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The Hard Problem of Consciousness
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2019-03-10 at 8:45 AM UTCStuart Hammeroff's Orchestrated Objective Reduction theory is a fraud.
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2019-03-10 at 8:53 AM UTC
Originally posted by mmQ Why then do we not yet have 130, 140 year olds on pacemakers? I understand the odds of disease in general vastly increase after peoples 60s or 70s in general, but your thinn think there would be a few people floating around on pacemakers that have avoided all the other shit and continue on past their 120s.
Are their brain pacemakers? I guess that's life support? Question mark? Why doesnt every organ have a "pacemaker" as in a device that makes it work when it doesnt want to?
I'm gonna invent one. The liver one. You're welcome.
Because the older we get, the more things start to go wrong.
It's like an old beater car.
If your 1950's jalopy breaks down, it could be because of a number of things malfunctioning in concert.
In theory, at least, human death by age and natural causes is preventable. We just have to isolate all the different mechanisms responsible for senescence in humans. -
2019-03-10 at 8:55 AM UTC
Originally posted by gadzooks Because the older we get, the more things start to go wrong.
It's like an old beater car.
If your 1950's jalopy breaks down, it could be because of a number of things malfunctioning in concert.
In theory, at least, human death by age and natural causes is preventable. We just have to isolate all the different mechanisms responsible for senescence in humans.
I think I addressed that in my comment question. I'm saying there should ar least be one or two 140 year olds out there on pacemakers who avoided the other odds. At least. -
2019-03-10 at 8:55 AM UTC
Originally posted by SHARK Stuart Hammeroff's Orchestrated Objective Reduction theory is a fraud.
In the sense that it's nonfalsifiable, yes, of course it's a fraud.
At this current time, there can be no [i[verifiable biological, chemical, or physical/quantum explanation for consciousness since we just straight up can't verify it.
But, it's worth noting that we also can't disprove it.
Nonfalsifiable theories are bad science, as they are entirely speculative, but what else can you expect when it comes to the hard problem? -
2019-03-10 at 8:59 AM UTC
Originally posted by mmQ I think I addressed that in my comment question. I'm saying there should ar least be one or two 140 year olds out there on pacemakers who avoided the other odds. At least.
Biological aging can be isolated down to a few key contributing mechanisms:
1. Cancer: Until we cure cancer, we will continue dying of cancer before we reach advanced ages.
2. Cell death: We have a finite number of telomeres (specific gene sequences) on our genetic material that lies inside of each cell in our bodies. As we age, those telomeres are continually truncated and it becomes a shorter and shorter sequence. Eventually, it runs out, and the cells in our body start dying.
3. Genetic mutations: Kinda similar to cancer, but can occur through other mechanisms as well.
There are a few more, but I'm drunk, dissociated, and high on crack right now so I'm not exactly in academic mode at the moment. -
2019-03-10 at 9:04 AM UTCWell than stop trying to be because I'm not asking you to list reasons why everyone eventually dies.
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2019-03-10 at 9:05 AM UTC
Originally posted by mmQ Well than stop trying to be because I'm not asking you to list reasons why everyone eventually dies.
BUT, the cool thing is that there are a finite set of permutations on the death problem, which means we can achieve true biological immortality one day.
That's some epic shit. -
2019-03-10 at 9:16 AM UTCI think our sun will have died out long before we get to anything remotely close to biological immortality. That being said, people less than half a century ago wouldn't have fathomed what is happening now medically or technologically so you're probably right. But the sun might suddenly die out really soon too so I might be right also.
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2019-03-10 at 9:18 AM UTCAnd then there's the whole topic of what living into your 150s 200s, 1,0000000s etc would even be like . do you continue to wrinkle and get 'old' in the proverbial saggy feeble sense? haha what if we could live to be 1000 but after 200 years old you're basically just a sop of shit with a brain laying on a floor but your brain still functions at full capacityThe following users say it would be alright if the author of this post didn't die in a fire!
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2019-03-10 at 9:28 AM UTCLol what a weirdo
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2019-03-10 at 9:32 AM UTC
Originally posted by mmQ And then there's the whole topic of what living into your 150s 200s, 1,0000000s etc would even be like . do you continue to wrinkle and get 'old' in the proverbial saggy feeble sense? haha what if we could live to be 1000 but after 200 years old you're basically just a sop of shit with a brain laying on a floor but your brain still functions at full capacity
Yeah that's what one would refer to as dystopia. Or, even more colloquially, hell on Earth.
