Viewing profile — roceasta

Isn't being more familiar with words a good thing? Another thing that seems to help is keeping a boring old deadwood dictionary next to my favourite armchair.

One thing that helps my reading, paradoxically, is listening to speech on headphones whilst out on a walk. I sometimes find myself visualising the words as I hear them. Presumably …

I take a jam jar containing tap water when out and about ('preserving jar' in US I think). Being made of glass it doesn't leach chemicals plus it cleans conveniently in the dishwas…

Having to work to survive keeps people engaged with reality and I think this may explain why people in the past and in developing countries today seem to be at least as happy and m…

I like the idea of basic income but I confess that my ideal of a basic income recipient is someone akin to the 19th-century amateur scientist subsisting on a private income whilst …

Can't recommend a specific link, but I remember when looking into vitamins and so on several years ago I found the Vitamin D Council and the Weston Price Foundation both interestin…

What I mean is that the idea that reinforcement learning is a 'low level dual' of the problem of consciousness is also a theory about the problem of consciousness. It's part and pa…

>switch to the low level dual of this problem [...] reinforcement learning. But that is itself a theory about the problem of consciousness! So why not do both? There's no obvious s…

Emily Deans writes very informatively about nutrition topics in a sea of dross (also about medicine, psychology, biology if I recall correctly). Another use of Magnesium is as a ad…

Yes, as Daniel Dennett says, groping around trying to find the right questions is what philosophy is . The confusion can be upsetting for both philosophers and non-philosophers. Cr…

Point taken. One reading of the article is that meta-consciousness is the new consciousness (whatever that was). I think of consciousness as being 'what you are paying attention to…

That would be a double whammy since debtors have diminished political influence/lobbying power even with the vote.

This seems consistent with my experience that when I'm attending hard to a task I have no idea what it is like. >For instance, it is the occurrence of a sense perception that trigg…

Yeah it's the opposite of the Nigerian prince scam which is designed to filter out respondents with any intelligence or common sense.

Are all beliefs fictional? What's the difference, if any, between holding such beliefs and attending a Harry Potter convention in costume?

Yes, it's complicated. Yet I don't think I committed an equivocation. As I said, what makes the difference is compulsion/coercion, which causes us to interpret scariness in one con…

Yes, feasible, but what makes large-scale censorship so apparently desirable, or at least so widely desired? The first obvious thought is that there are repressive governments arou…

Slow approach with a sheet 20-30cm wide held at opposite edges by both hands. The film being transparent the fly sometimes doesn't notice it. Also a convenient means of disposal.

>Yes, I have a lot of time on my hands. Also a lot of fly goo.

Agree with your first paragraph but isn't it his talent that you are judging in the second (and therefore forgiveness is not applicable)? Myself I'm starting to question the sense …

Yes. Bring the hand close very slowly, forefinger cocked... then....pow. Other techniques I've employed: (1) cling film (saran wrap), (2) detergent spray (slows em down; dispatch a…

>that territory tends to be picked clean, precisely because those insights are so valuable People often think that a field has been 'picked clean' and conclude that either no furth…

What circumstances bring out the 'madness of crowds' as opposed to the 'wisdom of crowds'?

That's true; there's cooperation everywhere and at every level. But there's competition too. There are of course many organisms that kill and maim others to make a living. So the d…