What, specifically, is Russia afraid of wrt neo-nazi's?

Russia in Grozny and Syria has shown what they are capable of. — Paine

Indeed. If this thing goes nuclear, Russia will be to blame.

Indeed, depending on how strong you believe these neo-Nazi elements are, it can be argued the Russian invasion is entirely justifiable if fighting the Nazi's the first time ever was. — boethius

Is there a popular nazi-esque leader that could plausibly become dictator? And do the neo-nazi's in Ukraine have significant political power? For example, how many parliament seats do Ukranian neo-nazi's have?

:up:

I don't know what would happen to my consciousness during gradual brain replacement!

The thing about the Matrix (and computer consciousness) is that, essentially, who I am (and my subjective experiences) would be reducible to CPU(s). Which is to say that who I am (and my subjective experiences) is essentially a series of switching operations- switching operations abc is the pain of stubbing my toe, switching operations xyz is the experience of seeing a beautiful sunrise, cde is the taste of a peach, etc. That, to me, is an absurdity.

Address this, please:

"Gradual uploading:
Here the most widely-discussed method is that of
nanotransfer. One or more nanotechnology devices (perhaps tiny robots) are
inserted into the brain and each attaches itself to a single neuron, learning to
simulate the behavior of the associated neuron and also learning about its
connectivity. Once it simulates the neuron’s behavior well enough, it takes the
place of the original neuron, perhaps leaving receptors and effectors in place and
uploading the relevant processing to a computer via radio transmitters. It then
moves to other neurons and repeats the procedure, until eventually every neuron
has been replaced by an emulation, and perhaps all processing has been uploaded
to a computer."
http://consc.net/papers/uploading.pdf

What do you think would happen to your consciousness if your brain was gradually replaced while you were awake?

I was getting ready to post "nonsense!" to your reply, which I was sure was going to say that introspection is useless.

Clever!

Let's try and make sure it doesn't happen ever again. — Isaac

To do that, we need to know who screwed up, so we don't repeat their mistakes. What percent of this mess do you think is Putin's fault?

There is no understanding consciousness without the understanding what it is that is producing it, and how it operates — Garrett Travers

There is no understanding consciousness without introspection either.

Just to be clear, you think Putin is to blame for invading Ukraine, right? And that Putin did an immoral thing by attacking Ukraine?

no worries!

The Chuchlands are smarter than me too, but that doesn't stop them from being eliminative materialists, which is a bonkers position. Smart people get it wrong a lot, you know.

John Searle says mind is to brain what digestion is to stomach. He's smarter than I am so he must be right... :wink: — Tom Storm

The stomach digests, the brain...minds??? That isn't right.

We obviously don't agree, but you have made a spirited defense of Randian philosophy! I salute you!

That's a knock on your philosophy. The LHC and Hubble and moon landing and ISS have been net goods. Not huge net goods, but net goods.

Can you respond to my point about scientific projects? How would a Randian society fund large-scale projects that don't return a realistic return on investment, like the Hubble Telescope and LHC?

I'm not exactly sure either. My understanding is they got a bunch of neurons to act as logic gates and coupled it to some software/hardware and taught it to play Pong.

How would large-scale science projects be funded? Say, the moon launch or Hubble Telescope or LHC. There is no realistic profit-motive for these projects, but they are a net-positive, so how would they come about in a Randian society?

I think Rawls has the right approach: if I was going to be placed in a society, and didn't know what my place will be in that society, I would like a certain amount of resources (say 10% of my income to start with, going up to 50% if I'm insanely rich) to go towards the military, police protection, science projects, and a basic safety net in case I'm a disadvantaged member of society who needs some basic help.

History has shown us that with statist/dirigist systems. You are describing the norm with states specifically. Laissez-Faire Economies have never existed. We only know what the markets have been capable of in Dirigist systems, and it has changed the world in 200 years. At least in Free Markets, we would be able to find an uninhibited market solution. — Garrett Travers

That's true, but to implement your system, and hope that charities can take up the slack, is quite a gamble. We have a system now that takes money from the richest and provides somewhat of a safety net for the worst off. It's not perfect, but your system is too much of a gamble. Are you familiar with John Rawl's veil of ignorance?

Yes. Taking care of them was their creators' responsibility. If you desire people to adopt that responsibility, you will need to appeal to them through reason. Forcing you to take care of them, or stealing your money so that I can, are ethical violations masquerading as virtue. And your real question should be: what did the creators do to place themselves in this position, and how do we ensure that this doesn't happen again. Of course, if they've died that's another thing. — Garrett Travers

Here's my problem with that: there are irresponsible people in this world. They have kids without planning for it. Sometimes their kids have problems. There are also tragedies that happen to parents who happen to have kids that need a lot of help. So we have this group of kids who, through no fault of their own, can't take care of themselves and also, through no fault of their own, have no one to provide for them. You think private charity is enough to care for this group. But history has shown that, in times of severe hardship, charities get overwhelmed. So, in the Ayn Randian society, when times are tough and charities are struggling...sucks to be you?

