Leaderboard

And there it is...the unproven and unprovable...the lie that discards real evidence for faith, feeling, and supposition. It is the idea that the brain is merely a lense for some noncorporeal source of the mind that isn't rooted in material evidence. So why are some so determined to believe in that idea? Is it fear of the inevitable or an earnest interest in devining some great truth or deep mystery for posterity's sake? It's the other way around, conventional wisdom isn't science and should be discarded without "findings-observations-data". Perhaps, but you seem to have doubts. If I'm not mistaken from our previous discussion, terminal lucidity appears to be a primary source of your doubts in brain function as the absolute source of the quality we call mind. Whether lucid or confused, mind is a product of the ebb and flow of brain function emerging from what are basically its metabolic,homestatic processes. However, it seem, you believes there's something more?

Scientists say they have successfully eliminated HIV from infected cells, using Nobel Prize-winning Crispr gene-editing technology. Working like scissors, but at the molecular level, it cuts DNA so "bad" bits can be removed or inactivated. The hope is to ultimately be able to rid the body entirely of the virus, although much more work is needed to check it would be safe and effective. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-68609297

Planning to hike a section of the trail, wanted to get advice from someone who has been on it before and since other social media platforms are flaming piles of garbage... y'all are the only folks I'll trust for sound advice.

"More than everyting I said/wrote?" = "Every coin has a flip side". Thanks for clarifying. I still don't know what you mean. Brevity may be the soul of wit, but it's often the tumor of understanding.

There are definitely claims here that require evidence. You've not convinced me that a hungry bear would not or could not think that we'd both make a tasty meal and believe it to be true enough to try to take a bite. If you want to link consciousness to thought, instead of the awareness of thought, that's fine. To believe that animals are not similarly endowed, because you won the evolutionary jackpot of linguistic expression through the right vocal chords, dexteritous fingers and thumbs etc; that to me just reeks of an unjustifiable anthroprocentrism on shaky grounds. Especially since the bear is privy to a world of scent perception that you and I could never begin to understand. We literally cannot have the same thoughts about scent, that a bear can. If you want to carry on down the wiring route, bears have brain wiring and some mammals have more complex brain wiring than we do. Whales and Dolphins are good examples. Maybe it's better to think of consciousness in terms of degree, rather than type.

I agree with @zapatos tips - useful for a somewhat less minimalist approach than mine - and I can't argue with the joys of hot beverages. I would suggest boiling water and plastic bowls don't always interact well, in light of concerns on leachates from plastic, so I would prefer aluminum (with insulated holder) for that. Like this? https://www.amazon.com/Burn-After-Reading/dp/B001D243WU

Not clever enough to see the obvious value of preserving the actual words someone once spoke, apparently. Nor clever enough to see that the written word can be dispersed much more readily than passing them down orally, apparently. I think the written word is MUCH more valuable than the spoken word in many aspects. I can practically guarantee it will be the only way you and I communicate, whether that advances our understanding of our available knowledge or not.

I'm not really suggesting that your beliefs can change reality. BUT you will perceive reality consistently with your beliefs and then your every action is consistent with your beliefs and perceptions. Your actions can most assuredly change reality. No "science" will ever be "overturned". However experiment is periodically reinterpreted from a new perspective often called a "paradigm". This occurs in fits and starts based on the specific individuals who are at the forefront of research. As this group evolves theory changes. Actually I believe I'm the only one with evidence. But this is a philosophy forum so evidence is off topic and nobody, I can assure you, is interested in such evidence. Suffice to say that every experiment ever performed agrees with this interpretation, or at the very least, no experiment counters it. It's simple enough. Math simply always corresponds directly to reality (2 apples is 1 more than 1 apple). This correspondence results from them both being based in logic. ...Like the double slit experiment? If you think it's off topic I will respond no further. Buit this is I believe the nature of our existence; the nature of life, the nature of reality and the nature of science and philosophy.

I'm sorry I was disrespectful to the geometry[?!]. I think you're trying to talk about the Arahonov-Bohm effect. Now I'm positive that's how you connected the words "Bohm" and "holonomy". It's about this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aharonov–Bohm_effect Aharonov-Bohm holonomy has nothing to do with realism, locality, or any of that, even though the word "Bohm" appears there too. It's the De Broglie-Bohm theory that does. Kinda like the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution has very little to do with Maxwell's equations, except for Maxwell. Do these comments help a little bit?

