messaging (including fake messaging) between species is commonplace, in a very practical biosemiotic manner. — Olivier5

There is dynamic "measure-counter measure" dimension to inter-species communication and perception. Consider the case of the tiger moth.

Moth Blocks Bat Attack by Jamming Sonar

Navy engineers aren't the only ones who can jam sonar. Scientists have discovered a species of tiger moth that thwarts hungry bats by emitting extra-loud clicks to block the bats' ability to echolocate.

Researchers have long known that some species of moths send out clicks in response to bat sonar, but until now, no one has been able to prove that the clicks actually interfere with echolocation. "The idea of a jamming mechanism has been thrown around for 50 years, but nobody has really put a moth and a bat together in a flight room to see what happens," said ecology graduate student Aaron Corcoran of Wake Forest University, co-author of the study published Thursday in Science.

Corcoran and his colleagues pitted a particularly noisy species of tiger moth, the Bertholdia trigona, against big brown bats trained to hunt in a flight room. As long as the moths were able to click, the bats couldn't catch them, even though the moths were tethered on a string.

But when the scientists pierced a small hole in the moths' sound-producing structures, called tymbals, the silenced moths quickly became lunch.

"It's the first good, solid case of this going on," said insect behavior expert James Fullard of the University of Toronto at Mississauga, who was not involved in the study. "For this bat and this moth, it looks pretty convincing that jamming is what's going on."

Not all clicking moths can jam sonar, Fullard said, and that's part of what makes this discovery so exciting. Previous research revealed that two other varieties of tiger moth make clicks that are too quiet to interfere with bat echolocation. Instead, he said, these moths likely use the clicks as a warning: Because most moths that click back at bats are poisonous, scientists think the noise may communicate, "Don't eat me, I taste bad."

But B. trigona isn't poisonous, and the Wake Forest researchers experimented with young bats that had no prior exposure to clicking moths, so they hadn't already learned to equate clicking with a bad taste. Nor did it seem like the bats were just startled by the clicking moths. Even after multiple attempts on multiple nights, the bats still couldn't catch the intact B. trigona.

"Mammals habituate to startle rather quickly," Corcoran said. "We went through seven days of trials, but the bats never habituated. They were put off by the clicks right away and throughout the whole experiment."

The researchers haven't yet proven how the moth's sonar-jamming mechanism works, but they have two leading hypotheses: The moth's clicks may act as false echoes, essentially making the bat "see" double, or they may interrupt the bat's own echoes, making its prey appear closer than it is.

https://www.wired.com/2009/07/mothjam/

as such [the redness of an apple] is already loaded with meaning and potentiality. — Olivier5

This means that there is a broad biological (ecological) meaning to the perception of a red apple by a potential apple consumer, human or animal. The apple physically looks "red" (pigments are produced by the apple skin to absorb green wavelengths) right in time to signal its maturity to the consumer.

One could object that the apple is just an example amongst many things looking red. And that red itself is just an example of color. But then, isn't red the color that's always invoked in qualia talks? And isn't that because it is "eye-catching"? Red is the somehow the queen of all qualia, the king of all colors. For us humans, red is a remarkable color, one once worn by emperors, now painted on firefighter trucks, calling drivers to stop at a traffic light, shining on women lips. Red is often a signal. It calls our attention, us primates.

And isn't the apple a frequent example? Apples are in a way the prototypical red object. It is a natural example to take. Our nature, our biology involve a certain semantic of colors. And none of it can be captured in a reductionist outlook, e.g. through biochemistry. It is about inter-species communication in a given ecosystem.

So the redness of the truck or of an apple is not a passive sensation, a mere impression on some physical sensory systems that would deliver a mere quality (red) to an observing subject. It has meaning before it was even perceived by anyone. It's generally a signal, a beckon. And it is perceived as such.

Of course if our world was predominantly red, green would be the way to signal something important.

And of course, there might be more than one biological meaning to red. And to other colors. Green of course signals plants to animal etc.

This is not to say the whole universe is permeated by meaning or anything as ridiculously panglossian. Just that coexistence between species implies endless possibilities of predation, competition, parasitism and cooperation. In such a context, messaging (including fake messaging) between species is commonplace, in a very practical biosemiotic manner. And therefore our senses are not just passively sensing: they are actively decoding signals sent by our own and other species, noting important patterns, some of which are biologically determined. Our senses do more than inform us, they alert us.

Here is the context from the quoted post that I was responding to:

"An animal that has no red photo-receptor cells in its retina cannot see red..." — Andrew M

Fair enough, apologies for not reading the thread.

