 secs at the most (still fun). I've had the same experience leaning backwards over a yoga ball and blacking out, as well as on a DMT trip, I was still conscious, but had no idea who or where I was until my eyes sprung open of their own accord, talk about soul wrenching. After having a number of experiences like this I've concluded that the spirit/consciousness within us is eternal. I think it just rides around in a body like we do a car, till the car dies, then we wait for a new car. It's the waiting for a new car that could be heaven or hell, imagine how scary that is for someone who wasn't expecting it, they die, but they're still conscious, but have no idea where they are, who they are, where they just were, how long they'd stay there and what's awaiting them. And no mobile device to occupy them while they wait *shudders* 😳😳😳
I have a couple dissociative disorders, so I have short episodes surprisingly frequently. My favourite (heavy sarcasm) is getting in the car to leave a social event, driving for about five minutes, and then realising I'm sitting in my parked car in front of my home - sometimes up to an hour away from the origin. Dissociative disorders such as DID (Dissociative identity disorder, formerly known as multiple personalities), derealisation, and depersonalisation challenge the concept of the self being directly tied to consciousness, because I have been completely dissociated in social settings, but other people claim I acted as normal and even engaged in conversation and complex discussion. One of the fascinating things I experience, as someone with DID, is interacting with people that I might never have met, but is close with one of my alters (alternate identites/personalities). I don't usually talk about it so openly because DID is so heavily stigmatised (thanks, Hollywood), and the idea of losing track of yourself through dissociative episodes is treated as either something for comedic effect, the beginnings of a horror story, or the origin story of a villain. So... here, have a brief dissertation on this.
There have been times when I feelt like I was living in a body that wasn't really me, kinda like a exoskeleton that I was just controlling, so I think only my brain is the real me.
I'm usually the same way with falling asleep but the past month or so I've been hanging drywall 50-60 hours a week. Haven't had a single night that it took me more than 5 minutes to fall asleep haha
Tyler Jacobson exactly Joe just needs some good old fashioned manual labor! I work in a foundry and machine shop and don’t have any trouble falling asleep. Even if I try hard to think about something that’s bothering me I’m still out almost as quick as I lay still!
I had a tbi and came real close to dieing. They were waiting on people to come say goodbye before harvesting my organs when I started recovering. I still have some memory deficits but either I continue to improve or I have gotten better at my workarounds of my mental deficits.
Daniel Mannebach Same, dude. Except for the organ harvesting part. I walked home as if nothing had even happened, apparently. My concept of time is nonexistent now. Has been for the last 17 years. It’s as if I ceased to age, merely learning as much as possible and making wiser decisions. The greatest shift was that I went from being a literature pro and terrible at math to the complete opposite. Now I’m awful at literature breakdown and proficient in math, science, and history. It’s as if the neurocognitive deficit flipped the LOGIC switch on and bulk emotion off. I still love to read and philosophize but I can’t pursue it professionally, only as an occasional hobby. It still doesn’t make any damned sense to me. Have you noticed such extreme processing differences?
JOE! I have the same problem. My problem is all day though. To the point where I can't work without music or radio in the background because it keeps me out of my own head and on task. And for sleep, I CAN'T sleep without a movie or show playing to block out the noise. Watching a movie actually let's your brain relax more than not. The images and sounds are done for you so it's easier for the brain to relax and allow you to drift off. Works for me, maybe itll work for you!
Glad I’m not the only one who thinks of death right before passing out almost every night without fail. Definitely have a fear of death and it’s worse cuz I’m a CNA for those who are at the end of life so I’m constantly thinking of it at work as well 😅😢
Your intro is my every night. You nailed it perfectly. I never thought anyone else would ever understand what its like. It usually takes at least one hour to fall asleep
That is the same with me. It is rare that I am my current self in dreams - I am usually "myself" but younger and in completely different circumstances. Often while dreaming I am merely "watching" myself in third person as if I am in someone else's life; not quite realizing I am dreaming, but aware enough to know that this isn't my real/actual life I am experiencing.
Me too, I've never looked at it this way before. I've been both halves of a couple in a dream, and completely switched perspectives frequently. It might also explain people tripping balls or meditating, losing their sense of self temporarily, and getting visions of a "past life" that's very likely made up imo
When I go to bed. Me: Joe uploaded a new TH-cam video on consciousness, that should be interesting. I should watch that tomorrow while surfing on turnips. Brain: Surfing on turnips? Me: Uh... looks like I'm losing consciousness. See you tomorrow, brain!
I'm :58 in and already wanted to say THANK YOU for the very first thing - I got through an anxiety ridden existential crises over death EVERY. SINGLE. NIGHT. (well, just the nights I don't fall asleep before bedtime or pass out immediately). I have anxiety issues (obv), but I truly felt like I'm the outlier, that nobody else had this issue this often. I'm sorry you do too. So, thank you, my friend for making me feel less insane lol
I understand your pain Joe. My husband can fall asleep the minute he hits the pillow. Me? I'm up for another hour thinking about what I did, what I have to do, what bills I need to pay, what work I need to do, story ideas, etc. And I'm a light sleeper too.
A good friend of mine hit his head while riding a dirt bike (always wear helmets kids) and forgot the last six months of his life. He didn't seem to have a problem making new memories though.
My first bike was an old hand-me-down. Turned a hard corner and the rubber grip on the handle bars slid right off. I went head first straight into the curb. 6 stitches but if I had any memory loss I don't think I missed much. Probably would've forgotten it by now anyway 😂
@@PrometheusV i've always found comparing a human's mind to a ship a poor comparison since a ship is by all intents and purposes never conscious or alive, so it has no sense of identity for itself but only how others view it.
@@PrometheusV yes, but it's odd since from an outside perspective we can only assume someone else has consciousness and autonomy, so it cannot answer whether the self is lost.
@@seraphiv3 Of course you are right. The whole case just REMINDS of the boat paradox. For the boat we can only say that both boats are functional and identical, which is a poor comparison to a "self".
Dualism... Monism... the glands outside our brain that help create our emotions... what is us? Is there consciousness outside a form of cognitive engine such as a brain flesh or otherwise??? Just Love and Learn; it's why we're here!
I have right temporal lobe epilepsy, and experienced an amnesic episode once after a massive seizure. I was staying with my father and sister for a holiday, who had recently moved house. When I regained consciousness, I didn't recognise their new house at all. I kept asking my sister where we were. It's like my memory had reset to around a year before - I asked my sister where her dog was (he had died the year before). She told me he was at the puppy salon so I didn't get upset. I picked up a pair of my shoes, super impressed and said "who's are these?!" when I found out they were mine, I was super happy. My sister was so concerned as I walked around the house, not recognising it and asking about old issues, that she hid the funeral order of service of a family friend who had recently died because she knew I would have thought he was still alive. The whole post-ictal amnesia lasted about half an hour, and I only snapped out of it and back to the current time when my father walked in the door and hugged me and told me I had had a seizure, explaining my confusion.
You could totally do a who series on what different philosophers have said about what it means to be a "self" (or what it means to be human more broadly). Besides Locke, you could do Descartes (I think therefore I am) and Kierkegaard (to have anxiety is to be human) come to mind off the top of my head.
When I was really sick in the hospital for five weeks with sepsis, I lost any memory of three weeks of my life. I do remember some wild delusions I had during that time though, but have to rely on what I was told about that missing three weeks. I still feel a bit lost about that six years later.
I had back surgery 11 years ago, 2 months in hospital. I remember bits, but most are sensations or just vague things. Medical and stress amnesia is a Trip
I did get retrograde amnesia when I was 17. I cured all my anger issues and the depression I've had since childhood. I was such a happy person, untill I got my memory back.
At 0:40 I can see that Joe didn't eliminate all of his clones he made in that previous video, I bet he kept the first two clones and killed any clone stuck at the "Bork bork bork" level. ;)
I listen to one man on TH-cam for hypnosis to knock me out to sleep. I use same audio every time and I have no idea what he says past about 7 minutes. It's unbelievable!
When I can't sleep I listen to Alan Watts, his ideas are interesting enough to follow a long, but not so provocative to throw you in to an existential crisis, plus his voice is very soothing and hypnotic.
Have you ever woken up and for that few minutes before being "awake" you're confused and have to kinda "find yourself?" Yeah, I get that sometimes. Super weird, possibly a structural weak point in the brain but not debilitating.
I only ever had moments when someone suddenly wakes me up and asks me something, then i respond with some sort of gibberish or something i didn't mean to say
Sometimes I wake up and have to work out reality. Who I am, where I’m at, and what I believe. Usually on the back side of a dream. The dream is so real I think it’s true. Then at some point I go “oh I was just dreaming”. I’d write it off but it can last for hours
in MEMENTO, the main character loses his memory and has to look at photos in his pocket to trigger memories.but how does he always remember to look at the pics?
