tar

swansont, No, we still have write in votes. If CharonY would give her real name, we could start a write-in campaign and save the country from Trump, Hilary, Johnson and Stein. Regards, TAR DrmDoc, Yes, I am suggesting that he was asked to "recommend" something. If you remember, he did not actually recommend anything, he just said that no reasonable prosecutor would bring charges, given the evidence. The AG still could have been unreasonable and brought charges. Regards, TAR That is if CharonY meets the requirements to be a candidate for U.S. president. "There are no statutory restrictions on the authority of the President to remove the FBI director. One director has been removed by the President since 1972."

swansont, What "she" disappointed me? The AG? Well yes, matter of fact she did. She met with Bill and then said she would take the FBI recommendation, and then the FBI did not recommend criminal charges so she did not pursue any. The same day Hilary was on the stump with Obama. If they did not know what the FBI was going to recommend, it would be pretty risky to plan the joint appearance. So I think the FBI director was somewhat influenced, in terms of what he was going to recommend, by the fact that the AG was going to take whatever he said and go with it. It would be fair to say that Hilary has an "in" with people in high places. Regards, TAR Phi for All, Oh we are doing real swell with Assad, Iran, North Korea, Libya and Russia, now, aren't we. What makes her tenure as Secretary of State a qualification? Maybe she did not do such a good job. Regards, TAR I remembegr reading that our invasion of Iraq was just the first part of a regime change plan that included Syria, Libya and several other African countries. Whether the regime change plan was good for us or not is a matter of debate, but having Hilary for it, shows she is with the program, and knows way more about it than us civilians, including Trump, but it does not guarantee that the plan is the right one, for us to pursue. Another thing that rubs me the wrong way about Hilary is the way she and her party just expected her to be the nominee with all the super delegates already in her column. Any burps or issues on her part are automatically ignored. Her concussion for instance, iNow lists as a failed attempt by the Republican witch hunters to burn her at the stake. Why are you as a democrat not concerned that her cognitive abilities might be somewhat challenged. My dad fell on his head and was on Cumidin and the fluids in his head would have killed him had they not done brain surgery to suck the fluids out. Afterward he was not allowed to drive, and he sold his riding lawnmower because he was not 100% sure his sensory-motor skills would not fail him and cause a balance issue. I am 62 and have lost a few steps in terms of sharpness and quickness and memory abilities. And I have not fallen on my head recently. But its OK, right? Because she is to be the first female president, and that will be a victory.

Hilary rubbed me the wrong way when she said she was going to let her husband run the economy. Really? You are qualified to be President, and you are going to hand off responsibility for the economy to your husband?

Phi for All, Your edit might reflect how some people feel about Hilary but I meant exactly what I said. Trump rubs me the wrong way too, more so than Clinton in some ways, less so in others. It rubbed me the wrong way when Clinton said the FBI director cleared her of any wrongdoing, when he did not. He just said no reasonable prosecutor would file criminal charges because there was no evidence of her willfully breaking the law. I am not chanting "lock her up", but while watching the FBI director talk about the investigation, I thought he was ready to recommend action against her, and was surprised as many others were, when he recommended not bringing charges. I was wondering at the time whether her security clearance would be downgraded, making her ineligible for being president, but no public action at all was taken against her. This "near miss" in my estimation was good for Clinton, and she should have been relieved that she was let off the hook. Instead she came out and bragged the FBI cleared her of any wrongdoing. She even admits she did a bad thing, why are you jumping on me for being a Hilary hater, because I am blaming her for wrongdoing. If your only defense is that she is better than Trump then your standards are way too low for me. Regards, TAR Trump gave to Hilary's campaign for senator as I understand. Is this payment for access, to have friends in high places? If it is, or was and somebody looked the other way, or said a thing at a pivotal moment concerning any of Trump's dealings it would be hard to prosecute for bribery, because the quid pro quo was not obvious and recorded, but that does not make it right. It is still wrongdoing. In my business we were not allowed to take gifts from dealers of ours worth more than 25 dollars, to prevent us from showing any favoritism toward one dealer over another. What Hilary did as secretary of state is not comparable to what Trump did as a private business man. She had the Public's Trust. Trump was acting like a private business man. Hilary rubs me the wrong way because she was for regime change in Syria and backed the Arab Spring in Syria, yet takes zero responsibility for the quarter million dead and millions of refugees her stance helped to cause. Not because of any damn e-mails. Hilary rubs me the wrong way because when asked who she was proud to have as enemies, she listed the Republicans, the drug companies and the Iranians. I am registered Republican, and the statement rubbed me the wrong way. Not a stance the leader of my country should have. How do you lead the world in pharma if your president views the drug companies as the enemy, on par with the Iranians? How do you run a country when you view a third of the population as the enemy?

