iNow

I wonder if this is valid. It seems more intuitive to me to think that dreams could be an outcome of that denoising process in the thalamus, not necessarily the initiator or cause of it as this sentence seems to imply. Perhaps just an issue with word choice and not representative of your actual position? This next sentence seems to reinforce this: I’m reminded of how the prefrontal cortex modulates the amygdala and in a way suppresses or tempers emotional responses. That tempering or modulation activity could equally apply to thalamus as you’re suggesting.

It can, but the return isn’t likely worth the investment

False

The attack is against truth itself. Classic flood the zone with shit propaganda tool. Manufactured realities micro targeted into specific tribes and groups. The premise being pushed is that nothing can be trusted. That sounds reasonable enough, even almostscientific. Verify everything, right? Except, the verification piece is missing. Stephen Colbert years ago called it “truthiness.” Your facts and my alternative facts are equal because I feel mine’s right… so there! That’s what free speech fights are about… my freedom to choose my own facts and my own realities, not the freedom to avoid punishment from government for saying something. Why bother beating your opponent in chess when you can instead dissolve the board itself and let the pieces fall to the floor. The earth is flat. Birds don’t exist. Trump won the 2020 election. Russia is defending Ukrainians from nazis. Hillary Clinton is raping children in the basement of a pizza place. The Jersey drones are nuclear buses and this $15K device for my muscles is surely not just a placebo. Humans have always been influenced by and vulnerable to such things, but lately the tech is making it easier than ever for the crooks and cronies to outpace and put scale cool headed critical thoughts. This is why the TikTok ban is being considered. It’s a brain tuner like a radio antenna for our cortex and we don’t like who’s controlling the knobs and levers and picking the stations.

Reading again a few hours later and continuing with the idea of guitar strings, it seems a bit to me like you’re suggesting dreams (in their tendency to return us toward homeostasis) act as a sort of a mute button, or perhaps even better as a type volume Down knob or lever on an equalizer board. There to slowly dissipate energy from the system… energy which came in from external stimuli.

I’m tired after a late night but this makes broad sense to me. I’m thinking immediately in terms of guitar or violin stings. The plucking of the string creates a new wave we receive. That’s thalamic. Those strings settling and returning to equilibrium (or even just vibrating passively from another guitar or separate violin string plucked nearby) are the dream part. Need more time to caffeinate and consider. Appreciate the sharing of ideas. Happy new year.

I may not have a good answer to that As opposed to… what, exactly?

Do you have a proposal for a better way to simplify? In many senses, humans are just wet meat machines, not truly different from what you’re dismissing due to poor philosophical capabilities. Most humans I know have poor philosophical capabilities too.

No pardon needed and thanks for the reply. I’m getting slightly hung up on how a mental emotional sense of self is supposed to differ from a physical material sense. My first impression is that both types of self rely on the same underlying neurobiology and processes, but believe maybe you’re implying a relevant distinction between those events happening in the thalamus while awake versus those happening elsewhere in other brain regions while asleep. Is that reasonably well aligned with your thinking, or totally off base? Paths through thalamus triggered by outside stimuli (tactile, smell, sight, sound, etc.) whilst awake, whereas dreams whilst sleeping more involve activity along paths in non-thalamus regions… and these are triggered instead as part of a systematic attempt to return to homeostasis during the pruning/reinforcing of those synaptic paths? Apologies if my language or terms here are remedial or misplaced. It’s been many years since any formal training in this space and I admittedly might be trying to shoehorn what you’re saying into my old outdated models of how the brain behaves.

Perhaps there is hope for humanity after all

The imaginary ones used to sell a book

Sounds to me like a forecast for what to expect in the US these next 4 years

I’m perfectly okay accepting this premise, but am not quite clear how it’s in any way different from how the brain operates when we’re awake and aware. Those interpretations too are all of effects and signals, are they not? Basically, by my way of thinking, even “direct” experiences are themselves also indirect when considered through the lens of perception and how our minds make sense of each moment. Hope you’re well and have enjoyed the holiday season.

We’ll see which one of us is correct. My money’s on Americans having a short and extremely inaccurate view of economic happenings and who to thank for the good / blame for the bad. I mean, thanks to taking it seriously and actually working to resolve it. Look at all this weight I’ve lost. It was obviously a mistake to focus so heavily on diet and exercise. Lol

Looks like you did At least for Venezuela.

Kind of like the economy Bidens team successfully rebuilt is finally growing strongly and Trump will get all the credit for benefits he didn’t enact a single policy to influence.

Phew. I was pretty nervous there that I wouldn’t get an update about this. Thanks for closing the loop. I’d have been unable to go on without knowing. I can now rest easy knowing what kind of pickups some rando on the internet prefers.

Perhaps a nice lemon curd will do today ✌️

Bacteria are naturally selected. If you think they’re displaying cognition then yet again you’re stretching the meaning of words so far as to render them useless. If you think they don’t naturally select, that’s plainly false. Conclusion: Cognition may occasionally sometimes be a variable, but is hardly essential to evolution.

No thank you First collaborative constructive criticism: It’s not a model. It makes no testable predictions. It’s a fiction, and a poorly structured one at that.

A role so insignificant that it's not written about in scientific journals. In the same way, sleep and urination play a role in building churches and playing violin, yet you're not equally asking why nobody is writing about that. Furthermore, people ARE writing about a role played in evolution by cognition... so you're basically wrong from every conceivable perspective and just digging in your heels for no apparent reason.

Maybe for the same reason there’s little discussion of the role bagettes play in violin music or marmalade plays in the construction of churches

It not only can, but does And when you name them and support them, they’ll be considered. I could equally claim that leprechauns drive evolution, but until I give further reason to explore that more deeply it can be dismissed and ignored. It’s not purely random. There are environmental factors at play and certain probabilities are far more likely to occur than others. Those are selected more often and it’s nice a simple dice roll every time. While these thoughts and ideas may be new to you, they’re not new to science and the nearly 200 year old study of evolution.

Okay, or we could advocate now for changes we agree are needed and insert economic levers that make more sustainable choices more profitable

Luc likely means “intention” specifically in the process of sexual selection, not evolution as a whole