You are saying that X consists solely of Y and X is Y are nontrivially different. — rachMiel

I'm saying that X consists of more than just Y, it consists of specific arrangements of Y. The arrangement itself is a part of what constitutes X.

And this is kind of what I'm trying to get at. If X consists solely of Y, does it make sense to say X *is* Y? — rachMiel

Nope.

Your forum password consists of 1's and 0's, but your password is more than mere 1's and 0's: it's information contained in the arrangement of 1's and 0's that represents your password. If you change the specific arrangement of 1's and 0's then it's no longer your password. Extra information is contained in the arrangement, and cannot be found or inferred from the basic constituent alone. (you know that my password is 1's and 0's, but you don't actually know my password)

A diamond is carbon.
Michelangelo's David is marble.
A human being is quarks and leptons. — rachMiel

But if we're all really just the same, why do diamonds outlast apples?

Why doesn't Michael's David join the forum and start posting in this thread, and why am I not currently posing naked in the Galleria dell'Accademia in Florence?

An apple would be a specific arrangement (or series of arrangements) of floom. It wouldn't be mere floom.

I'm also a global learner. I was told so as a child, I believed them, and it's been a self-fulfilling prophecy ever since...

What exactly is global learning though?

I would say it is when one's classification or understanding of a particular phenomenon is informed by its relationship to the whole/greater system in which it is situated/functions/interacts/evolved. Knowing the outcomes or function or purpose of a system can make it easy to anticipate the outcomes, functions, or purposes of its various parts. (i.e: if you're trying to fix a broken machine, it's very helpful to know beforehand what that machine actually does). This is a kind of teleological approach to classification and anticipation, and it seems to make the most sense when applied to complex systems with clearly discernible evolved or designed purposes. Here we derive general rules to anticipate parts from what we know about the whole. The limitation of this approach is that we're more or less stuck generalizing about sub-components (which could be observed, described and understood with greater precision) from our initial assumptions about the whole.

As opposed to the above "top-down" approach to learning and discovery, there is also the "bottom-up" approach which I would also consider "global" in some sense. This is where we look at the basic and fundamental parts of a system, and how they interact, in order to predict and anticipate the behavior of the whole. When we're actually able to get down to the basic components of a system and are able to describe them with adequate precision, we can deterministically calculate (or simulate) the whole. The limits of this approach exist in the fact that often times we can only examine and measure basic components (and their dynamic interactions) with a certain degree of precision, and in many cases the sheer number of basic parts and dynamic interactions between them makes simulation (for anticipation) a computational impossibility.

---------

Employing a healthy mix of both of these approaches is what I have found to be most intellectually rewarding. Getting from part to whole can be confusing and complicated, but the more examples you see of how dynamic parts can combine and interact to produce a greater whole, the easier it gets to explore in both directions (there are boundless similarities between complex phenomenon).

Choosing the most relevant or accessible plane or scale of observation, and going from there, seems to be the best bet.

I think this might also play into perception itself:

A particle physicist or astrophysicist looks at a star and sees a collection of atomic and subatomic particles fusing together which releases light (of a given wavelength), heat, and produces heavier atomic particles, all held together in a big ball under the weight of their own cumulative gravity. First they see the parts, and understand how they combine to form a whole in a self-sustaining chain reaction.

An astronomer looks at a star and sees a unit of gravitational mass, a part, which is situated in a local system of its own, which is itself situated in a larger gravitational structure (galaxies), galaxies are situated in clusters, galaxy clusters are situated in galaxy super-clusters, super-clusters are situated in a filament like arrangement, and beyond that the observable universe ends. First they see the whole, but it is merely a part within the greater wholes they're more concerned with.

Everything can be reduced down to lower level parts, the possible limit being the quantum scale, and everything can be viewed as a part of a greater system, the possible limit being the observable universe. In the grand scheme of things we're forced to work with the observations we're able to actually make:

An alchemist looks at the sun and sees a mysterious whole, unable to observe or perceive the fundamental components which combine to cause the overall phenomenon. Like their limitations in chemistry, they simply have no access to begin observing or isolating the basic parts of the system and hence cannot reconstruct or anticipate the whole from a description of fundamental parts. Being likewise unable to chart and observe the bigger picture of the sun's location relative to nearby stars, alchemists were unable to perceive of the existence of galaxies (a galaxy was just another star in the eyes of an ancient astronomer, and the milky was was an awesome rift in the night sky), let alone model and anticipate their behavior. They had to start at the observational limits available to them and try to push the envelope forward.

