@newtboy

Your being dishonest and unfair to people with stuff like this:
"predicting so many of the educated would go along for short sighted, purely tribal reasoning, that's tougher."
and
"people have been claiming white men are the downtrodden powerless whipping boys.

I saw an op-ed in the nytimes back when the supreme court nomination was hot and had hoped the author's opinion were a minority. Segments of this Daily Show clip and your own feedback make rethink that. The op-ed wanted to concisely show how dangerously right wing and extremist current Justice Roberts was. To do this, the author stated that the Justice own chilling rationale for one of his decisions should tell us everything we need to know about him: "To stop discrimination based upon race, we need to stop discriminating based upon race"

Being insulting and dismissive of people's frustrations at being racially discriminated against as your post appears to do just makes for more division still.

There is a generally held belief that consciousness is a mystery of science or a miracle of faith; that consciousness was attained instantly (or granted by god), and that one has either attained self awareness or has not.

I don't believe any of that. I believe like all things in biology, consciousness evolved to maximise a benefit, and occurred gradually, without any magic or mystery. The closest exurb1a gets to that is when he says at 6:28:

"Maybe evolution accidentally made some higher mammals on Earth self-aware because it's better for problem solving or something"

We need to know what other people are thinking and this is the problem that consciousness solves. If a neighbouring tribe enters your territory then predicting whether they come to trade, mate, steal or attack is beneficial to survival.

Initially this may be done through simulation - imagining the future based on past experience. A flood approaching your cave is bad news. Being surrounded by lions is not good. Surrounding a lone bison is dinner. Being charged by a screaming tribe is an upcoming fight.

We could only simulate another person's actions, but we had no experience that allows us to simulate another person's thoughts. You may predict that giving your hungry neighbour a meal may suppress their urge to raid your supplies but you still can't simply open their head and see what they are thinking.

Then for the benefit of cooperation and coordination, we started to talk, and everything changed.

Communication not only allows us to speak our mind, but allows us to model the minds of others. We can gain an understanding of another person's motivations long before they act upon them. The need to simulate another person's thoughts becomes more nuanced and complex. Do they want to trade, or do they want to cheat?

Yet still we cannot look into the minds of others and verify our models of them. If we had access to an actual working brain we could gradually strengthen that model with reference to how an actual brain works, and we happen to have access to such a brain, our own!

If we monitored ourselves then we could validate a general model of thought against real urges, real experiences, real problem solving and real motivations. Once we apply our own selves to a model of thought we become much better at modelling the thoughts of others.

And what better way to render that model than with speech itself? To use all of our existing cognitive skills and simply simulate others sharing their thoughts with us.

At 3:15 exurb1a referenced a famous experiment that showed that we make decisions before we become aware of them. This lends evidence to suppose that our consciousness is not the driver of our thoughts, but a monitor - an interpretation of our subconscious that feeds our model of how people think.

Not everybody is the same. We all have different temperaments. Some of us are less predictable than others, and we tend to avoid such people. Some are more amenable to co-operation, others are stubborn. To understand the temperament of one we must compare them to another. If we are to compare the model of another's mind to our own, and we simulate their mind as speech, then we must also simulate our own mind as speech. Then not only are we conscious, we are self-aware.

Add in a feedback loop of social norms, etiquette, acceptable behaviour, expected behaviour, cooperation and co-dependence, game theory and sustainable societies and this conscious model eventually becomes a lot more nuanced than it first started - allowing for abstract concepts such as empathy, shame, guilt, remorse, resentment, contempt, kinship, friendship, nurture, pride, and love.

Consciousness is magical, but not magic.

The last comment about 'be a nice guy' is interesting.

I was listening to Joe Rogan Experience, and they mentioned something about how the genesis of the 'woman hater' is actually the forever-friend-zoned-nice-guy who gets so fed up with being 'taken for granted'/'shot down' that his niceness turns into hatred

It made sense to me. Essentially, the woman hater is what becomes of a boring nice guy who lacked the patience/endurance to wait for women his age to make their way through all the exciting unreliable men before being satiated (or just getting too old to fetch the interesting men's attention) and finally settling for the nice guy that was boringly always available.



And I get it. It plays into the human natural value system, where things that are scarce are more valuable.

The ahole is fleeting. You can't always have him, and if you do you can't hold him, so he has an element of scarcity, which creates value.

The nice guy will reliably stick around if you go with him, so he is less scarce, so he is less valuable. The lower value in turn makes him more likely to be single and always available, further reducing his scarcity, and further devaluing him, and further increasing his chances of being single. A feedback loop.

I suppose that there is also a 3rd path - the element of nice guys that just stop giving a crap before turning into haters, which makes them more scarce, which actually finally gets them attention, and they stop being single.

(And a 4th path - nice guy finds 'a girl who wants a nice guy from the start'. In my observation this isn't the typical case.)



