Alternatively it would be really funny if someone was prepared to pay like a grand for it, but then the old site owner swoops in and just renews it for the $12 bucks minutes before the auction ends

Ifit turns out to be an elaborate bit to see how much people would bid, with Carcosa in on it and everything, I will have enormous respect for it. Shutting down the site for that joke would be ok.

I love when tankies call you a fed for calling them tankies. Is there a purer expression of tankiedom than a tankie fedjacketing an anarchist for mildly insulting them?

Tagline. Lots to choose from that person.

The bear abides.

Kinda like all the stories of, “What could possibly be behind the rise in anti-Asian hate crimes?”

I generally hate anything with a personalized algorithm and avoid them like the plague, so maybe I’ve screwed it up. There’s nothing in my likes but I might be interacting with the wrong stuff. I’m just gonna start automatically disliking everything with Musk or Trump’s face, I guess.

Fuck, didn’t think of that one

I’ve been doing that, but I’ve also been clicking on stories to translate them first so I might have been giving the algorithm mixed signals. I also want to be able to discuss politics, and it’s hard to avoid.

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.