SoylentNews

When things are too unusual they just aren’t “noticed”, and when things are too familiar they also aren’t noticed. In the first case the sensations are just perceived as “noise” and are filtered out. In the second case they aren’t interesting enough to notice, and are filtered out. You can override these filters, but it takes careful attention.
This presents a problem in “how to get started”. The resolution is the existence of a few built-in “forms”. One demonstrable one is a view of a smile, I’m sure there are other demonstrable ones. Just how many built-in forms exist is a good question, and some, probably most, will be quite difficult to detect.
Given a few forms to start with they can act as “seeds” for other “objects” to “crystallize” around. But the “how” of this crystallization needs explication.
Well, if one this is recognized, then other sensations can be linked to it. Thus if a smile is recognized, then a forehead can be linked as “occur above smile”, and this will cause it to be “expected” when the smile is seen, and hypothesized when not seen, perhaps because of being obscured by something else. This uses state specific memory to enable weak signals to become established as a definite object. After being stabilized as an object, it can then be recognized in other contexts. Please note that while this example is visual, most of the early linkage is kinesthetic or goniometric, and much will be auditory or cross-modality.

Sunday 2018/10/21
Sensory stimuli preferentially occur in certain built-in forms. Visual examples are lines, arcs of circles, and areas of light or dark.
Is an object initially required to have a particular distribution of features? The face recognizer has been shown to initially require two dark spots above a centered dark spot above an arc, but that is a highly specialized feature that is, if not species specific, probably primate specific. But what about a dresser or refrigerator? A Chair? Does later speed of recognition derive from the initial process? Or is it because since we usually see chairs upright, the upright chair is more readily accessible?
How are objects indexed for access? Seeing the same object from slightly different angles would alter the positioning of features, but many, or even all, of the features would still be present (vertical lines, areas, etc.). Others would be rotated, changing, e.g., the angle at which diagonal lines were seen. (I’m assuming translation rather than rotation of the view with respect to the object. Sometimes some of the features will be obscured, or partially obscured. So what seems to be going on is that the features visible are activated, causing the other features “linked” to them to be activated.
The preceding doesn’t sound sufficiently specific, but this is handled by “state specific memory”, i.e. the entire context is linked into each memory, this includes things like “Where am I?”, as in “what room”, and also emotional state, what recent thoughts have occurred, what other objects have been seen recently (i.e. are still partially active), etc.

Friday 2018/10/20
Object Persistence depends on recognition.
Object: A particular collection of “sensory” impressions.
N.B.: An object won’t be all of the “sensory” impressions from an area of focus, but only those selected as “foreground”.
To form an object, we must l rely on a loose interpretation of “Hebb’s law”, paraphrased as “neurons that fire together, wire together”, so when particular neurons are simultaneously stimulated repeatedly they begin to stimulate each other. Thus perceiving (or imagining) a piece of an object will render the entire memory active.

Mike, assuming you have a normal sized kidney, tomorrow you will be approximately 150g lighter... Unless the surgeon leaves some tools inside you, then it will be a little less.

I'm sure you are in good hands and I hope everything goes well and I look forward to you getting back on here and posting random Unix commands and updates on your current mental state.

Godspeed MDC, godspeed!

Things are really coming to a head here. We have a bunch of alt-right jerkoffs hysterically jumping up and down shouting "butbutbutbut MUH FREEZE PEACH!!!111one" over Gab getting its blood supply cut off like the cancer it is.

Listen, you Constitutionally-ignorant know nothings, you fucking fourth-grade civics class failures, you frothing wild-eyed lunatics: the First Amendment merely says the government may not restrict your speech in and of itself (and there are still exception clauses for public safety).

It does not mean you have a right to be heard.

It does *not* mean you have a right to a platform.

It does NOT mean you have a right to incite violence.

And MOST OF ALL, it does NOT mean you have a right to escape the consequences of your speech.

Now, I personally am all for shitholes like gab.io, and would even support funding them. Why? Because they keep you stupid motherfuckers all in one place, contained, exposed, letting you mingle and hybridize and ooze and fester, like the old Chinese sorcery "gu." Some interestingly poisonous shit must come out of that. Free association and all that, right? And poison goes where poison's wanted.

The most hilarious part of this, though? It's when all the gibbertarian shitheads start demanding that Thuh Eebil Gubbamint stop *private corporations* from doing what the fuck they want with their resources! News flash, assholes: corporations have discovered that hosting actual, literal, Heil-Hitlering, 1488'ing Nazis is a Bad Business Decision (TM). That burning pain you feel is the Invisible Hand of the Free Market smacking you across your inbred faces so hard it raises welts. And raising a gigantic middle finger at you. You made your bed, now lie in it.

So keep screaming and howling at the corporations and the government both to do your bidding. Keep marching. Keep concentrating yourselves into ever smaller and more feverish and more frenzied little circlejerks deep in the festering asshole of the internet. Keep displaying your ignorance and stupidity and hatred and utter, utter impotent rage.

