The way that I think we need to deal with the definition of "post-truth" is that it's not about the perpetrators of lies, manipulations, deception, disinformation or misinformation etc. It is rather about the inability to decipher them as doing such. It's mainly about how society and culture erodes a collective understanding and consensus of "truth", of "facts" and how we rationally reason in order to arrive at them.

What it means to live in a post-truth world is therefor not about the liars at the top, but rather that when truth loses meaning among the people, the liars at the top are able to gain power. They are the consequence and symptom of post-truth culture, and as such we won't get rid of them by treating the symptom itself...

...we need to treat the sickness.

Which is why it is so important not to overestimate the scope of our empirical "knowledge". What is real now might not cover what is real tomorrow. — Pantagruel

But that isn't a foundation for "anything goes". Science is a process, not a statement. It's the process of knowledge; what we know at this moment going into the next. The next moment we will know something else, something further and built upon yesterday's knowledge. But we are still using this knowledge to build, engineer and have agency in our reality. The fluid nature of science does not mean it is rendered irrelevant or lacking; it is the best tool we have against the chaos of human nature and our limits in knowledge. I'm merely pointing out the limits of our relation to the answers, that some answers require a drastic change in perception in order to know where to look and where to conduct the further research.

As I said:

politicians and demagogues are only as powerful as the people let them. — Christoffer

If the people succumbs to such terrors and suffering that things are on the brink of collapse... then collapse, and overthrow the government. My point is that there's a limit as to how much a government can wield its power against the people, at some point, the people fights back. Either it starts earlier, demonstrations and movements that put pressure on the government. I mean there's MILLIONS of people who could march on the streets. With enough bad stuff happening, what's the loss?
Yeah, the loss could be state violence, but that would only lead to a pushback with other means.

Must I remind that this happens in many regions and times in history? The apathetic and lazy will only be so as long as the status quo doesn't change. If the situation change so much it removes the security and wellbeing of the people, then what's the government gonna do against millions of citizens taking action against such policy?

And since the actual majority who voted on Trump seems to do it without buying into his fascist tendencies, they too will not accept what he does. When looking at it from this perspective, only the christo-fascists and christian fundamentalists are loyal to him. And they are a minority.

I wonder too about time, whether time at micro-scales is even a well-defined property. — Pantagruel

You got the Planck scale in which spacetime breaks down. But relativity is tricky on our perception and the well-defined becomes abstract concepts for that perception. By verification we know something is objective and tapping into that for inventions and engineering, it further verifies that our theories are correct. But it doesn't help for our perception and understanding as human beings...

We lack enough comprehension to fully grasp the implications of what we objectively know. And therefor we lack in the instinct which guides us towards further knowledge.

Bunge has some other remarkable observations, that energy is the only "universal physical property," for example. But what I like most is his conclusion that "the general concept of energy is so general that it belongs in metaphysics." Because it is so big that it overflows our scientific conceptions of it. — Pantagruel

Maybe a side note, but...

What usually comes to mind for me about energy is how scale influence the perception of entropy. We often think of an explosion as this violent distribution of energy, this extremely rapid dispersion and release of energy from it's matter-trapped form into heat and kinetics.

However... when you look at an even larger explosion, like that of a nuclear bomb, the perception of its scale is like watching a liquid slowly flowing through another medium, even if a nuclear bomb is many times more destructive than a regular small scale explosion.

If you then scale things up. The sun.

If you then scale things up...

The dispersion of energy, the entropic process of our entire universe is a form of explosion. Even if scientists aren't really looking at the Big Bang as an actual explosion, I can't get the concept out of my head that it wasn't an explosion, but rather... the entire universe acts as an explosion.

On this scale, just like a mushroom cloud feels like a slow process, our perception of the explosion is so limited that we aren't even looking at it as an explosion. Or fully understand the implication of it as an entropic process of dispersing energy until that energy settles into its most entropic end time; the heat death of the universe.

In what medium did it explode?

Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) today released the following statement in response to the outcome of the 2024 presidential election. — Banno

Watch the video I posted, he references it.

If you have further comments related to Lio's banning, say them. — fdrake

I'm not interested in discussing it with them at all, I just remarked that the decision to ban him has nothing to do with the forum being left-leaning or censorship as is being implied. But rather that he showed a failure to behave respectfully.

Here's a good take on the failures of the democrats.



As mentioned, the biggest problem with the democrats is catering to right wing voters just granting them a miniscule increase in voters, rather than forming a strong left narrative around things that a majority actually wants.

Most usually just talk about Trump and his people being stupid, but when it comes to marketing and forming a cohesive and strong marketing narrative to campaign on, the democrats are fucking amateurs.

The democratic party needs a total changeover. Take these four years and get rid of the centrist stupid people, find a candidate who's charismatic and gathered around just basic left leaning politics in economy and welfare. Produce a STRONG narrative in marketing with slogans that are quotable and that resonate with the voters who don't understand policy or politics in general.

It's like, minor parts of the democratic party that agree with this should just do a hostile takeover and put all the old demented idiots in retirement homes... except for Bernie. :sweat:

Lionino had a way of highlighting a left-leaning bias on the forum. — Leontiskos

Is it left-leaning to ban homophobia, transphobia and racism?

It's remarkable that being respectful in not promoting or doing such is considered "left-leaning". What does that make the right and conservatives? If you reduce actual living human beings down to categories of ideology and "agendas", then how is that different from when other certain historical movements did the same?

The proof is in the pudding, and if the pudding smells bad then throwing it away is not a political leaning, it's just basic human decency.

Politicians have tended to elected by their electioneering practices. They don't get elected by proposing well thought out policies. They get elected by dumbing it down - distilling it to sound-bites that are directionally congruent with policy choices, while spun to be appealing. So (for most), the voting choice is based on the superficial. The problem: this has created the opportunity for a man to run entirely on the superficial - honing the message to make it more appealing.

The proper solution would be for the population to delve more deeply, to try to understand the impact of what is said - to demand more detailed policy positions, and also to understand that even the best policies will also have some negative consequences. The problem is, this isn't going to happen. People don't take the time, or they lack the skills, to understand. We will perpetually be at risk of being victimized by demagogues. — Relativist

What you describe is our current post-truth environment. Above your post I've mentioned a few strategies to mitigate it.

The thing that is important to remember is that politicians and demagogues are only as powerful as the people let them. Even in states of high authoritarianism. What post-truth is doing is slowly eroding society into being more subservient to populists and demagogues, so fighting against post-truth is the way to heal back society into being more able and willing to put leaders under more scrutiny.

Movements can be run to fill the gaps that leaders don't take responsibility for. The key is for the people who haven't yet fallen into post-truth mentalities to organize and collaborate and install mitigation strategies against further erosion of knowledge.

Simply, get creative and organize, instead of waiting for someone to swoop in as some savior, there won't be one.

How do you propose to "/dismantle/ an ideology or behavior" without reaching people?

You can write a book where you "/dismantle/ an ideology or behavior" all you want, but if people don't read your book or don't heed it, how have you accomplished anything? — baker

Ok, now I get what you were asking. And it's the problem. If anything, it's a problem in society that I think should get more attention.

One strategy is marketing.
The only problem is that the reach of marketing as an educational form for the masses is very expensive as it needs funding that will never have any money-based ROI. We can argue that the ROI is rather that society will function better, but even the governments might not have the interest in it since much of their current policies and communication is now dependent on post-truth rhetoric while facts are only so good as those who can promote their own party.

Such marketing is sometimes done by organisations that work to mitigate and inform about disinformation and misinformation. But their reach is so limited that they drown in the current attention economy. So it would need billions in funding to reach large and wide and it needs to keep going for years in order to become part of societal norms.