Still, the point remains that the apple's color is far more than a passive sensation by some animals. It is an active signal from the tree to certain animals able to see it, and as such it is already loaded with meaning and potentiality.

A signal is a sort of sign, a symbol, one that is difficult to miss. It is a sign drawing attention to itself, like a loud siren. Hence the red, which is basically non-green (to simplify, red is what happens when you substract green from natural light). A red patch is hard to miss in foliage. It "pops out".

A signal calls for an action, typically. That's why it's urgent. It comes at a certain moment, when a certain action is required and not before. In this case, the apple turns red when it is ripe, i.e. when the fruit and its seeds are ready for consumption by animals. So basically the tree is calling an animal as a sort of taxi, when it's ready, to transport its kids to a new neighborhood (the seeds, that will be excreted a few miles away). The cab fare is the sugar in the fruit.

It has worked well for apple trees, who have managed to colonise the whole world thanks to a certain primate species appreciative of its fruits: us.

And all new varieties of apples are red because that's what the primate spots best at the supermarket.

There is no difference between Reps and Dems when they both adopt the others position when the roles are reversed. — Harry Hindu

The difference is that here, the Republicans could possibly pull it out and keep the White House.

Should any of this lead to riots, another difference is that Trump can rely on thousands of neo-Nazi sympathizers to unleash hell onto peaceful demonstrators. These violent cretins have had wet dreams for years about the Day of the Rope. Yes their dream is to hang all people of color, all white women who ever had biracial sex, as well as all politicians, journalists and intellectuals.

These guys are planning a “Million MAGA March” to “Stop the Steal” this coming Saturday in Washington DC. Let's see how many show up.

I suppose for a naïve realist it is just a meaningless absence of light.

The apple is nonetheless red, but the animal is unable to perceive that. — Andrew M

Nonsense. The only reason apples and other fruits exist in the first place as sugary edible stuff, and are colored in a way that makes them stand out from the green background, is precisely to be seen and ingested by animals. This is a well-documented seed dissemination strategy: the animal spots the fruit, eats it, and excretes the seed around, allowing the seeds to fall far away from the tree, so to speak.

Apples are red so that monkeys can see them.

I think Iranians are also wondering whether to invade the US or not, to help Americans get rid of their fascist regime.

It can't do because the decision to use the word has already been made prior to any occipital originating signals in areas of the brain associated with conscious awareness. — Isaac

You have some data to back this up?

Could one of you, or anybody, explain why zero was a "troublesome" concept to integrate into science? Was the issue forced by the success of math in making predictions? — frank

What I could find:

Pope Sylvester II (c.  946–12 May 1003), a French-born scholar and teacher who ended up ruling the Papal States from 999 to his death was aware of the Arabic numeration system, which he had studied in Catalonia.

The first formal introduction of the new numeration system was done by Leonardo Fibonacci. In his Liber Abaci (1202), Fibonacci introduced the Modus Indorum (the method of the Indians) or base-10 positional notation to Italians, and Europeans:

As my father was a public official away from our homeland in the Bugia [Algeria] customshouse established for the Pisan merchants.... there he wanted me to be in the study of mathematics and to be taught for some days. There from a marvelous instruction in the art of the nine Indian figures, the introduction and knowledge of the art pleased me so much above all else, and I learnt from them, whoever was learned in it, from nearby Egypt, Syria, Greece, Sicily and Provence, and their various methods... Therefore strictly embracing the Indian method, .... The nine Indian figures are: 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 -- With these nine figures, and with the sign 0 which the Arabs call zephir any number whatsoever is written... — Leonardo Fibonacci

His book advocated the use of the digits 0–9, and of place value, as he had learnt from Arabic merchants in his youth. The new system was much more powerful and faster than Roman notation, and Fibonacci was fully aware of this. Until this time Europe used Roman Numerals, making modern mathematics almost impossible. This put European merchants at a disadvantage to Arab ones, precisely in places like Bugia where a lot of North-South Mediterranean trade happened. So his book was a great success amongst European merchants and bankers, who could now compute interest rates as fast as any Arab out there...

But the invention was poorly received by the general public because the people could no longer understand the calculations that merchants made. In 1280, Florence even banned the use of Arabic numerals by bankers. The zero was decried as confusing and difficult to understand, to the point that the Arabic al sifr would lead of course to the word "zero" in English but also to "cypher": secret code, from Italian "cifra", French "chiffre".

Al ṣĭfr in Arabic, means literally: the void.

I still believe that the many Americans believe in their Republic can get over an election — ssu

I agree many Americans still believe it. They even believe that what Trump is now evidently trying to do is impossible to achieve, that the Republic cannot fall, that this is the kind of things that happens elsewhere but not in the USA.