Swansont, I am not privy to the current security rules, but I would bet that they have evolved as cyber criminals have gained in ability. I had a secret clearance in the Army and was very cautious with what I said to who about what I knew. Even non secure info, like what unit I was with and when I was going on leave, was something you did not share in public in Germany in 1980 because there were Soviet agents around, whose job it was to get little pieces of info, that when put together would paint a picture of our troop strength and capability. Hilary did government business on a private server that she did not always keep properly encrypted. That was careless. The FBI said it was careless and could not prove it was hacked, but a hacker would not have to leave evidence of the hack. Not having a case against her, does not clear her of wrongdoing. Regards, TAR

swansont, True, one tends to frame the exact same thing in a good light when first person, a neutral light when second person, and a negative light, when third person, but there is also an objective difference between buying access and selling it. Or an objective difference between using an AOL email server years ago and a private server more recently when the skills and abilities of hackers has increased since. Regards, TAR The other day, I brought some cans of root beer out to a crew working on some trees next door and struck a deal for the removal of a branch that had been bothering me. Bribery? Cash deal? Underhanded dealings or a good exchange were everybody benefits?

Thread, I think the way to defeat dangerous ideologies is to fight them to the death. That being said, in regards to the U.S. being the great Satan, and Daesh being the epitome of evil and repression, the most important strategy, is to come up with a good story, that can be ascribed to, by everybody. It is my understanding, that Daesh is run by the residue of Saddam's guard, and has great power because they allow their minions to benefit from the use of their criminal power. That is, if you steal a bunch of stuff and give it to the cause, you get credit toward buying some of it back. 16 to 25 year old males are very attracted to power and sex and control of their lives. The leadership of Daesh has arrived at a good formula to deliver these things. However there is a kind of pyramid scheme thing going on, where the leadership thrives and the minions die...we need to go after the leadership to defeat the thing, not smuggle in DVDs. We can not offer riches and power and wives to the minions as is currently arranged by the leadership. Except in maybe promoting the economies that will provide riches and mates and good lives for everybody. Stories like the American dream for instance. But I think it wrong to impose any beliefs on others, or to pretend toward some kind of moral authority which makes you right and the other person wrong. If you can not come up with a story that includes a situation where the majority can aspire to the role of the hero, then there are going to be problems. Such a plan, doom to failure, is to convert all people of faith to people of fact. This makes you right, if you are a person of fact and the rest of the world wrong, if they are people of faith. What makes sense to me, is to promote the idea that it is more important to take care of each other now, here, on this Earth, than to focus on a life after death, that is liable to exist only in one's imagination. If the sacrifice of one's life, is for others, to live, then good. If the taking of other's lives is to make yourself right in the eyes of your imagination, then it is not good. However, religion is a standard that people hold themselves up to. It is in essence the sum total of the hopes and dreams and judgement of the society to which you belong. The stories by which you go. We need to solve the economic and the resource issues, without imposing our personal values on everybody else. But at the same time we have to, we HAVE TO fight against destructive, criminal organizations like Daesh as surely as we have to fight against the Mafia, or the KKK or urban drug gangs, or Hitler. Regards, TAR

StringJunky, Why would you buy a pack a cigarettes? You don't smoke! Regards, TAR

Perhaps not, but people used to come up to me and call me by name (while I could not recall their's), having been a student in a class I addressed. I think most people that e-mailed the Secretary of State, or received an e-mail from the Secretary of State, would remember the incident. Plus there were advisors and friends and donors and diplomats she corresponded with regularly, that were probably among the recipients and senders.

Ask Hilary. Ask known correspondents.

