I don’t think you understand what “snake oil” means.

If you were accused of a war crime, who would you want involved?

Accuser, defender, and as close as possible to a neutral host/judge/jury?

It seems that’s the best we can do.

I think the question is deliberately naive and baiting.

The accusation of “war crimes” requires an actual, full investigation (and trial) to be completely valid and/or meaningful.

Instead, it’s thrown out any time an act of war appears to be particularly unfair or evil, often without full context or detail.

It doesn’t. Lemmyverse seems to respects/enjoys certain biases and this is one.

That’s because it is Children of Men.

Focus on building muscle.

If you haven’t already, get a guitar and give it a go.

I’d it sticks (and lights you up), you’ll have a lifetime journey and millions of fellow musicians to share it with.

rhetorical “question”

I use Affinity sometimes, but PS, AI, & AE rule the roost because they are just better at most tasks.

PSSm: Apple Motion flies way below the radar and can do a LOT of things better/more elegantly than AE.

I delivered two seasons worth of graphics for a network show, and 85-90% was done completely in Motion.

YOU’RE

Any thought or idea that begins with “people are…” is doomed.

There is no such thing as “people;" there is I only you, this person here, that person there, and so on.

Stayed honest and followed my nose into whatever actually lit me up and really did things fully.

Ban TikTok already. Can someone tell me why this isn’t a good idea?

I think you’ve made some assumptions about my position on this…my sense is that we are essentially in agreement, I’m just a bit more willing to stand in the “we simply don’t know…yet” column?

Yes it deserves study, yes I believe it’s a matter of us not understanding what’s what (and how), not “and then god” or something silly.

Fake news.

People say they want the truth but they can’t handle the truth!

9/11.

I didn’t think much about the dangers of religion and “faith” in general until then.

I can see how magic appears to be creeping in!

When I think of “magic” in this context, it’s the kind of magic that a citizen of the Roman Empire might see at work in viewing a Facetime call on an iPhone. I think the wall we hit in trying to unpack and nail down consciousness is a similar impediment; we simply lack the knowledge, understanding, context, and even language (at least so far) to begin to address it directly.

We are smart enough to get these questions, but not yet able to answer them. I don’t think that means we must somehow use our current understanding of a thing to arrive at comforting explanations; instead, I think that this question in particular is forcing us to admit We Don’t Know…and can’t even fathom what it might take to actually nail it down. The black and white/color thought experiment is a beautiful allusion to what this unknowing is like, and I think that’s where we must be comfortable sitting, at least for now!

(PS agreed! Love me a good thoughtful disagreement)

What exactly is the brain the substrate for?

That’s the question, isn’t it!

I’m not ascribing anything unknown (for now!) to anything magical, I’m simply convinced that remaining agnostic on these ideas is the only honest position to occupy at this time.

For now, we simply do not know the origins of consciousness. Certainly the brain is at the center of it all, literally, but much of “what it’s up to” remains a mystery when it comes to consciousness. Trying to nail it all down (at this point) to biology+physics+whatever reminds me of that old cartoon of a defeated-looking man staring at a giant chalkboard filled with elaborate equations, parted down the middle by the phrase, “and then a miracle occurs…”

Altering or tinkering with the substrate will of course alter the ”functioning” of consciousness. This does nothing to demystify or explain its existence; it only proves that it “utilizes” or depends on that substrate.

If you remove the hands of a brilliant guitarist, you haven’t “proven” that musicality is purely a function of hand structure/mechanics.

Catherine O’Hara.