So I would say that the self is an idea, a thought around which all thought becomes organised, that becomes all important. I call this process of thought 'identification.' Starting like this is has the advantage that it is clear from the beginning that we are not talking about the physicality of the human being, but of the construction of an image in the mind. Now I can say very simply that I, unenlightened, am writing this post, having these thoughts and pressing these keys, but that all these things can perfectly well happen, and happen even rather better, without the idea of myself intruding at all. — unenlightened

But suppose there was somekind of civil unrest in your city and this produced a certain amount of worry about your person or property. Does any projection of the future self and its well being amount to an intrusion of the self in one's mind (ex. the self is thinking about the conditions of its continuity). It seems this is about the physicality of self.

The whole reason we imagine the self is to ensure its continuity. Granted there might have been a time prior to this where instinct served us well in the absence of self-awareness. I'm sure many would argue that the neurotic self-obsession of modern times has become a kind of self harm. Just like it's good to eat food in moderation, so is it to avoid over-thinking or worrying about future states, but this is easier said than done.

Is this sort of what you mean?

If there is ultimately only one thing that exists, the whole thing, which is reduced or divided into aspects, parts, functions, multitudes, then it is the universe.

It's like Hilbert's Hotel. Whatever is has a room in the universe motel.

This is more a subject for Zen meditation. There one learns, or experiences one's "I" as a fabrication. Instead of "I am aware" there is only awareness. An instant of realization is worth more than a lifetime of philosophical dialogue. — jgill

I think you ought to mean a life time of practice is worth more than an instant of realization. :P Especially if there is "nothing" to realize.

So if there are no selves in whatever this metaphysical sense is, is there also no things?

Why isn't a "self" just an object with a special status.

I don't think "insanity" is a psychiatric diagnosis.

If the patient knows they have a psychiatric condition where states of control and self-awareness cycle on and off, then the patient may well have a reasonable grasp of their own problem.

I agree its less likely for someone with chronic psychosis to be aware of how crazy they are.

It's really ok, they are all versions of modbot. They can't be held accountable and their creators are inaccessible, just like Terminix customer service.

The moderating algorithms maybe biased but its for our own good, probably.

They erase harmless threads when they could just as well move them to The Lounge. I guess that takes extra computational work.

When VR (virtual reality) becomes realistic enough will anyone remain unplugged? — Benj96

It would depend entirely on the incentives/disincentives of being plugged in. What are they currently with respect to VR?

Has work been moved into a VR space and is now a requirement for maintaining basic economic needs? Or is VR just a luxury experience like video games that folks play in their spare time?

What about physical maintenance of the body? Can the body do its thing while its consciousness can play.

Has this world reached a state of sustainable providence by AI and robotic labor, such that folks are free to choose how to spend their time?

It seems that a substantial amount (>50%) of heat lost by human beings in a cool temperature is due to thermal radiation (mostly infared light?). I guess that is why mylar blankets work if you can insulate yourself well enough and why a thermos has a reflective material on the inside. It's counter-intuitive to think we're losing heat because were emitting so much light.

The temperature fluctuations due to EMR in space are glaring due to the lack of an ambient buffering system (atmosphere, et cetera).

Are you gonna get meta about your physics question?

Interesting question. It seems the temperature of deep space is actually related to the heat transferred by the cosmic background radiation. Whatever is put in deep space doesn't get colder than that because of the radiation.

So temperature in a vacuum is related to electromagnetic rays passing through its space, heating whatever mass is in that space.

Well, imagine a situation where the state represents the will of God and delivers punishment for those who transgress divine law.

Eternal damnation might take the form of life sentence and torture until death (the end of eternity).

See South Korea.

When is a dead cat no longer a cat? To be or not to be... a dead cat, that is the question.

Hmmm... Important philosophical wonders.

Radio Lab: Poop Train

Somewhat amusing podcast about biosolids from New York City sewage plants being transported to Colorado for use in agriculture for a time.

My own city makes this stuff, biosolids (sewage cake), but I bet it gets thrown into the landfills. Apparently studies show that it's ecologlically safe but I wonder how exhaustive the testing has been.

Be glad you were born into a somewhat stable(?...) wealthy country where your grievances are minor. You're not typing from an arid internet cafe in Mauritania, are you? South Korea?

By our current expectations about conveniences, the past was a total shit show. A look at history should make us misanthropes, or reconcile to us how terrible we have been and will be in the future.