Cases like this (forever alone nice guy, not specifically Mr Van Driver) are when I think 'arrangement' web sites create a good solution. The guys get to not be lonely anymore, and the women gets taken care of. Kind of plays into the nice guy natural instinct, too.

Amusingly, 'arrangement' may be a better fit for the forever-alone nice guys than 'waiting it out'.
In both cases (waiting vs arrangement) the women are mainly after stability/support.
The older women 'nice guy' matches with by 'waiting it out' would not have picked 'nice guy' if they still had the looks to keep pulling exciting men.
So, if you're gonna be with someone because they want you for support, why not just go with a younger woman and be up front about the situation. If it doesn't work out, either party can walk away. No messy divorce. Seems like a safer and more practical option.

(Not picking on older women, just observing that : as people get older, the single scene becomes more and more 'leftovers' that are 'left over for a good reason'. The odds of finding anyone worth while diminish with time, because the highest quality individuals get retained first. Wait long enough, and you're left with over the hill jaded pragmatists who once may have had looks but now have nothing left to offer. At which point, both 'arrangement' and 'being single' are legitimately better options.)



Regarding Mr. Van Guy specifically, I'm not sure if he had a chance. He had some social anxiety that made him unable to talk to people. So he was likely not gonna get a partner naturally, and was unlikely to succeed among professional peers well enough to get the financial security necessary to be some sugar daddy.

So, yeah, dude was likely a romantic dead end. Possibly even the same mental (brain developmental?) issues that made him unable to talk to people also made him susceptible to getting the sort of crazy tilted that allowed him to run people over. The dude could have actually been fated (circumstantially) to end up in tragedy. Just speculating, wouldn't shock me.

-scheherazade

More spoilers:

I think the movie tried to show that they only opened up and became vulnerable when they heard the feedback sound from the hearing aid.

The movie didn't really go on about how they defeated armies, but really they only have to kill the farmers, everyone will eventually starve if they can't grow food.

"Hi, I’m(A) ____________, and I’m (B) _________________…"

okay

"(B) Our greatest responsibility is to serve our Northwest communities. We are extremely proud of the quality, balanced journalism that KOMO News produces."

okay.

"(A) But we’re concerned about the troubling trend of irresponsible, one sided news stories plaguing our country. The sharing of biased and false news has become all too common on social media."

I mean, with reports of social media "shadow banning" conservative accounts (and other one sided controlling of content), it troubles me too.

"(B) More alarming, some media outlets publish these same fake stories … stories that just aren’t true, without checking facts first."

True statement. Remember this: https://youtu.be/WhHAPsXhbR8

"(A) Unfortunately, some members of the media use their platforms to push their own personal bias and agenda to control “exactly what people think” … This is extremely dangerous to a democracy."

aka opinion as fact. also bad.

"(B) At KOMO it’s our responsibility to pursue and report the truth. We understand Truth is neither politically “left nor right.” Our commitment to factual reporting is the foundation of our credibility, now more than ever."

so, they pledge to do their job. okay.

"(A) But we are human and sometimes our reporting might fall short. If you believe our coverage is unfair please reach out to us by going to KOMOnews.com and clicking on CONTENT CONCERNS. We value your comments. We will respond back to you."

when they screw up, we have a way to tell them. how is this bad?

"(B) We work very hard to seek the truth and strive to be fair, balanced and factual. … We consider it our honor, our privilege to responsibly deliver the news every day."

again, they pledge to do their job.

"(A) Thank you for watching and we appreciate your feedback."


I don't see the big deal.

From: http://money.cnn.com/2018/03/07/media/sinclair-broadcasting-promos-media-bashing/index.html

The instructions for producing and airing the localized versions went into great detail about how the promos "should look and sound," according to another document obtained by CNN.

"Talent should dress in jewel tones -- however they should not look political in their dress or attire," one of the documents says. "Avoid total red, blue and purples dresses and suits. Avoid totally red, blue and purple ties, the goal is to look apolitical, neutral, nonpartisan yet professional. Black or charcoal suits for men...females should wear yellow, gold, magenta, cyan, but avoid red, blue or purple."

At the end of the promo, viewers are encouraged to send in feedback "if you believe our coverage is unfair."

The instructions say that "corporate will monitor the comments and send replies to your audience on your behalf."

In other words, local stations are cut out of the interactions with viewers. Management will handle it instead.

I hate crap touchscreens. Haven't really had a problem with them on dedicated devices like phones, tablets, etc.

I do think putting a touchscreen in something like a car is borderline irresponsible. There's some promising work being done with haptic touchscreens, but it's early days yet. https://www.cnet.com/news/tanvas-reunites-touch-with-feel-using-refined-haptic-feedback-ces-2017/

But there's really no substitute for a dedicated control surface.

It's so amazing how a little bit of sensory feedback can completely sell a vr experience to your brain. Another interesting approach that is under development is a sort of VR/haunted house mashup where you physically walk through a set or rooms where the walls and objects exactly match the virtual ones.

