Differing explanations of NDE's

This singular event prompted a writing period characterised by metaphysical speculations and an obsession with Christian Gnostic teachings, documented in his monumental Exegesis. Either that was a mystical revelation, or the man went nuts because of too much drugs.
And there are cases where people who experienced a singular event of physical brain trauma, getting "whacked in the head," who suddenly developed genius abilities (mathematical, artistic, musical, etc.). Go figure. In those cases, they definitely tapped into something, and it wasn't just going nuts.

Cheers,
Bill
 
Again, you are putting the cart before the horse. The perception that NDE is associated with radical life changes is because NDEs with radical life changes have been selected post hoc. This selection process can be applied to any experiences and lead to similar results. If you want to confine yourself to "experiences which brought about a radical life change", then you will be excluding most of the experiences called "NDE" in prospective NDE studies and including many experiences which don't involve imagery or would otherwise be dismissed by NDE researchers.

I don't have a problem with focussing on radical or transformative experiences. But this will take us even further away from NDE research as it stands.

Linda


NDE elements are present in samadhi states, adrenaline rush, DMT and psylocibin trips, episodes of extreme fright, holotropic breathwork, epileptic seizures, aura migraines etc. I can shut my eyes and press my knuckles against my closed eyelids and generate a tunnel of light. What is your point?
 
And there are cases where people who experienced a singular event of physical brain trauma, getting "whacked in the head," who suddenly developed genius abilities (mathematical, artistic, musical, etc.). Go figure. In those cases, they definitely tapped into something, and it wasn't just going nuts.

Cheers,
Bill


Oh the man was a creative genius no doubt, and in my opinion the best science fiction writer in existence, in my subjective view. But after reading his biography, his drug use and paranoia, I incline towards mental instability. Not to disparage cases when people do acquire extraordinary capabilities after brain injury or other brain related changes.
 
NDE elements are present in samadhi states, adrenaline rush, DMT and psylocibin trips, episodes of extreme fright, holotropic breathwork, epileptic seizures, aura migraines etc. I can shut my eyes and press my knuckles against my closed eyelids and generate a tunnel of light. What is your point?

That which of these experiences we select out post hoc to regard as special, and the way we interpret them, tells us more about human prejudices than about other aspects of reality.

Linda
 
Linda,

Don't you make a bit too much of the need to avoid selection? I mean, wouldn't it be valid to study the physiology of peak athletes (forgetting questions of doping)? Isn't it even possible that such a study would tell doctors something valuable about far more ordinary individuals?

I mean if a reasonable number of people report that while their hearts were stopped, they watched the scene from above, and can describe what went on, isn't that worth studying, even if others had a vaguer experience?

We all select things from a continuum - for example, you would treat someone with BP above a certain threshold, but not treat someone who was otherwise similar, but below that threshold, yet there is a continuum of possible BP values. Likewise a research project might select people with clinically raised BP - disregarding the continuum of people with lower BP!

David
 
Linda,

Don't you make a bit too much of the need to avoid selection? I mean, wouldn't it be valid to study the physiology of peak athletes (forgetting questions of doping)? Isn't it even possible that such a study would tell doctors something valuable about far more ordinary individuals?

Where have I said you need to avoid selection? I've even offered up some examples of how experiences could be selected. I did say that you need to avoid drawing conclusions based on your selection criteria. It would be like studying the physiology of elite runners and concluding that black people are all elite runners.

I mean if a reasonable number of people report that while their hearts were stopped, they watched the scene from above, and can describe what went on, isn't that worth studying, even if others had a vaguer experience?

I specifically said earlier that one possibility would be to study autoscopic OBEs.

We all select things from a continuum - for example, you would treat someone with BP above a certain threshold, but not treat someone who was otherwise similar, but below that threshold, yet there is a continuum of possible BP values. Likewise a research project might select people with clinically raised BP - disregarding the continuum of people with lower BP!

David

Right, but then she/he shouldn't conclude that all people have a BP above a certain value.

Linda
 
Linda,

Don't you make a bit too much of the need to avoid selection? I mean, wouldn't it be valid to study the physiology of peak athletes (forgetting questions of doping)? Isn't it even possible that such a study would tell doctors something valuable about far more ordinary individuals?

