Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by ptoo 1521 days ago
But every trait or behaviour that survives on evolutionary timescales does serve (or did serve, in the case of vestigial features) a purpose. I'm not sure what the exact mechanism is for one's life flashing before the eyes, but the researchers mentioned a very specific alignment of brain wave patterns that seems a bit too intricate to be purely random.

For a complex feature to pass through generations, it has to have some relative positive fitness associated with it. If it didn't provide some survival or fitness advantages, random genetic mutations would simply prevent the effect from being created. It is likely a very ancient survival mechanism based on these NDE existing through many different cultures and eras, and possibly not even specific to humans.
3 comments
DubiousPusher 1521 days ago
> But every trait or behaviour that survives on evolutionary timescales does serve (or did serve, in the case of vestigial features) a purpose.

This is in fact not true. There are "coincidences" of evolutionary biology and if there is not selective pressure to change them, they remain for millions of years.

link
jakear 1521 days ago
> specific alignment of brain wave patterns that seems a bit too intricate to be purely random.

Spend some time looking and you’ll find everything evolution has crafted contains patterns seemingly too intricate to be purely random. In my opinion this is an artifact of our collective laughably poor understanding of the powers of recursive formulae, especially those that have undergone countless rounds of differential optimizations. In fact, the question “could this have been created by evolution” is eerily similar to the halting problem. Suffice to say, our feeble “human intuition” is of little use against true uncomputability.

Less abstractly, it’s been proposed that by flashing through all your memories you might pick up on some prior experience that lets you recover and go on to have some more kids (or provide for existing kids a bit longer)

link
asdff 1521 days ago
Plenty of traits are inadvertantly selected for, due to being linked to the traits that actually affect fitness under selected.
link