Very much hoping for a chapter on your NPC hypothesis.

Of course, the NPC hypothesis is just speculative, but if we are living in a kind of simulation, which I believe, then it's certainly within the realm of possibility. However, the fact that something is possible doesn't give you a good reason to believe it. If NPCs are part of this reality, we wouldn't be able to detect them, most likely, from inside the simulation. A chapter on NPCs could explore the ramifications of such a scenario, which would be interesting.

the issue here is that the evidence is too sparse for most people to take it seriously as a falsification of the most successful paradigms of knowledge in human history. — Apustimelogist

:chin: What knowledge would the veracity of near-death experience falsify?



What’s an NPC?

What’s an NPC? — Wayfarer

In Gaming

Definition: Any character in a game world not controlled by a human player.

Control: Their actions, dialogue, and behavior are scripted or driven by the game’s AI.

Purpose:

Populate the world so it feels alive

Advance the storyline or create obstacles

In a Simulated Reality
If our reality were a simulation, an “NPC” could be a person who appears human but is not conscious, merely part of the program. Such entities might exist to maintain the simulation’s structure, guide events, or influence outcomes without possessing genuine awareness.

Philosophical Connection
Philosophical zombies are the logical counterpart to the NPC idea: beings physically and behaviorally identical to humans but lacking subjective experience (qualia). NPCs in simulation theory are the applied version of this thought experiment. Both challenge the assumption that everyone who appears human is conscious, and both raise the unsettling possibility that consciousness may be rarer—and harder to detect—than we assume.

Implications from Near‑Death Experiences (NDEs)
If NDEs are veridical (accurately reflecting reality), they suggest that we possess free will, or at least some degree of free will. This inference comes from the “life review” many experiencers describe, in which they are shown the ripple effects of their choices on others. Such experiences imply that our decisions matter and that moral agency is real.

It would put into question things we know about how physics and biology works.

It would put into question things we know about how physics and biology works. — Apustimelogist

But that's the whole point: It's questioning those paradigms. It's challenging what you believe you know, which is why I emphasize epistemology.

If the probability is, say, 50/50, I would agree, but the probability is high based on the evidence. Most of our knowledge is probabilistic, but we don't say "It may or may not be true." Moreover, we don't claim "to know" if the probability is relatively low. I'm claiming to know that the conclusion follows, not, obviously, with absolute certainty. — Sam26

What exactly is the probability of life after death? Ball park?

French operating-suite amputation (Toulouse)—During surgery under general anesthesia, a patient described rising above the theater and then “looking” into an adjacent operating room where a leg amputation was underway, — Sam26

This is the sort of thing that bothers me, Sam.

(Are the scare quotes around "looking" an acknowledgement of my question about Nancy Rynes looking behind her?)

First, the consciousness that has separated from the body on the operating table seems to have a location in physical space. Doesn't that strike you as odd, for something non-physical?

Second, with or without scare quotes, this consciousness seems to have a definable perspective, a field of view that can be turned this way or that, much the way humans normally see using their front-facing eyes.

Third, this consciousness seems to do one thing and then another thing, meaning it is bound by time. Isn't that also odd, for something non-physical?

Based on my inductive argument and evidential foundation in Chapter 3 of my book, we can derive a rough probabilistic estimate for the survival of consciousness (as a proxy for "life after death") using an informal Bayesian framework, as alluded to in the logical summary. This treats the hypothesis probabilistically: start with a skeptical prior and update based on the likelihood of the observed evidence (e.g., millions of NDE reports worldwide, with a subset of many thousands of documented veridical/anchored cases featuring time-locked, independently confirmed details under sensory constraints).

Key inputs from the book and supporting data:

Prior probability (P(H1)): Start conservatively at 0.01 (1%), reflecting a skeptical stance toward "extraordinary" claims without evidence.

Evidence (E): The testimonial field includes 5-10% global prevalence (120-240 million cases per 2025 estimates), 10-23% in cardiac arrest survivors, and thousands documented (e.g., IANDS database >5,000).

Veridical subsets: Literature suggests 100+ strong cases (e.g., >110 verified per Habermas 2024; systematic reviews note 10-11 with visual/auditory perceptions; UVA/Greyson >1,000 studied, including blind cases). AWARE studies (2023-2025 updates) show 2-18% full NDEs in resuscitated patients, with biomarkers of consciousness during arrest.