We are about to find out if this trust is well placed. I hope they are right, to be clear.

Also what is needed a) poor government, b) lacking and nonexistent institutions, c) a history of military coups and d) active or passive support from at least a portion of the people for a military overthrow. — ssu

You got a) and d). Trump has got more than passive support, he's got 70 million votes and a host of extreme right militia armed to the teeth, and biding for their time. As for b) the US electoral system is very weak and open to abuse; and for c) a history of military coups, there's always a first time.

He doesn't stand much of a chance without the support of the GOP establishment. — Echarmion

He's got that covered. As soon as they start to see that he could possibly pull it off, dozens of Republicans will flock by his side. Keep in mind that there's much money to be made in selling off a democracy.

You can't just order a military coup in an established democracy. Without some kind of legitimate claim, such orders would simply be ignored by the rank and file. — Echarmion

The way it's done in Africa, all you need is a few battalions backing you up. You don't need the entire army t make a coup.

That's not necessarily what Trump and / or the GOP want though. — Echarmion

Trump wants to stay in power, by whatever means. He is not posturing. He is doing it.

TRUMP UTTERLY FAILED in using active army units to quell the rioting in the summer. They weren't used. The now fired Mark Esper was against it — ssu

And that's why he was fired, to give way to people who will not object.

Trump is no Putin. — ssu

Maybe Putin is doing the thinking...

This isn't over. He is trying to stay in power by any means necessary. First he tried to weaken US Postal, now he is blocking the transition, putting up a legal smokescreen, and preparing for the use of the military to clamp down unrest. I bet he's gonna hit on Tom Wolf next (Pennsylvania Governor).

Then when they say that after investigations that there has been widespread fraud etc and they won't admit that Biden vote, only then you are going into the true political crisis/civil war territory. Or when you have two competing administrations in January 20th — ssu

In other words, they are preparing a coup...

There will be a smooth transition to a second Trump administration," said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo after a reporter asked whether the State Department will cooperate with the Biden transition.

Echoing President Donald Trump’s repeated claims that he would be the winner if only “legal votes” were counted, Pompeo said “I’m very confident that we will count, and we must count, every legal vote, we must make sure that any vote that was not lawful ought not be counted, that dilutes your vote if it’s done improperly, gotta get that right. When we get it right, we’ll get it right.”


It looks like those guys are preparing a coup.

This nonsense can be dispensed with by dropping some acid. — Banno

I recommend cauliflower.

Remember, the disembodied observer Isn't human. The observer looks at greed and is only capable of noting unconventional behaviors in comparison to ones we'd consider conventional- the un-greedy ones. What I mean by this ''observer'' character is a POV that is separate of human bias and mindset. A perspective as close to objective reality as possibly conceivable — Albert Keirkenhaur

If I may, a perspective as close to objective reality as possibly conceivable would include history, which encompasses the history of people's thoughts and therefore a history of meaning (a genesis of meaning). Moreover, a perspective as close to objective reality as conceivable would have access to people's thoughts, and not just to their actions.

The disembodied observer would therefore be able to see greed, better than ourselves in fact. He would 'read in our hearts'.

Is there a coup d'état going on, or what?


Official who once called Obama a 'terrorist leader' takes over Pentagon policy
The departure of James Anderson, acting undersecretary of defense for policy, potentially paves the way for Anthony Tata to take over the policy shop.

By LARA SELIGMAN and DANIEL LIPPMAN
11/10/2020 10:34 AM EST

Anthony Tata, a retired brigadier general whose nomination for a top Pentagon job collapsed this summer due to Islamophobic tweets and other controversial statements, began overseeing policy for the Defense Department on Tuesday.

The move is part of a high-level civilian leadership shakeup that began on Monday when President Donald Trump fired Defense Secretary Mark Esper.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/10/pentagon-top-policy-official-resigns-435693

I want a Sunday kind of love
A love to last past Saturday night
And I'd like to know it's more than love at first sight
And I want a Sunday kind of love
I want a a love that's on the square
Can't seem to find somebody
Someone to care
And I'm on a lonely road that leads to no where
I need a Sunday kind of love

I do my Sunday dreaming, oh yea
And all my Sunday scheming
Every minute, every hour, every day
Oh I'm hoping to discover
A certain kind of lover
Who will show me the way

And my arms need someone
Someone to enfold
To keep me warm when Mondays and Tuesdays grow cold
Love for all my life to have and to hold
Oh and I want a Sunday kind of love

I don't want a Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday, or Thursday, Friday or Saturday
Oh nothing but Sunday oh yea
I want a Sunday Sunday
I want a Sunday kind of love

In my experience, they are still some "Monsignor Ingoli" in this world, and they do easily get irate. So I shamelessly plagiarized the joke...

