Lurker > iCurious

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What explanation? "At some point, all the right bits of matter come together and quite suddenly, like magic, consciousness arises". That's not an explanation. It's a placeholder that does nothing more than acknowledge that consciousness exists. It clarifies nothing about its source.

Unless I've missed the more enlightening bits, the idea that consciousness results from something that doesn't fit the materialistic world view at all is no less plausible.

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So you just take the baseline, unexplained materialistic view at face value with absolute confidence, and on that basis write off any form of afterlife whatsoever? Well, fair enough. I guess that's a normal scientific view if nothing else. Couldn't do it myself.

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Well yes, but subjective experience is used to describe that which is experienced by an individual, and interpreted through the lens of an individual consciousness. It contrasts with objective reality, if there is such a thing.

I didn't come up with the term.

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Your description of where consciousness comes from gave me the impression that you believe the requirement is just an arrangement of matter, and I thought electrified bits of silicon processors with sensory input in the form of cameras and microphones could potentially suffice just as well as electrified meat bags under this view.

But you're saying that isn't what you mean, so I guess I'm left wondering what you're saying consciousness comes from. What special property of the electrified bags of meat brings about conscious perception?

The extent of my own answer to the hard problem of consciousness boils down almost entirely to what I've ruled out, and the materialist view just happens to be it. But I'm still always interested in the possibility that science has found a way to make the materialistic explanation for consciousness make sense - until such a time that I've settled on an alternative anyway.

The_shibe posted...

basically reincarnation?

Without the karma bits, yes. I started to just say that exactly, but a lot of people don't think of one concept without the other.

Because I don't care about real sports either.

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You think that accounts for subjective experience? Does that mean that you think computers experience the world just like we do as well?

I assume the consciousness(spirit, soul?) gets "recycled" and put into another body.

Wow, there are people in here acting like Sony doesn't do everything in its power to deny other platforms the opportunity to play things, buying years long timed exclusivity, exclusive DLC, and whatever else they can manage. Xbox still gets denied plenty of stuff outright.

Still can't enjoy Final Fantasy games on release on PC because Sony pays to stall them for years, and probably gonna happen with GTA VI too. Horizon Forbidden West nowhere in sight, though I hardly care at this point.

I'd be glad to see them go out of business just for having the audacity to be this hypocritical if that were on the table, but a lack of competition would probably make Xbox even worse than Sony was so eh.

I certainly don't know. Raised Christian so I'm going to comment on the God of the Bible, but at this point, I'm only confident in the spiritual side of reality, or something along those lines. Based mostly on my thoughts regarding consciousness - the idea that subjective experience is a result of purely biological coincidences doesn't add up to me, so spirits land on the list of things I believe in as a probable (and honestly, desirable) explanation. Ideally it also means that dying isn't a total loss of self.

As such, I only wonder if God the Creator is one of those spiritual entities that I believe exist, and I can't really come to a conclusion on that one for now. I might like to think God is real, since nothing ensures continuity of the self like the Christian afterlife, but numerous little things leave me unconvinced. Curiosity about it makes the idea of death less terrifying and more like an unfortunate opportunity to discover the answers to the most interesting questions that we can't yet answer in life.

Just have to hope that none of the claims of eternal torment if you don't meet certain conditions are accurate. I try not to think about that one and kind of hope I just change my mind at some point on God before I die, just to be safe. Of course, if it's one of those other religion's condition sets that I fail to meet then I'm pretty much screwed.

And it's this last dilemma that serves as a primary reason that I'm unconvinced. I feel like, as a baseline, God would ideally provide some means of belief that go beyond blind faith, since there are all these alternative things to believe in. There's also too many ways to explain away most things that religious people believe constitute proof, up to and including grand human conspiracies going back thousands of years, aliens, or even a virtual matrix-like simulation that can simulate any number of seemingly impossible events if need be. Pure coincidence is more popular than any of that, of course.

But, maybe not providing absolute proof that he exists is part of a morality test, reasoning that any test of moral character is useless if the absolute certainty of punishment is what motivates you to follow the rules. It's just that that explanation falls apart when you introduce alternate options as religions, since they would seem likely to skew the test results in an undesirable way.

It's a bit much but yes.

This isn't a joke topic?

3? It has a handful of guides I like to compare to guides on other sites for a handful of games. My occasional visit is sometimes entertaining. If I stop to think about it it has some nostalgic value from better days long gone.

I did start to give it a solid 0 but I am here now, so that wouldn't be entirely fair.

