To restore democracy and create a fairer, safer, greener world, we need massive taxes on the ultra-rich. As in the 1940s. People get confused about this. The main purpose of such taxes is *not* to raise revenue. The point is to stop the few dominating the many. It's an essential democratic measure.
[love it when people speak in thoughts, i.e., in brackets]
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[ahem]
[2nd the non-paywall request]
Do we get @anilseth.bsky.social ’s response here or in a response article?
But think of all the mutilized children …
I would accept this challenge, except I’m not in the specified group.
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Any comment on your opinion on this?
Slow Gods
Clair North's Slow Gods is a grim look at what happens to far future human societies in the vicinity of a supernova. It's a novel with a strong literary feel, one that explores a number of very distinct cultures, including a hyper-capitalistic dystopia, a highly artistic society, and…
I too remember the earlier, woke wars. tons of spent microaggression munitions strewn about everywhere, friends crying out for God as they were slowly cancelled...look, if you weren't there, you'll never understand
Quietly, calmly and forensically, BBC just dismantled the Trump communications shitshow on Iran.
No hyperbole, just laying out an unprecedented military, diplomatic and reputational shambles.
Worth a watch.
(🎥 BBC News/BBC Verify)
My name has appeared on the top of Mt. Everest.
You got it. [except that evolved instinct results from prior observations. Sorta kinda. :) ]
So the recognizer is only measuring the X/Y relation if it was set up beforehand for that purpose and there’s some next part which interprets ”X” as “probably Y”. The same measurement of X could also be used for an entirely different purpose, like responding to Z, if X also has mut. info. with Z.
The measurement is just physical interaction, and the only pattern involved is the pattern of that interaction. Say X is a particle with spin and you measure up. There may or may not be a Y somewhere that if you measured you’d get down. But you don’t get that just from measuring X. You’d need more.
“Knowing” can get tricky … but …
When I speak of information I’m referring to mutual information: X has mut. info. w/ Y if recognizing X at time t means that at time v (past or future) you would recognize Y with some probability greater than chance. You “know” something by having a recognizer for it
Information is not observable in that you can’t measure something physical and determine the information (relative to something other than you measuring it) in a thing.
[brackets because I didn’t have room to include the full phrase as used by Keith]
In my own contribution to this special issue, I explore how internalised semantic representations could have evolved from simpler pragmatic control policies philosophymindscience.org/index.php/ph...
Information is [not] observable nor definable in terms of effects, but science establishes that physical interactions follow patterns (laws), creating information, and systems (like life) can establish physical contexts wherein these patterns are correlated with observable effects.
[Howzat?]
Having read the paper, I would title it “A Natural History of the Psychule”. It’s all there, except for the last step. Only thing I would add would be recognizing the exact same processes causing “consciousness” are happening front to back in the cortex via Ruth Millikan’s unitrackers (minicolumns).
[another, more obvious: “These means something must ride on a given pattern representing A rather than B.”—pretty sure “this means”]
[Any point in reporting possible typos? Just in case —
“This view implies that is the meaning of neural patterns that forms the substrates of cognition …”: I could be wrong, but I think there’s a missing “it”, as in, “… view implies that *it* is the meaning … that forms the substrates …”
]
Love how this supports Psychule theory.
Donald Trump canceled Direct File after giant tax prep companies spent millions lobbying.
Why? Because Direct File let you file your taxes for free.
So today, I’m introducing a bill to make Direct File the law of the land. And 160 members of Congress are joining me.
I wonder if they could look at humans in different situations. There are definitely times of intense concentration when time seems to slow down.
Hmmm. Maybe I should be paying more attention to those notes ….
[link does not seem to be working]
Project Hanuman: information as the fundamental reality
Stewart Hotston acknowledges that his Project Hanuman is inspired by Iain Banks' Culture novels. The society he describes, known as the Archology, is very similar to the Culture in many respects. However, where Banks' books usually have the…
They have to pop into existence before they can be discovered, no? I mean, especially if they’re discovered by natural evolution.
still unclear to me how the species made it this far
only because the universe is really good at it, and getting better all the time. Any combination of interactions which are good at increasing entropy, like tornadoes, Bernoulli cells, last longer (get selected). If you get variation while it lasts, as in life, those variations can be selected.
