Alex_Krycek

No, you factor the individual's experience into the aggregate. I'm not debating that. So what about the second part of your answer? Why are subjective feelings scientific and individual experiences not? Of course not. Further research would need to be done to verify their claims. Unfortunately there haven't been many long term studies done on the effectiveness of juicing, so the jury's still out. You can look at people who have followed a raw food / juicing lifestyle and see how they turned out. Jay Kordich died at 93. Jack La Lane died at age 97. Norman walker at age 99, all from natural causes. I'm not going to wait around until New Scientist tells me to start juicing before I take action. It may take another 50 - 100 years to gather conclusive evidence on the effectiveness of juicing on long term health. If the formerly mentioned pioneers of nutrition lived that long, if it makes me feel great everyday, if other people are doing it and are also seeing their health skyrocket, that's good enough for me. That's part and parcel of point #2. Any person who is actively seeking to prolong their life would investigate all avenues. But the key is experimenting with and implementing that knowledge into their daily life, otherwise it's useless. This would also include listening to people who are not scientifically orthodox and or those who have had experiences that might not be validated by the mainstream.

So what exactly did you mean when you wrote that? Well, when it comes down to it, what are the choices? You either care about preventative healthcare, or you don't care about preventative healthcare, or you'e somewhere in the middle. For example, a person can choose not to smoke because they decide it's an unacceptable risk factor for their long term health. They could do this for a number of reasons. Perhaps they actively researched the negative affects of smoking and discovered for themselves that smoking increases the risk of cancer. Or they might have been fortunate enough to live in a society that educates its populace on the dangers of smoking, and so that particular individual didn't have to take any initiative but instead just went along with the herd (which in that situation happened be informed correctly by external forces). Or the person can know full well the dangers of smoking but think "I only live once!" and choose to disregard the potential hazards of the activity.

Art is an expression of creative intelligence. This creative intelligence isn't a means to an end; it's an end in itself.

So you think science includes an individual's subjective feelings but excludes an individual's personal experience? That seems a bit incongruous, but ok... Sure. But I was responding as one person to the OP's query about whether there are viable alternatives to caffeine. The OP can factor in my personal experience as he sees fit, and I don't expect the OP to take my word for it, which is why I suggested he do his own experiments to determine what works in his own life. Generally speaking, yes.

Ok. I must have misunderstood you then. What else did you mean when you wrote this:

Of course. So in the face of inevitable death, what kind of life do you choose to live? You either treat your health with casual indifference, living the life of the bohemian pleasure seeker, thinking: "everyone has to die someday, so I may as well just do as I please". You make an effort to live as long as your can and stay in as optimal as shape as you can, experimenting with different diets / nutrition regimes in your search for the healthiest possible lifestyle. Or you just do as everyone else does, not thinking about it too much while you follow the herd, whichever way it may go. The avenue a person chooses is related to how much they value their life.

Treating one's subjective experiences, whether in relation to health, consciousness, psychology, or any other area of life as irrelevant is an oversight which impedes the search for truth. This is one of the major flaws in the mechanistic / materialist philosophy that currently prevails in the scientific mainstream.

If a subject is consuming a substance (be it a food, beverage, drug, chemical, etc) and they report their experiences honestly and in good faith, that does count as evidence. Discounting the experiences of the subject of the experiment is unscientific. Sure, I hear what you're saying. Which is why the OP should do his own experiment and see for himself how juicing affects his daily life. Until he does that, everything else is mere speculation.

