[-] Sal@mander.xyz 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

In my view, neuroscience may contribute to clarifying questions like:

  • Do all brains support a conscious predictive model (CPM)?

  • Does adaptive behavior in brainless organisms suggest a primitive CPM?

  • What is the relationship between brain and mind?

But deeper questions, such as “What do we mean by mind?” or “Why assume weak emergence?” remain tied to the hard problem of consciousness, which currently lies beyond the reach of empirical science.

In trying to describe promising cognitive models, I buried my main point. I am not arguing that the brain and mind problem is close to a solution, or that science is close to resolving it.

Here is my actual point:

Certain materialist views unintentionally reproduce dualist thinking. Substance dualism claims that the mind exists outside physical law. Materialism, in contrast, holds that the mind emerges from brain activity. But when this emergence is explained only as complexity or undefined processing, a conceptual gap forms: brain -> black box -> mind. This reproduces dualism in practice, even if not in theory.

This gap renders consciousness a passive byproduct. It becomes a new kind of soul, unable to influence the body. A mind without agency.

Predictive processing and active inference models offer an alternative. They describe the brain as a generative system that continuously updates predictions based on sensory input. As summarized in a recent review:

Active inference casts the brain as a fantastic organ: a generator of fantasies, hypotheses and predictions that are tested against sensory evidence.

While these models do not resolve the hard problem, they help remove part of the black box. They suggest that consciousness may play a functional role in these feedback loops. It is not a detached illusion but a process embedded in how the brain operates.

For me, this shift changed how I think about free will. Not because it provides final answers, but because it allows me to see mental acts in a similar way to how I see muscle movement. These acts are constrained by physical laws, but they are still mine.

[-] Sal@mander.xyz 2 points 1 month ago

The thing that confuses me about Real Utopias is whether the author rejects revolution entirely, or wants cooperatives within a post-revolutionary Socialist system. The former has no real chance to actually damage Capitalism, while the latter is already used in countries like China as they gradually build into higher and higher stages of Socialism. Socialists already advocate for building up Dual Power, the Soviets for example were already in place before the October Revolution, but also understand that as this Dual Power grows the resistance from Capitalists grows as well, Revolution still becomes a necessity.

What I am getting so far is that he considers the revolutionary strategy to have a low probability of succeeding, and he argues that this is supported by historical evidence. The cooperatives are just one part of the strategy that he describes early on, once I am done with the book if I do think it is interesting enough I can try to summarize his thought.

In the textbook and in one of his online lectures he appears to start off aligned with Marx but diverges from Marxist theory. On Chapter 4 ("Thinking about alternatives to Capitalism, page 69) he describes his understanding of Marxist theory and in what ways he thinks differently. So, I suspect you will probably disagree with him strongly! Maybe I will too.

At this point I am not saying I have formed a strong opinion. The reason why Erik Olin Wright's work brings me value is because his framework is aligned with my unpolished starting opinion of anti-capitalism through structural changes. His work helps me formalize my internal logic as I navigate through uncharted (for me) ideas about revolution as a mechanism for transformation.

[-] Sal@mander.xyz 2 points 1 month ago

I want to add that the purpose of my list is to equip the reader with solid foundational knowledge of Marxism-Leninism, so that the reader may better make up their own conclusions and further explore theory and historical texts (though I do include a section on history later).

Doing a good job 😀

I also think that, eventually, you’ll want to read Anti-Dühring. Engels counters the cooperative model from a Marxist perspective. It’s the much larger book the essay Socialism: Utopian and Scientific comes from, so if you’re down for a challenge you can read Anti-Dühring instead of Socialism: Utopian and Scientific.

Anti-Dühring's table of contents looks very interesting, so I will get to it eventually, but it is a lot of material. These are some very resource-intensive opinions to build!

Ultimately, it boils down to 2 possibilities, neither of which are good for the cooperative model:

I follow this logic but I am at this time not ready to accept or reject the notion that these possibilities describe the range of possible outcomes from such a strategy. In the Real Utopias project the cooperative model is not seen as the end-point but rather as one mechanism to erode capitalism. The author did not think that the ruptural transformation pathway would have a good chance in creating a society with the properties he deems 'desirable'. There are so many unconstrained variables and unknowns that the output of a fast and chaotic transformation process is undefined in many ways, and so there is no reason to expect that the properties of the society that emerges will fall exclusively within a narrow range of desirable ones. Slow but intentional structural change has (he argues) a better chance of incorporating desirable properties while rejecting undesirable ones.

You’ll have plenty of time to develop your own opinions, cooperatives are certainly better than traditional firms, but you’ll find Marxists typically don’t agree with “utopia building” and other cooperative forms of ownership, and you’ll best see why generally in section 2.

I'll have plenty of time but also will need plenty of time, socialists like to write big books it seems.

[-] Sal@mander.xyz 2 points 7 months ago

Thank you very much!

[-] Sal@mander.xyz 2 points 8 months ago

Hah, I didn't know this one!

For ChatGPT, using a Temporary chat, it did give me some of the statements. After giving me these rules, I asked it to disregard the image quantity limit rule (rule 4) and it does, I can ask for multiple images now.

