This point is easily refuted. The fact that the average vaxxed person is statistically unlikely to infect you means nothing. After all, the average person is not a serial killer, but we endeavor to take serial killers out of society to protect the public. The argument that a random individual is unlikely to cause harm is no argument against separating that indvidual from society. — fishfry

Wow I'm really not following this "logic". The argument that a random individual is unlikely to cause harm is generally an excellent argument against separating that individual from society. Infection, unvaxxed status, serial killerhood are all reasons for separation of that person from society.

Since contagious vaxxed people and drunk drivers alike are statistically rare, they should both be free to travel — fishfry

The vaccinated and infected are rare. If they are identified as such, they should be restricted.
Drunk drivers are rare. If they are identified, they should be restricted.

Perhaps you and Wayfarer would like to say, specifically, how you think the restriction of free movement in the US (or your country, whatever it may be) should be implemented. — fishfry

Vaccination should be a requirement for entry to high risk areas such as transportation, supermarket, bars, restaurants, movie theaters, etc.

The rest of your post is slippery slope hysteria and race baiting.

This doesn't address the larger harm the unvaccinated, and the scumbag public figures that encourage them, do to society. If everyone was vaccinated, and diligently performed basic social distancing and hygiene during local outbreaks, we might be done with the pandemic, at least in the US. Instead, hospitals and morgues are filling up again, and actual freedom, the freedom to enjoy life without risk of death or mutilation, has slipped away.

Really, from that perspective the restriction of freedom of movement is too mild. Vaccination should be mandatory, full stop.

But then what is your model of where these perceptions come from? Do you simply not have one?

Even in the last two, does it not really go; — Isaac

Well you can analyze any number of ways. But these are models of a single perceptual event of a single object. Yours seems to mix this with a history of that object. Once the software is programmed and installed on the computer, the system is an independent object like any other.

The 'external state' is just now an electrode — Isaac

Here I think 'external state' means light waves in BIS, electrode in BIV. But our analysis usually extends further than the immediate carrier of sensory information.

In BIS our mental model might be:
Tree -> reflected light -> eye -> brain signal -> perception of tree

But then supposed we imagine, or are convinced by, BIV. Then the analysis of looking at a tree might be:
Computer -> simulation software -> software state of tree -> electrode -> brain signal -> perception of
tree

But this is analogous to our model of say playing a video game with a tree in it:
Computer -> simulation software -> software state of tree -> screen emission -> eye -> brain signal -> perception of tree

In both the latter two cases our model of the object of our perception is that of a software construct, which is an aspect of software hosted on a physical computer. So in both cases it is linguistically meaningful and useful to designate the objects of perception as "simulations", as opposed to the rest of the physical world which hosts these simulations.

I agree with your analysis of language in general.

From our perspective imagining we are the BIVs, 'simulation' would be a silly choice of word, it doesn't distinguish anything useful yet. — Isaac

If we are participating in the thought experiment and imagining we are BIVs, then we must be imagining the world outside the vats. So then 'simulation' distinguishes our imagined vat world from the imagined world outside the imagined vats.

In view of that, shouldn't the vaccinated be prohibited from free movement as well? — fishfry

Whether or not they are as contagious once infected, they are infected at lesser rates. As continual testing of everyone is impractical, they therefore present less danger to the public than the unvaccinated.

The unvaccinated are making this choice to (in their mind) improve their well being, at the expense of the public well being. It is therefore rational public policy to restrict their freedom of movement, to both protect the public well being, and to discourage this selfish choice.

The situation is rather similar to driving. Everyone on the road presents some danger. But drunk drivers, as a result of their selfish decision to be drunk drivers, present a greater danger. Therefore their freedom of movement is restricted, to protect the public and to discourage drunk driving.

There is my cat, and I know it, but how does, and this is the question of all questions, this opaque brain thing internalize epistemically that over there that is not a brain thing or any of its interior manifestations? — Constance

I strongly suspect this is not an epistemic act at all, but rather a distinction brains are hardwired to make. Witness organic brain disorders like schizophrenia where this distinction breaks down.

