I feel you on the muscle cramps and jaw clenching. I hear exercise is great for stress reduction, but I also have a terrible time sticking to it. Stimulants don't help with that. I feel like I only get relief from a hot shower.
Can you provide a panpsychist definition of consciousness? I had a hard time finding an actual definition in searching. I understand the idea that panpsychists believe that mind is a fundamental part of reality, but haven't seen a solid definition of consciousness in that context.
Also are you on the Panexperientialism or Pancognitivism bandwagon? Or maybe both?
Edit: From plato.stanford.edu I found this, but it is attributed to analytic philosophy:
"something is conscious just in case there is something that it’s like to be it; that is to say, if it has some kind of experience, no matter how basic."
This is the hottest question in theory of mind right now thanks to David Chalmers. It's called the Hard Problem of Consciousness and it's about connecting the reductionist view of the brain's function with the first-person experience of consciousness.
I think that any explanation of consciousness completely from "the outside" will result in not being able to quantify the experience part of it. Any explanation completely from "the inside" will eventually run into the same issues as empiricism where it will be limited by subjectivity. I think that fundamentally we can't rigorously combine these two views because they aren't compatible. The starting points for each view carry different base assumptions.
Both may be true from within their perspectives but combining them is basically just stating that a subjective experience "maps" to a physical function. There isn't any explanatory usefulness of mapping. It doesn't explain why the subjective experience is there just that it happens when these other physical things happen. I'm not sure we'll find an answer that truly resolves the hard problem, but we're still trying.
I'm a personal fan of Daniel Dennett's multiple drafts theory of consciousness. The biggest problem of defining consciousness is that the deeper you look into where it comes from the definitions we commonly use to describe consciousness fall apart.
It's a collaborative effort between different parts of your brain and the environment. A lot of it we aren't even aware of. At the same time we often generate explanations for our behavior after the fact so our experience of consciousness tends to be mostly a justification mechanism, not necessarily primarily a control mechanism.
Here's the thing, the LLM isn't recalling and presenting pieces of information. It's creating human-like strings of words. It will give you a human-like phrase based on whatever you tell it. Chatbots like ChatGPT are fine tuned to try to filter what they say to be more helpful and truthful but at it's core it just takes what you say and makes human-like phrases to match.
You bring up some interesting points about content. I agree that a large majority of media today is so focused on quantity and hype that meaningful information is lost in the noise. I think there is a common thread there with the Silicon Valley style VC hype around whatever current thing is hot at the moment, but I felt you didn't quite support that much in your post.
Time will really tell for disruptive technologies we keep seeing in headlines. But I think we won't find out until much farther in the future than people expect. Bitcoin is still around after 15 years, but didn't prove to be as revolutionary as expected and has massive externalities that make it unappealing. It found it's niche though.
It takes a long time to find the unintended long term consequences that makes or breaks these high concept tech ideas. By then the gravy train is over and the next big thing is in. Some of these are grifts where someone smart enough to see the problems can avoid it but others like Air BnB or Uber don't get sorted out until long after they screw up the market.
A lot of this is due to the push to get a user base first then make it profitable later where the profit comes from scale and efficiency. In the meantime they sell a product that seems too good to be true because it isn't currently sustainable.
I think Strange New Worlds season 1 is a strong contender for best Star Trek season. Though it has the advantage that it is a shorter season than most.
For me Tunic perfectly captured that sense of wider and magic that I felt as a kid experiencing adventure games for the first time. Hyper Light Drifter and Outer Wilds gave me a bit of that as well. I highly recommend all three if you are looking for a similar experience.
Wholeheartedly second Chernobyl. It's an amazing show.
It shows the party dynamics of the decision making process for disaster response and the infighting that results really well. Not too much everyday life stuff but there is a bit.
It bothers me that you want to educate people but you are being so combative and smug. This isn't the way to change people's minds. All you are doing is making people feel personally attacked and driving them further away from having an open mind.
This is the first I've heard of HVDC, my experience is with typical AC transmission that makes up most of the current grid. Not a lot of experience, but college physics level.
US high voltage transmission is usually AC in one of the following voltages: 345 kV, 500 kV, or 765 kV. I used the 765 kV worst case losses of 1.1% per 100 miles (according to American Electric Power Transmission Facts Q12) which is over generous since most transmission would likely not be using only the high efficiency lines.
Also, transmission range is affected by load and high load reduces line capability.
We're talking about moving a huge amount of power across 3000 miles. In my experience transmitting power across a nation as large as the US is unheard of.
You also seemed to have missed my point about how much excess power would be required to power the opposite side of the country (in the dark) while basically at dusk. Let's say 30% of the east coast's power comes from solar. That would mean that the West Coast would need to provide that 30% excess on top of their current energy demands during a relatively high demand time period. It would also be a bit unfair for the West Coast to be the ones responsible for over-provisioning to accommodate the east coast.
Is HVDC even installed and able to transmit across the US now?
Why would we limit our hedging to non-world destroying scenarios? It seems we're already on track for a mass extinction event anyway. The reason you hedge is exactly for the worst case.
Transmission losses prevent most of what you are suggesting. Across a continent, even with high voltage low loss power lines, you lose 35% to resistance. This doesn't count the added loss from stepping down the voltage at various substations and transformers along the way. You can expect another 8-15% more reduction from that.
You're suggesting that the amount of excess power from one side of the country could be enough to power the other side (while still meeting the demands locally) with 40-55% losses. Come on.
Not a strawman when you respond to "sometimes it's night and solar doesn't work" with "it's daytime somewhere". The natural assumption is that your intention was that day side power could be used on the night side.
Do you have anything to back up your idea that the US grid can or does actually supply power across the entire nation?
There are some uBlock Origin custom filters that bypass a lot of paywalls. The one I use is called Bypass Paywalls Clean.