When you have all that money and fame to insulate you, self-preservation is no longer a concern.
fear
joined 2 years ago
Not my fault it's so forgettable.
why do the author's politics make a difference?
In this case it makes a difference because there has been an alarming increase in harmful lies made by the far right. This is a purposeful spread of misinformation that many people hesitate to get involved with in any way, and for good reason.
I do not trust the creator of Brave to be aligned with the far right and to still be guided by ethical conduct that I can trust. If you align yourself with people who lie and put others in danger for profit and control, you're condoning such behavior and may be capable of it yourself.
Something becoming more than the sum of its parts to such a degree would indeed be magic. Are you claiming we're AI computer programs and that real life is analogous to ChatGPT? Are information and consciousness synonymous? I would say that one of us indeed doesn't understand the complexity of the situation.
To be fair, it appears that by definition anyone who disagrees with them might have a hard time getting through.
skeptical of social change, instead tending to support the status quo
A more polite way of saying they're firmly stuck in their ways, unwilling to accept a different perspective.
Was the check engine light virtue signalling again?
we might not know exactly how our brain produces consciousness, but because the components we can see must be involved, it isn’t a discreet phenomenon
This statement begins with the assumption that the brain produces consciousness, then says that because the thing that produces consciousness has components, that it can't be fundamental. This is a really really good example of circular logic.
I find emergence to be the least reasonable of the 3 main hypotheses I consider, but I still accept that it's possible since I can't disprove it. However, it is illogical to conclude your hypothesis must be true at this stage.
Your comparison proves nothing. It is no different than insisting a radio must be creating the signal it's picking up, because if you poured alcohol or liquid gabapentin all over it, it will no longer be able to play music. I'm sure you realize that if your radio breaks, that doesn't mean the radio signal has disappeared. It is possible our brains are simply interfacing with consciousness rather than inexplicably fabricating it from more than the sum of its parts.
Based on everything science has taught me, it seems far more likely to me that consciousness is not magically created by my brain, but rather one of two things are happening:
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My brain is able to interface with a conscious field
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Consciousness is a force inherent within the universe, and our brains are able to make use of the force
No one is above the law, unless they show his honor a good time first. Well that's a fatal flaw in the system if there ever was one. Justice Clarence Thomas, marionette of the ultra wealthy. What an embarrassing legacy.
Why would you assume it's an emergent property and thus should be dismissed as not being a force of nature? I'm making fewer assumptions than you are by wanting to list it alongside the other forces until we can determine if it is emergent or not, and the implications of such emergence. It's kind of a big deal that we can sit here and ponder the forces of nature with some degree of control over our little sack of atoms.
It's safe to say that this list is going to change over time and represents a current snapshot of humanity's limited understanding. Under the current snapshot of human understanding, leaving it off of the list seems to me to indicate an ironic bias on the behalf of researchers who must use the very force in question to do anything. By necessity, it is the overarching phenomenon surrounding all other forces since the only place we can definitively know these forces even exist is within our own mind. To say anything more is to make assumptions.
While I agree that a certain level of assumptions are necessary if we're going to get anywhere, I'm also acutely aware that they're still assumptions and that assumptions are not scientific. If we're going to be scientific about this, we need to make as few assumptions as possible.
The conservative justice, who has come under scrutiny for his failure to disclose such gifts, took at least 38 vacations, 26 private jet flights, eight flights by helicopter, a dozen VIP passes to sporting events, as well as stays at luxury resorts in Florida and Jamaica, the nonprofit news site reports. ProPublica notes that Thomas appears to have broken the law by failing to disclose flights, cruises and sports tickets.
So what happens now? Who is going to hold this unethical POS accountable for blatantly abusing his position?
This will be why we can't have nice things, won't it?