Comments

  • Are only animals likely conscious?
    Researchers had humans search like dogs, on hands and knees, and their performance finding stuff by smell was not greatly inferior to a dog’s!Daemon

    I know what they let them sniff firstly... And then set them loose on hands and feet, but I don't dare to write it...
  • The Decay of Science
    No, it is the energy that sets the orbit. That's first year stuff. If you study the physics of orbital docking maneuvers you'll see what I meanGary M Washburn

    You can't compare classical spaceship orbits with an electron, which doesn't follow a classical orbit.
  • The Decay of Science
    Hah! Not until after it gets "excited" and jumps to higher energy orbit.Caldwell

    Not until then no. That's pretty obvious.
  • Why does economy need growth?
    Yes. What's your point?Caldwell

    Economic growth is not linear. It's exponential.
  • Are only animals likely conscious?
    Have you got anything useful to say?Daemon

    As a matter of fact... I just walked with our dog. She sniffed around a car unusually long. And found a small animal hiding beneath it quietly. Likely my dog and the animal are conscious beings like us. How would it be to smell like that? Would be great! How would it be to hide in fear? Not so great I guess.
  • Are only animals likely conscious?
    Speaking from personal experience, when I have a general anaesthetic or hit myselfDaemon

    Personal experience? Hitting yourself with an axe?
  • Why does economy need growth?
    But, the thinking in terms of economic is linear progressionCaldwell

    Isn't linear progression growth?
  • The Decay of Science


    If a photon is absorbed there is an increase in the potential energy of the electron. Not its kinetic energy.
  • Is there something like AS, artificial stupidity?
    Other incidents have been recorded.Banno

    I read about an auto-driving automoble that it couldn't see the wall it was driving to. Passenger killed.
  • Is love real or is it just infatuation and the desire to settle down
    Infatuation is an intense reaction that can quickly turn to hate at any mild displeasure
    Love is a conscious
    Yohan

    Still, my love infatuates me.
  • The Definition of Information
    Information is not one or the other act of consciousness but what is known by the act of consciousness, something that is common to these conscious persons who are otherwise so differenPop

    He was right.Information is not interaction. Interaction operates on information. It is waht gives form to forms. The forms are the information. Whithout interaction no forms exist. A quantum wavefunction spreads out more and more (or shrinks in momentum space). With interaction oblivion is called back (collapse).
  • On Death Toll Arguments
    the Holocaust seems fairly trivial by comparisonthewonder

    That's a pretty cruel statement. Why did your aquaintance think Trotski collaborated with the nazis? Wasn't he in Mexico and didn't he condemn the non-agression pact of Stalin and Hitler?
  • Who is to blame for climate change?
    SUVs. :)
    I carefully checked the science behind the so called 'CO2 emissions
    stoicHoneyBadger

    "So called" emissions? They're pretty real. How did you carefully check that?
  • The definition of art
    What about fame? Banksy stood in an artmarket selling his paintings. Nobody wanted to buy them. Even not with a discount. If only they knew...

    And what about his landscape with an uniformed nazi sitting relaxed on a bench, enjoying the landscape? The homeless center he hang it in got 300 000 pop for it.
  • Who is to blame for climate change?
    Nuclear lobby is quite miniscule and not so strong. Besides, Coal mining has earlier been important employer for example in the Appalachian range, so it's no wonder that a populist politician declared himself of supporter of Coal. Got the votes from from the rust belt!ssu

    I know that politician! Even here his false Trumpet tones can be heard! Every time the stories from your country amaze me (assuming it's your country). The basic rules are so pretty though. As are the words under the statue of liberty. About the poor...
  • You are not your body!


    I wrote you at exactly the same time in anothercthread! Youre right about the tattoo!
  • Is love real or is it just infatuation and the desire to settle down
    If I'm to take you seriously, BIV is short for "brain in a vat" hypothesis. Hence the naughtiness factor.javra

    I really didn't know! I looked it up but got a return in my language. I could see it wasn't what you meant. Brain in vat. Mmmmmm.... :smile:
  • You are not your body!
    As to bodies not having an unchanging essence, neither do selves (or even souls) require an existentially unchanging essence in order to bejavra

    I have the conviction I'm nothing more than my centralnervoussystemless body. The butterfly tattoe on my left arm is a pretty unchanging essence.
  • Why does economy need growth?
    A critique

    Romantics would claim that those living simpler economies from the past ( tribal, agricultural) may in fact have led happier lives.Joshs

    Not only romantics, though it can't be denied I'm one myself.

    transformation of cultural knowledge does not require economic growth as measured in standard ways.Joshs

    That's pretty obvious.

    This implies that even in the most stressed economic conditions personal growth will continue as a consequence of the continued change in worldviews.Joshs

    I'm not sure the prisonors in the concentration camps in nazi Germany agreed. The showers they had to take wasn't a real stimulation of personal growth or changing worldview.

    Ostensibly, an economy is a proxy for individualsJoshs

    How can you make that ostensible? What is the ostensibility? What proxy?

    This is a particularly significant question because in the era of climate change , there is widespread anticipation
    of slowdown in worldwide economic growth.
    Joshs

    Dunno. Is there truly a widespread anticipation? Aren't people more in anticipation of the disasters to come?

    So what do i docudals need in an economic sense?Joshs

    What are docudals?

    Some believe that reversals of economic growth automatically imply stagnation or reversal of cultural development , but since the development of worldviews is knowledge-based, can there ever be a reversal in knowledge? Have any large cultures in recent history forgotten the knowledge they were based on, or failed to undergo further cultural development? Certainly some
    cultures seem to transform themselves
    more rapidly that others, but isn’t there continuous transmission and transformation going on in even the most seemingly stagnant cultures?
    Joshs

    Nicely said. Too much emphasis on knowledge though. I had the strange feeling of a deja vu when reading your words here.