So really we should be starting at both the top and the bottom - and in the middle - because observations and understanding at any level can inform and corroborate discovery at different scales within a system.

Take the weather for example: long term observation reveals obvious patterns (seasons) and can be used as a reliable but general and imprecise means of anticipating future weather (great for long term, less so short term predictions); in order to make accurate predictions we instead look at the immediate causes of weather changes and actually model its behavior with precision (great for short term predictions, and nearly useless for long-term predictions). By modifying the scope and scale of our observations we could also concoct various medium range weather prediction models (almanacs?), and so on.

I will say that as someone who always looks for the big picture understanding first, it's nice to have a background upward and downward limit (and rudimentary view) of everything that exists, from quarks up to the filaments of the observable universe. It's an unfortunately big window, and it's filled with incoherent blurry areas, but it's something everything...

It's fairly exciting, but not uncontroversial. The first ten minutes of this News video encapsulates the trepidation and complaints coming from many First Nations groups.

Note: The "white paper" refers to papa Trudeau's 1969 axed total assimilation proposal mentioned in the OP.

Yeah, ask them what they want and how the government can help them get it. Maybe they already have some ideas. — frank

The problem is that the federal Government unilaterally decided to have the wave of meetings across the nation and is already making (some) plans and taking actions on its own without consulting First Nations groups before hand (what those plans are specifically are still unclear). I don't think unilaterally calling for open communication is a bad thing in any way, but critics are wary of intentions given the history of failure.

In the US, federally recognized tribe members get a free college education. A lot of them use it to become lawyers. Does Canada do that? — frank

The same is true in Canada, but systemic failure to provide equitable education even in recent decades has meant that on reserve students are massively less likely to attend secondary education to begin with (remoteness (expense), chronic under-funding, and managerial/bureaucratic incompetence to blame in recent decades)

Natives tend to be poor and vulnerable. I would guess that being cut off further from Canadian society would be disastrous if it happened abruptly. — frank

Some have said the recent endeavor is happening too abruptly (and stinks of indigenous non-participation). They argue that it would be better to allow indigenous communities to organize and call for meetings on their own time, which makes a good deal of sense if the government is to honor its intention of allowing self-governance. On the other hand reform is long overdue...

Some of the reservations in the states exist because of donated land. How will Canada allocate land? — frank

Most likely according to heritage, historical treaties and land agreements, and need, but it is not yet clear exactly what will happen and how it will take place.

In the states reservations often make money with casinos (which are illegal outside the reservations). How will Canadian Natives finance things like law enforcement? — frank

This, the corruption issue you mentioned, and many others are a part of the central dilemma entailed in relinquishing control while promising a raise in standards. It's a risk that that is hard to mitigate. Short of exorbitant investment, can it be mitigated at all if Canada is to truly allow indigenous groups to govern themselves?

The right to freedom of speech most intelligibly means "freedom from censorship". Anyone can lie, but what matters from a moral perspective is whether or not the lie was harmful. The west permits freedom of speech but it does not permit fraud and many other kinds of harmful deceitful.

The right to bear arms isn't a human right, but in so far as it can be considered one it has to do with freedom from physical coercion and the right to personal physical safety (to not be killed). The right to life (to not be killed) is much more widely held to be a fundamental human right (capital punishment not withstanding, which is ubiquitous in Christianity).

The right to be free is not the freedom to oppress others because the right is meant to apply to others as well. Your suggestion here is at best word-play and at worst a severe misunderstanding of why the west holds "freedom" close to its cultural heart.

The right to property is not the right to steal: we have laws that explicitly forbid theft. Almost paradoxically, without the right to property there is no such thing as theft to begin with. Are you positive that human rights invented greed?

The Right To Freedom of Worship is the Right To Idolatry — Agustino

It's also the freedom to not worship idols. Like "the right to be free" in general, it means that we cannot be forced to do things we do not want to do. You may think that people who genuinely worship pagan idols are doing something bad, and many of them would say that you are the bad one.

Do you want to remove our right to worship, or not worship, as we see fit, and begin forcing us at gun point under pain of death and oppression to abandon our civic and religious freedom and property in favor of Christianity?

