On this subject I highly recommend the documentary "the Century of the Self" (produced by Adam Curtis for the BBC). It explores how Sigmund Freud's theories about the unconscious mind were used by his nephew Edward Bernays to create modern public relations and consumer culture. The documentary shows how corporations and governments learned to manipulate mass desires using psychological techniques, transforming democracy from meeting people's needs to managing their wants through consumption and marketing.
I can recommend to read Allen Carr's "Easyway to stop smoking" if you haven't already. I had been smoking for 15 years total as well, tried to stop at least 6 times (sometimes for 18 months, with the help of Nicorette and e-cigs) and was telling myself "today is the last day" every single day. But I was constantly tempted and was always picking it up again. A lot of ex-smokers I knew kept recommending me this book with almost magical claims.
I finally begrudgingly read it and stopped from one day to the next. The craziest thing is that it was actually easy to stop this time and gave me great satisfaction. I have stopped for 2 years now and am confident that I will never smoke again (contrary to all other attempts).
I'm not a smoker, but know many, many people who are legitimately addicted to tobacco. What is it about the content of this book that made such a change in you? I'd love to hear about your experience - it sounds like an extraordinary approach if it indeed works as well as you're saying, which makes me think it's some kind of written neurolinguistic programming thing, a technique that could be helpful in a lot of other situations.
I don't smoke, but my understanding of that book is that it basically reprograms your associations re: smoking and quitting smoking.
Before you read that book, quitting smoking is perceived as a loss of something that made you feel good. The permanence of this loss -- the anticipation of living the rest of your life without this source of comfort -- leads to cravings.
What the Carr book does is install a new set of associations: smoking is disgusting and your life is going to be so much better once you free yourself from this completely unnecessary weight that's been dragging you down. Instead of viewing quitting as the loss of something good, you learn to view it as the act of freeing yourself from something bad. Now, when you think about a future without smoking, the anticipation is positive: you get to live the rest of your life without this terrible thing intefering with it! And all you have to do is just stop doing it! Sure, you might have a little bit of physical withdrawal for a little while, but isn't that worth it to be permanently free of this awful thing that's been ruining your life?
That's the basic gist, as far as I can tell. In a way, it's just about being optimistic about a life without cigarettes instead of pessimistic.
That's a very good summary of the approach. It stems from the observation that every single smoker already know about all the reasons they should not smoke (health, financial, social,...) yet they still do it.
You know it's probably going to kill you, you know it costs a lot of money and you know it's anti-social. The book wastes no time trying to convince you about those things. However, it dispels in a very systematic and repetitive way all the positive myths you believe (or repeat to yourself) about cigarettes ("the brainwashing"). It does not actually relax you or bring you pleasure, it just relieves a nicotine addiction and allow you to get back to a state you already had before smoking. It does not taste good. It does not help you focus. Nicotine withdrawal is actually extremely mild. Etc.
As the parent comment explains it's a re-framing, a change of paradigm. By the end of the book I could very clearly see that quitting would not be a sacrifice or "a pleasure i would loose" but something that would make my life better. And to be honest, this has felt like magic. A few days after finishing the book I just threw my pack in the trash and it really has been easy and at times actually even pleasant to quit. Every cigarette you do not smoke brings you a feeling of pride, accomplishment and liberation.
Thank you for this comment, as a non smoker, not fat person, this is probably the most helpful comment of the week ! I made a [Ask HN] post [1], to solicit further tips.
It's easier to start tackling the question when you make the distinction between mind and consciousness as other commenters pointed out in other threads. Let's just assume some very basic definitions:
- mind = memories, personality, aspirations, knowledge, pattern recognition, etc...
- consciousness = this unmistakable, unshakable certainty that "I exists, I am" that we all share (unless solipsism is true and you are a philosophical zombie :) )
To me it is then evident that the answer to your question is: we (and any sentient being for that matter) are more than that any AI will ever be.
very good point. It's an important distinction to make and a first step in formally defining what is meant by "consciousness". Some people mean consciousness as in "I become unconscious when I sleep or faint" some as in "I exist, I am" others as a prerequisite for free will. As with many things, trying to define the concept helps understand it
Let me first state that I understand that your goal was not to create an "accessible" palette and you state in your README that the palette is not "particularly suitable for people with colour vision deficiency". But being colorblind myself (deuteranomaly, up to 8% of the male population), I would still like to offer feedback: it is extremely hard for me to distinguish most of the colors in this palette (especially in the light version); more so than with "normal/default" palettes
I’m actually working on another project where I’m trying to design fully optimized categorical colour palettes for people with colour vision deficiency, so I’m fully aware of this issue.
When trying to encode highlighting with only chroma and hue and still be accessible, one would probably have to limit the palette to two hues which obviously isn’t practical. This means it would be necessary to use luminance, which expressly goes against the design goals and would eliminate the advantages I’m trying to achieve for people with normal vision.
But you're right, I should have been more clear in the docu, this palette is actually particularly unsuitable. (update: clarified it now)
Solomonoff Induction. Although proven to be uncomputable (there are people working on formalizing efficient approximations) it is such a mind-blowing idea. It brings together Occam's razor, Epicurus' Principle of multiple explanations, Bayes' theorem, Algorithmic Information Theory and Universal Turing machines in a theory of universal induction. The mathematical proof and details are way above my head but I cannot help but feel like it is very underrated.
Statistics is an applied science, and Solomonoff induction has had zero practical impact. So I feel it's not underrated at all, and perhaps overrated among a certain crowd.
My impression, for what it's worth or not worth, is that this area is sort of what Bayesian statistics was 50 years ago. Something that is fundamental but is difficult to implement so doesn't have much impact practically speaking at a given moment in time.
Consciousness cannot be understood or known in the epistemological sense of the term since it is, by definition, the ultimate subject. It also cannot be experienced as an object. It sounds very hand-wavy and esoteric but if you think hard about it, it is absolutely and undeniably the only tenable logical position.
Put in another way: if you somehow claim to be able to observe or measure consciousness as an object, then what is it that is doing the observing?
Similarly, consciousness is unchanging and without beginning or end, for noticing and knowing any change you need consciousness.
The entire doc is on Youtube: https://youtu.be/GFwDc17WZ-A