We won't necessarily punch a Nazi, but we're sure as shit gonna mock a Nazi till y'all drop dead of apoplexy. And something tells me what you really can't stand is mockery; violence you will merely take as incentive to continue on. But being laughed at? No. Never. What you fear most isn't death; it's having to live on, knowing your entire political philosophy is a laughingstock, a byword for ineffectual, self-destructive evil, your entire lives wasted on this destructive, fruitless comedy of errors.

It's coming. You've already lost. You lost the moment you started this.

It turns out that increasing spending and decreasing tax revenue isn't good for the bank balance.

The federal deficit ballooned to $779 billion in the just-ended fiscal year — a remarkable tide of red ink for a country not mired in recession or war.

The government is expected to borrow more than a trillion dollars in the coming year, in part to make up for tax receipts that have been slashed by GOP tax cuts.

Corporate tax collections fell by 31 percent in the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, despite robust corporate profits. That's hardly surprising after lawmakers cut the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21.

Income taxes withheld from individuals grew by 1 percent. Overall tax receipts were flat. As a share of the economy, tax receipts shrank to 16.5 percent of GDP, from 17.2 percent the previous year.

Federal Deficit Jumps 17 Percent As Tax Cuts Eat Into Government Revenue

This is very much a first draft of an essay I've been wanting to put together for some time. Please be critical. I want you to tell me if you uncover any glaring logical flaws (or even grammatical ones!). I want you to tell me if you disagree or even think I'm being an egocentric asshole¹ or an insane crackpot hippie! I also want you to tell me if any of these ideas make sense or resonate with you and also if you can point me to anywhere else you've already come across them before. It's quite long and a bit heavy so thank you very much if you do decide to take the time to read it.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Discussing one's own mortality may produce an air of discomfort or awkwardness in some western societies and yet for those of us that tend to reflect and introspect it remains a topic that we cannot help but contemplate from time to time.

As we go through life, we all soon realize to our dismay that none of us are getting any younger--and anyone with a head for figures that's watched the decades pass in their grandparents' and parents' lives will soon gain an all too sharp understanding of just how rapidly their own life seems to be passing, measured against its estimated length.

Some people find comfort in religion. As I approached adulthood and gained a greater understanding of probability, logic, and the scientific method, I quickly cast aside pretty much all religious beliefs and also the overwhelming majority of anecdotal evidence for the popular so-called Unexplained on the basis that extraordinary claims do indeed need extraordinary evidence to be worthy of serious consideration. I now understand that the probability of bizarre coincidences occurring is massively higher than most humans intuitively think (but hey, they still play the lottery--I guess they're only willing to consider the improbable events that make them feel happy!)--and that easily accounts for many accounts of supernatural phenomenon. Outright fraud in many cases is much more likely as well than any of these events requiring new science (or religious faith) to explain.

Despite all of this skepticism I've always tried to remain open-minded. I am fascinated by the most fundamental questions of what consciousness, reality and existence are made of, if you like--the limits of science and the boundaries between physics and philosophy. I became especially interested in the philosophy of mind and first person consciousness. Much of this involves speculation, but if you're careful you can try to be at least logically consistent and consider which theories are the most attractive based on things like simplicity or drawing parallels with other established theories in science.

Our own reality is by its very nature, subjective. It is as if the entire universe is perpetually centered on our own body's location in space. Not just in space, but conveniently the universal "now" also coincides with just that moment in our own life that we thought we had got up to. Unless you're a raging solipsist, you'll probably acknowledge that physically this phenomenon seems to be related to our senses and our brains. My universe feels centered on here and now simply because I only have access to my own memories and the most recent of those memories are of sights and sounds and thoughts that relate to this very time and place. I feel safe enough to call it my brain and my memories because the memories have a continuity stretching back into my body's past all the while accompanied by a strong sense of identity.

At least for now, I feel hopeful that I may continue to exist in the above physical and mental form for the near future because it seems a fair bet that the apparent continuity in my past can be extrapolated at least a little way into the future as well. Especially when I observe other people, both older and younger than I, also seeming to persist (well, at least in a physical, third person form). Moments seem to pass consecutively whilst we are alive--but we can't prove it--and at the point of death, all bets are off--for all we know perhaps our perspective even loops right back to the moment of our own birth or conception, if you'll forgive my wild speculation!

We now have a reasonable understanding from neuroscience of how the information content of memories can be represented physically inside our brains. That strongly suggests that if the brain is lost, the information represented in the memories will be lost for that person along with it. Some religions and some dualist philosophies (perhaps Cartesian Dualism) will suggest that varying amounts of that information will be preserved somehow separately from the physical brain. To me that seems highly unlikely because it implies some kind of massive redundancy in reality. Brains and memories are highly complex and took millions of years to evolve physically, so it just seems odd that there should be some other storage mechanism present at the same time that--let's note--also persists after the brain is long gone. If such a mechanism were to exist it would seem awfully convenient, as if perhaps some benevolent deity had chosen to conjure it up just for the sake of human comfort.² Anyway, after death what use would our memories even be unless this aforementioned deity has also conjured up a redundant reality similar enough to our own for the things we have learnt in our Earthly existence to be relevant and useful in the new one?

