/lit/ - Literature

>>16164894
Cosmic colonialism

>>16164907
What do you mean? How is this a response to the OP?

I very much agree with the chimney shitter, seething Mr. Wojak deserves to have some nice stinky poo sprinkled all over his furniture. He literally burns trees, who are living beings as well, for enjoyment. I don't think he has any right to complain about basedfrog shit on his grate

>>16164907
Based

>>16164894
Labelling theories about consciousness as "geocentric" seems silly. The author really wants to push the parallel of Copernicus and Galileo vs the church's ignorance. I don't really see it. Just another scientist that is 4-D butt-blasted by our lack of fundamental understanding of the physics behind consciousness.

>>16164894
I could kinda see his point until bringing up Buddhism which outs him as a tard. In general though I think he's right that humanity will continue coping and trying to rationalize away the meaninglessness and arbitrariness of existence however they can to feel special again.

My theory is that Catholicism creates the most annoying atheists. They're kind of like vegans
>Did you know that I was raised Catholic, but then DROPPED it once I grew a brain?

>>16166615
You clearly have no idea about quantum mechanics

>We should discredit theories of consciousness because it might make reality seem more esoteric than I'm comfortable with

>>16164894
>I guess what I’m advocating is a simple acknowledgment that no theory or theology can do justice to the mystery of our existence. That modest agnosticism, it seems to me, is what Homo sapiens would choose.

Fuck off you're not my supervisor

>>16166640
All "interpretations" of qm are retarded, but even so Many Worlds is the least retarded and has nothing to do with consciousness.

>>16166727
I think they're all interesting to ponder :)
I don't know if retarded is the best adjective to describe the interpretations themselves. I'd just say that humanity is retarded for being at this intellectual impasse for about a century now.

>>16164894
The narcissism metaphor is dumb, and it is the more dumber the more you include (family, tribe, humanity) and the more you understand about what the disorder actually is. And it's not about self-centeredness, it's only a small part of it. Why do so many insist on injecting the concept of narcissism where it doesn't belong? Fucking stop doing that.

And the whole argument is a pretty unsophisticated term confusion. Confusing size with significance or importance (a common dumb mistake made by pop science astrophysicists DUDE the universe is so vast, therefore humanity and its concerns are unimportant, get the fuck out of here), confusing the fact of being necessarily anchored in a certain point of view with self-centeredness. He doesn't understand why consciousness studies tend towards panpsychism (it's because everything else failed, so ridiculous ideas are looked upon more favorably, not because of his confused and ill-defined notion of neo-geocentrism).

When he goes down the list of theories, he fails to connect them to this notion of his.
>Information-based theories are all neo-geocentric, because information—definable as the capacity of a system to surprise an observer--presumes the existence of consciousness.
Fucking what? It's not only blatantly wrong (just look up the fucking equation for quantifying information, it can be just as easily based on entropy), it seems to claim that assuming the existence of consciousness leads to geo-centrism.

What the fuck is that geo-centrism of his? The more I try to figure it out, the less sense it makes.

>>16166965
Can you please explain/point me to an explanation what information based means?

>>16164907
anti-cosmic colonism is the answer

>>16167040
Shannon & Weaver, a classic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_theory
As for information-based theories of consciousness, your guess is as good as mine, I have an interest in consciousness studies and I don't know what exactly he's talking about.

>>16166965
His take on information theory is nonsensical. Shannon's Theorem is frequently used to describe information transfer between non-conscious entities. I could set up a few computers to collect some kind of data and transfer it between each other, then destroy all consciousness in the universe and Shannons law will still apply and be valid. Whether or not some other consciousness arises and observes the computers is beside the point.
>Information is the capacity to surprise an observer
No it isn't lol, this take exposes him.

>What the fuck is that geo-centrism of his?
He wants the readers to draw the analogy of
>People who are curious about the nature of consciousness and make claims about = Catholic Church
>People who are staunchly agnostic = Free thinking Copernicus and Gallileo

Which is retarded, he's the one pushing something that resembles dogma "don't look into consciousness you might end up thinking you matter or something" while the other people are out there trying to figure it out and answer the open question. It is absolutely ham-fisted, this article would have been better presented as a plain critical analysis of the various theories that assume consciousness is fundamental.

>>16167040
Claude Shannon is extremely based and totally underrated. I reccomended the book 'A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age' if you're not a total STEMfag but want to know more.