Thread, I only skimmed this thread, but I think I get the drift, same arguments and spins from both sides as I have been hearing for a while. So I am breaking my self imposed rule of always reading a thread before posting, so I do not know if this detail has been covered, but I had a thought the other day, about the 30,000 e-mails destroyed by Clinton and her lawyers, and thought to be hence unrecoverable. My thought was, unlike a letter, being burned, record of an e-mail can also exist on the other end. E-mails that were sent to the Secretary of State, also exist on the server of the sender, and e-mails sent by the Secretary of State also could exist on the server of the receiver. Have the servers on the "other end" been looked at, in order to determine the nature of the missing e-mails? Have the correspondents been silenced and told not to share their copies with the state dept or FBI? Just wondering why the senders and receivers have not been polled to share their copies. Or if they have, why the results of such inquiries have not been made public enough to know that the attempt was made. Regards, TAR

StringJunky, Yes, you are quit, as soon as you smoke your last cigarette. Then it is just a matter of learning to live without the nicotine. Break those old habits, those "times" when you always reached for a cigarette, its a thing between you and you. Hard at first, hard at second, but easy in a way, because you win a victory, every time you don't reach for one, and funny but that victory, gives you dopamine, because you have won that little battle. You will miss your old friend, the smell, the color of the pack, the oral gratification as you go along, the nicotine was a easy way to get dopamine in a general non specific, no reason way. I used to call smoking a punctuation mark for life, a comma and a period to reward myself for completing a task or to give myself an interim victory during a long grueling process of work or study. I had 20 reasons why it was OK to smoke. But as the weeks went by, I learned to live without the nicotine, and found those other ways to get dopamine, to feel good. I had a pretty friend at work that said she would stop if I did. I used to go out and talk with her as usual and not smoke a cigarette. We joked, that she was my dopamine fix, because she was that good to look at. She did not stop at first, but finally did as well. I also relied on the good folks here on the forum to tell me what to expect, tell me how the 6 month mark was a peak that once you reached it, an uphill climb would be over a easy downhill path was in store. They were correct by the way. Long term I would add two precautions to help ensure success. One, don't stand downwind of smokers, and get that little bit of nicotine. Remove yourself from the room if you are inside with a smoker. Two, don't use any nicotine substitutes. It is the nicotine you are dependent on, and that is the demon you are releasing yourself from in quitting. Don't use a gum or patch or anything like that, because that is just the same as smoking. You are spending money to get the nicotine, which you are hooked on. Once off the nicotine, it no longer has power over you. Stay away from it, and enjoy other things about life. Pleasure is still the same as it always was. A hug is still a hug, a laugh is still a laugh, completing a task still feels good, solving a problem still is enjoyable. Regards, TAR By the way, those long grueling tasks...break them up into smaller components that you can "finish" one by one. This because doing things right, completing things, gets a reward. You guessed it. Dopamine.

StringJunky, I don't know how the drug you are taking works, but I would imagine it has something to do with your pleasure/reward system. Back when I quit for good, I was most helped by three things. One, my desire to not be unable to breath, on some oxygen machine, thinking that I did this to myself. Two, Phi for All's suggestion to just board up that route and make smoking not an option. Three, learning that the nicotine receptors in your brain receive the nicotine and release dopamine. This is the exact same, the EXACT SAME dopamine that is released when you win a card game, or look at a pretty girl, or see a green tree against a clear blue sky. So it was easy to just say I have not given up dopamine, I have not given up pleasure and feeling good, at all. I have just given up that one way to get it released in my brain, but I still have 100 other ways to get it, that are almost free, easy, readily available, not expensive, not dangerous, not stinky, and that also usually turn out to be beneficial or pleasurable for someone else, as well. Regards, TAR

Fredreload, I think, as I have stated, that relocating the self into another vessel is not an option. So that eliminates the data immortality, and eternal immortality of our physical selves is just not reasonable to shoot for, so I will settle for living to 150 with a clear head, if you can arrange it. Regards, TAR If when I am 150 I still have a clear head we can then go for 175. Lets study the immortal jellyfish a bit more. in #32 I referred to Aster fibers. I meant Astral fibers emanating from your third eye, or 6th chakra or brow chakra thought to be the area from which we "see" the world, or the center of your consciousness. Of course I think this is more possible if you are in an altered state of consciousness.

