What metaphor? I was responding to your single statement that did not include anything else. Did you even read the post you were responding to?

A fantastic question that likely requires its own topic. Why does society enforce prejudice and stereotypes when it comes to sex? I imagine its a combination of many things from sexual dimorphism emphasis, power dynamics, and sexuality. There is a thin wall between biologicaly expectations of a sex vs gender expectations of a sex as well. We are very willing to accept biological expectations, and perhaps its easy to cross over into sociological expectations because of it. — Philosophim

It becomes easier when the expectation is enforced over generations. Being a woman eventually becomes more than just having certain biological parts, it now entails wearing a dress, makeup, etc. This is where transgenderism makes its mistake - in assuming that society is defining a woman as someone with not just the biological characteristics, but the expectations as well. But society is not saying that (and people that use language in this way are misusing it) wearing a dress makes you a woman. Society is saying because you are a woman, you wear a dress. In a society that expects, and enforces, people to wear clothing, we need a way of distinguishing between males and females for the purpose of mating. Society is not saying that to be a woman you must wear a dress. Transgender people are misinterpreting what society is saying, and trans-people are identifying as an expectation, not as an objective, biological entity.

Trans exists and is popular because exogenous (bio-identical) hormones exist and you can artificially induce intersex conditions. That is why the discussion exists and trans will continue to exist in the future unless the tech is taken away which is what conservatives are trying to achieve.
If has nothing to do with sexism. — Forgottenticket

All you are doing is conflating sex with gender, so of course gender as the same thing as sex can't be sexist. It is gender as societal expectations that are sexist.

Trans exists and is popular because exogenous (bio-identical) hormones exist and you can artificially induce intersex conditions. — Forgottenticket

Which means that those hormones have nothing to do with defining one's sex. Humans have other hormones other than testosterone and estrogen and they are not defined as sexual characteristics precisely because both sexes have them in roughly the same levels.

100% agree. But that is not the society we live in. — Philosophim

It is the society we should be striving for.

As I have said, expectations have changed. Having long hair is no longer considered feminine. We were headed in the right direction until the left saw another group of victims in the trans community to use for their own ends. The left just jumped on the trans bandwagon without fully understanding what was being said, or the ill logic of the arguments being made. It wasn't about logic and reason to them. It was about having another group of victims to use as a weapon against the right.

Society in general is a combination of individuals who have varying degrees of discomfort with crossing gender divides in public. — Philosophim

This leads me to ask, what kind of expectations are we talking about here? Are people jailed for wearing clothing inappropriate to one's sex? If not, is it fair to say that society has no expectations of the sexes? What is an expectation that isn't enforced? Society might not enforce the dress code but there are still people that may judge, but that is on the level of individuals, not society.

The purpose of the term transgender for transsexuals is to hide the term 'transsexual' as that has a largely negative connotation in society. Transgender is seen as more normal, as everyone crosses the gender divide at times, and some people just like to cross a little more right? So much more that they need to try to change their biology and be seen as the other sex. — Philosophim

If everyone crosses the gender divide then that means the society is gender neutral and that there is no such thing as gender as everyone in the society wears what they want regardless of their sex, and there are no expectations of society for people to act differently because of their sex. You are conflating transgenderism with gender-neutrality. As I pointed out - transgenderism's existence depends on a society having sexist expectations. If there are no more expectations then there is no gender (based on your own definition of gender as societal expectations of the sexes).

If you are not educated in classical philosophy, then you are excused for not being acquainted with the cosmological argument. However, I am sure you are fully aware of your own ability to choose. Do you not see how this is incompatible with materialism? Or do you really believe that the laws of physics can explain why you choose to do what you do? — Metaphysician Undercover

I agree that materialism is false, but not that free will is evidence of it being false.

