In reply to this comment by ReverendTed:
>> ^Xax:
Weird. The salt causes this?
It's been a few years since I took Physiology, but I'm inclined to think the salt gets it started.


Muscle activity is primarily dependent on the flow of calcium, so I'm guessing the salt is triggering action potentials in the motor nerves. The residual twitching could be the result of disinhibition.
Being unfamiliar with frog anatomy (and culinary preparation) I'm not entirely certain how much of the spinal cord remains, if any; they don't appear to be particularly coordinated movements, so I suspect there isn't much spinal muscle memory going on.
That said, so much of animal physiology is dependent on the flow and balance of ions (like sodium), so it could be an entirely different process than I've postulated.

dude..your awesome.

>> ^Xax:
Weird. The salt causes this?
It's been a few years since I took Physiology, but I'm inclined to think the salt gets it started.


Muscle activity is primarily dependent on the flow of calcium, so I'm guessing the salt is triggering action potentials in the motor nerves. The residual twitching could be the result of disinhibition.
Being unfamiliar with frog anatomy (and culinary preparation) I'm not entirely certain how much of the spinal cord remains, if any; they don't appear to be particularly coordinated movements, so I suspect there isn't much spinal muscle memory going on.
That said, so much of animal physiology is dependent on the flow and balance of ions (like sodium), so it could be an entirely different process than I've postulated.

9/11 wasn't brought down by airplanes.

It was the secret government ion cannon.

"Preparing to fire Ion Cannon."

*promote-ion!

At dg: First of all let me say this conversation has been fun. Few people obviously well versed in these issues are willing to engage in this dialogue. I haven't given you your due as someone willing to engage in respectful debate.


The universe does not really have rules, it has limits and structures, no enforcer is needed, because nobody can break rules which can not be broken.

I don't see, at this point, how what you posit is not simply a poetic view of physics. What is the difference between consciousness and existence? Is consciousness simply the attribute of being beholden to physics?

I'm not sure there is a difference between consciousness and existence. And you may be right, it might just be a poetic view of physics. My contention is this, physics, science, and philosophy all exist in order to explain in some precisely predictable manner the nature and causation of our common experience. This includes all aspects of that experience. Thus far it has done a remarkable job at explaining certain aspects of it, but it has come short of explaining experience itself. As I keep saying to you, there is nothing to suggest we should experience anything at all, just as you do not suspect your car engine experiences your depression of the pedals. To me, this begs for inquiry.


Heisenberg makes this entirely unrelateable to cuddling up to a fire, which is the main reason I consider this thesis incoherent.

I'm unclear on what you mean here.


I generate a coherent narrative, but you seem to be suggesting something else entirely. Something which has no context or meaning. Something which we share which is not a narrative, but is an experience in the absence of a narrative. And though it is common in my culture to claim otherwise, I don't see how this resembles anything I have.

What is it that "hears" the narrative? Do you understand the distinction? Why doesn't the narrative simply update synaptic weights, or activate ion channels, or whatever is physically happening, why doesn't that just happen without being experienced? To understand the distinction you'd probably have to refer to how you imagine internal states being recorded, presumably (under your presumptions) without experience. For instance, these words are internally represented by bits being set low and high in registers throughout my computer, but you don't seem to suggest that anything is "experiencing" those registers getting set. It just happens, the way physics always happens. Yet when you consider OUR experience, for some reason we are different. We "decide." We are "counter-entropic." You use these things to explain without evidence why I have experience, yet the computer does not. I, on the other, prefer to posit experience as the atomic element of existence.


We start in the middle, with experience. Then we build the tertiary structure, our theory. The theory points to the primary system, matter/energy/universe which gives rise to the systems which allow the theory to be created.

If we are under the spell of an evil genius, then you are right, matter follows from observation, but it is of no consequence, since observation is completely suspect, and in all likelihood meaningless. If the universe is instead how it appears, then our theory is almost certainly correct in pointing out that we, and our ability to create the theory, are consequences of the physical system the theory describes.

I don't understand why observation is "in all likelihood meaningless". Again, I'm not trying to separate us, or anything from physics. I'm simply trying to pull this final aspect of experience, experience itself, into the fold of physics. This, ultimately, is the goal of science. To describe existence as we know it. As of yet we have no physical description, or causation underlying experience, yet this is certainly part of existence as we know it.


