281–290 of 377 posts
When you pray to the sun god it won't hear for 8 minutes, and then you need to wait for another 8 minutes for the response. Just basic physics. If it's an emergency the sun can't help you, better luck praying to the moon.
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Yeah. The biggest thing most people miss is that the question your asking is in No way at all profound. You are asking an extremely mundane question that only appears profound as an illusion. What you are dealing with here is in actuality a language problem. You are contemplating and asking about the intricacies of a specific vocabulary word. It is an arbitrary sounding word with a simply arbitrarily vague definition…
This assumes that language is fundamental to all understanding. May well be true, and it probably is according to Wittgenstein, but it is just one of many perspectives, and I'm not convinced.
People tend to have strong opinions about this sort of thing, but the fact of the matter is there’s no way (currently) to know. (But also, it’s effectively metaphysics as it makes no testable/falsifiable predictions.) We could in principle discover a physical process that causes subjective experience, and a detector for same (say, it’s a particular string vibration in one of the coiled up dimensions). But it’s also p…
We have neurons and other cells doing their jobs and working with each other and the emergent system from this are humans, a different structure creates a different animal. We have circuits and 1s and 0s (which is as dumb as simolifying a human to atoms) and programs and structuring those in a certain way creates an emergent system of a computer with a language model installed on it. Would it be far fetched to say th…
One area I would question is what the appropriate/relevant measures are for complexity and consciousness.
Is the earth really more complex than a human mind, in the ways that matter?
Presumably consciousness arises from more than the amount of "stuff" in the system.
One person is conscious, but do two people form a collective consciousness? If not, why? They have more links, rules, states, and everything else that a single person would have.
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This makes me think of a concept for a story: It’s the end of a dark age and science is becoming popular again. They’re in a constant battle between the religious forces but at least they have unity and political power of some kind for the first in known human history. However, they keep coming up with solutions to problems that seem to line up perfectly with the strange little details of religious superstition in a…
A Canticle for Lebowitz has many of the themes you mentioned.
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There is a strong case to be made that Jesus was basically a rip of Dionysus; ritual cannibal sacrifice (eat my body and drink my blood), son of zeus (son of god), born to a virgin when visited by an eagle (born to virgin mary when visited by a dove), resurrection in the spring (Easter), both turned water into wine, and Dionysus wore a crown of thorns. Dionysian festivals, although not proven (it's hard to find sampl…
Sounds like pretty shallow Holy Blood, Holy Grail stuff to me. It is fairly firmly established that roman mystery religion shaped some of early christianity, in particular the Mithras mysteries.
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Yeah I would think anyone that has got drunk or experienced post-wank clarity should realise that consciousness isn't a separate thing to the brain's physical processes. Still, consciousness definitely exists and is definitely weird. And I don't think it's futile to try and learn about it. It's just not going to be philosophers that give us any answers (as usual).
Thinking science and philosophy are entirely separate misses the big picture. Look at it this way: all the science fields we study today, like physics and biology, grew from philosophical questions. What we’re doing when we dive into these subjects is exploring questions about the world, a task philosophy started. Take chemistry and astrology as examples. Why do we consider chemistry more valid? It's not because chem…
No, they grew from experimental evidence. I'm not aware of any scientific knowledge that came from pure thought experiment without experimental validation. Pretty much the only thing you can use that for is maths.
You can say "but lots of discoveries came from medieval philosophers", but that's just because they didn't have a separate word for scientists. I'm using the modern definition of the word, which really makes my argument almost tautologically true. By the modern definition if any philosopher actually provided and answer to a question then people would call it science.
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Yeah I would think anyone that has got drunk or experienced post-wank clarity should realise that consciousness isn't a separate thing to the brain's physical processes. Still, consciousness definitely exists and is definitely weird. And I don't think it's futile to try and learn about it. It's just not going to be philosophers that give us any answers (as usual).
Not sure why you'd want answers, that's the domain of religion rather than philosophy. I'd like to suggest comparing observations from Merleu-Ponty and late modern neuroscience, perhaps Bear et al, Neuroscience: Exploring the Brain (pick a previous edition to get it cheap).
Ha perhaps I should have been more specific - I want correct answers!
And I want answers because a) I'm interested, and b) answers to scientific questions tend to let us make new cool things!
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> I think our brains are machines for predicting what happens next. Technologist thinks that humans are machines (breaking news) > Therefore, a large brain makes sense because it can simulate the world more precisely and make better predictions. Whence consciousness? > One mistake of this simulation is that the brain simulates us as a conscious agent who can make their own decisions and act in the world. A mistake? L…
>> I think our brains are machines for predicting what happens next. > Technologist thinks that humans are machines (breaking news) While I also dismiss or at least be careful of the inherent biases of technocratic viewpoints, humans and life in general are very much made of many types of machines. Take a look at these videos: https://youtu.be/wJyUtbn0O5Y https://youtu.be/7Hk9jct2ozY I.e., life is insane and bewilder…
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I am not sure, if our concept of evolution can be applied to the stars, assuming they have consciousness. Asking why they evolved consciousness, would be the same to me as asking why the big bang happened and what was before that. No idea, this is way beyond my understanding. But I doubt there is any human who has these insights. So to clarify, I do not claim anything here, I just state how little we know about the g…
> which I am aware is entering theological realms Theological realms are where people tend to go when they feel they must have an explanation to something unexplainable. I think it’s important to preserve a non-theological space that allows one to acknowledge how little we know without defaulting to a theological position, and to highlight that acknowledging these unknowns does not make one a believer in deities. Not…
Who knows, probably more philosophical, but I think the lines can get blurry.
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> I'd say in a way my consciousness comes from the sun. Our star is the major, "central" (chuckle) factor in our Goldilocks existence, but Anthropomorphism is an anthropocentric game. [1] Cyanobacteria [2] , flowering plants and pollinators would also be part of our complex Goldilocks consciousness. Our awareness of this fragile existence should encourage us to be the best version of ourselves and enjoy every moment.…
> Anthropomorphism I don't think the article or I have made any references to anthropomorphism.
In the article: "Therefore anyone who supposes that the sun is conscious is making a childish error, projecting anthropomorphic illusions onto inanimate nature."