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Community > Posts By > TexasScoundrel
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Topic:
Are you ready to confess...
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I started posting in these forums when I had a job doing nothing. I was a security guard at a film studio and there was no one in the building but me all night. It was a way to pass the time.
Now, I'm out here driving a truck all over the USA and never get to see my close friends. So, it allows me to fool myself into believing I have a social life. |
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Topic:
Barriers
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You could try applying the Drake Equation to dating. For those that may not know, the Drake equation is a way to estimate the number of planets in the Milky Way that have intelligent life. Here's how it works;
First how many people are within the area you're willing to travel to for a date? Let's assume a large city like Boston. That's about 600,000. Of those we'll subtract half based on gender, leaving 300,000. Next we'll remove all the ones outside the age range you're looking for. That's roughly 70% that are too old or too young. So, that gives us about 90,000. Now, let's assume a fairly large number of these will be attractive looking to you. About 1 in 5 or 20%. Giving us around 18000. How many of these are single? Assuming half we're left with 9000. Do you want someone with a collage degree? That cuts out another 70% bringing the total down to 2700. Do you want someone that makes at least $100,000.00 a year? Guess what? 95% just fell off the train and there are 135 still along for the ride. 135 out of 600,000 or 1 in 4445 and we haven't even touched on things like hair and eye color. I think most of us should probably widen our standards. |
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Topic:
Given up?
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I'm currently not looking for anyone new. But, I also know I can find someone whenever I want to. It's really not that hard.
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Topic:
What would you do, if?
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I don't invest anything emotionally before approaching someone. I wait until I get to know her a little before I become really interested and I never chase the ones that I don't hit it off with. This way I'm never rejected because I don't ask her out until I know she'll say yes.
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Approach me for a "serious relationship?" That seems a little creepy, don't you think?
How about if she approaches me for a date first? I'm cool with that. It's happened to me fairly often. But, women are lousy at starting a conversation with a stranger. They'd get better at it if they did it more often. |
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Usually I am practical BUT being a child of chaos I cannot help but break out the romantic sometimes! But a one sides romance is so BOARING! Love does work both directions you know! Yeah. If a woman insists on the romantic option when it is more expensive than the practical option, then the woman should pay for the romantic option. Absolutely! |
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Edited by
TexasScoundrel
on
Wed 02/13/13 06:00 PM
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First of all, science can and does measure consciousness. Doctors do it everyday in trauma centers all over the world. Dan Dennitt has been measuring it in great detail for a number of years now.  Dan Dennitt! An Atheist who apparently believes in miracles.
Sorry, you lost me there. IMO he's way off track, plain and simple. What do Dan Dennit's views on deities have to do with his observations of consciousness? I'm also an atheist BTW. Do you think that colors my views? I'm sure it does, but no more than a supernatural believer's views are colored by their beliefs. At least my views are based on actual, observable evidence and not flights of fancy. Secondly, There's no need to prove emergence because some things are conscious and other are not. An assumption (wrong) based only on what humans are currently able to detect. No, you're the one assuming. You have no evidence that everything is conscious. My view is based on the evidence. We have lots of evidence that non-conscious things were around long before conscious things were. Therefore, consciousness must have emerged from unconsciousness. An assumption without proof. Its like saying that since the sun clearly comes up in the east and sets in the west, therefore the sun must be circling around the earth. Something that isn't there doesn't need proving. It's just not there. If you insist on calling that a miracle, go right ahead. Personally, I think this kind of "miracle" is far more likely than conscious rocks. I don't believe in miracles. Apparently Dan Dennitt, an atheist, does.
