WatDabney @ WatDabney @sopuli.xyz

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2 yr. ago

How is it that the world is so deeply insane?

Surely I'm not the only one who sees it, right?

I mean - as just one example, we have here a country that launched a military invasion of another country, and is now trying to characterize attempts by that country to defend itself as "escalation."

The only possible "logic" behind that is that the Russian position is that the only acceptable thing for Ukraine to do is to meekly submit to Russian rule, and that anything else is such an affront that it justifies even more violence and murder.

That's stark, raving, bug-eyed insane. And it's not some derelict on a street corner spouting that insanity - it's s nation. And it's not the only national level insanity happening - hell - it's not even the only national level insanity happening today. Even as I type this, it's guaranteed that some country or some national level politician somewhere, and probably more than one, is doing or saying something at least as mind-boggling insane as that, and it just keeps going, moment-to-moment, day-to-day.

How does that even work? Seriously - is it some sort of conspiracy of silence or something? Some (potentially unspoken) agreement around the world that yeah, we know that these people are stark staring mad, but let's just pretend that the shit they spew has some merit, mmkay?

Or is it that the rest of the world is so insane that they don't even notice? (Or, it suddenly struck me, so drunk that they don't?)

I just don't get it. It's not even just countries and their leaders doing and saying things that are a bit questionable, but countries and their leaders doing and saying things that are screechingly insane - that don't even bear a passing resemblance to logic, reason, truth or reality. Day in and day out, and without even a whisper about how patently insane it all is.

I don't understand how that's even possible.

If the GOP had any decency left, its members would be discussing whether to dump Trump for a candidate who isn’t out to bulldoze democratic institutions in favor of autocracy

Except that they want to bulldoze democratic institutions in favor of autocracy. That's their explicit goal.

Trump isn't the important part to the Republicans - he's just the one who happens to have a chance to deliver what they want.

I wonder if that's now another of the Biden-era policy decisions Trump plans on overturning...

Flogging a narrative - someone has a vested interest not just in promoting a particular idea or position, but in communicating the idea that there's a broad consensus for that idea or position. That's the "narrative."

For whatever reason (generally simply that that broad consensus doesn't exist), they can't simply report that some significant majority of people support the idea or position. So instead, they publish an anecdotal example of it - this particular person, who's notable for whatever reason, supports it. Then the next day, they publish another. Then another. Then another. Then another.

The goal is simply to repeat the same idea enough times that people who aren't really paying much attention will come to think that it must be a notably popular position, since they keep seeing it mentioned.

I have no doubt that an aide said what 's being reported. And I also have no doubt that a determined enough reporter could come up with pretty much any idea at all - for instance, that Kraft macaroni and cheese is the best food ever - then find some aide somewhere who would go on record saying it.

Yeah - I'm calling bullshit at this point.

This isn't reporting - it's just flogging a narrative.

And I say that as someone who argued for Biden dropping out.

Just the first of many, MANY more to come.

The Republican plan, rather obviously, is to take this election by whatever means necessary - fairly, or if that fails fraudulently, or if that fails by judicial fiat, or if that fails by force.

That's the biggest reason I don't even call this a revolution. It's a coup.

Yeah - I hesitated to post that, since even with the clearly negative characterization of all of the clearly negative aspects of it, it still sort of sounds as if not defending democracy is the right thing to do, when it's really only "right" in an extremely narrow, warped, relativistic and brazenly evil sense.

Still though...

That's a fascinating concept.

And yes - though a yank, I know Doctor Who. ;)

(And this is the point at which I accidentally tapped "Reply" last time through, which is why there's a deleted post before this one)

Anyway...

My first reaction was that it didn't make sense that a consciousness could find itself attached to (hosted by?) a different mind and just blithely continue on.

But the more I think about it, the more I think that's at least reasonable, and possibly even likely.

A consciousness might be comparable to a highly sophisticated and self-aware frontend. Any range of data or software can be stored and run through it, and when new data or even a new piece of software is introduced, the frontend/consciousness can and will (if it's working correctly) integrate it with the system, and it can review the data and software it's overseeing and find flaws and (unless the ego subsystem intervenes) amend or replace it, and so on.