Likelihood P(E|H1): If survival is true, expect a moderate chance (0.2 or 20%) of observing this convergent, cross-cultural pattern with anchored veridical elements.

Likelihood P(E|H0): If no survival (purely naturalistic), this evidence is unlikely (0.0001 or 0.01%), requiring ad hoc explanations like mass coincidences or undetected confounds across diverse cases.

Updating yields a posterior probability of approximately 0.95 (95%). This is rough, sensitive to inputs, and reflects inductive strength from the five criteria (number, variety, etc.), not absolute certainty. Narrow scope (brief persistence) and failure conditions (e.g., anchors dissolving under audit) keep it proportionate; stronger evidence could push it higher, defeaters lower.

What are the chances that near-death experiences are the result of hypoxia?

Yes, it does seem odd that even though we don't need brains for experiences, our earthly-transcendent spirits have experiences of the exact same kind which are supported by brains which, in the earth-bound counterparts, would be compromised by brain injury. If I have a stroke, will my stroke-related deficits manifest in the afterlife? If not, why do I even have a brain in the physical world that can be disrupted to produce stroke-light deficits. If stroke-like deficits are specific to my earth-bound experiences, why does my transcendent experiences resemble my earth-bound ones? Lots of bogglement ensues.

Updating yields a posterior probability of approximately 0.95 (95%). — Sam26

Can you explicitly write out this calculation?

(Are the scare quotes around "looking" an acknowledgement of my question about Nancy Rynes looking behind her?) — Srap Tasmaner

No, it's just a quote about what the patient was claiming.

First, the consciousness that has separated from the body on the operating table seems to have a location in physical space. Doesn't that strike you as odd, for something non-physical?

Second, with or without scare quotes, this consciousness seems to have a definable perspective, a field of view that can be turned this way or that, much the way humans normally see using their front-facing eyes.

Third, this consciousness seems to do one thing and then another thing, meaning it is bound by time. Isn't that also odd, for something non-physical? — Srap Tasmaner

Good questions, I appreciate that. Let's unpack these one by one, because while they sound like an oddity, they're actually pretty straightforward when you stick to what the evidence shows.

Remember, my argument in the book is modest: consciousness persists in some form, capable of veridical representation under constraints where ordinary senses fail. These aren't "odd" in a way that torpedoes the case; they're features that fit a transitional state, not some pure non-physical ether.

First, on location in physical space:
Yeah, the OBE reports often describe a vantage point, like above the body or in the room, that seems spatially anchored. But why assume that's "odd" for something non-physical? We're dealing with a perspective that's detached but still oriented toward the physical world during the crisis. It's not like it's zipping off to Narnia right away; it's a liminal phase where consciousness is decoupling but still tuned to the immediate environment. Think of it as a bridge state—persistent awareness retaining some spatial reference because it's tied to the body's context. The veridical bits (e.g., describing staff actions or instruments accurately) suggest it's interacting with or perceiving the physical without being fully bound by it. If that's "odd," fine, but oddity isn't disproof—quantum entanglement's odd too, yet here we are. The evidence from cases like Pam Reynolds or the Toulouse amputation shows this spatiality yields checkable facts, so dismissing it as weird misses the point: it works evidentially, at least in my view.

Second, the definable perspective and field of view:
Sure, it's often like a movable viewpoint, not omniscient 360-degree (although 360-degree vision has been reported) god-mode. Human consciousness is embodied and perspectival by default—why wouldn't a surviving form carry over that structure initially? It's not claiming to be a disembodied absolute; it's a continuation of the same first-person stream, now untethered but still structured. Pediatric cases and blind experiencers report "seeing" in ways that transcend normal limits yet remain viewpoint-based, often expanding as the experience progresses (e.g., into panoramic reviews). If it mimicked eye-based vision exactly, that'd be suspicious of hallucination; the fact that it's flexible but directed fits a non-physical extension, not a contradiction. Odd? Maybe to a strict materialist, but the testimony consistently delivers veridical hits from these perspectives, so the "oddity" strengthens the case if anything.

Third, bound by time and sequential actions: Temporal sequencing (I can't make sense of being outside time) in the reports, doing one thing then another, isn't some fatal flaw for non-physicality. Why should persistence mean timeless eternity? The accounts describe a process: separation, observation, encounters, and return, that's sequential. Historical motifs (Plato's Er, Bede's Drythelm) and modern ones show time as malleable—sped up, reviewed multi-perspectively—but still narrative. If consciousness is fundamental (and I believe it is), temporality could be intrinsic to experience itself, physical or not. Physics already plays with time (relativity, quantum non-locality), so binding non-physical to atemporality is an assumption I'm not making. The evidential punch is in time-locked particulars matching clinical clocks; that's what shifts the burden.