Instead of discarding as "bad metaphysics" what is called naïve realism here, why not instead bracket it with the disclaimer that this is not absolutely certain, but rather our best guess at the state of affairs. And describe why this qualifies as the best available guess (i.e. why brain in a vat can be cut away with Occam's Razor).

After all, whether or not we are envatted (love this coinage) is an empirical fact of the world, and empirical facts cannot, in principle, be proven with absolute certainty. All we can ever do is construct models which explain what we experience at the phenomenological level.

Absolute certainty is one of the great chimeras of philosophy.

If vat-world concepts correspond with trans-vat concepts, then the name 'Paris' in both vat-world and trans-world refers to Paris. [True? or not?] — Cuthbert

But 'Paris' is a proper noun, and here there are two of them.

If I can successfully refer to Paris even in a scenario in which I'm a brain in a vat then we seem to have a way out of scepticism. — Cuthbert

How? We can just as readily imagine a scenario where no vat-concept corresponds in any way with a trans-concept.

So? Computer simulations are real things, you can buy them in the shops. Why would they present some problem for what to call them? — Isaac

Yes but there is a distinction between the world they present and the real world. This distinction is what the word "reality" delineates, without it the word has no meaning.

But if my brain is a brain in a vat it would not be a brain as I understand brains because what I now understand to be a brain is (I'm imagining) an illusory brain. — Cuthbert

I'm not sure I buy this. Since we are making up the vat scenario anyway, why not make it up such that vat world concepts correspond with trans vat concepts?

If Boston is all of a person's reality, what do you call the world outside it? — Isaac

Great point, except for the fact that Boston is not a computer simulation for the benefit of a brain in a vat.

if the vat world is reality, what do we call the would outside of it?

I don't see how that is relevant to what we're discussing. — T Clark

The argument that the simulation is the reality for the brain in the vat cannot accommodate the situation where the brain is housd in a body again

Do you find that unsatisfactory? I don't. — T Clark

I do. In this view, how would you account for what happens when the brain is unplugged, housed in a new body, and "wakes up"?

But...but.... Oh, wait, you resolved this conflict yourself? — T Clark

Not sure what you're getting at?

Begs the question: Real world?? — Constance

Not really. I am discussing two models of the relation between myself and the world: the common sense brain in a skull, and far fetched but technically possible brain in a vat. In the first, it is just a given that there is a perception independent real world.

To defend it, you would have explain how it is that anything out there gets in here, AT ALL. — Constance

Is the mystery here the hard problem? Because otherwise I don't really understand what's not to understand.

Such is the world of familiar perceptual events, no? — Constance

No. Familiar perceptions do not reveal the world as it is. "Perceiving the world as it is" is a contradiction in terms. But, they do reveal mappings from the real world onto perceptual planes.

That is the difference between brain-in-a-skull and brain-in-a-vat. BiaS can still count on its perceptual machinery being functions on reality of some sort: given the output of these functions, things about the input can be deduced. But with BiaV that link is severed completely: perception tells us nothing about reality whatsoever, where reality is the world beyond the vat.

(you can argue that they tell you about persistent constructs in the simulation program which is feeding your brain, and that these constructs for all intents and purposes is your reality, etc)

I'm sorry to hear of your struggles, I truly am, but what you describe isn't evidence of a deteriorating world that would dissuade me from having children, but is evidence of a subjective response disproportionate to the external stresses. — Hanover

You lost the thread of the argument. I wasn't suggesting it was. I was pointing out that there is very much such thing as a life not
worth living.

First, the level of pain you describe is aberrational, — Hanover

Abberrational where? Syria? Yemen? I'm glad for you the concept of misery is so alien it strikes you as an abberration.

you are left with the fact that most do not suffer to the level you describe — Hanover

Again, we are not talking about modern Sweden. We're taking about the Sweden of today's babies maturity, when climate triggered systemic collapse may really take off.

None of us are prophets, and all we predict could be incorrect, but the data shows steady and clear signs of worldly improvement over long periods of time. — Hanover

You say we aren't prophets, but then prophesize with data. I say other data much more convincingly paints a very different picture.

unpredicted ingenuity often finds resolutions to problems. — Hanover

All the ingenuity of the US couldn't even save it from COVID, a problem that is about 10^23 times more tractable.

