Rottcodd @ Rottcodd @lemmy.ninja

Posts

57

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122

Joined

2 yr. ago

Actually, the people who would only bother with the fediverse if it had more content are exactly the people I don't want here.

I never really liked it much - too many assholes, astroturfers and bots - so I was always open to moving somewhere else, as soon as I found somewhere I liked better. And I liked the threadiverse better.

Undoubtedly.

To paraphrase Lily Tomlin, no matter how cynical I get, it's still not enough.

I don't bother with the right-wing propaganda networks so I don't know, but I can't imagine how they might spin this to blame Biden when his administration hasn't even been involved in the process.

The whole thing hinges on a purely internal conflict not just within Congress, but in the House specifically. How does that even colorably come to be blamed on an entirely separate branch?

I don't doubt that the propaganda outlets and the grifters will simply lie, and conjure up some entirely different account of things that won't match up at all with the plain objective reality of the whole thing stalling because a group of hard right House members are demanding concessions and refusing to vote in favor of a budget that doesn't include them, but I can't even imagine what it will be, since it will have to be essentially completely false, from start to finish.

Unfortunately, I also don't doubt that some significant part of the Republican base will believe whatever it is, since they've been so thoroughly indoctrinated and made so subject to their emotions that they literally can no longer distinguish between reality and fantasy.

Still though, even with as confused and misled and blinded by emotion as much of the Republican base is, and as brazenly dishonest as the propagandists and grifters that are profiting off of them are, I can't imagine how it might be the case that Biden will get the blame for this. It's not just that it's not narrowly true, but that there isn't even a colorable basis, as far as I can see, to even pretend that it is.

A link on Reddit.

It was immediately after spez's fatuous AMA. I wasn't specifically planning to leave Reddit, but I had never really been satisfied there, so I was open to the idea. And I ran across a link to join-lemmy.org, so I followed it, just to see what it was about. I had no idea then that following that link would end up being the last thing I did on Reddit, but that's the way it worked out.

Setting aside the fact that this is a generalization and thus naturally overstating things, I don't doubt that there's some truth to this.

There's a sort of rigidly intolerant moralizing that arose on the internet over the last decade or so, most exemplified by Tumblr, and gen z was right in the middle of it.

It puts me in mind of the Victorian era, with a group of people who absolutely and unequivocally condemn anyone and everyone who violates their rigid sense of propriety, or more precisely, the stereotypes that they substitute for those people. Of course, the biggest difference is that they have a completely different set of rules to which they insist that all submit - instead of a religious morality mostly concerned with sex they have a secular morality mostly concerned with social behavior. But they share that absolutism - the smug certainty that their way is the only way and that any who believe otherwise are not only wrong, but due to the fact that they believe otherwise, so monstrous as to be unfit to even judge.

That last is the trap - the thing that sets that extreme of moralizing apart and keeps it going when it takes hold. Those who come to believe in it end up believing not simply that they're right, but that believing as they do is the defining trait of people who are fit to judge the matter, so they then can and do reject any and all differing views out of hand on the basis that the mere act of holding a different view means that one is obviously an inferior being, and since one is an inferior being, whatever one believes is and can only be wrong. It becomes a closed loop, in which people aren't even capable of considering different viewpoints.

And that's presumably the quality that's being characterized, and with some accuracy, as them not having the skills to disagree.

I'd note though that this is just one manifestation of the problem. It's a new version of it, made possible by social media, and it appears to be notably widespread, and particularly in a relatively narrow age group, but the dynamic itself is likely as old as human civilization.

Saw that coming.

I think this puts consciousness on too high of a mystic pedestal.

I think that one of the most common ways by which the devotees of reductive physicalism try to make it appear to be a valid position is by positing a false dichotomy by which they then sneeringly characterize anything that's not simply physical as "mystic."

What makes you think that it is impossible to observe someone else’s consciousness?

The fact that it's an emergent phenomenon with no physical manifestation.

I think we'll be able to (and in fact we already can to some notable degree) track neuronal activity in a brain and map it and interpret it, so we can make reasonably solid guesses regarding its nature - general type, intensity, efficiency and so on - but we can never actually observe its content, since its content is a gestalt formed within and only accessible to the mind that's experiencing it.

There's nothing at all "mystic" about that - it's simple logic and reason.

And, by the bye, it's also much of why actual philosophers rejected reductive physicalism almost a century ago.

Philosophy can't have "a scientific basis.

If an idea has a legitimate scientific basis, then it's not philosophy - it's science. Philosophy explicitly addresses ideas for which there is not, and in most cases there can't be, a legitimate scientific basis.

Conveniently enough, I just wrote another response to the thread, since there was more I wanted to say on the topic, and it addresses this.

It's not a matter of not having the tools to test theories of consciousness - it's more fundamental than that. We are consciousness. When we theorize on consciousness, we are engaging in consciousness. It's inescapable - it's the very thing that makes it possible to theorize. And it's entirely experiential - you necessarily experience your own consciousness and cannot possibly observe anyone else's. We are each and all, and necessarily, behind a veil of perception. It's literally impossible for it to be otherwise - to somehow step outside of consciousness and observe it, since the only thing that can meaningfully observe it is that same consciousness.