Do you have any evidence for this? Because there are countless individuals who would attest otherwise. Or are they all victims of psychosomatic thinking? "The pasteurization process typically involves heating beverages up to 180 degrees Fahrenheit in order to kill bacteria, although many fungi and parasites are also destroyed by the heat. Flash pasteurization uses higher temperatures." Vitamin C "Vitamin C is needed to make and repair collagen, which is the elastic-like protein found in skin and connective tissues and is important for immune function. Unfortunately, vitamin C is very sensitive to heat and oxidation. Consequently, a significant amount of vitamin C is destroyed by pasteurization, although some juice manufacturers may add more to their products after the pasteurization process to compensate for the loss. Perhaps more importantly, vitamin C deteriorates quickly when exposed to oxygen, so there may not be much viable vitamin C left for pasteurization to destroy by the time the juice gets to that stage. This is why some “before and after” pasteurization studies examining vitamin content may be misleading or confusing." Antioxidants and Enzymes "Antioxidants in fruits and veggies, especially compounds called phenols, are also very sensitive to heat and oxidation. As such, a significant amount of antioxidants are destroyed by commercial production of juice and the pasteurization process. Antioxidants destroy free radicals, which are chemical by-products that damage and age tissues such as arteries. Fruits, especially pineapple and papaya, contain enzymes that help break down protein and other components of food. Enzymes such as those are also destroyed by heat." Irradiation "Many pasteurized products are also irradiated, which is capable of destroying other kinds of nutrients because the gamma rays deeply penetrate food and alter the molecular structure. For example, irradiation can destroy vitamins A, B-12, D and E. Irradiation also alters the natural life cycle of plants, which delays ripening and prevents sprouting." SOURCE: https://woman.thenest.com/pasteurization-affect-nutrients-fruit-9199.html Of course. Produce or livestock raised in a natural, clean environment is always preferable to that contaminated with pesticides, growth hormones, or other unknown toxins.

Ok. Thanks. But I'm not interested in having a debate with you about how you think you know more about my own life than I do. If you want to believe that, you're entitled to, but I'm not interested in entertaining your superiority complex.

Mainly because the energy difference is so noticeable. It's not just a minor boost in energy, it's like night and day. Which is only normal considering I'm consuming massive amounts of vitamins, minerals, carbohydrates, protein, etc pretty much directly into my bloodstream.

Yep.

@ OP For me, drinking fresh fruit and vegetable juices that I make myself has totally changed my life. I feel 10 years younger when I'm "on the juice", so to speak, compared to when I lapse back into drinking tea. I usually keep it simple and drink celery / apple juice twice a day which is very cheap and easy to prepare. Drinking celery juice has a calming effect that I find very beneficial. Vegetable juice doesn't cause the swings in energy associated with caffeine. It gives you a strong boost, but then you return to normal. I've noticed that fruit juices high in sugar, such as fresh watermelon juice, do tend to make me tired once the sugar has worn off, so it's important to drink those in moderation. The science behind juicing is you are getting close to 99% of the food value (i.e. the vitamins and minerals) from the fruit / vegetable with your body doing minimal work. Our digestive systems are actually very inefficient when it comes to extracting nutrients from raw vegetables, only getting about 5-10 % of the food value if you eat it raw. If you cook the vegetables, forget it, you just killed pretty much all the nutrients. Same with store bought juice. It's pasteurized (super heated) to kill bacteria so it can sit on the shelf without spoiling, but this also kills the nutrients that make the juice healthy. When you buy orange juice from the store you're essentially buying glorified sugar water with an orange flavor. Much better to juice the oranges yourself and get all the benefits. Juicing brings 99% of the food value into your bloodstream within minutes of drinking the juice, no digestion required. If you're serious about trying this, do an experiment. Buy a basic juicer from the supermarket. Learn some basic recipes. Twice a day (once in the morning and once in the afternoon), drink a very basic fruit / vegetable combination (carrot apple / celery apple / cucumber / apple . etc). Make enough for 8-12 oz of juice. Follow this new regime of two fresh juices a day for two weeks, and record your energy levels each day and if they change. There's a million books and channels on youtube about juicing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-_FuK4pgs0

Why don't you tell me what you think? Are animals conscious? If so, what is driving this consciousness? How is the brain generating consciousness in human beings? What processes are occurring to make this happen? In many ways animals are more conscious than we are. From "Birds Can See the Earth's Magnetic Field" This is why I believe the positivist approach is so flawed. Four decades without conclusive evidence, and the researchers interested in this subject still persisted with their hypothesis. Imagine if they'd given up or dismissed the idea as "pseudo-science" because they didn't have evidence at the outset. More discoveries would be made if a more open minded approach is adopted.

