mistermack

I don't think there's any mystery. We experience colours in the mind, so to a person who's been blind since birth, there are no words to convey what that mind sensation is like. To a sighted person who can see a few colours, you could say that it's "like" green, but different. What's it like to see ultra-violet ? It's like violet, but different. Or to a person blind from birth, it's just like all of the colours. Basically, seeing isn't 'like' anything else, so you can't say what it's like. What you can do though, is observe how people react to colours, and tentatively infer from that that most of us "see" red in the same way inside our heads.

The real problem with any quick form of acceleration, whether nuclear or chemical, is how to avoid destroying what you are accelerating. The forces need to be so high that virtually anything would be obliterated. Your cell phone would be dust. If you find a way to accelerate something over a much longer period, the forces can be more survivable. But then you have the problem of accelerating your fuels and reaction mass before you use them. Other less obvious problems would also provide a barrier to interstellar travel. At a speed of 50%c, the tiniest particle of dust would cause catastrophic damage, so you would need shielding, and that would have considerable mass, which is the enemy of interstellar travel. The same applies to cosmic ray shielding, it's all extra mass that needs to be accelerated and decelerated at the destination. Everything seems to work against interstellar travel, even to the nearest stars, and that's why it's not surprising that we haven't been visited by aliens.

Since you still haven't given a short concise definition in plain English then "actual consciousness" is still a mystery. It's going to be different in every animal anyway. Human consciousness isn't likely to be the same as in a fruit fly larva.

I haven't studied the calculations, but the fundamental difference in how they work is still relevant. The brain could be using sequences of connections in real time, instead of one connection pattern. Until you have a full understanding of what it's doing, you can't compare meaningfully. And as I said, the computer isn't designed to be conscious.

You're comparing apples with oranges. Computers don't work the same way as a living brain. From what I remember, brain cells multiply their capacity by vast amounts, by using combinations of connections where a computer uses one connection to do one thing. So five brain connections has 120 possible combinations, compared to a computer's five. That's an over-simplification of what I'm saying, but that's the sort of thing that what I read was saying. In any case, computers are not designed with consciousness as the target. But in fruit flies, consciousness, or the ability to respond to the environment very quickly, is a survival benefit, so their brains evolved towards that ability.

Why does that make a difference?

Am I missing something? Going up or down, the acceleration would still be +g in the downward direction. Or minus g in the upwards direction. Unless you factor in drag and friction.

For windows 10, I can recommend Macrium Reflect, and IOMEI Backerupper, if you want to clone the entire disk with just a few clicks, or backup chosen folders. However, I suspect that the OP wants to reinstall their app, on a fresh install of windows. If that's the case, I don't know, but I suspect that you will have to bite the bullet, and install that app afresh, and lose all of the updates and data that you've added. You could TRY to copy the app folder in C:program files, or C:program files(x86) but I very much doubt that it will work the same. Maybe the program will have an "export settings" function, like Bing or Google, but probably not.

I perdict that Mercans who can't spell will always win out in the end. Except the ones who get indited.

I believe you can get "free" acceleration by using the mass of planets or moons in a "slingshot" effect. I don't know if there's a limit on what you can take from it. Any atmosphere will limit how low you can pass a body, and of course the craft has to be robust enough to withstand the forces involved. But it's substantial enough for long-distance probes to use it on a regular basis. Fusion does allow for a greater percentage of the fuel to be used, but the hardware involved will be extremely heavy for centuries to come, so the weight advantage of a light fuel will be nullified. Controlled fission needs a lot of heavy hardware too. Maybe uncontrolled fission (as in a bomb) could give a craft a hefty kick??

We speak the King's English over here. Even a leaky pen can be unbearable in England : 'I can't bear this bloody thing': King Charles gets frustrated with leaky pen - YouTube

The hard problem of consciousness appears to be defining it. And talking about it in plain English. I don't see any prospect of that happening so I'm out. But generally, in plain English, evolution made aerofoils. As in the birds wing, etc. Humans made aerofoils, and put them in planes. They're different but they both fly. Evolution made animal brains, including our own. They are conscious, in varying degrees. Humans make electronic brains, and we can make them conscious too. They are different, but they can be made to have a form of consciousness, as I use the word. I think we get side-tracked by our own form of consciousness, because we have such exceptional brains. Go back in time, back through our ancestral past. Where did consciousness kick in? Because after that point, there is no mystery. It just grew over time. I have this vision of Earth being attacked and defeated by machines originally made by aliens, that have learned how to improve their technology and their own intelligence to such an extent that we are no match for them. It's not going to help matters, if we try to explain to them that they are not conscious and never can be.

So are you claiming that no machine can ever have "a point of view" like a slug can?

So, you just throw that in, without any context, with no continuous narrative, not linking it to anything, and expect people to be on your wavelength? You don't say why it's relevant, or what it's relevant to, or why it combines with something previously mentioned to establish a proposition. You can't expect other people to share your own line of thought. You can't build a wall by standing back and throwing random bricks, you need to build up on top of what went before.

I'm amazed you have to ask. I have no idea what you mean by that. Maybe with more context it might be simple. But without it, I have no idea what you're trying to convey.

I'm sorry, maybe we have a language problem, but I have absolutely no idea what you're trying to say there. I posted the Dawkins link because I was beginning to doubt myself, is it me being a bit thick here? I can follow and understand everything those two are saying, but I can't make sense of your above post, or most of the others. Dawkins is a top communicator, and Greene is no slouch, and both are talented scientists. I try to keep my posts clear and concise and jargon-free. I'm no Dawkins, but that's how I'd like to come across.

