Your aggressive rejection of new knowledge has been noted.

The patriotic Russtards appear to be pretending they haven't heard the news...

http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/related/2on802/russian_internal_affairs_ministry_hacked_66gb_of/


Oh, wait, I forgot about their controlled media brainwashing. Maybe they really haven't heard the news. Either way, there's no need to thank me for enlightening you.

Dafaq?
Cars are shit. Ugly 20th century phallic symbols representing the 2+3 "nuclear family" taking a giant steaming dump on the environment. The whole point of cities is that people are already crowded close to where they need to be for all kinds of work and lifestyle things. So the best modes of transport are typically walking, cycling or light rail. Sacrificing the most valuable inner city real-estate for dead infrastructure space is the complete opposite of what many cities are trying to do.

The concept of family is just intellectual inbreeding, and the proud egos of the men and women who spread their seed the farthest. It's fine to a degree, as long as they don't belittle other people who make different choices with their lives.

If we're looking for something buried in the silt and sand, we'll only find whatever is recognisable to us. It would have to be some kind of image of what we know.

I mean, surely, all of the more advanced aspects of ancient societies were biodegradable?

We tend to assume that global society is the most advanced it has ever been, but what if that's just our arrogant ego talking, based on a mirage? It should be obvious that only the most primitive metal and stone symbols (pyramids) would have the dumb longevity to survive 1000s of years. Even so, they've given us so many hints about their mathematical abilities.

What if ancient societies got so cynical about "dem young inbred next generation" that, in multiple acts of desperation, they inscribed a whole bunch of runes for us, dumbing it down of course, like a kind of mental seed bank??


Ancient satellite and Internet technology? Biodegradable.


Ancient nuclear power? Safe enough not to leave any long-term evidence on the planet. The lack of evidence for (ancient damage, isotopes scarring the environment, etc.) is not evidence of lack (Logic 101). If anything, any "first time ever" occurrences of scarring should be regarded as positive evidence that we have gone downhill.


Ancient mining and excavation of energy and minerals out of the earth? Advanced quantum teleportation, unlike the primitive metal scoops that we use today.

That is all.

Has anyone considered that the "New World" simply refers to the Americas? Just like "old world" wines are from classic European regions and the "new world" wines are from the colonies.

So in that context, "New World Order" would just be big-headed Yanks gloating about US dominance over the rest of the world.

IMO the "Order" would simply be the combination of economic and monetary policies, treaties and agreements, military alliances, science and technology, and mainstream culture.

A "world government" would simply be superficial re-branding of the status quo. They, the US, basically are the world government by virtue of having the most power. There's no point in expecting a more dominant government to appear because the global anarchy doesn't work that way, except perhaps during a transition period.

I love the Feng Shui seating arrangement

A fun Big Brother environment where trust is guaranteed! I wonder if the chairs will be equipped with electric shock collars, so that lower-tier slaves sitting in the outer rungs can be immediately electrocuted if they're caught watching porn or playing games.

It's the Russian "information war" again.

Also, Norwegian oil maybe?

The whole story sounds like speculative nonsense. For all we know, the innocent Russian "family" may have been people-traffickers, the story somehow went public, but the authorities wanted to avoid embarrassment so they twisted it around and made up some shit to brainwash the public with in their "free" media.

That would be consistent with the stealthy way in which Russia tries to expand its influence and empire:

1) Have double-standards for the law inside and outside of their federation.
2) Criminals can expect harsh prison sentences, for crimes committed INSIDE Russia.
3) But as soon as they cross the border to Europe, it's somebody else's problem.
4) Russia takes it a step further and protects criminals by being extremely sceptical of any sense of law or justice on the outside. The normal practice in Europe seems to be to only imprison criminals with a local passport or some kind of residency rights, while the others get extradited back to their country of origin. This is very convenient for Russian criminals (and for Russia) because as long as they only commit crimes OUTSIDE of Russia, they never get punished.
5) Russia never pays for the costs that the other countries incur from the criminality.


