LastThursday

@Joseph Maynor you've hit the nail on the head. Nobody thinks "statistically" for example, because it's hard to integrate. And, thinking "theoretically" isn't something that comes at all naturally to most. Nevertheless, it is possible to think differently, but as you say it isn't easy to integrate. My list was just a toy model, nothing more.

If you accept that there is a point to life, then love in all its forms is it.

@YIDIRYIDIR it's a good insight that behaviour is linked to identity. I would argue the converse (because I'm like that). People don't change behaviour because it threatens their identity. Change is uncertainty, and uncertainty is risk, and risk could threaten who you are. Also, there is nearly always some pay off for any entrenched behaviour, even if it's to the detriment of your overall wellbeing. To change then, requires a renegotiation of the pay off, which in itself can be hard to accept or work out.

@Majed I find it weird that you find it weird. Novel things can be weird, but you get used them, and it stops being weird. Women on motorcycles is neither here nor there, they are neither lesser or more of anything for doing it. Maybe they don't like traffic or just like the wind in their hair or have a death wish 🤷‍♀️

It would be interesting to come up with a model of non-standard thinking. I'd say the default mode for most folks is social thinking: who did or said what to whom and why, how one person relates to another, what you feel about things. Here's a random bullet list pulled out of nowhere of different types of thinking: Social - you keep a ledger of interactions between things (people), you apply a value function (feelings) to those interactions Relational - you accept that nothing happens in isolation, everything affects everything else with varying strengths Systems - everything works like a machine with distinct interacting parts, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts Construct aware - you realise that every type of thing is an artificially constructed entity made of other things Causal - you know that if A and B happen, there are different scenarios for their synchronicity: A caused B, A and B were caused by C etc. Statistical - see @Carl-Richard Ambiguous - you accept that it is not possible to know the detail of causes for A and B and therefore have to conclude that A and B are equally likely even if contradictory. You know that knowledge and information are always lacking. Big picture - you zoom out or bring more of the world into the scenario in order to explain things, i.e. there a nearly always outside influences, outside of your knowledge. Meta - you constantly try and see problems from different angles, and through different paradigms, or by thinking laterally. Abstract - you use ideas not rooted in every day things to explain things: mathematics, language, symbols, geometry, numbers. I also wonder if there can be a distinct progression in different styles of thinking.

@Adrian colby I think with autism there is a weak "theory of mind". This makes it difficult to take social cues from a person, interpret those and create a mental model of what that person is thinking and feeling, in real time. This also applies to oneself. We have a theory of mind of our own emotions and bodily sensations and build an identity from it. I suspect those with autism have a more fluid or looser identity. Identity mostly comes from copying others, and applying that to ourselves, but if that process is disrupted then building an identity becomes harder. Anyway, don't take my words verbatim, just my ideas nothing more.

I had an argument with AI about a maths problem the other day. The AI was wrong. AI's are not infallible gods, they are robots that make shit up. I actually had to rephrase my maths problem for it to get the right answer. It was useful for me to argue with it, to clarify my own thinking, but I was aware of how ridiculous the situation was. The problem is, is you don't know what you don't know. If an AI is spouting knowledge about things you don't know about, then what are you supposed to do with that other than believe it is correct? And the whole reason for talking to an AI is mostly to talk about things you don't know about. You see the problem. What is needed, is AI training before using it and those AI companies should offer it.

There isn't one. The trap is thinking that intelligence is a one-dimensional thing that you can put a number against. There's also quite a blury line between knowledge and skill, and whether you consider those two things intelligence too. Are insight and creativity intelligence also? What about physical intelligence versus mental intelligence? Gaining knowledge and improving skill can clearly be done by anyone. Insight largely comes from deep domain knowledge and/or skill. Creativity can come from mastery of a thing. The idea that you can somehow download or access intelligence is the wrong way to think about it. If you want to improve intelligence, then you have to practise and learn on all fronts.

The compassion, generosity and intelligence of some, knows no bounds.

I enjoyed the video, interesting to get a history of Mishlove. I've watched a lot of New Thinking Allowed. The one property of consciousness is that it's the thing itself, i.e. it has a kind of recursion built into it. Recursion can lead to a fractal or holographic structure, whereby the thing is contained inside itself. With a fractal it's a self-similar structure, with a hologram it's the entirety contained within itself - although the holographic principle gets abused, because it's only ever the entirety from a particular perspective. It's not then a difficult leap to think that consciousness expresses a brain, which contains consciousness and so on. A brain then is just a recursive structure in consciousness. Consciousness is never lost however, even with a blow to the head, because the person whose head it is, doesn't experience a loss of consciousness, but a discontinuity. And the person watching the blow don't experience a loss of consciousness either, just the person collapsing, i.e. consciousness is not "aliveness".

This is true, and it continues to be true no matter how close you get. But if you give it the benefit of the doubt, then you have a mutual synchronicity of experience, two mirrors looking into each other infinitely reflecting.

If you like the scratchings of a madman, then this guy's @LastThursday's journal might be interesting. There are some other good ones to on there though.

But I don't like ambuiguity, and riddles, in the name of God, I must know the absolute truth, right now, please tell me @Mellowmarsh.

Isn't "everything else" consciousness itself too? Confused.

Most definitely you're not an exception. There's a whole spectrum of gender from ultra male to ultra female, and everything in between. Biology, gender, sexual orientation, those things don't necessarily align, even if society wants to pretend it does. There's a higher chance if you're autistic that you're more gender fluid, but I forget where I read that factoid, some study or other. In short the tension you feel is between what you feel you are/should be and how society thinks you should be. To resolve that tension you'll need to engage with who you think you are more strongly. Start off gently, experiment, test the waters.