I had that happen to me after taking chantix to quit smoking, till the Dr wrote a script get me straight. I had seen the movie, and it made me laugh that it similar. It wasn't constant, but would happen many times a day. I remember forgetting where I was going in the car, see groceries in the back, must be done shopping. Dirty dishes, I had dinner. Lol
Me: Ah nice, another video of Joe just before I go to sleep, better watch it! no time tomorrow... Video: Consciousness Me: Laying awake, contemplating every question raised in the video...
Best tip I've found for getting to sleep is to use ur imagination to create a cartoon world. Not sure why, but it really works for me. Sometimes I'll imagine up a cartoon I've seen and create my own situations. I know it sounds dumb, but if ur struggling to fall asleep it's worth a try.
Joe, finally, after near 67 years - I finally learned that I can fall to sleep without thought - literally! I have finally learned to stop asking myself questions as I slumber - then, I fall to sleep - always, without fail! Exceptions can be physical and deep physiological pain...
Don't know for sure what any of the following implies but here goes... I had an accident at 14yrs old. I flatlined and everything was white exept I was slowly rising off table, facing myself, through the ceiling but there was no ceiling, watching them massage and attemp to reanimate my body, I was calm and had no questions about anything. I'm very curious usually but it's as if I knew everything and it was serene. They obviously succeed and I was in a coma for 4 hours. While comatose, I was conscious but kinda floating in dark nothingness, I remember wondering what was going on but not panicked. I slowly started hearing beeping and opened my eyes to realize it was all the medical devices around me in icu. I had issues remembering the time before the accident but it has slowly dripped back in. A year or so after that, I walked into a corner store, walked to the fridge, got what i wanted and walked to the cash register to pay but before I could pay... suddenly I was walking into the store again, I looked over to the fridge, wondering "wtf?", saw myself standing at the cash stairing blindly at the clerk. I walked over to myself, walked around myself then just like that, I was again just standing there with the guy talking loudly to me, I paid and left and waited years before sharing the experience with anyone...because I realize how far out it all sounds. I have researched many fields, subjects & topics but nothing is has fully described it. So many people have tried to tell me what I experienced was, this and/or that, some were way too wrapped in their beliefs (stating them as facts), some are pure reductionists, many refuse to take me at my word that it even happened. All of them have taught me something about myself and helped me grow as an individual. The closest I've come to explaining it theoretically, is that perhaps, consciousness is fractal. Hinduism has some notions that resembles this but in my opinion, it tries too hard in labeling and detailing. All in all, I'm now just thankful for the experiences and appreciate the mystery of it all. I no longer try to label any of it but I do still ponder it from time to time. Consciousness is definitely mysterious to me. :)
Philippe Santini it’s odd that when ur in a coma u slowly regained consciousness because while ur not conscious what is in control? What’s handing you back the controls slowly? How does it make the decision to? How would being conscious without any memories or stimulus work? Is ur subconscious responsible for this? Is ur subconscious “conscious” aka awake enough to do these things? Ugh, it raises so many good questions!
@@grayishcolors all I know is I was in that coma for hours but it felt much shorter to me...minutes. Perhaps all I remember is the few minutes before waking. Or maybe coma time is like dream time, warped and twisted. :)
Philippe Santini I only know that time passes at the speed of consciousness because if u process the world slowly like a sloth a day may seem like minutes while like a fruit fly it would feel like a week. It’s also said when u die because ur not conscious all time happens instantly to you. So, maybe while waking up ur brain was moving slower & thus 30 minutes felt like 1, kind of the opposite effect adrenaline has on the brain.
@@grayishcolors an odd phenomenon is that our brains are more active in dreaming yet we're seemingly unconscious. 5minute snooze can translate into a much longer period in dream states. I myself have even experienced changes in time perception while meditating. What felt like 20 minutes was actually an hour or more. I also (woowoo alarm) have experienced the dark nothing in sitting meditation...only difference is my thoughts kept popping up separate from me and I interacted with a "tree woman/being??". It touched what should have been my chest and I instantly burst into uncontrollable tears...then found myself sitting in meditation where I had started but was still tearing uncontrollably. Took me a few minutes to stop and I haven't been able to meditate properly/peacefully since...that one freaked me out more than the others(lol). Then there's the atheist/reductionist neurologist that ended up brain dead for a week and suddenly awoke. He then told everyone that he went somewhere and interacted with others. It gives a little weight to the concept of the brain being a "antenna", rather than the "signal"(consciousness). It's all so very interesting. I have experienced these things yet I don't declare that it's surely this or certainly that. I still enjoy the mystery. :)
Philippe Santini yeah there’s a reason people find for others experiences in their lives, some people believe it was gods or a god, and others will say it was a hallucination or other brain related thing. I don’t even try to find one because how would I know anything when nearly everything hasn’t even happened in my life. From the time I was born to the time I’ll die is just a fraction so small & Insignificant that the universe doesn’t even notice. Time doesn’t care for that thought or this thought or the next, but we try to place meaning in it all. Personally I’ve always found it odd when people try to frame others experiences under their would view & even try to get them to agree. It makes me happy to see people like you who don’t subscribe to one would view, or a least see the possibility that their would view is wrong. Anyways, I personally when obligated to do something boring for a long period of time can make the days & weeks fly right by. I find it very easy to not remember things if you actively place little to no importance on them... It’s like turning off ur emotions? Not in a bad way, they’re still there but I try to actively not remember them. This ends up making many months feel like a couple weeks at most because everything runs together in your head, and there isn’t much to remember. If you don’t place emotional meaning to memories then you won’t remember them, and thus your perception of time speeds up because being conscious takes memories. Of course you don’t always want to do that so it’s like a awake meditation? Idk, but I’ve gotten pretty good at it over time.
What if we're able to do that, but there's a 50/50 chance you either only get to be the digital version (and your real you seems like someone else) or vise-versa? I wonder if that would be weirder than possibly being both digital and real at the same time like being able to control a camera through a computer and look at and talk to yourself
@@danagibbs3265 There's actually a whole debate on the uploading our minds to a computer subject, which discusses whether we'll actually be wholly transferred or if the upload will merely be a duplicate of one self
There’s a medication for that. 🤓 As my dad used to say, “your brain is not your friend.” 🤓🤓 But I can remember thinking without words when I was an infant, so there’s that.
Every time you recall a memory you read and rewrite it. I know that I have added detail to some of my earliest memories because I recall recalling it with a detail missing A memory of an odd car when I was about two foot tall, or at least, shorter than the letter box. The car used to not include colour, only it's shape and the fact it had only three wheels. Now it's red. I wonder if it really was red.
I have sleep issue too but find listening to you helps focus my mind and most of the time fall asleep before the end. Then I have to try again later so I can listen to the whole thing
That's to say, I have one brother. But when it's after midnight, I know I can watch your videos and not only find comfort, and laugh, but you have serious content as well. With love from PDX. 🦄
I agree, I was deeply offended, I've been happily consuming strawberry Machine-O's ever since I finished replacing every part of my body with artificial organs and cells.
You kept saying being asleep is the same as being unconscious. It's very much not. A lot more stuff is going on when you sleep, including the consolidation of your experience into memory. Re mind uploading, even piece-meal neuronal substitution has issues - neurons are not digital and there is nothing that acts like neurotransmitters act or would have the imperfect malleability of biology - part of what makes us who we are is random chance on a molecular scale, to add to your existential sleep crises. Also, the mind or cortex cannot be so easily separated from the rest of the body, or the body simulated, because of the intricate integration of mind and body via hormones/endocrine system. Read "Behave" by Dr Robert Sapolsky, one of the best science writers in existence. He describes in the first few chapters how fears and phobias and learning NOT to fear something intricately links "higher" parts of the brain with the older amygdala and "reptilian" older parts. It's not just a separate thinking bit tacked on to an autonomic system, everything is linked a lot more than most first-year-level descriptions make out.
@@LePageChannel Or perhaps we're not at all information collecting computers. How sad it is that we identify ourselves with technology with the continuation of the idea that our brain is a super computer. "Our bodies are just a concotion of elements and our minds impulses connected to various sensors..." I'm not religious nor spiritual, but I do like to think of our lives and our minds as something more than "JUST...".
Your so right about the neurons. To quote (or nearly!) Marvin Minsky . . . . " lets take a billion beer cans and bang them together to simulate the neurons firing . . . . . . . . . You just can't do biology with beer cans!!"
Re mind uploading, Joe is referring to possible future tech commonly discussed and explored among futurists. Obviously there are current challenges, otherwise it would already exist.
To be certain that we cannot gradually substitute neural activity seems a bit short-sighted in my view. Considering the medical advances we've made that would absolutely shatter the understanding of medical men even a hundred years ago, let alone thousands, I wouldn't be so quick to say its impossible.
I have the problem too in which as soon as I put head to pillow I can’t stop thinking. What I’ve started doing is that I count down from 1,000. It helps stop me from thinking about anything too cerebral.