And viewed that way, and taking into account the likely mechanics of the whole thing, it really is possible and arguably even likely that it would be essentially content-neutral. It would make sense that while the experience of "I the audience" is itself a distinct thing, the specific details - the beliefs and values and memories and such that make it up - are just data pulled from memory, and it could just as easily pull any other data from any other memory (if it had access to it).

Fascinating....

The really disturbing part is that he's technically correct.

At this point in history, supporting democracy really is a partisan position, since the Republicans uniformly and adamantly oppose it, and intend to impose christofascist autocracy in its place.

Fight the urge to immediately get off the train.

Even with as many episodes of Star Trek as I've seen, I'm sure I'd want to rush right out and start exploring.

Neither really. Sort of.

There are certainly inherently repugnant beliefs, but beliefs in and of themselves are harmless - they're just a particular pattern of firing neurons in a brain. They literally cannot bring harm to others just in and of themselves.

The thing that makes some beliefs horrible is not the mere holding of them, but the things one who holds them is likely to do. It's those acts that are the real evil - the beliefs are just a foundation, or a trigger.

Now, all that said, I would hazard that it's exceedingly rare at best (and arguably impossible) for anyone to hold noxious beliefs without them in some way affecting their behavior, so the mere holding of noxious beliefs can certainly serve as a justification for the conclusion that the person in question is in fact horrible. Still though, to be (perhaps overly) precise, I'd say that it's not the belief itself that makes them a horrible person, but merely that the belief makes it quite likely that they'll act in ways that make them (or reveal them to be) horrible people.

At this point a new revelation about Thomas doesn't even really count as evidence that he's corrupt - it's evidence that he's even more corrupt.

I get where you're going with that analogy. It's a bit awkward, just because, as you did, you have to stipulate shelter as opposed to the sheltered area, but with that stipulation it does work, and quite well really.

And as analogies should be, it's intriguing.

But...

My first reaction is that it's sort of similar to the "consciousness is an illusion" concept in that it appears to just move the problem back one step rather than solve it.

It seems to me that what you're describing is the "space" (or maybe "framework would be better) in which consciousness takes place, but not consciousness itself.

The problem then (as is the problem with the consciousness is an illusion idea) is that that space/framework/whatever is only of note if a consciousness is introduced.

At the risk of bringing in too many metaphors, it's akin to the "tree falling in a forest" thought experiment. The tree falling in the forest certainly generates disturbances in the air that, were there ears to hear them, would register as sound. But without ears to hear them, they're just disturbances in the air. Similarly, it seems to me that the "shelter" that's apparently intrinsic to the brain is only rightly considered "shelter" if there's a consciousness to experience it. Without a consciousness to experience it, it's just a space/framework/whatever.

Anyway, do you believe there is any ingredient to consciousness other than the physically of the brain?

I believe that consciousness in and of itself is obviously that.

I probably should've clarified - when I say "consciouness," I'm referring to the state/process that's at least one step removed from immediate perception.

I see a round red thing and recognize it to be food. That's just perception.

I also recognize it to be the thing called an "apple" (in English - other languages have other words). I know that they grow on trees and come in many varieties, and I remember the tree in the side yard of the house I grew up in and how the apples were small and yellow and very good, but I had to generally get a ladder to get any apples, since the deer ate the ones close to the ground (and the ones on the ground, which at least meant I didn't have to worry about cleaning them up), oh yeah and mom had a recipe for raw apple cake and it was delicious, but she bought the apples for that because the ones from the tree were too firm and tangy to bake with... and so on.

That's the part that, to me, corresponds with the "shelter" in your analogy.

But that's still not consciousness.

Consciousness is the apparently entirely non-physical "audience" to all of that - the "I" that's aware of the process as it's happening.

For example, it's not the part that recognizes an apple, or the part that categorizes it as food, or even the part that remembers the apple tree and the cake and feels nostalgia - it's the part that's one step removed from all of that - the internal "audience" (of one) that observes that "I" am experiencing all of that.