Are we talking about learning, or are we talking about creativity? Learning of course does involve memory; understanding different styles, seeing that has come before. Creativity involves something different. It's about being able to deviate from established patterns and create something new, but more importantly it's about creating something that resonates emotionally, intellectually, or spiritually with other human beings. If a machine can create a work of art, such as those paintings in the article, that sufficiently resonates with an audience, then yes, you could say it is being creative on a certain level. But there is an important factor in this discussion that we're omitting, and that is the appreciation of art. If a machine throws together a painting, or composes a piece of music, and has no appreciation for what it is actually doing, then it isn't being creative. It's just carrying out instructions without the core motivators that define what human creativity actually is: emotion, spiritual inspiration, etc. So taking into consideration what is driving the machine, it isn't actually being creative at all, the creativity that we're attributing to it is merely a human projection. When the researchers doing this experiment can engineer an AI that doesn't need creative assistance from humans to finish the piece of music, your claims will be more acceptable. Emotion: "the affective aspect of consciousness, a subjective state of feeling". There is every reason why we can't program machines to feel emotion: mainly because we haven't the first inclination how. Sure, you can program what you believe are the surface manifestations of emotion in response to a given scenario, but that is again work of the illusionist. The machine in that case would be behaving according to what you told it to do, not because it actually feels anything or is responding to what is right or wrong. We're not talking about erratic behavior, we're talking about a unique feature of humanity, one that provides great depth and meaning to our human existence. So you equate love with sycophancy? Interesting. With all due respect, this statement sounds like it was written by someone who has never experienced love. Once more, you're just programming superficial behavioral reactions in response to certain conditions which you feel justify compassion, the machine has no actual feeling. There is no innate natural cause to its behavior. Any behavior the machine would demonstrate is really coming from the human programmers and from their moral views. You must not get out much. With respect, it would be worthwhile for you to perhaps go to your local homeless shelter and see what volunteers do their every day. Or at the very least, google "charity news" and read about the altruism that ordinary people engage in every day. You seem to think that programming a common superficial behavioral reaction to an emotion equates that superficial reaction with the emotion itself. It in no way does. A human being can cheer at a soccer game and feel absolutely nothing, just as she can stand motionless and be full of joy over something as simple as how the park looks on a cloudy day. You're not addressing what emotion really is. More revealing insights here, such as how you equate philosophical wonder with existential anxiety. You seem to view all the subjective experiences of human beings as inherent flaws in our being, flaws which machines conceivably will be better off without. Do you think your materialist / mechanistic philosophy is informing such a misanthropic viewpoint?

Cheers for the suggestion. Been tinkering around with it the last few minutes and it seems pretty robust. I've got multiple projects on the go so something like this would be ideal to integrate everything in a simple and accessible format. I'll give DropTask a look...

MARSHALL, MN—Claiming that his gruff classroom demeanor was often misunderstood, no-nonsense chemistry teacher Bill Powderly explained on Wednesday that he was only tough on his students because he gets off on exploiting his authority. “Listen folks, I’m only stern with you kids because I care [about the surge of dopamine that rushes through my brain every time I raise my voice],” said Powderly, who added that his biggest source of happiness—besides bullying adolescents for the sheer thrill—was teaching. “You don’t have to like me, but I conduct myself in this manner because [it makes me feel like an omnipotent god-king].” Powderly went on to say that one day when they became adults, his students would look back and realize he was “a [small, vindictive] man who cared.” https://local.theonion.com/gruff-no-nonsense-teacher-only-hard-on-students-becaus-1822586332

What's the best piece of software for organizing projects, charting goals, seeing what's on your agenda for the day / week / month / year, etc? I looked at iMind Map and it looks decent. Looking for something that will help me become more organized and efficient in executing my plans.

@ OP Albert Einstein's writings on science and religion are worthy of consideration. Find a few of his articles on the subject by following the link below: http://www.sacred-texts.com/aor/einstein/einsci.htm