As for consciousness. I would argue that it is a consequence of language. This may sound odd at first, but there is no way to construct cohesive thoughts without words which leaves you without a way to define, describe, or understand your reality. You think (in a language), therefor you are Radiolab has an episode titled "New Words, New World" regarding people without language. Interesting as well as unsettling
My brother called me out of the blue, panicking because he doesn’t remember his home address and who he was with. He was playing sports and got hit by the ball, he continued playing and hours later after the game thats when he called me. He doesn’t remember playing but he had pictures with everyone. He was posing at the camera and everything. It was so weird, 3 yrs later, he still doesn’t remember it.
When I was 7, I was lying in bed and started thinking that my bed was in my room, and my room was in my house, and my house was on a hill, and that hill was on the Earth, and the Earth was in the Solar System, and the Solar System was in the Milky Way, and the Milky Way was in the Universe, and the Universe was in... something... which had to be in something... which had to be in something... which had to be in something... This infinite placeness and my infinite smallness terrified me, and I ran out of bed to my dad in the other room.
Funny thing is all you know is your consciousness. So the exact opposite of your idea could be true: That there is only your consciousness and you are litteraly everything in existence.
A few years ago I was diagnosed with a disease that nearly killed me. I got sick so fast that my mind couldn't keep up, and when I got better, my mind finally DID catch up and kept telling me I was sick. It was terrible and it put so much strain on my mind that it kinda just..... Wiped itself. Apparently, I woke up one morning with no memory of who I was or where I was. They couldn't find anything really wrong with me so they kinda just sent me home hoping my memory would come back. It's the weirdest thing, waking up three weeks later and being told that you had completely forgotten everything. I have no idea what happened in those three weeks, outside of the stories I was told.
I'm had two major bouts of amnesia before I was 18, both due to head trauma. The first one was for about a week. I was told that during the week, I could not recall may name or other similar facts. After the week, my memory process seemed to return to normal, but nothing from that week ever got saved to long term memory. The second incident only lasted a few hours, and disconnected flashes of memory were actually saved, though with a dream-like unreality. Dream-like unreality also describes the way I felt coming to consciousness after a seizure in adulthood.
It probably doesn’t help that you sleep on a chair in your office.
... with the lights on in the middle of the day with your clone talking to you.
Hahahahaha!
Yeah all that probably doesn't help xD
@@chaosordeal294 xD
:))))))))
When you get old, memory is the second thing you lose. Can't for the life of me remember what the first thing was.
Kenny Mac - car keys!
@@adamwest8711 *Boston accent* khakis
Physical health?
Forget whether you make a statement or a joke.
Where did I put my Viagara.
I had a car accident years ago. When I gained consciousness I had no recollection of any events for 2 weeks prior and 2 weeks after the accident. I only know what people had told me - I use that information in place of my memories. The doctors suggest that I was fully aware of the trauma of the accident and the mind just shut it down to protect me. At the jury trial the defending lawyers wanted to hypnotize me into remembering but the judge went with the decision that if my mind didn't voluntarily want to remember it shouldn't have too (of with I'm glad). I used to wake up screaming - knowing that I was reliving the accident - but the second I wake it was gone...
This could be a comic book movie hero's backstory who have the power of suggesting criminals to atop using false memories and hypnotism
That sounds awful : [
When you REgained conciousness.
@@joshuatraffanstedt2695 d1ck move good sir! d1ck move indeed.
Why did you need to go to a court trial if you just got into an accident?
I have epilespy, and have had some interesting events: once I had a seizure, and smash the drivers side window from my car with my head. With no window, I for some reason, on auto-pilot, drove 3 hours to New York City in the middle of the night, then I snapped out of it and realized that I was covered with blood and had been driving for hours----no clue why I went to NYC. It gave me some insight as to what it is like being awake, but not really conscious.
We aren't really conscious, it's an illusion, or is it? _(Vsauce music)_
Hope it was your blood
RPD 🥳
Why are you allowed to drive
Interesting. May I ask how long does it normally take you to "regain" consciousness after a seizure? Also what are the laws in America? I know in some European countries you have to be seizure free for two years before being able to get a driving license
Silver lining of having a disease that destroys my memory is I now get to go through your entire catalouge of videos again, like watching for the first time, but feeling familiar and comfy. Love your videos, they really help get me by some days.
Lol, that's one of the advantages of our amnesia too. We can have a "first" experience with a favorite show or book multiple times. Of course it's not so useful at work...
@@solsystem1342 Assuming you have DID, can you share those experiences amongst yourselves? Or does every alter experience the show or book once for the first time? Can you tell the others in your inner world about this great show you've seen that the others have to check out, or do you guys leave notes to each other?
Maybe these are silly questions, idk xD
23 00 go to bed
23 05 go to youtube for cat videos, quantum physics and how to train eagle for hunting...
Got a link for that eagle thingie?
5 minutes? you give up too easily.
@@mikestevens8012 search falconry
lol
Sums up my life :)
Had one super scary moment of amnesia. I had just started taking a drug called Lipitor for high cholesterol. I was driving home from the grocery store when suddenly I was convinced I was driving on the wrong side of the road. I thought that I must be driving in England but couldn’t figure out how in the hell I had gotten from my home in Canada to England. I panicked then looked at the other cars and decided I must be doing it right. Then I realized I didn’t know where I was or how to get home. I was only able to get home by noticing familiar trees, signs and objects along my route home. Once I got home, I flushed the Lipitor. At my next appointment, my doctor explained that it was a very rare side effect of the medication and that some people had suffered full amnesia from the drug. Strangest experience ever!
"looked at the other cars"
Well at least it did not impair your (sound) judgment.
Some people would never consider they could be wrong, and prefer causing accidents.
Wow! If it makes you feel better, this is EXTREMELY rare. In over a year of working with Social Security claimants I’ve never once heard one of them say their Lipitor (aka atorvastatin) did this - and it’s very commonly prescribed!
I hope you and your doctor found a reasonable solution - without all the scary amnesia. ♥️
I find the thing that helps me sleep the most is listening to your videos. That’s not a jab, it’s your voice, I find it soothing. You’ve helped me go to sleep every night for about two years now.
The summer before I turned 6 I was apparently playing on the railing of our front porch. It was one of those wide concrete ones. I slipped and fell backwards. Landed on the pavement and was blacked out for a few minutes. My brother dumped water on me and slapped me in the face (he was only 12 at the time). I don't remember any of this but I do remember regaining consciousness. It's one of my strongest memories still. I remember being cold, wet, my face hurting, the back right side on my head hurting, and seeing a clear blue sky with a small puffy cloud in the top right of my vision. I didn't remember anyone, any events, or places. According to my mind that was the moment I started existing.
After that I ended up having frequent seizures that tapered off as a got older. In my early 20s they turned into cluster headaches and that went away in my mid 30s. Also, my family said there was a massive change in me after. I suddenly became great with math and started taking things apart to figure out how it worked.
How painful were the cluster headaches? I’ve heard they’re worse than giving birth!
@@josburn6768 I've never been able to quantify it but the best I can do is imagine brain freeze on one side of your head about a few hundred times more intense, lasting 2 to 4 hours, and repeating up to 4 times in a day. For me this happened on average once every 3 days for 3 months every year. Medications did absolutely nothing to help.
systematic101 have you heard about or tried qsylicibin mushrooms? I’ve heard that works wonders. You can order some spores and cultivate your own it’s not hard. But you don’t have this problem anymore you said right?
systematic101 Well if you’re not having problems anymore I’m happy for you man. I can’t imagine how bad that would be. Especially holding down a job.
So you never regained your memories?
In 2011 I was in a car accident. It was the last memory I have for about a year. During that time I kept copious notes and journals about everything going on. I had to learn to walk and read again, I had to learn how to THINK again!
Now the journal entries are almost indistinguishable from real memories, at least until I try for details. Other than that it's like I skipped a year in my life. As time goes on, memories of my life before the accident have slowly started fading. Not disappearing but getting fuzzy and indistinct.
In the TBI survivor community we say we are different people and we mourn the loss of that old self while accepting who we are now. It's like dying and coming back. I have a different personality, different strengths, different weaknesses.
You are not alone. The exact same thing cross my mind before I sleep.
This is diagnosable anxiety.
@@morganrobinson8042 why would that be anxiety? What if you want to know?
Morgan Robinson It’s plain curiosity.
John theux We all are.
... You sit around worried about the fact that Joe is going to die some day? That is troubling.
I have a set of boring stories kept in the back of my mind where I'm the main character. Whenever I have trouble falling to sleep I try to add another chapter. But, it's so mundane that I fall asleep after a couple of chapters. One of the stories involves backpacking in the woods going from one camp to another where nothing happens in between. Works well for when I can't shut my mind off from the happenings of the day.
I have a similar process but I describe very boring things to myself in great great detail.
Like let’s think of my shoes, let’s visually describe them and where I wear them and when I wear them how long have I had them…. Etc what they look like also
That is commitment to a bit
"Where did you come from,
Where did you go,
I have amnesia,
So I don't know..."
*-* *Cotton Eye Joe Scott, 2019*
Cotton Eye Joe?
@@MTerrance Cotton Eye Joe Scott
😂
Give this man a medal 🏅
lol
When the power goes out for me (fall asleep) I go in to a state of very vivid dreams. I LOVE it.
