Same for me. I spent the first 45 years of my life breathing almost entirely though my mouth. Then I tried some nasal spray that was great, but made the situation worse when I inevitably overused it, so I went to a doctor. I had been told when I was a kid that I had polyps, so I went to see about getting them removed. She put me on Flonase, which at the time was prescription, and since then I've been able to breathe through my nose unless I'm sick. It has been a significant quality of life improvement for me.
I send international reply coupons with QSL cards. They no longer sell them in Ireland, where I live, but you can still order them from Swiss Post, online. They work everywhere. They mail them to you for free.
How is it known or tested to verify that "animals don't choose compassion over selfishness, they merely make an instinctive survival cost-benefit analysis"?
I'm not disputing it, but I've never understood how we can say definitively that animals are doing the same things we do, but they are doing it out of instinct.
You have to verify yourself that this is a level that human beings can reach, should they connect with their Creator and ask (beg) to level-up and learn.
My comments over the past few days explain it quite fully.
The "evidence" I would suggest is that the only tool-making animals are some primates and birds, but I'm sure there are others. But that is not abstract thought and thoughful choosing. Their choosing is purely for survival benefit, including their partnering with humans.
Is there something more than prediction going on? I'd like to understand why there would be studies like this: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2307.02477 if it's all just prediction. Are there some algorithms that are called "reasoning", that are somewhere between prediction and full-blown reasoning?
My guess is the framing in that paper was chosen to be provocative. The authors surely understand deep neural networks neither reason nor recite as we understand it in humans.
In any case, the conclusion was decidedly against reasoning.
It was probably a bad choice of words, but chosen for a reason. I'm guessing of course, but I think the people that picked those words knew what they were doing. They wanted to appeal to people who think the police do more harm than good.
I used to be convinced that NDEs were either made up, or the brain rebooting or something like that. I'm not so sure about it anymore. I'm not religious (not anti-religious either), but there are a lot of options between nothingness and a religious expectation of an afterlife. Maybe these NDEs are indicators of something else. I was surprised to see that almost 20% of people that "die" report them. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6172100/
I really want to believe in something after death, but watching my Grandma die of Alzheimers makes me skeptical. She was completely gone before her body died. She did not remember her name, or any of us. Whatever intangible thing was "her" was long gone. On scans of her brain you could see huge pieces just atrophied away.
How can we have some intangible "me" that transcends my physical form if that thing literally disappears as my physical form degrades. What part of me goes on? 20 year old me? 50 year old me? The broken remnants of when I finally die?
We have accounts of people on strong psychedelics that are similar to these NDE and we know the body produces endogenous psychedelics during crisis. I would postulate many of these life after death type NDE are just strong Psychedelic experiences. Most NDE accounts are just: "I remember right before unconsciousness and then my next memory was waking up".
This is all speculation based on things I've heard, so take it with a big grain of salt.
I used to be on a forum with somebody who posted about having an excellent relationship with his dead wife. He said they interact regularly. He was not religious. Normally I would think he's a crackpot or somebody trying to sell something, but he was not either of those things. He came across as very honest and intelligent and sincere. The forum had nothing to do with life after death, but it came up occasionally. His other comments were always very rational.
There are others, e.g. Bernardo Kastrup, who think that there is a single consciousness, and that life as a human (if I understand correctly, any physical life) is like when somebody has multiple personalities. When we die (according to Kastrup) we "remember" that we are part of that consciousness.
I think panpsychism in general is a non-religious basis for at least the possibility that consciousness doesn't have to be physical. Consciousness could be fundamental.
To be clear, I don't believe any of those things, but I don't rule them out either.
The same goes for religious belief. My reasons for not believing might be due to perspective. I doubt that my dogs had any clue as to why I put them on a leash. I (and humans in general) could be in a similar situation, and that would change a lot. I suspect we are in a similar situation as far as making assumptions that work for us, but are not necessarily grounded in reality. I think it's very likely that there are things that we don't and maybe can't understand.
Oh, it very definitely is. It's an invariant "information" substrate of the universe.-
PS. I am personally convinced that one of the things that AI and the AGI search will yield is more clarity into - or even the discovery or demonstration - of that fact.-
Or a person with a sick kid, or who is about to be evicted, or who made some bad financial decisions or for some other reason is about to run out of food money. In those situations it's very easy to rationalize that the good outweighs the bad.
I've only been in a similar situation once. I could barely sleep at night for a week before I finally told them that I couldn't do it. In my situation I would have taken a financial hit if they decided to let me go, but my wife works and I have savings and there was no immediate threat, and it still was a difficult decision.
Why would you diminish all those silent heroes who do decline the morally bankrupt job despite not making rent , or having to carry bad financial decisions?
The truth is that in the US we do have some very expensive social safety nets, and it always comes back to the morals of the individual. You can rationalize just about anything against all kinds situations, but in the end we are talking about someone morally corrupt, or morally steadfast.
Dont justify the injustifiable.
Instead Judge character in the hard times and use that opportunity elevate the heroes that do the right thing im the face of adversity.
I'm not diminishing anything. I'm just not willing to condemn people without taking into account extenuating circumstances.
People regularly justify things that are not justified. When there's a lot of pressure, rationalizing is very easy. It's not even easy to realize that something is being rationalized.
I'm not justifying the unjustifiable. I'm saying that a person doesn't have be morally "bankrupt" to do something bad. Condemning people as morally bankrupt without taking into account extenuating circumstances is certainly not justified.
My experience with ham radio has also been positive. I've been a ham for about 14 years now, and I can't recall any bad experiences. Most of the contacts are barely more than signal reports, but any conversations I've had have been at least cordial.
I can't speak for bityard, but I think that pointing out that there have always been complaints is just saying that there are always unhappy people regardless of the state of the hobby. Most people don't talk about something if there's no problem. The people that speak up are unhappy with something. That can make it seem like the problems are common, even if they are rare. That's my take on it anyway.