I once stayed up for over 48 hours studying for an exam. On the way home from the exam, less than half a mile from my house, I rear ended a vehicle while we were turning into a curve to merge into traffic.

He moved forward and I mistakenly thought he was going to keep going while I turned to look for other oncoming cars. But he'd stopped, so I ended up hitting him. Cracked this little thing on the front of my car, but the other vehicle was undamaged. It was a really light tap.

The guy gave me a stern reprimand to pay attention, but decided not to make a big deal out of it since his vehicle was unaffected. Only "accident" I've been in, as the driver anyway.

As if Google is lacking the money necessary to improve their site...? With all the money in the world, all they do is fuck up their products whenever the mood hits them. I'm beyond convinced that some of it is deliberate.

It's been like 12 years or something and comments still have a dislike button that just sits there to remind me that I can't do anything with the button. And now they've done the same with video dislikes, knowing how much it pissed people off. Still the button sits there, ostensibly so that those 5 people still bothering to hit dislike can provide invisible negative feedback to the uploader.

Google is all about trolling and mind games. It is also possible that they're just a very rich, lazy company that likes to put off whatever they know they can get away with putting off indefinitely, but I'm leaning more towards trolling.

I almost might have watched it, but knowing that they want me to this badly kind of makes me want to give it a hard pass.

I'd like to move somewhere where it's never sunny. Or maybe Alaska.

Fuck hot weather, basically.

Well yes, I got bored of that channel like a thousand years ago. Wonder if I'm still subscribed to it anyway.

emblem-man posted...

Your random herb doesn't list any side effects because it wasn't even tested! Not because it's safer

Makes one wonder why they don't get tested then, all things considered.

CSCA33 posted...

100% guarantee its bigoted nonsense about minorities

lol. Okay.

BunkerBoy posted...

And yet, you're a Trump supporter

It's a strange world we live in, Bunks.

DarkChozoGhost posted...

Of course Biden bends to the Saudi's too much. All presidents do, but some are worse than others. But Biden's state department following questionable, but long standing rules is significantly different than the Trump administration actively defying bipartisan actions from congress that actually could punish MBS.

Please stop pretending that you actually believe Trump's domestic policy lowered gas prices, and that Biden's domestic policy raised them. You know that's not true, we know that you know that isn't true, stop feigning ignorance.

What bipartisan actions? There's nothing Biden & the Bipartisan could do now instead? Other than a friendly fist bump I mean? I really don't know, maybe he has.

That aside I do believe Trump helped, and Biden...devastated? Seems like a good word for it. I look at gas prices then and after 2020 as indicators. It's honestly kind of bizarre how easily you dismiss how rapidly things went to shit once Biden took office. Haven't met many people in recent years that think he's doing a good job, but I also haven't been on this site. Probably related.

Anyway it's time to stop.

TMOG posted...

You know, for somebody who keeps posting in multiple topics about how much you don't want to post on GameFAQs, you sure post on GameFAQs an awful lot.

In that bit you quoted I said I wasn't going to post because I said I wouldn't, years ago. If I didn't want to post at all I wouldn't have, but you are right in that I certainly don't like this place enough to stick around as a regular. At best I might hop to one of my older accounts (yes, my actual alts - go crazy) and go visit a board that isn't owned by the 261 Clique.

Speaking of, there's also this gang argument I've been dealing with where I'm responding to the echo chamber, so that sort of thing does usually cause me to post for a bit. Though I can't recall anyone ever indicating that 42 posts is particularly high...I'm seeing counts in the hundreds, but I suppose standards for entry into the, "posts an awful lot" club may have gone down to boost membership in response to the ever declining number of visitors to this site.

If you call off the gang I'll be out of here sooner, or at the least I'll be out of the political threads, and maybe I'll just do that anyway. I really should get back to cert studying after all - or playing a game and putting it off.

KajeI posted...

BoTW/ToTK durability defenders.

Truly awful people.

Heineken14 posted...

Princess Diana dying shouldn't have turned a lot of right wingers into disgusting swamp creatures. Or you can keep being vague because you know what you're talking about is disgusting. Either or I suppose.

What...what does Princess Diana dying have to do with Republicans reverting Democrat policies?

Heineken14 posted...

No, it's not sealioning at all because I'm not pretending to be civil to get you to expand upon your dumb bullshit lies. I'm openly hostile to the fact you are spreading right wing propaganda.

