RogueAI

I agree, but...when you look under the hood at how we process meaning and produce intelligible output from inputs, it's just a bunch of neurons firing...

I was reminded of another pseudoscience, IIT.

Why does there have to be a punishment? ETA: Scratch that. Let's say we have two people, Bob and Alice. Alice is an atheist who lives a decent life an...

If all minds in the universe suddenly disappeared, would it still be true that Sherlock Holmes lives at 221B Baker Street? Truth is supposed to be wha...

Where do you land on the issue of consciousness? What's your favored theory?

If physicalism is true (more specifically, if minds are physical), how do we even begin to discuss how something like the meaning of a book is possibl...

So let's suppose John and Alice have complete knowledge of all the physical facts of a copy of Orwell's 1984 in English. Neither of them has ever hear...

Before a story can be put down on some physical media, it exists in a mind first. Now, you may say that a story exists in a brain, but then we're back...

Wait a minute. If God says masturbation or gay sex or eating the wrong thing is a sin that needs to be absolved, isn't that the end of the discussion ...

Your analogy actually undercuts your claim. You’re assuming the data on the hard drive is something different from the hard drive itself, that the 1s ...

How would Peter know, he wasn't even there?

If we're talking about legitimate debt, don't we need to talk about legitimate sin? What, exactly, is a sin? Is masturbation something I need to be fo...

How do we know he felt any pain or suffered? He's part of some powerful trinity, right? For all we know, he blocked the pain.

Doesn't it depend on the circumstances behind the debt? If a heroin addict is in debt to his dealer, is not paying off the debt "unjust"? What about b...

What is it about the brain then that makes it "work" for consciousness? Both brains and livers have cellular activity. Why is the brain's cellular act...

Why are brains conscious but hearts and livers aren't? Why are only some brain processes associated with consciousness? If the mind is identical to th...

:up:

America won't turn fascist under Trump. If Trump thought he could pull off something like a Reichstag fire scenario and solidify/expand his power, I h...

Yes, but is one side objectively right? To use the archetypical example of "the good war", WW2, wouldn't you agree the Nazi's were the "bad guys" and ...

Do you think it's possible for a side in a war to be fighting "the good fight"?

Have you read any stoicism? I've always liked two quotes from Epictetus that Tom Wolfe used in a novel: "Difficulty shows what men are. Therefore when...

A dragonfly eating a mosquito is evil and selfish? Fuck those guys.

Was the Big Bang a low probability event?

What about a machine of lesser complexity? Could a smartphone be conscious?

Or they'll demand cheap fossil-fuel based energy to run AC and heaters.

Nothing. It's just interesting.

Not only do we act like it's a low probability event, we believe it too. No one is scared the universe will kill us all in the next minute. We believe...

Not necessarily. It could be the case that the universe becomes chaotic at exactly a point in time that coincides with tomorrow for reasons we're not ...

That's a good question. Also, why do we believe the universe will continue to behave in an orderly way? How do we know there isn't some principle at w...

That's all right. I was just trying to be funny. Thanks for fixing it, though!

U.S. is the richest country in the world, with a GDP of $27 trillion. Who do you think is going to pass them up and when?

"The American strike on the three nuclear facilities – at Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan – was undoubtedly effective. “Most serious analysts think that th...

Who da fuck is that? :lol:

Re: the bolded, hasn't that always been the case, though? Someone has to sue if they think their rights are being violated.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2025/jun/22/one-million-and-counting-russian-casualties-hit-milestone-in-ukraine-war Deaths are estim...

I was responding to your point that Trump doesn't have a plan. He does. It might be unrealistic, but the plan is to offer Iran goodies to drop their n...

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/trump-administration-exploring-30-billion-civilian-nuclear-deal-iran-rcna215679 I think the Trump a...

Kastrup wants to have it both ways. He says the physical world is just how consciousness looks 'from the outside'—but if everything is mind, then this...

But things have gotten much better for a lot of people in the last thousand years. Hasn't philosophy played a large part in that?

Yes, that is the crucial difference. So why does that difference exist? Is it religious fundamentalism and the rise of European secularism? I was talk...

Yes, at the heart of it all is plain old fashioned antisemitism.

Yeah, that's certainly not true. The rise of nations is a zero-sum bloody game. Israel can't come into existence without taking the land from someone ...

Within the framework of materialism, I think it is. I think the materialist story of life is just a story of chemistry, so there's no fundamental inco...

Do you mean the mystery of abiogenesis? That's a scientific mystery, not a philosophical one. Life reduces to chemistry, so the idea that chemicals sl...

OK, when you unpack "consciousness emerges from matter" you get: 1. There is this non-conscious stuff, and it was created ex nihilo around 14 billion ...

I see. So, the NYTimes is drinking the Trump Koolaid. Is that what you're claiming?

Lol Yes. There hasn't been nuclear fallout, there won't be nuclear fallout. Now, do Israel and America have the right to bomb Iran? Depends. What are ...

Kool aid, with a k. What Kool aid are you talking about?

Yes, but now there's a UN agency, and the UN is no friend to Israel, backing up Israel's claim.

"Iran has further increased its stockpile of uranium enriched to near weapons-grade levels, a confidential report by the U.N. nuclear watchdog said Sa...