LastThursday

Environmentalists are not wrong though even if you think their vision is weak sauce. We can change our lifestyles as humans and it not be a bad thing: most of us recycle now and we probably don't think much about it. If public transport we're cheap, reliable and affordable we'd all use it more. It doesn't make us hippies, it makes us more self aware collectively. Maybe engineering a grand vision for the human species instead of geoengineering one is more important? We as apes do like a good story.

I agree the equilibrium isn't harmonic but more so chaotic, from a systemic view everything is constantly on the "edge of chaos", so in many instances it only takes a small nudge for the systems to flip into a different equilibrium, think snowball Earth and climate change. But because it's an "open" system everything affects everything else, and many of Earth's systems have settled into a static or cyclic state over eons. Earth is one huge open system where all its constituent parts are in equilibrium with each other, even if its chaotic at times. I'd say its extremely difficult to work out if Earth has intention, and if it does what that intention is. There have always been outlier organisms that disrupt the systems of Earth more than others. Take cyanobacteria pumping into and poisoning the atmosphere with Oxygen. That was probably catastrophic for a lot of life on the Earth at the time. But it happened slowly enough for Earth's systems to keep up the overall balance. Humans are another outlier, and similar to cyanobacteria we're pumping huge amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. But we're also disrupting nearly everything on Earth or if you prefer geoengineering the Earth. Indeed. However, they are small scale (in effect) to what the video you posted describes. I don't know, if we have to geoengineer for our own future survival then at least do it with foreknowledge (modelling) and systemic thinking. These projects should be agreed on by everyone in the world, and not left to the hands of a few private companies or individuals.

Geoengineering is like playing 5D Chess. I agree that we're raping the planet and putting our own future at risk, so something should be done about that. What makes me uneasy about geoengineering is the level of intervention. Earth as a system had reached a state of dynamic equilibrium before humans came along - that's obvious from how eco systems are so miraculously well balanced and interwoven: watch any wildlife documentary. Our activities have progressively pushed the systems way out of equilibrium, which is done mostly out of ignorance. I don't think we have the capacity to continuously monitor the outcomes of geoengineering in a fine grained enough way to understand what the consequences will be for the Earth. Some of the interventions will cause irreversible changes to the Earth, possibly negative. And we'll have to geoengineer patches for our previous geoengineering mistakes. Once we start at that large a scale we won't be able to stop, because we don't understand the Earth deeply enough to know what we're really doing. It will be like a rookie barber cutting too much hair off one side, and correcting the mistake by cutting too much hair off the other side.

Like it or not, we do place value on some people more than others, either consciously or unconsciously. But I disagree that what all men or all women value is the same for each group. That's far too reductionist and simplistic and possibly insulting.

Just remove "you" and "your" from the above and what's left? Solipsism has to assume "a you" exists otherwise it's nonsensical. It's possible "you" is a mirage or a construction in experience itself, that would make other "yous" also constructions. The whole thing kind of falls apart.

@Dodo that was my point, there isn't a test for consciousness. There's only a test for humanness and the Turing test isn't even particularly good for that. Think of it like this: how would you find out if a duck is conscious, what's the definitive test?

@Dodo imagine a future where you're talking to someone and you're convinced they have a mind. But no, it's actually a machine. It walks like a human talks like a human, but it isn't and it has no conscious experience. An LLM has about as much consciousness as a lump of silicon.