I know you won't accept it, but you have my sincere apology. I should never have accused you of even pretending to be gracious or civil. A different term should have been applied, or no term at all (related: is there a word for a hostile sealion?).

Won't happen again, promise.

KajeI posted...

Please tell me you're referring to Keystone.

If you want.

DarkChozoGhost posted...

It's very statistically unlikely, and you've otherwise been incredibly dishonest. It would be foolish to believe you. Especially when you post blatant lies like this in the same post:

Well I'm certainly not about to provide anything resembling evidence for my finances, so fair enough.

DarkChozoGhost posted...

I know you're not actually stupid enough to believe we had "energy independence" or that the pipeline had anything to do with gas prices lowering or raising. You'll lie and pretend you believe that, even though you're perfectly aware that prices were low under Trump solely due to him covering up Muhammed Bin Salman's kidnapping, torture, and murder of an American citizen. You're also perfectly aware that Biden has authorized more oil drilling than any recent president. But you're going to continue to lie, and pretend that the pipeline owned by foreign companies was the cause of our gas prices going down, and that Biden blocking that environmental and imminent domain disaster was what caused prices to go up. You'll spread that lie because people less evil, but more stupid than you will believe it.

That's certainly...interesting? Apparently I already knew all this, but I suppose it's even more interesting to see it all again in long sarcasm form. Thanks for the reminder.

Biden gets along with the guy too apparently.

https://www.reuters.com/legal/biden-admin-says-saudi-prince-has-immunity-khashoggi-killing-lawsuit-court-2022-11-18/

Seems like it's just the Presidential thing to do.

Heineken14 posted...

Yeah, I had posted a link debunking that claim of energy independence too. Lol

Your link indicates the claim of energy independence is true, but attributes it to very different causes. Causes that remove all credit from Trump, and certainly don't attribute it to anything involving a Saudi Prince. But I suppose in a roundabout way you're both in agreement, one way or another.

Heineken14 posted...

Hah, I KNEW you crying Bout mods would be the cop out.

Similarly, I knew you wouldn't tell me what happened 25 years ago. The world may never know.

Heineken14 posted...

So you don't have any actual answers for the dumb bullshit you say. Who would have thought. Shocking, really.

So, sealioning, like I said. That would be one hell of a useful tag to start applying.

loafy013 posted...

Well, for starters, they aren't being taxed more. The taxes they are already paying would just be allocated to a different direction.

Or, if I'm wrong, then it's not right that my taxes go up every time the government bails out a business or forgives a PPP loan.

If that's the case, I certainly don't know about it. But I suppose it's of no consequence anymore.

BunkerBoy posted...

We all remember iTrumpy from 261. He pretends to be an enlightened centrist, but he was supporting 1/6 and Trump's BS

It's nice that you remember (an enlightened centrist? Eeeh), but I certainly wasn't there for 1/6. There was a topic during the election where people were saying "if x wins I'll delete my account". In that topic I said that I wouldn't delete my account, but I'd stop posting on 261 if Trump lost the election. He lost, so I stopped posting. Anyone claiming I've posted anything political on this site since like December 2020 at the latest has memory issues.

I didn't even come back here to post when I came to see the newly generated salt mines from recent SCOTUS rulings. Just wanted to look, and you people are typically quite boring when responding to bad news, so I don't check often.

But of course, 261 is gone now, so here we are. Should it be restored I still won't post there.

loafy013 posted...

Oh, look at what Kajel was kind enough to post. When they wanted to look into gouging at the pump, it wasn't Biden or the Democrats who shot it down.

Giving the government more power isn't a desirable solution. Not creating a gasoline shortage is a desirable solution.

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In this case, it would directly benefit the people paying into them, if they hadn't just spent years paying off their own debt. Imagine finally finishing your last payment on $90,000 in loans, and the next day hearing that loans are forgiven and being passed on to taxes. You finished, now you can pay extra in taxes to let someone else slide past the last 30 years you spent making steady payments? It's neither fair nor warranted. Find another way to address the student debt issue for the future, without punishing people that paid already.

Heineken14 posted...

Uh huh. Right.

So what specifically did republicans give and try to give under Donnie to help the average person? What are their current plans to fight things like climate change, inflation, gas prices, and healthcare? Why have they not introduced any bills to enact any of those changes?