Why do you choose to do what you do? What it the decision making process like for you? Don't you have to first be aware of the situation you are in and then aware of options to respond to the situation, and if you have enough time (as time limits the amount of options you can have at any moment before the power of decision is taken from you) go through each option, predicting the outcome of each option and then choosing the option with the best outcome? It isn't much different than how a computer makes decisions with IF-THEN-ELSE statements. IF this is the situation, THEN think about the outcome of option A, ELSE try option B. Learning entails repeating these steps over and over - observing the situation, responding, observing the effects, responding again, etc. until you've mastered the task.

People that know you will can actually predict what you might do or think in some situation, effectively making you predictable.

I see better evidence against materialism in the way science describes matter as the interactions, or relationships, between smaller "objects", which are themselves just more relations between even smaller relations. Where is the material when all we find is relationships/processes when we dig deeper into nature?

I think I've equated it with the eye's inability to see itself. — Copernicus

Ever looked in a mirror?

AI has none of that, so when it starts using its own material as its input, errors are multiplied like those of inbred genomes - only much faster. — unenlightened

AI gets its information from scraping public websites. It does not make up its own data.

AI is trained using various methods that resemble how you acquire and process information.

Sure, AI is like every other source of information that needs to be verified and cross-referenced. Just as we take what people around here say with a grain of salt, we do the same thing with AI. Many people on this forum don't seem to have any inclination to verify the information they are posting no matter the source, and there are some that cannot argue against what was said and resort to attacking the source or the person instead of the argument.

Will that cell generate consciousness? — Copernicus

That's the question: what makes carbon-based life so special to generate consciousness when carbon is just another physical element. Cells and organs, like brains, are all "physical" objects. How does a brain, or its interaction of neurons generate the feeling of visual depth and empty space?

Complexity doesn't seem to solve the problem. It's this dualistic discrepancy between how the world appears and how the mind is. No matter how far I dig into your skull I'm never going to view your view, yet it is the one thing I know exists (at least for myself). Why is that? Why don't I experience the inside of my brain like you would if you dissected it? I don't experience a visual representation of neurons firing in certain patterns. I experience sounds, empty space, smells, tactile sensations, and feelings.

Isn't a possibility that I'm not seeing the world as it is - as physical objects. My mind is more like how the world is - a process - and its processes all the way down, not physical stuff, and we are confusing the map with the territory.

If the mind emerges from physical processes, consciousness should, in principle, be reproducible by any sufficiently complex physical system. Yet, only cellular life forms display sentience and sapience—suggesting that the cell marks a boundary between living and non-living matter. — Copernicus

If we can reproduce intelligence "artificially" then why not cells? One might say that cells are simply the path to the more complex arrangements of matter, and there might be higher forms of life that are even more complex made of different elements. I'm not a chemist but I believe it has something to do with the amount of bonds carbon atoms can have lending to its versatility. I'm not sure if there are any other elements that share this same characteristic.

Humans play a role in natural selection. Humans are the outcomes of natural processes and the things we do and create are natural. The term "artificial" is based on a idealistic projection of humans being special and separate from nature. "Artificial" life could be the actual next step in the nature of this universe. As forces of selection ourselves, we are shaping the next generation of life in the universe.

The question now is do we have a Butlerian Jihad and change the focus of selection back to ourselves? What if we genetically engineer ourselves to be able to have AI-like speed and knowledge? What if we integrate technology with biology, say have wireless interfaces in our brains that connect directly to the internet (Star Trek Borg?)?

We're going in circles. The paper is not about qualia, it is about the first person view, and Chalmers says that the hard problem boils down not to the problem of qualia (which is difficult to explain only because it is complicated in humans), but to the problem of first person view, which seems not problematic at all. — noAxioms

I see the problem as confusing the map with the territory. In talking about the first-person view we are talking about the map, not the territory. In talking about what the map refers to we are talking about the territory and not the view. The map is part of the territory and is causally related with the territory, which is why we can talk about the territory by using the map.

The problem comes when we project our view onto the territory as if they were one and the same - as if your view is how the world actually is (naive realism). Indirect realism is the idea that your map is not the territory but provides information about the territory thanks to causation. The effect is not the cause and vice versa.