I can't stress how much I enjoy your offerings. Most binge-watchable channel in my active subscription feed.
One of the best Joe Scott videos yet.
Thanks.
*Gets out of bed with grumbling resignation* "Fine I'll write the script."
I identify with this moment SO much.
about 3 months ago i got knocked unconscious in a workplace accident, and after waking up my brain operated on an autopilot-like loop for several hours until i started to actually recover.
it went something like this (explained the exasperated paramedic for about the 20th time): [seeing concerned faces] hey what happened? [situation explained] i'll be fine, it's just a little bump [realising i'm not fine, there is blood, i can't stand and have zero balance] * insert lighthearted joke * (apparently i have many) [ppl saying to take it easy, just rest, try not to move] me checking for injuries (cut & bruised head, arms, shoulder, are my teeth still in? etc..) ow i really hurt [seeing concerned faces] hey what happened?....
i have zero memories from the moment of the incident until several hours later when i was getting x-rays at the hospital, so i guess my brain was defaulting back to some starting condition until it could properly write memories again and get on with the task of being me! thankfully my default settings are pretty mild mannered
This is a typical reaction after a trauma. I have seen it: a friend of mine had a car accident. She was physically ok but kept asking what happened every 5 minutes. It lasted for 2 days. Then she woke up perfectly normal with zero recognition of what happened from 1 minute before the accident to that moment.
Sounds like global transient amnesia. It can even happen without a discernable trauma of any kind. Radiolab did a fascinating look at it, and the woman featured had an episode extremely similar to yours and it was recorded.
www.wnycstudios.org/story/did-i-miss-my-birthday-darn
I'm a nurse and a while back I spent some time working with a guy who had a hypoxic brain injury. He was a very difficult patient, being verbally and physically abusive. After months of rehab he eventually came around and was mortified to learn of his recent behaviour.
We had a very famous case of that type of amnesia in my country, a guy had an accident with his bike and then just started asking for his bike and his daughter over and over again, its been like 12 years and you can still sometimes hear people quote him in moments of funny confusions. If you wanna watch it just search for "y la moto y candela?"
Paramedics: Have you tried turning it off and on again??
You: 20 times already
Them: Well just keep at it, then 😂
I have bouts of amnesia all the time, but for some mysterious reason, they always happen right before exams
Haha, cool. I always get that right AFTER an exam. Can't even remember what it was about.
I once went into a chemistry exam, looked at my paper and all I could think was, “the brain you are requesting is not available, please try again later” ...
Guys ya gotta take multiple days and study a little each day.
Are you describing Tolkien’s dwarven version of hardtack? Because all I hear is “cram.”
As someone who's gone thru retrograde amnesia and multiple fugue states I love these ideas about the brain and memory and how that constructs who we are as people. Are we only are memories or are we constantly recreating ourselves moment to moment?
One of my fugue states lasted a little over a month. One day I woke up and a month had gone by and I had no memory of any of it. I actually "woke up" in the middle of a conversation 1000 miles away from where my last memory started. Crazy cool stuff.
I walked by my kitchen sink and saw a yin and yang symbol on an Arizona Ice Tea can exactly when he said “dualism” 😂.
*Carl Jung has entered the chat*
And Zhuangzi (~ 370 BC) once wrote, he dreamt he a butterfly, but upon awakening, he didn't know if he was a human having dreamt he was a butterfly, or butterfly dreaming he was a human.
Synchronicity is fun huh😂
Zac Tiner When the Celestine Prophecy came out, I was with a buddy that purchased it. I didn’t pay any attention to what it was, what it was about, or anything. I was just running errands with a buddy for something to do. But the book title, for some reason, stayed with me. Maybe 5 or 6 years later, I was thinking about that title, as I often had, and I thought, damnit, I’m going to buy that book finally. Just as I was walking out the door, my phone rang, and it was this girl I met at college (I was in my college days here), and we chit chat and she asks what I’m doing. I tell her that I’m going to get some book I’ve been thinking about for years, but had no idea what it was about. Being home from college, I tucked myself in my parent’s den to talk on the phone. So as I’m talking to her about this book I knew nothing about, I’m facing the bookshelves in the room when I see it... there it was on the shelf...the Celestine Prophecy sitting on the bookshelf of my parent’s house. Thinking what a weird coincidence, I ask my parents about it...they knew nothing of the book, or how it got there. I asked my brother....he had no idea. Then I read the book over the next couple of days, and was tingling with the strangeness of the entire ordeal that lead me to remember the title, think about it for years, finally deciding to buy it, getting a call as I’m walking out the door, telling the girl I met about going to get the book, noticing the book on the shelf as I’m telling her about it, asking my family to which they have no idea where it came from, how it got there, or what it’s even about, only for me to read it and realize the book is about meaningful coincidences.
What a weird ride that was.
Sure, maybe subconsciously I saw it there, and that’s why i thought of it and never forgot it. But no one in my family knew how the book got there, and none of them read it. Someone put it there, but who? My buddy? He said he didn’t. So I have no idea. All I know is that the whole thing was truly a meaningful coincidence.
@@tbardoni5065 I'll have to check out that book! Sounds like a good read
"He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart."
- Aeschylus
Thank you, had never heard that, but oh how it resonates.
"There is no knowledge without sacrifice. To gain everything, you must lose everything." -Gautama Buddha
Interesting that these two lived in about the same period. Coincidence?
I don't understand it. The pain cannot forget? What is that supposed to mean? The pain falls upon the heart? What? This is just confusing to me.
@Florestan Trément .... go through two combat tours in Vietnam, you’ll learn exactly what that quote means.
Did you make that up? Cuz it's cool.
Well, I worked last night.....and I WAS about to go to sleep.....but now I'm worried my conciousness is going to blip out of existence. Thanks Joe.
I understand your struggle my friend, my inner voice never stops either. It's silly but a trick that helps me is to use my endless train of thoughts to my advantage. I imagine a fantastical reality and the crazier I get the more I drift off to sleep and before I know it... morning. Good luck🤗
One of my brothers could fall asleep quickly. One moment wide awake the next sound asleep. Always amazed me.
The bout of amnesia, anyone who has over drank has had a bout of amnesia.
yep. and the interesting thing about this sort of 'context switching amnesia', is that if you get close enough to shitfaced again you can generally recall blackout stuff that you cannot remember sober.
Yup
@@homelessrobot Yeah even studies have covered that. I even read about one that found if someone had a small amount of alcohol while they learned something they could remember it a little better the next day if they had a small amount of alcohol again. It was a very small amount of alcohol tho. iirc 1-2 drinks.
Well. It's Monday, so that means it's time for another "Existential Crisis" video from Joe! Thanks Joe....
Only a Joe Scott video can make me almost spit out my coffee at a Demolition Man three seashells reference, while simultaneously making me ponder aspects of consciousness (which I think about often enough anyway) that I have never contemplated. Well done good sir.
Teleportation, aka recursive suicide machine. Gold
CGP Grey did a video about this, also Kurzgesagt too.
Zappa Wench linkk
@@stella-vu8vhjust search for it
There's a good book concerning time/memories/consciousness & hints at the different worlds theory...it's called "Recursion".
Dude thinking about dying one day has definitely kept me up at night. I’ve even had a panic attack once because of it. It’s nice to know that I’m not the only one.
Imagine uploading your consciousness while having the sensation to pee and then being stuck for eternity needing to pee
If that's your idea of Hell. Boy, do you have a cushy life.
@@MrStringybark oh this is old, I don't think I meant my interpretation of hell in fact I'm an atheist so I don't believe there is even a hell, but if I was to believe in a place like hell id say we are already living in it, this world is horribly dangerous and cruel, everyone regardless of there background or how they are raised has the capacity to commit untold acts of evil and violence.
@@BJL2142 My comment was to point out comically that your idea of eternal misery was something only a very privileged person would casually remark on as being the worst thing that came to their mind.
@@MrStringybark well I never claimed it was the worst thing, I live with chronic neuropathic pain so I'm well aware of torture that never ends or feels like it won't end, I imagine the worst case would be for all eternity to feel like jumper leads are connected to your nervous system electrocuting you endlessly, that would be hell
@@BJL2142
I once had a nightmare about being electrocuted. I fell down and lay on the kitchen floor unable to move, completely paralysed and rigid as I had hold of the electric cord and couldn't let go but still feeling the electric shock at the same time
The electric cord then turned into a dynamite fuse which burned quickly away from me making it impossible, if I could, to somehow pull the cord out of the wall. With despair, I knew this was the end and just gave up.
This of course is when I woke up.
Sometimes if my wife wakes me up out of a deep sleep, I'll catch myself having a conversation with her and then I'll really wake up and realize that I don't know wth I just said to her and I need to figure out who am I or where am I or what day of the week it is or what year is lol🤣😂😅
🙋
Ugh! Always happened to me. My family already knows that talking to me half sleep is pointless
Imagine having that same experience, only 'waking up' during the day and while standing and talking. That happens to me far more than I'd like. Not sure which category it fits into
Joe needs deserves more subscribers than he already has.
It's bounce that lad the army is strong we are just the early batch of subscribers one day he will
When I was younger I had two moments of amnesia.
the first came when I slipped on gravel and hit my head on some stones. My memory blinked out for a second and I was dazed but nothing major.
The second and bigger one came when I was 15 playing ice hockey.
After receiving a nasty hit to the head I was concussed but played it off to the coach so I could keep playing. I don't remember anything after that for about an hour.
I only know how long it was because my father got me off the ice and undressed me.
I "woke" up in the car on the way home. time had passed for me instantaneously. No memory also means no perception of time. I still remember the eery feeling of being in one place and then instantly being in another.
My memory of the incident never returned and 20 years later I only know what my father told me happened.
But other than That I am great. Thanks for asking Casey Neistat I love your channel
;)
P.s. I fall asleep instantly at night. Not caring about anything works wonders for your sleep. Waking up tired sucks but oh well.
I fell off a skateboard and hit my head when J was a kid. I woke up when somebody came to help. The went to call an ambulance but I walked off in the meantime. The problem was, halfway home I went blind for a few minutes.
The Casey Neistat bit got me! Lol
similar experience with hockey, all I knew is I lost an edge and then I on my back on the ice looking up at the rinks medical staff, apparently a few minutes went by that i was unaware of.
If at that time your brain was not able to transfer the short-term memory to the long-term storage, you never will have access to that memory. It is like erased. Of course, you could access it if hypnotised! Because even if the brain couldn't store it, consciousness still has access to everything that happened in your life. Something to think about, eh!
It’s weird commenting on a video from 3 years ago. I’m not surprised you have a hard time falling asleep, just watching how fast you have to talk in order to keep up with your brain in these videos says it all. Started watching your most recent videos and am working my way back, so doubt you’ll ever see this, oh well.
You inspired me to go ahead and study philosophy, to hopefully someday be able to find an answer for the question of what consciousness really is :)
Joe - you mention at the end that digital consciousness will not end or have lapses in memory. That could be a living hell - imagine being able to recall in high def all your worst moments? Memory loss can also be a blessing...
Only you don't get to choose which things you will forget. I remember a whole lot of shitty things that happened to me, but I get on with living here and now, because that's what you do.
@@shariwelch8760 Yup... If some incident is traumatic, I remember it vividly and constantly. Mundane things, can't remember at all. Like just now I burnt the food because I forgot I was cooking!!
I used to have amnesia just about every weekend. I haven't drank for yrs and still have some great memories, I've been told.
Hey Joe, you only exist today because I decided to watch your video.
Enjoy your 15 minutes of existence 😊
True, but then you only exist because I am reading your comment. Anyway, I've got to go now. Bye. Don't worry, it's just an eternal void.
Each Day stop hogging the CPU of our shared simulation
@@K1RTB Getting all laggy on my end too
All of you only exist because I bothered to spare my time of day to write this out. So enjoy. Now I'm off to join the rest of us nonexisting people that only exist when an organism of intelligence reads and understands our comments.
That's "persistence of memory". Young babies will think you've disappeared when you play peek-a-boo
I had a gf once who temporarily lost her memory after being in a car accident. We were broken up at the time, she couldn’t remember who i was or our past relationship. We were still friends before the accident. She was so confused/scared when i came up to her saying hello at school, as one would after being approached by a stranger. After her friends explained what happened i felt so bad i did everything i could to help her regain her memory. It took about 3 months for her to regain most of her lost memories but never fully recuperated all. It was tough in the beginning but quickly became a blessing, It’s special to fall in love and we’re bound to love more than one thing but to love someone twice is twice as special.
PRO TIP!
I've got some serious insomnia issues. Throughout high school I would often toss and turn until the early AM and then be up ungodly early (passing out at 2-4 was common, 6AM was go time). I tried all the old tricks like melatonin, soft music, even counting sheep!
After a particularly rough 3 day stretch of consciousness I decided enough was enough. It was time to scratch this nut. I started by analyzing my approach to the problem and realized that in essence I'd only tried one thing: I'd tried to relax to the point of unconsciousness.
I mean that makes sense on the surface. What could be more relaxing than a good nights sleep? Thing is it wasn't working. That's when it dawned on me: conscious intent interrupts natural flow. By trying to will myself to sleep I'd been disrupting my own ability to sleep... I s'pose it could be equatid to walking and then trying to control all the subtle movements your body makes as you walk. In one case your able to simply move, the other you get mired down in the technical aspects and wind up on your arse.
I concluded that my best approach would be totally contrary to my intuition. If focusing on the issue exasperated it then ignoring it might be my ticket out. Sure does sound like a conundrum, hell it sounds nearly paradoxical. I mean how can someone ignore their state of consciousness?
The secret is distraction. That's the common thread in all the non medicinal solutions, they are an attempt to yet your mind off your problem without demanding any effort. That's the secret: devote your mind to something that will take 100% of your focus but doesn't require much thought. For me it was audiobooks.
I'd start one on my headphones and totally devote myself to the story. I had modest results at first, but within a month I'd had a distinct improvement. My 2-5 hours of actual sleep became .5-1 hour to pass out.
Next I altered me eating schedule. I forced myself to have a good, wholesome breakfast at 6:30, no exceptions. Dinner was at 6, no exceptions. That also helped improve my situation.
Where I found the most luck was I incorporated our pattern seeking behavior into the mix. I've finished the Harry Potter series, the Sword of truth, and the Kingkiller Chronicles at least a dozen times... well that's not quite true for the Kingkiller Chronicles. I've listened to those at least 30 times, no joke.... and I may or may not own 3 compies of all the books. Allegedly one is pristine, one is for lending, and miiiight have a few (thousand) notes.......... there're kinda the best thing ever. I mean seriously, if I'm not careful that'll become a fanboy post. I'll content myself by saying it's my single most favorite entertainment media. Of every book, show, movie, videogame, you name it. The Kingkiller Chronicles hold stop number one, two, and three. Seriously, do yourself a favor and read them.
My Aunt has some form of memory loss. She doesn't remember new people or events. She's always asking where her husband is and when her daughter reminds her that he's dead she relives the loss all over again and cries.
Maybe sometimes just tell her he's out for the day and he'll be back. Spare her daily pain :(
Man, that sucks.
My best friend recently suffered from total retrograde amnesia, we had known each other from Kindergarten and he didn‘t recognize me at first. Thankfully he appears to be recovering pretty well.
I met a guy once who had a brain trauma and amnesia. He does remember people from before the incident, but only if he met them again in the week immediately after the accident.
I've had a nearly identical conversation with my brain, minus the script writing part.
Joe is reading my mind! I have lately been pondering this my self. Like at what stage did Self evolve?
@Niji Same here. Not about the exact same stuff, but still my brain is thinking about writing dialogue ideas for my book or future tech or film music or...
You get the idea. But I still fall asleep eventually.
I once got so sick that I fell asleep before Christmas and from my perspective, woke up after New Year’s Day. I’m told that despite sleeping most of the time, I got out of bed and went to the bathroom repeatedly, had brief conversations, and drank water and juice a few times a day.
When I had the flu a couple of years ago, I was blacking out while standing up so I fell flat on my face. In that instance everything had gone, myself my memory, the world. The first and only thing I was aware of was just all encompassing, mindnumbing pain. Then, as the pain subsided after a few moments, I sort of became aware of the world. Then I became aware of my self but I didn't know who I was nor did I remember anything I've ever experienced. That moment was profoundly frightening. Then my memories and my personality gradually came back. It all only took probably less than 30 seconds but it was a really unsettling experience. Basically as if you pulled the plug on a running computer and then plugged it back in and rebooted it.
I’ve had several concussion over the last two years. Sometimes I can feel my brain getting heavy. Like it’s filled with electrically-charged cotton that gets heavier and heavier through the day and at night is cleared out.
My memory is so spotty. I can rewatch movies and tv shows and it’s like watching them for the first time every time. I forget things all the time yet some memories I retain and some events I remember. Honestly, it’s quite frustrating for myself and others when I can’t remember something that may have happened moments before or even the day before. Things that I once deemed as my favorite show or place, I can’t remember what makes it a favorite. I can’t predict what memories will stick. It’s been an interesting time in this post-concussive life. It involves a ton of notebooks and lists.
My sister has memory problems following an accident and has to live her life by her calendar and reminders in her phone. She gets on just fine unless she forgets to charge her phone!
I had memory problems almost constantly because of congenital anaemia. So, for instance, if we were asked to read something at home and the teacher asked questions the next day, I knew I'd read it, but couldn't for the life of me remember the answer. So in one instance what happened was that I needed to give a one-word answer, and could only remember the first letter of the word (proper noun). But that incident where the teacher humiliated me in front of the whole class (over three decades ago) and then announced the answer has stuck with me till date. I still remember that answer (and the question) now. So if you are in an emotionally charged situation, you will remember it in detail. But mundane things, you'll forget. Also, for almost every joke, if I hear it or read it again, I am completely blank about the punch line, and am as curious about it as the first time I was listening to it. And I mean even the fifth or tenth time I hear the same joke!