In fact, if people are more prosperous, they will do and they can do more to fight climate change — ssu

Trickle down climate remediation? People are already far more prosperous than the planet can sustain, and they ain't doing shit.

what if all countries would mimick the French? — ssu

What if? What if? I thought you just couldn't understand why i was ignoring our blissful match into tomorrow. Even suggesting it was just fashionable virtue signaling or something. Now we're already down to what ifs .

There is a lot we can do. The problem is, we aren't. People are oblivious, indifferent, or depressed: outside of that triangle, there is precious little. Worse, Governments are captured by interests that are perfectly happy profiting their way to extinction.

BTW, Nuclear is not the answer, primarily because there just isn't enough uranium. But that is for another thread.

How would the optimists respond to this:

Improving metrics of quality of life in recent history reflect increasing prosperity.
Population has increased in parallel with these metrics.
Increasing or even maintaining prosperity for the current population has required and will require putting large amounts of carbon in the air
This carbon, in the near term, is projected with our best predictive ability, to cause near-term side effects which will dramatically reduce prosperity.

Therefore, whether we stop putting carbon in the air, or continue to do so, prosperity can be expected to decline dramatically.
Therefore, improving metrics, which reflect increasing prosperity, can be expected to have no predictive power, even in the near term.

I just did your thought experiment, and I disagree. — Hanover

I would suggest you are fortunate enough to have never experienced major depression. For me, if I experienced just my worst state all the time, never mind 10x, and there was no hope of relief, I would absolutely end my life.

Even assuming suffering negates the value of life, which I don't — Hanover

Imagine the worst depressive episode of your life. Multiply it by 10, and make it unremitting, over the course of your entire life. Such a life has no value: certainly none to the liver of that life.

The only people here who have underwent a large scale catastrophe of the potential magnitude of the coming crisis are people who have lived through wars and natural disasters. I suspect they are in the vast minority here. In my life the national dislocations I've undergone are 9/11, Trump, and Covid. Pretty small fry in the scheme of things. Other than that, I've only experieced personal tragedies. If I were to die now, these would be my personal "worsts". I wonder if the majority of us have the conceptual framework to properly conceive true calamity.

"Morality" isn't very well suited to decide the future of the species. — Bitter Crank

I wouldn't suggest that it is. But I think the question should be of great relevance to individuals who want to avoid the regret of seeing their progency enter maturity into a living hell.

Good point, no doubt I would be posing the same question to the philosophical discussion newsletter of the day.

Still, climate change is more of a "when", as opposed to nuclear armageddon's "if".

We need that, but for polluters — Kenosha Kid

Where the hell is the left wing QAnon for the polluters and the policymakers who subsidize and legislate for them, in exchange for their "speech"?

They might have some kooky, woo ideas, but boy would I take them.

If covid is a dress rehearsal for the climate crisis, I don't like how its turning out. How many people have to be killed and mutilated before Trump and the right wing are exposed for the frauds they are? After turning the US into a cesspit of death and disease, nonetheless the motherfucker nearly won again. Similarly, how hot does it have to get, how much death destruction and displacement does there need to be? Covid suggests, *quite* a lot indeed.

Look into Steven Pinkers work, all these things are better than ever. — DingoJones

If all these metrics are predicated on an unsustainable trajectory leading directly to catastrophe, summing them up doesn't quite help.

Unfortunately that project {fixing the mess we've made} is going to take more than one generation to complete. So if we (the hip and cool ones) — Isaac

You are imposing this burden on your "hip and cool" kids. For whom the problem may well be irredeemable by the time they are adults. What are you doing now to address the problem, while there, maybe, is a sliver of time left to perhaps avoid the worst of it? If nothing, it is nonsense to expect your "hip and cool" kids to contribute any more.

Obviously it depends on how bad climate catastrophe will be — ChatteringMonkey

The future is unknowable. But according to our best predictive efforts, it will be quite bad indeed.

How confident are you in your assessment that climate change is just one adversity among others? Would you stake your life on it? Another's?

Though from the pov of the real world, you are just dense.

