Comments

  • What is creativity?
    I have a primitive view of creativity. If something is made that didn't exist before, no matter how many millions of other examples of that same thing exist, the making of that something is creativity. If I take a piece of paper and make a paper airplane, to me that is being creative. That particular paper airplane didn't exist before I made it. If the soil accepts an acorn and grows an oak tree, the soil is being creative no matter how many oak trees are in existence, as that particular oak tree had never existed before.
  • Climate Change (General Discussion)
    My take on the changing climate is, money talks and BS walks. All the protests and statistics and numbers being tossed around is the BS, cuz it's not stopping the large corporations and various governments from moving ahead as usual in the use of fossil fuels. The U.S. seems to be the largest purveyor of fossil fuels currently (Dec 2024) but that could change as other deposits or retrieval techniques are discovered.

    So from the money perspective, legacy fossil fuel companies are stalling and denying while eyeing emerging alternate energy sources to see which ones can be profitably co-opted. Other companies are developing technolgies to help rich people fend off the effects of a changing climate and if they're successful, they'll probably be bought by the legacy fossil fuel companies to burnish their climate credentials and maybe even make a few bucks. Just like 40 years ago people would create computer companies in their garages, and now computer creators just want to create something that Apple or Microsoft or whoever will buy.

    Until those who wish to change the direction our climate is headed in learn to cause serious economic and political pain to the legacy forces causing this current climate situation, it's all BS, even with all the deaths and destructions, because they're not being effective. Sure, the people care, they just don't care enough, and don't see enough entities successfully opposing legacy fossil fuel corporations.
  • Cosmology & evolution: theism vs deism vs accidentalism
    Suppose several other life forms were discovered in the universe, some not carbon based, some not even needing a planet to exist on. How would the perspectives illustrated here change? How much of our beliefs are homo sapien based? What if the universe was designed for a totally different life form and homo sapiens are just a temporary part of the chaos? What if the universe wasn't designed for any particular life form and various life forms just pop into and out of existence?
  • What Does Consciousness Do?
    Consciousness, acting in the role of boundary administrator, formats a grid of material boundaries in superposition into a navigable environment.ucarr

    I'm just spitballing it here with no backup references (my apologies), but it seems to me as the quantum environment gets explored more deeply, basically what we've defined as "matter" is just different levels of energy in different forms. My hand feeling the surface of my desk is the energy fields of the atoms (which can be decomposed into energy) in my hand reacting to the energy fields of the atoms that make up the desk. Could one function of our consciousness be to define all the energy fields we come into contact with, whether "matter" or not, into a "navigable environment"? In this context I would separate consciousness from awareness as awareness doesn't require acknowledgement beyond "this exists", which may or may not be navigable.
  • Is the truth still owed even if it erodes free will?
    As has been demonstrated many times...truth always loses to free will. Free will involves ignoring truth or describing truth to fit whatever free will chooses for it to fit.
    Truth is revealed...free will deals with it.
  • Can the existence of God be proved?
    In the beginning there was nothing. Then something came into existence. Whatever created existence is the god that still exists. We are all literally a part of that god. The hydrogen atoms in our body are billions of years old, going back to the "Big Bang" (inaccurate but cute name).
  • Moravec's Paradox
    I do not concern myself with how much artificial intelligence can do what humans do. My fascination is what's gonna happen when artificial intelligence starts doing something humans cannot do, use wisdom in all their actions. Wisdom being defined as making correct assumptions and judgements covering longer and longer periods of time. Then you have to start being concerned about what, if any, ethics they were trained on.
  • The universality of consciousness
    I've a question towards the universality of consciousness. For animals, plants and the planet geology itself, where does consiousness appear, distinct from hormonal, biochemical, genetic or chemical interactions?