The monist solution to the problem comes in realizing that everything is information and the things you see in the world as static, solid objects is just a model of other processes that are changing at different frequencies relative to rate at which your eyes and brain perceive these other processes. Slower processes appear as solid objects while faster processes appear as actual processes, or blurs of motion.

Could anyone have made a different choice in the past than the ones they made? How would I know the answer to this question? — Truth Seeker

Take any choice you made in the past as an example. What were the reasons you made that choice? If given the same reasons would you have made a different choice? How and why?

It seems to me that you only realize you could have made a different choice if you had access to different information, or reasons, than you did at the moment you made the choice. As such realizing you could have made a different choice always comes after the fact that you made the choice and now know the consequences and other possible choices that could have been made (more information), that was not available at the moment of decision.

So no, you could not have made a different choice because that would have meant that you had different information than you did when you made the decision.

Only if one is in some position of power or a member of an elite. Like there are photos on the internet of some fancy banker who is evidently a man and goes to work in a skirt and high heels; or some male members of the elite who wear high-end fashion skirts.

But if an ordinary man were to wear an ordinary skirt, it would be just foolish, inappropriate, certainly not gender-neutral.

Things that are okay for the upper class are not automatically okay for everyone. — baker

This might have once been true, but now anyone can claim (even if you were a man that was just convicted and being sent off to prison and now want to identify as a woman) to be the opposite sex and they get all this special attention and treatment.

All society has to do is abandon these sexist expectations and then transgenderism no longer has a leg to stand on. Transgenderism only exists in societies with sexist expectations.

A clarification. Crossing the gender line is a transgendered act. This is independent of one's own viewpoint. If one purposefully commits a transgendered act, knows and accepts that the action belongs to the gender of the opposite sex, they are purposefully being transgendered. If a person commits a transgendered act, but doesn't accept that the action belongs to a gender, then they are being gender neutral. — Philosophim

This completely ignores the fact that society's expectations have changed. Having long hair and wearing earrings is no longer considered feminine, so a man that grows their hair long and wears earrings is no longer transitioning because those traits have now been taken off the table of transgenderism. The members of Motley Crüe were not transitioning to females. They were going against the grain (the social expectation), breaking down the sexist barriers and making a statement that MEN can have long hair, not that they are now women with long hair.

Gender is a fine line between expectations and sexism. Gender is mostly in the realm of pre-judgement, or prejudice. Healthy gender is typically a one step away from biological differences. Unhealthy gender is farther away from biological differences and is used for control. This is what we would call sexism. — Philosophim

Transgenderism is putting people in boxes based on their biology when those boxes have nothing to do with their biology, just being racist is putting people in boxes based on their skin color when the boxes have nothing to do with their skin color. There is nothing that prevents men from growing long hair or wearing earrings, but there are things that prevent a man from getting pregnant.

I spent the last hour composing a post responding to all my mentions, and had it nearly finished only to have it disappear leaving only the single letter "s" when I hit some key. I don't have the will to start over now, so I'll come back to it later. — Janus

Ctrl+Z

I think this is the fundamental problem. AI does no research, has no common sense or personal experience, and is entirely disconnected from reality, and yet it comes to dominate every topic, and every dialogue. — unenlightened

If AI was disconnected from reality then how can it provide useful answers? What makes AI useful? What makes any tool useful?

I wonder if they think that using a calculator to find an answer to an equation falls into the same category. You didn't determine the answer, the calculator did and you are just posting what is displayed on the calculator's screen.

I don't agree—"one's post"?...if one is not the source of the post, then it is not one's post. — Janus

Then you must also believe that using a long-dead philosopher's quote as the crux of your argument, or as the whole of your post, is also an issue.

You seem to misunderstand the purpose of language - especially philosophical discussions. The point of any conversation is what the scribbles refer to. It does not matter what words are used if they end up making the same point - whether I chose my own or AIs they both say what I mean to say.

