Do We Know How Anesthesia Works Yet?

This. The ending - we do NOT know what consciousness is. Quite literally.

That makes everything about anesthesia, and about unconsciousness in general, extremely blurry and grey.

Do we know how anesthesia works? no. Why? because its main function is to make you unconscious. Well, what does it exactly mean to be unconscious? How does one measure that? We simply don't know.

Hypotheses and theories are there, but no agreed answer, no clear lines and boundaries, just some blurry edges.

But this video does (OHHHHHH BTW I JUST NOTICED THE CHANNEL NAME IS LITERALLY "THIS." AND THE VIDEO POINT MADE ME REACT WITH EXACTLY THAT WITHOUT KNOWING - "THIS.", THAT'S HOW THE NOTE STARTS AAAAA YOO) (:D) a great job outlining why that doesn't mean being completely clueless. Plenty of people think a scientific theory isn't to be taken seriously, just because it's called a theory. We do have a fairly good general idea of how anesthesia works, but a general idea isn't enough. Why? I'm not gonna spoil the whole video in this note, check it yourself.

The main point stands tho - not only does this video explain how anesthesia works, but, imo, it gives a very good general idea of how deep and complicated some of the moral & medical lines go, and where our expectations break. It demonstrates one of my favorite phrases I heard a while ago - "differentiate between what you know, and what you think you know".

- aleksi