1. Will technological evolution make us have new desires that our current brain cannot imagine? — Eugen

If we give a wild ape some cake with the certain knowledge that it has never tasted anything like it (cake), do we conclude that the ape potentially has a "new desire" based on the memory of that cake?

Or think about opiates with humans which highjack the pleasure reward system. Prior to trying such drugs can a person really imagine the desire (pain of addiction) or pleasure (super high) it elicits.

Desire usually entails a lack of a previously encountered stimuli and that stimuli having been integrated into habit. The satisfaction in the encounter of such stimuli is somewhat dependent on the severity of the desire for it. For example: someone who is extremely thirsty finds greater satisfaction in drinking water.

I'd say that there are no "new desires" if were limiting the term to the full continuum of whatever the maximum or minimum configurations of pleasure are. However, desire isn't really separate from the object (stimuli). I don't think it really makes sense to speak about objectless desire.

It is impossible to desire something without being able to imagine it. — Sir2u

Unless of course you are seeing what you desire and there is no need to imagine it.

There must be some animals that still desire despite a complete lack of imagination.

A quottle is a grain of something between salt and sugar. So take what I say with a quottle.

Please name one thing that you can desire without imagining it first. — Sir2u

The Quottle. I can't imagine it but desire it. Let desire shape its form.

Check out the adaptive dissipation theory by Jeremy England and others.

Very basically I think it is that matter can organize itself to dissipate heat more effectively under certain conditions and this might be a framework for understanding how life started.

Clothes are more practical in Northern latitudes for races who lack pigment and to keep warm. Humanoid species lost their hair for some reason and this increased the practicality of a manufactured cover to protect vulnerable parts. Even in more benign equatorial latitudes where nudity in hunter-gather groups might be more common (sans Western influence) covering genitals might make sense.

Current inherited customs likely grew around a very basic practical need for clothes while engaging in physical work.

If you dug into game theory there might be some sense in which clothes actually perform some kind of Evolutionary Stable Strategy (ESS) function on par with "poker face" type behavior in animals. The less you show in terms of weakness or strength the more you stand to gain when deciding how to act against a competitor or collaborator. It levels the playing field of first impressions.

To some extent the severity of the taboo for any of us is an accident of history. The larger and more sophisticated the society, the more stratified it is by status and property, the more severe the customs imposed are out of a need to maintain order.

What do you mean you don't know what it is? You tell me Professor Sushi. What you see is what you get, a fragment. I won't participate anymore sense I'm unlikely to write as much as required.

It is a juxtaposition of two absurd scenarios which are fact based for the most part, one about accidentally killing snails and the other about saving them.

The Rube-Goldberg machine is suppose to introduce a sense of absurd causal determinism which involves as much of the universe as it can be imagined to involve.

Ideally there would be some illustration of the pointlessness of either saving a dying species or accidentally killing an invasive one, in light of what gives rise to these actions.

Dennett is definitely a zombie created by the blind process of natural selection.

His consciousness is an illusion, born of competing neural circuitry.

Maybe claims for and against Trump based on what he has or hasn't done should be backed up with linked citations, not that anyone would believe any of them.

Copper sulfate pentahydrate (26% solution) was applied to a 40,000+ gallon concrete pond complex at between 5-7 gallons per surface acre of 4 foot depth. The goal was to eliminate floating algae that resembled turds.

Days later the devastation to the pond snail population was apparent. A thick foul smelling protein foam coated the surface of pond # 3 with hundreds of tiny floating empty shells.

The pond snails were dead, along with the dragonfly nymphs.

The man who might be charged with this mundane collateral damage, the poisoner, was really just another vital mechanism in a much greater network of looping and crossing Rube-Goldberg machines.

__________

Miles upland, in the K range, a great plastic wall protects the last tribes of a dying species, Achantinella fuscobasis, from rats and rose colored wolf snails.

The woman in charge of preserving these lives in a shell counts them all to the rhythmic beats of another Rube-Goldberg network, whose modular causal chains necessarily involve a helicopter, the Smithfield Foods plant and the memory of a fossilized Ammonite.

Learned helplessness is one theory for developing depression.

A person is continually stuck in a stressful situation where no natural action can ameliorate the stress. They become conditioned to accept such negative states.

