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hypericin

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"I" would mean the individual who was stuck. There are two numerically distinct individuals who claim continuity with the same individual in the past....
August 20, 2025 at 16:20
I'm not following your logic here. At the moment of death, you agree the body is identical to the body immediately before death. Yet, personhood is ex...
August 20, 2025 at 03:51
If we are talking numerical identity, then clearly not. But personal identity is obviously not numerical identity. This is most clear in death. When s...
August 19, 2025 at 21:14
And what is the problem with that? Whether or not people explicitly believe in souls, my position is that there is an implicit presumption of souls in...
August 19, 2025 at 18:17
Because for instance, nobody actually counts molecules or uses molecules as a criteria for identity (and as already established, nor does the universe...
August 18, 2025 at 20:34
I have articulated a notion of self already. "Self" is a conceptual integration of sensory experience, mental experience, and memory into a unified id...
August 18, 2025 at 20:29
It is unintuitive, but not "unsatisfactory". What is unsatisfactory is letting intuitions about persistent selves remain unchallenged.
August 18, 2025 at 20:22
Not necessarily. People can still be confused, and imagine criteria for "sameness" in certain scenarios that neither they nor anyone else actually app...
August 18, 2025 at 18:51
Yes. And?
August 18, 2025 at 18:39
What we identify as "the exact same chair" is our mental bookkeeping we impose on the world. It is not a part of the world itself. The universe does n...
August 18, 2025 at 18:21
@"Mijin"@"AmadeusD" I think the fundamental conceptual problem here is the nature of persistence. The experience of personal persistence is, in the pr...
August 18, 2025 at 17:26
What exactly is the problem with multiple "I"s? If we had metaphysical selves, aka souls, then it would be a problem. Which one would the soul ("I" he...
August 18, 2025 at 16:55
Despite what I said, I sympathize. To me the thought experiment is more real and poignant if it is less abstractly sci-fi. Suppose you have a serious ...
August 17, 2025 at 20:02
No, normally not, normally "I" just designates the speaker. In this question, though, it seems to designate not the speaker as such, but an implicit g...
August 17, 2025 at 17:34
The facts I listed are as first person and subjective as I can think of a fact being. What"first person facts" am I leaving out? I think it is the kin...
August 16, 2025 at 23:54
@"AmadeusD" By posing this question you are importing the notion that there is a metaphysical, persistent self that may or may not persist. By listing...
August 16, 2025 at 19:14
I realized I did a horrible job conveying just how tiny the coherent subset of every possible book is. One atom vs. the whole observable universe does...
August 16, 2025 at 03:33
I think this is far more answerable than my question. Assume the set of all 100 page books, 1500 characters per page. Ignore punctuation. In the rando...
August 15, 2025 at 19:18
At every moment, you experience things: sensations from the world, and sensations from yourself. These are facts of experience. These sensations don't...
August 14, 2025 at 17:01
These are the facts. Someone steps out of the teleporter. That someone has experiences. That someone has a self-autobiography, that tells it that it i...
August 13, 2025 at 18:42
The core confusion of all such problems is the nature of identity. Identity is a mental label masquerading as a metaphysical property. When this is re...
August 12, 2025 at 20:52
So if in the codex we encounter, :smile: :hearts: :smirk: :point: :lol: :wink: :nerd: :love: :roll: :monkey: :nerd: Are you proposing we can map this ...
August 12, 2025 at 18:08
PSC! Gooo Hayseeds! Sorry, this made me chuckle.
August 12, 2025 at 00:35
But the core premise is that there is no meaning at all in the text. [ Perhaps. But it would be interesting to see how the Coptic/Egyptian case, minus...
August 11, 2025 at 20:33
Yes, this is the other side of the coin that I don't think has been mentioned yet. It may be that even if the contents were perfectly meaningful, we w...
August 11, 2025 at 20:23
I hate to frustrate you, but I'm just not following you here. Maybe eli5?
August 11, 2025 at 11:56
"Incontrovertible" seems far from a rigorous, objective term. It is a "know it when I see it" kind of thing. At one end are completely coherent novels...
August 10, 2025 at 00:44
Good point. If one coherent (whatever that means) interpretation can be produced it seems likely innumerable can be. This will call the legitimacy of ...
August 09, 2025 at 18:43
Really I should have said "translation", not "meaning". And it is true, not every earth-language translation is the same. What I really meant was, the...
August 09, 2025 at 04:35
A liar, a traitor, a felon, a pedophile, and an imbecile walk into a bar.
August 09, 2025 at 01:04
Humanity must assume that the codex has a single, incontrovertible meaning. What throws me off is when you say that we can start with a single string ...
August 08, 2025 at 21:10
But this is cheating, and would be readily apparent to the community of decoders. You are essentially putting the decoding into the decoder. Suppose s...
August 08, 2025 at 17:20
But what possible combination of characters could have an incontrovertible meaning, given that there is in fact no meaning at all to the codex?
August 08, 2025 at 17:13
I don't follow what you are proposing. What is a "valid one dimensional strong of meaning"?
August 08, 2025 at 00:43
If it is an encrypted alien message, the task is certainly hopeless. But if it was, then it wouldn't display the language like regularities I mentione...
August 08, 2025 at 00:42
Sorry, let me try again, I might have gotten mixed up in my last attempt to reply to this. I guess what I am asking is precisely this. CAN a false mea...
August 07, 2025 at 00:50
No. Imagine how the symbols are arranged in a language, vs noise. There is a lot of structure and repetition in a language, whereas noise has none. No...
August 06, 2025 at 22:48
I think we are in the same page. It is not possible to derive a message from noise. But that is just my intuition. Everything about the presentation s...
August 05, 2025 at 20:57
Any interpretation at all is too permissive, only our alien expectations is too restrictive. What I am asking is, can a incontrovertible message be de...
August 05, 2025 at 17:05
Maybe. But that is just semantics. "Is it an interpretation or isn't it" is ultimately definitional. I'm interested if meaning can be constructed in n...
August 05, 2025 at 02:33
@"Mijin" If spatial-temporal continuity is required to maintain identity, then your case adds nothing, the subject is killed no matter what. If it is ...
August 04, 2025 at 17:30
Yes, you can look to life as the best example. Genetic code influences other generic code, messenger molecules, large and small scale structure, reall...
August 03, 2025 at 03:07
I would say there are three terms, not two. Substrate, encoding, and content. Substrate is purely physical, content is purely informational, and they ...
August 03, 2025 at 00:00
A: The leaf is red. The leaf has such and such shape. The genetic sequence is ATATGCA... B: (The actual light reflected) (The actual molecules arrange...
August 02, 2025 at 21:09
Yes, I imagine informational objects, so do many. Using technology these days does that to you. Velocity is typically a property of material objects, ...
August 02, 2025 at 19:28
I don't want it both ways. When have I said that "whether something is art or not does not come in degrees"?
August 02, 2025 at 19:17
Yes. To qualify as art less, means it only marginally identifies as art. Oatmeal, or a poo painting. This is not a value judgement, this is a statemen...
August 02, 2025 at 18:42
Data on a computer certainly is. I think information and interpretation have to be kept distinct. Note that it doesn't need to be a conscious being do...
August 02, 2025 at 18:30
Comparison to absolute? What does that mean? It is not the artist caring, it is the critic. A critic can acknowledge that a piece is "artistic", yet n...
August 02, 2025 at 18:18
It is not a solution whatsoever until @"Michael" can prove it. In the "official" formulation I saw on Popular Mechanics, it says something to the effe...
August 02, 2025 at 17:49