EdEarl

Descartes: "Cogito ergo sum," or I think; therefore, I am.

Such travel is currently science fiction. However, you don't need wormholes, only patience.

Hope it doesn't cost too much.

Toba erupted about 75 K years, which is the largest volcanic eruption in the past 25 M years, including the largest Yellowstone eruption. Humanity survived Toba, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory We survived Toba, and we should survive Yellowstone, but not without many deaths.

An accident would be serendipitous.

There's no evidence of supernatural processes. Consciousness is a computed state; if not, what is it?

LOL I like puzzles, especially science oriented puzzles.

Sensation and perception are part of the process I described, which I think might be implemented in a neural net. I'm not sure what results would occur. I suspect my process is too trivial.

What is it? Wikipedia has an article on consciousness, which discusses various aspects of consciousness. However, I’d like to add my observations about my consciousness for others to read. Perhaps others have additional comments. "Buddhist teachings describe that consciousness manifests moment to moment as sense impressions and mental phenomena that are continuously changing." Our senses receive experiences simultaneously; in other words, the sights, sounds, odors, etc. assail all our senses at the same time. Moreover, each different sensation, such as sight and sound, experience many parts of a sight, sound, odor, etc. simultaneously. Our eyes see a changing panorama of many pixels, instant by instant. Our ears hear a changing cacophony of many tones, instant by instant. Our nose smells an emanation of odors from various things, instant by instant. And so on for each of our senses. These senses include things like temperature, pain, balance, and body position and motion. Most of the things we sense are not noticed by our stream of conscious or mind-stream, because our subconscious multi-processing brain decides which of our sensations are most important and feed that data to our stream of conscious. The unremarkable parts of our experience may be forgotten, but we remember many pieces of our experiences. At the same time, we can walk and talk. Our brain is a marvelous parallel processing system. Our stream of conscious can develop single thread processes, such as computer code by using the same brain that does marvelous parallel processing. Actually, writing code is difficult and fraught with errors, because we don’t have a serial processor in out heads. However, we must have a part of the brain that monitors important or unusual things, like there’s a De Lorian. Truly remarkable things don’t happen often, but our brain continuously feeds things to our mind-stream that may be trivial, like there’s a pretty black stone. Multiple things get our attention, like this ice-cream is good and it is a hot day. In fact, we will generally notice several features of whatever comes into our conscious, like the color, style, and texture of a shirt we are about to wear. Whereupon, we may remember a stain on the shirt and select another without a stain. That is an example of feedback into our conscious by our conscious. In other words, our conscious decision to wear another shirt changed the things our conscious needed to do. Our stream of conscious often controls what we do. It is a single thought stream fed by many inputs with one preselected by our subconscious for our conscious to ponder.

There is no evidence that I shall die by tomorrow. Observation: Life strives to survive another second, another minute, hour, day, etc. Thus, I assume I shall be alive

Yes. I believe things I observe, with the caveat that some observations can deceive, for example slight of hand. The most reliable observations are made by honest scientists; however, dishonest scientists exist, which means one must be skeptical. One does not need to believe anything without being able to experience some evidence.

Improperly used big words can eschew obfuscation, which is a bad idea.

Consciousness is a small energy, like a butterfly, that can have large consequences, like a hurricane. Hitler's consciousness caused WWII, and Faraday revolutionized the world by discovering electromagnetism and other things.

Bold mine Without oxytocin, mothers milk could fail, mother love could fail, and birth could fail. I believe serotonin is also important, and without them mothers don't do well. One may argue that mind is not inherited, but chemistry is, and it affects mind.

World production in 2014 was 36,000 tons. Wikipedia Copper mining is measured in millions of tons each year; thus, lithium mining will disturb the Earth less. Iron mining is over a thousand million tons each year; lithium mining is much less. Lithium can be recycled.

Light is energy. However, heat energy does not move at the speed of light via convection or conduction, it moves slower than the speed of light. Heat in the form of infrared is photons, the same as visible light except lower frequency.

I don't like it, but what can I do?

Yes, both psychologically and physically. See time twin paradox, slow motion perception, and types of temporal illusions.

There are already tunnels between Mexico and the US.

Politics brings out the worst and occasionally the best in people.

Yes, a great post.

Mikhail Gorbachev and the demise of the Berlin Wall.

If Trump does actually get funding for the Immigration Wall, the next time a Democrat is elected, the wall can be dismantled. Twice, Dems have put solar collectors on the White House, and the next Rep admin have removed them. Turn about is fair.

It might work, but Republicans are opposed to social services, among other things.

In the limit, if robots and AI take all jobs, and people have no money, capitalism fails because no one can buy anything.