I mean if a reasonable number of people report that while their hearts were stopped, they watched the scene from above, and can describe what went on, isn't that worth studying, even if others had a vaguer experience?

We all select things from a continuum - for example, you would treat someone with BP above a certain threshold, but not treat someone who was otherwise similar, but below that threshold, yet there is a continuum of possible BP values. Likewise a research project might select people with clinically raised BP - disregarding the continuum of people with lower BP!

David
David, in this post you ask how important avoiding selection bias is - and that's a good question that should be discussed.

I'm a bit curious though, because immediately after reading this post, I read the post you may about 45 minutes earlier in another thread, where you post a study specifically on the perils of selection bias, and call it "sobering".

I just finished reading that paper, and I agree it is sobering (the paper was in 2009, I'm curious as to whether the authors of all those papers did the reanalysis suggested in the paper). Now, the contexts are a bit different of course, but I couldn't help but be drawn to the parallels between the selection discussed there and the kind that we are discussing in this thread. At the very least, it highlights for me the importance of the issue.

I'm just curious as to why you differentiate between the two.
 
Where have I said you need to avoid selection?

Well let me quote what you wrote in the previous thread (emphasis added)
I'm not sure why you're talking to me about "explain them all" and "ad hoc". The claim is that these experiences mean something in terms of a consciousness separate from the brain. It makes sense to me to investigate what kinds of experiences are had under these circumstances and whether these are unique in some way - some way that informs us about the process of consciousness. Also, it should be noted that the appearance of "common elements" is an artifact of selecting out a small subset of all the auditory-visual experiences people report around the time of physical/medical crises on the basis of these "common elements" (I've said before that we should be interested in all the auditory-visual experiences which people report, not just this small subset). I have no interest in explaining them in terms of a materialist viewpoint - what a waste of time. I'm not interested in "ad hoc" explanations, either.
I am more than willing to countenance the idea that these strange phenomena happen when the brain has become disabled to a greater or lesser degree - due to cardiac arrest, anaesthesia, gee forces draining blood from the brain, etc. The point is that the recognised phenomena of NDE's aren't normal parts of everyday life - they only come to the fore in situations in which the brain can't do its job.

From a completely materialistic perspective, the brain and only the brain creates consciousness (though how it creates awareness is a total mystery) and that includes all these intense phenomena - that can often be remembered vividly for the rest of a person's life. That isn't bad for an organ that is close to expiring!

From a non-materialist perspective, the brain is an interface to actual consciousness - an interface that filters out a lot of 'irrelevant' information. Clearly, this perspective fits much better with the peculiar facts of some NDE's.

One of the strangest aspects of some NDE's is what you describe as autoscopic - observing yourself. Now I think anyone who claims that people can use information from their senses to assemble (not in a deliberate sense) one of these accounts, should try some experiments. Even being fully conscious in a dentist's chair, shows you how little visual information is available. You can't see the drill, or any of the other gadgets they use, nor can you see them mix the filling material, etc. Admittedly you can hear what is going on, but I doubt if one could give a really good account of the whole procedure after it is over - one that would correspond with what could be seen from the ceiling. Seeing what is going on from the vantage point of the ceiling while lying on a bed is clearly physically impossible, so the only way to square these accounts with standard materialistic assumptions, is to bend them until they can just about be explained - but does that make sense?

Furthermore, as Billw pointed out above, brain damage (either before birth or later) often seems to unleash amazing special abilities. Once again, that makes more sense using a brain-as-interface model, than using a model where the brain simply creates consciousness.

In conclusion, this isn't about selection (or any other statistical issue) - and I am well aware of what can be 'achieved' using skewed samples - it is about the fact that some people whose brains are temporarily disabled, have experiences that really don't fit with materialistic assumptions. To the extent that you would really like to explore this, I think most readers of this forum would be right behind you, but it might help if you realised that you might end up having to agree with the 'other' side of this debate.

David
 
I am more than willing to countenance the idea that these strange phenomena happen when the brain has become disabled to a greater or lesser degree - due to cardiac arrest, anaesthesia, gee forces draining blood from the brain, etc. The point is that the recognised phenomena of NDE's aren't normal parts of everyday life - they only come to the fore in situations in which the brain can't do its job.
I find the emphasis on physicality here rather misplaced.