The Decalogue has no positive content but is merely negative. It restricts what can be done. Whereas Human Rights have solely positive content, and hence miss delineating the negative. It is no wonder that Western permissive culture has adopted human rights and forgotten about the Decalogue. — Agustino

Human rights are ideal states of affairs we strive toward, but we use prohibitive laws to get there as a matter of course. If restricting harmful actions are the kind of laws you think work best, then the good news is the west has a body of case law and legislation filled with more prohibitive laws than there are verses in the holy bible. Better still (for you) many of these laws were founded on ideals found in Christianity!

Don't steal, don't kill, don't purger/defraud/slander/etc... These are prohibited actions in the west. You can however worship idols and graven images, covet your neighbor's wife's mansion's oxen, ruin your marriage by cheating (not without legal/financial penalty), pick up sticks on Sunday, blaspheme baby Jesus, and sing hymns to Baphomet, because none of those things warrant prohibiting them with force (because that would lead to oppression, unhappiness, death, etc...).

It's no wonder the contemporary west is so very less violent than its thoroughly religious medieval counterparts. Infidelity is ungodly per the Decalogue, and so adulterous women had their noses cut off as a mark and punishment. Petty thieves died by hanging, counterfeiters and fraudsters were boiled to death, while witches and heretics were impaled and burned alive.

"Exod 22:18, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live, "

What a curious idea this is... We aren't allowed to allow witches and wizards to continue living.

Are you positive restricting what can be done is foolproof?

Hmmmm....

This is a false dilemma/dichotomy incarnate. You're saying it can only ever be a choice between two relevant options but it's entirely possible that a third option is or can become relevant.

The rise of a third party could come at the cost of both the republicans and democrats, and it could result in the trisection of the various representative houses rather than the traditional bisection.

The mistaken belief that a deciding vote is more important than all other votes is one of the mistaken beliefs that has kept America so dogmatically locked in its two party system for so long.

Which is why they should start voting third party instead!

Since American's are able to vote for third and fourth parties (albeit indirectly in many states), they actually can cast their ballots in support of something else (or not at all). Just because you are presented with two options does not mean to need to support either of them.

It was a false dichotomy; the notion that we're stuck with only one of two possible options.

Why not take the unstated third option and say you don't support systematic persecution?

Trump doing a 180 on the value of tariffs?

EDIT: yep

Let me rephrase the question:

Do you support persecution based on ethnicity or persecution based on political belief?

I wouldn't say it has "nothing" to do with it. Sexual attraction won't progress further without some sort of sexual compatibility. The fact that males are sexually compatible with other males, and females are sexually compatible with other females, means that same-sex attraction can help serve the same adaptive functions as sex (save direct reproduction).

In other words, some people would say that same sex attraction is unnatural because of the nature of sexual reproduction, but if partnership involving sexual intimacy/gratification is actually a function of sex, then homosexuality can serve that function without issue.

In the most straightforward terms, my point is that because we have a biological suite of sexual organs which permit same-sex intercourse, it stands to reason that a capacity for same-sex attraction evolved along with them and serve various entirely natural adaptive functions.

There is no debate; the jury came in ages ago: the fact that the human anus is capable of being pleasurably stimulated (in both males and females) heavily implies anal sex ("sodomy") has long served adaptive utility. Sex as a form of stress relief and creating/maintaining relationships is a strong enough adaptive advantage in and of itself, and we see plenty of great ape species employing it for those reasons...

Do you support National Socialism or Communism?

If you don't pick one of these sides, you're just uninformed?

Just because one of two piles of excrement stinks less than the other doesn't mean people cannot choose to support alternative piles altogether. The whole point of a third political party in America is to have more choice, and to force improvement via competition.

Of course everyone leans more in one direction than another, but this coming from a political scientist as means to define "independents" is incredibly vapid. I reckon he is trying to point out that since it's one of two parties to begin with that we must inevitably choose one of them? (the self-fulfilling prophecy)...

Some video games blur the line between consumption and creation. As interactive art forms they can be of immensely high quality and serve many functions (learning, creativity, escapism, etc...) aside from being inherently entertaining.

Some video games (sandboxes usually) allow you to create in-game content that was never intended or anticipated by the game designers. In-game discovery and evolution can then go on to influence the creation of new games (and industries surrounding games and the way games develop) in a cycle that is as self-serving as any modern human endeavor.