An anecdote about "usefulness":

When Galileo discovered the four largest moons of Jupiter thanks to his newly invented telescopes, it made a big sensation as it contradicted the then canonical cosmology based on Ptolemy. This is when Galileo started his defense of heliocentrism, based on his astronomical observations. One theologian (Ingoli I think) objected that since the whole world was created by God for man, and since the moons of Jupiter did not affect mankind in any way, they are useless, and therefore the moons of Jupiter cannot possibly exist... A dogmatic argument if there ever was one.

To which students from the university of Florence responded through a satirical poem: But the moons of Jupiter annoy Monsignor Ingoli, and therefore they are very useful to mankind!

What is useless to one, can be useful to another... :-)

But then they'd be pretty bad automatons — khaled

Well yes, otherwise you could not annoy them.

Doesn't make the concept meaningless, just useless. — khaled

The concept of qualia is useful to annoy would-be automatons. That must count for something...

Each mouthful had several distinct tastes, sometimes the garlic, sometimes the 'roo, sometimes the cinnamon, each time in a different combination.

To describe a qualia of curry would be a nonsense. An utter failure to recognise the complexity of the experience. — Banno

So you have a way to distinguish garlic from cinnamon through "distinct tastes". Amazing!

You are not saying that these tastes are qualitatively distinct from one another, right? That is ruled out by Dennett, the naked emperor of your soul.

Not in this paper. But supposedly that is what he is doing. — khaled

I don't think that's what he is doing. Because many around here are Dennett readers and they don't propose any alternative conceptual framework or theory to understand how come we can spot sugar from salt, or dislike cauliflower.

With time goes...
Everything goes
We forget the face and we forget the voice
The heart, when it doesn't work,
There is no need to go further
Just let it go and it's all right

With time... everything goes
The other whom we adored, whow we looked for under the rain
The other whom we guessed in the bend of a glance
In between words, in between lines, and under the blusher
Of a makeup vow going to sleep
With time, everything vanishes

With time... everything goes
Even the best memories make a terrible face
At the used-cloths store, fumbling in the shelves of death,
On Saturday evening, when tenderness leaves us alone

With time... everything goes
The other we trusted, for a cold, for nothing
The other to whom we gave hot air and jewelry
For whom we would have sold our soul for two pence
In front of whom we dragged ourselves like dogs
With time, hey, everything's fine

With time goes everything
We forget the passions, we forget the voices
That whispered the words of simple folks
"Don't come back too late, please, don't catch a cold."

With time goes everything
And we feel old and grey like a broken horse
And we feel frozen in a bed of hazards
And we feel all alone, perhaps, but cushy
And we feel fooled by our lost years
So really… with time… we don't love anymore.

I never loved nobody fully
Always one foot on the ground
And by protecting my heart truly
I got lost
In the sounds
I hear in my mind
All of these voices
I hear in my mind
All of these words
I hear in my mind
All of this music
And it breaks my heart

Suppose I never, ever met you
Suppose we never fell in love
Suppose I never ever let you
Kiss me so sweet
And so soft
Suppose I never, ever saw you
Suppose you never, ever called
Suppose I kept on singin' love songs
Just to break
My own fall

All my friends say
That of course
It's gonna get be'er
Better, better, better, ohhh...

I never loved nobody fully... etc.

It's a wonder man can eat at all
When things are big that should be small
Who can tell what magic spells we'll be doing for us
And I'm giving all my love to this world
Only to be told
I can't see
I can't breathe
No more will we be
And nothing's going to change the way we live
'Cause we can always take but never give
And now that things are changing for the worse,
See, its a crazy world we're living in
And I just can't see that half of us immersed in sin
Is all we have to give these
Futures made of virtual insanity now
Always seem to, be governed by this love we have
For useless, twisting, our new technology
Oh, now there is no sound for we all live underground
And I'm thinking what a mess we're in
Hard to know where to begin
If I could slip the sickly ties that earthly man has made
And now every mother, can choose the color
Of her child
That's not nature's way
Well that's what they said yesterday
There's nothing left to do but pray
I think it's time I found a new religion
Whoa, it's so insane
To synthesize another strain
There's something in these
Futures that we have to be told
Futures made of virtual insanity now
Always seem to, be governed by this love we have
For useless, twisting, our new technology
Oh, now there is no sound for we all live underground
Now there is no sound
If we all live underground
And now it's virtual insanity
Forget your virtual reality
Oh, there's nothing so bad
I know yeah
Of this virtual insanity, we're livin' in
Has got to change, yeah
Things, will never be the same
And I can't go on
While we're livin' in oh, oh virtual insanity
Oh, this world, has got to change
'Cause I just, I just can't keep going on, it was virtual
Virtual insanity that we're livin' in, that we're livin' in
That virtual insanity is what it is
Futures made of virtual insanity now
Always seem to, be governed by this love we have
For useless, twisting, our new technology
Oh, now there is no sound for we all live underground
Futures made of virtual insanity now
Always seem to, be governed by this love we have
For useless, twisting, our new technology
Oh, now there is no sound for we all live underground
Living, virtual insanity
Living, virtual insanity
Living, virtual insanity
Living, virtual insanity
Virtual insanity is what we're living in