Similarly, if you think there is no purpose to life, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, you will form your conclusions accordingly. Nor is the view that consciousness is merely an unintended byproduct of the brain's evolution. If that is ever possible. If creative intelligence and mechanistic function are two distinct phenomena, and somehow humans are able to engineer an entity with creative intelligence, that entity would in essence no longer qualify as a machine. I'd say you're the one engaging in a logical fallacy. You're saying that human beings and machines might one day share equal footing in terms of intelligence. Even accepting that this assumption comes to pass, It ignores the reality that human beings created machines. They did not create themselves, nor did they evolve naturally as we did to possess creative intelligence. The term is artificial intelligence for a reason. Everything a machine could ever achieve it was gifted by an organic life form with this intelligence . Have you read any of David Bohm's work? "This system also uses two sub-networks.The discriminator is given a large set of art associated with style labels, the researchers explained, for example, Renaissance, Baroque, Impressionism, or Expressionism, and the generator does not have access to any art. As it generates a piece, it receives two signals from the discriminator: one, which classifies the image as ‘art or not art,’ and another which indicates how well the discriminator can classify that art into an existing style." It's a neat trick, but giving a machine a data-set of previous artwork and then programming it to replicate styles in general alignment with that data-set is only the illusion of creativity. "As previously noted, the chord structures and instrumentation is purely Amper’s; it just works with manual inputs from the human artist when it comes to style and overall rhythm." Style and overall rhythm are integral to the end result of a piece of music. Looks like human beings are still sharing the creative legwork with AI. Another neat trick. I understand the analogy that cdk007 is positing in this video, but at the end of the day it's just that, an analogy that he concocted in order to advance his philosophy. This in now way proves anything that mechanistic materialism posits is true. He simply grafted his previously held mechanistic assumptions onto a more elaborate machine metaphor of evolution. This is not evidence that machines evolve on their own or that organic life forms are machines. It reminds me of a TED Talk that Anil Seth did a while back entitled "How Your Brain Hallucinates Reality". Most of the examples in Seth's talk were merely reflections of his own assumptions about consciousness, they weren't independently occurring phenomena that objectively advanced his case. For example, he had subjects wear a virtual reality apparatus (Google's Deep Dream) and then programmed the apparatus to reflect a state of perpetual hyper-awareness, one which produced visual results similar to those reported in hallucinatory states. He then made the unsupported claim that consciousness itself is a hallucination based on this experiment, which is completely illogical. Yes, consciousness can become hallucinatory under certain conditions, but that in not way implies that consciousness itself is a hallucination. Any emotion first of all: True love. Compassion. Altruism and pity. Joy when your team scores the winning goal. Philosophical wonder: attempting to understand our place in the universe. Asking questions about who we are and where we come from, and why. Etc. Yes, we have evidence that human consciousness ceases when the brain is damaged, and that a healthy brain is generally necessary for the active manifestation of human consciousness in this dimension. However, these two facts still do not address the question of origin. It's entirely possible that there is a consciousness that exists independently of the human experience.

You wrote: "By this argument, we don't need a Turing test for consciousness. Any sufficiently complex robot is evidence of consciousness being received from an external source." My point was that if we're able to create a fully sentient, conscious AI, then that still wouldn't explain the origins of our own consciousness. Animal/ plant life (and life in general) demonstrates levels of complexity, awareness, and purposive behavior that reflects an evolutionary trajectory towards intelligence. The alternative perspective is that consciousness is not an epiphenomenon of evolution, but the very purpose of evolution itself. I think the machine metaphor is outdated, if not obsolete. Mechanistic materialism may have been a useful philosophy in the 1600s when reductionism found traction, but there are too many glaring differences between organic life and machines to justify it's use any longer. The whole really is greater than the sum of its parts. Any attributes that may be similar between a machine and organic life, such as communication or autonomous behavior, human beings have purposely chosen to create. Machines are a reflection of our creative intelligence (which is required for their existence). This creative intelligence is what separates us, and arguably all organic life, from something that is purely mechanical. I don't see purpose as "magical". I see purpose as the logical movement of a universal evolutionary trajectory towards intelligence. There is purpose in a spider's web, the murmuration of sparrows, and the existence of consciousness. For the first, it's to catch prey. The second, to communicate with other sparrows. The third, to understand the universe and our place in it. These are but three of an infinite number of iterations within this evolutionary trajectory. I think it actually makes a huge difference how you see the world. If one believes that life is merely the haphazard result of random chance, a cosmic accident existing in a dead, mechanistic universe, that person will probably go on to view life with much less value than a person who views life as unique and sacred, the progeny of a "higher power" whose exact nature cannot be comprehended. On the one hand life is disposable and irrelevant, on the other it is indispensable and priceless. The ""observer - observed" phenomena comes into play here. As finite observers attempting to integrate and understand what is essentially an infinitely complex system, the philosophical underpinnings of our approach play a huge role in what we will eventually interpret as true. Truisms that a scientist may assert as axiomatically normative and the logical end result of an objective analysis based on verified evidence (read: positivism) may in fact be deeply contaminated with unconscious assumptions and subjective conditioning. This is why I find David Bohm's work in the area of consciousness so fascinating. Because of his deep expertise in quantum mechanics, and his extensive dialogues with eastern mystics such as J. Krishnamurti, Bohm gained access to a synergistic perspective that has allowed him to go further than anyone in reconciling the subjective and the objective in a way that is not arbitrary or biased.

