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iNow

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Everything posted by iNow

  1. Enough proselytizing and preaching from yet another gullible fool caught in a god fog.
  2. I reject your framing of the question. Psychological differences are everywhere. They come from many sources. Biology, culture, parents, nutrition even. Since even identical twins have psychological differences, and even males have differences from other males / females have differences from other females, yes. You can also find differences between males and females… but are those just from society? The way parents buy dolls for girls and trucks for boys? The way the math teacher shows a soft bigotry of low expectations to girls in their classroom? Or is it biology… something about having that extra X chromosome or less testosterone that changes psychology… or is it a combination of those things? This isn’t math. Nobody can give you a simple answer and tell you 2+2 = 4. It’s far more complicated than that. If the world doesn’t fit neatly into your mental framework, the problem isn’t with the world. When people identify one way or the other, it’s usually because that’s what the doctor told them and what their parents and family and community have told them all their lives. When they reject that it’s generally because they feel differently from how they’ve been told to feel and they decided to do something about it. Each and every one of us has a slightly different version of what gender means to us. Sometimes 2+2=4, and other times 2+2= banana. Humans are weird.
  3. Differences psychologically can be from, biology, upbringing, social norms and expectations, impact of puberty, etc. Since even two identical twin siblings will from each other, it’s not surprise than differences can be found across populations of males and females. What matters most is what you think and feel. Life becomes a lot less stressful when you stop worrying about what others think of you.
  4. I see it more as an issue of identity. I may identify as a baseball player, or as an artist, or as a father. As I approach the world, I am just being myself as who I am. The world then tries to impose other labels on me. Those labels aren’t always ideal. Gender is more of a spectrum than a binary set of two, and sometimes trying to force ourselves into just one of those two buckets feels like smashing a square peg through a round hole. Likely in part due to how little gender matters when interacting online and how many hours of our existence are now spent online, more and more people are simply being authentic, less concerned about ostracization, and saying “I no longer feel like smashing myself every day to fit your arbitrary outdated shape.” So, maybe being born with a penis isn’t what makes the male, or being born with a vagina isn’t what makes the female. Maybe hormones are weird and not black and white. Maybe we can just start being ourselves as humans and stop giving a shit if someone else fits into MY rigid categories. Apologies if this isn’t the type of answer you’d hoped for. Definitions change all the time. What’s weird is how people seem to get so spun around the axle on this particular one.
  5. I said try harder and you took that to mean I thought you were being too rough? I’m not sure what your problem is, but I bet it’s hard to pronounce.
  6. Like the memories we form in the minds of those around us? The words which will live on in perpetuity on databases like this one? The furniture and similar woodwork I have scattered around my home and in the homes of loved ones received them as gifts? The way our cells will feed other life forms and transform into new life in other ways later? There are lots of ways we live on. Call it a soul or not, of course we’re more than just ourselves. We are the universe expressing itself as a human being for a little while. Recycling. Listen, man. Yours was great. I’m the one who just said recycling is a definition for soul.
  7. You have literally less than zero credibility with me. You’ll need to try slightly harder than that. It’s also just pure wish thinking and refusal to accept the reality of death in our collective lifecycles.
  8. Israel just had an oopsie and killed 3 of their own hostages. Hard to get the rest of the world to give you a mulligan on something like that. Expect heavy negotiations in Qatar over the weekend and amplification of international pressure until operational tactics change.
  9. Amplified by the stunning abilities of AI that has come over the world like a wave this year… and the deep philosophical questions around being, existing, and trusting that’s generating. There are reasons so many people are thinking and talking about it.
  10. I reckon that depends entirely on how one chooses to define soul I would have to agree with you. God is an invented narrative in your head. Sciences suggests you’ve made god in your image, not the other way around.
  11. Why would you ask that flawed claims not be challenged and suggest some desire to learn what is "not right?" That's ridiculous. I feel this deeply right now.
  12. So panpsychism, basically? Easy to do since a definition of mind is so arbitrary and so consistently conflated with self. That's not a definition, at least not one that anyone with any experience on this topic would willingly accept. The "substrate of mind" is a set of cells that behave in specific ways. Sub - Under, beneath, below... Strate - Material, surface, layer... these are useful concepts in construction, but not in definitions of intelligence (which are expressed behaviors and activities viewed from specific perspectives and with an overarching framework. Lol... now try definining living. Most consciousness chats on a science forum just waste time for page after page after page and go absolutely no where useful. --iNow's Law
  13. It is if we're talking about the cause of behavior and actions. I may need you to elaborate here. They don't move backwards, they simply move in the same direction more slowly... in aggregate. Individual cars may temporarily change gears and and go in reverse, but the overall flow doesn't tend to reverse.