It is likely a mistake to project the unique human capacity for suffering onto animals. We have a rather sophisticated sense of self having a past and a future. The worrying about these imaginary selves is not a irrelevant aspect of human suffering and should be taken into account.

Worst possible outcome? — Shawn

Hell has exits, one hopes. The Buddha on your shoulder might whisper something about "mindfulness" and the imaginary friend on the other might say something about benign distraction.

When a solipsist isn't thinking that he is a solipsist, is he a solipsist in that moment?

Solipsism is a manifestation of loneliness most likely. Find a distraction and don't indulge in nightmares.

How does one stop being a solipsist once one? — Shawn

Stop thinking about it.

In the end any appeal to rights requires whether they are recognized by whoever/whatever is obstructing them.

Do crocodiles have a justice system? If I go swimming in a croc infested pool, have I ceded the natural rights to my life, if I indeed have a natural right to life?

They are just notes of a premise.

Youtube star causes outrage because of Ortolan Mukbang...

Vignettes of Ortolan eaters across time from Roman era to today. One involves an a medival ship import and something happens... Someone steals inventory to try it out. Punishment is macabre.

Servants having moral reservations while pricking the eyes of the small birds. Philosopher chef biased by gustatory lust defends the practice with his reasons.

Dialogues as to the purpose of the veil of the Ortolan eater. Different humorous scenarios that cause the veil to come into being.

Recipes from the Apicius cookbook (1st century?) Must be a roman recipe for Ortolan somewhere.

Scald the flamingo, wash and dress it, put it in a pot, add water, salt, dill, and a little vinegar, to be parboiled. Finish cooking with a bunch of leeks and coriander, and add some reduced must to give it color. In the mortar crush pepper, cumin, coriander, laser root, mint, rue, moisten with vinegar, add dates, and the fond of the braised bird, thicken, strain, cover the bird with the sauce and serve. Parrot is prepared in the same manner.

When I get my act together and become an accomplished illustrator from 10,000 hours of practice, I'll be presenting:

Oriental Landscapes using tea as paint.

Tea dragon carrying toilet roll instead of pearl.

Cups of tea colored tea, enjoyed in a tea house by tea drinkers.

A sea of tea with a galleon of tea ahead of a squall.

Toilet roll prayer wheels stained with tea runes.

Biscuits and tea.

Tea and biscuits.

Tea Samurai beheading Coffee Samurai in duel.

The one in which a rogue Sith lord, Darth Exitus, initiates vaccum decay of the Star Wars universe in all time lines.

Now you’ve shifted the discussion to the disproved position of the tabla rasa (empty slate). If someone is born and denied sensory experience or help they certainly won’t go far and die quickly. That has very little to do with memes and more to do with basic sustenance.

You seem to be equates memes with experience. That is patently false. — I like sushi

Eh, you're not being very charitable. Why wouldn't basic knowledge about how to survive constitute learned knowledge, culture (memes)? Subtract any culturally transmitted know how in absence of built-in instincts and there is a survival learning curve that can't really be easily overcome.

Another way of thinking about this would be to say that our genetic inheritance can no longer cause us to be evolutionarily unfit. What would make us unfit would be if somehow we failed to pass on our knowledge of science, medicine, etc. — Pinprick

Whatever continues into the future is still dependent upon the actual continuity of genes. The memes need the genes as much as the genes need the memes.

Curious comparison. Dawkins wants to explain human behaviour in terms of attributes of particles of human make-up that entirely lack such behaviour. Whereas you are objecting to explaining the behaviour of the whole (corporation) in terms of the actual behaviour its parts, (people). It seems a more reasonable project. — unenlightened

Isn't animal behavior well explained by genes in theory? Memes (as a kind of horizontal information transfer) helps to explain the added complexity of human behavior.

Obviously genes are not selfish, and do not try to survive or multiply. — unenlightened

Likewise, corporations are not selfish (they literally aren't persons) and do not try to survive or help their shareholders to multiply.

I'd rather be dead than in debt if that is any consolation.

Might as well throw the something from nothing thread into the Lounge also to be consistent.

FF7 Remake

Let Madam M. give you a hand massage at the wall market.

There is only what it is like to be something. A world that isn't aware of itself at all is equal to a world that doesn't exist.

So long as there is any life after death, there is an afterlife. Who is to say "our" life is by any means coherent as a piece rather than continuous with the whole universe.