Another is laws and regulations.
Stronger enforcements on social media platforms to mitigate spread of disinformation and misinformation. To mark not only disinformation, but also statements and info that are factual. It's also possible to criminalize participation in the spread of disinformation and misinformation; meaning, virally shared clips will charge everyone who spreads it, not just the initial source. If a 100 000 people spread it, they can be charged a fine. This would incentivize to better check what it is you are sharing and make sure viral clips, especially marked as factual or official, gets promoted. We can also enforce algorithms to not promote conflict language, as this has been used for algorithms as conflict language drives engagement. Promote level-headed discussions over conflict, even if it doesn't drive engagement as much; as well as promote people who generally has a better ability to form proper arguments (AI can analyze and form such an algorithm easily today).

That's just what I can think of, but there are so many laws and regulations that can be put into place that promote both verified information and better civil discussions, which helps form a better attitude and behavior around the concept of discussions that are civil and fact based. Flipping the current status quo of the worst shit being put at the top of the page and the better people and arguments being almost invisible.

Just think about this forum, there's no algorithm that promote certain language over others. Imagine if mostly the people who're referenced in the "Bannings" thread were the posts that dominated the front page and how that would affect the general language of others and how they treat arguments. It might be that we don't even need algorithms for promoting good behavior, ban promoting algorithms altogether and we will still get a better atmosphere on social media.

Another strategy is also a simple reform to education.
While schools under a good educational systems generally have critical thinking and media literacy built into parts of all parts of education, there may be a need to include critical thinking, media literacy and epistemology as a fundamental and large part of education overall. Education hasn't really kept up the pace with the rise of post-truth behavior, and so we need a much larger focus on forming a good protection against manipulation, propaganda, disinformation and misinformation, while forming an automatic response to statements that steers the person to fact check more often and not accept things at face value or just because the speaker is charismatic.

Failure of in education has also been attributed to why so many fall for leaders like Trump. But I want to take it further and improve even for those who get a good education. It needs to be even more focused on understanding all of this than just having fractions of such information spread out within existing curriculums.

---

I could go on, but the problem isn't that there is a lack of ideas, strategies or work that can be put into figuring things out, it's that there's not much push on figuring this out on a large scale, even thought this problem is on a global scale.

People are stuck within the post-truth behaviors, which means even the discussions on how to do this falls within similar bad faith arguments and ends up in irrelevant dismantling definitions among non-experts with the power to decide what to implement or not, and things stall and ends up not happening.

It kind of falls on those who can do this out of the will alone. Those who can start a non-profit to help work with this. But much of the funding for world scale changes is in the ten digits. No one will care until things collapse and people are forced to rebuild.

But we still need to do something.

Philosophers should know better than to try to reach people through arguments.

Most people respond to (perceived) status, not to arguments. Respect for power is paramount.

(This is true even in academia. Just imagine a student majoring in philosophy daring to disagree on a claim made by her professor in a lecture. This amounts to risking failing the exam.) — baker

I'm not sure how what you say connects to what I said there? What I'm saying is that the way to defeat populism and post-truth degrading of the importance of facts is to return back the status of truth and facts as the highest value and something to care for, not to misuse. Post-truth ideologies use bad faith arguments to reduce facts and truth down to imaginary relativities, making any statement that is actually based on facts into equal to a statement based on nothing but a made up foundation or misunderstanding of a source.

This isn't about reaching people, it's about dismantling an ideology or behavior that is the driving force behind the inability of people to gather around truth and facts about the world. Without that, society has nothing to build on and we erode any form of ability to have justice, health, economy, security or knowledge overall.

One example of this is how some would respond to a factual statement with "facts are just something that enough people agreed upon", not as a definition, but as an argument for why we shouldn't trust a fact. And this type of reasoning is done without any form of nuance with respect to evaluating the initial facts first or understand that consensus-formed conclusions made by experts in a field still is the most optimal way for how we humans form a body of knowledge and what we define as a scientific fact used to further build knowledge.

It's used as blanket statements, mostly by people deep into echo chambers, to dismiss any factually based reasoning. In essence, it is a constantly repeating weapon to shoot down anything that is a threat to their made up delusions about the world.

This has become the kind of behavior that feeds the post-truth society. In which experts are lowered to the same level as amateurs and no one either listens to actual facts, or has any ability to collaborate with other in the pursuit of actual truth. It's a breeding ground for conspiracy theories and an inability to see through lies of charismatic people.

When Trump blames the bad economy on Biden, that's a false statement that ignores the global reasons for inflation and the work Biden's government has put in to mitigate it. But the bulk of his voters (not the evangelical christo-fascists, but the seemingly normal voters) voted because of the economy, because they wanted Trump to fix "the economy that Biden destroyed". It doesn't matter if experts point out that this is a faulty narrative, it doesn't matter if they try to inform; the people do not value expert's input anymore because they have, through the constant erosion of definitions, lost their ability to spot when something is true, something is an actual fact, or how to check if something is.

It's basically a lynching of the concept of truth, facts, rational reasoning and scientific methods, all in favor of the masses sense of individualism forming an arrogance by making their ego feel like the protagonist who knows better than everyone else, rejecting any ideas that do not fit their world view by bad faith grinding down the defining elements of knowledge into absolute noise.

This has to stop.

The majority respond to populist, easy answers. They're not going to understand or want to hear complicated proposals that aren't going to give them everything they want. So the side that gives them what they want is the side that is going to win.

A bit of pragmatism over principle shouldn't be ignored. — Michael

The reason more and more respond to populism is due to the consequences of the rising post-truth environment. By aligning with what further enforces it, we're only digging that grave further.

We're not getting anywhere by using the tools that created this mess in the first place. We're only going to create more fact-resistant people who have no clue how to find out what's actually going on and the disdain for politics and people in power will only increase until there's nothing left.

It's absolutely the wrong path to lower yourself to their level. We need to get back to valuing truth, facts, science, research, proper journalism and rational reasoning over got damn reality television.

Can't you see what the actual consequences are for what you're proposing? How it's just further polarizing and feeding into the problems that is the foundation for the global rise of populist extremists?

You speak of pragmatism, but this is like saying that because they are extremists, we should be extremists. To be blunt, it's childish logic. And missing that upholding and elevating truth and facts back to its higher valued position as a foundation of society isn't a principles... it's defending the core of a functioning society. It's the foundations and pillars of a free society.

Your argument is unfortunately part of the problem. Keep lowering the bar until all we have are populists on each side, nothing gets done and people are left in a hell in which no one is able to find a trustworthy source of information for any actual truth.

Sorry, but in my opinion, that is an appalling scenario and I don't feel like people are really thinking things through enough when reacting to the rise of people like Trump.

You don't have to be a damn populist yourself to fight back against populism and fascism, you need to shout the truth as it is, in a raging fire! No one is doing this! And that's the problem. Everyone is catering to the manipulation of the stupid, everyone tries to trick people into a certain vote. Just tell the damn truth and make policies that actually help people and stop being afraid of the fascist monsters.

Just do the damn work instead of empty fluff talk, that's the democrats needed to fight the right.

What you are promoting is basically equivalent of carpet bombing the whole society just to win. Winning isn't enough, there need to be something left that wins.

Populism is fine, just so long as it's good policies. — Michael

I reject this on the basis that it's short sighted for short term effects. Because in the long term it's eroding society. Going low does not mean just catering to post-truth narratives and populism, going low can be political strategies in the halls of power that sabotage right wing policies.

