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Not everything needs to be an object

And if digital computers are conscious at the hardware level, the universe is conscious.

I haven't read the article myself yet as it's big and I haven't got time now, but I will as it looks like it might be very good. However, if you read just the very first paragraph you'll see that's exactly what the author thinks:

> Personally, I consider myself a physicalist, but I’m also a panpsychist – because physics doesn’t really seem to deal in hard absolutes, and I find it straightforward to consider that everything is conscious to some greater or lesser degree


Consciousness could be an emergant property too, of matter arranged in a certain way. Why am I me though? Drives me nuts!

Time for a thought experiment! Imagine there are 2 monkeys. One monkey genuinely believes it is a unique and special being. The other monkey is genuinely egoless, believes all monkeys are just a coincidental blob of matter with no fundamental claim to being special and that in some sense are all part of the same being. There is enough food for 1 monkey. If that is all the information we're getting, I would contend that the egotistical monkey is far more likely to be the one to eat the food.

You might easily be you because if you weren't it'd be an evolutionary dead end. Everything with the ability to make choices ahs to believe at some level that it has more of a right to exist than the systems they consume energy more.


Everything with the ability to make choices ahs to believe at some level that it has more of a right to exist than the systems they consume energy more.

Not necessarily.

Everything has a "right to exist". Otherwise, it probably wouldn't.

Everything that exists has not only a "right" but also a "requirement" to consume energy from the universe in order to survive.

Sometimes, the only way to meet this "requirement" is to exclude others from doing the same.

Doing so doesn't necessarily make you any better or worse than others. Any more than the universe is good or bad for creating you with an instinct and a "requirement" for survival.

Bottom line: Being egotistical doesn't mean you are better able to survive, it just means you are more arrogant and delusional about doing so. Personally, I believe the universe favors reality over delusion.


That’s an interesting thought. I’ll try not to type too hard on my keyboard then

my keyboard enjoys a bit of rough play

I mean, we are as much a part of the universe as everything else. We're just dead star matter arranged in specific ways.

A part of the universe is objectively conscious.


I have yet another take on that.

Each consciousness is a universe on its own. Matter is just how those universes interact with each other. This is how quantum mechanics work in my idea, each observer affects the matter and quantum effects take most probable outcomes because of that.


The latter is easier to accept.

And so are electrons.

Makes no sense to me.

Typical first indication of an elaborate financial fraud.


Strychnine cures cancer.

Unfortunately, it also has a few side effects.


Maybe the Pope should have prayed for better security.

Or maybe he did and the result was indistinguishable from random chance. Divine guidance tends to be fickle like this.

Or maybe god just didn't like his app and decided to punish those who use it. The lord works in mysterious ways and you can't really know his mind.

But never mind all this and just keep feeding the collection plate.


More expressive --- I don't necessarily think so.

What types do is make language more precise and deterministic.


It is unknown what conditions would allow complex phenomena to be described simply and predictably.

In other words, lots of time spent thinking and talking has produced nothing of any practical significance.


this turned out to be a _crop_ of a much longer talk (https://bigthink.com/the-well/physics-doesnt-explain-the-uni...) that included interesting references to a TOE based on computation, something called the Ruliad, etc. that was pretty interesting IMO but this crop is pretty lame it seems like zoomed into the couple of bits that mentioned AI and pulled it out of context and without the context it's just bleh

The idea is to give China an inherent cost advantage in AI and manufacturing.

Meanwhile, the bassakwards US administration is subsidizing carbon based energy and fighting wars related to it.


Comparison to bookies is really comparison to betters.

Bookies don't really care about winners and losers. They just try to balance the money being bet on each side.

Bookies make their money from the "vigorish" --- and a good bookie will win every time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vigorish


I wonder if bookies share between them information about where people places the money.

What is happening with other bookies is not really relevant. All a bookie really cares about are the bets on his books.

As long as the bets are roughly the same on each side (money wise), the bookies work is done. All he has to do is take from the losers and give to the winners --- and take a nice cut for himself.


I never built this to bet, just for fun, always liked statistics and sports. In the end, better to invest your money in stock market and leave it there, than to think you can make a living out of betting.

than to think you can make a living out of betting.

The most sensible, surefire way to make money from betting is to become a bookie.

A good bookie doesn't care about picking winners and he knows precisely how much he will make before the game begins.


Time to wake up and smell the coffee --- Musk's primary skill is marketing and con artistry.

People buy into his grandiose visions that are really just ploys to move money from investor's pockets into his.


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