The alleged "miracle" would be the instant when a dead unconscious inanimate chunk of matter, having been spat out by the "big bang," becomes conscious to any degree at all. It never happened, as all things are conductors of consciousness already and from the very beginning. Prove it. I'm afraid I cannot document any life forms becoming conscious because it happened millions of years ago, before there was anyone around to witness it. You can't document it because it did not happen that way. But if all evolution happened at all, or "millions of years ago," then it is still happening today. Yes, evolution is still going on today. I know it's your claim that everything is conscious. If this is true, prove it. Just one example of something that's generally considered to be inanimate demonstrating consciousness. A stone, a chair, a car, whatever you'd like. My argument that some things aren't conscious doesn't need proof because something that isn't there doesn't require proving. It's just not there. Very well. The makeup of a "stone" actually allows it to interact with its environment, according to its consciousness, which I will identify as its frequency and vibration and other elemental activity(..unknown to me.) If I see a stone, I can pick it up and throw it at a person and hit them in the head. If that stone did not exist within a certain frequency range, I would not be able to even see it or touch it or pick it up. I am aware of it. I see it, and feel it. It is aware of me, its frequency range allows interaction. Where's the evidence that the stone is aware of you? The burden of discovering evidence lies with your side of the argument. And if you want to understand my hypothesis, you have to try to understand my logical argument or explanation. Otherwise, you remain at a dead end that requires a miracle just like the rest of the scientific community. What makes you think I don't understand your points? I do understand them, I simply disagree because I live in a world based on evidence. Lastly, to further explain how emergence can happen from a large number of algorithms; Your brain has millions of cells and yet none of them can be said to be conscious on their own. But, all of them, working together are, indeed conscious. This is another wrong assumption. Each cell has a capacity for consciousness and is a conductor for consciousness. I am not talking about HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS which is what I think you are talking about. I am talking about other degrees of consciousness which is awareness. A bunch of unconscious (or 'dead') chunks of anything cannot gather together and then suddenly be conscious and start 'working together.' If my brain cells are not conscious, they are not alive. If they are not alive they cannot work together. Its called being 'brain dead." 
Again, you are the one assuming. You assume that a single cell can think. If this is so, where is the evidence? Yes dead things can gather together and there are many examples of it in nature. Crystals are not alive, but gather everything they need to grow form their environment. Clay does too. It just lays there in a stream growing bigger and bigger, gathering what it needs as it floats by until some bit breaks off and starts the process again. How about that? Dead things with the ability to reproduce! This is actually one of the hypotheses of how life started. And I never said consciousness happened suddenly. On the contrary, it happened very slowly over many, many years. This is it. I'm done. The last word I give to you, but I'll never see it. |
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Edited by
TexasScoundrel
on
Wed 02/13/13 04:28 PM
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First of all, science can and does measure consciousness. Doctors do it everyday in trauma centers all over the world. Dan Dennitt has been measuring it in great detail for a number of years now.
Secondly, There's no need to prove emergence because some things are conscious and other are not. We have lots of evidence that non-conscious things were around long before conscious things were. Therefore, consciousness must have emerged from unconsciousness. If you insist on calling that a miracle, go right ahead. Personally, I think this kind of "miracle" is far more likely than conscious rocks. I'm afraid I cannot document any life forms becoming conscious because it happened millions of years ago, before there was anyone around to witness it. I know it's your claim that everything is conscious. If this is true, prove it. Just one example of something that's generally considered to be inanimate demonstrating consciousness. A stone, a chair, a car, whatever you'd like. My argument that some things aren't conscious doesn't need proof because something that isn't there doesn't require proving. It's just not there. The burden of discovering evidence lies with your side of the argument. Lastly, to further explain how emergence can happen from a large number of algorithms; Your brain has millions of cells and yet none of them can be said to be conscious on their own. But, all of them, working together are, indeed conscious. |
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Edited by
TexasScoundrel
on
Tue 02/12/13 02:02 AM
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That isn't evidence. It's just words. I've already explained to you how consciousness can emerge for nothing without it being a miracle. If everything is conscious as you say it is, simply measure the consciousness of a rock. That would be evidence. It is evidence. In fact it is better than you or scientists have. It is logical evidence. Explain the miracle. Evidence is observed, not imagined. You don't have a single bit of observational evidence to back up what you're suggesting. Consciousness: the state of being conscious; awareness of one's own existence, sensations, thoughts, surroundings, etc. It's not a miracle. The word miracle suggests intervention by a deity. I'm not suggesting anything of the sort. It's a highly unusual event. Given a long enough time frame anything can and will happen. If we lived for millions of years, we'd all be lottery winners. A "miracle" is comparable to jumping to the top of cliff. I'm suggesting a slow climb up a long slope. Think of a single algorithm. Now, think of two algorithms, and three, then millions. One by itself isn't conscious. However, millions, all working together could be. One alone isn't aware of it's environment and is therefore not conscious. But millions, working together, all doing different jobs are aware if their (it's) environment. In order to be conscious, one must be aware of ones environment. That's what consciousness is. Awareness of ones environment. So, a thing without the ability to sense it's surrounds simply cannot be conscious. Now, I want to ask you something. What about death? If an entity was alive and conscious, but then died, it's "soul" going to wherever souls go, is it's carcass still conscious? If everything is conscious it logically follows that a dead body must be conscious too, yes? |
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Edited by
TexasScoundrel
on
Mon 02/11/13 06:07 PM
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That isn't evidence. It's just words. I've already explained to you how consciousness can emerge for nothing without it being a miracle.