So what do you really lose if you lose all your memories? Your own personal interests, thoughts and feelings are not as unique as you maybe like to think they are! You like music from a particular band? That's great. Don't worry, there are thousands of other people that will still like it too for the same reasons after you are gone. Even when that music itself is long forgotten in the mists of time, every attribute that made it great to you will almost certainly be realized again, albeit in a different configuration, in other, future pieces of music. You like running? Come on: that's not even unique to homo sapiens! You like a very particular piece of engineering on a particular model of train? So perhaps, did the designers and you likely won't be the first or last person to cast their eye over it with some degree of appreciation. Moreover when you reduce it to a sum of the qualities that you like about it, such qualities will doubtless pop up again, much like the music. What's that, the particular configuration is important to you? I submit that that doesn't make it better. Other very particular and arbitrary configurations of qualities will be just as important to other individuals. It's the familiarity that you crave. Other people have familiarity too, just for subtly different things.

Of course, at some time or other just about every one of us likes to create rather than just consume. If you invent something, discover some new science or create some works of art then these are entities that truly are unique to you. It might be painful contemplating having to let go of that sense of ownership and pride when your body and memory dies. But you needn't really worry. If your discovery has wider appeal or helps other people make their activities more efficient or gives them a sense of wellbeing, then it's likely of course that it will persist after you are gone, with them. If it doesn't have wider appeal, well then you're being incredibly egotistical wanting other people to spend time and energy preserving it. It had its time and place and purpose within your own life, but it's no great loss when the day comes that you have no further need of it.

Other than creating and consuming, something notable that brings many of us satisfaction in life is helping other people. This could be raising a child, sharing time and resources with a friend or loved one, or helping strangers. It could be doing charitable work that benefits other beings indirectly. We'll doubtless worry about leaving the people we care about behind³ but at least we will have made a positive contribution to their lives and so, hopefully, to the wider world.

When thinking about our own demise, we may lament the loss of our body, our personality, our social interactions, and even our daily routine. But then, from your own perspective, your life doesn't just encompass you. Everything. Everything you see and hear and read about. Every historic event you discover. Every idea. Every mathematical theorem you understand. Every movie you watch. Every other being's life that you observe. All of it is a part of your own life experiences. Your view of the universe and your memories of it are what really make up your life when viewed from your own perspective. To the third person, on the outside looking in at you, it couldn't be more different of course. They don't look at you and see an entire universe. They just see a talking, moving body, much smaller and more limited in scope. That body and brain. and the particular things it does and says, are very probably lost when death occurs. But all those outward things that your body perceived and felt and enjoyed through its life--those things mostly will go on existing. I don't know about you, but I find that somewhat comforting.

I think that the more you can absorb yourself in and grow to love the beauty of the longer-lived aspects of reality--the sound of bird song, the changing shapes and shades of clouds, the sharp contours of mountains, the less worried you need feel about the decline and demise of your own brain and body--because the love of these things is not unique to you--it has been and will be enjoyed by countless other humans throughout history and likely other beings too. You may still trouble yourself with the fact that even these things are probably less than eternal, that our very universe may too have a finite history.⁴ Perhaps then seeking delight in the beauty of mathematics may provide further comfort.

Of course even if the above reflections allow you to become somewhat comfortable with what disappears when your brain is no longer capable of storing and recalling memories, you might still be dreading death on the basis that you like experiencing life and just want a lot more of it. This is understandable but I take some comfort in the fact that some sort of reincarnation seems very logically plausible. Even if you're a die-hard materialist, you have to acknowledge that it was possible for you to be incarnated on one occasion. Why should it not be possible for another such event to happen? It probably doesn't have to be an identical event. Just similar enough (whatever that means). It doesn't matter how many centillions of millennia it takes for you to be incarnated a second time, since you will have no awareness at all of any passage of time without a brain or senses to measure it with. This is a sort of variant of the Anthropic Principle: that is that we have all found ourselves in a conscious state because it simply isn't coherent for someone to be experiencing non-existence.⁵

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

^{1. I'd be surprised as I thought this is more about getting away from selfish interests, if not full on ego death. Hey, don't some of you more right wing Soylentils think the left is all about the loss of individual identity? Perhaps you think what I've written here reeks of that. If so, tell me more.}

^{2. You might think that brain injuries causing obvious lasting memory loss are evidence against it, but the religious folk may postulate that the information is only made available again once death has occurred.}

^{3. They'll probably do OK. Maybe you think you're more important to them than you really are [joking!].}

^{4. In some physical models of 4D spacetime, the past is just as real as our perceived present moment, in much the same way that two locations in space are equally real. In that case we need not fret over our universe's demise, when from a different perspective it will still be existing.}

^{5. We can of course conceive of nightmarish Purgatories where a mind is able to think on some minimal level but lacks any sensory input but given that thinking for us seems to depend on the evolution of a physical brain, the scenario doesn't strike me as something, hopefully, that would be especially likely or common.}