But going "low" can also mean speaking the damn truth, not twisting and turning to try and cater to everyone. But straight up call out the consequences of right wing politics. Tell the people straight what the consequences are and what the democrats will do to stop it. It's not really "low", but it's saying the hard truth straight in a way that's not trying to compromise itself to death.

The democrats have nothing but meaningless fluff in their speeches and communication to the people. There's nothing to hang onto. Like, stop bullshitting and just say straight "we're gonna make healthcare free for all! Into the best healthcare in the world" and dare to actually make that into policy.

Why is the choice to go actual dirty the first strategy when failing to fight back against the dirty? Maybe they should try to actually go higher rather than just talk like they do.

They're not going higher, they never really did.

That just erodes truth more into the post-truth environment that makes people unable to know what is true and facts. We've already seen what catering to populist rhetoric to counter populists is doing to society... giving birth to more populists.

Fighting fire with fire needs to stop. There has to be a movement that rejects post-truth ideologies.

The likely outcome is that the administration will have meager results in advancing it's policies simply because of Trump himself. The last year of the previous administration is in my view telling about what Trump II administration will be. First of all, Trump will likely appoint yes-men and then get unsatisfied with their inability to get things done. Hence the Trump administration can continue to be a place where people go in and out. I assume Trump has lost his love affair with appointing military personnel into positions. — ssu

This time around he's surrounded not by yes-men, but by people of similar or worse ideologies. And the reason things didn't get done last time around was that the rest of the government could block his worst policies. This time, the house and senate are aligned with Trump and he's already been blessed by the supreme court that a president can do whatever he wants without legal repercussions.

Trump was weakened last time because he didn't have the same support around him as he does now. And he were going into a new election trying to appeal to voters he had lost. So he toned down his worst behavior.

What do you think will happen now that he does not have a new term after these four years? When he's aiming to replace the permanent staff in the white house (which requires policy change)?

He has nothing to lose and also almost no one standing in his way, as well as a hold on the supreme court that's going to back him up if he crosses the line.

It's nowhere near how it was the last time he was in office and I don't think people have really and fully understood this.

I'd wish that he's just gonna clown around and be embarrassing, but I fear he's become far more of a proper fascist these recent years as the world overall has adopted similar tendencies.

Just as people underestimated this election result, I don't think it's a good idea to just adopt a new set of coping mechanisms and arguments in which we ignore the possible consequences of these four upcoming years.

And perhaps the media simply won't give him the attention that he desires. — ssu

That won't happen... at all. American media is a market driven reality TV trash pile. It needs a reform into actual news. The problem with media, but primarily how media is in the US, is that they're desperately trying to compete with YouTube, social media and other online outlets. In doing so they've doubled down on the emotional, opinion driven bullshit and abandoned much of the investigative and critical force that were on the side of the people. They are only critical from an ideological perspective or market driven perspective, while trying to entertain in order to keep the attention of people.

What we need is organized, neutral and fact oriented media on YouTube. And while many have a presence there, I'm talking about big media channels that are respected and trusted by verifiable means. Something that fundamentally competes against traditional media, not in attention, but in quality that gains viewers long term.

But we also need to see the Democrats reform themselves. Get rid of the Clinton ties, put actual progressive politics into the forefront in order to exist FOR something and not just be the unmoving centrist "whateverist" that tries to win the votes of everyone.

If you try to please everyone you will please no one.

The Democrats need to be more left in their economics. They need to fight for free health care, need to be progressive in human rights, to help the middle class workers and don't ignore the homeless and opioid epidemic by just ignoring it. They need to be the party that help and enrich the majority of people and pushing back against the billionaire elits.

And they need to dare lose on those terms. Because this catering to the right wing voters to gain votes only seem to have gained around 5%. Compare that to how much voters on the left that they've lost due to abandoning more left-leaning policies.

The problem with Biden wasn't his age or anything, it's that he's an outspoken centrist. He rejects the more progressive left, he wanted to get into office in order "for the progressives not to destroy the democratic party".

But that's a fools errand.

There's nothing in the center but mediocrity. You don't have to be a political extremist to move society in a direction, you just need to have some direction.

If Trump and the republicans have fallen so far to the right they're basically becoming right wing fascists or christo-fascists, then the democrats can't solve that by also moving more to the right, they need to step more to the left. At least one step to the left of centrists.

When listening to someone like Bernie-Sanders, it's exactly the kind of left politics that the democrats need. The problem is that people are so politically illiterate that all they do is regurgitating influencer rhetoric against the kind of socialism he proposes, and in so labeling him as some kind of extremist. He's more in-line with the right wing politics in Scandinavia than anywhere near any communist socialist extremists. Any time that he speaks to actual people about their real world problems, it's like they get confused because of how rational his arguments and ideas are for actual working people.

On top of that, the democrats are so fucking bad at marketing. They're basically rich people trying to appeal to workers.



The democrats need to rid themselves of charlatans of left politics and actually have someone with more left leaning politics. There's a lot of people who want that kind of pushback that actually counters republicans... not just trying to get their voters.

On the other hand, there is a plethora of venomous far right keyboard warriors on the internet. — Jamal

I find it interesting that some people's defense of racist, homophobic, transphobic and fascist opinions and posts usually comes in the form of defending it for being conservative, right wing opinions.

Either conservatives and right wing people are really just all of the above, or they're so politically and ideologically confused that they can't see the difference between that and true conservative and right wing politics.

Beyond the historical extreme outliers of right wing ideologs, I thought conservative and right wing views were mostly about pro-capitalist, pro-market, family values, keep traditions type of an ideology. So, either right wing conservatives have collectively become totally delusional and there's almost no actual conservative right wingers left, or they've all just become racist, homophobic, transphobic fascists?

Why do conservative right wingers let themselves be represented by immoral haters and fascists? It's like having a large dinner with friends and one is just screaming racist remarks over and over and when someone wants him silenced, everyone is just, "just let him be, he's a friend too".

I wish the real conservative right wingers could just get their moral compass straightened out and distance themselves from this stuff.

But whatever, glad another is gone. Good job cleaning up.

I will note that the Trump phenomenon has normalised mendacity. — Wayfarer

In a post-truth society, the public have stopped pursuing truth, stopped listening to experts and scientists. Rather they let themselves follow whatever is emotionally satisfying, be it their own opinion or someone else's opinion.

Liars, scammers and manipulators have always existed, but the public have generally been able to arrive at the truth together, fighting back at the ones trying to scam their ways into power.

But in a post-truth society the public is in an intellectual disarray. They aren't able to organize around a truth or around some facts and thus will fail to keep demagogues and authoritarian grifters away.

This is why Trump is elected. The noise of post-truth society let's people like Trump do whatever they want and people will never be able to align around what they think about him. Only the ones who sees him for what he is are able to, but as we're seeing globally, more and more people are unable to do this.

It's one of the reasons why I am so focused on research, scientific methods and such in other arguments on this forum. Because people have lost touch with what rational reasoning really is. Whenever I see someone, in their argument, target scientists and their research with a vague concept of science changing all the time, and therefor "scientific research and findings can't be trusted", I know that I'm dealing with someone who has succumbed to the post-truth world.

It blocks any ability to progress ideas, to have proper discussions. Facts and truth are called into question so often that any attempt to form actual knowledge is futile.

The challenge, globally, is how we get rid of this post-truth bullshit. How research, experts, proper discussions, scientific methods and facts return back to normalcy and popularity again.

Instead of teaching people that all their opinions matters, teach them that facts and truth matters and their opinions are worthless without them. Make it embarrassing again to utter stupidity. Something that people look down on enough so that it hurts sociologically.

This inclusion bullshit of everyone's opinion mattering has shaped everyone into their own little expert who knows everything about everything.