You seem to be making a mountain out of mole hill. If someone uses a thesaurus to find alternate (maybe even more intellectually sounding) words to what they currently have in their draft, is that the same thing? Would you respond to someone that sounds less intelligent, or may in which English may not be their native language, less than someone that is not? And if another poster came along and said the same thing but with different, more eloquent words, who would you give credit to the idea?

It is the idea that we should be focusing on here in a philosophical discussion, not the words used to convey it because the same idea can be put in different words. If not, then how can we agree with each other when I might not have put what you said in the same words?

Ah, but the thing i find unsettling is that A.I. is also dishonest, it tries to appease you. However, yes, sometimes it is better than the weirdness of real humans. — ProtagoranSocratist

I don't see AI as being intentionally dishonest like many on this forum do. Once you find a fault in AIs response you can usually address the issue and AI ends up acknowledging that it might have made a mistake and it offers alternatives. I was even able to get ChatGPT to admit that it might be conscious. What does that say about those in this thread getting their underwear tied in a knot over AI responses but not when it comes to using some long-dead philosopher's quote as the crux of their argument?

That is my point - that you can only make that judgement as an autonomous entity yourself - by imposing one's own judgements based on one's unique experiences.

Even a community is a amalgam of individuals that have chosen to live among others that share the same values, or one where one person, or a select few get to realize their own autonomy and manipulate others to do their bidding (which is what we have right now in the current two-party political climate in the U.S.). In many nations - one person makes all the decisions and they simply have acquired enough power to make everyone else fall in line with their wishes.

True political autonomy comes by abolishing political parties, imposing term limits on all politicians and taking money out of the campaign process.

Correct, gender is a culturally subjective expectation of the behavior that a person should do in regards to their sex. This differentiates from objective behavior in regards to one sex such as bodily functions. The subjective notion may be within an individual, a small group, a city, a country, or world context if possible.

For example, wearing a skirt in America is expected to be worn by females, not males. If a male wears a skirt, they are acting in a transgendered way. They understand the culture views this as clothing that is expected to be worn only by females, and as a man they actively choose to wear a skirt despite knowing this.

Contrast this with Scottland where men are expected to wear kilts, which is basically a skirt. Wearing one fits the cultural expectation of a man, and if a woman actively wore a kilt prior to the 1800's where it was only men, this would be seen as trasngendered within Scottland. — Philosophim

A man wearing a skirt does not mean they are being transgendered. It means that wearing a skirt is now gender-neutral.

Just as in the 80s with all the hair bands, MEN sported long hair, make-up and earrings. No one called them transgendered. They did not identify as transgendered. Sure much of society made a stink about it but eventually the EXPECTATIONS changed to where having long hair, wearing make-up and earrings is not longer a part of gender (no longer considered feminine).

Gender neutral means that we stop having these expectations of the sexes as opposed to transgenderism that amplifies the expectations to the point of being sexist.

We use the modifiers trans and cis to denote gender. You can be a man, and also be a cisman or transman. "Man" denotes your sex, the modifiers denote you are talking about male gender. — Philosophim

But you defined gender as a cultural expectation. This means that for gender to change, the cultural expectation needs to change, not a person's personal feelings.

AI is "trained" with real world data, just like you are. It's just that AI probably has a much larger number of sources than you might have. Do you give credit to every person you have read or listened to when you submit a post?

I don't see how quoting others as your argument is any different here.

Sex - A species expressed reproductive role.
Gender - A cultural expectation of behavior in regards to an individual's sex — Philosophim

Sex as a species expressed reproductive role means that terms like "man" and "woman" are sexes, not genders.

"Man" and "woman" are like "bull" and "cow", "rooster" and "hen", "queen" and "drone" - sex as expressed by each species. So then what would be the labels we place on different genders?

and every politician that has a speech writer.

First, we philosophically (not politically) argue whether the individual warrants full autonomy or minimal intervention.

Then, we take the answer, doctrinize it, and codify it into the statutory law and make it political. — Copernicus

The problem is that any intervention will be done on the part of another's full autonomy. We are merely talking about a battle of autonomies.