A game called "DayZ" was released as a player created "mod" (modification) for a different game called Arma II (a modern warfare simulator). It was an open world zombie survival concept with no rules, and it went on to inspire a slew of subsequent copy-cats. One of the most popular things to do in such games was to play "battle royales" (not unlike the hunger games franchise), which went on to inspire a host of subsequent niche games (notably, player unknown's battle grounds and Fortnite, the latter being the most popular game in the world right now, and alone responsible for hundreds of millions of dollars of investment into a burgeoning industry known as "e-sports").

Even if the creative products of various games are self-contained (the evolution of chess strategy as an example), it still adds to their intrinsic value as entertainment.

Too much video games is bad though (too much of anything is bad). A Korean man once died playing a game called Starcraft because he literally kept playing for too long and with too few breaks. Starcraft in South Korea is (was) almost like a national sport, having had televised broadcasts of tournaments for many years, and the best players are considered famous just like any other celebrity (fawning fans and all). Starcraft "streamers" in korea and in the west pioneered the initial growth of e-sports before the market diverged to include many games. In a society where playing video games can actually lead to wealth and fame (the income of the popular video-game streamers is downright absurd) how much video games is too much video games entails an altered equation.

I wonder what kind of video game might Charles Orwell or H.P Lovecraft have designed? (Horrors I reckon). What about Van Gogh? Da Vinci? Tolkien?

In their respective mediums and styles, did they engage too much?

I love the auto-save feature.

There's also a "drafts" section in which I have pages upon pages of un-sumbitted and half-complete posts (or posts I thought better of)... Gonna go through them when I get a chance...

From where is "the light" you speak of "gathered from" in order to generate the experience of dreams, in all their colors, shapes and 3 dimension during sleep? Remember it is usually dark and eyes are shut. — raza

Photons that the eyes gather are turned into electrical and chemical signals that the brain then interprets. The data within the light that the eye gathers is what the consciousness sees.

Given our dreams clearly draw from our memories it's not surprising that they usually conform to them in many ways.

Incorrect. While a monitor is viewed by "oneself" the point-of-view (POV) is located (habitually, imo) "within the eyes". — raza

What if you're wearing a VR headset?

And "Analogously" refers to biology. A camera is not biological. — raza

Analagously refers to "analogs" (as in: a person or thing similar to another). As it happens, "analogous" is used to describe comparisons between biological and non-biological things all the time: bird wings and plane wings are analagous; photosynthesis and solar panels; machine learning and human learning; cameras and eyeballs.

If you'd like to know more about the definition of analagous, feel free to have a read!

what criteria makes testimonial evidence strong? — Sam26

One criterion for strong testimonial evidence is corroboration. If multiple people testify to witnessing an event then the claims corroborated by the testimony have more weight as evidence. (likewise, if people testify to not-witnessing something when they allegedly should have, it weakens the testimonial evidence)

Another criterion is the credibility of witnesses. If a witness has a clear bias (such as a conflict of interest or having been inebriated at the time) then this can weaken the inductive strength of testimony as evidence.

Falsifiability is a great attribute for improving the strength of testimonial evidence. The more you try and fail to falsify a claim, the stronger that claim is shown to be.

Our point of view is "located within the eyes" because that's where the light stimulus is gathered from.

Analogously, when we're viewing a monitor of a security camera feed, the point of view is "located within the camera".

How is that deception? — creativesoul

Because it's intentional belief altering via coercive/irrational means. Is deception the intent to conceal or manipulate or is it the successful concealment/manipulation of objective truth? I'll satisfy both:

Lets say I'm at a singles bar looking for a date, and I know that statistically my chances of being successful are low... Consuming alcohol can make me go from believing it is true that I will likely fail to either forgetting or believing the opposite, even while it remains true that I will likely fail despite the statistical benefits alcohol may confer.

Prohibition can be a persuasive salesman...

It occurs to me that we can very easily and in the true sense of the phrase 'lie to ourselves' if we're content with deceiving our future-selves rather than our present-selves; the necessary ingredients are forgetfulness or suggestibility (as you can probably imagine, someone with Alzheimer's could quite effectively lie to their future selves).