In a broad sense, what is called an NDE tends to be identified not because of anything physical, but because of what was taking place in the person's consciousness. That is, someone may describe viewing themselves or the world from a location separate from their physical position, There may be a sense of altered rate of time, of experiencing various other phenomena, including some or all of: life-review, feeling of bliss or all-encompassing love, specific visions of other locations such as far-away loved ones, or other times such as a possible future, meeting with other beings etc. etc. When someone describes some of these things, we say it is a an NDE. But - this is the important part - there are a number of cases where such things are reported and none of these are true:
"brain has become disabled to a greater or lesser degree - due to cardiac arrest, anaesthesia, gee forces draining blood from the brain, etc".

That there are NDEs which occur when there was not at any stage any physical dysfunction is surely significant. It means that looking for the causes in brain malfunction is bound to fail.
 
Well let me quote what you wrote in the previous thread (emphasis added)

I am more than willing to countenance the idea that these strange phenomena happen when the brain has become disabled to a greater or lesser degree - due to cardiac arrest, anaesthesia, gee forces draining blood from the brain, etc. The point is that the recognised phenomena of NDE's aren't normal parts of everyday life - they only come to the fore in situations in which the brain can't do its job.

Thinking in terms of "disabled" or "can't do its job" is probably too mechanistic (like a gear has seized up). Instead, it's a complicated morass of activity which produces differing effects depending upon the balance and paths of that activity. These phenomena are already part of everyday life - dreams, delirium, hallucination, imagination, reconstruction, visualization, scotoma, confabulation, phosphenes, etc. It is the idea, of using human prejudices to select a tiny handful of these experiences post hoc and elevating them to an exaggerated philosophical importance which is extraordinary.

From a completely materialistic perspective, the brain and only the brain creates consciousness (though how it creates awareness is a total mystery) and that includes all these intense phenomena - that can often be remembered vividly for the rest of a person's life. That isn't bad for an organ that is close to expiring!

From a non-materialist perspective, the brain is an interface to actual consciousness - an interface that filters out a lot of 'irrelevant' information. Clearly, this perspective fits much better with the peculiar facts of some NDE's.

To be honest, I'm not interesting in a flimsy idea created simply to serve as an antidote to another flimsy idea. I think we'd all be much better served if the false ideas of materialism and anti-materialism were dropped and we just focused on how to navigate our way to the truth by following the evidence (and by evidence, I'm referring to a concern with validity), rather than human prejudices.

One of the strangest aspects of some NDE's is what you describe as autoscopic - observing yourself. Now I think anyone who claims that people can use information from their senses to assemble (not in a deliberate sense) one of these accounts, should try some experiments. Even being fully conscious in a dentist's chair, shows you how little visual information is available. You can't see the drill, or any of the other gadgets they use, nor can you see them mix the filling material, etc. Admittedly you can hear what is going on, but I doubt if one could give a really good account of the whole procedure after it is over - one that would correspond with what could be seen from the ceiling. Seeing what is going on from the vantage point of the ceiling while lying on a bed is clearly physically impossible, so the only way to square these accounts with standard materialistic assumptions, is to bend them until they can just about be explained - but does that make sense?

You are mixing up two quite different types of tasks - explicit and implicit. The imagery found in NDEs and similar experiences seems to be the result of implicit processes. NDEers haven't shown themselves to be able to perform explicit tasks, such as the one you describe above, any better than non-NDEers. They are able to describe their imagery, but they are unable to reconstruct what is out of their field of available sensory information. If you read the accounts Satori recorded, you find that the details of much of what is described is wrong with respect to information which was unavailable. There are phones in the reconstruction, but their colour is wrong. Or the sound of a fan has become a helicopter. Even Pam Reynolds reconstructed a tool which was the general shape of a dental drill from hearing the sound of a dental drill, but the visual details were inaccurate.

Furthermore, as Billw pointed out above, brain damage (either before birth or later) often seems to unleash amazing special abilities. Once again, that makes more sense using a brain-as-interface model, than using a model where the brain simply creates consciousness.

I don't see how either model is particularly useful.