Yup

Circular argument: "methodical research is superior to alternatives because its results turned out to be superior".
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/begging-the-question

I've got a couple of problems with that:
-it deifies the Method and shuts down logical thinking (let us all bow down to the Great Book of Scientific Method! )

-there's the placebo effect, which you seem to have failed to observe. Frustratingly, even the most bizarre rituals have had documented effects, rather than no effect. Hence, "placebo effects" where various unknown effects are lumped together and ignored.

Apples and apples.


I'm told that the build quality is actually pretty good.

Educate yourself:

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/10/googles-iron-grip-on-android-controlling-open-source-by-any-means-necessary/1/

Well, I didn't mean disparage the aeons of cooperative development that went into creating today's scientific method from the ground up.

How can we investigate if we don't already have some idea of what we're looking for?

Preliminary scientific aim: "find X" where X is consciousness.

But I've always had some rudimentary a priori knowledge that I'm an "experiential being".
So then I want to "learn more about X".

And so the process seems continuous.


Eventually we get to: "find other instances of X".
Which brings us to the possibility of multiple minds:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_other_minds
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many-minds_interpretation

Here, we run into more difficulties simply because the scientific method relies on cooperative effort. We get this problem:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant


Going further still, we could think of 'reality' as a substrate that provides loose connections between the multiple minds in nature, allowing them to combine to form a larger over-mind.

Not to derail the topic but the Scientific Method is just a modern-day bible. It's an adjunct to reason, a cookbook that lays down a history of scientific findings, lists best practices and acceptable ways to approach certain types of problems. It's not a substitute for reason or the curious inner child that wants to explore and experiment.

I loosely define consciousness as the 'ego' or the "first person experience" - the something that imagines all that stuff that we're aware of when we're awake or dreaming. Right off the bat it's difficult for the scientific method because it focuses on empiricism as the dominant way of doing things. We're supposed to observe and measure the outside world, not the inside world. And it's easy to get caught in a trap of making too many assumptions:
-that consciousness exists somewhere else as well.
-that it's likely to be tied to some physical location, such as clumps of neurons inside people's brains.
-that it belongs to the category of real things, such as matter or energy.
-observing other's behaviour is as good as experiencing it myself, because I assume that I'm fundamentally similar to everyone else. After all, the images that I see of other people seem similar to the images that I see when I look in the mirror.

Well, what if we're mistaken to assume those things?
In much the same way that in mathematics imaginary numbers have no location on a real plane (or we can think of a separate imaginary plane that is orthogonal or a different dimension), why should our imagination be located in a real location?
I'm reminded that information has no mass or energy either. As far as my computer is concerned, the words on the screen are just meaningless noise that it was forced to draw by a program. So where is the information located?

I think you'll find more answers if you look at what some philosophers had to say about "the world". At least this approach seems helpful on my own journey. Some suggestions for research:

"5 minute hypothesis"
ask yourself:
What could the implications be for experiments that rely on collecting sequences of data and analysing them?
The world seems consistent and causal, but why should it be that way?
Could our actions in the present somehow seamlessly alter our memory of "the past" so that it fits our expectations?


The unresolved tension between causality and free will.
How can they co-exist? Surely, that would be a paradox?
Which one is the illusion:
-that life has some ability to interfere with the universe by exerting its will on it?
-the appearance that everything is locked to some causal cog?
Or maybe that's a false dichotomy, and there could be a bit of both?

I hope to read through it a bit later.
In the mean time, I've got a couple of light-weight thoughts on the subject...

It's easy for people who are just starting out on this topic to put their faith in science. Unless they ultimately re-do the experiments and interpret it for themselves then they're simply putting someone else's lessons on a pedestal. I'm not saying ignore everything you read, just be aware how pervasive the act of believing is. Beliefs crop up everywhere.