It's like the doctors have given you second and third opinions and told you your liver is failing, you have to stop drinking or you'll die. You won't die the next time you have a beer, but every beer takes you farther over the edge. You can say the bartender who knows this is blameless for serving you, because others gave you the alcohol that destroyed your liver and it took longer than one night, or you can work from now and realize that he's intentionally killing you in hopes of a tip before you stumble outside and keel over.
Working from today, our planet's liver is failing, there no transplant, and Trump just reopened the bar and is serving everclear. Chances are he can't accelerate things so much that Florida submerges in the next 3 1/2 years, that doesn't mean he can't make things be far worse, beyond the point of possible mitigation.

You may hold that theory, but climatologists disagree. We are past, but still near the tipping point, and every ton of CO2 takes us farther from a survivable rise. It's ridiculous to think that we're already past holding at 3.5 degrees global rise (edit: the maximum assumed to be survivable by civilization), so we might as well make it 5 degrees.

Island nations, people who live South of New Orleans, and millions of others are already being displaced. It only takes one high tide (edit: or one extended drought) to wipe out low lying farmland permanently, and erosion has become an unstoppable force.

Trump is moving towards raising the level of multiple greenhouse gases we produce, Obama had us lowering those levels. Time can only tell what that actually means in tonnage, but 180 degree turnaround is awful enough. I agree, we also didn't do enough under Obama.

? Reversible means it can be reversed, not that it's easy. I don't know where you get that idea. Irreversible in this context means sending the temperature trend the other way before civilization becomes unsustainable. Eventually the planet should normalize unless we really follow Trump's lead wholeheartedly, then we might go full Venus. There WAS a magic bullet, being responsible with our atmosphere, but we argued over climate change until it was useless.

If, before it reverses (which it may not do at all, btw) the planet becomes inhospitable to humans, then for humans, it's irreversible. In 4 years we can do enough damage to 1) make the effects longer and harsher enough to make long term survivability impossible and or 2) go beyond the next tipping point where feedback loops reinforce each other, leading to a Venus like runaway greenhouse effect. We're damn close to massive methane releases (already happening) and if we don't avoid that, nothing will save civilization.
All that said, Clinton probably wouldn't do enough to avoid disaster either, but at least she accepted the science and agreed we should make efforts to mitigate the coming damages.

I'm definitely a pessimist, mostly because I understand the systems and human nature, and so I think we're totally hosed as a species.

Now is he actually steering the plane like this or is the wind pushing on control surfaces and this is the feedback?

Hey, dubious. I don't know nearly as much about the details as you do, but I was skeptical when he made the claim to the grad student that inter-neuron transmission was binary. My layman's understanding is that there's a sort of "signal strength" between neurons that can decay or be amplified depending on how those pathways get used. Each signal affects others, and so on--it's much more a very complex feedback system utterly different than the binary instruction pathways used by our current computers.

But....we already do that.
Pollution; soot, sulfur, etc, already cause global dimming, which is exactly what you're describing, blocking 10% or more of sunlight and mitigating as much as 5%, but averaging 2-3% of warming already. I have said repeatedly that instantly switching to real clean energy would actually accelerate global warming exponentially because of this little known effect. That makes most plans to do something actually worse than doing nothing in the short term, and now in the long term too because that rapid temperature rise would absolutely accelerate methane releases (among other cycles) which starts feedback loops, possibly turning us into Venus.
Sadly, because of the size of the areas where the methane is escaping, there's no way possible to capture it. You would have to cover about 1/5 of earth with a sealed plastic sheet or something. It's not possible to tap the deposits and siphon them off, they are not centralized gas pockets for the most part.

Love me some sand dunes. I've heard low droning sounds while out in Guadalupe sand dunes in central california and in Death Valley. I remember researching why and there were some theories - something about grain size (changes pitch), friction & amplification from a layer of moisture below the surface and sand collision upon the surface creating vibrations that in turn create a feedback loop of low frequency. Stony stuff, lol!

There was a moment there where Rock was impersonating Kevin, impersonating him... He should be careful that's going to create a negative feedback loop and open up a black hole or some shit.

I think a lot like you do -- big government is a problem. But, while the GOP loudly and constantly *declares* that it is the party opposed to big government, to me it seems pretty clear that that is no longer even remotely true (if it ever was).

Is Clinton even more in bed with all of that than Trump? Probably, yeah. But this isn't an issue that revolves around Republican vs Democrat lines. It absolutely does revolve around corporations.

Yay for Capitalism and everything, but if Capitalism is the ultimate motivator, it stands to reason that these giant corporations *must* be getting a return on their investment when they funnel huge sums of money into politics. Otherwise, as Capitalist enterprises, they wouldn't be doing it.

So while I tend to agree that big government tends to be worse than small government for quite a few reasons (harder to monitor for corruption, less efficient, etc.), I think that big corporations and big government represent a feedback loop that feed off of each other. Thinking that the problem lies in one but not the other is doing yourself a disservice.