Except in this example we would already know the source of that consciousness: human beings. Where we derive our consciousness from (and why) is still an open question. If you're choosing to embrace mechanism as a catch all theory, and the machine metaphor as an explanation, then what programmed these machines, and to what end?

It's extremely unlikely. And we already discussed this point; I agree that a physical apparatus is necessary (at least in humankind) for the expression of human consciousness in this particular dimension. But this fact does nothing to answer the question of origin, it merely relies on an assumption that the material apparatus is where consciousness originates. There are clues as to an alternative, as I mentioned before with extremely complex behavior existing in insects without highly developed brains. There was no evidence for ultraviolet light before Ritter discovered it. Nor was there evidence for neuroplasticity before scientists like Norman Doidge came along. The fact that we don't have evidence for a particular theory doesn't make it untrue. The fact that we have incomplete evidence doesn't make something true. What is important is asking questions, formulating hypotheses, and working towards a way to test them, even if our current state of limited technology precludes it. I'm not asserting, I'm just questioning an unsupported assumption that you're putting forward. I think there is the possibility that your viewpoint is incomplete, that's all. All science begins with questions, and questions lead to hypotheses. There are many hypotheses by "universally accepted science" that are untestable. Multiverse theory, for example, is one such untestable theory. So I don't see it as "religious" ,as you say, to ask questions that challenge someone else's worldview. If anything it is more religious to posit an unproven theory as scientific gospel and attempt to shut down any inquiry into an alternative. Science was born from philosophy, from wanting to understand the universe. Philosophy is where most scientists who want to truly delve into the novel unknown end up - those such as Einstein, Heisenberg, and Bohm, among many others have found themselves squarely in this realm. In this territory positivism is essentially useless, as you are dealing with phenomena that we either A.) don't comprehend B.) partially comprehend but can't test or C.) we can't comprehend or test.