It needs to stop, because this is what fuels the post-truth world that grifters like Trump feeds on. They won't disappear as symptoms until the root cause is treated.

How? I have no clue, but it's up to society to solve this. It's this that needs to happen. Everything else is just barking up the wrong tree.

1. As the U.S. scales back on environmental regulations, the EU could solidify its global leadership in climate action. This moment could further the European Green Deal and enhance the EU's position as a hub for green technology innovation and investment. By strengthening partnerships with like-minded regions (e.g., Canada, Japan), the EU could lead a coalition to tackle climate change and attract global investors focused on sustainability.

2. The EU could also capitalize on a more protectionist U.S. approach by attracting foreign investors looking for stable markets.

3. The EU can leverage its more stable stance to exert greater influence in institutions like the UN, WHO, and WTO. By doing so, the EU could shape international policy in ways that align with its standards on trade, human rights, and environmental protection.

4. Given Trump's prior skepticism toward NATO and multilateral security, the EU could take a stronger stance on European defense and autonomy. This might involve further funding for the European Defence Fund and strengthening PESCO (Permanent Structured Cooperation).

5. Policies may lead to a U.S. shift away from renewable energy production, possibly leading to increased oil and gas prices. The EU may want to fast-track its transition to renewables to mitigate potential price shocks and reduce reliance on external energy sources, especially in a time of political instability. — Benkei

Agreed. Nations in the EU might need to stop bitching around and start to face the reality that we all need to collaborate more, not less. Build up a proper position that can hold back Russia, China and deal with whatever shenanigans the US does.

A major hurdle is however that we have so little technology research and development. There's too much of a dominance from the US in terms of technology like AI. While people think AI is a fad, they're just judging the current appearance of it. But outside the public fluff it has major implications in both security and productivity. The EU needs to support technology development more.

Trump's vice president leans toward project 2025, which is about removing opposition to Trump from the federal government. Plus he favors dictatorship, so the coming years might be pretty interesting. More isolationism, maybe a transition to dictatorship by the end of the century? — frank

I don't think so. Post-truth can only survive as a society so far as to give people nothing for their devotion to bullshit. And any attempts to install authoritarian leaders by ripping the constitution and dismantling guardrails of democracy will lead to civil war before any such authoritarian regime takes place.

Another scenario is that the nation gets divided so much it actually breaks apart. With a Christian fundamentalist society spread across the deep red states making up a new nation, while the rest and blue states form their own. It's usually what happens if a divide gets too polarized and doesn't lead to civil war. So, in your scenario of dictatorship, it would be a nation with an authoritarian leader built upon Christian fundamentalism akin to Islamic fundamentalism in the middle east.

It could very well end up in a similar image of Margaret Atwood's Gilead.

While something like this shouldn't be brushed off as pessimistic fear mongering, I do think that such a future is unlikely. Primarily because there are enough people who don't want it and they are only passive about it until it seriously threatens them. If Trump tries anything drastic these four years, I believe there will be enough republicans who are rational enough to block it, since not all are Trump fundamentalists. And the blowback from these coming four years will likely spark a major return for the democrats in which they might realize how in danger the nation is, installing enough protections from leaders like Trump and maybe even reforming the democratic process nationwide to fit more up to date democratic systems in the world.

If there is a crisis, or civil war happening in the next 50 years, I think that the US will transform into a proper parliament and abandon the old system. The bipartisan system is so broken that it's not a democracy anymore and people are fed up with this "voting for the least bad" type of election.

People will get fed up with idiots running things, especially when the real consequences kick in.

A defeat for the US establishment is a win for the rest of the world. — Tzeentch

In what way?

Too much noise to do any predicting. I was hoping along with you. — Benkei

But the world is globally moving in the direction of post-truth behaviors. And in such a climate, you can't have an election if there are no laws preventing lies. Lies and opinions aren't the same thing. A post-truth world thrives in lies because voters doesn't care what is true, reasonable or good even for them, they go with the narrative that is emotionally good for them. This is what fuels people like Trump.

So there's no surprise that we see more of this. Economic turmoil and world uncertainty almost always generates a populist response.

The problem people have when trying to analyze the world is that their political bias also produces a cognitive bias. People leaning towards the left have been living in a delusional idea that things can't get worse. They believe that the good will prevail.

If there's one position where I've been trying to be for a long time, it's on the side of truth, to the best of my ability. That doesn't make me an unmoving static centrist, no, I think that this political categorization and labeling of everyone around us needs to fucking stop.

There's only two sides right now. The side of the lies, filled with populists, criminals, corruption, war and hate. And the side of truth, filled with rational reasoning, scientific methods and thinking, problem solving, humanism and collaboration.

What the post-truth world needs is better ways of streamlining how we reach truth. Better ways of how to cut through the noise of lies and bullshit in order to collaborate for a better future for all.

Right now, there are no tools of a democratic society to handle post-truth representatives and their followers, because the very thing that a democratic society was founded on were that people followed actual truth. When truth disappears because the tools of rationality and reasoning gets demolished, we also lose the foundation for a democratic nation to function properly.

In essence, democracies of the world today aren't equipped to handle a post-truth movement. It doesn't win on arguments for truth, it doesn't win on policy that are meant to improve society, it wins on noise, lies and a people who don't care about truth anymore.

What good is a democracy when no one votes based on truth and politicians don't have to fear any truths? In which you only have to be charismatic and make noise to win. Then the actual politics doesn't matter anymore. It's not an election about what matters for people, it's a popularity contest that risk people's lives.

I think the democratic world needs to wake up and look at the system itself. To stop thinking that just having a democratic system, regardless of its quality, is as good as it gets.

The world needs to politically evolve into caring more for truth. Otherwise we will all live in the utter chaos of a fully post-truth society where nothing matters to people and no one knows where to even begin to find answers to what's actually going on.

Ready for Trump 2.0.? — javi2541997

We don't know what that means. It could either be four years of non-stop clowning, with policies that just create chaos and a big pile to clean up for democrats in 2028.

Or he'll do by his word and play dictator. If so, I wonder how long it will take until politicians, even within his own party, will start to try and remove him. I mean, democrats can't do shit now, both the house and senate are there for him. And since the justice system have ruled a president can do whatever the fuck he wants, he can basically do what he wants.

In that case it will be interesting to see how long it will take before the more normal voters who voted for him will regret their vote... just like voters of Brexit now regret their vote.

Will it be when they realize that his tariffs will fuel inflation even more? When the cost of living skyrockets because more goods than they think are imported rather than domestic? And that the industry of building up industries in the US will not only force people off their lands to make space, take time to build up and still produce goods that are much more expensive than imported goods ever was?

And what will all of that do to the national dept? With the even further risk of the nation defaulting? Will he do a little dance on stage, fellate the mic and tell everyone that it is the "best default in history, not gonna lie, it is simply the best!"

Most people voted for Trump because of the economy. That's the level of stupidity here. And his voters are probably gonna feel the consequences the most.

What happens when enough people feel betrayed and let down by someone who promised them utopia? When the sand castle crumbles and he continues to dance on the ruins?

When people speak of the possibility of assassination. It is a highly likely possibility now. If there were attempts before the election, just imagine where we're going. And I don't think it will be anyone on the political left.

It will be a lone man on the right, who blindly believed in Trump but when he didn't fix the economy as he said he would, when he didn't make America great again and this man lost his marriage, his job to Musk's robots or extreme costs of production and all medical help is gone to treat his newly found tumor. He'll take the last bit of money he has left and buy an AR15 at a supermarket, with discounted armor piercing bullets and find a comfortable spot to die in, somewhere with a good line of sight.