I've been feeling increasingly stressed and uneasy recently. It's mostly been triggered by work and especially interactions with my boss there. I think ordinarily if my state were less fragile it wouldn't have affected me so much. The fragility arises because I feel naked and exposed. The reason for that is a complex thing for me to interpret, but it's a combination of my temperament, upbringing, my choices, my philosophy on life and living alone. Ordinarily most people have a backstop to help support them, be it their partner or close family. If they're a bit older then they may have a sense of purpose - supporting their family and kids - which helps focus the mind on the more important things, and not get swept up in trivialities. At this point in my life I don't have any of those. If anything my close family has always relied on me for support, not the other way round. And despite my mum relying heavily on me also, she would have always provided a home for me (albeit temporary) if all else failed. But since her passing I don't have that. My friends whilst close, I or they would feel uncomfortable talking about things very deeply, and indeed other than being there to listen couldn't practically help me - they are not therapists! Many times throughout my life things became "spent". By spent I mean that the situation or object or whatever passed it's usefulness or shelf life. To give an example I was very interested in Tai Chi at one point. So much so, that I decided to join classes which I did for a fair few years. I liked the idea originally of mastering it to some degree and I liked the poise and meditative nature of it. My dad had done Karate in his earlier years, and I also liked the idea of having my own "martial art" that I could call mine. I learned the forms and started to teach others in the classes. But my teacher decided to move on and do other things. I had also changed, and it became less important for me to pursue it further: it had become spent. I moved on. Sometimes, things have been spent and long overdue, but I haven't detached and moved on like I should have done. This was especially so with my first long term relationship. Detaching can be difficult if you have a lot of time and emotion invested. It's the sunk cost fallacy. But when your identity and basis for living have become spent, you have to build up a new identity and basis of living, and that can be incredibly daunting and difficult to do. Most times, even if situations are long stagnated and spent, things conspire to end them: people change and the world keeps turning. My long term relationship finally snapped, and I've been living with the fallout of it ever since. I had to re-invent my identity and basis for living and its ongoing still. All through that time I've been getting older. This always has consequences, in terms of what you're willing to tolerate, how employable you are, how health affects you, how much you socialise, how other younger people perceive and treat you. Most times when things are spent, my knee-jerk reaction has been to just "dump it" and move on. But I've always been risk averse and that has counterbalanced my impulsivity. That creates tension in my life. And so it is at this point in my life. A lot of my situation as it stands has arisen through choices I made that seemed right at the time. I needed to re-invent myself and distance myself from the pain of having split up from consecutive long term relationships. I want to dump my job, because it's causing me stress and because it's spent. I want to move out of my flat, because it no longer is up to the standard I want and my new landlady is irritating, it's spent. I want purpose in my life in whatever form that takes, because my minimalist, disengaged approach to living is also spent, I need to be part of the fabric of a place. I want to be a different more dynamic, engaged and driven type of guy, because this identity is also spent. To a large degree this country is also difficult to live in, as it gets ever more expensive and I can't seem to fulfil basic things like buying my own home and getting a partner (I have a friend about my age and she has dated tens of people at this point without luck). It's all spent and I need to dump it all. But rejecting everything leaves you with nothing. I need something to go towards first, before I clear away the spent stuff, but that's just my risk averse self talking.

Just some thoughts off the top of my head. Autism Spectrum is just that, a constellation of traits that you may or may not have. IMO there is an argument for dividing the spectrum up into different conditions, as they really are quite different as you point out. I don't know the history of classification too well, but I think there used to be separate conditions (i.e. Aspergers) instead of a spectrum. The only reason I can see for getting a diagnosis in anything is that whatever it is is negatively impacting your life: if there is no problem, then there is no disorder to diagnose. Labelling can be helpful to some people, as it can give them an explanation for their problems and can offer them support. But as you say, a label can be restrictive if others choose to discriminate you based on it or you use the label as an excuse for not engaging with life. A label is always someone's subjective opinion even if if it's dressed up as objective "truth" - you don't have to accept the label. I suspect that like you I'm neurodivergent, and I know that I have had social difficulties in the past and to some degree still do. I don't want a diagnosis, because I don't feel that it would be useful to me and/or because my life isn't too negatively impacted by it. My niece has been diagnosed with autism, and if it helps her then all the better for her I would say.

It's better to apologise as soon as possible and as much as possible. Some people won't forget, and may get resentful after a while, but they may not say anything. But, you should be clear about what you're apologising for.