I have the problem you described with sleep. I like to put hour long talks/presentations/lectures on things I am mildly interested in. They help guide my thinking, and I eventually fall asleep as I'm processing what's being said.
Just make sure it's not something you're very interested in, it will likely keep you up. Even if it doesn't, you'll miss out on many details.
Exactly! Every night almost. Works great. Thank you, TH-cam!
I do this but also sometimes just listen to familiar t.v. comedies... works great as a psychic numbing agent. The further intersection with this topic is that sometimes I come back partly into consciousness while the sound is still on, and I hear a joke I've heard many times before, but in that moment I hear it as if for the first time -- I recognize the context of the show (like, I recognize it's "Jack Donaghy"), but the joke (e.g. "what am I, a farmer?") is received as new information. Awareness, language processing, contextual recognition, perception of humor -- all that is at least partially online, but access to memory that would allow me to re-experience it as a familiar joke instead of hearing it fresh? Not online. Maybe it's just kind of an example of modular consciousness. The funny twist is that I am forming new memories at the time (obviously, since I'm able to recall these events) but full memory retrieval is not functional.
Ah, amnesia, it happened to me few years ago when working very intensely on code. After few weeks on not sleeping much, working 16 hours daily in one particular moment I realised that I didn't understand any line of my own code and of what purpose that whole library of functions had. I went completely terrified as I was going to have a meeting with the client paying for that project the very next day.
I tried many times to recall and couldn't ..
otherwise everything was all right, I was thinking straight, remembered details of meeting, telephone numbers, etc.. but couldn't remember and even understand my own comments for code that I was writing 15 minutes earlier!
Struggling with panic, I forced myself into leaving everything and getting out for a walk and later having a short nap...
after which I started feeling better..
It took me the whole day before everything returned...
but it did
lucky me :-)
It never happened to me earlier, and I felt so strange, machine-like or like a computer when you disconnect power cable of one of hard disks.. I have goosebumps when thinking about it even now.
That goes to show how integral sleep is to short and long term memory.
Been knocked out playing rugby and “lost” an afternoon on strong painkillers. Both made me a little “emotional” I would say. Very disconcerting to loose your mind... even if it is temporary
Hello from 2021! This happens to me every single night, no matter what it takes me like 20-30 minutes each night to fall asleep. I just literally started like imagining what I would like to dream about and like actively making a dream. To this day that is how I fall asleep.
Do not watch or read Ghost in the Shell... unless you wanna go down that rabbit hole.
Despite being a futuristic sci-fi, what Ghost in the Shell really is about is the dualism between body and mind. The sci-fi action and investigative story is the pretext to go round and round in an exploration of the concept. Self identity, mind upload, memory interference, memory loss, creation of an entire persona, conciousness, hivemind, rise of conciousness from machines, plus a bunch of topics are peppered around the manga and anime plot.
The english name came from Koestler's The Ghost in the Machine, several of the TV anime episodes makes reference to books and philosophy works around the concept of the mind/body dualism.
And THIS is what most fans feel is missing from the live-action... but that's a whole other discussion.
The new american film, is it any good?
I'd be denied access to any Hivemind. Reality would be deemed inappropriate.
@@DaP84 its originally a manga
@@jevaughndixon1218 Of course, I know. I remember playing the demo of the PS1 game (based on the original) back in late 90's.
Reminds me of Homer Simpsons dialogue;
'OK Brain, you don't like me and I don't like you...but let's just get through this for both our sakes....'
Perhaps have that conversation as a prelude to sleep. Sweet dreams!
that's pretty good.
Had to like it as soon as he said “there is plenty of woo to go around.” I love it!
Love you Joe, thank you for the brain stimulation as always.
I love temporary amnesia, I had a bout of it the other morning at a friend's place. I was pretty waisted on a number of different substances and it was an all nighter, so I put my head onto the table in front of me and closed my eyes, almost as soon as I did this I forgot everything, who I was, where I was or who I was with. I could have just opened my eyes and found out but that would have spoiled the fun. It took me a good minute I reckon to figure out where I was.
I've had the same sensation many times upon waking, but it only lasts 10 or 20 secs at the most (still fun).
I've had the same experience leaning backwards over a yoga ball and blacking out, as well as on a DMT trip, I was still conscious, but had no idea who or where I was until my eyes sprung open of their own accord, talk about soul wrenching.
After having a number of experiences like this I've concluded that the spirit/consciousness within us is eternal. I think it just rides around in a body like we do a car, till the car dies, then we wait for a new car. It's the waiting for a new car that could be heaven or hell, imagine how scary that is for someone who wasn't expecting it, they die, but they're still conscious, but have no idea where they are, who they are, where they just were, how long they'd stay there and what's awaiting them. And no mobile device to occupy them while they wait *shudders* 😳😳😳
I have a couple dissociative disorders, so I have short episodes surprisingly frequently. My favourite (heavy sarcasm) is getting in the car to leave a social event, driving for about five minutes, and then realising I'm sitting in my parked car in front of my home - sometimes up to an hour away from the origin.
Dissociative disorders such as DID (Dissociative identity disorder, formerly known as multiple personalities), derealisation, and depersonalisation challenge the concept of the self being directly tied to consciousness, because I have been completely dissociated in social settings, but other people claim I acted as normal and even engaged in conversation and complex discussion. One of the fascinating things I experience, as someone with DID, is interacting with people that I might never have met, but is close with one of my alters (alternate identites/personalities).
I don't usually talk about it so openly because DID is so heavily stigmatised (thanks, Hollywood), and the idea of losing track of yourself through dissociative episodes is treated as either something for comedic effect, the beginnings of a horror story, or the origin story of a villain. So... here, have a brief dissertation on this.
There have been times when I feelt like I was living in a body that wasn't really me, kinda like a exoskeleton that I was just controlling, so I think only my brain is the real me.
That's happened to me while thinking about the universe and existence.
It also happens on high doses of psychedelics as well.
Ditto the depersonalization. It’s like I’m the little alien wearing the old man suit in Men in Black
@Lorenyth👍 exactly what that is
You think you are your _whole_ brain?! Oh, my sweet summer child.
Y'all scaring me.
I'm usually the same way with falling asleep but the past month or so I've been hanging drywall 50-60 hours a week. Haven't had a single night that it took me more than 5 minutes to fall asleep haha
Tyler Jacobson exactly Joe just needs some good old fashioned manual labor! I work in a foundry and machine shop and don’t have any trouble falling asleep. Even if I try hard to think about something that’s bothering me I’m still out almost as quick as I lay still!
Hi I’m the guy that does tile and always gets thin set all over fresh drywall and never clean it up
Probably making good money with that!
@@tu1469 haha outside of doing ceilings and doors I only do the framing and boarding so that's the finishers problem :p
Do construction here too. Never have a hard time falling asleep either.
I had a tbi and came real close to dieing. They were waiting on people to come say goodbye before harvesting my organs when I started recovering. I still have some memory deficits but either I continue to improve or I have gotten better at my workarounds of my mental deficits.
Daniel Mannebach Same, dude. Except for the organ harvesting part. I walked home as if nothing had even happened, apparently. My concept of time is nonexistent now. Has been for the last 17 years. It’s as if I ceased to age, merely learning as much as possible and making wiser decisions. The greatest shift was that I went from being a literature pro and terrible at math to the complete opposite. Now I’m awful at literature breakdown and proficient in math, science, and history. It’s as if the neurocognitive deficit flipped the LOGIC switch on and bulk emotion off. I still love to read and philosophize but I can’t pursue it professionally, only as an occasional hobby. It still doesn’t make any damned sense to me. Have you noticed such extreme processing differences?
JOE! I have the same problem. My problem is all day though. To the point where I can't work without music or radio in the background because it keeps me out of my own head and on task. And for sleep, I CAN'T sleep without a movie or show playing to block out the noise. Watching a movie actually let's your brain relax more than not. The images and sounds are done for you so it's easier for the brain to relax and allow you to drift off. Works for me, maybe itll work for you!
Glad I’m not the only one who thinks of death right before passing out almost every night without fail. Definitely have a fear of death and it’s worse cuz I’m a CNA for those who are at the end of life so I’m constantly thinking of it at work as well 😅😢
Your intro is my every night. You nailed it perfectly. I never thought anyone else would ever understand what its like.
It usually takes at least one hour to fall asleep
"If your brain loses and identity, then it makes one up with detailed backstories."
I am rarely myself in my dreams.
That is the same with me. It is rare that I am my current self in dreams - I am usually "myself" but younger and in completely different circumstances. Often while dreaming I am merely "watching" myself in third person as if I am in someone else's life; not quite realizing I am dreaming, but aware enough to know that this isn't my real/actual life I am experiencing.
Me too, I've never looked at it this way before. I've been both halves of a couple in a dream, and completely switched perspectives frequently.