This doesn't follow for several reasons. First, I have to address the phrase that you use: "universally accepted science" in relation to the actual consensus in the scientific community. There are few more hotly contested issues than the issue of consciousness, so the idea that your viewpoint of material origin is "universally accepted" is simply not the case. You are part of a subgroup that exists within the scientific community, a subgroup that holds a positivist / monist / mechanistic / materialist philosophical viewpoint and you are applying your philosophical viewpoint to the issue of consciousness without conclusive evidence. There are many who don't agree with your interpretation. It is common practice when human beings are divided on philosophical matters to presume to be in the majority, to project one's viewpoints as "universal". This happens in religion frequently. One particular sect represents the "true faith", the true interpretation of the holy book, while the other interpretations are cast aside as heretical. In short, it is a cognitive bias which results, in my view, from the unconscious insecurity associated with holding an incomplete model of the universe. Second, even if such an issue were "universally accepted", such widespread acceptance would not make that theory true or untrue. The number of people who believe in a particular theory has nothing to do with said theory's veracity. If this were the case, then relativity theory would have become "more true" since it's publication in 1916, and we can both agree such a notion would be absurd. You're adopting a very rigid positivist philosophy here with regards to this subject, and I think such a viewpoint is inherently limiting and will only stifle free inquiry into the more obscure questions that need to be asked regarding consciousness. More on positivism: More from Heisenberg, after being asked about Neils Bohr's remarks about positivism: The magic of thinking is that it can probe into the depths of the unknown and begin to fathom what was once unfathomable. This is the pioneering spirit of science which originated from Natural Philosophy, which was decried at that time as being "overly metaphysical". It was these same Neo Kantians who leveled the first criticisms of the theory of relativity, due in no small part for it's implications to their own philosophical perspective. One such early pioneer was Johan Wilhem Ritter, who discovered ultraviolet light, among other things. He was a student of natural philosophy. What if Ritter has foregone his experiments because there was "no evidence"? Such a positivist mindset would have precluded more or less all the great scientific breakthroughs. To Ritter the possibility of the "force" of ultraviolet light must have been within the realm of his comprehension, but what if you suggested the same thing to Archimedes or Plato? Surely these great men would reject the notion of different spectrums of light as "magical thinking", as they did not possess the instrumentation to measure or test for them, or would they perhaps entertain them in the realm of philosophy? Similarly, we do not yet possess a means that is capable of truly analyzing consciousness. Perhaps in the future we will, when scientists look back pityingly on CERN as quaint and primitive. In lieu of the positivist approach, which is limited, understanding consciousness requires instead a noetic approach: From Douglas Hofstadter's book Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid regarding: So at some point there must be a departure from the "known" to the "unknown", from the fireside of comfortable evidence to the abyss of potentiality that may overturn that evidence. David Bohm's theories on the nature of consciousness and the "implicate order" address this point of departure, however, he rejected a dualistic approach, preferring to see the mind and body being involved in one continuous movement of an unfolded universe: He continues: In other words, the true nature of consciousness is ever-present, but immeasurable. Thus, to rely on understanding the material components of something like the human brain as the full spectrum of what consciousness actually is is an incomplete approach. This isn't evidence to support your hypothesis, that consciousness originates in the brain. This statement merely recognizes that for human beings a brain is necessary to inquire into the question of consciousness. It doesn't address the question of origin. The universe may in fact be conscious, objectively speaking, with or without our existence. It would be an interesting discussion, however after all is said and done merely analyzing from a mechanistic perspective the anatomical workings of the brain in relationship to evolution would still not settle the question of the origin of consciousness. Such a discussion would ultimately be an analytical elaboration on your aforementioned presupposition that consciousness originates in the brain.

I read each of these. I'll refer mainly to the first two articles as the are most relevant to this specific discussion. The wikipedia article discusses a wide range of theories on consciousness. The most relevant excerpt is this passage, as it sums up the foundation of our dialog: (you seem to fall into the monist category and I into the dualist category). First, this introductory sentence to the Science Alert article is key and I think underscores our debate: But this is also important to keep in mind, the article addresses physical origins. I already agree with you that a physical apparatus is necessary for consciousness to manifest in the material realm. However, this doesn't address the question of origin. The fact that consciousness requires a physical apparatus to operate doesn't discount the possibility of an immaterial origin of consciousness, it only focuses on the physical systems necessary for consciousness to manifest within the brain of a biological organism. It's an interesting discovery, certainly, but ultimately the Harvard team's research needs to be verified. But again, the key phrase is "physical source of consciousness". The article makes a point to differentiate this. Is there another source? This is an important breakthrough and I hope it helps people who are in vegetative states. As technology advances we will no doubt learn more about the material processes required to allow the manifestation of consciousness. But ultimately the question remains open, and this research is not evidence that consciousness originates in the brain, only that a healthy brain is generally necessary for the manifestation of consciousness. There is a big difference. What is the difference between hypothesizing an external, immaterial source and hypothesizing an internal, material source? I was simply making the point that Dawkins engages in the same metaphorical language and hypothetical thinking that others do when debating subjects such as this. Falling back on terms like "natural selection" and "evolutionary pathways" and stating that it is the "scientific consensus" does nothing to explain how or why these processes happened / are happening. It's the necessary first step in the development of any inquiry: make observations, think of interesting questions, and then form a hypothesis. Your hypothesis states that because consciousness in many cases ceases when the brain is physically damaged, consciousness must therefore originate in the brain. Such a viewpoint is inconclusive and requires further evidence. Look interesting. I will check it out. Certainly. I'm aware of this fact. However, the cessation of function as correlated with the cessation of consciousness isn't enough to determine where consciousness is actually originating. Further inquiry is needed. I'd like to read any information that you can provide.