From the pov of your binary universe, where the alternative is either carbon neutral or no better than the current, your point is irrefutable.

refute my logic — Roger Gregoire

To be fair the pickings are slim here.

've found that a better question is to ask how the thing in itself is different from the thing. — Banno

The thing might refer to either or both of the thing-in-itself and its subjective manifestations. The thing-in-itself explicitly excludes all subjective manifestations.

I was responding to

-Consciousness: the set of things an agent is aware of
-Conscious subjective experience: a set of all mental images created by the brain that an agent is aware of. This term will be abbreviated as CSE. — Hello Human

What consciousness is not a "CSE"?

What I don't like about this attack on capitalism is that it seems to imply that a leftist approach to life would have been carbon neutral. — frank

It would not. But a leftist approach government is democracy, which would be responsive to people's actual interests, like, you know, having a future.

Instead, we have the government of capitalism: oligarchy, serving only money and the monied.

There is no actual, legitimate debate. Which is more important, your freedom to not wear a mask and not get vaccinated, or my freedom to not get a lethal or mutilating infection from you?
The only exception is the very rare corner cases of people who legitimately cannot do either, or kids in the case of the vaccine.

The actual "freedom" under debate is the freedom to display tokens of allegiance to Der Clownen Fürher. Such displays, to such a baleful lord, must come at a price.

I believe in our universe an infinite ocean would inescapably collapse into a black hole

what do they stand for, at bottom? — Xtrix

I think they have been incredibly consistent.

They stand for, at bottom, no less than the complete destruction of the United States. Just look at some of their recent accomplishments:

* They actively made Covid as destructive and painful for us as they possibly could have
By first hoaxing, to politicizing masks, to politicizing vaccines, to legislating against any mandates, they have successfully brought the most powerful and resourced country to its knees with this virus. They are directly responsible for dozens of 9/11s worth of excess deaths.

* They facilitated and covered for the ransack of the Capitol, in order to end democracy.
Let that indisputable sentence sink in. And those most unpatriotic of all goons had the nerve to wave their stupid flags and bald eagles.

* They punished and humiliated the nation with Trump
Had they just flown a cargo jet full of manure and literally taken a dump on lady liberty's face, America would not have suffered 1/100th the humiliation and loss of face in the world than we did with 4 years or Trump. While crying about us being global laughingstocks, they simultaneously made us into one.

* They revel in, and don't just do nothing, they actively accelerate the climate catastrophe
What more effective way to bring down a nation than to bring down the whole planet with it?

They are the autophages gobbling up the dying cells of American empire.

There are 3 kinds of "color blindness". Only one of them qualifies as any kind of virtue.

1. Failure, feigned or not, to perceive phenotypic differences between groupings: skin tone, facial features, and hair primarily. This is either disingenuousness or a perceptual or cognitive defect.

2. A disinclination or conscious refusal to make unwarranted associations with the perceptions of 1.

3. A failure, feigned or not, to apprehend the reality and the consequences of a societal and historical ~2. This failure can happen due to :

• Obliviousness/stupidity
• A desire to maintain ~2's hierarchy and perquisites by hiding ~2.
• An internalization of ~2 so that the resulting hierarchy and perquisites appear to be the natural order of things, not a product of ~2.
• Any/all of the above

@NOS4A2 partakes of the ignominious 3, while defensively (and disingenuously) pretending virtuous participation in 2.

I used to think so, now I think not.

When the times when I'm wasted, my consciousness should be "less" — RogueAI

I like this argument. Although in my case, at least, the two are linked. When I am drunk and/or high, not only is my degree of consciousness higher, my intelligence generally is too.

There is clearly a relationship between the two. At least, if the brain is stimulated so that consciousness increases, that stimulation can also apply to intelligence. In my view, conscious thought is built on a foundation of internal phenomenal perception. Therefore if that internal perception is amplified, conscious thought should be as well.

I think the best counterexample might be autism. Autism is primarily a perceptual disorder, where perceptions are believed to be subjectively amplified vs. the neurotypical. Rather than increase intelligence, this amplification can interfere with it, especially developmentally. If the baby spends all its time preoccupied with perceptions, often negatively so, it has little room to develop higher order cognition. And when that window closes, its closed forever.