/sci/ - Science & Math

>>11435773
>define real
The agreement between multiple independent parties (e.g. you, me, and a hundred other people), non-biological diagnostic systems (e.g. an audio recording device), abstract mathematical models, etc. There is no consensus reality when it comes to the notion of a literal "experience" object. What the consensus reality is there is that someone *reports* having an "experience," or someone demonstrates a *belief* in an "experience," and it's important to always remind yourself that's what we really have with all this. Even when I look at the computer screen and 100% believe I'm "seeing something," that doesn't mean I ever went beyond the point where it's a belief.
>I don't know what you mean by "abstract reference point"
It's a situation where have behaviors around the notion of something that doesn't really exist, so that the outline formed by our behaviors makes a neat kind of phantom object through reference alone. Your center of gravity or the notion of the US dollar (the currency, not the paper used to represent it) are both examples of that sort of thing. There isn't actual any such object as a "center of gravity," but we can abstract out how physics works with gravity and a given body to get this useful pretend reference point to work with. And there isn't any such object in the real world as a US dollar, but our behavior of trading goods or services based on that reference point gives it pseudo-existence.
>you keep trying to handwave conscious processes with qualia as some kind of self-deception that doesn't require self.
"Self" is part of the "deception" you're talking about. It might be clearer if instead of "deception" though you used a phrase like "not literally true." A barcode scanner can operate under a not literally true proposition without possessing any "self" simply by scanning a distorted barcode and behaving as though the object it scanned were a different object. Behavior as though an untrue proposition is true.

>>10878563
>that does not mean there is therefore ANY excuse for obesity
I'm not saying it's an excuse for obesity. I'm saying the food energy supply increasing is clearly what led to the obesity epidemic rather than other explanations people try to come up with like modern food screwing with your metabolism or whatever else fat people are trying to blame it on.
>We have liquor stores and we have alcoholics.
>Putting a liquor store on every block will NOT lead tot he average person becoming an alcoholic.
Alcohol's a bad example for the point you're trying to make. It's super-similar to the overweight / obese problem.
71.6% of the US is overweight, with 39.8% being overweight to the point of clinical obesity.
56% of the US are actively drinking alcohol on a routine basis, with 30% drinking to the point of alcoholism.
And making alcohol more available does in fact result in greater rates of alcohol consumption:
https://academic.oup.com/alcalc/article/44/5/500/182556
>The majority of studies reviewed found that alcohol outlet density and hours and days of sale had an impact on one or more of the three main outcome variables, such as overall alcohol consumption, drinking patterns and damage from alcohol.
None of this is an argument that these people have no control over their own behavior. All I'm doing is pointing out these are the obvious and straightforward reasons for the problems they cause and that you don't need to come up with tortured alternative explanations about environmental thyroid toxins or hormones in tap water.

>>10764203
>Still mostly mentally sober; only has trouble figuring out the meaning of some words
lol, nowhere close. Whoever made this either did a baby dose, is morbidly obese (and therefore what would normally be an appropriate dose is a baby dose relative to their weight), or is part of that portion of the population who have issues with metabolizing it properly.
Fundamentally it's an NMDA antagonist. Whether you get your NMDA antagonism from a cough medicine or an animal tranquilizer (ketamine) isn't going to change how at a sufficient dose of either you get completely dissociated from reality to the point where it eclipses your internal monologue and everything about who you are, what you are, where you are, and what you're doing become a nonsensical collection of erratic alien shapes that hold no meaning and assemble no cohesive context you can infer like you normally would when sober and dealing with familiar situations.

>>10719746
>scared shitless
This is nothing. A way heavier issue is how we've begun literally determining sentences for defendants with proprietary (meaning privately owned, copyright protected, and nobody can look at its code to try to figure out how it arrives at its conclusions) AI software.
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612775/algorithms-criminal-justice-ai/
If you're black you're pretty well fucked since these programs will identify you as having a higher recidivism rate and will have the judge sending you to prison instead of getting to do cushy community service picking up a couple pieces of trash at a park for a weekend.