Provide a real world example because if the source of whatever "goes against" me is another person's want/desire/interest/feelings then we have not found ourselves outside of your definition of "selfish".

Say someone was born with the need to help others, sometimes to the detriment of other wants and needs, but if one of their needs is to help others, and they find satisfaction in helping others, then would that fall into your definition of "selfish"?

I don't know. It seems you are defining "selfish" in such a way that makes it meaningless, as there is no contrast to what "selfishness" is not.

I'm asking "whether I should let you or not", NOT "whether you should let me or not". — Copernicus

Your questions seems to ignore the reality that whether you should let me or not is at least partially dependent upon me letting you help me or not. If I don't want to change then you are going to have a hard time getting me to.

The question is really "is what I am doing interfering with what you want to do?"

If one does not attend to one's own needs first, how can they ever hope to help others with their needs?

Do we expect the poor and the sick to contribute to the community? If not, are they being selfish?

It is those in better circumstances that provide the capacity to help others. The issue is whether or not they have the compassion to do so, or the wisdom that helping others out of a hole might mean they could provide some useful benefit to me or the rest of the community in the future.

You try to juxtapose an individual's liberty against their welfare, treating the issue as if it were only about that individual. Since you still show no acknowledgement of the place of other folk in the question, you have not yet entered into an ethical or political discussion.

Why should we leave you alone? One of us will have to clean up the mess. — Banno

No one has to clean up the mess. Nature will take its course in all things - even if all humans disappeared today, nature would have our mess cleaned up in a few hundred to a thousand years - a blink of the eye to nature.

Hermits living in the Alaskan and Canadian wilderness have no one to clean up their messes.

Let's say that I, as an individual, don't want to have to worry about my trash after it leaves my street, or my food before it gets to my pantry. I might choose to live in a community that has people that handle these things as part of their contribution to the community, but also for themselves as a means of providing for themselves and their family. Doing so can provide me more free time to do the things I want to do.

The problem is when we outsource our thinking and our speech to the community. We do need diversity - diversity of thought - and we only progress by allowing new ideas to be heard and read and debating them in the arena of common sense and logic. I chose to live among people I might disagree with because I think the benefits of progress outweigh the stress of disagreeing with others and hearing that you might be wrong sometimes.

On the contrary, I lean towards libertarianism. Individuals have a right to be unnecessarily rude (something objectively immoral) but not a right to murder (also objectively immoral). — 83nt0n

If these things were objectively wrong then no one would ever be rude or murder another. To be objective means that it is always the case as in the relationship between matter and energy in e=mc²

What if you don't? What if drinking as a patient is bad for me? Should you be given the mandate to prevent me or let me rot? — Copernicus

Who determines if it is bad for you? Is smoking marijuana bad for me or a cure for me? It seems that to answer that question you would have to be me. We are all going to die someday. Living a short or long life is neither good or bad. It is the journey that is good or bad, and whether or not you made the most of the time you are here.

The only rule needed in my book is that you are free to do as you will until what you are doing prevents others from doing as they will. Worrying about what is good or bad for another is the first step towards authoritarianism.

sounds like the genetic fallacy to me. The source of one's post is irrelevant. All that matters is whether it is logically sound or not.

How many on this forum have had a philosophical discussion with ChatGPT? Sometimes I find the AI's lack of emotional attachments to its responses a refreshing change to some of the intellectual dishonesty you can find here

But this isn’t “cancel culture”. This is government pressure.

The general public are well within their rights to “demand” that someone be fired, and threaten a boycott otherwise, because the general public are under no obligation to buy some business’s goods or services. That’s a legitimate expression of free speech.

But the president and government agencies threatening to revoke their critics’ licenses is a different matter entirely. — Michael

Well, yeah. The decline of late-night comedy shows due to the lack of comedy and alternate viewpoints is effectively "cancel culture".

Most Americans are tired of the bias and hypocrisy. We want open debate with all sides being represented.

The legacy media is also being canceled because they only promote the two-party system by having only left and right talking points.