Bottom line:
These features aren't inconsistencies; they're what you'd expect from a persisting consciousness that's shedding embodiment but retaining continuity. If they strike you as odd, that's fair—reality's full of oddities—but they don't undermine the inductive case from number, variety, corroboration, etc. Rivals still have to explain the anchored matches without ad hoc dodges.

I could write it out, but my argument doesn't depend on this Bayesian framework. Most people won't understand it anyway. What I think is funny is that I estimated the probability of my conclusion being correct at 95% even before the Bayesian analysis.

I could write it out, but my argument doesn't depend on this Bayesian framework. Most people won't understand it anyway. What I think is funny is that I estimated the probability of my conclusion being correct at 95% even before the Bayesian analysis. — Sam26

No one's going to take you seriously unless you are going to back up your mathematical claims. I would like to see how you got to these numbers.

Edit: in [ ] : nevermind, I see what you're saying for this bit.

Can you explicitly write out this calculation? — Apustimelogist

I could write it out — Sam26

So could I:

$\begin{align}P(Survival\ \vert\ Observations) & = \frac{P(Survial)P(Observations\ \vert\ Survival)}{P(Observations)}\\0.95 & \approx \frac{(0.01)(0.2)}{(0.01)(0.2) + (0.99)(0.0001)}\end{align}$

What you don't understand is that I don't care whether others take me seriously. If I cared about being taken seriously, I wouldn't have posted in this forum, because most people in here don't take the argument seriously.

1. What's Bayes' Theorem? (The Big Idea)
Bayes' theorem is a formula that helps calculate how likely something is after seeing evidence. It's like this:

Posterior Belief = (How Likely the Evidence Is If Your Idea Is True × Your Starting Belief) ÷ Total Chance of the Evidence Happening Anyway

Posterior Belief: This is your updated guess after looking at the facts. (What we're solving for.)
Starting Belief (Prior): Your initial hunch before any evidence. Here, it's skeptical—only 1% chance that consciousness survives death.

Likelihood: How well the evidence fits your idea vs. the opposite idea.
Total Chance of Evidence: This accounts for the evidence happening under either your idea or the opposite one.

In this case:

H1 = The idea that consciousness survives death (what the book argues for).
H0 = The opposite: No survival, it's all brain tricks or natural stuff.
Evidence (E) = Millions of NDE reports worldwide, including thousands with confirmed details (like people describing surgery accurately when they were "dead").

2. The Numbers They Used (Conservative Guesses)
The explanation picks safe, low-key numbers to avoid overhyping:

Starting Belief in H1 (Prior): 0.01 (1% chance—very skeptical, like "probably not, but let's see").

Chance of Seeing This Evidence If H1 Is True: 0.2 (20%—moderate, meaning if survival is real, you'd expect patterns like this sometimes, but not always).

Chance of Seeing This Evidence If H0 Is True: 0.0001 (0.01%—super low, because if it's all natural, it'd be weird to have so many matching, detailed reports without huge coincidences).

Starting Belief in H0: 0.99 (99%, since it adds up to 100% with the prior for H1).

3. Step-by-Step Calculation
Now, plug in the numbers like a recipe:

Numerator (Top Part): Multiply the likelihood if H1 is true by the starting belief in H1.

0.2 × 0.01 = 0.002
(In words: If survival is real, the evidence is somewhat expected, times your low starting belief.)

Denominator (Bottom Part, Total Chance of Evidence): Add up the evidence chance under H1 and under H0.

First bit: 0.2 × 0.01 = 0.002 (same as above).
Second bit: 0.0001 × 0.99 = 0.000099 (tiny, because evidence doesn't fit well with "no survival").
Total: 0.002 + 0.000099 = 0.002099

Final Posterior (Updated Belief): Divide the top by the bottom.

0.002 ÷ 0.002099 ≈ 0.9528 (or about 95%).
(In words: After the evidence, there's now a 95% chance consciousness survives, based on these numbers.)