Thread, I agree with Strange. The striped shirt alternates. The black pixels on the page alternate to allow the white on the page to show and make gray. The screen has red blue and green pixel on to make white alternating with off pixels to make grey. The love and hate alternate, because sometimes you include the other in your feeling of self and sometimes you don't. Or sometimes you love the other entity and sometimes you don't and sometimes you actively don't, or you actively exclude the other from your feeling of self. So to speak. Regards, TAR

MigL, Well then maybe black and white is a good analogy, either definition you use. White is all colors, black is no colors. White is no pigments and all wavelengths of light are reflected, black is all pigments or enough that all wavelengths of light are absorbed. Either way half black and half white make gray. Regards, TAR

Fredreload, The little letters here are popping up at the same time my fingers are hitting the keys. If I glued my fingers to the keyboard I could type asdfjkl; all day, but the computer would only be an extension of my motor system, it would not contain my consciousness, but in that it is my computer, and types the letters I ask it to. I would not think however I have transferred my consciousness into it, except in the same manner that the world has been affected by my breathing and eating and typing and stomping and driving about for 62 years. Whether your consciousness ends at the tips of you fingers or not is thereby a matter of agreement and conventional understanding of the terminology one uses. In fact if you shoot someone with a gun, even though you never touched them, and you could say the bullet did the damage, you still killed the guy, so even if you elect a president that uses a drone to kill an enemy, one could still say that your bidding was done in the world, so the length of your extension into the world and your ability to affect it, is again a matter of conventional use of the terms involved in describing the thing. But you are talking about transferring Fredreload into a computer, just because the timing of the signals is the same, and there is much more to it then that. What would control the next arrangement of signals, after the transfer? The copy would become immediately stupid and not know even how to metabolize a lump of sugar for energy. Regards TAR Just was thinking about asking you what is the first thing you were going to do, after transferring yourself into the computer. Your wife says Fredreload can you take out the garbage for us, and you say "buz, hum, click". (don't even know if you heard the question as you did not mention if you were building any ears) it would be difficult to be conscious of your wife's voice if you were not near her and if you did not have ears

Fredreload, But what makes you think it would "work". That is, when somebody dies, let's say of old age, all the physical synapses and cells and voltages and such were there a second before he died and not there a second after...even though all the cells were sitting there, in their exact arrangement. The spark of life left. What is that? I do not think your copy has it. And even if it did, it would belong to the machine you built, it would not belong to you. Regards TAR as to switching over synapse by synapse you still wind up with two yous not a new vessel you can jump into, unless you sacrifice your life as you destroy your synapses as you copy them over, in which case the copy would be as dead as the original by the time the process was complete

fredreload, Well it sounds possible, but very detailed, and complex where a simple sneeze for instance, would require millions of operations required to sense the pollen and control the various muscles to expel the air and pollen through the nose...etc. You would have to graphically reproduce not only the entire human body, heart and brain, but the entire environment you inhabit. For instance if your real self is looking at the sky on a starry night, and sees a shooting star, your graphics would have to include a simulation of all the dust particles about to enter the Earth's atmosphere, or your graphic self would not experience the shooting star, and hence not be you. Besides, just having a picture of you, does not make the picture you. Unless you think like the stories of the natives in Africa that thought taking a picture of them stole away some of their soul, or that sticking a pin in a voodoo doll of you will cause you pain. No, I think we have a bigger problem than you imagine, getting "you" into the empty space of your graphics. If you take a picture of a skunk and send it to me, will my dog be able to smell it? Regards, TAR that is, you might make a copy, but the copy is not the original AND even if you make an exact copy, an exact analogue of you, it would still not be you, it would be another entity that was an exact analogue of you. Like an identical twin. Your analogue made of wire and chips and code could never come even close to being as identical as an identical twin, and an identical twin has his/her own consciousness, your consciousness does not just jump over into the twin, because it is identical.

fredreload, ? Regards, TAR I think my point is exactly that the model is missing a consciousness, if it was conscious, it would be conscious of itself, it would not be your consciousness that was in it, and you have not described or even hinted at what physical thing would be transferred into this empty space, that represents your consciousness. You are back to the ghost in the machine, and you have not nailed down the characteristics of the ghost. Remember, the complete formulae for the position of every quark and molecule in a sugar cube would not taste sweet. It would taste like the ink and paper the formulae was written on, or taste like the computer chips the program and data were housed in.