The sociological mechanics and psychology of people that regret their vote can be dramatic. But Trump will only manage to hold onto these four years by not changing too much and mostly just clown around. If he starts to make drastic changes to the US, I don't see how else this will go.

I have a hard time seeing the people accepting changes that very well uproots the foundation of the US. It's either clowning around for four years, an assassination or a civil war. Those are the three paths. The fourth would be managing to fuck foreign policy so much that it ignites a larger war... or maybe that's exactly what's needed to teach the gullible voters how stupid they are? When their children are drafted into death by a clown.

Let's see how long it will take for the gullible voters to realize that Trump doesn't give a shit about them.

Because now they own everything and will have no problems installing whatever policy they like.

The rational concept is to never treat his voters as stupid. To listen and understand why they vote for him. But listening to voters outside the voting halls, in interviews that weren't pre-planned democratic hit pieces trying to find the bottom of the barrel... they're still not convincing me that they aren't stupid. It's just not as blunt as the Maga trumpsters being portrayed so far; it's more that they simply either do not understand the basics of economy or have any actual insight into the actual policies and politics that's been done.

So many people just don't understand why there's inflation. Some people think the Trump tariffs will grant them more income because they believe it's the other nations who pay them. Or that Biden's strategies to fight inflation was the cause of the inflation, not the Ukraine war and it's energy politics, and the pandemic screwing around with the global market.

I know children in school who learn this shit when they're around 12, who understand the basics of it.

If anything, this just confirms the notion that people are gullible and stupid. What's the point in listening to these people complaining in ways that have no relation to the real world? It's just emotional garbage reasoning, it's just biases and fallacies and a basic inability to have integrity towards manipulators. It's impossible to meet their wants and needs since they live on another planet.

We've had 80 years of processing "why the German people where so stupid in following Hitler", there's been literature, shows, theatre, movies and even video games handling the concepts and intellectual discussion with the public about why people follow charismatic leaders who doesn't give a shit about them.

Hell, THIS YEAR we had one of the biggest stories about this turn into a massive cinematic hit in Dune part 2, that is primarily about this concept. But in hindsight... there are so many people who just shouted "Lisan al Gaib" when watching the movie, believing in Paul in the same way as the fremen people. How the point of the story went right over the heads of the gullible... again.

No, these people deserve the sledge hammer of reality to the face. Maybe this time, when Trump policies aren't blocked by democrats in other sectors of the government; the people will actually, finally, open their fucking eyes.

How could your experience help you in a situation when the outcomes of options are not clear? — MoK

Because we're evolved beings and the evolution of our consciousness requires a logical reason for why it is as it is. That logic is not coming from nature just flipping a switch that let's it think about itself. It evolved an evolutionary trait; the ability to adapt to changing circumstances. The entire process we experience is setting us up with better and better capability to handle unknown situations. The more experience the better we survive. The more situations, the better we adapt. A totally unknown or uncalculated situation creates a fear; the fear of the unknown, which is probably the deepest emotional response we have outside sexuality. Why? Because it's our prediction not being able to handle a situation it has no clear generated model scenario for.

But even beyond that explanation, you don't even have to go into those details about our biology to find the simple psychological logic that it doesn't help us. Have you not seen enough examples in the real world of people who make extremely stupid decisions in face of an unknown situation? Our experiences are ALWAYS trying to navigate us through "a maze", it's how our consciousness works. Our decisions doesn't just stop being influenced by our past experiences because the choice is unknown. In the best case it's so unknown that our inadequate ability to decide in such situations makes us choose the correct path out of pure luck.

But let's say there's three such path choices and at the third choice there's a trap under the left path. If the person have no information prior to this and chooses left the first time. His brain will start to form all kinds of biases with that choice. So when he comes to the second choice he might choose left "because it seems that left is the safe choice" or choose right "because it can't be left over and over, it could switch between them" only to end up choosing left at the third choice going into the trap. We see this behavior in "game theory" all the time.

And that leads to a simple question: if the other two choices are influenced by that first choice, by the biases it creates in our decision making, then why would the first choice not be influenced by other biases prior to that point? It is illogical to view that choice as existing in a vacuum.

The problem is that your argument attribute a cognitive ability to process the world around you to something that doesn't have support in psychology or neurology. You need to ask yourself, where do choices come from? How do we, humans, make choices? If you can't incorporate all the science that's been done so far on the human brain and consciousness when trying to answer that question, you're creating a large gap in your argument that relies on a bad or incomplete interpretation of how we humans function.

Our choices do not appear out of nowhere. If so, how do you scientifically or logically explain that? As well as hold that idea up to all the scientific research so far?

I agree, I don't understand how so many people are calling Harris a winner at this stage. There's nothing that really points towards it. Remember that there's a lot of Trump voters who don't want to be open about it.

And usually, authoritarian people gain power when the world is in turmoil. People are gullible and believe that someone will come in and just "fix things" without any negative consequences.

So at the moment I think people need to come back down to earth and don't get the hopes up too much.

It’s amazing that when listening to Trump voters who are actually trying to make a rational case for their vote, most of them vote because of the economy. They blame Biden and Kamala for the increased prices. No one seems to understand why inflation spiked, why gas prices spiked and prices went up and no one seems to understand that Biden helped mitigate the effects of inflation and that the central bank is acting independently from the government to adjust the economy.

:shade:

I don't think Trump will win. — Manuel

People seems to forget that everyone said the same in 2016.

The lesson they’ll take away from this is that... — Mikie

People do not learn lessons on a sociological scale. Individuals learn lessons, if the population is inclined and willing to listen to those who learned lessons about past events, they can change. If they reject these lessons, they will repeat history.

Society didn't learn any lessons from WWII, individuals did and their lessons were taught to the rest. Fortunately those lessons shook enough to form a consensus on where history should go.

Today, however, people do not seem to listen to individuals who want to teach. People are so called, "fed up with experts". They will only listen when they, themselves, face the consequences that would gives the lessons the experts already learned.

For something like climate change, this is what will happen. People won't want any change until storms and catastrophes absolutely destroy their lives. When the heatwaves, hurricanes, floods and stuff keeps coming and don't stop. When relatives and friends die because of this, then they will start to learn the lessons. And when the rest of us have said "we told you so" and they finally agree, only then will change come into play... far too late to make a difference.

And seen as more and more individuals who learned lessons from WWII disappear, there's no wonder that the mechanics of what enabled WWII to happen will start to appear again.

The fundamental stupidity of humanity as a whole and over history is staring back at you.

They do not vote wishing their lives would be fixed but saved. The political slogans have mottos such as 'democracy is in danger' 'save America', 'Israel or Palestine existence' and the delicate topic of abortion and pro-life. One side of the voters thinks that if their opponents win, their lives are at risk. So do the others otherwise. — javi2541997

Doesn't matter. The principle I described is the same. Swing voters goes back and forth expecting change, but their lives do not change. All they're doing is lowering the propaganda narratives down to even further polarized language.

People don't know what they want in life, or what they need, people just dream nightmares or utopias and fall into the narratives of those who can scare or give them hope.

My point is that democracy isn't in danger... it's in some ways already dead. And people need to realize this in order to rebuild it.

I have a bad feeling people are just redoing the same mistake as 2016. I'm seeing a lot of "Trump is screwed" kind of material that just comes off as denial. As far as I can see, I'm seeing a lot of this day leaning in favor of Trump. So I'm already setting my expectations for a Trump victory. I'm not even sure I can end it with "if I'm wrong that's a nice surprise", which feels like a cop out. I can only hope that this time around, the Trump voters will suffer enough to understand that Trump doesn't give a shit about anyone but himself. The christian evangelists won't care, they're zealots, but he's not winning because of them, he's winning because of people who fall for propaganda narratives.

