[CRUDite]

This happened to me as an 11 or 12 yr old. I was hit by a car that crossed a red light. The moment I was hit I saw my life and memories from it, certain pauses on interactions with key people and there were very overwhelming positive and calm emotions, but I saw everything and indeed strangely carousel style. When I hit the tarmac I was slammed back in real time and was scrabbling to hang on the front of the car as it didn’t stop for 50 yards and was dragging me under.

It had a profound impact on me. It makes sense it’s a human experience that’s ‘an unknown known’. I don’t buy the ‘survival mechanism’ theory, the nature of the experience was not one of search. It was over 30 years ago, but remains something I know to be ‘real’ as a phenomenon

[mysterydip]

> I was hit by a car

> It had a profound impact on me

I assume this wasn't intentional, but I had to appreciate the pun

[CRUDite]

Thank you! I am walking the dogs in the park and laughed out loud when I read that. It was unintentional to be clear. The experience was real, I wish I had the foresight to notice the pun

[mbar84]

I wonder if the memory carousel itself is not so much a survival mechanism, but rather it's a side effect of a survival mechanism. In layman terms, the brain goes into overdrive as it tries everything it can to eek out some minor optimization in your movement, that might help you dodge an arrow. As a side effect everything else in your brain also gets stimulated like never before and for the parts of your brain that we relate to consciousness, the experience is one of explosive recall of memories.

[mromanuk]

Wow, I like your theory. Would be really cool if it’s that way. Like when you have tunnel vision during a fight and your hands get numb

[lr4444lr]

This fascinates me. Can you tell me what the perception of time is like for this experience? Obviously it must be extended as compared with waking reality, but how long did it feel like? Was it like a lucid engrossing dream that has a plot that literally feels like many days length, or did you perceive the outside reality moving in more slow motion?

[CRUDite]

I went onto study physics, I used to think about it every now and then. It’s not easy to characterise / quantify an answer but there was no experience of time, I was not aware enough of externalities to know what slow motion would be as that implies a connection to outer time. I don’t remember a cradle to present run through of memories but I certainly saw / experienced a slideshow and then ‘real time’ moments of positive interactions with people, which then moved on. Was that seconds or moments or just memory clusters firing I don’t know. Enough to re live the experience with a different perspective. of course early memories are not (for me)as complex or emotionally involving or nuanced with language so the bulk of memories were from later life. I have no recollection of the composition of ‘the slideshow’ but do remember for eg love for my mother in certain ‘scene(s)’ and that was more of a ‘real-time’ segment. A precession of memories certainly indicates time flow. I was dimly aware of the ground at the last moment as it came towards me and thinking back on it the scenes faded and real time came back along with my sense of the outside world aka the ground.

[mikepurvis]

I wonder if there's a connection here to "dream time", how you can have a dream experience that connects to something waking you up in the real world (a noise, or sensation like cold or wet). But the dream experience of whatever it was feels like it must have taken way longer than the amount of time it actually took you to react to the real world thing.

[VHRanger]

The reason time *feels slow* in these catastrophes, AFAIK is that memory formation kicks into high gear during it

Your brain isn't somehow over locking itself, you just remember everything about the event in detail, so it feels like it in retrospect

[_dceh]

That's a smart theory. I have another theory: life-review is the simulation diverting additional compute resources to your local "process" to quickly judge whether or not your annihilation would be optimal for the reality/simulation/timeline. This requires intense extra compute in real-time to assess each moment of your life, and the reason you experience it is because there's no priority in that moment to maintain the normal veil between "in-time" (real time subjective to observer) and "out-of-time" (ie as in simulation time) experience. So the rapid processing starves the normal "subjective you" process, and your consciousness gets to "peek through" at the workings of the simulation as it judges whether you dying would be catastrophic. If you "pass", then the simulation ensures your exist for at least a while longer, otherwise, it lets the event take its course.

The subconscious knowledge of this is why we've internalized and re-expressed the "judgement upon death" notion across many religions.

[gregorymichael]

I love this theory. Thank you for sharing.

[CapsAdmin]

When it comes to feeling "slow motion" on psychedelics, it feels like you're just taking in and focusing on too many details so your memory of the experience feels a lot longer than it actually was.

Under normal circumstances when looking at a random car, you most likely just see a car. You've probably seen a car before so it's not something you need to pay attention to.

But under the influence of psychedelics you pay attention to all the details of the car. Like how it's somehow symmetrical in shape, the reflection of the car from the sun, transparent windows that somehow reflects the environment a little bit but is still somehow lets you see the inside of the car, the front part of the car looks like a face, the car is larger than you, etc, etc.

The experience under the influence might feel like it took 2 minutes, but in reality it probably took 10 seconds. It can feel even longer when recalling the memory.

(you might also see things that aren't part of the car but I'm leaving that out here to talk about how long an experience feels like)

[r3trohack3r]

I have a pet theory that this is why time seems to move faster as you age. Novelty runs out.

As a child, nearly every day is packed with novel stimuli. The number of distinct “imprints” on your memory during this time is extremely high. In other words, you have a higher “memory density” during this period compared to when you’re older and the mind uses these reference points as a proxy for the passage of time.

It follows that you can lead a “longer” life by prioritizing novel experiences over routines.

[brnaftr361]

Since you've thought about it, my impression was more that we're forced to distribute consciousness. Consciousness as in mindfulness. What we aren't conscious in doing becomes reflexive, we put our bodies in autopilot. I think novelty is one way that yes, because it calls forward consciousness, we can expand our mental time frame, sort of like pressing record. I think a good aside here is the concept of the beginner's mind.

In terms of untrained optimization, though, autopilot is prioritized. I think this is pretty well corroborated by Kahneman's chimera in Thinking, Fast and Slow but I think it's less of a metabolic thing than it is an interruption in train of thought.

Perhaps this is derived by the fact the mind can create its own feedback loops, and in the circumstances where you've mastered to the point of intuition and reflexivity some practice, those feedback loops are given precedence because they're more rewarding, and being called to the real world becomes frustrating. At least that's how I'd assemble my own experience in narrative.

[CapsAdmin]

It almost seems like time can only be measured when recalling past conscious events.

If you've ever been anesthetized for a medical operation, it really feels like the moment you lose awareness to the moment you wake up again is the same event, except that 15 hours has passed in between.

I've heard people who fall unconscious from head trauma say the same thing. Suddenly they wake up in hospital not knowing what has happened.

[taneq]

That's my conclusion, too. Our sense of time is defined not in seconds but in terms of events, and our perception of the passage of time is defined in proportion to the total number of events we've experienced.

It reminds me of that statement in Starship Troopers (the book): "The death rate's the same for us as for anyone. One person, one death, sooner or later."

[warent]

thank you for sharing. I'm glad you're here today. What do you feel is the purpose of a life review like this?

I don't know that I believe in an afterlife per se, but oblivion also seems unlikely. Something about being an aspect of the infinite universe that continues. stories like yours are very compelling!

[Fervicus]

I have heard so many people describing the same exact feelings as you, especially the "overwhelming positive and calm emotions" part. It's so fascinating!

[TomMasz]

I hit a deer on my motorcycle. I remember nothing between the initial impact and finding myself on my back looking up at the sky. I had been separated from the bike and slide on my side for a considerable distance (only going 30 mph, luckily). Perhaps the flash of life experiences doesn't happen for everyone.

[Ozzie_osman]

Perhaps it happens for everyone but in some cases, you black out and forget it.