4. What Does This Mean in Real Life?
This isn't exact science like measuring height, it's a "back-of-the-envelope" guess to show how evidence can flip your starting skepticism. The book uses NDE stories (millions reported, thousands checked and confirmed) to "update" the odds strongly in favor of survival. But it's flexible: If you start with an even lower prior (say, 0.001 or 0.1%), or think the evidence fits natural explanations better, the final number drops. It's a tool to formalize thinking, not prove anything 100%.

If you tweak the inputs (e.g., "What if the prior is 10%?"), you can rerun it easily—it's like adjusting a recipe for taste. Hope this makes it click without the math headache!

This won't convince anyone because people will simply deny the inputs or the premises.

I love that analysis. Keep it up!

:up:

Anyone who wants a free copy of my book when it comes out, let me know.

the OBE reports often describe a vantage point, like above the body or in the room, that seems spatially anchored. But why assume that's "odd" for something non-physical? — Sam26

Because non-physical entities do not have spatial locations or orientations. "Odd" was perhaps too polite; it's simply a contradiction.

a perspective that's detached but still oriented toward — Sam26

"Perspective", "detached", and "oriented" are all terms describing physical entities.

it's often like a movable viewpoint, not omniscient 360-degree (although 360-degree vision has been reported) god-mode — Sam26

"Movable", "viewpoint", and "360-degree" likewise.

Mystics, when they try to eff the ineffable, frankly admit that they cannot literally describe their experience because it transcends our quotidian, physical vocabulary and concepts.

Your survivors give frankly physical descriptions of physical impossibilities, and then you take that impossibility as evidence of non-physical existence.

"She could not have seen the saw but she did" has to be rescued from contradiction by making two distinctions: "Physical, embodied she could not have physically seen the saw, but disembodied she non-physically did." What I have been pressing you on, is whether you can give any sense to "non-physical seeing" or "non-physical hearing" (and I am passing by whether a disembodied consciousness can be given sense), beyond just positing that they must be a thing because people say they've done it. What exactly is it they've done? What do they mean when they saw they saw these things? In what sense did Pam see the bone saw?

So far, it seems to me the NDE community is satisfied with "exactly like normal seeing but not, you know, physical."

I think this thread is finally coming to a close.

:up: :up:

It would put into question things we know about how physics and biology works.
— Apustimelogist

But that's the whole point: It's questioning those paradigms. It's challenging what you believe you know, which is why I emphasize epistemology. — Sam26

Without grounds to do so, such challenges, or questioning, is, at best, idle. You've not provided any compelling grounds which throw how either physics or biology works into question. Poor epistemology.

I want to thank everyone who responded to this thread. It lasted 8 years, and this is my last post. Thanks again.

Because non-physical entities do not have spatial locations... — Srap Tasmaner

Where did you take that from?

I want to thank everyone who responded to this thread. It lasted 8 years, and this is my last post. Thanks again. — Sam26

:lol:

I think this thread is finally coming to a close. — Sam26

I think you should have considered the possibility that NDE is a result of hypoxia. The brain goes without O2 and a weird memory is created.

Thank you.

I want to thank everyone who responded to this thread. It lasted 8 years, and this is my last post. Thanks again. — Sam26

It is very sad to see that you leave your thread. I have to say that you are a very patient philosopher and scientist. Oh, man, this thread is so long! Thanks for your contribution.

I want to say a little more about this calculation (in which I've corrected a misplaced decimal):

$\begin{align}P(Survival\ \vert\ Observations) & = \frac{P(Survial)P(Observations\ \vert\ Survival)}{P(Observations)}\\0.95 & \approx \frac{(0.01)(0.2)}{(0.01)(0.2) + (0.99)(0.0001)}\end{align}$

That's using Sam's numbers, the most important of which seems to be this:

Chance of Seeing This Evidence If H0 Is True: 0.0001 (0.01%—super low, because if it's all natural, it'd be weird to have so many matching, detailed reports without huge coincidences). — Sam26

You'll note that making this value really small is what makes the posterior probability so high, regardless of how low the prior probability was. It's a ratio: on top is the chance, however low, you assign to consciousness surviving death and people reporting that they experienced this; on the bottom is the total chance of people reporting that they have experienced survival, whether it happened or not (so we add the two cases to get a total).

One way to think of this is as an explanation of how quickly people can update. Consider the characters in a science fiction movie: maybe they don't believe in monsters or aliens, but when one is right in front of them, they might initially resist thinking it's real, but if it demonstrates that it is, they very quickly adjust. Similarly for rare events in real life. You may know for a fact that airplane crashes, church shootings, and tornadoes are rare, but when you're in one, you believe it not quite immediately, but quickly.