It will be, just like with children, the responsibility of those who created them to take care of them. — Garrett Travers

What happens if "those who created them" are unable to take care of them? Reliance on charities?

C. then the only moral system of society is one in which each human is free to pursue their own values to live and achieve their own goals — Garrett Travers

What does an Ayn Randian society do with those who, through no fault of their own, are unable to pursue their own values. Specifically, I'm thinking of people who are severely handicapped, severely schizophrenic, children with severe birth-defects, etc.?

Is dishbrain conscious according to your definition of conscious?

I think we are asking if Dishbrain can feel anything. Whether it has experiences. — Daemon

Yes!

That we can only define consciousness by reference to our own consciousness, which is inaccessible to anyone else. I assume your conscious and subjective experiences are similar to mine (I also assume that you even have them), but I have no way of knowing.

You have what is called "ostensive definition", definition by pointing. You might point at a patch of green and say "that is green". You can define consciousness ostensively, that's what RogueAI was implying, I think. — Daemon

That's correct.

Brother, I hear you, but in this world, we have to pick the lesser of two evils, and that means voting as if our vote is the deciding one. I never like who I end up voting for, but I have to pick one or the other or abstain and write in a name in that I know won't win, and I consider the latter option the coward's way out because, realistically, there's not a chance in hell that a write-in candidate will win.

Apparently communing with God makes a person mysterious and arrogant. A story as old as time. — praxis

:up:

I don't think we can define consciousness, other than we each have a private definition of it, which we assume everyone else has a similar definition (are you a P-zombie, 180???). I think the lack of a rigorous definition of consciousness is a knock on science. Shouldn't we have a working definition of it by now? The fact that we don't suggests that modern science might not be the best tool to tackle the job.

Great reply!

The problem with things like traffic lights "causing" anything is that the propositions almost always end up relying on counterfactuals. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Can't we just say that the changing light causes a mental state that then causes the person to brake?

Red is an experience, not a fact. It is a data integration on the part of the brain. It isn't itself real, it is the representation of a wavelength that brain can detect and differentiate objective fact values with. — Garrett Travers

The experience of seeing red certainly is real. So is being in pain. To deny the reality of experience is extremely counter-intuitive, and something I can't get on board with. I think your claim is more along the lines of experiences are illusions. Is that more accurate? Very Dennettian, if so!

But they're all imperatives and they have the same source: Reason. And as they're imperatives they need an imperator. And as only a mind can be an imperator, Reason - the source of all the imperatives of Reason, is a mind. — Bartricks

:100:

I would say that Mary has complete knowledge of seeing red iff she has seen red. Learning the physical facts of seeing red alone is not sufficient. This seems irrefutable to me. It's the old saw that a blind person can read up on seeing as much as they want, but they'll still have no idea what seeing actually is until they experience it.

I am somewhat stumped by the physicalist move of the ability argument- Mary doesn't learn new information, she gains a new ability: what seeing red is. I tend to believe that after she sees red, she does have new propositional knowledge: seeing red [the broad experience] is like seeing red [Mary's experience], but this seems too tautological to be considered some new fact about that world. It also might not be true, since Mary doesn't know what seeing red [in the broad sense] is like. None of us do. We only have access to our own particular experiences.

There's no problem there - they come from a mind.

And they do exist - the reason (the faculty of resaon) of virtually everyone tells them that there are ways we ought to behave and ways we ought not to behave. Disagreement exists over exactly what we ought to do and ought not to do, but 'that' we ought to be doing some things and not others is beyond reasonable doubt. — Bartricks

I'm not so sure about that. Just because you ought to do something does not mean there's a moral obligation. For example, if I want to be a champion chess player, then I ought to practice chess, but I'm under no moral obligation to practice chess.

It seems obvious that we ought not torture children for the fun of it, but even there, I can remove the moral component if I stipulate that there are no children- there's only the one mind and what different aspects of it are doing to itself in its dreams. But still, I would agree that even in a dream, children should not be tortured, but not for moral reasons, but because doing things like torturing children and in general behaving like an egotistically ass in this dream we're all having will not help one reach one's goal: to wake up.

Awesome!

:up:

Is this where you're coming from?
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/computational-mind/

that what we generally use the term "thoughts" to describe, are actually neuronal processes of computation by the brain — Garrett Travers

So computation is the basis for thoughts (and presumably consciousness)?