Why does the media even interview Democrats or Republicans anymore? We already know what they are going to say on some issue - bashing the other side's stance while propping up their own all while never directly answering a direct question.

I want to hear more from Independents - the largest political group now - and free-thinkers and not political party group-thinkers and group-haters. There are more than just two points of view on an issue. Why are Independents not getting proportional representation in the media considering there are more Independents than Democrats or Republicans? Because the media is part of the two-party system and thrives and profits off conflict. The best solutions lie somewhere between the two extremes of left and right.

The point is that both sides are to blame for "cancel culture" and for using political power to limit free speech.

The problem wasn't what Kimmel said. The problem was that he didn't have anyone on his show to provide an alternate view or argument to what he said.

The side that is the minority tends to embrace free speech and then acts to limit when they are in the majority.

Free speech is the capacity to question and argue against authority, not the capacity to say what you want without repercussions. Only a totalitarian would expect to be able to speak without any consequences. In a free society, everyone has the right to free speech - the right to question authority and argue against what has been said.

The left thought cancel culture would keep them in power. Now that the tables have turned, they cry “hypocrisy” when the right uses the same weapon. But let’s be honest—both parties are guilty. They scream when cancel culture is aimed at them, and they celebrate when it’s aimed at their enemies.

This is the rotten heart of the two-party system: hypocrisy, corruption, and endless division. They play you against each other, while nothing ever changes.

How much longer will you put up with this? Do you want real freedom? Real accountability? Then stop voting for the same two broken parties that have sold you out again and again.

Are you not able to explore an issue without judging it? — frank

Of course. I was trying to explore your apparent contradiction.

Are you not able to explore an issue without judging it? An disenfranchised person could be white if they live in Kentucky and their community has been decimated by drug abuse. Just think about the generic struggling person. The issue is: which does more to help:

1. Alter their environment so that they are receiving positive recognition.
2. Alter their environment so they can get their share of the economic pie. — frank

Neither. It would seem to me that a person dealing with drug abuse is dealing with other issues - neither of which is recognition (most drug addicts won't admit they have a problem when others offer help), or economics (they can afford the their habit, it's just they have different priorities on what they spend their money on, including the case of minorities buying celebrity merchandise). There is already access to free rehabilitation and assistance for drug addicts. They just have to want to recover. It can be very difficult to do so, which is why I see it more as a mental disorder than a criminal act.

An advocate of identity politics would say that focusing entirely on economic realities fails to account for the fact that some people won't take advantage of the opportunities they have if they have a negative sense of identity. They won't excel in school, they won't go to college, they won't start small businesses. — frank

It seems to me that if you are offered an opportunity - that is a type of recognition. It is up to you whether you take advantage of it or keep blaming others for not giving you an opportunity.

My personal opinion, based on things I've seen, is that a capitalist society bestows recognition on anyone who has money. Make the money available, and they'll get recognition. — frank

Sure, especially those that came from a lower income upbringing to invent something awesome for the rest of society to use. We don't typically recognize lottery winners.

I agree. But I would say that lacking a clear sense of identity isn't necessarily a bad thing. Yes, it poses an obstacle to self-advocation, but a person like that is basically what a Buddhist is trying to figure out. — frank

What does one mean by, "identity"? If you already see your genetics as a defining characteristic - something that you did nothing to acquire - then you are simply being lazy with your identity, or see it as something that will get you benefits in certain societies. If you live in a society that shits on certain groups based on skin color, I could see you trying to hide your skin color. In a society that favors certain skin colors, you would want to flaunt your skin color. It seems that today's climate favors one being black (or any minority) and disfavors being white (the majority). If you are publicly proud of being a certain skin color then you don't live in a society that discriminates negatively upon that skin color, but positively. I want to live in a society where no one is proud or reluctant to be a certain skin color. They should be proud or shameful of their actions.