Medical and technological advances are fucking scary shit.
It sometimes bothers me that I don't see people suddenly stopping dead in their tracks while walking down the street only to spontaneously shit their pants and start screaming manically.
That ain't just inspiration for a horror movie serial killer mask.
Existential angst is straight up horrifying. -
2019-03-10 at 9:39 AM UTC
Originally posted by mmQ I think our sun will have died out long before we get to anything remotely close to biological immortality. That being said, people less than half a century ago wouldn't have fathomed what is happening now medically or technologically so you're probably right. But the sun might suddenly die out really soon too so I might be right also.
We have at least a billion years more to go before the Sun starts to get too mean. We've been around for like 200k years look where we at, give it 200k more and i am pretty sure we've outsmarted death, time, and space. If we don't nuclear holocaust ourselves by that time at least. -
2019-03-10 at 9:40 AM UTCdid you ever see that episode of black mirror where the guy ends up being stuck in a room having to listen to the same song over and over and he can't do anything about it? he's part of a program which is a punishment of sorts and like one second of REAL TIME amounts to a year for him, and the people decide to make him stay there for Christmas day which for them is however many seconds but for him its those seconds times 1000 years and so basically its like hell for him for millions and billions of years even though it was just a day that had passed for normal people ?
spoiler alerts prior -
2019-03-10 at 9:44 AM UTC
Originally posted by mmQ did you ever see that episode of black mirror where the guy ends up being stuck in a room having to listen to the same song over and over and he can't do anything about it? he's part of a program which is a punishment of sorts and like one second of REAL TIME amounts to a year for him, and the people decide to make him stay there for Christmas day which for them is however many seconds but for him its those seconds times 1000 years and so basically its like hell for him for millions and billions of years even though it was just a day that had passed for normal people ?
spoiler alerts prior
I have not seen that episode, but even the synopsis here fucking traumatizes me.
Fuck. -
2019-03-10 at 9:51 AM UTC
Originally posted by gadzooks I have not seen that episode, but even the synopsis here fucking traumatizes me.
Fuck.
It's called White Christmas. netflix or torrent or whatyever you do . It's worth a watch if you're into feeling peculiar. Even knowing how it ends, it's worth it. There a few stories told into one in the episode so I relaly didn't give much away. -
2019-03-10 at 1:05 PM UTC
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2019-03-10 at 3:49 PM UTC
Originally posted by Lanny I don't think so. We could easily imagine a world wholly devoid of consciousness. Just like rocks and dirt everywhere without anything that can think or feel. So unlike the idea that "we couldn't have good without bad", it seems pretty intuitive we can have a universe devoid of consciousness which is distinct from the totally conscious universe.
rocks do think and feel.
if you have a mind reader youd be surprised with what rocks think and feel. -
2019-03-10 at 5:21 PM UTCI don't think a philosophical zombie is conceivable in a functional sense. All you have to concede is that if there is an explanation for why a particular experience is the way it is rather than some other way. What does it mean to actually have a conscious experience? If something behaves in that way in a mechanical sense, then that is what it means to have that experience. So I don't think there is a way to conceive of a universe identical to ours but minus conscious experience.
Lanny, read I Am A Strange Loop by Doug Hofstadter. Information structures can have some very interesting properties that, in a complicated relationship, could probably be conscious, or at least think they are conscious... At which point, what is the difference? -
2019-03-10 at 5:27 PM UTCConsciousness is not some weird and wonderful product of some brain process, rather it is an illusion constructed by a clever brain and body living in a complex social world. We can speak, think, refer to ourselves as agents, and so build up the false idea of a persisting self that has consciousness and free will.
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2019-03-10 at 6:55 PM UTC
Originally posted by Obbe Consciousness is not some weird and wonderful product of some brain process, rather it is an illusion constructed by a clever brain and body living in a complex social world. We can speak, think, refer to ourselves as agents, and so build up the false idea of a persisting self that has consciousness and free will.
Who perceives the illusion, faggot
