Zuzak [fae/faer, she/her] @ Zuzak @hexbear.net

Posts

42

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1,275

Joined

5 yr. ago

Under communism there would only be one wordle and everyone would get the same... hey wait a minute!

1. Scapegoat a minority
2. Take their stuff
3. Give it to a megacorporation to create artificial growth
4. Toss someone out of the dominant group, return to step 1

Wondering is fine, if that's all we're doing, we should keep that in mind. Before we had the tools to study atoms empirically, it would be silly to choose one model and dig heels in and base other beliefs on it. If someone in the Middle Ages tells you they've just come up with a new way of building bridges that's based on a certain model of the atom, you should probably pass that guy up. Even if he happened to stumble upon approximately the right idea, his understanding would be crude and unrefined.

Maybe there is some whole field of science yet to be discovered around consciousness, but even if so, such ideas do not provide a solid foundation to build other ideas on top of. Picturing things as a structure, those ideas belong at the top where they are not load bearing and can be safely tinkered with.

Has anyone confirmed Stefan Molyneux's location at the time of the theft?

Well, that's where the analysis of material interests comes into play. The idea that if you're a good person (don't disrupt the status quo) then you'll get into heaven is a narrative that furthers the material interests of those in charge. That isn't enough to disprove it, but it is enough to treat it with suspicion, and the lack of evidence paints a pretty clear picture.

You do have a point with the examples of animism. Since everyone makes some assumptions on that point, it's worth questioning those assumptions and considering alternatives, but I guess to me, those assumptions aren't very load bearing. There are few cases where someone's opinion on a topic is based on their assumptions about consciousness. We could imagine, for example, someone arguing against veganism on the basis that animals don't have souls or consciousness, but if you ask that person whether they're opposed to animal cruelty regarding cats and dogs, they'll probably say yes. The consciousness line, in that case, is just a rationalization.

It's also something where if someone says, "Well, I think it's this way," there's not like, compelling evidence you can show them to prove them wrong. If a debate hinges on theories of consciousness, it's likely to result in "agreeing to disagree." Generally, if it comes up, I'd just try to make the best argument I can within the other person's framework of consciousness rather than getting caught up in such an abstract disagreement.

There are some philosophical problems that strike me as too caught up in language to the point that they become detached from reality. Maybe it's my physics background, but I always want to keep things grounded in some relation to material reality, like, "What would the universe look like if this answer was correct vs that answer?" With questions about consciousness, as well as questions about determinism vs free will, everyone is seeing the same stuff in terms of observations and evidence, so to me the questions seem limited to what semantic description we use to describe it. If you believe in determinism, you have not removed free will from the universe, the universe is unchanged, you've just chosen a certain way to describe the same observations.

To me, if everything looks the same no matter what answer we go with, I don't see how the question can be said to have meaning.

No, I don't think so. Tbh, I don't really think about consciousness much at all, I don't see why such questions are important or relevant to my life.

What needs to be explained, exactly? Consciousness emerges from brain functions.

The Tendency of the Rate of Hijinx to Increase, yes.

I think you may have just touched the lathe there.

Algae rock? Yeah, what about it?

If that actually happened to me I'd be terrified. Like, you want me to take your keys and get in the driver's seat of a police car? Hey, while I'm at it, do you happen to have an unloaded gun I could hold and get my fingerprints all over?

Bit idea: go to this protest and point at random people and scream, "FED! THIS GUY'S A FED!"

Don't forget to tip!

If you get high enough skill with a weapon type, you can get a skill that gives bonuses like the weapon triangle, but otherwise there's no bonus/penalty. Idk why the devs hate the weapon triangle, but even back in Radiant Dawn, it was disabled on Lunatic.

I am sad to announce that the United States, bastion of communism, have decided that China is "not socialist enough." In order to fix this, we will seek advice from the Western Ultra-left, who neither understand our conditions nor have any experience producing a successful revolution, except the one from 250 years ago when they broke away from Britain because they wanted more slaves and fewer taxes. I have hired as my new foreign policy advisor this white guy from Twitter who called me a redfash once.

That would've gotten results tho.

:::spoiler Tienimin Square.

This is a bit, if it wasn't clear.

Question for tankies: when you're picking out your ideology, why don't you simply choose the lib-left part of the political compass instead of auth-left?