Yes - we can concevably at least make some good guesses regarding the physical processes that correspond with our experiences of consciousness, but that's necessarily the extent of it. Again, it's not simply that we don't have the tools to do more than that, but that it's inherently impossible for it to be otherwise.

This is still nagging at me - there's more I want to say. So, another response.

This particular theory is a pretty good illustration of the unfortunate ignorance of philosophy I mentioned, but an even better one is mentioned in the article - "the popular claim, advanced by philosopher Nick Bostrom and taken seriously by physicist Neil deGrasse Tyson and David Chalmers, among others, that our reality is a simulation being run on a computer, as in The Matrix."

That's not just pseudoscience, but embarassingly ignorant. If these people had even the vaguest understanding of the idea, they'd recognize that it's about as far from science as it's possible to get.

The whole concept was first popularized by Descartes in the 17th century. He presented it as the possibility that one's perception of reality could be manipulated by an "evil demon," but the underlying concept was the same as "the Matrix."

But the thing is that it was never intended to be an actual theory of perception and consciousness - rather it was a thought experiment meant to illustrate the fact that it could be the case that our perceptions of reality are controlled by an evil demon (or are a computer simulation), and we could never know.

The exact point is that it's literally impossible to somehow step outside of our perceptions and our consciousness and analyze them, since any observations we might make are and can only be products of the very perceptions and consciousness we're trying to analyze. So they could be entirely right or entirely wrong or anything in between and we could never know, since they simply are and can only be whatever they are.

As far as that goes then, it not only falls astray of but pretty much explicitly illustrates the distinction between science and pseudoscience.

And if Tyson et al had even the faintest understanding of philosophy - if they weren't blinded by some ludicrously ignorant species of reductive physicalism - they'd already understand that, and recognize how foolish it is to treat the Matrix, or any other such idea, as a legitimate theory.

I'm pleased to see this.

In recent decades, science has been trying to move into areas, like consciousness, that are really philosophy, and all that does is fuck things up for everyone.

Yes - of course it's pseudoscience - it can't help but be, since it's all untestable.

The problem is that, by labeling it "science," whatever it is that someone proposes is immediately treated by devotees of scientism as certain fact, when in reality it's philosophy, and thus "fact" is a quality it can't even possess. And that's doubly a problem because not only is it not and can't ever be legitimately treated as fact but, not to put too fine a point on it, when it comes to philosophy, all too many scientists don't know what the hell they're talking about. In ways, many of them are even more ignorant than laypeople, since they tend to disdain and thus ignore the philosophy that's gone before them.

It's a neat trick - an amusing and effective way to illustrate internalized struggles. It sort of reminds me of B Gata H Kei's personified "sex gods."

I've been online since the early 90s, when it was just understood that there were risks, so you had to protect yourself. So it's not so much that I got into internet privacy as that I've never done things any other way.

The only thing that's really changed is that I've had to shift more from passively protecting myself to actively protecting myself, since corporate and government shitstains are constantly scheming to destroy our privacy in order to expand and protect their own wealth, power and privilege.

The one time I did that, I just switched my inbox from "Unread" to "All." Problem solved.

That was adorable.

I happened to run across a CD of the fourth one used, a couple of years after it released. I didn't even know it existed before that, and definitely didn't know it'd end up becoming my favorite. And I still don't have a copy of the fifth. I do have the last two though.

25 On is sort of reminiscent of Tornado or The Good News and the Bad News - a return to form. It's pretty good on its own, but sort of suffers by comparison. Monster Movie is odd but interesting. It feels kind of self-indulgent, but in a good way - just a bunch of guys sitting around playing what they want to play just because that's what they want to play. It's a bit disjointed, but I like it.

I happened on them when they put out their first album and have been a fan ever since, and that's even without ever getting a chance to see them live. Bob Walkenhorst is easily my favorite songwriter.

Flirting with the Universe is their fourth album - after a bit of a recording hiatus after The Good News and the Bad News, and it's far and away my favorite. It's obvious that they took their time and carefully crafted an album designed to showcase their talent. It's unfortunate that it still didn't manage to bring them the recognition they've always deserved, but I appreciate it.

Off the top of my head...

The Presidents of the United States of America - The Presidents of the United States of America

Stan Ridgway - The Big Heat

The Rainmakers - Flirting with the Universe

XTC - Black Sea

Morphine - Good

Bloodhound Gang - Hooray for Boobies

Lloyd Cole and the Commotions - Rattlesnakes

The Mattoid - Great Lovers

Frank Zappa - Joe's Garage

Was (Not Was) - What Up Dog?

...or something like that...

Because it's never let me down.

I started using it pretty much from the beginning and have never had a reason to stop. When Chrome came along, I thought the whole idea of using a browser made by Google was obviously awful, so I just kept using Firefox. And I'm still using it.