If everything is conscious as you say it is, simply measure the consciousness of a rock. That would be evidence. |
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“Do people have free will? If we have free will, where in the evolutionary tree did it develop? Do blue-green algae or bacteria have free will, or is their behavior automatic and within the realm of scientific law? Is it only multicelled organisms that have free will, or only mammals? We might think that a chimpanzee is exercising free will when it chooses to chomp on a banana, or a cat when it rips up your sofa, but what about the roundworm called Caenorhabditis elegans—a simple creature made of only 959 cells? It probably never thinks, “That was damn tasty bacteria I got to dine on back there,” yet it too has a definite preference in food and will either settle for an unattractive meal or go foraging for something better, depending on recent experience. Is that the exercise of free will?
Though we feel that we can choose what we do, our understanding of the molecular basis of biology shows that biological processes are governed by the laws of physics and chemistry and therefore are as determined as the orbits of the planets. Recent experiments in neuroscience support the view that it is our physical brain, following the known laws of science, that determines our actions, and not some agency that exists outside those laws. For example, a study of patients undergoing awake brain surgery found that by electrically stimulating the appropriate regions of the brain, one could create in the patient the desire to move the hand, arm, or foot, or to move the lips and talk. It is hard to imagine how free will can operate if our behavior is determined by physical law, so it seems that we are no more than biological machines and that free will is just an illusion.” — Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, The Grand Design, Bantam Books, New York, 2010, p. 32. TexasScoundrel, you posted the above and stated that this is what you fell about 'free will.' But the experiment sighted above in the second paragraph failed to mention that although the brain surgeon could touch a part of a person's brain and cause that person to move the hand, arm or foot etc, when the person was conscious he was able to tell the difference between who was initiating the action, him or the doctor. He knew when it was the doctor, and he knew when he himself gave the body the command to move. So, who is the "he" that made the decision to move his arm when the doctor was not doing it? In the first paragraph all Hawking does is ask questions. I have the answers to all of those questions in my hypothesis. It is very simple. Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow are not as brilliant as you think they are if they have not figured it out. The WILL is not "free" until a certain amount of consciousness is attained, and until then, most decisions are programmed instincts, and reactions. These programmed instincts have evolved over centuries and are pretty much automatic. No WILL is required for life to continue. These actions and reactions are automatic just as the beating of your own heart is automatic. You don't have to 'think' about it or consciously cause it to beat. "Free will" is conscious thought. It can go against programming or instinct, that is why it is called "free." It is like you would imagine a robot like the terminator going against its own programming. To use your will, to have a will of your own, depends on how conscious you are. When you are following programming, you don't have to be as conscious. You may have answers, but do you have any evidence? Even if your ideas are logically consistent they still require evidence. Without evidence your answers mean nothing. |
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So that's it? You don't want to hear any more from me because you believe in miracles? I would have never thought that of you, being such a skeptic. I don't believe in miracles. There is a logical explanation for everything. But you are stuck now.... because you chose to believe in the miracle at some point in evolution as yet undetermined, where some organism unknown to us, went from unconscious to conscious... or some inanimate (dead) object went from dead to ... ITS ALIVE!!
Then I guess we are done here. You have your mind made up. There is a very small chance that all the atoms in the right arm of the statue David could line up and move in such a way that David appeared to be waving. Many people would use the word miracle to describe that event. I wouldn't. I'd call it a highly unusual incident. Life 9in my opinion) is the same sort of highly unusual incident. So is consciousness. Your arguments are good up to a point. But, then you make some huge leap into something that I don't think follows from what was said earlier. It like Depak Chopra or something. I'll give you an example of the kind of thing I'm talking about. As we learn more about the smallest things in the universe we are discovering that these tiny things aren't really made of anything. They're just little impulses of energy an information. (That part is fine) What is a thought? It's a little impulse of energy and information. (so far so good) Therefore, the universe is made of thought. (and here we go off the deep end into lala land) Gotta go. Have a good evening. |
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Any opinion I have can be changed when I've been given convincing evidence. I just don't think your logic is convening enough. I disagree with your conclusions based on my own understanding of the subject.