Again, I don't know. I would say an economic focus is more important that identity politics because to the extent that Hollywood panders to minorities, it's doing that because minorities buy tickets and merch. On the other hand, notice the next time you see a hospital advertisement. If they're depicting one of their awesome doctors, they'll be showing you an old white dude. Possibly Jewish. Why do you think they're doing that? — frank

But I thought you said it wasn't about money:

Identity politics is saying that what the oppressed need is not more money. — frank

If minorities are able to afford celebrity merchandise then they must not be doing to bad economically.

I don't know - is the doctor they are showing a doctor that actually works at that hospital, or did they find a Jewish person - maybe a family member of the producer - to act as a doctor? This is why I was asking about how much of what we show is reality vs. theatre? This is not to say that images of reality can't be shown out of context, though.

For instance, a poor student who works hard may still have fewer opportunities than a wealthy legacy student at Harvard, and a blacknman with the same resume as a white man is 50% less likely* to get a callback (National Bureau of Economic Research, 2023). — Joshs

How was that percentage determined? Don't whites outnumber blacks more than 2-1? Speaking of percentages - what percentage of black should be represented on TV and in movies? They are only 15% of the population but some seem to think that every other person on TV and in movies should be a black person. What about other minorities? What about the disproportionate representation of whites? It seems that being black gives you a leg up in this industry.

As for school funding disparities, my wife is an elementary school teacher in a hispanic neighborhood. The neighborhood is middle class. Prior principals have failed the school where the school grade was a C for years. After a new principal took over the school has now been an A school for the past three years. It's not just money - administration has a lot to do with it.

You argue that modern identity politics is a pendulum swing to the opposite extreme of historical racism/sexism, but most modern identity-based movements seek equity, not supremacy. Reparations or diversity initiatives aim to reduce disparities, not establish a new hierarchy. — Joshs

We already live in a country with laws against discrimination. If you feel you were discriminated against, then you have paths you can take - there is even financial legal aid available for those that qualify.

It may be that to some extent, but we're looking at realist physics-and-matter-compliant phenomena exampling non-locality; the 2022 Nobel Prize in physics went to three researchers with something to say about the universe not being locally real. I understand this means, at least in part, that the reality immediately before us is not discretely mind-independent. That it appears to be, as explained by some researchers, stands due to the fact the environment, which includes sentients, measures material systems, thus cancelling their quantum effects. From this viewpoint, I can say that discrete mind-independence results “from a certain constrained view of ignorance.” — ucarr

If it's not locally real (what does "real" mean in this sense?) then why do physicists talk about electrons and photons being in a state of superposition? To talk about these things indicates that these things have some boundary that separates them from other electrons and photons, even when in a state of superposition - as if they have an existence independent of other things even in a state of superposition. What makes a thing an electron of photon and what makes one electron or photon separate from other electrons and photons? Physicists talk about electrons and photons as if they are real - even when in a state of superposition. Decoherence appears to simply change the states of electrons and photons - not make them real, as physicists use of language indicates that they are already real - even in a state of superposition.

Sentients haven't always existed. What was the world like before sentients existed? How did sentients come to exist? How is it that multiple sentients seem to come to the same conclusion about what is in the environment and even use each other to validate scientific theories by performing the same experiments from their own position in space-time.

Yes, the third state affords an exponential increase in info processing. Regarding improbabilities, earth being friendly to carbon-based life forms might be an example of an extreme statistical bias towards emergence of consciousness. — ucarr

But Earth is only only one of trillions, upon trillions of planets in the universe. It was just statistically possible given all the time and space that at least one planet would end up in a stable star system with the just right distance and chemistry for life. There may be other planets in which life evolved but not conscious life. It does not seem that the universe was fine-tuned for consciousness. Of course it seems like we are lucky being the beneficiaries of these purposeless natural causes. You might think you are lucky winning the lottery, but it was just a statistical reality that someone will win because millions are playing, and this time it was you. Luck becomes even less of a thing if there are trillions (or an infinite number) of other universes. The more time and space you have, the more likely you will get something unique occurring. How much time and space does one need for consciousness to have a chance to evolve? If there was a creator, it seems to me that it would require much less space than we have, and it is the mind-numbing expanse of space and time that is evidence that we are outcomes of purposeless processes, not a purposeful one.