I think the vagueness contributes to the ease with which you find agreement, but what you have described seems much more specific, and very different from the "phenomenal experience" most people claim. Just as an example: what is the "qualia of phenomenal experience" while you are dreamlessly sleeping? Many people would claim that they have none, but you suggest that small bits of matter are eternally having phenomenal experience. Are we also consistently conscious? If so why don't we remember sleep, but do remember our waking time? Is our awareness/thinking/memory completely distinct from this phenomenal experience?

Well, the question becomes "can you experience oblivion?" IMHO, yes. In fact, I believe this to be the state that many in your culture aim to attain. It requires practice, however, as quieting the unrelenting, driving signal of sensory input, and ending the maintenance of internal states is against the tendency of the system. When it is achieved, however, I think it helps one to understand the nature of experience itself, as divorced from the sensory input you're so conditioned to associate it with.

Replacement li-ion batteries for mobile phones, cameras and laptops are already rather pricey... as the number of hybrid vehicles rise I can only imagine what may happen in the future.

I can only hope the increased production improves availability and quality over time, as any new battery technology developed now would not be transparently available to consumers for over a decade. I remember seeing li-ion batteries in high end expensive laptops in the late 90s thinking how cutting edge they were... now they are in every laptop down to the cheap netbooks!

Ok... I still see this line as completely arbitrary. How are our actions not "probabilistic events?" The amoeba is operating off the same basic principals. It's exerting energy to maintain certain ion concentrations. It's moving matter in order to seek out food, and even flexing its pseudopods along the shortest path between food sources in proportion to their delivery frequency. There is even a paper showing that it will respond to periodic stimuli (such as cold shocks at particular intervals) with predictive changes of behavior. How is that any different?

Further, comparison and recall? Why is memory necessary for experience? For the successful completion of certain cognitive tasks, sure, but I keep needing to remind you that isn't what we're talking about here. As for comparison, it's happening everywhere all the time. Electrons are "comparing" electric fields when they settle into a state, otherwise they couldn't obey their physical laws. I think the problem here is that your thinking is boxed into the human sensory modalities. As far as I'm concerned an electron is sensing an electrical field in the same way I am sensing visual band EM. It just can't image it as well, and thus can't respond to complex patterns at much distance. Again, not to diminish that extraordinary decrease in entropy, but I don't know why it should be so fundamental.

Also, to be clear, I've never claimed that what I'm looking for is something immaterial. I just believe that consciousness is a fundamental property of matter. Being matter, and conscious, I have no reason to think otherwise. Again, this consciousness is distinct from "thinking". It's the sheer fact that there is a phenomenal experience, not the particular nature of those phenomena. You've presented me no evidence that I should only expect phenomenal experience in a complex organism, as you have no test for phenomenal experience. This is why Chalmers, and others, have argued that consciousness is not necessarily best studied by traditional english empiricism. It's wholly inadequate to investigate the phenomenon. A better solution might draw on Eastern traditions of meditation, for instance. Many monks, including the Dali Llama have been interested in cooperating.

But you have made a claim, that for some particular X, P(X) > P(!X). On the basis of that statement, and the assumption that you are rational, I draw the conclusion that you have some concept of what X is, or at least what its consequences are, otherwise you are making a non-sequitur claim.

I do have some very general concept of what x is, but not such a certain idea that I would ever make a claim like P(X) > P(!X). That is, unless you toe a hard Bayesian line, and accept that my claim is completely a subjective degree of belief. Otherwise, my claim was something like "I believe that P(X) > P(!X)". Something you shouldn't really care to contest, but I'll defend my priors against your priors till you're blue in the face. I won't be bullied by the tyranny of some arbitrary model selection criteria.

Yes you SAID that, but if you MEANT something by it, it would be useful to state what. You say that consciousness ≠ thinking, but you maintain vagary on what it is, not defining your terms does not strengthen your position.

Likewise when you claim I am theist, without defining the deity, you undermine your own argument. That's why I'm an agnostic. I can't make claims about undefined terms.