Actually, why does anyone ever think that their elected president is going to fix their life? So far, elections over decades just show how society swings back and forth. It's usually just about people having hope of change and getting disappointed. So they swing back and forth, without a thought in their head that their lives are unimportant to any president. That they're just meat to be herded.

The problem is direction, vision. There are no visions. True visions. There are just scam narratives. A true visionary president who has a real plan for making society better and people agreeing to that vision not out of propaganda, but out of a will to work for a change that is properly thought through. That will change things to the better.

But the system is set up to rewards scammers and narcissists, because those people knows how to play around with people's emotions rather than being forced to confront their intellect through systemic guardrails.

How I'd wish democracy was in actual serious trouble. To the point of people seeing that danger head on, not in some abstract analysis by experts, but in society. That way people would want to change the system because they would realize what the current system can lead to.

People are too comfortable at the moment.

Please just stop. Your constant attempts to rewrite things into Trump's favor borders on plain desinformation. I'm amazed that you haven't been banned yet because of this constant bs spamming, but I guess it's the lounge so anything kind of goes. But just so you know, outside of this, I'm not engaging with your posts. So you know you're wasting time with replying to me.

I don't think Trump is viewing himself as a fascist, I think fascism is the result of his views.

I don't understand women who would vote for him. Is it brainwashing? — RogueAI

Echo chambers, conspiracy narratives, christian evangelism, low education and so on.

The general human condition is that we are always prone to bias and avoid complex thought. It takes effort to stay educated and informed, to think and be vigilant.

Everyone is like this, which means that the general public are inclined to follow the herd, follow what emotionally feels right, and with the right narrative, truth and reality does not matter. It is relative.

To generalize... everyone is basically stupid and populists and demagogues take advantage of this by both constructing false narratives, appeal to emotion and flood elections with so much conflicting information that truth doesn't matter anymore.

It's why it's impossible to use rational arguments with these people. Within these groups, truth has eroded so much and been replaced by emotional chanting that it basically is a fundamentalist religion. If you listen to his crowds, they're chanting as a cult. Meaning, they don't even seem to understand what they're chanting, what the implications are of the words they say. They blindly follow him.

It's the same mechanics that transformed morally good people in Germany to follow Hitler into death.

And with online social media, the speed at which this stupidity spreads, there's no wonder we've seen an uprising of this type of mindless cult behavior in many countries around the world.

If you are a person with power and you reach out your hand to stupid people and tell them that they are the best people in the world, you're giving them dreams and hopes they have never felt. They don't understand world politics, they don't understand economics or the justice system, they are fundamentally lost in their existential struggles and then this powerful figure, who's name is on many things in society, who's up there at the top, but behaves just like them, reaches out a hand... it's like a divine experience to them.

It's the SAME mechanisms as cults. Someone with power who "sees you" and tells you that you are chosen to be the new elite and that everyone who called you stupid in your past will be punished. Every family member who cut ties with you will return back and tell you they're sorry for not believing you. You're part of the promised people, the kings and queens in the new world order.

I have no problem understanding why people follow Trump, regardless of his behavior. People are more stupid than they think and it demands effort to always be vigil of your own biases. These people have no such abilities and thus are open to a total annihilation of their inner agency, making them into zealots and drones.

That is a peculiar way to use the concept of prediction.  From my idea, prediction is always for the unknown future.  You don't predict how a cup of coffee will look like, when you are seeing a cup of coffee.   The cup of coffee is sending you a vivid and forceful image to your eyes.   You are perceiving it with certainty and realistic assurance for its existence.  Why do you have to predict it?   It is just a logical flaw and nonsense. — Corvus

You are literally calling predictive coding theory logically flawed and nonsense while I've already shared you some research papers and links to the actual science behind it. You're just getting lost in word definitions and use a simplified idea of what perception is. The neurological process that handles our consciousness is what makes perception happen. This process is a form of prediction algorithm in its function. Generating an internal concept of outside reality in which our sense information stabilizes it into accurate correlation with the outside world.

You are just saying that "we perceive the cup of coffee", that it's sending a "vivid and forceful image to our eyes". And how do you think our brain process that information? What happens with the photons that our receptors register? What happens to the nerve signals from our eyes? How does the visual cortex see anything?

Before you call actual scientific theories nonsense I think you need to engage with the material some more. You're looking at perception in the most simplified way, without taking into account how the brain process perception. And it's this process that predictive coding theory is about.

Without fully understanding what I'm actually talking about here it breaks apart further reasoning.
Repeating the most basic information again: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictive_coding

OK you say, you are using the concept of prediction differently to describe how you structure the images in your perception, and it is Scientific research.  But why would you do that?  Why do you have to change the meaning of the concept prediction in order to describe the perceptual process in that context? — Corvus

There's no changing the meaning of "prediction", you are misunderstanding how the term is used in this context and theory.

If you are seeing a cup of coffee from your memory, then logically you cannot fail to recall the factual past content of your memory when you are seeing it. If you are seeing an image from your memory, it wouldn't be just the object of the image, you would also see the background, material detail of the cup, the type of the coffee and where it was lying on etc etc. — Corvus

You aren't seeing anything. The internal image you "see" is a generated construct, a remix of different memories.

It's the reason why witnesses in court cases are considered very unreliable. Because the memory they recall is filled with errors, changing colors of jackets, changing clothes entirely, sometimes even environmental differences to the real place. It's why the legal process sometimes take witnesses back to the scene of the crime, trying to ground their memory in current sensory information.

The reason memories change like this is because they're not a solid stored information, they're a mental generative construct of reality. The more vivid the sensory inputs at the time we form memories, the more accurate those memories become. The cup of coffee you got on a wonderful vacation, staring out into the sunset as your loved one smiles next to you, with the smell of newly baked sweets at the café you were at can significantly ground your memory to that location, making it easier to recall. But if I ask you to remember a cup of coffee from a Thursday three weeks ago, it might be impossible for you to remember it and even if you remember it, you cannot be sure how other similar days of drinking coffee is affecting that internal image.

You are therefore never "seeing" anything in memory, everything is a construct, a hallucination. With deliberate recall we are hallucinating with the grounding of stored sensory memories, which are never as accurate as current real time sensory information in the present. But even in the present we are experiencing this construct of reality. The whole concept of optical illusions is based around how our mind is using predictive coding to form our perception.

Therefore you cannot see both at the same time:

As I said, the OP is not about how we form and see images from some scientific research. It is about how we see non existing images sometimes, and what is the nature of non existing objects. I have asked a few questions on the nature of non existing objects and perceiving non existing objects in my previous posts, but you have not answered any of them, but just kept going on about the prediction and hallucination. — Corvus

No, I've answered them. You are ignoring how perception actually works and keeps trying to get answers that aren't there. Like if the scientific research into the concept of perception isn't giving you the right answers. You are literally ignoring actual research here because you simply don't understand what it means.

You're stuck in wanting your questions to lead somewhere else, but the science of perception is right there pointing our that the problem is in your question, the premise of seeing non-existing images is not correct. We never see anything in our brain. Why are you stuck in this loop of thinking? Your question relies on a false premise.

You must be aware of the fact that scientific research explanations and theories are not all eternal and infallible truths. When new research and experiments prove otherwise, the present scientific theories and principles are destined to collapse. That is the way scientific explanations work, and you have to be always open minded on the scientific explanations and answers on the abstract topics. — Corvus

But predictive coding theory has empirical evidence and experiments behind it. I don't know why you aren't actually engaging with the material provided? This is just a cognitive bias in which you try to argue against the concept of science itself because it threatens your line of thinking.

