I hadn’t put it together before, but Israel is sort of an international case of affluenza - a spoiled, indulged rich kid who ends up a psychopath because daddy’s money has always given them whatever they want and shielded them from ever having to face the consequences of whatever they do.

It’s long past time to cut off their allowance.

And Netanyahu’s obvious provocation strategy is playing out exactly as intended.

Identity in general doesn’t matter much on forums (as opposed to microblogs, like Twitter or Mastodon). Forums are focused on topics rather than people, and what is said is generally more important than who says it.

Since Trump has an unbroken record of bowing and scraping in the presence of autocrats, I think we can safely disregard anything he might say about anyone else’s attitude towards them.

Exactly.

He’s one of the most loathsome pieces of shit to have ever sleazed his way into office anywhere - a foul, noxious, utterly repugnant psychopath who bears personal responsibility for tens of thousands of murders and for the undue suffering of millions. And he gets fucking standing ovations from people who have the gall to consider themselves worthy representatives of the American people.

It’s grotesque. It’s so far removed from human decency or even sanity that it defies any sort of valid explanation. Sincerely, the only conclusion I can reach is that the lunatics are in charge of the asylum - that somehow we’ve ended up with a society led by monsters - by amoral, loathsome, foul wretches who are so clearly depraved that they likely shouldn’t even be allowed out in public unaccompanied, much less entrusted with power.

It’s insane. Literally, completely, staggeringly insane.

Are we actually asking if an utterly vile, demonstrably corrupt, entirely self-serving psychopath who’s overseeing a genocide, a violent incremental land grab and repeated attempts to provoke wars with four different neighbors has “finally lost America?”

Every time I think this timeline couldn’t possibly be more fucked up, it shocks me yet again.

I’m an American, so yes - in a heartbeat.

Broadly, I wouldnt much care where it was, just so long as it was somewhere that was not being actively transfomed into a plutocratic/christofascist autocracy.

And in fact, there’s virtually nothing that I want more at this point in time than to get the hell out while I can. I fully expect that if I don’t, I’m going to end up in prison or dead, just like so many other vocal dissidents under so many other authoritarian regimes.

It (Israel) submitted written comments, saying that the questions put to the court were prejudiced and “fail to… acknowledge Israel-Palestinian agreements to negotiate issues, including “the permanent status of the territory, security arrangements, settlements, and borders”.

Imagine how brazenly dishonest one would have to be to actually, unironically try to condemn an international body for supposedly “fail(ing) to acknowledge Israel-Palestinian agreements to negotiate issues” when the specific matter at hand is ones ongoing policy of coming onto land that’s clearly desgnated as Palestinian territory, throwing the residents off (and killing them if they dare to resist), then building an Israeli-only settlement on the Palestinan land you’ve just forcibly occupied.

That might as well read “Five year old with a faceful of crumbs rejects call for immediate inquiry into who ate all the cookies.”

I take “cannot be compared” to be a sort of shorthand claim - they aren’t actually asserting that the two things literally cannot be compared at all, but that they cannot be compared meaningfully or relevantly.

At this point - no - probably not.

I think he should have stepped down weeks ago. Framed correctly (something along the lines of "I still want to believe I’m the best possible candidate, but I can’t deny that there’s significant doubt about that, and this is a point in history that’s far too important to allow for doubt), AND accompanied by the DNC (acting entirely out of character and) simply throwing open the nomination and going with whoever proved to be the most popular candidate, I think that would’ve generated enthusiasm that Biden never has, and would’ve led to Trump getting his flabby ass handed to him.

But I worry that it’s too late for that now - that at this point there’s been too much fiddling around, too much dissension and too much astroturf to allow for the sort of spontaneous rally 'round a candidate that would’ve worked so well. And I worry that if he does drop out still, it’s not going to be so that the voters can get a candiadte they’ll rally around, but so that the DNC can just saddle us with some other drab establishment hack who’ll likely end up being even less popular than Biden.

So no - at this point, I think the best strategy is to stop bitching about it and focus on beating the fucking wannabe dictator in clown makeup and his christofascist coattail-riders. It really doesn’t matter who wins, so long as it’s not that foul piece of shit Trump.

How is it that the world is so deeply insane?

Surely I’m not the only one who sees it, right?

I mean - as just one example, we have here a country that launched a military invasion of another country, and is now trying to characterize attempts by that country to defend itself as “escalation.”

The only possible “logic” behind that is that the Russian position is that the only acceptable thing for Ukraine to do is to meekly submit to Russian rule, and that anything else is such an affront that it justifies even more violence and murder.