It might also explain people tripping balls or meditating, losing their sense of self temporarily, and getting visions of a "past life" that's very likely made up imo
"When I go to bed..
Me: Good night, brain.
Brain: Goodnight, me.
...
*Brain starts screaming*"
When I go to bed.
Me: Joe uploaded a new TH-cam video on consciousness, that should be interesting. I should watch that tomorrow while surfing on turnips.
Brain: Surfing on turnips?
Me: Uh... looks like I'm losing consciousness. See you tomorrow, brain!
I'm :58 in and already wanted to say THANK YOU for the very first thing - I got through an anxiety ridden existential crises over death EVERY. SINGLE. NIGHT. (well, just the nights I don't fall asleep before bedtime or pass out immediately).
I have anxiety issues (obv), but I truly felt like I'm the outlier, that nobody else had this issue this often. I'm sorry you do too.
So, thank you, my friend for making me feel less insane lol
I understand your pain Joe. My husband can fall asleep the minute he hits the pillow. Me? I'm up for another hour thinking about what I did, what I have to do, what bills I need to pay, what work I need to do, story ideas, etc. And I'm a light sleeper too.
A good friend of mine hit his head while riding a dirt bike (always wear helmets kids) and forgot the last six months of his life. He didn't seem to have a problem making new memories though.
My first bike was an old hand-me-down. Turned a hard corner and the rubber grip on the handle bars slid right off. I went head first straight into the curb.
6 stitches but if I had any memory loss I don't think I missed much. Probably would've forgotten it by now anyway 😂
You’ve heard of being knocked into last week! Well he got knocked into 6 months ago!
I'm kind of amazed that no one has mentioned the Ship of Theseus. Or the show Dark Matter.
As soon as he said "replace bit by bit" i imidiatly thought of the ship
@@PrometheusV i've always found comparing a human's mind to a ship a poor comparison since a ship is by all intents and purposes never conscious or alive, so it has no sense of identity for itself but only how others view it.
@@seraphiv3 Well for the Theseus comparison the ship has to be given an identity by an observer
@@PrometheusV yes, but it's odd since from an outside perspective we can only assume someone else has consciousness and autonomy, so it cannot answer whether the self is lost.
@@seraphiv3 Of course you are right. The whole case just REMINDS of the boat paradox. For the boat we can only say that both boats are functional and identical, which is a poor comparison to a "self".
Dualism... Monism... the glands outside our brain that help create our emotions... what is us? Is there consciousness outside a form of cognitive engine such as a brain flesh or otherwise??? Just Love and Learn; it's why we're here!
I have right temporal lobe epilepsy, and experienced an amnesic episode once after a massive seizure.
I was staying with my father and sister for a holiday, who had recently moved house. When I regained consciousness, I didn't recognise their new house at all. I kept asking my sister where we were. It's like my memory had reset to around a year before - I asked my sister where her dog was (he had died the year before). She told me he was at the puppy salon so I didn't get upset. I picked up a pair of my shoes, super impressed and said "who's are these?!" when I found out they were mine, I was super happy. My sister was so concerned as I walked around the house, not recognising it and asking about old issues, that she hid the funeral order of service of a family friend who had recently died because she knew I would have thought he was still alive.
The whole post-ictal amnesia lasted about half an hour, and I only snapped out of it and back to the current time when my father walked in the door and hugged me and told me I had had a seizure, explaining my confusion.
I'm 2 minutes into this video and already you are giving me a crises of existential dread. I have these thoughts constantly.
You could totally do a who series on what different philosophers have said about what it means to be a "self" (or what it means to be human more broadly). Besides Locke, you could do Descartes (I think therefore I am) and Kierkegaard (to have anxiety is to be human) come to mind off the top of my head.
"Have I ever suffered from amnesia?" Honestly, I can't remember.
When I was really sick in the hospital for five weeks with sepsis, I lost any memory of three weeks of my life. I do remember some wild delusions I had during that time though, but have to rely on what I was told about that missing three weeks. I still feel a bit lost about that six years later.
I had back surgery 11 years ago, 2 months in hospital. I remember bits, but most are sensations or just vague things. Medical and stress amnesia is a Trip
I watched my fsther go through sepsis in hospital twice. Its terrifying to watch. Lord knows what it must've been like to go through.
For me it helps to listen to a podcast, or one of your episodes when going to sleep. My mind wonders when it has nothing else to do.
I did get retrograde amnesia when I was 17. I cured all my anger issues and the depression I've had since childhood. I was such a happy person, untill I got my memory back.
At 0:40 I can see that Joe didn't eliminate all of his clones he made in that previous video, I bet he kept the first two clones and killed any clone stuck at the "Bork bork bork" level. ;)
While it would be rough losing your memory every morning, it would be awesome thinking your back in the 90's.
I could sleep like a baby back then.
Quite literally like a baby. Or at least more baby like because you were younger
Me in bed:
My brain: Hey remember that one time....
At band camp?😁
Same!
Dude... My life flashes before my eyes every night when I lay down lol. A stream of memories pour out.
no i don`t i have amnesia
🤣
I listen to one man on TH-cam for hypnosis to knock me out to sleep. I use same audio every time and I have no idea what he says past about 7 minutes. It's unbelievable!
When I can't sleep I listen to Alan Watts, his ideas are interesting enough to follow a long, but not so provocative to throw you in to an existential crisis, plus his voice is very soothing and hypnotic.
Have you ever woken up and for that few minutes before being "awake" you're confused and have to kinda "find yourself?"
Yeah, I get that sometimes. Super weird, possibly a structural weak point in the brain but not debilitating.
Almost as if one has to "download" whatever content that makes You....You.
I only ever had moments when someone suddenly wakes me up and asks me something, then i respond with some sort of gibberish or something i didn't mean to say
Sometimes I wake up and have to work out reality. Who I am, where I’m at, and what I believe. Usually on the back side of a dream. The dream is so real I think it’s true. Then at some point I go “oh I was just dreaming”. I’d write it off but it can last for hours
@@mixerman24 Same here.
in MEMENTO, the main character loses his memory and has to look at photos in his pocket to trigger memories.but how does he always remember to look at the pics?
He keeps the pics where he can always find them. Plus he got his tattoos.
After that I would assume classic conditioning afterwards
I had that happen to me after taking chantix to quit smoking, till the Dr wrote a script get me straight. I had seen the movie, and it made me laugh that it similar. It wasn't constant, but would happen many times a day. I remember forgetting where I was going in the car, see groceries in the back, must be done shopping. Dirty dishes, I had dinner. Lol
Me: Ah nice, another video of Joe just before I go to sleep, better watch it! no time tomorrow...
Video: Consciousness
Me: Laying awake, contemplating every question raised in the video...
Best tip I've found for getting to sleep is to use ur imagination to create a cartoon world. Not sure why, but it really works for me. Sometimes I'll imagine up a cartoon I've seen and create my own situations. I know it sounds dumb, but if ur struggling to fall asleep it's worth a try.
Joe, finally, after near 67 years - I finally learned that I can fall to sleep without thought - literally! I have finally learned to stop asking myself questions as I slumber - then, I fall to sleep - always, without fail! Exceptions can be physical and deep physiological pain...
Don't know for sure what any of the following implies but here goes...
I had an accident at 14yrs old. I flatlined and everything was white exept I was slowly rising off table, facing myself, through the ceiling but there was no ceiling, watching them massage and attemp to reanimate my body, I was calm and had no questions about anything. I'm very curious usually but it's as if I knew everything and it was serene.
They obviously succeed and I was in a coma for 4 hours. While comatose, I was conscious but kinda floating in dark nothingness, I remember wondering what was going on but not panicked.
I slowly started hearing beeping and opened my eyes to realize it was all the medical devices around me in icu. I had issues remembering the time before the accident but it has slowly dripped back in.
A year or so after that, I walked into a corner store, walked to the fridge, got what i wanted and walked to the cash register to pay but before I could pay... suddenly I was walking into the store again, I looked over to the fridge, wondering "wtf?", saw myself standing at the cash stairing blindly at the clerk. I walked over to myself, walked around myself then just like that, I was again just standing there with the guy talking loudly to me, I paid and left and waited years before sharing the experience with anyone...because I realize how far out it all sounds.
I have researched many fields, subjects & topics but nothing is has fully described it. So many people have tried to tell me what I experienced was, this and/or that, some were way too wrapped in their beliefs (stating them as facts), some are pure reductionists, many refuse to take me at my word that it even happened. All of them have taught me something about myself and helped me grow as an individual.
The closest I've come to explaining it theoretically, is that perhaps, consciousness is fractal.
Hinduism has some notions that resembles this but in my opinion, it tries too hard in labeling and detailing.
All in all, I'm now just thankful for the experiences and appreciate the mystery of it all. I no longer try to label any of it but I do still ponder it from time to time.
Consciousness is definitely mysterious to me. :)
Philippe Santini it’s odd that when ur in a coma u slowly regained consciousness because while ur not conscious what is in control? What’s handing you back the controls slowly? How does it make the decision to? How would being conscious without any memories or stimulus work? Is ur subconscious responsible for this? Is ur subconscious “conscious” aka awake enough to do these things? Ugh, it raises so many good questions!
@@grayishcolors all I know is I was in that coma for hours but it felt much shorter to me...minutes.
Perhaps all I remember is the few minutes before waking.
Or maybe coma time is like dream time, warped and twisted. :)
Philippe Santini I only know that time passes at the speed of consciousness because if u process the world slowly like a sloth a day may seem like minutes while like a fruit fly it would feel like a week. It’s also said when u die because ur not conscious all time happens instantly to you. So, maybe while waking up ur brain was moving slower & thus 30 minutes felt like 1, kind of the opposite effect adrenaline has on the brain.
@@grayishcolors an odd phenomenon is that our brains are more active in dreaming yet we're seemingly unconscious. 5minute snooze can translate into a much longer period in dream states. I myself have even experienced changes in time perception while meditating. What felt like 20 minutes was actually an hour or more.
I also (woowoo alarm) have experienced the dark nothing in sitting meditation...only difference is my thoughts kept popping up separate from me and I interacted with a "tree woman/being??".
It touched what should have been my chest and I instantly burst into uncontrollable tears...then found myself sitting in meditation where I had started but was still tearing uncontrollably. Took me a few minutes to stop and I haven't been able to meditate properly/peacefully since...that one freaked me out more than the others(lol).
Then there's the atheist/reductionist neurologist that ended up brain dead for a week and suddenly awoke. He then told everyone that he went somewhere and interacted with others. It gives a little weight to the concept of the brain being a "antenna", rather than the "signal"(consciousness).
It's all so very interesting.
I have experienced these things yet I don't declare that it's surely this or certainly that. I still enjoy the mystery. :)
Philippe Santini yeah there’s a reason people find for others experiences in their lives, some people believe it was gods or a god, and others will say it was a hallucination or other brain related thing. I don’t even try to find one because how would I know anything when nearly everything hasn’t even happened in my life. From the time I was born to the time I’ll die is just a fraction so small & Insignificant that the universe doesn’t even notice. Time doesn’t care for that thought or this thought or the next, but we try to place meaning in it all. Personally I’ve always found it odd when people try to frame others experiences under their would view & even try to get them to agree. It makes me happy to see people like you who don’t subscribe to one would view, or a least see the possibility that their would view is wrong.
Anyways, I personally when obligated to do something boring for a long period of time can make the days & weeks fly right by. I find it very easy to not remember things if you actively place little to no importance on them... It’s like turning off ur emotions? Not in a bad way, they’re still there but I try to actively not remember them. This ends up making many months feel like a couple weeks at most because everything runs together in your head, and there isn’t much to remember. If you don’t place emotional meaning to memories then you won’t remember them, and thus your perception of time speeds up because being conscious takes memories. Of course you don’t always want to do that so it’s like a awake meditation? Idk, but I’ve gotten pretty good at it over time.
Downloading your consciousness into a collective... Sounds weirdly like the Borg... Resistance is Futile!
What if we're able to do that, but there's a 50/50 chance you either only get to be the digital version (and your real you seems like someone else) or vise-versa? I wonder if that would be weirder than possibly being both digital and real at the same time like being able to control a camera through a computer and look at and talk to yourself
you will be assimilated!
@@Sabry4TunnelVision You would be a Democrat!
@@DogWalkerBill already happened. It's Zuckerberg's pet project.
@@danagibbs3265 There's actually a whole debate on the uploading our minds to a computer subject, which discusses whether we'll actually be wholly transferred or if the upload will merely be a duplicate of one self
There’s a medication for that. 🤓 As my dad used to say, “your brain is not your friend.” 🤓🤓 But I can remember thinking without words when I was an infant, so there’s that.
Every time you recall a memory you read and rewrite it.
I know that I have added detail to some of my earliest memories because I recall recalling it with a detail missing
A memory of an odd car when I was about two foot tall, or at least, shorter than the letter box. The car used to not include colour, only it's shape and the fact it had only three wheels. Now it's red. I wonder if it really was red.
I have sleep issue too but find listening to you helps focus my mind and most of the time fall asleep before the end. Then I have to try again later so I can listen to the whole thing
That's to say, I have one brother. But when it's after midnight, I know I can watch your videos and not only find comfort, and laugh, but you have serious content as well. With love from PDX. 🦄
What's your friggin' problem with strawberry Machine-O's?
I agree, I was deeply offended, I've been happily consuming strawberry Machine-O's ever since I finished replacing every part of my body with artificial organs and cells.
“An ever present now”. That sounds lovely.
You kept saying being asleep is the same as being unconscious. It's very much not. A lot more stuff is going on when you sleep, including the consolidation of your experience into memory.
Re mind uploading, even piece-meal neuronal substitution has issues - neurons are not digital and there is nothing that acts like neurotransmitters act or would have the imperfect malleability of biology - part of what makes us who we are is random chance on a molecular scale, to add to your existential sleep crises. Also, the mind or cortex cannot be so easily separated from the rest of the body, or the body simulated, because of the intricate integration of mind and body via hormones/endocrine system. Read "Behave" by Dr Robert Sapolsky, one of the best science writers in existence. He describes in the first few chapters how fears and phobias and learning NOT to fear something intricately links "higher" parts of the brain with the older amygdala and "reptilian" older parts. It's not just a separate thinking bit tacked on to an autonomic system, everything is linked a lot more than most first-year-level descriptions make out.
Sleeping is a bit like cleaning your browser history and defragmenting your computer.
@@LePageChannel Or perhaps we're not at all information collecting computers. How sad it is that we identify ourselves with technology with the continuation of the idea that our brain is a super computer. "Our bodies are just a concotion of elements and our minds impulses connected to various sensors..." I'm not religious nor spiritual, but I do like to think of our lives and our minds as something more than "JUST...".
Your so right about the neurons. To quote (or nearly!) Marvin Minsky . . . . " lets take a billion beer cans and bang them together to simulate the neurons firing . . . . . . . . . You just can't do biology with beer cans!!"
Re mind uploading, Joe is referring to possible future tech commonly discussed and explored among futurists. Obviously there are current challenges, otherwise it would already exist.
To be certain that we cannot gradually substitute neural activity seems a bit short-sighted in my view. Considering the medical advances we've made that would absolutely shatter the understanding of medical men even a hundred years ago, let alone thousands, I wouldn't be so quick to say its impossible.
I have the problem too in which as soon as I put head to pillow I can’t stop thinking. What I’ve started doing is that I count down from 1,000. It helps stop me from thinking about anything too cerebral.
As for consciousness. I would argue that it is a consequence of language. This may sound odd at first, but there is no way to construct cohesive thoughts without words which leaves you without a way to define, describe, or understand your reality.
You think (in a language), therefor you are
Radiolab has an episode titled "New Words, New World" regarding people without language. Interesting as well as unsettling
"Sleep, those slices of death, how I loathe them." (E.A. Poe).
My brother called me out of the blue, panicking because he doesn’t remember his home address and who he was with. He was playing sports and got hit by the ball, he continued playing and hours later after the game thats when he called me. He doesn’t remember playing but he had pictures with everyone. He was posing at the camera and everything. It was so weird, 3 yrs later, he still doesn’t remember it.
Wow thats some scary stuff
When I was 7, I was lying in bed and started thinking that my bed was in my room, and my room was in my house, and my house was on a hill, and that hill was on the Earth, and the Earth was in the Solar System, and the Solar System was in the Milky Way, and the Milky Way was in the Universe, and the Universe was in... something... which had to be in something... which had to be in something... which had to be in something...
This infinite placeness and my infinite smallness terrified me, and I ran out of bed to my dad in the other room.
Realizing the human condition hit like a ton of bricks. 😕
What do you do for a living now if you're okay with sharing? You sounded like a cool 7 year old.
Funny thing is all you know is your consciousness. So the exact opposite of your idea could be true: That there is only your consciousness and you are litteraly everything in existence.
@@Tarnbar Boltzman brains for the win. 👍
@Dahn We're all in this together, mate. 😄👍
A few years ago I was diagnosed with a disease that nearly killed me. I got sick so fast that my mind couldn't keep up, and when I got better, my mind finally DID catch up and kept telling me I was sick. It was terrible and it put so much strain on my mind that it kinda just..... Wiped itself. Apparently, I woke up one morning with no memory of who I was or where I was.
They couldn't find anything really wrong with me so they kinda just sent me home hoping my memory would come back. It's the weirdest thing, waking up three weeks later and being told that you had completely forgotten everything. I have no idea what happened in those three weeks, outside of the stories I was told.
I'm had two major bouts of amnesia before I was 18, both due to head trauma. The first one was for about a week. I was told that during the week, I could not recall may name or other similar facts. After the week, my memory process seemed to return to normal, but nothing from that week ever got saved to long term memory. The second incident only lasted a few hours, and disconnected flashes of memory were actually saved, though with a dream-like unreality.
Dream-like unreality also describes the way I felt coming to consciousness after a seizure in adulthood.