>>16167068
>>16167204
Thank you, I wish I knew more about physics

>>16164894
what I am reading sounds like a seething soijak

>>16164894
He's confusing agnosticism with willed ignorance, i don't see any scientific refutation of the theories he's decrying as "neo-geocentrist". He's just saying "Hey! don't look at that it makes me uncomfortable" Some people's heads just explode when philosophy and physics intersect. Bland rehash of the whole
>Only philosophers of science are interested in the philosophy of science, real scientists should just ignore it
>Doesn't even realize he's partaking in discourse about the philosophy of science

>>16167712
This

>>16167152
>>Information is the capacity to surprise an observer
>No it isn't lol, this take exposes him.
To be fair that is literally the definition though. I agree with everything else you said however

There is no scientific basis for a rabid suspicion of human importance. It is no more than a mildly useful heuristic in certain fields of study. The analogy between geocentrism and all of the theories the author confronts is strained at best. The author falls sway to the exact same way of thinking, he just uses a different jargon ("mystery of our existence" lmao). And if any scientist did the most to dislodge a geocentrism in humanity's psychological and social self image it was Freud.

>>16164894
Scientists are just now coming around to accepting what theologians, mystics and metaphysicians have known for several millennia

>Religions reflect our self-centeredness, and science did too, at first.
How is anything built on the human brain/mind, like literally everything especially science which dutifully attends our mental faculties as sole arbitrators of reality, not human-centred? This is dumb. Having a mind by default makes you self-centred by his thinking.

>>16164894
>"neo-geocentrism"
>not about re-emergence of flat earth

>>16170384
Based and /x/pilled

>>16164894
I didn't read it all but what he idiosyncratically refers to as "geocentrism" - that is, anthropomorphism - is prevalent in certain strands of modern thought like Kantianism. And yes it's completely wrong. I don't know what else I am supposed to comment on so yeah.

>>16172359
Goddamn it I should 've read it all before commenting
>But if neo-geocentrism bugs me, so do militant materialism and atheism, which belittle our craving for transcendent meaning, and seem oblivious to the extraordinary improbability of our existence. And after all, without minds to ponder it, the universe might as well not exist.
Here comes the enlightened centrist garbage. He is not against anthropocentrism at all, the last two paragraphs at the end contradict everything he said before that point.

>>16172376
>Goddamn it I should 've read it all before commenting
The internet in a nutshell

maybe im smoothbrained but isn't integrated information theory go complete against the author's theories of neo-geocentrism?
man i should read information theory

>>16164894
Why is he referring to panpsychism as "neo-geocentrism"? Utterly retarded.

>>16173228
Because "neo-geocentrism" sounds worse and implies that it is wrong, whereas panpsychism sounds like a normal concept

>>16170384
No, nobody could have known how matter is correlated to conscience

>>16173796
That's why that information was disseminated to humankind through revealed scriptures which were commented on and analysed by the aforesaid thinkers instead of those conclusions being reached through independent logical analysis.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/zygo.12367

I'm coming at this from a Buddhist perspective.

Consciousness is real, but like all things, dependently originated. That is to say, the brain does not "generate" consciousness, but rather braining and consciousnessing are the same thing just as much as thinking about raising your arm and doing so are the same thing. There is no strict cause -> event, rather, there is a stream of one thing that leads into another, with the first thing passing away, with no discrete beginning-end that we give it. Because things are (for simplicity) just the sum of their causes and their effects, they asymptotically lead into a dense hump of "existence"and asymptotically lead out from it, but they never stop existing because they never start existing. In this sense, Julius Caesar has always existed, faintly, flared up, and then passed away, but is still "here" in some sense, and always will be, if just infinitely faintly.

But this is rooted in a perspective where the "stuff" that consciousness is made up of is not some sort of special other "stuff" than what the body is (or the spirit, or chakra, or chi, or anything), which is directly counter to what OP's guy, and the overly-reductionist Daniel Dennett, suggest. Both reify a mind-body duality, Daniel Dennett just rejects the idea of a mindstuff, saying that everything is bodystuff. But in doing so, he just reifies the existence of mindstuff, even if it's only found (ironically) in your mind. OP's guy is doing the same, but in reverse
>ah, it's not all BODYSTUFF, but all MINDSTUFF!

As far as I'm aware physicists are still sort of just aping and flailing and saying IT'S ALL ATOMS N' STUFF N' BRAINS N' STUFF, while neuroscientists are sort of creeping towards the Buddhist perspective ("consciousness is real, but it's not a single thing"). So, unless you're suggesting quarks are made up of thought or something, I don't see how you can really get back to panpsychism from physics. We can throw philosophy at each other all day, but the moment you bring in physics I have to ask for evidence, and... I see none in the article.

(Ignore Yogachara's "mind only" position, that's different from panpsychism in a few key ways)

>>16173947
>blah blah blah Buddhism, Why are scientists and philosophers considering panpsychism as a solution to the hard problem of consciousness etc? Who knows, I can't be bothered to do the reading...

>>16173969
>t. didn't read the article
Go read the article. It's not long.

>>16173947
>...just as much as thinking about raising your arm and doing so are the same thing.
They are obviously not. Is this what happens to your brain if you meditate too much?