And this core challenge is being amplified by deepfakes which can now be created from a single 2D image and a recording of 3-5 words alone by any of us

! Moderator Note You need to go start a blog somewhere. All you’re doing here is soapboxing, which is against the rules.

I've heard history buffs say that Luther and the Reformation wouldn't have happened without the invention of the printing press. (which wasn't solely about the written word - Luther also used woodcuts, to present simple stories to those less literate) I really can't think of anything that wasn't advanced by the press, given its role in dissemination of information and promoting knowledge. It eventually shifted literacy from a tiny elite to a majority of the population. Sure, it was double-edged - easier to spread propaganda and libel, too - but what technologies haven't had a double edge at some point? Societies that do well have information gatekeepers who filter out the lies, nonsense, sophistry, etc. The US Supreme Court just heard oral arguments yesterday on litigation over what such gatekeepers should do in social media companies.

Wow, so much to unravel here. Yes. The scientific background was in the open. So it would be just a matter of time. And then the point Swansont mentioned: That is true, more or less. But Japan simply did not capitulate. So the war could have taken much longer, taking many lives of American soldiers. Yes, but only after Germany was defeated. Heisenberg was in charge. The infamous meeting between Heisenberg and Bohr in 1941, gave the latter the impression that the Nazis were making serious work of the atomic bomb, and brought this impression to the US. Yep. I have seen the 'atom cellar' in Haigerloch: Does not quite compare to Los Alamos, is it? I would not put my hand in the fire for this, but it surely was a reason: Truman said something like this about the Soviets and the atomic bomb: "Now we have a real hammer on those boys". Another reason might have been to have a 'real live test'. A hint for this is the second bomb. One of the A-bombs was a U-235, the other a plutonium bomb. Wouldn't it be interesting to compare their effects 'in the field'? About the capitulation of Japan: there was a struggle between the civilian government and the military. The government wanted to give up, the military wanted to fight until the bitter end. One of the struggling points was the position of the emperor. The US wanted an unconditional capitulation, the Japanese government found that the position of the emperor could not be discussed. In the end the Japanese government made a very unusual proposal: let the emperor decide. In the meantime the first atomic bomb was dropped. If this fact had an influence on the decision of Hirohito is not known, fact is that he chose to capitulate. His speech in which he called for the capitulation was recorded, to be brought to the Japanese radio studios. Radical militaries tried to steal the recording on its way to the radio station, but they did not succeed. Hirohito's speech was broadcasted, and Japan capitulated. And the US more or less let the emperor untouched. Had the US made it known that the emperor could stay earlier, Japan might also have capitulated earlier. Maybe the A-bombs would not have been necessary. Main source: Bert Röling, who was a.o. member of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (also called the Tokyo Tribunal, similar to the Nürnberg Tribunal in Germany). Hmmm. Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch were hardly Nazis, they were Jewish and fled Germany in 1938. Otto Hahn: Fritz Strassmann: So four of the 'main characters' were definitely not Nazis. Equating 'German' and 'Nazi' is simply wrong, also during WWII.

I meant no disrespect, but what you're discussing here isn't much different from our previous exchanges other than perhaps your clearer assertion of mind emerging from some non-physical/material source. If I've misunderstood, my apologies; however, any assertion of mind emerging without a brain or some functionally similar structure is ludicrous without a basis in science. From all you have discussed here, you have not sufficiently nor convincingly provided such a basis. From nearly half-century in private study of the dreaming brain and now amid the twilight of my life, I want to believe that their could be something more to the nature of the mind than I have discovered...but I believe in the science, I believe in the objective truths good science provides. To believe in something more may be comforting, but it's a lie if not proven or provable and I, personally, won't believe in a lie.

The issue here is that we have to distinguish the level of complexity here. Cells and arguably protein complexes are capable of sensing and processing information. But what they are able to do is limited. More proteins can sense and act on more cues and with a cell surrounding them can process signals of larger complexity. Multiple cells then can further specialize and become better at processing and so on. The question here is really how you define mind. If it is really just sensing something, molecules could have a mind. But it is really different to what is used in common (or even scientific language). It is like equating a transistor with a supercomputer. Both have similar principles, but what they can do is very different. Also I have the feeling that you are a bit confused what action potentials are and their role (which is primarily transmitting signal over longer distances without loss).

I checked the data. It turns out that every man who died from an infection is infertile.