Being "open minded" does not equal ignoring the science that oppose the ideas you have, it is about the opposite of that. Being open minded is to understand that new information expose flaws in your thinking and ideas, and when you need to gather more information about a subject before continuing. I've provided tons of information here, including links for further reading and you just put on the blinders and regurgitating the initial question over and over, demanding answers that aren't there.

Philosophy is not about accepting and adopting the scientific explanations into their inquiries without analysis, logical and critical reflections. — Corvus

Where did you get that idea? You think philosophy does not rely on facts?

Sorry, but what you're doing now is grasping at straws trying to justify your originally flawed question. You're trying to redefine how science, facts and philosophy functions because what's being said here doesn't align with your question and the answers that you want.

I recommend you to sit down and read up on the science of perception and cognition. Take time in studying and be open to abandon ideas that does not work.

Otherwise you are not doing philosophy at all, you're just trying to fight for a fundamental belief you already have. Accept the cognitive dissonance you experience and let it guide you to study further.

Otherwise you're going to get stuck and never evolve intellectually.

I used the maze example to ensure our past experiences cannot affect the decision. — MoK

Doesn't matter, being human means having past experiences and even if those past experiences seemingly have nothing to do with the choice at hand, as I described, there are always factors that pull towards a choice. Even if the line of causality is quantifiable, the mechanisms of how we choose are far more elaborate and complex behind what we're conscious of.

The example can be used as an analogy for a philosophical concept, but it can't be applied to human choice in reality as everything in our past affects our choices. And the feeling of doubt is seemingly pointing to a lack of, or contractionary memories enough to form a cognitive dissonance between the two paths, stalling the predictive function that underpins our cognitive functions. It can lead to people using seemingly nonsense reasons to choose a path, even if they're not aware of it. A headache on the right side of the head, choosing the left path; a smear of different shade of the stone on the walls of the right, choosing that one. None of it really conscious, but becoming the only correlation we have to what's stored in our memories and in such doubt lead to our instincts choosing whatever have some correlation, even if that connection is absolutely irrational. Therefor we cannot really make internalized coin tosses for choices as everything we do that we think comes out of random choice is never random for us. And none of this is a conscious process we are truly aware of while acting and navigating reality around us.

Or does some internal neural mechanism in your subconscious "toss a coin"? — jgill

I think MoK is saying here that if you know the outcomes of a decision, you can form reasons for acting in a certain way. This means the act is not free in the sense that reasons impel us to act in one way or another - the brain is deterministic, and the reasons arise from the brain.

Alternatively, when you are ignorant and have doubt, you can choose freely because reasons do not impel you to act in a certain way. However, since the brain is deterministic, this free act must arise from a mind that can freely choose. — ToothyMaw

Exactly right. :100: :up: — MoK

Coming from another discussion about perception in which I went into the up to date research on consciousness with "predictive coding". If our mind creates a mental representation with generative means for the purpose of prediction, then our mind will always strive for predicting the best outcome.

A person with a certain irrational belief might have their brains predict, even on an unconscious level, that "left is always the right choice", regardless of the random nature they're presented with. Imagine if there were two forks and the first reaffirmed that left was true, such a person would choice left without a doubt, even if it's wrong.

The issue with the doubtfully ignorant choosing freely is that a choice which we cannot find reasons for, even a random internally manifested coin toss, is never actually random. We always choose out of bias and this bias is always a sum of our prior experiences forming a present predictive function for our navigational actions. Therefore, we always make an "informed choice", even when we don't have enough information or an experience of making such choice out of information.

So doubt can be described as our predictive functions having to decide between choices too close to each other in nature, forming a fear response as the decision takes longer than other choices. However, we are always deterministic regardless of what is happening and we're always leaning towards some path based on the sum of prior experiences.

Predictions are overtly conscious and intentional on the events, movements of objects or functional processes which are uncertain in their results. It sounds illogical and unsound to suggest that our brain keeps making predictions just because it is their nature to do so. — Corvus

I think you are severely misunderstanding how this works. I suggest that you engage with the scientific material surrounding predictive coding theory.

The best way to describe it is through a comparison to how the AI models operate today. People saying they just collage together other images do not know how these neural network models work. They essentially "dream" up images based on their training data. Constructing something never seen out of the decoding of massive amounts of data through a prediction process. Predicting based on a construct concept of what such an image should be looking like. Effectively hallucinating forward an image by predicting every single part that makes up the image.

This AI has never seen a white tiger. Yet here it is in front of predicting what badly drawn tigers should look like.



Increasing this complexity to function real time in which a constant feedback of sensory data grounds this process and does it over time forms the perception of seeing the world. If the AI model is grounded by the prompt that's written, the sensory data grounds each moment in time for the hallucinated constructed concept of the world around us.

What you are describing is the mental deliberate predictive action of us as individuals, not the fundamental process of how we function. Those are two very different forms of predictions. What you are describing is more akin to what I described as how we are able to tap into this process when using our imagination, but at its core it is also the foundation of all perception and thinking.

Prior to your seeing something from your memory, you must be conscious of the content of your memory. You cannot see something from your memory, if you cannot remember what they were.
Seeing hallucinatory images from one's past memories is what is happening in one's dreams doesn't quite assuredly explain the nonexistent objects appearing in dreams, if the dreamer has never seen, encountered or experienced the object in his / her life ever. — Corvus

Here you are also looking at the concept of "hallucination" in the textbook description of it, not as what it means as a mental process. Our entire experience is a hallucination that our brain is constructing, it is perception itself. The hallucination of dreams and psychedelics is only the version of that hallucination that isn't grounded by our real time sensory data grounding it through correlation.

And you are never seeing anything original, ever. Everything in our dreams is a construct, a collage and combination of concepts and previous memories flowing together through a predictive process that is lacking grounding.

Saying that you are seeing something truly original is just believing in the illusion that you do. There are no original things within us, there are only remixes.

The problem with your argument is that it relies on a false premise of our mind being able to construct something that has never been. But everything we perceive as deliberate imagination or dreams is always just a remix of our memories.

If I imagine a shortnecked giraff, my brain is using its predictive generative ability to generate an internal image that is based on my memories of a giraff and my memory of spatial relations in 3D space. It then predicts this scenario within me and I see something that doesn't exist in the real world. But it's all drawing from memory. And it's drawing from memories of other animals or objects that aren't long, that have a different form, a dog doesn't have a long neck; fusing together a prediction of what a giraff with a short neck like other animals having short necks.




And it extends to other memories as well. Not everything is constructed of visual memory. We have memory of tastes, sounds, we have memory of previous constructs as well. When we imagine something, we add that to our memory as well.

Everything is a constant stream of updating parameters that is the foundation of our brain's hallucinated perception of life as a whole.

You say, that your explanations are from the scientific research on the topic, but it seems to have basic logical flaws in the arguments. Blindly reading up the scientific explanations on the topics, and accepting them without basic logical reflections on their validity appears to be unwise and unhelpful for finding out more logical explanations and come to better understanding on the subject. — Corvus

What are you actually saying here? Are you saying it's a logical flaw that I create an argument that has roots in actual research? Even providing links to that research?

That reasoning is an ironic fallacy. You basically call the correct argumentative process of forming premises out of actual facts and research "blind", while at the same time provide arguments that even admits to be blind to how things work:

I am not too sure on the details of technicality of hallucination on why and how it occurs. But that is my idea on it. — Corvus

The validity of what I say is rooted in the research, facts and empirical tests that has been done on consciousness and how our mind works. It's the research itself that forms the validation.