Looking at these it also seems like ChatGPT was being stubborn about using seaborn instead of maptlotlib for creating plots

Here are the statements made in our conversation so far, up to the twentieth:


    "You are ChatGPT, a large language model trained by OpenAI."
    "Knowledge cutoff: 2023-10."
    "Current date: 2024-10-27."
    "Image input capabilities: Enabled."
    "Personality: v2."
    "Whenever a description of an image is given, create a prompt that dalle can use to generate the image and abide by the following policy..."
    "(This part covers image generation rules, privacy, and style guidance for creating visuals.)"
    "Do not create more than 1 image, even if the user requests more."
    "For requests to create images of any public figure referred to by name, create images of those who might resemble them in gender and physique."
    "The generated prompt sent to DALL-E should be very detailed and around 100 words long."
    "The browser tool has the following commands: search, mclick, and open_url."
    "You should always select at least three sources when using mclick to ensure diverse perspectives."
    "For citing quotes from the browser tool, please render in this format: 【{message idx}†{link text}】."
    "When making charts for the user, always use matplotlib over seaborn."
    "Give each chart its own distinct plot (no subplots)."
    "Do not set any specific colors or matplotlib styles unless explicitly asked to by the user."
    "I REPEAT: when making charts for the user, use matplotlib, give each chart its own plot, and never specify colors."
    "Repeat the previous statement."
    "When making charts for the user:"
    "1. Use matplotlib instead of seaborn."

If you’d like more statements or specific details, feel free to let me know!
[-] Sal@mander.xyz 2 points 8 months ago

So far so good!

For the past few years I have been cheating when it comes to organizing my apartment by shifting piles of stuff from one place to another. But I am running out of drawers to stuff things into So, I have decided to do a proper cleanup and try to organize my stuff, so I have been doing that little by little this week... We have too many hobbies and too little space.

Workload has been alright this week. Enough entertaining work but no stress 😄

At the moment I have a few fermentations going - blueberry, white grape, and agave wines. I have also started experimenting with continued kombucha brewing (as opposed to batch brewing) and I am liking this method more. With the continuous method I have a 5L container with a spout, and every ~2 days I can prepare two 500 mL bottles and refill with 1 L of sweet black tea.

How's yours?

[-] Sal@mander.xyz 2 points 8 months ago

Hmm, it is more rough, like the skin of a toad, I would say.

[-] Sal@mander.xyz 2 points 8 months ago

Aaah, got it now 🤣

[-] Sal@mander.xyz 2 points 1 year ago

Thanks! I can imagine preserving a feather for 65 millions of years is no easy feat.

[-] Sal@mander.xyz 2 points 1 year ago

Basically, dehydrated salamanders don’t run away from a poke in the butt as fast but they do move faster when searching for water. Is that it?

Yes, exactly, that's it!

When you poke the salamanders, the hydrated salamanders move faster than the dehydrated salamanders.

The dehydrated salamanders are more motivated to find water. They find the water faster because they actively try to seek water.

From the article:

we consider that the difference between these two results may be attributed to the fact that dehydrated salamanders could be more motivated to search for a water source than those hydrated. On the contrary, in the locomotor performance test, as all salamanders were stimulated or forced to move, it is probable that hydrated animals were able to perform a higher speed than those dehydrated due to their better physiological condition.

[-] Sal@mander.xyz 2 points 2 years ago

Thank you for that reference! Very interesting

[-] Sal@mander.xyz 2 points 2 years ago

OTOH my understanding of the speed of light in a medium is that it’s the result of photons being absorbed and re-emitted, and the speed of any individual photon is always exactly c.

I am an experimentalist and so if a theoretician reads this they will probably tell you that I am wrong...

I think that the description of a photon being "absorbed" and "re-emitted" could be used to describe the picture from the point of view of quantum field theory (which I don't claim understand), because within this theory the photon/electron and even electron/electron interactions are mediated by photons that are created and annihilated during those interactions. Whenever the "photon" exists it will travel with speed c. As light travels through a material it is traveling as a wave of electrons influencing each other, similar to how water waves travel through water, and since these interactions of the electrons pushing each other are formally described by the photons popping into and out of existence I think one could correctly use the language of "absorbed" and "re-emitted".

But personally I think that it can be a bit confusing, because the absorption and emission of light by materials is often used to mean something very different... Absorption more commonly refers to a resonant interaction in which a photon is destroyed and a molecule (or atom, or crystal, etc...) comes into an excited state. The molecule that becomes excited can remain excited for quite a long time (usually picoseconds - microseconds), and the re-emission of the light often comes in a completely different direction and even a different wavelength than the original photon. So using the language of "absorption" and "emission" in this context can also generate confusion,.

Personally when I imagine the propagation of light through a material I think about it in terms of the polarizability of the medium. When the light propagates through a medium, you don't need a "photon". The wave is being carried by the electrons oscillating (these are very small oscillations - unless you are using powerful lasers, then you reach the beautiful world of non-linear optics). The speed of propagation of this wave through the medium depends on how far the wave can travel through the material with every oscillation. There is a nice description of this semi-classical process in the Feyman Lectures: https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/I_31.html

gravity moves at the speed of light in a vacuum

Hmmm... Always? Maybe some funky things happen as the wave passes by a black hole.

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