A state can involve constant change, or constant motion. The Earth is in a state of motion around the Sun. My computer processor is in an active state right now, dealing with inputs and producing outputs. If I switch it off, it's in a dormant state. To some extent, it mirrors the human brain, asleep and awake. I like this discussion, particularly by Dawkins, as they chew over the consciousness phenomenon. I don't necessarily agree with everything, but it's refreshing how Dawkins communicates, so clear and precise, without the need for bullshit and jargon. The PHYSICS of CONSCIOUSNESS - Richard Dawkins & Brian Greene - YouTube

I used to play snooker in a fairly large snooker hall, and that had no air conditioning, (fairly standard in the UK) but it did have a stand-alone evaporative cooler, which they call a "mobile air conditioning unit" in this country. On very hot nights, you could be playing a game of snooker, and suddenly become aware that conditions just got much more sweaty and muggy, going from hot but ok, to pretty unbearable. And it always coincided with someone switching on that "mobile air conditioner". If you stood right in front of it, the air stream was nice and cool, but it would raise the humidity to an unpleasant level in the whole room. So yes, in arid areas, where the humidity is low, you might benefit from cooling without taking the humidity to unpleasant levels. But when humidity is not low, as in my snooker hall example, they just make conditions a lot more unpleasant. But, standing or sitting directly in the cool air flow IS nice, so if you can arrange that, without affecting other people, it's probably ok.

From what I remember, it does seem to be that they descended faster than standard. And they dropped the weights, and cradle, which should have got them rising at a good rate, but it only resulted in a very slow beginning of an ascent. It seems to me that they must have started taking on water early on, which would explain a faster descent and very slow beginning of ascent. They would have noticed if water was coming into the passenger part, but there was a separate chamber, so I think that began to fill on the way down, which they were unaware of. Nobody seemed to ask the question, why are we going down faster than usual? If they had done that, and aborted the dive, they would probably have survived.

I don't detect a definition in there. This is your thread. It's not unreasonable to ask you for a definition of consciousness, that we can all understand and agree on. But having said that, I totally disagree with what you just wrote. You can be conscious, semi-conscious, drifting in and out of consciousness, and unconscious. And in the animal kingdom, you have a spread of organisms with a complete range, from human consciousness all the way down to nematode worms, and beyond that down to bacteria etc. We know that our own consciousness arose at those basic levels and evolved up to our current state, starting with chemical signals, advancing a bit with nerves and their electricals, bit by bit all the way to us. Why can't we imitate those systems? What's the intrinsic problem that says you can't even start to make a machine that's as conscious as an earthworm? Because if you can do that, then you can build on that to a machine that can rival our own consciousness and beyond.

No. I think you must have swallowed that dictionary. Why can't you use plain English? Can you give a short, concise, plain English definition of consciousness, as you understand it? Because I if you can't do that, how can any meaningful debate take place?

It's hardly surprising, when they have the means of setting their own remuneration in their own hands. What would anybody do? If you own your company, there's nothing wrong with that. Otherwise, it's corrupt. The theoretical brake on that is the shareholders, who in theory have a vested interest in not having the company ripped off by those at the top. But what happens in practice is that the shareholders are represented by people with the same interests as the CEO, and they all get together and award each other whatever they can get away with. The only way to break that cycle is a law that fixes management pay scales to a multiple of the average salary of that organisation. And pay those salaries in company shares, not cash.

This whole thread is of an interesting subject, but kicked off with a hugely bad OP. And then pushed by some weird and not wonderful argument. Surely, if you have such a claim as what's in the title, you start with rock solid definitions of artificial, and consciousness ? And then, you have to clearly explain why an intelligent being can never, ever, under any circumstance, bring about any form of consciousness, no matter how primitive. Well, humans have replicated what evolution has achieved in so many areas, why can't we replicate consciousness? We can replicate flight, deep sea diving, legs, kidneys, we can replicate speech at the speed of light, to people on the Moon, we can even replicate the Sun, here on Earth, all not identically but to varying degrees. So why should it be impossible to replicate consciousness, to some degree? In the OP the poster says : Consciousness[2]: “When I am in a conscious mental state, there is something it is like for me to be in that state from the subjective or first-person point of view.” That's hardly a definition, but I didn't see anything else resembling a definition. Just a following list of things the OP "asserts" consciousness must include. For someone who is so ready to accuse posters of "argument by assertion", the OP is full to the brim of unsupported assertions. The above assertion in blue seems to exclude lower forms of consciousness, and really seems to talk about self-consciousness, or self-awareness, which is a totally different thing. To me that's consciousness on a much more advanced level. Babies develop through lots of stages of awareness, and self awareness, but they are surely conscious right from the start. Earthworms have a primitive level of consciousness, surely? They are conscious of a torch shone on them, of moist or dry environments, of the presence next to them of a possible mate. So there are different levels, all the way down to zero. I can't see any reason why you can't one day construct a machine that is more conscious than a nematode worm. And if you can do that, then you can improve it, over and over to higher levels. The OP is so full of unclear vague assertions, you can't really have a meaningful debate that centres around it. Such as : Requirements of consciousness A conscious entity, i.e., a mind, must possess: 1. Intentionality[3]: “Intentionality is the power of minds to be about, to represent, or to stand for, things, properties, and states of affairs.” I'm not a genius, but I'm not thick either. But I have no idea what the poster is trying to say there. But I do recognise an assertion when I see one, even if I've got no idea what it is. 🙃 I would say, try to make arguments from fundamentals that most people would understand and agree with. Otherwise, you're just spouting verbal confetti.