>>16174128
>thought and action have no relation or connection what so ever
So how do you move your arm then? Are you like an octopus, each arm having its own mini-mind? Or that gigachad megaretard that just flails and drools while scientists record his movements?

>>16174157
>thought and action have no relation or connection what so ever
>thinking about raising your arm and doing so are the same thing
These statements seem equivalent to you based brainlet?

>>16164894
Honestly who cares? The author sounds like a dumb liberal who is afraid of views that contradict him. He has no evidential assertions to make about consciousness, he is just complaining because he is ideologically committed to the idea that human life is meaningless and that we are worthless narcissistic scum.

God forbid, so I imagine the author thinking, that people should actually care about humanity. Why all this talk of metaphysics of consciousness might negatively impact our consoomer culture, which is fundamentally based in the idea that life is meaningless, and that as a result the only way that you're allowed to feel good about yourself is if you buy our products! How dare anyone elevate mankind in importance above billions of miles of unthinking gas and dust in the universe?

>>16174240
How is he a liberal and where do you even see the connection to politics? You burgers are so fucking retarded

>>16174178
Reread my first post. You're nitpicking and missing the point.

>>16174533
You're spewing nonsense and blatant bullshit in varying degrees. I latched on to the earliest and most blatant piece of bullshit in your post and you responded with a gargantuan shift of the goalpost. Eventually, you admit that it was indeed bullshit, but I'm "nitpicking". Maybe just stfu and let the adults do the talking.

>>16174493
Liberals don't think that life is without meaning, what they really mean when they say that life is meaningless is that life is inane. They rank us below the dust and gas of the universe on the basis of ideology; nothing in a science textbook imposes this value-system on scientists. The universe does not ascribe greater value to itself, or lesser value to people. The universe does not rank things according to their size, the universe just exists. There is no fundamental rule that "thou shalt not ascribe importance to humanity" written in the stars.

Hitchens was right; liberals are becoming reactionaries. This is just the intellectual vanguard of the reaction; it may just seem like a quibble about physics, but it's not innocent; it's an attempt to make you think a certain way.

>>16174615
>take something out of context
>it doesnt make sense
Well... Duh?

>>16175443
It sure must be hard being this stupid. Nonsense != bullshit. The negation of nonsense is still nonsense, which is why I didn't even touch the rest of your verbal diarrhea and only highlighted the one statement which you tried and failed to defend with brainlet "logic".

>>16164894
What's wrong with geocentrism? Simply set the Earth as the origin point of your coordinate system and you have there a geocentric model.

>>16174533
It is absolutely not nitpicking. I have just thought about raising my arm, but my arm did not actually raise. This is a completely reasonable case to bring up.

>>16176621
Yes it is. Picking a post apart line by line so you can quibble about the terminology used in each line is indeed nit picking. Of course it doesn't make sense when removed from context, nothing does.

You are correct, what you have brought up is reasonable. But it has no relevancy to the topic at hand. Perhaps if I were talking about something that it was relevant to, I would have mentioned it. But it is not, so I did not.

>>16176709
>OP's guy is doing the same, but in reverse
>ah, it's not all BODYSTUFF, but all MINDSTUFF!
Says the dumbass who read the article and somehow got the exact opposite idea from what the author was trying to convey.

>>16165007
well, i'm guessing that the blue pepe represents an ayylmao bogdanoff spreading misinformation (such as geocentrism) to deceive humans in order to keep his cosmic colonies under control. a prime example of fpbp

>>16176772
What precisely do you think panpsychism is? In your own words. Don't look it up on wikipedia.

>>16176772
yes, that is what the article is talking about. that is deepak chopras entire gimmicm. this is why he said it. because its in the article.

>>16176822
still don't get it? your dumbass definition of panpsychism is also wrong (it's not the same as idealism), but it's not my problem, my problem is that the article does not argue for it, in fact it argues against it
>>16176848
>this is why he said it. because its in the article.
yeah he said it because he made some weak connection from the article's themes to his scrambled stream of consciousnessing, what the article actually argues for is above his enlightened level of understanding

>>16177247
So, you don't know the definition of panpsychism? Then why post?

>>16177247
why do you do this? you havent read the article, you arent responding to what other people are saying. you arent even arguing, youre just getting mad and throwing around buzzwords like a retard.

what do you bugmen hope to accomplish when you do this?

>>16177247
But the article IS about panpsychism, dumbfuck. He cites fucking Deepak Chopra. Ironically, the author actually brings up Panpsychism, but misdefines it.

What kind of retarded misdefintions do YOU have for Panpsychism and Idealism?

>>16177298
>>16177336
>>16177358
stop samefagging retard, fucking hell are you resistant to any attempts on making you slightly less stupid; and of course I did point out several things already which you ignored and proceeded to ask dumb, tiring questions, why don't you use google to find out what idealism and panpsychism are and how wrong you are?