I've participated in a couple of discussions here regarding the role of science in studying consciousness. IIRC, I figured that there's something called a Demarcation Problem in this area, because although consciousness is a very interesting "something" that we might like to study, empirical science seems ill-equipped because it has the wrong category of tools to do it. In plain English, consciousness is a very personal, experiential, phenomenal "something", that I experience, manipulate, create, do, and make choices with. I also assume that other people have a conceptually similar consciousness of their own, even though its qualities might be entirely different and unimaginable to me.

When we focus on our a priori, 1st-person knowledge of consciousness, we can gain plenty of insights:
-we already know what our own sense of consciousness is like. We don't need other scientists to write their interpretations. In this case we are the scientist.
-we can sense a vast gap between cook-book methodology where we study behaviour, never really knowing if it's some philosophical zombie operating mechanically, versus the metaphysical idea of a telepathic connection between minds.


I've been curious about the idea of Leibniz's Monads lately. Antiquated idea, for sure, but to me it seems it was needlessly abandoned in that dark 19th-20th century era of Materialism and Positivism, and substance prohibition. AFAICT the idea of living atoms was never debunked. Instead, it seems science didn't find it very useful to incorporate metaphysical ideas into newer models. Now it seems we've come full circle: with quantum behaviour being so strange, it could be worth revisiting the idea that 'elements' also have elements of consciousness.

The format is irrelevant. Why do the industry magnates try to go after people for illegal distribution even though the "stolen" 1GB data files are completely different from the 4.7GB data files they're trying to sell? In order to resolve that in court, they'd still have to fall back on weaker, more bullshitty arguments regarding the subjective similarity of the visual and audio experience.

By that standard, having an old analogue tape gives you lifetime listening rights. Most civilised countries have some form of contract law, so you should also be protected since you're the weaker party -- if those abusive monopolies want to keep their profits AND harsh penalties for copying, then they should also supply you with replacement copies in perpetuity.

Indeed it is. Freud would probably have a lot to say about the Russian psychological complexes. It all seems very consistent, even if it's not easy to predict:

The average Russian feels weak and powerless.

So they support governments that are power-hungry.

The average Russian feels like a victim who is not given much respect by the West.

So the Russian government acts like it has been victimised.

At the same time, the average Russian seems confident that their level of education and historical knowledge is superior to the Western kind.

So the Russian government acts arrogantly, "correcting" what they see as historical injustices.



It's a pathological loop of bullshit that has been going on for hundreds of years. Have they ever had a government that wasn't some gross overreaction to their psychological needs?

Didn't Steve Jobs die of pancreatic cancer, and just one day later, rumours started appearing about it really being AIDS and that the "cancer" was just a cover story?


This explains everything...

Ahh, so you're not a complete idiot. You do understand the tactics that Russia has been using to bankrupt Ukraine, by playing around with gas prices. Instead, you are a dishonest asshole. That's good to know.



Now, get back to work. Aren't you supposed to be spreading propaganda about how Russia is just a poor victim of aggressive EU and US politics, and misunderstood by the rest of the world? You just want to be loved and respected!

Yeah, I was wondering about that.

For one thing, death is just a catchword for empirical observations of other people dying, and for theories relating to what it might mean. Obviously the particles don't go anywhere, and what about when a child's brain starts becoming conscious out of thin air?

I have another question regarding birth and death: when does it happen?

I could probably think of some thought experiments, relating to relativity, which suggest that our lifespan of 70-something Earth years literally equals the 13 billion year lifespan of the observable universe.

Might I suggest that "faulty ideology" is a tautology?

To me it seems that ALL ideologies have a latent potential for flaws, imperfections, internal inconsistencies and so on. This is already accounted for with the word "ideology". By grouping ideas and ideals, putting them into a 'set', calling them 'Communism', 'Islam', 'Christianity', 'Zionism', 'Capitalism' and so on, we're mentally acknowledging that it's just a group of ideas inside a set, and that special exceptions might be possible.