In conclusion, this isn't about selection (or any other statistical issue) - and I am well aware of what can be 'achieved' using skewed samples - it is about the fact that some people whose brains are temporarily disabled, have experiences that really don't fit with materialistic assumptions. To the extent that you would really like to explore this, I think most readers of this forum would be right behind you, but it might help if you realised that you might end up having to agree with the 'other' side of this debate.

David

Maybe that's what it's about for you. Like I said, I don't give a rat's ass about whether an experience fits a materialistic assumption, or an anti-materialistic assumption. Maybe someone like you, who has picked a side, needs to worry about finding themselves agreeing with the other side. But I'm not interested in picking a side a priori. In particular, I see no reason to give priority to human prejudices.

Linda
 
Thinking in terms of "disabled" or "can't do its job" is probably too mechanistic (like a gear has seized up). Instead, it's a complicated morass of activity which produces differing effects depending upon the balance and paths of that activity. These phenomena are already part of everyday life - dreams, delirium, hallucination, imagination, reconstruction, visualization, scotoma, confabulation, phosphenes, etc. It is the idea, of using human prejudices to select a tiny handful of these experiences post hoc and elevating them to an exaggerated philosophical importance which is extraordinary.



To be honest, I'm not interesting in a flimsy idea created simply to serve as an antidote to another flimsy idea. I think we'd all be much better served if the false ideas of materialism and anti-materialism were dropped and we just focused on how to navigate our way to the truth by following the evidence (and by evidence, I'm referring to a concern with validity), rather than human prejudices.



You are mixing up two quite different types of tasks - explicit and implicit. The imagery found in NDEs and similar experiences seems to be the result of implicit processes. NDEers haven't shown themselves to be able to perform explicit tasks, such as the one you describe above, any better than non-NDEers. They are able to describe their imagery, but they are unable to reconstruct what is out of their field of available sensory information. If you read the accounts Satori recorded, you find that the details of much of what is described is wrong with respect to information which was unavailable. There are phones in the reconstruction, but their colour is wrong. Or the sound of a fan has become a helicopter. Even Pam Reynolds reconstructed a tool which was the general shape of a dental drill from hearing the sound of a dental drill, but the visual details were inaccurate.



I don't see how either model is particularly useful.



Maybe that's what it's about for you. Like I said, I don't give a rat's ass about whether an experience fits a materialistic assumption, or an anti-materialistic assumption. Maybe someone like you, who has picked a side, needs to worry about finding themselves agreeing with the other side. But I'm not interested in picking a side a priori. In particular, I see no reason to give priority to human prejudices.

Linda

Assuming that Clark's story is true, which I have no real reason to doubt. Then it seems reasonable to me to accept that Maria did somehow gain information about a shoe seen on a ledge outside a hospital window.

I don't claim that Maria was out of her body, neither do I feel comfortable that she picked up the information from conversations and confabulated it. I take a middle (and different) view because of my own unique childhood OBE, which suggests that Maria may have obtained the information via currently unknown means.

That would be via coherence... that is that one or more local persons laid down a pattern of energy on Maria's exposed brain networks which caused her to become coherent with those same third party/s, or, that her networks themselves were already similar or closely synchronised with a third party (friends, family etc), such that coherence could occur.

For example, If a local third party was holding a visual 'things to do' item consciously in their awareness... such as, I must remember to remove that shoe from the ledge (with imagery). And if this occurred at the same time that Maria's brains endogenous EM field was operating at a weaker output, then I think it's plausible that Maria's networks could become at least partially entrained and thus coherent with the third party/s. Thus directly incorporate access to that information within her brain whilst it was somewhat exposed.
 
Maybe that's what it's about for you. Like I said, I don't give a rat's ass about whether an experience fits a materialistic assumption, or an anti-materialistic assumption. Maybe someone like you, who has picked a side, needs to worry about finding themselves agreeing with the other side. But I'm not interested in picking a side a priori. In particular, I see no reason to give priority to human prejudices.

Linda

I like the notion of 'picking a side a priori'! I mean it isn't as if we all came along and looked at no evidence, but picked the 'side' that happened to please us most! I was utterly sceptical at one point, but there really are a huge number of extraordinary NDE accounts out there. You may feel they have been cherry picked out of a much larger mass of data, but neither you not I are actively trying to create a better database, so we have to decide from the evidence as it is available. Of course, you can always reserve judgement, but if you feel the data is so unreliable, I don't see why you want to spend time discussing it here!