That’s stark, raving, bug-eyed insane. And it’s not some derelict on a street corner spouting that insanity - it’s s nation. And it’s not the only national level insanity happening - hell - it’s not even the only national level insanity happening today. Even as I type this, it’s guaranteed that some country or some national level politician somewhere, and probably more than one, is doing or saying something at least as mind-boggling insane as that, and it just keeps going, moment-to-moment, day-to-day.

How does that even work? Seriously - is it some sort of conspiracy of silence or something? Some (potentially unspoken) agreement around the world that yeah, we know that these people are stark staring mad, but let’s just pretend that the shit they spew has some merit, mmkay?

Or is it that the rest of the world is so insane that they don’t even notice? (Or, it suddenly struck me, so drunk that they don’t?)

I just don’t get it. It’s not even just countries and their leaders doing and saying things that are a bit questionable, but countries and their leaders doing and saying things that are screechingly insane - that don’t even bear a passing resemblance to logic, reason, truth or reality. Day in and day out, and without even a whisper about how patently insane it all is.

I don’t understand how that’s even possible.

I wonder if that’s now another of the Biden-era policy decisions Trump plans on overturning…

That’s a fascinating concept.

And yes - though a yank, I know Doctor Who. ;)

(And this is the point at which I accidentally tapped “Reply” last time through, which is why there’s a deleted post before this one)

Anyway…

My first reaction was that it didn’t make sense that a consciousness could find itself attached to (hosted by?) a different mind and just blithely continue on.

But the more I think about it, the more I think that’s at least reasonable, and possibly even likely.

A consciousness might be comparable to a highly sophisticated and self-aware frontend. Any range of data or software can be stored and run through it, and when new data or even a new piece of software is introduced, the frontend/consciousness can and will (if it’s working correctly) integrate it with the system, and it can review the data and software it’s overseeing and find flaws and (unless the ego subsystem intervenes) amend or replace it, and so on.

And viewed that way, and taking into account the likely mechanics of the whole thing, it really is possible and arguably even likely that it would be essentially content-neutral. It would make sense that while the experience of “I the audience” is itself a distinct thing, the specific details - the beliefs and values and memories and such that make it up - are just data pulled from memory, and it could just as easily pull any other data from any other memory (if it had access to it).

Fascinating…

deleted by creator

I get where you’re going with that analogy. It’s a bit awkward, just because, as you did, you have to stipulate shelter as opposed to the sheltered area, but with that stipulation it does work, and quite well really.

And as analogies should be, it’s intriguing.

But…

My first reaction is that it’s sort of similar to the “consciousness is an illusion” concept in that it appears to just move the problem back one step rather than solve it.

It seems to me that what you’re describing is the “space” (or maybe "framework would be better) in which consciousness takes place, but not consciousness itself.

The problem then (as is the problem with the consciousness is an illusion idea) is that that space/framework/whatever is only of note if a consciousness is introduced.

At the risk of bringing in too many metaphors, it’s akin to the “tree falling in a forest” thought experiment. The tree falling in the forest certainly generates disturbances in the air that, were there ears to hear them, would register as sound. But without ears to hear them, they’re just disturbances in the air. Similarly, it seems to me that the “shelter” that’s apparently intrinsic to the brain is only rightly considered “shelter” if there’s a consciousness to experience it. Without a consciousness to experience it, it’s just a space/framework/whatever.

Anyway, do you believe there is any ingredient to consciousness other than the physically of the brain?

I believe that consciousness in and of itself is obviously that.

I probably should’ve clarified - when I say “consciouness,” I’m referring to the state/process that’s at least one step removed from immediate perception.

I see a round red thing and recognize it to be food. That’s just perception.

I also recognize it to be the thing called an “apple” (in English - other languages have other words). I know that they grow on trees and come in many varieties, and I remember the tree in the side yard of the house I grew up in and how the apples were small and yellow and very good, but I had to generally get a ladder to get any apples, since the deer ate the ones close to the ground (and the ones on the ground, which at least meant I didn’t have to worry about cleaning them up), oh yeah and mom had a recipe for raw apple cake and it was delicious, but she bought the apples for that because the ones from the tree were too firm and tangy to bake with… and so on.

That’s the part that, to me, corresponds with the “shelter” in your analogy.

But that’s still not consciousness.

Consciousness is the apparently entirely non-physical “audience” to all of that - the “I” that’s aware of the process as it’s happening.

For example, it’s not the part that recognizes an apple, or the part that categorizes it as food, or even the part that remembers the apple tree and the cake and feels nostalgia - it’s the part that’s one step removed from all of that - the internal “audience” (of one) that observes that “I” am experiencing all of that.

And it seems to me that your view accounts for all of those subsidiary things, but doesn’t account for the “audience” - consciousness. Consciousness is distinct from, and at least one step removed from, all of those things.