fredreload, The camera and robot arm you are going to attach to your digital copy, should have already been built into your copy. That is, you are not completely copying your consciousness, if you have not already paid attention to your senses, and as well, properly carried forward the memories of your senses from birth on, plus memories of your positioning on the Earth and your movements around the place, and memory of the seasons and history and so on. It is not enough to have a history of the world built into your copy of your consciousness, you must build in the history of the world from your prespective. That is, if Harry built a tree fort but it was in another town and you never knew Harry, then that should not be reflected in your copy of your consciousness. Regards, TAR that is, we all have a model of the world built within the synapses and folds of our brain, and each model is different since we each have had different experiences, met different people, and read and viewed different messages and had different thoughts hopes and dreams and problematically you have not described the "viewer" that would read your copy and "be" the consciousness you are creating What would do the experiencing within your copy?

and very importantly, sometimes its the imperfections that make a person who they are...I am thinking particularly of a young lady with cerebral palsy that I fell in love with as I held her on my lap, my hands and fingers over hers...somehow a perfect computer sitting on my lap would not be the same thing...at all

Sensei, And also metaphysics and psychology and the tackling of the hard problem of consciousness in general. Believe it or not in a small way, I have been working on the issue and developing ideas since a thread years back that iNow presented on how religion hijacks the neurocortical mechanisms of the brain and why so many believe in a Deity. Among many other interesting neurocortical findings I learned about the predictive motor simulator, and about an area of the brain that develops around 3 or 4 years old, that allows one to converse with unseen others, which lights up, when scanning the brain, when people deal with moral problems. These findings and other muses and discussions since on topics of consciousness and where the consciousness would go in the case of a perfect copy of the person being executed, and reincarnation and such have led me to my belief, proposed in this thread, that moving a consciousness into another vessel is not going to work. It is, in my estimation the vessel that a consciousness is conscious of, and the memories of all the historical senses, and all the experiences that are built in, are what a consciousness is measuring reality against, continually, while awake. Thus, while Thorham would like a non-bio body, superior in "every way" to his bio body, I posit it would not be Thorham's consciousness if it did not carry the scar on his knee when he fell in 3rd grade, or the memory of the pain he felt when he hit his head on the radiator after leaning back on the folding chair when he was 8. So the whole complex has to be extended, and erasing the scar is removing that part of Thorham's consciousness, so one should consider what is lost when something else is gained. Regards, TAR for instance, the brain has a lot of connections, an amazing amount, but finite in number and positioning and distance between amongst the folds...changing the distance and timing of the connections between cells will change the functioning, and adding and subtracting connections, which the brain does all the time, creates the physical reality which a consciousness is conscious of...just trying to reproduce the functions in a black box type of way does not do the complex justice

Phi for All, It seems to me, that aging is already built into the genes. Women are born with their lifetime compliment of eggs for instance, and the supply runs out about the same time as the hormones change and the change of life happens. Women having children at 40 have increased risk of problems and such. The aging process does not seem to only be a thing that could be reversed by cell regeneration, it seems a whole collection of interrelated systems that shut down or change purpose as the human ages. I sometimes wonder if it is alright that I can't run and jump like I used to, since my bones are more brittle than before and by not running and jumping I am also not breaking my bones. As if the aging process is holistic in essence and the changes are complimentary. I for instance can still move big rocks, but I use a lever and a helper, rather than yanking the thing around like I could as an 18 year old. And would it really be advantageous to have the same hormones coursing through your veins as you had when you were 16? Regards, TAR Plus, we have no idea of the interrelations of chemicals and how they affect personality and behavior. For instance look at the suicides and ODs that have resulted from our development of pain medications. I don't think we have the overall grasp of the situation of aging under enough control to make any improvements on the systems and processes evolution has already put in place. So many parts and pieces of our systems are carefully balanced and pushing in a thing over here is going to cause a thing to pop out over there. Too complex to "improve" on. at least given our current state of technology and morality and politics

SwansonT, Do we have any evidence whatsoever that transferring a consciousness to another vessel is even remotely possible? Any steps in that direction ever documented? The closest I remember ever hearing about anything of the sort is Aster fibers in the 1970s where ones consciousness could move about with the fibers as conduits. Complete hooey with no science or sense behind it. Are any clear thinking people, using the scientific method, attempting to put a consciousness in a supercomputer, as the OP is waiting for? Regards, TAR