From wikipedia:

The term hard problem of consciousness, coined by David Chalmers[1], refers to the difficult problem of explaining why we have qualitative phenomenal experiences. It is contrasted with the "easy problems" of explaining the ability to discriminate, integrate information, report mental states, focus attention, etc. Easy problems are easy because all that is required for their solution is to specify a mechanism that can perform the function. That is, their proposed solutions, regardless of how complex or poorly understood they may be, can be entirely consistent with the modern materialistic conception of natural phenomenon. Hard problems are distinct from this set because they "persist even when the performance of all the relevant functions is explained".

"Thinking", would fall under the easy problem of consciousness. Consciousness is a concept that is difficult to put into words, but I've found most humans share this sense. That is, we experience coherent unitary stream of multi-modal sensation. There is no physical reason for that. There are only physical correlates of aspects of these experiences. There is no unitary locus. It's the equivalent of saying that your graphics card is conscious because the registers contain an internal representation of whatever is being displayed. It's nonsensical unless you posit consciousness in the first place.

You know full well the ball is not "responding", it is effected, objects which don't have the capacity to act don't have the capacity to react. You are just avoiding the consequences of the obvious by conflating terms.


I respectfully disagree. Before I can explain further, I'd need to know what you mean by act. Am I "acting" if a series of billiard balls bounce off each other in my head leading to my hand moving? Obviously, the process is much more complicated involving semi-permeable membranes, electro-chemical gradients, allosteric processes involving ion-channel gating, sensory transduction, passive and active cable properties attenuating electrical signals, neurotransmitters, resonating macro-circuitry, etc... In the end, however, it's still billiard balls. Granted, I'm able to overcome much larger energy barriers than a single billiard ball, but I'm still running down the free-energy hill, as all physical processes are.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'Ion positively entertaining shows hits favorites Criminal Minds Ghost Whisperer' to 'spammers have no soul, banned, redacted' - edited by rasch187

>> ^mentality:
>> ^rychan:
yes, per mile a commercial airliner is safer, but that's a stupid statistic. Per mile being an astronaut is extraordinarily safe, but in actuality it's outrageously dangerous.
Say you're traveling from NYC to LA. You can either drive there, or you can fly there in one trip. Which is safer? Flying would be safer, because you have to physically cover the distance from point A to point B, and you said flying is safer according to distance.
A space shuttle "travels" many miles with respect to earth as it stays in orbit. Comparing the distance a shuttle "travels" to distance covered intentionally between two terrestrial locations is a stupid point to make.
I can tell you that water has a very low electrical conductivity, but you wouldn't want to get into a bathtub with a toaster -- and rightly so, because it turns out that the dissolved minerals in tap water raise its conductivity several orders of magnitude.
Guess what also tells you that getting into a bathtub with a toaster is dangerous because water with ions in it conducts? Science.
I really don't get the point that you're trying to make. Are you trying to say that the implementation of science is scary because statistics can be manipulated to show that cars are safer than planes or vice versa; or that a toaster in bathwater is bad? Or are you saying that applied science is scary because it cannot eliminate risk, only greatly reduce it? For example, your risk of dying from not performing the procedure would be far greater than the risk of dying from the anesthetics.


People don't think about distances when they step on a plane. They think "am I going to step off this plane alive?". The fact that the planes are covering more distance is as inconsequential as the spacecraft covering more distance. The fact that it would be even more dangerous to spend two full days driving the distance is inconsequential. They're stepping into a situation an order of magnitude more dangerous than when they step into their average car trip, so they're right to be scared. Of course, that fear is more based on lack of control and discomfort than statistics, but I hate people who try and calm you with statistics, because they're not strongly on the side of airplanes.

I'm saying science is great and reproducible, our human interface with science is often unreliable, because the real world and the human body have thousands of variables that science can't account for. And for that reason I'd be hesitant to test something like the Leidenfrost effect by dipping my hand in liquid Nitrogen (if I hadn't seen someone else do it, or maybe even then). Who knows, maybe if you sweat a lot and your skin is salty, if you have on nail polish, if you have on rings, etc... then something goes terribly wrong.

>> ^rychan:
yes, per mile a commercial airliner is safer, but that's a stupid statistic. Per mile being an astronaut is extraordinarily safe, but in actuality it's outrageously dangerous.

Say you're traveling from NYC to LA. You can either drive there, or you can fly there in one trip. Which is safer? Flying would be safer, because you have to physically cover the distance from point A to point B, and you said flying is safer according to distance.

