iNow

Just so we’re clear and in case there was any confusion, I was not under the influence when typing my post. ✌️

In fairness, nations around the world are consolidating and newer super-regions who share governance in various ways aren’t out of the realm of possibility. This extends well beyond just the US and Canada, though.

As long as the US gets all of the control and access to resources, yes. The government would support it. More specifically, it depends entirely on how this gets done and what agreements are made. Just asking about a vague merger isn’t detailed enough to answer in a probabilistic way.

Oh, cry me a river.

In case you ever wish to explore this more, what you describe here is probably better covered by the phrase “sense of self.” We have this feeling if there being a “pilot behind the eyes,” but most neuroscience suggests all of this is actually the result what’s known as a “post-dictive illusion” wherein the brain is attempting to organize a diverse collection of signals into a coherent story or narrative. We fool ourselves into thinking we’re more than a biological bag of meat and mostly water. There is, and there are vast colonies of bacteria that have enormous affect on our wellbeing, digestion, and general state of mind. There are also viruses treating us like hosts, invading our cells and hijacking our DNA every waking moment. There are mites and various other bugs making their home on our skin and each of us is a fairly amazing ecosystem that could be studied for centuries and still not understood in our entirety. You’d probably have better luck with AI, uploading your mind to some (not yet invented) computer interface. That seems more likely to me than infinite probabilities and reincarnation.

Why not? Ken’s point is perfectly valid. The executive branch of the US government already prevents its departments from even using the phrase “climate change” in any tax payer funded reports, and for decades hasn’t let us collect data on national gun violence. Why wouldn’t they equally restrict measurements of climate in Greenland?

I see what you did there

It’s mostly at the edges, but still significant (and I tend to agree with your broader points).

Truman wanted to buy Greenland, too. My gut on this one is Trump wants to give climate hating moguls access to the resources for mining (rare earths etc) and drilling (oil) now that the ice above it melting. It’s similar to how he’s opened up more public lands and national parks here in the US for resource exploitation than any president ever.

Just a small nit to pick. We don't actually know this. The inflationary model seems to suggest it, but we lack certainty on this question. Likewise here. We don't really know. We have some models which suggest one thing, while other models suggest other things. They're mutually exclusive with one another, and both appear to be internally consistent and valid... pending additional evidence. My pleasure

You meant assess.

Passionate climate advocate and Washington state governor, Jay Inslee, has chosen to leave the race.

There’s a lot right with your post (which is admittedly more philosophical than astronomical... don’t feel hurt if mods move it). A few points stand out to me: - We ARE different now than before. Every cell in our body is always getting recycled. I think the average to complete this for every single cell is 8 years. You’re not even exactly the same person reading this as you were when writing that original post. You’ve drank water, eaten food, the connections in your brain have been pruned and reinforced, the bacteria in your belly has evolved countless different colonies. Change is the only constant. - Infinity IS hard for our human minds to grasp. We evolved counting seeds and arrow head and antelope. We can barely conceive of thousands or millions, let alone infinities. With that said, it’s important to recall that infinity is just another abstraction. A useful tool in math. It’s not somehow magical and doesn’t make impossible things possible. It’s another type of number. - Probabilities DO get really interesting when considered over vast epochs of time. The probability that something unlikely will happen changes when considered in the next 5 minutes, 5 days, 5 months, 5 years, 5 centuries, 5 millennia, 5 infinities... Its easy to speculate that another “you” could exist, but the amount of time required is likely several times older than the universe itself. - Not everything can be compared to a roll of the dice. If you roll a dice enough times, you can achieve nearly any combination of results. In our reality, however, certain rules apply. Certain chemicals attract and repel to form certain molecules. Certain forms are more successful in an environment than others and evolve more successfully. Certain forces apply, and all of this is well before you get to the level of complex organisms and life forms, or even cultures. Given enough time, nearly anything is possible, if considered within the rules of the system. The main problem here is the amount of time required for these things is several times older than the entire universe. - Most concepts of reincarnation are pretty silly. We are formed from atoms formed by exploded stars, and we do get recycled by other organisms when we die. Our molecules decompose or get eaten by a beetle or burned into the air or absorbed by a mushroom or a tree. In that sense, we reincarnate, sure, but much like you’re not even the same person now as you were when you wrote that post, you’re most certainly not the same “person” after death as you were while alive... while you were “the universe expressing itself as a human being for a little while.” I probably missed the important parts of your question. Sorry for that. These are just a few thoughts off the top of my head. Thanks for letting me share them with you and for the opportunity to do so presented when you asked your kind thought provoking questions. Not all questions have answers, but that doesn’t make it any less fun discussing them. Cheers.

The audience for newscientist is interested laymen. Math is the exception, not the rule. It’s more pop-sci than peer reviewed journal.

"that's why this question makes no sense" is the phrase you're looking for

Unfortunately, his position of decriminalization border crossings is one of the least popular among the broader general election voting public (doing only marginally better than Yang's UBI proposal and other proposals for reparations)... <emphasis mine>: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/democrats-policy-agenda-popularity-ranked-862338/

Merely repeating this claim doesn’t magically render it true. I’ve never made any claims regarding the self-awareness of plants, so no.

More precisely, for asserting your speculations as absolute and without any supporting evidence whatsoever.

My post equally doesn’t apply to fruit flies or cactus or most forms of life. While whimsical as a commentary on modern times and human politics, it’s really quite crap when applied to the overall thread topic and I’d like to retract it.

The purpose of life is to choose, and the choice itself is simple. Choose kindness or Choose blindness Your purpose is to choose.

Its just another version of Hoyles fallacy

The assumptions here are that 1) you’d build and own the robots, and 2) you’d still get paid. If those apply, you’re surely right that this is all motherhood and apple pie. However, much more likely is that a tiny handful of ultra rich will build and own all robots, workers will be both displaced and cutout of any profits or income, and the classes will further separate while people starve and struggle to keep a roof over their heads... unless we proactively put policies in place to support the masses irrespective of robot ownership.

Also, leave your husband since, even if he’s not poisoning you, your relationship together is clearly toxic and poisonous.

You should avoid seeking employment with Oxford or Merriam Websters. Your definition of time is perhaps the single worst I've ever seen. I thought the question was about life and consciousness. It's even right there in the thread title.

This one set of words at the very end of your post is the single best explanation for all of the negative sentiments you described in the rest. You seem to have given up and turned apathetic. As should be obvious to everyone... That's not a successful recipe for maximizing the chances of situational improvement.