    . Others, like satisfying relationships , may not be directly measuredJoshs

    This suggests they can be indirectly measured. But can they?

    This notion of personal growth is about the development of sense-makingJoshs

    I have grown substantially personally. In creative, scientific, love, understanding, etc. I'm trying to live with minimum material goods. They are generally totaly superfluent to me. I make little sense to many people though...
  • On the Eternality and Non-Eternality of Relative Space


    Ah! It's just the spacetime of relativity? The question there is: is time real or do we assign it?
  • On the Eternality and Non-Eternality of Relative Space
    Sure, if there can be one bang, there will be others.PoeticUniverse

    It's a banging universe. Bangs chasing one another. When our bang has reached infinity (big rip), another bangs behind us.
  • Are only animals likely conscious?
    We know an astonishing amount about those mechanisms and processes.Daemon

    But the major part, especially in the living brain, body, and world, we don't know.
  • Is love real or is it just infatuation and the desire to settle down


    I get you but don't know what a BIV-scenario is. Sounds kinda naughty...
  • Who is to blame for climate change?


    What many fossile plants in the US? I thought it was nuclear energy that banged the main drum! Would be nice if fusion worked. Although, creating the Sun on Earth...
  • Why does economy need growth?
    money is merely the generic device of measuring value within a group of goods and services distributed.I like sushi

    Nut what determines the value of money? The goods produced and services delivered? Trust? Quality?
  • In the Beginning.....
    Quantum physics recognises that this potential energy source is limited by our perspective, and that matter is no more than our anticipated interaction with potentiality, implying affirmation (less certain, more affected by limitations) of an unlimited source of possible energy.Possibility

    I'm not sure here what it is that quantum physics "recognises. "Potential enetgy sources that are limited to our perspective"? What do you mean by this? QM or QFT both "recognise" potential energy derived from a classical view on energy. Particles can interact and this interaction determines kinetic and potential (the potential to become kinetic) energy.
  • what if the goal of a religion isn't to be factually correct?
    What if they give a class on chemistry and teach that a spark plus oxygen and hydrogen yields water? Because a religious institution teaches it, it is scientifically unprovable?Ennui Elucidator

    Einstein was a religious guy. It even inspired his view on quantum mechanics ("der Herr Gott wūrfelt nicht").
  • Philosophy of Mind Books?
    "Gödel, Escher, and Bach".Douglass Hofstadter. A bit too computer oriented though. "The Mind'sEye". Don't remember the author.
  • Who is to blame for climate change?
    It's telling that altogether France, Germany, UK and Japan in the aggregate emit just half of what the US does, even if the combined population of these countries is bigger than the population of the USssu

    What's done differently in the US? Are the most billionaires made in the US?
  • Why does economy need growth?
    ponzipraxis

    Senor Ponzi entrepeneured well. Got even wicked scemes named after him. Ponzi-fraud.
  • The definition of art
    The only difference between the porcelain urinal (before) [not art] and the porcelain urinal (after) [art] is Marcel Duchamp's consciousness.TheMadFool

    Imagine my reconstruction of modern sex-dolls in the not so distant future. "Dada...dada..."

    And how appropiate the video after the urinoir: Echoes, Pink Floyd
  • Evidence of Consciousness Surviving the Body


    Do you have Swiss consciousness? Somehow your name sounds Swiss. Like meusli.
  • Why does economy need growth?
    Which red-blooded person doesn't want more money than fae already hasTheMadFool

    I think you mean the ones blue blood. Or was it purple? All vicious circles can be broken. No matter how vicious they are.
  • Evidence of Consciousness Surviving the Body
    All reason and emotion are the product of the intellectual and affective dimensions of my mind,Michael Zwingli

    Don't yòu think it's the other way round?
  • The Decay of Science
    How can there be an asymptotic convergence between quantum and "classical" physics if the whole thrust of quanta is to hide some portion of its phenomena from mathematical formulation? "Classical physics" is mechanics. What mechanism emphatically and explicitly hides its mechanism from science? And what kind of logic "passes over in silence" where its terms fail its anticipated conclusion? And doesn't the task of understanding the silence and the hidden start its talking there? And, once again, if the best rigor we can bring to this is that point of departure, how can it be untruth? Isn't emotion the beginning of reason, not the end of it? If rigor is humanizing, then maybe reality is too. If science is failing, it is its commitment to dehumanizing reason.Gary M Washburn

    I had to read it over carefully a couple of times. To suddenly realize it's beautiful! In particular the last sentence! :up:
  • Evidence of Consciousness Surviving the Body
    I simply see no evidence for an "anima mundi"Michael Zwingli

    What about you feeling, percept, your emotions, thoughts, ideas, dreams. You are aware of all. How can this be if all matter were just matter? Devoid of content? Don't you think psycheless matter is an abstraction, taking out its most important ingredient? Of course a stone is not conscious, but how can the stuff you eat turn into your consciousness if it didn't had itself a (very rudimentary) piece of soul? Maybe pansoulism is a better word.
  • What is your opinion of Transhumanism?
    It's bs to me.RAW

    Best shit?

    I do appreciate the tender attention to my detailsZugzwang

    Excuse me?
  • Against Stupidity
    Less confident people may take more time to think through a problem leading to higher chances of accuracy than a confident person might.Yohan

    Unless the confident person is right about things and the less confident wrong.
  • The Decay of Science
    that the frequency of a radiation emitted or absorbed by an atom did not coincide with any frequency of its internal motionCaldwell

    What internal motion is meant here? That of an electron?