One book can dispel all these slightly weird views and give you a better sense of what's really happening: The Open Universe, by Karl Popper. Popper is a realist, he treats philosophical problems as a surgeon approaches a tumor: coldly, logically, with skills.

Numbers are abstract quantities that you can perform mathematical operations on. Sure, you could assign 0 to purple and 1 to green, or use the standard digital hex value or HSLA. But numbers can be assigned to represent anything, from unicorns to philosophers.

Colors are not abstract quantities. You don't say there's "green squares" to represent a number of squares. — Marchesk

By abstract, do you mean "quantitative"?

There is the quality-quantity lens mentioned above by @javra.

We can apprehend the world through quality and quantity, hence both of these must exist, at least in our mind. They must be supported by perception systems. I noted that the taste of sugar combines a quality (sugar taste) and a quantity (too little, too much sugar in my coffee). So the idea is like this:

Functionally, a successful animal needs to be able to estimate certain things, including the energy available in its food, and incentivise certain behaviors, while minimising certain risks (including food poisoning). Its olfactive and gustatory senses help distinguish between "good" and "bad" food by:

1. Using chemical reactions in the nose and mouth to estimate a series of indicators - eg concentration in disposable sugars, various salts, some "known" ( by evolution) poisonous stuff, etc.

2. Tag each of these indicators with a qualitatively distinct mark or feel, a qualitative signal if you wish, that allows the animal to recognise the indicator. The taste of sugar is different from the taste of salt.

3. Use the intensity of the signal above to code for the quantitative aspect of perception. (too much or too little sugar)

4. Attach pleasure or displeasure to each of these qualitatively identified signals, as a way to shape behavior.

5. Make the system evolutive and adaptative throughout the animal's life, with some capacity to record or reproduce past food consumption events, to inform future ones.

It's also quite something to realise that Biden's speech wasn't particularly special; it just feels alien after a mere four years of Trump. — Kenosha Kid

Ah the simple pleasures of life! They are the most enjoyable: the first sip of a beer on a hot, dry day; a song that catches you when you need it; a kiss on the cheek when you're feeling lonely; a US president's speech that sounds reasonable, and even somewhat presidential, coming after years of verbal torture.... Hmmmmm.... :-)

Dennett ... is just trying to come up with better ways to talk about them because "Qualia" is not good enough for that. — khaled

If that was true, he would try and propose an alternative conceptual framework, better than the one he criticizes. But this does not appear to be the case.

Through us and other species.
— Olivier5

Don't agree with that. That's kind of fashionable reaction against so called 'human exceptionalism'. We have to own our abilities, not project them on other species. Reason is a soveriegn faculty. — Wayfarer

In my mind, it's more that we shouldn't go around denying other species possible abilities. W can speak for ourselves of course, but not for others.

Ah. Thanks for clearing that up. Not sure how helpful that distinction is given the task, but at least I better understand what it means. — creativesoul

It is important to realize that theory emerges from a non-theoretical background, for instance that infants learn how to speak through observation, comparison and imitation, not from grammatical theory. When they grow up they can study grammar theoretically, and even become grammarians. But a grammarian cannot say: "There's no such thing as learning a language."

It follows that those theories -- such as naïve materialist theories -- who deny the efficacy of pre-theoretical observation and reason are shooting themselves in the foot. They can have no credible story of origin, and they cannot make any progress. Theory cannot destroy the basis for theoretical thinking.

As though it'll then be clearer what everyone is talking about. — bongo fury

We are talking about mental stuff, so there's no avoiding mental stuff, as much as some would like to...

The stars are not as wise as you are (Omar Khayyam). — Olivier5

The good and the bad that are in human nature,
The joy and grief that are found in fate and destiny--
Do not attribute them to the movement of heavenly bodies
For according to the path of science
The stars are a thousand times more helpless than you