As for not giving a rat's ass about whether certain phenomena can be explained within materialism, I find that incredible!

David
 
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Assuming that Clark's story is true, which I have no real reason to doubt. Then it seems reasonable to me to accept that Maria did somehow gain information about a shoe seen on a ledge outside a hospital window.

I don't claim that Maria was out of her body, neither do I feel comfortable that she picked up the information from conversations and confabulated it. I take a middle (and different) view because of my own unique childhood OBE, which suggests that Maria may have obtained the information via currently unknown means.
Right - that explanation is just too contrived to make sense.
That would be via coherence... that is that one or more local persons laid down a pattern of energy on Maria's exposed brain networks which caused her to become coherent with those same third party/s, or, that her networks themselves were already similar or closely synchronised with a third party (friends, family etc), such that coherence could occur.
Linda seems to think that whether a phenomenon is or is not explainable within materialism, is not important, but I certainly do, and I get the impression that you are teetering on the brink of going outside the realm of materialism too. Perhaps you are talking about ESP and trying to put a conventional explanation on it.
For example, If a local third party was holding a visual 'things to do' item consciously in their awareness... such as, I must remember to remove that shoe from the ledge (with imagery). And if this occurred at the same time that Maria's brains endogenous EM field was operating at a weaker output, then I think it's plausible that Maria's networks could become at least partially entrained and thus coherent with the third party/s. Thus directly incorporate access to that information within her brain whilst it was somewhat exposed.

This is a concept that you have discussed before, but I don't think this concept is feasible because electromagnetic fields coming from neurons in the head would spread in all directions and rapidly blur together. I'd maybe believe it if someone demonstrated a gadget that could read the visual field of a man from a distance of say 1 foot from the skull.

The other thing is, that if this sort of transmission were possible, wouldn't we be far more aware of it? I mean suppose someone in the resuscitation room were thinking about meeting their lover, or making a meal, or whatever, wouldn't people receive all sorts of weird images by your mechanism (Linda will no doubt say that perhaps they do, because we haven't sampled all the data) - not just those that related to viewing the immediate area.

David
 
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I like the notion of 'picking a side a priori'! I mean it isn't as if we all came along and looked at no evidence, but picked the 'side' that happened to please us most! I was utterly sceptical at one point, but there really are a huge number of extraordinary NDE accounts out there. You may feel they have been cherry picked out of a much larger mass of data, but neither you not I are actively trying to create a better database, so we have to decide from the evidence as it is available. Of course, you can always reserve judgement, but if you feel the data is so unreliable, I don't see why you want to spend time discussing it here!

As for not giving a rat's ass about whether certain phenomena can be explained within materialism, I find that incredible!

David

We all have our biases and prejudices in favour of or against this or that view. How one approaches these problems may differ depending on how one evaluates that prospect. By framing our exploration of a topic in the context of pushing for one point of view or another the effect is that we increase the impact of our biases/prejudices on our evaluation. This bothers some people more than others. And in fairness there probably are pros and cons to each approach.

One of the reasons to discuss these topics on a public forum such as this is to share perspectives with a view hopefully to maximizing the pros and minimizing the cons of each approach.

I'll just bring up one concrete example of what I mean in terms of a con from framing the issue in terms of supporting or attacking materialism.

Take the discussion about Pam Reynolds. We often see this basic argument: "Pam had certain experiences when materialist science says that she shouldn't be able to therefore minds are not brain activity."

Now, Pam's case - and others like it - should lead us to ask ourselves and investigate the proposition that minds are independent of brain. However, by approaching the issue in terms of looking to support that proposition we close ourselves off to another question that Pam's case, and others like it - should also lead us to ask ourselves and investigate: Is Pam's case - other others like it - giving us new information about the capacity of the brain, and under what conditions it can produce experiences, etc.

Note: in both cases the previous science is considered wrong to one extent or another, the question is, does the case - or others like it - provide us with enough reliable information to close down one path of study in order to focus on the other? And what about other paths not related to materialism?