Edit
Holy shit. Please explain how Democrats are the EVIL party when republicans have 0bpolicyboutside of "trigger the libs." The party that has run such a massive disinformation campaign trying to destroy all forms of government to seize power. That continues rallying around and supporting the only president in our history to actively incite an insurrection to install himself as dictator. Who continually strip away rights from citizens. Please. I'm all ears

Is this, "sealioning"? To answer that list of questions would require an essay that you would ignore even if I did write it, and one you've heard before (you live on a politics board, there's nothing I can tell you). We had energy independence under Trump, we have these gas prices now due to actions taken by the Biden admin to placate climate change activists like yourself. This list would go on.

The only way to get you those answers is for you to find your preferred sources that will validate your existing opinion. Why even ask such a broad, general series of questions? You clearly remember me posting on 261 prior to 2020. You should know insurmountable disagreement is all there is to discuss.

And again, I don't like either party, but the Republicans do less to break things and occasionally address things the Democrats have done. They are largely ineffectual and useless like most politicians, which is simply preferable to being actively detrimental, as Democrats tend to be. Obviously, you see the inverse of this. Which brings me back around to why even ask, when anything I say will simply be viewed through an inverting lens anyway?

DarkChozoGhost posted...

He's also lying and pretending he was better off financially when Trump was president. It's not true.

And you base this statement on...what? Are you monitoring my bank account?

Heineken14 posted...

Yeah. I suspect there will be no further clarification on that.

Is there something specific that happened 25 years ago? I don't know what if so, but you're probably right. There's like half a dozen opinions that likely land an instant suspension here and I wouldn't bother making it that easy. It'll happen sooner or later without any help on my part if I keep posting here.

EthanSilver posted...

In general terms, just having the rich pay more of their share in terms of taxes is a step in the right direction. In terms of funding social services for the plebs.

I don't like taxes either, but like going to work, it's just a lame thing that must be done. A "membership," if you will. Do one's part with what they are able to with.

I mean, I don't have and maintain my own army. Have or maintain my own customer base. Etc... I don't want to be leach, and we shouldn't encourage such behavior from the more well to do peeps. Reap the benefits of functional society/government, and not do one's part. I mean, what is that. How's that okay?

I suppose, but they're excessive. There's also often the matter of what massive projects are being funded by tax dollars. Getting hit with a huge tax increase to fund a polarizing project that you openly oppose is no good.

Like student loan forgiveness? I personally owe quite a bit in student loans, but having them disappear isn't fair to anyone before me that took out student loans and already paid them back. Because now they'll be taxed for it, and gain nothing. In fact they'll have paid thousands of dollars only to then be charged more money to help pay for someone else's debt.

Government is constantly using tax dollars to fund shit that people don't want funded, and ignoring anything that would actually benefit the tax payer until it can't be ignored anymore.

Haven't had it that I can recall, but I like spinach in all forms and I'm sure I'd be fine with it.

EthanSilver posted...

This is what I mean by "easily" manipulated sheep.

First thing Rep's did when they had full control under Trump, while dramaqueening about "Da MIGRANTS<!" left and right...

Is permanent tax cuts for the rich.

As a pleb, you'll still pay taxes. Clown.

Eh, financially things were much better for me under Trump, and I'm not rich. What exactly has Biden done to improve the lives of "the plebs"?

And to be clear, I don't like either party at this point. Much like so many on this board, I generally support the Republican side solely because it's the lesser of...well, the lesser of one half of one evil I suppose.

loafy013 posted...

He said things they actually do, not policies they lie about doing.

Democrats are different in this regard?

LightHawKnight posted...

Nah a real conservative party would still want some changes, just very slow ones. The republican party currently is all about going back centuries, taking away rights, brining back shit like child labor, etc.

Doesn't work out that way when your hands are full trying to stop people from reimagining the fabric of society. As I said, the changes often work out to "revert this thing over here that got ruined 25 years ago".

EthanSilver posted...

I asked you to name the things Republicans are actually willing to do for plebs. Outside of manufactured shit that doesn't cost money, and just distracts.

Lowering taxes is usually a big selling point.

EthanSilver posted...

Oh please... Republicans don't have anything for people in general besides petty shit that doesn't cost money. Trans peeps in sports. Niche as fuck things like that... Plebs are a tool, easily manipulated sheep, to better themselves. Nothing more.

Dems at least talk about things like education and health care.

If I'm not rich, nor a bigoted simpleton... what do I gain from republicans? Nada. Zilch.

This is the way the whole thing works, yes? One side wants to make a series of changes, while the other simply wants things left as they are (or reverted to how they were at this point). Conservatism. It's an invading army vs a fortress. One of these things isn't exciting and moving about so much, but it is still the other side.