A weak case can be built upon the consumption of fictional entertainment where immersion causes a suspension of disbelief. While we're never fully deceived by fiction (and that it is the fictional work doing the deceiving), the intent to become immersed in the first place (which requires some albeit weak or pseudo-level of belief change) can constitute a form of intentional self-deception. "Escapism" highlights the difference between this kind of intentional self-deception and the mere consideration of hypotheticals.

A strong case for the intentional deception of our future selves exists in the case of intentional mood altering practices (though they do not necessarily come with specific belief changes, mood changes can easily cause changes in belief). It may not be "lying" to instigate a general mood change but it's definitely intentional self-manipulation to purposefully alter one's mood by pro/prescribing substances, physical activities, or other means. Mood changes would most directly affect emotionally contingent opinions, but they can and do also impact actual beliefs. For instance, someone who lacks confidence might try to consciously project confident body language (i.e: smile more) in hopes that it will impact on how confident they actually feel, and in turn change their beliefs which are in part dependent upon their confidence (i.e: what they can accomplish, the moral nature of the average person, etc...).

Drinking in order to forget or become distracted from an unpleasant reality seems to at least fit the description of "lying by omission". If an omission can be a lie, then at least while inebriated we are possibly being lied to by our former selves...

Haven't got round to watching the video yet. Adams might be worth listening to. I find Dave Rubin to be lazy and clueless though so it puts me off a bit. — Baden

He's a bit of a limp biscuit but at least he has interesting guests from time to time (though he would never dare to ask a confrontational question).

For a laugh:


I remember watching the Adams' interview when it came out. He has an easily misunderstood perspective, which is, for various/whatever reasons, that trump is extremely persuasive. IIRC the gist of what he said panned out. Trump really could shoot an American man, in the pussy, with a Russian pistol, in the capitol hill conservatory, live on twitter, and his staunch base would barely (but reliably) twitch a single eyelash.

Just to clarify I'm not exactly advocating for erecting a "TPF Academy for Members Who Cant Post Good And Want To Learn To Do Other Stuff Good Too", but more of a kind of thread purgatory which is out of the way (serving the function of post removal) while giving people a chance to improve themselves.

There have been occasions where deleted posts are characterized by some as potentially worthwhile, and these edge cases would also be served by such a purgatory like category.

My main consideration is turnover-rate actually, and while I have no way of knowing how often the hurt feelings of post removal actually result in the loss of a member (or how much a segregated category for low quality threads would mitigate that pang), retaining one or two members every now and then would add up over-time.

If it was a category, then discussions there would appear on the homepage by default, just like other discussions, and it wouldn't be immediately clear what category they belong to. So, in practical terms, it wouldn't really be any different than if they were left in their original categor — Sapientia

I was hoping that this section could be omitted from the all discussions section/home page somehow. I realize now such a feature is not available, as points out.

Personally, I don't like the idea. I think that it would be an unnecessary distraction which would lower the quality of the forum by neglecting to remove poor quality content. If, after reading the guidelines, and attempting to abide by them, the staff decide that your comment or discussion doesn't meet the standard, then it should be deleted, and you would then have the option of contacting the staff with any questions or complaints, or using the Feedback forum, and/or taking another stab at it. That's fair enough, I think. — Sapientia

It's fair enough, to be sure, I just wondered how much we could possibly gain by softening the emotional blows of moderation (mainly in turnover rate). As an aside, Are there any reasons why we have no "graveyard" section where such posts could remain locked in perpetuity, if only to serve as record and cautionary examples? (I notice that sometimes the thing that gets to posters the most is that they had no copies of their removed posts, and perhaps being able to re-read them would prove didactic for them). It would be great for moderator transparency but it might also just wind up being a source of drama, or as Streetlight also points out, not worth it as the bar is already so low.