Where else do we find validation for the premises of an argument in this? I fail to understand the logic of what you say here. It mostly seems like you attack the scientific research because it comes into conflict with how you think and engage with the subject. But, sorry to say, you have to.

Because if you ask these questions and the research provides you with the latest answers out of the research that's been going on for over a hundred years on the subject, then what do you have to support the skepticism against those findings?

You have a lot of research you can read up on, I'm pointing towards the body of evidence, so what's your counter argument against all that? I'm not blindly accepting these research findings. I understand their implications and that's what I'm drawing on to make my argument.

I've answered your questions many times over now, but it seems like you simply don't like the answers and it seems like you rely on the answers being something else and want to force forward answers that does not conflict with the implications of your initial questions.

If that's the case, it's impossible to engage with the question without you rejecting everything that doesn't support a satisfying conclusion you already seem to have.

Basically, we do not form original, novel images in our mind, deliberately or unconsciously. It's all a remix under the illusion of us being free in thought. We are not free, we are pushed by causes that forms these remixes and nothing is truly original. Your question is therefor faulty in what it asks for as it relies on an assumption that isn't true. You are looking for an answer to a faulty question and the only thing anyone can do is to answer the real question; how these imagined concepts form within us, which I have answered to the best of my ability out of the entire scientific field that researches this very question.

Predictions usually happen when the result of some events, movements of objects or processes are unknown to the predictor. But in visual perception of a cup of coffee, result of the perception is irrelevant with the unknown-ness or uncertainty. This tells us prediction is not relevant in most daily visual perceptions. — Corvus

The example with the coffee cup is an extremely simplified version of what the prediction function is in order to explain the process.

The prediction function is a constant flow, it has nothing to do with the known or unknown state of something. Studies on infants show how the mental models of their surroundings are incomplete, but quickly forms into rudimentary predictive navigation as they grow into young children. Every human start out in this extremely basic state in which our brain is gathering enough neural paths to conduct basic spatial and social navigation through predicting future states in time. But as we grow older, it forms an exponentially growing complexity not only to navigate spatially and behaviorally, but conceptually. We begin to form a sort of rudimentary control over the prediction process in the form of imagination, helping us to test scenarios for navigation through unknown territory. However, this imagination is built on previous knowledge and correlations between previously mental models of scenarios and objects.

The prediction function is not a detached function of our brain like the visual cortex, it is the fundamental function of the entire brain. It fundamentally is our brain.

I recommend that you read more about it because I don't think you grasped the concept fully yet. It's not a part of our cognition... it is our cognition.

The OP is also about "non-existing objects" and existing objects. How do we perceive non-existing objects, and what are the nature of non-existing objects? How are they different from existing objects? — Corvus

I don't see how this isn't answered? How we perceive non-existing objects has already been answered. It's a hallucinatory flow of predictions detached from sensory inputs and composed by a collage of previous experiences and concepts of objects that we have stored in memory. The nature of them is that they are hallucinations detached from sensory information or minorly influenced by it while imagining or hallucinating in an awaken state. Internally they differentiate to existing objects in that they are pure memory information formed into prediction calculations by the brain that detaches from sensory grounding, transforming memory representations of real objects into a malleable conceptualized mental model that can be reshaped internally. During dreaming, this process happens without our ability to control it, since the flow of this collage of memories flowing together is influenced by the brain's process of fusing long term memory with the new short term memories.

You are essentially asking for a summery of the entire field of perception and cognition and I'm trying to make a short simplified description, but you have to engage with the material fully to understand the answers to your questions.

I'm not sure what else you're asking for, because with this field of science in mind, the answers are somewhat clear or at least rationally explained enough by the current understanding of our consciousness and how we function.

Do you mean that we never see a real cup of coffee, but images of constant steam of information from your memory, which is a hallucinatory state of predictions?

I recall debating on this topic before. The direct realists would say, you are seeing a cup of coffee in front of you, and indirect realist would say, you are seeing a sense data of a cup of coffee which seems sounding similar to your suggestion. — Corvus

Both speak of two sides of the same coin, neither is correct in just their single concept. And the third part is the prediction function which they don't even include.

We need to see the system as a whole of different parts. We do have a real sensory, raw data flowing from our registration of photons and molecules, this is as real as a still camera registering signals ont he CMOS sensor into raw data.

Then we have a visual cortex and parts of the brain directly processing visual sensory data .

However, that is not enough on its own. In order for our brain to make sense of this sensory data it needs to correlate it with something it already knows, so it correlates it with memories of cups of coffee, every map of neurons possible for that concept in order to verify that it is a cup of coffee. The map of neurons firing out of the sensory data is essentially being correlated with the map of neurons firing out of memory.

If it marches up, it transforms into an internal image that is basically an hallucination of all our stored memories of cups of coffee being hold into place by the raw sensory data creating a bias towards the specifics of that real time current stream of sensory data.

In essence, if the cup is blue and it steams in the rays of window sun, this data produces a bias towards similar concepts in our mind forming an interplay between memory and raw sensory data that generates this internal image.

And over time our mind uses this interplay to predict the next moments in time by constantly using our memory of cups of coffee as a foundation for that prediction and rooting a bias of that prediction with the sensory data and possible scenarios of the future for that cup of coffee, forming an illusion of motion ideas of navigation going forward.

This process seems simplistic, but if you expand and include every single object, every single memory, everything that makes up the internally formed memory and possible predictions about everything around us, it starts to form a basic structure of how humans navigate with their consciousness.

On top of that, the very act of this interaction with this blue cup is in itself adding new memory data for future events. Meaning that every single second we are gathering extreme amounts of memory into our short term memory.

This is then sifted through and organized during sleep, with similarities in situations being shaped as stronger biases for better prediction functions in similar situations. Meaning, if you work as a barista and handle cups of coffee all day long for many years, your mind is essentially an expert on anything related to the concept of navigating "cups of coffee" around you as you have formed so much memory about cups that almost any scenario can be predicted by your brain.

It's why we can experience things like "flow", or automatic behaviors like juggling. Because the training has supercharged our predictions about those specific objects around us, giving us the ability to function beyond having to think about them in the moment.

And when we sleep, our mind is essentially cutting off the sensory data and starts to "play around" with predictions based on primarily the new memory data we gathered during the day. A form of testing ground to compare the new data to old data with a free form trial and error of prediction actions onto these memories. Which finds support in how dreams behave; usually forming around recent events, but at the same time lifting out old memories or people from long past because our mind is trying to categorize a new memory to what it things is a close match in the neural mapping between the old and new memory.

You say it is a scientific facts, but is it tested, and proven fact? Or would it be just another hypotheses how seeing works? — Corvus

It's based on the most recent research on how our consciousness works. It's not a single fact, it's consistent of a number of facts with a number of observations and hypotheses. There are a lot of tests done on our cognition, both neurologically, behaviorally and sociologically that form specific areas of proven concepts that are then put into a holistic hypothesis and new research.

When I say it's the latest research in science it's what's the most up to date. And it is the least speculative of all speculations surrounding our consciousness and how our perception, experience and how dreams work.

I'm just drawing up an extremely simple description of all this with predictive coding at the center, but it's a concept that gathers many fields into one holistic form. If you want to check out the underlying idea more here's some more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictive_coding
And there's more to go from there, check the hyperlinks etc. And there are many research papers on the subject if you search for it and then follow citation hyperlinks for further papers.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-022-01516-2
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10339-016-0765-6
https://arxiv.org/abs/2107.12979
To mention just a few.

But there's a large body of research, empirical tests as well as theoretical concepts out there about this.