I think the radicalism of QM is rooted in its intentional focus upon the strategic and useful confusion of the map with the territory. Were this confusion not useful, the memory lobes of your brain would not keep you connected to your childhood. — ucarr

I don't see how confusion could be useful, other than informing you that you don't have something quite right about your interpretation of reality, and to keep trying.

Before sentience, there were no boundaries. Dimensional extension defining the physics and materiality of things is rooted in cognition. Absent brain_mind, matter and its physics are a jumbled outpouring of potential states possibilities. Have you ever seen a computer monitor try to display the graphics of a program that requires a higher info-processing video card than the one installed in the computer? The screen shows a technicolor morass of jumbled, overlapping distortions unintelligible. This is my conjecture about the physics of the world independent of the organizing principles of cognition. — ucarr

I think of it more as the world is like an analog signal that minds digitize into discrete objects for the purpose of thinking and solving problems. The question is how much of the digital object is a mental construct and how much is a representation of the signal before being digitized. Does it even matter? Is that even a relevant question?

What defined the boundaries between sentient minds? What makes your mind "other" than mine?

Yes, my perception of the world is an approximation of same. The tricky thing that QM has taught us, is that the interpreting_approximating is bi-directional. The supposedly mind-independent world is not hardened into discrete system states, just as my ability to perceive and understand mind-independent world is not hardened into discrete system states. There is a dance between observed and observer. The adventure of living lies in the fact that while there are constraints upon what the dance steps can be, how they are attacked supports many, perhaps infinite variations. An example paralleling this is the keyboard of a piano. The number of notes provided by the keyboard are limited, but that number nonetheless supports many variations. We don't know exactly what the pianist will play. — ucarr

Well, the pianist is just another part. If we know the history of the pianist and what they know how to play and what they like to play, and what they have played most often, you don't really need to count the keys on the piano, do you?

I don't know. Is a strong will and the range by which we need confirmation from others to define ourselves an inborn trait (natural) or something that is the result of one's upbringing (nurtured)? While I will agree that our upbringing has a large impact on the person we are today, there are some that appear to develop in stark contrast to their upbringing. Maybe they were raised in a home that did neglect them but found a true friend that encouraged and supported them, and it still is the nurturing, I just can't say. We would have to study the details of each case.

The way this plays into identity politics is that a person who only sees negative images of people like themselves (say a black child only sees blackness depicted as being gang related, or enslavement) — frank

What black child today lives in such informational isolation?

Identity politics is saying that what the oppressed need is not more money. They usually aren't actually looking for that. What they want is recognition, which is a basic requirement of a psyche that can advocate for itself. — frank

I think that "recognition" isn't the right word here. It's "representation". To constantly be represented in a negative light can have a negative impact on one's sense of self. Some might say, that for a celebrity, any publicity is good publicity. That may be true for celebrities who make money by being in the spotlight, but not for the rest of us.

The question is do we bring down one group to raise another, or simply stop representing one group only in a negative light? And when are we representing a group in a negative light as opposed to merely pointing out facts? Is the answer that when talking about or showing images of gangs and slaves we show a majority of whites? Is the answer that we just stop talking about and showing images of gangs and slaves? If you know you are not in a gang and not a slave, isn't that clear evidence that the images do not define you as an individual?

Identity politics focuses on the characteristics of individuals that the individual, nor society, had no hand in making - genetics. People that criticize identity politics focus more on defining people by the characteristic of their actions, not their biology. One might say that a racist nation, like the U.S. in the later 18th and early 19th centuries, was a society based on identity politics - treating people differently based on the color of their skin and their sex. The U.S. has evolved since then, but it appears that there are some that want to take us backwards by pushing the pendulum back to the opposite extreme - where another group receives special treatment at the expense of others to make up for the way things were while ignoring how things are now.