This is what Sam is asking of us here. The idea is that something you think unlikely has in fact happened: you never in a million years expected someone to tell you they had experienced the afterlife, but here they are. My prior credence was low; I've gotten the extremely unlikely evidence; now my posterior credence is high. The more unlikely the evidence, the higher my credence will now be. (Hence, Sam above comparing these reports to "coincidences", which raises other issues not addressed here.)

Of course, that is not the view of the skeptic at all. There are two possibilities:

(1) Skeptics believe that these reports are not evidence of an afterlife, and therefore the likelihood of someone offering such a report, having had a near brush with death, just is whatever it is in real life. If five million people last year nearly died but survived, and five thousand of those reported experiencing the afterlife, then the odds of a survivor making such a report are 1000 : 1, and that's it. Whether there's an afterlife doesn't enter into it. Bayes's rule has no use here at all.

(2) Skeptics believe the reports do count, but not so much.

Let's look at how (2) works with an example.

Suppose the chances are 9 in 10 that people will comment favorably on a cute outfit. Suppose further that the chances are 3 in 10 they will comment favorably on an uncute outfit, out of politeness, etc.

How likely are people to say that your outfit is cute? We can't say, because we don't know the base rate ― we don't know how likely your outfit is to actually be cute, so we can't do the calculation. Let's say half your outfits are cute. Out of 20 outfits you wear, 10 of them are cute and you get 9 comments, 10 of them are not cute and you get 3 comments; altogether you get 13 comments out of 20.

Now for the important question: what are the chances that your outfit is cute, given a favorable comment? 9 out of 10? 13 out of 20? Nope. The chances are given by the likelihood ratio of comments on cute outfits to comments on uncute outfits, scaled by the base rate. Given our 50-50 base rate, the chances that your outfit is cute, given a nice comment, are 3 in 4 (because genuine comments are three times more likely). But if only a quarter of your outfits are genuinely cute, a favorable comment makes it only even money that this is one of the cute ones. If only 1 out of 10 of your outfits are cute, the favorable comment gives you only a 1 in 4 chance that this is a cute one.

For our problem, let's say the skeptic considers the odds there's an afterlife a colloquial "million to one". That's the prior. To calculate the posterior odds, we need to know how much more likely we are to get reports of an afterlife, if there is one than if there isn't. It doesn't matter what the odds are, really ― both can be pretty likely or unlikely ― what matters is the ratio. Sam's estimate was that we are 2000 times more likely to get reports if there is an afterlife (0.2 : 0.0001).

Having gotten these reports, what would the skeptic say are the odds there's an afterlife? It's the likelihood ratio scaled by the base bate, in (rounded) odds form:

$\frac{10^6}{1}\times\frac{1}{2000}=\frac{500}{1}$

Still 500 to 1 against.

It's as if the skeptic says, out of a million and one universes, one of them is cute; reports of an afterlife are two thousand times more likely in that universe than in any of the other million; we have those reports, so what are the odds we're in that universe? Bigger than you might think, but still small because the base rate controls. Even if people in the cute universe are dramatically more likely to report an afterlife experience, our chances of being in such a universe ― according to the skeptic ― are so small that they remain small, even when we have those reports.

Sam's skeptic picked a colloquial prior of "a hundred to one", so instead the calculation was (rounding again):

$\frac{100}{1}\times\frac{1}{2000}=\frac{1}{20}$

or 20 chances out of 21, which is about 95%.

So it turns out ― as it almost always does with these kinds of problems ― that the most important estimate Sam gives is not (as I suggested above) the relative likelihood of reports, but the base rate.

If you want to leave open the possibility that we live in a cute universe, you still have to consider:
(a) whether the reports that we do are acceptable as evidence at all;
(b) how much more likely that evidence, if accepted, is in cute universes rather than uncute ones; and
(c) how likely it is that we live in a cute universe.

What will determine whether this evidence controls is the difference between the likelihood ratio of the evidence, in (b), and the base rate of cuteness you give credence to in (c). Is one orders of magnitude bigger than the other? Which one? Sam gets the result he does by treating the evidence as twenty times more likely in the favorable case than the favorable case is unlikely.

(I'm not saying anything about how we might settle on one value or another here. It's just my understanding of the math, particularly for people who found that "95%" somewhat eye-popping. Ignore if you're better at probability than I am.)