A space shuttle "travels" many miles with respect to earth as it stays in orbit. Comparing the distance a shuttle "travels" to distance covered intentionally between two terrestrial locations is a stupid point to make.

I can tell you that water has a very low electrical conductivity, but you wouldn't want to get into a bathtub with a toaster -- and rightly so, because it turns out that the dissolved minerals in tap water raise its conductivity several orders of magnitude.

Guess what also tells you that getting into a bathtub with a toaster is dangerous because water with ions in it conducts? Science.

I really don't get the point that you're trying to make. Are you trying to say that the implementation of science is scary because statistics can be manipulated to show that cars are safer than planes or vice versa; or that a toaster in bathwater is bad? Or are you saying that applied science is scary because it cannot eliminate risk, only greatly reduce it? For example, your risk of dying from not performing the procedure would be far greater than the risk of dying from the anesthetics.

Well actually Looking Glass Studios folded mostly because while making incredible innovative games that were highly praised critically they never sold enough copies and constantly needed capital injections.

When Eidos over reached with its frivolous funding for Ion Storm it couldn't come up with the capital to sustain LGS, the company folded and much of the staff got rolled into Ion Storm Austin.

With Ubisoft buying old Eidos IPs there is alot of speculation that after Dues Ex 3, Ubisoft will be resurrecting the Thief franchise.

I dunno, lucky - not that uneducated. I think the analogy has more to do with the claims made by the YT poster in the description. And I've heard enough "change the world" claims in computer science/engineering before to take 'em all with a grain of salt now.

As for the claim that "scientists are discovering the mathematic equations used to govern memristors are similiar to those which govern synapses in the brain" - that's pretty ridiculous. On the one hand, if all he means is that there is a current discharge in the device when it's depolarized, well, there are lots of biological and synthetic devices that do that. If on the other hand, he means they have similar voltage-gated ion channels that produce a specific response to a huge variety of inputs that are not at all clearly understood by neuroscience, well, then he's just blowing smoke.

I'm not saying it's not a cool tech, but claims of "changing the world" are rather silly for a device whose mechanisms aren't even totally understood, much less how to mass produce them with consistent properties.

btw - why Kurzweil in the tags? Is he involved in developing these? Or because it's something he'd appreciate?

I'm surprised this got sifted as I was more than happy to let it rest peacefully in my PQ.

Actually, the "overacting or in-character" is one of those trick questions: the overacting is in character. I'm stepping on my movie reviewer soapbox for just a moment (hey, some guys know sports inside & out. I know movies.)

In the film, Glover's character, Layne, is your basic teenage slacker who goes to great lengths to help his "friend" John after he learns that John kills a fellow student. Layne's concern, while well-intended, is disingenuous and ultimately wasted. Keanu Reeves' character, Matt, points this out to Layne with "I know you don't really care this much." and that "you don't think things through."

And when Ione Skye's character mentions "Mission Impossible" Matt immediately starts humming the familiar theme. These kids have been raised to believe that if they act concerned and helpful the way they do on TV, then they may actually be concerned and helpful.

Credit goes less to Glover and more to the director, Tim Hunter, for crafting the performance of a kid whose motivation is to, basically, overact. Hunter's directing talents were last used on the AMC's Mad Men, another gem!

There's a good parallel story involving Matt's younger brother, Tim (played by Joshua Miller...now there's bad acting). Tim keeps picking on their younger sister by "killing" her favorite doll. In fact, the opening scene of the film shows him tossing the doll into the river (foreshadow alert) and in the background during this opening scene, we hear John shouting in jubilation at the river's edge, celebrating his own evil deed. Later, Tim destroys the doll's grave marker erected by the toddler, who protests to Keanu Reeves, teary-eyed, "He's killing her again!"

In a brash abandonment of symbolism, Dennis Hopper's pot-dealing character is named "Feck" for goodness sake, playing the only character who really cared about the girl he killed years ago. So basically, he's the only one not feckless. I always thought that was neat.

As you can imagine, I recommend this film as an excellent exception to the cinematic crap that the 80's produced.

^my bad. somehow i pasted the wrong embed last night and posted the relativistic heavy ion collider story instead. sorry, folks...