And finally (though this has already gone on quite long) -

I don’t believe that consciouness is a manifestation of some “spark” or “soul” or anything else external. I think it’s really a relatively mundane function of the brain that we simply haven’t come to understand yet (and for as long as “science” remains blinkered by reductive physicalism, likely won’t be able to come to understand). The key, and the thing (to go all the way back) that ties it in with free will, is that I believe that (as I mentioned before) the communication between brain and consciousness is bidirectional - that there’s some mechanism by which conscious thought alone can at least affect if not wholly direct the path along which neurons fire, and likely not only pioneer new paths, but in some way “flag” them, such that the new path is (nominally) properly fitted into the whole.

And again - thanks. This is some of the most rewarding mental exercise I’ve had in a long time.

It’s a hosting site for free ebooks.

The site admins don’t provide any of the ebooks themselves - they just host files that are uploaded by whoever wishes, and provide for downloads for whoever wishes. (Not that that alters its legal status - just by way of explanation).

It’s notably popular among college students, as a source to download free versions of obscenely overpriced textbooks.

That consciousness is (theoretically) an emergent property of the brain doesn’t make it indistinguishable from the brain. I would say that it’s self-evidently a thing unto itself - while consciousness appears to be (and logically is) a manifestation of brain activity, it is not that brain activity in and of itself. My experience of consciousness undoubtedly manifests via the firing of neurons and release of chemicals, but it is not merely the firing of neurons and release of chemicals - it’s an experience unto itself.

To use a potentially poor analogy, consciousness might be viewed as the fruit of the plant of the brain. While the fruit comes to be solely through the workings of the plant, it still, fully formed, has an existence outside of, and even to some degree independent of, the plant.

Or something like that…

Or, as you acknowledged before, it seems like you experience them.

Yes.

If I’m to be precise, it seems that I exist on what seems to be a planet in what seems to be a universe. On that seeming planet it seems as if I am surrounded by what seem to be things - some of which seem to be alive and others of which seem not to be. And among the ones that seem to be alive, there are some that seem to share the classification I seem to possess, as a human being.

In my seeming experience as what seems to be accurately desgnated a human being, I seem to experience some things, among them the process of seeming to make choices. And that process of seeming to make choices is a thing that I seemingly perceive the other seeming humans who seem to exist seemingly relate to be a part of their seeming lives as well.

And so on. Since I, as seems to be the case with all other beings that seem to exist, live behind the veil of perception, I cannot know for certain that any part of what I experience represents an objective reality. So every single aspect of my experience of life, most accurately, can only be said to seem to be as I perceive it to be.

And each of these inputs could be understood as the inevitable result of a causal chain.

I simply don’t believe that to be the case, if for no other reason than that that would appear to make creative reasoning impossible. If reason was merely the manifestation of a rigid causal chain, then all reason would follow the same paths to the same destinations. The fact that human history is, viewed one way, a record of new chains being followed to new destinations, means that there must be some mechanism by which consciousness can and does effectively “switch tracks.” Or even introduce entirely new ones.

It’s super complex and likely involves technology that we don’t yet possess, but if I could perfectly simulate a brain identical to yours, with the same neural states, and the same concentrations of relevant chemicals in its simulated blood at the moment of the decision, that simulated brain would have to produce the same output as as your meaty one.

Nor do I believe that to be true, since while consciousness appears to be a manifestation of the mechanical workings of the brain, it is not itself merely those mechanical workings - it is a “thing” unto itself. And I believe, quite simply, that the relationship between consciousness and the brain is not unidirectional, but bidirectional - that just as the physical state of a brain can be a proximate cause of a chain of thought, a chain of thought can be a proximate cause of a physical state of a brain.

And in fact, I would say that that’s easily demonstrated by the fact that one can trigger a response - fight or flight for instance - merely by imagining a threat. There’s no need for any physical manifestation of the threat - a wholly conscious, wholly non-physical imagining of it is sufficient. That says to me, rather clearly, that consciousness can serve as a cause - not merely as an effect.

And on a side note, thanks for the responses - this subject particularly fascinates me, but I find intellectually honest debate on it to be vanishingly rare.

I don’t understand where you found justification to state that there really are such points.

Because I experience them, and not just at times, but moment-to-moment, every waking day. And so do you. And so does essentially every single human in existence.

That indicates two possibilities - either it’s a universal illusion, and in both senses of the term - one experienced by everyone and one experienced without exception by each individual, or it’s a real experience.

And I just find the former to be so ridiculously unlikely that the latter can be safely said to be near certainly true.

How do you dismiss the idea that our conscious choice is not simply an application of the myriad parameters?

I don’t. I simply include consciousness, and all it entails - reason, value, self-interest, preference, mood, etc. - among those parameters.