  14. Actually, the parts of our minds responsible for narrative generation and story writing pretty much own this. While much like a single board or brick doesn't hold up an entire house and other parts of the brain are involved, contrary to your assertion above the key player here is quite obviously the hippocampus. This depends on how one defines intelligence, does it not? Some people are intelligent with regards to math, others with regards to poetry, and others still with music or engineering or how emotions work and how to interact with others. The point is there are MULTIPLE frameworks for the concept of "intelligence" and your assertion comes across as oblivious to that. I agree that there is intelligence to be found in nature, but unless you make this more concrete then you may as well be saying there is love in nature or beauty. Agreed... so what? So obviously false, it's not even wrong... but maybe you're defining "mind" in a unique way? You're obviously a very important man, but please expect no awe from me that you "have a meeting." I haven't been able to scrub through them all... Do any of your links above touch on recent ideas from neuroscientists regarding the use an algorithm to consistently calculate different levels of complexity in cortical activation? The core idea here in case you're unfamiliar is that we seem to have different levels of consciousness (whatever that is and however it ultimately gets defined) and that those levels of complexity can be put into an equation and get explored by reviewing how much activity is occurring across how many brain regions at which intensities in a given time.
  15. I believe they're currently considering draft of a strongly worded letter. That'll do it. Done and dusted.
  16. With bated breath I sit awaiting your return
  17. And there are passages in the bible that suggest we should stone people to death for wearing two different fabrics at the same time or that we should slaughter neighboring tribes and rape their women. So what?
  18. Substances are measurable. What apparatus can we use to measure these? What is the baseline state we're looking to compare results against? You posted like 900 of them. How about instead you summarize here which key point you'd like to begin with. Also, please don't assume I'm beginning in this topic tabula rasa and with no existing baseline knowledge. That would be an error.
  19. There are also passages in Mein Kempf that are still relevant today, that doesn’t exactly mean we should be using it to amplify what’s best in humanity. I thought that was the tooth fairy.
  20. You seem to be conflating mind, consciousness, and other similarly nebulous concepts lacking utility.
  21. A label repeatedly leveled at me by various respondents in these FW threads is that I’m epiphenomenalist. I don’t think I am, but acknowledge maybe I’m wrong and have been trying to better understand that position in order to be more sure. When you said: This struck me as an obvious disagreement I would have with that stance and the simplest rebuttal against claims that I am epiphenomenalist myself. It seemed quite silly to me… to suggest that a new brain state cannot be caused / influenced / shaped by a past one… or have “no causal impact on the brain.” Ergo: If that’s what being an epiphenomenalist means, then I’m clearly not one. However, while the above quote suggests there is a relevant meaningful difference between mental phenomena and brain states, the next quote below seems to suggest the opposite: And we agree if this is the case. I’m attempting to validate that agreement, but also respect that you may be using terms differently than I do and so I’m working to validate my own comprehension in parallel. So… in that first quote… the implication was that there’s some sort of important difference between a mental phenomenon and a brain state. If so, what is that? Not entirely, though definitely agree we align in other important ways. It is our notion of how the concept of “freedom” applies / does not apply to these FREE-will explorations that seems to differ most (and to be frank I don’t entirely disagree with you there either). Please understand that I’m not approaching this topic with my mind up nor closed, but instead looking to challenge my existing preconceptions and better comprehend the various threads in this quilt were weaving together. To that end, I am grateful for your contributions and partnership in doing so.
  22. To make this simple, is the suggestion that brain state 1 cannot lead to brain state 2?
  23. This doesn’t answer my question. That is not my position, nor have I posted anything which should reasonably lead one to conclude it is. To be transparent, I’m struggling to find my stance on this topic. I do know the asymmetry in the Israeli response is only making things worse long term.
  24. Yes. Exactly. Golly, how nice it is to finally be understood. Are you clairvoyant? Then why mention 2005 at all? It’s about to be 2024.
  25. I read it similarly. Consider recognizing authors role in conveyance of intended / unintended points
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