Did you mean "sword of Damocles" or was this a pun on the House of Hanover? — Bitter Crank

Admittedly not one of my finer puns. I enjoy making Damocles metaphors, and for some reason among the moderator staff I'm not unfamiliar with, Hanover hangs out as the edgy one. :D

The specifics of your idea may or may not be possible to implement, but the thought and feeling behind it are commendable. New members might need a little patience and direction. They would find a good example in your well-written posts. There are certain little things about this wonderful forum that might possibly benefit from tweaking or updating, IMHO. Could be a software limitation thing. Or maybe the moderators are just too busy driving their Lambos and hanging with Elon Musk and the Winklevoss twins — 0 thru 9

To expand on that, we care about the site and want it to work as well as possible, but we derive most of our enjoyment from posting just like everyone else, so we're not likely to want to make our own non-posting responsibilities more complicated or burdensome than they need to be. If that means less hand-holding, we're likely then to think the responsibility should lie more with the poster than with us. — Baden

In my head it didn't create additional work or headaches for the moderators, they would just move offending threads and the stuck thread would explain why it's in that category. I don't begrudge the mods any hip-shooting though, it's a tedious and thankless task they're volunteering to do, so anything that makes that job more difficult had better be well worth it.

It was worth considering though...

There's nothing new under the digital sun I guess...

As I was not privy to the original discussion, could you share any information about its conclusion?

If Russia is indeed an enemy of the United States (is an "Enemy" well defined in this context?) then could any of Trumps statements or actions be considered as adhering to America's enemy or giving America's enemy aid and comfort?

Aye aye Cap'n!

*Begins swabbing feverishly*

I just want to point out the melody and rhythm of this sentence. It's magic. — frank

Thanks! :heart:

Trump can take away our security, our confidence, and our dignity, but I'll be damned if he taints the elegance of the english language! :lol:

Best we learn to saver those cheap and traditional pleasures which are above the cranial and legislative reach of that sad and tremendous orange tempest we all so know and love to hate >:)

By 2020 he'll be so.... So.... Old... And tired... So tired...

Even if the economy soars he would still need another miracle in my estimation (Hillary stealing the Democrat nomination again for instance). Trump was somewhat a "fuck you" vote - a spanner in the works - and as a literal and figurative pejorative he has excelled stupendously. I reckon there will be less such incentive to slam the big orange button on the next go round.

I've been predicting resignation or impeachment since before he was president though (when Hillary cinched the democratic nomination I knew he had a serious shot). It's just too rough of a circus to carry on for the full four years; whether it's us or him, something has got to give. I did think that trump would have resigned by now amidst the endless controversy, but I underestimated how much silliness we the people and the system in general can tolerate.

I confess, I desired this outcome from the very beginning. It's the best possible outcome: a shakeup of the system brought about by america's own hubris, which will (or should) beget reform.

Trump will be remembered as the loud and long honk of a (hopefully) near miss when America fell asleep at the wheel. When it's all over I reckon America will take a good long look at itself and swear off a few of it's more retarded habits.

At the very least, the generations who are around to remember this disaster will be forever inoculated against it.

The pee-pee tape is seeming more and more plausible everyday.

What evidence persuades you that you are a neural network? — Moliere

Brain damage in various places can have corresponding effects on conscious experience and mental faculties. The taking of drugs for instance interacts with individual neurons and neuro-receptors in the brain and can cause drastic effects on what we think and feel. Artificial neural networks which have proven capable of a certain aspect of learning were inspired by biological neural networks, which in and of itself is enough to convince me that I am in large part a neural network (or at least the part of me that learns, which happens to be the best part :wink: ).

I sort of feel like the computational approach has to abandon "belief" -- there is no belief formation, there are algorithms which optimize. There is nothing that a belief is about, there are models of math problems through logical switches. And the stream of electrons move in accord with physical facts. — Moliere

Granted I cannot solve the hard problem of consciousness and explain how the outcome of an algorithim can seem like a "belief". As it sits physically in a network, a belief is abstract, and like raw data in a file it can only usefully be expressed when executed within the larger set of executive functions that cause "beliefs" to spill into our thoughts and out of our mouths. That this network can learn and alter itself on the most fundamental level is why it differs from an ordinary algorithm. When exposed to a world of varied and complex stimulus, there's no way of precisely predicting how such a network or algorithm will respond; it learns and evolves chaotically.

Similarly, a few levels up, we have algorithms optimizing and modifying themselves in light of some goal set for them. But do the algorithms lie to one another? Do they avoid dissonance? Or are they simply following instructions and giving us a good model for understanding (some of our) learning? It seems the latter to me. — Moliere

To an algorithm, dissonance comes in the form of a weighted error value. The bigger the error, the greater the dissonance (and the more drastic the self-correction). End results such as intent and feeling are of the ineffable whole rather than a specific part, or so it seems; my brain doesn't feel, it reacts mechanically, but its abstract product - the mind with awareness - seems to.