What is the conscious experience in idealism really like? There are several different modes that consciousness could be operating in. In summary these could be: Direct. The only thing that exists is what you are directly aware of right now. Talk of anything outside of that is fantasy. Omnipresent. Consciousness extends beyond what you are directly aware of. It is everywhere and potentially infinite. Bubble. Consciousness appears compartmentalised. Each compartment is a world unto itself, maybe even completely disconnected from others pockets of consciousness. Subtle. There are levels of awareness to consciousness, some so subtle they are barely discernable. Let me take each in turn and give me thoughts on each. Direct Consciousness In this mode the entirety of consciousness is just that which you are aware of and nothing more. This is the basis of Solipsism, which says to forget anything that isn't in your awareness, it simply doesn't exist, your awareness is prime. My main unease with this is the problem of persistence and structure. It seems obvious that if you sit and close your eyes stuff doesn't just stop existing, because when you open them again the world reappears. Now, it could be that consciousness has a "memory" and so can effortlessly persist the world even when you are not directly aware of it, but that does presuppose that there is a form of existence which isn't "direct consciousness", a contradiction. It's hard to reconcile persistence of the world with this Direct mode. But it could just be that indirect consciousness isn't necessary, everything in direct consciousness just correlates and fits together so well, there is an illusion of a whole persistent and continuous world "out there". It could be that the entirety of existence is encoded in direct consciousness, like the surface of event horizon of a black hole encoding the contents of its interior. Maybe direct consciousness is a form of hologram, the whole contained within the part? Omnipresent Consciousness This separates consciousness from awareness. Consciousness could be an infinite spread out field, and we just so happen to be aware of one chunk of this field. Then omnipresent consciousness could easily maintain an entire universe, and your particular patch of consciousness is limited like a flashlight illuminating part of a dark room. But then, what is the nature of that consciousness which isn't direct? Why is it I don't have access to it, without taking the effort of illuminating my way through my neighbourhood with my awareness by walking through it (say)? Is that non-aware (indirect) part consciousness churning away just like my aware consciousness is? Could it be that consciousness can take different and incompatible forms, so that my consciousness awareness cannot access those incompatible forms? Does my walking around my neighbourhood in fact "convert" that incompatible consciousness to something compatible, and voila I'm aware of it? Bubble Consciousness Maybe consciousness is plural. There is more than one type of consciousness each of which is more or less separate. This jives with how people experience each other. There is a strong sensation that yes other people are conscious too, and that they can communicate that conscious experience. But try as we might we can't have first-hand access to others' consiousness. Maybe a planet or star is conscious, but we are unable to communicate with it in the right way to check? The question naturally arises then if people inhabit they're own bubble consciousness, then how is it we seem to share a world together and can agree on what is happening in it? How are all those bubble consciousnesses co-ordinated with each other? Is that a super-conscious that does the co-ordination? Subtle Consciousness Maybe consciousness correlates with (my) awareness, but there are subtle fingers of my awareness that stretch out into the universe, keeping the whole shebang hanging together? By subtle I mean "barely aware", but not weak. It would be a form of Omnipresent awareness, but with a peak in awareness precisely where "I am". I imagine it like an infinite web of varying levels of awareness. And by some force this peak of awareness traverses the web, rising and subsiding in the level of awareness as it moves (like a wave). Maybe it isn't subtle awareness as such, but more of a morphing of awareness that happens outside my own immediate bubble? So that it becomes less matched with "my" type of awareness and hence harder for "me" to discern. This subtle web of awareness may even allow "my" awareness to experience other parts of the web without my physical body. Everything is connected?

I think I would take a more goal oriented approach. If a wanted to produce and edit a video, I would have in mind what I wanted to do. I would then go ahead and learn the necessary techniques to allow me to actualise what's in my head as I go. At first it will be inefficient to learn this way, because you're having to take in a lot of new information at the same time as trying to use it. But, in the long run you'll be a lot quicker than just being taught information upfront and then trying to put all that information to use. The great benefit of having a teacher is that they can comprehensively cover a subject. Often when teaching yourself, you won't be aware of big gaps in your knowledge, and you may get stuck in inefficient habits. They may also know tips and tricks to make you more efficient, but you can pick these up yourself over time.

@Princess Arabia consciousness (noun) is exactly the same thing as "conscious of" (verb), they're just two linguistic ways of saying the same thing. Newton says: to every action there is an equal and opposite re-action. But it's not that there are two actions in that phrase, no, it's just one action. It's just that language confuses things.

@Mixcoatl you have to differentiate a stretch of time from an instantaneous moment of change. It's clear that we experience change, so you could say there are qualia for change, it's part of the conscious experience. But time is different, it is an accumulation of change, all those small changes add up to give a sense of a block of time. But where does this block of time exist? Time gets "encoded" into the present moment. Say you go to prove that pitch is a vibration, you break out your microphone and oscilloscope. You play a note and the waveform appears on the oscilloscope. Where is this vibration? It's on the oscilloscope screen. All those small changes accumulate in the oscilloscope itself and you infer that a vibration "happened". It's no different from your own memory of the past, those changes get imprinted in your mind and you infer the passage of time from there - but the recall of the past is always happening now. Time is always constructed, but change is fundamental to consciousness.

@Infinite Tsukuyomi good insight. Falling into the unknown and surrendering yourself to it is a great metaphor for life in general. Thanks for the reminder that I need to do more of this! I'd recommend doing a bungee as well as skydiving, standing on that platform is truly nerve-racking but exhilarating. Here's mine: