Brian Greene interview with Dan Brown about consciousness/anomalous experiences

[Magical Realist]

Actual dialogue between science and the paranormal is starting to happen!

Here's a tantalizing excerpt:

https://www.facebook.com/reel/3223913721114515

Here's the full interview:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFuYUSWwn7s

[C C]

VIDEO EXCERPT: And yet science, as I understand it, is driving us to that perspective that it's just the chemical processes and so forth. I have come to be a firm believer in that view, the materialist, the physicalist perspective. I know there's a character in your new book who takes a somewhat different perspective, a dualist perspective, that maybe there's something about the world that embraces consciousness in a manner that's not just inside of our heads. Our heads are kind of the receptors, if you will.

Sure.

I would love that to be the case.

As would I.

So what anomalies have at least driven you to think that it might be the case?

Sure.

I mean, do you currently hold that view? Is the view that your character has the same view that you hold?

Yes. I mean, if you had asked me eight years ago, I'd have a totally different answer. You have to understand also that you think about these things at a much different level than most of us. Your understanding of science is far different than most of us. So when I say anomalies, I'm talking about those life experiences that are documented medically, things like near-death experiences.

Somebody's on an operating table. They die. Materially, they die. Their eyes are taped shut, no brain activity, and they are resuscitated 50 minutes later, and the doc says, "Wow, you're lucky you made it." He says, "Yeah, no, no, I saw the whole thing. I saw the guy with the green shirt come in with that machine, and you did this, and he said that."

The doc said, "I don't understand how this can happen," but it happens over and over and over. That's one anomaly where you say, "Wait a minute. If your brain is creating your consciousness, it is impossible that you have a point of view from anywhere other than your eyes. It doesn't make sense." ''

Sudden savant syndrome, some kid in Arizona gets hit in the head with a baseball, wakes up speaking fluent Mandarin Chinese or is a virtuoso violinist having never seen a violin. These sorts of things, precognitions, those are the things I'm talking about that say, "Well, these are outside the model."

We call them paranormal because they're not normal. And our view of normal, if you get enough things that are outside of normal, you have to say, "Well, maybe normal isn't normal."

And so, I again come back to... I am totally open to all those paranormal, anomalous events, experiences, episodes that people have reported. I haven't dug into them deeply in a long time because there was a time that I did dig into them deeply, and every single one that I looked at closely didn't stand up to scrutiny. Have you sort of taken a baseball bat and tried to crush these paranormal events that have been reported, or do you feel like you're very open to it? And hey, if it's enough people say it, I'm willing to go with it and see where it leads.

I would say I'm more skeptical than open to it, but it took eight years for me to make the journey from total skeptic to someone who says, "Wait a minute. There's so much evidence to suggest that something else is happening." I have no vested interest. I've never had an out-of-body experience. I've never had any sort of spiritual flash that made me think, "Oh my god. This must be true." This is just from primarily talking to people who've had these experiences and looking at even just something as simple as thousands of medically-documented moments when people had points of view outside of their body.

Well, I'm just curious if you think that there's any physical way that that could happen. How do you understand?

Well, I do, and in fact, in our conversation just a second ago when we began, I briefly made reference to the fact that I think I had a kind of out-of-body experience...

[Magical Realist]

I would be VERY interested in hearing about Brian Greene's OOBE!

[C C]

I would be VERY interested in hearing about Brian Greene's OOBE!

That would be this segment here just beyond the six minute mark. This link should go directly to that point (after the ads):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFuYUSWwn7s&t=369s

[Magical Realist]

Fascinating! I learned in my meetup class that you can heal past traumatic memories by "re-remembering" them from the standpoint of a third person observing it all. Perhaps there is a latent power/function for the brain to occasionally disassociate itself from our body in this way. Don't we sort of do this in our memories anyway? A sort of buffering going on to mitigate the overwhelming sensory/semantical flurry of immediate experience?