I don't think there's anything wrong with from time to time pausing to assess where our investiagtion fits in with the various large scale worldviews. In fact, with so much information out there, I think we need to do so from time to time in order to be able to make decisions, and live practically. And to some extent I don't think we can help doing that anyway. But I think there is value in not making that our goal (or at least for a portion of us not to). To make an effort to consider the evidence on its own first, then fit it into the bigger picture later. To discourage premature closing of doors, and giving us the best chance at finding an explanation for these phenomena.
 
Right - that explanation is just too contrived to make sense.

Linda seems to think that whether a phenomenon is or is not explainable within materialism, is not important, but I certainly do, and I get the impression that you are teetering on the brink of going outside the realm of materialism too. Perhaps you are talking about ESP and trying to put a conventional explanation on it.


This is a concept that you have discussed before, but I don't think this concept is feasible because electromagnetic fields coming from neurons in the head would spread in all directions and rapidly blur together. I'd maybe believe it if someone demonstrated a gadget that could read the visual field of a man from a distance of say 1 foot from the skull.

The other thing is, that if this sort of transmission were possible, wouldn't we be far more aware of it? I mean suppose someone in the resuscitation room were thinking about meeting their lover, or making a meal, or whatever, wouldn't people receive all sorts of weird images by your mechanism (Linda will no doubt say that perhaps they do, because we haven't sampled all the data) - not just those that related to viewing the immediate area.

David

We've got plenty of studies now showing behavioural effects of hyper-weak magnetic fields on birds navigation, and one on turtles which also shows a memory effect. (I've posted links to these before).

These studies open the door to something rather new to do with magnetic fields, because there is simply no existing mechanism able to explain the observed behavioural effects of such hyper-weak fields. It simply shouldn't happen, they are far far too weak.

The first such animal studies were met with a great deal of criticism and disbelief. I watched one eminent Russian physicist who wrote a very critical paper attacking the first studies, now years later he's changed his mind, after conducting his own behavioural studies which produced similar effects.
 
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The other thing is, that if this sort of transmission were possible, wouldn't we be far more aware of it? I mean suppose someone in the resuscitation room were thinking about meeting their lover, or making a meal, or whatever, wouldn't people receive all sorts of weird images by your mechanism (Linda will no doubt say that perhaps they do, because we haven't sampled all the data) - not just those that related to viewing the immediate area.

David

I can't recall if I've read Max suggest this or its just my own thought, but one possibility to explore with Max's hypothesis is whether the reason we aren't constantly bombarded with information from these signals is because they are generally too weak integrate into our conscious and possibly unconscious information streams. It might be that certain situations result (such as we find in the situations where NDEs occur, or certain meditative states) either shut down or slow other paths down enough for these weak signals to get through.

Other possibilities may be that to some extent, our own signals are relatively unique - I think I recall reading recently an article describing our brain processes as being uniquely identifiable in a similar way to fingerprints. It may be with these signals that with most people we're simply incompatible to receive coherent signals but that occasionally we come near some with signals that are similar enough that we can interpret bits of it. What one might need is a combination of right signals with right circumstances to be able to process them.

(I'm not advocating for this particular hypothesis, because frankly I don't know enough about these signals to even form an opinion about them, but this is what comes to mind when I read Max's posts.)
 
I like the notion of 'picking a side a priori'!

I can tell. :)

I mean it isn't as if we all came along and looked at no evidence, but picked the 'side' that happened to please us most! I was utterly sceptical at one point, but there really are a huge number of extraordinary NDE accounts out there. You may feel they have been cherry picked out of a much larger mass of data, but neither you not I are actively trying to create a better database, so we have to decide from the evidence as it is available.

No we don't. If we don't really have valid or reliable evidence, we can reserve judgement. Jumping the gun has always led us to get it wrong anyways. Very wrong.

Of course, you can always reserve judgement, but if you feel the data is so unreliable, I don't see why you want to spend time discussing it here!

This place is supposed to be confined to those who have picked a side and are willing to be dogmatic about it?

As for not giving a rat's ass about whether certain phenomena can be explained within materialism, I find that incredible!

David

Why? That's how science operates.

Linda
 
This place is supposed to be confined to those who have picked a side and are willing to be dogmatic about it?
Most of us want to access the truth!
Why? That's how science operates.
Science is very interested in observations that break paradigms - think of the fuss that was made about the claim (later withdrawn) that neutrinos could travel fractionally faster than the speed of light (which would have broken Special Relativity).

David
 
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