Language itself is part of the self-awareness program. The statements of a language don't make sense unless it has a context of the speaker itself in relation to whatever it is speaking to. It's a way to express the functions of one's own algorithms. If you say speaking a language is a form of communication, then you might even argue that quantum superposition is a form of communication too if you break down language this way. What's to say the difference between consciousness and physical phenomenon. One of the downsides to being human is that we don't kn...
The mirror test seems to me like a decent proxy for at least one item on that list
This is merely a bias on our own part as humans. I think people are confusing consciousness with self-awareness. They are completely different things. Consciousness is the OS that runs on the meat machine. Self-awareness is an algorithm that runs on the OS. All meat machines that run this OS have different algorithms for different functions. Some may not have any self-awareness algorithm running, some may have something similar but not exactly the same as our own self-a...
You don't talk about because you want others to accept your position. You talk about it, so others have a chance to convince you to abandon that position, either for you to take theirs or something entirely different. How do you know that you've read everything to take up your position if you don't bother giving others who have put into their own time and thoughts into this a chance to present their arguments? But at the end of the day, we just gotta what we gotta do that makes us happy.
In both cases of US local and global understanding of the word, it limits the scope of the discussion to be had. Once you start categorizing actions regarding specific issues in this way, you inadvertently start drawing boundaries in relations to other issues that are related to the issue at hand. It's a failure of methods, not language. For instance, the issue of abortion is closely tied to the issue of personal beliefs, which is also tied to the beliefs and laws regarding the preservation of life. The method is merely a simplification for the political m...
I think the the self-reflective part of evolution brought us the revelation of suffering to our understandings. The self-unaware computations simply operate on pain as a carrot/stick system as they were initially evolved to function as. Most of the laws of civilization is about reducing suffering in the populations. Such realization in evolution has introduced new concepts regarding the relationship between ourselves as an individual self-contained computation and these smaller chunks of functions/computations that exist within us. Because of the carrot/st...
I'm sorry I wasn't saying you personally. I don't know who you are. I was referring to the writing I replied to. Maybe it was someone else who brought up the topic, I didn't read enough up the thread, that's my bad. I will try to be careful next time.
The lack of recognition probably has to do with your own ability to keep things positive internally, so when you do talk about negative or depressing stuff, it has different type of emotional effect on you compared to most others. I don't have as many "friends" as a result of this, but I'm able to find friends who I think matter for areas that others may not care much about for this as well. It's really just a case of "even though you are reading this, it doesn't mean it was written for you."
If you google "most valuable thing in the world," it shows you a bunch of lists of fancy items covered with rare gems. I think civil engineering and infrastructural projects are much more valuable than these things when we talk about utility and how much value people can get out of them. It's also useless if their utilitarian values aren't being put to use. Efficiency and practicality also plays a huge part. A lot of those Middle East oil countries built a lot of skyscrapers in the middle of nowhere. They probably would've stretched their money a bit if they didn't just copy existing civil engineering designs and came up with something that makes more sense given their own local ecosystem.
I wouldn't recommend psychedelics to anyone. If I had a choice to have never taken them, I would've chosen that than where I am today. You learn quite a bit about reality and your own life, but at the end of the day, it's not really going to help you in terms of finding meaning in life that would ultimately be healthy for your own good as a mortal being. For me, things just seem quite meaningless. Before, life is still enjoyable in its own way. They threaten me with more good times, yet I can't see how my life would be any different after that point. Oh ma...
The ones who matter wouldn't care anyways.