And it seems to me that your view accounts for all of those subsidiary things, but doesn't account for the "audience" - consciousness. Consciousness is distinct from, and at least one step removed from, all of those things.

And finally (though this has already gone on quite long) -

I don't believe that consciouness is a manifestation of some "spark" or "soul" or anything else external. I think it's really a relatively mundane function of the brain that we simply haven't come to understand yet (and for as long as "science" remains blinkered by reductive physicalism, likely won't be able to come to understand). The key, and the thing (to go all the way back) that ties it in with free will, is that I believe that (as I mentioned before) the communication between brain and consciousness is bidirectional - that there's some mechanism by which conscious thought alone can at least affect if not wholly direct the path along which neurons fire, and likely not only pioneer new paths, but in some way "flag" them, such that the new path is (nominally) properly fitted into the whole.

And again - thanks. This is some of the most rewarding mental exercise I've had in a long time.

There are a bajillion crappy old games that I actually dislike more, but none of those would be interesting answers.

Of games that are generally well-regarded, so the gap between my opinion and the common opinion is largest, I'd have to say Final Fantasy Tactics.

It's not that I dislike it - it's just that, between FFT and Tactics Ogre, there are five games of the same type from the same devs and the same general era (FFT, FFT Advance, FFT A2, Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together and Tactics Ogre: Knight of Lodis) and IMO, FFT is the bottom of the barrel - every single one of the others is better.

Nailed it.

Well of course they're going to.

They've been blatantly backing Trump and the MAGA Republicans, and why wouldn't they?: They're ideological allies. They all want the same thing - moralistic and militaristic kleptocratic autocracies that will stand against the threat that progressivism poses to their unearned, undeserved and grossly destructive privilege.

It's not an accident that Tucker Carlson flew over to fellate Putin, or that Trump and the MAGA Republicans have undermined support for Ukraine at every turn, or that they've expressed increasing hostility toward NATO at every turn. As part of their fascist coup, the hard right wants to ultimately entirely switch sides - to ally with Russia and against Europe, since Russia represents everything they admire and Europe represents everything they hate.

Of course Russia is going to assist in that.

I don't think your point and mine contradict each other.

I likely should've clarified it a bit more, but I specified the long game because that, IMO, is the significant bit.

Trump is absolutely a master manipulator, and it's absolutely the case that the Dems have underestimated him, to their detriment.

But I think it's far more likely that that ability is more in the nature of a natural talent honed over a lifetime. He notoriously has a startlingly short attention span and a complete lack of interest in anything other than whatever concerns him at the moment.

So, for instance, I think that he's distancing himself from Project 2025 simply because he recognized that they were making him look bad, and that at most he assured himself that if/when it came to it, after he'd managed to finagle the win on which he's laser-focused, he could revisit the idea of following their roadmap. Then he stopped thinking about it entirely.

Again, that's why I stipulated the long game. I just don't think that's the way his mind works. To the contrary, he appears to be entirely in the moment, feeding whoever he's talking to whatever they need to hear so that he can get whatever it is that he wants from them, right then and there.

On a bit of a side note, I actually worked with a guy much like the Trump the Motley Fool article describes, and it was uncanny. I could stand there listening to him, knowing full well in some corner of my mind that he was almost certainly lying, and still find myself, as if I was hypnotized, nodding and agreeing with everything he said. And I wasn't the only one - most notably, he was fired and rehired at least four times of which I was aware, and the owner once confided in me that every time he fired him, he swore that was it, then every time he came back, he'd just find himself rehiring him again, as if he couldn't even control his own actions.

To this day, I have no idea how he did it, but it undeniably worked.

Eh.

Yes - I was wrong, and yes - that was stupid.

All in all though, I'd rather be someone who makes mistakes than a raging asshole (who likely makes at least as many mistakes anyway).

Thanks for the clarification, and yes - I, to my regret, failed by not getting the entire story before posting a satisfying but ultimately off-topic rant.