This is really complicated. :D — Moliere

Not just complicated; complex!

Do you feel like an amalgamation of computations? I don't really. If it is true it's all "under the hood", so to speak. — Moliere

Sure we don't feel like an amalgam of streaming information exchanges among and between learning neural networks, but there's too much evidence to ignore that it is so.

But how would you computationally model a lie to another neural network? — Moliere

General self-deception I would describe as existing in the fact that an erroneous or inapplicable sub-model is used in the formulation of a given belief. There's no difference between this description and simply being incorrect or mistaken about something, and the feedback we get from such mistakes is how we develop and optimize existing and new models; it's how we learn.

"Lying to one's self", if such a thing exists, must be more than just self-deception. As a guess at what it could be (or something like it) from a learning network perspective, I would say that it occurs when a consciously held belief (the higher level result of complex network interactions) happens to be erroneous, and causes related lower level models/networks to move toward an erroneous or de-optimized state.

When another person lies to us and we believe them, we may alter our fundamental understanding and cognitive models of the thing we're being deceived about. When we ourselves formulate erroneous beliefs and cling to them with conviction, our fundamental understandings which underpin them must be bent or negated to fit properly, to avoid dissonance.

The trouble with modeling such phenomenon computationally is that we're unable to follow the rhymes and reasons of learning neural networks as they learn; we can create a learning machine that can become excellent at a specific task through experience, but the way it discovers and encodes patterns creates messy extended algorithms that are utterly illegible (too long, too raw, too abstract; imagine a human mind expressed in algebra).

As potentially recursive in various ways, these extended algorithms can alter themselves (for better or for worse, though the thing that makes them "learning" is that they tend to alter themselves for the better), so, when an error in one part of the algorithm is carried into its product, which then recursively alters sub-components of the algorithm toward greater error (and sustained error), we might say the algorithm has successfully lied to itself.

Put in the most uncomplicated terms I can think of, "lying to one's self" is like the opposite of learning truth; it's when we learn untruth not because of externally deceptive stimulus, but because of our own faulty minds. Bias of all kinds therefore fits the bill of lying to ourselves along with succumbing to any self-generated fallacious appeal!

How (and why) did human beings come to be able to know so much about how the Universe works?" — Ron Besdansky

How familiar are you with the science of machine learning? (And welcome to TPF!)

The question you've asked is a big'un; it spans the history of evolution of biological life, of nervous systems, of intelligence and understanding, of science, of technology, etc...

At some point the how and the why are inseparable. With natural selection as the central designer and vast amounts of time and space as processing power, everything from matter to cells to minds can be causally explained from an empirical point of view (though with much tedium).

I gather that you're specifically interested in the evolution and emergence of intelligence and accumulated human scientific knowledge, is that correct?

but I don't see how knowing a quark from a boson can help make it any more likely that I will survive to produce more offspring. — Ron Besdansky

It might not help us survive to produce more offspring (it might in-fact kill us), but we don't yet know, and evolution doesn't know anything at all. A main strategic angle of evolution (and the scientific approach itself) is to test many possibilities, and allow the self-sustaining/reproducing/predictive/robust/etc) possibilities to proliferate.

That we live in a universe which allows for so many dynamic possibilities and configurations of matter and energy (and so much time and space to play with) is why there's so much evolved complexity; it's inevitable.

P.S: Knowing a quark from a boson might turn out to be invaluable though; mastery over gravity (or other elementary forces and quantum particles) could be a game-changer for human success and survival.

Trump will only resign if he can feel like he can go down a winner.

He never believed he could win and almost certainly never wanted to be president, and he'll do what he thinks is best for his ratings 100% of the time, which is the only thing keeping him from resigning at present.

If someone can pitch him the right angle he might resign (especially if someone can convince him Mueller is closing in), something like "These are levels of obstruction never seen before folks..." "Because of constant fake news and anti-American actions by crooked Hillary and the lying democrats, I am choosing to step down a winner and leave this country in the capable hands of vice president Pence", "It's really a shame folks, but in the time that I have been president I've done more for this country than any other president. At least that's what people are telling me. *grins cheekily and emits a spastic shrug*". It's really sad folks, I really had a lot of great things, tremendous things, in store for this country, and now the democrats are going to have to live with the fact that they might be responsible for making America un-great again".