As for the above statement, "I just don't think your logic is convincing enough." I might add that I am trying to go is simple steps so that at each step where you are not in agreement, we can discuss further and find out exactly why you don't think it is convincing. We have not even scratched the surface and you seem to have made up your mind. Don't disagree with my conclusions based on your own understanding of the subject until you actually hear me out. You are stuck at #2. You feel that consciousness is an emergent property. If this is true, then I am saying that if consciousness emerged, it either had to emerge from a tiny degree of consciousness already in existence, or there was a MIRACLE at which point it suddenly appeared, however small. I don't believe in miracles. Apparently you do. Miracle is not the word I'd choose. However, I suppose it's as good a word as any. No matter how long the odds are that this "miracle" has of happening are, it only needed to happen once for everything to have played out the way it has. It's the same for life. It only has to happen one time for everything to be as it is today. Given enough time, anything can happen. Even miracles. |
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If this is where you remain, then we can go no further. But I might add that you are assuming an awful lot about what a plant might be aware of. (but plants ARE AWARE OF SOMETHING.) --- THAT IS CONSCIOUSNESS. You seemed to criticize me for "assuming" and I see clearly that you assume much more than I do. I am trying to explain to you why I state that everything is conscious and we have not even gotten to the minerals or the protons. You are still stumbling around with the belief that living things are not conscious even in a small DEGREE. And this, after you already did agree that consciousness comes in degrees. I don't know why you believe what you believe, as they are just as much ASSUMPTIONS as anything I state. I have said before that everything I know is an assumption based in the information I have. Any opinion I have can be changed when I've been given convincing evidence. I just don't think your logic is convening enough. I disagree with your conclusions based on my own understanding of the subject. If I've ever said anything you thought was insulting, I'm sorry for it. I don't ever intend to insult anyone. |
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I don't think we are.
Firstly, It's my view that anything alive must have a certain level of self awareness. I concept of this is my body and that is not my body. It knows it is separate from other things. It knows it needs food and how to find it. If it doesn't know at least this much it could mistake it's own tail for food. But, to be conscious requires one to interact with one's environment to a greater degree. A tree isn't conscious of a lumberjack coming to cut it down. But, a deer consciously understands it needs to avoid wolves. Each living thing is conscious of what it needs to stay alive and produce offspring. Also, I do think consciousness evolved slowly over time. As lifeforms became more and more complex they had a need for greater consciousness. It's the same as growing stronger legs to run faster and escape being eaten. |
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I will bet my pay that my male friends would say the same thing. Not every man thinks with his penis and bottom line not all men are attracted to all women; so there is certainly room for frienship. Karielteone nailed it when he said it was a small percent that was surveyed out of the billions on this planet. I'm not talking about you and your friends. I'm talking about men and women in general. Generally speaking, men and woman cannot be true friends because one is secretly sexually attracted to the other. |
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Scientific American (informally abbreviated, SciAm) is a popular science magazine. It is notable for its long history of presenting scientific information on a monthly basis to the general (but educated) public, through its careful attention to the clarity of its text as well as the quality of its specially commissioned color graphics. Many famous scientists, including Albert Einstein, have contributed articles in the past 167 years. It is the oldest continuously published monthly magazine in the United States. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_American Okay, find research on the subject that offers a different conclusion and I'll be happy to read and consider it. LOL I am not making your job for you :P Regardless, thanks for the chat... was one of the best ones that i had so far on this site. I've done all the research I think is needed. I'm convinced. If you disagree, it's your job to make your case, not mine. |
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Edited by
TexasScoundrel
on
Mon 02/11/13 12:56 PM
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When you meet someone that catches your eye, captivates your mind, and pulls on your heart until it’s almost impossible for you to think about anything, or anybody else, in other words, you’ve got it really bad for this unique someone, what will you do to convince him or her of your sincere fascination and desire to get to know them? And, if they rebuff your first advance, as strangers often do, but don’t actually tell you to drop dead, do you give up and move on, or hang around and try to make head way, slowly but steadily? I don't think I've ever felt that way about a stranger. So, I'll answer your question in the context of seeing someone I find attractive. I walk up to her, tap her arm gently. It's natural for her to turn and face me. I look into her eyes and smile. I say "You are too cute. I have to meet you. I'm Ray. What's your name?" Then I extend my hand for her to shake it. She always shakes my hand. Next I'll ask a question and start a conversation. Within about ten minutes I know if she's interested in me or not. If so, I'll get her number. If not, I forget all about talking with her and move on. However, I do remember a couple of times when I spoke to a girl a second time. But neither she nor I remembered speaking before at the time. I remember it later. In both cases she wasn't interested the first time, but was the second time. |
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 sorry! sue me!
A lot of you ARE shallow pigs. lol Because they are entirely too used to the dolled up version of porn to appreciate what natural beauty is and the way love feels. NO woman can compete with porn no matter what she does or looks like. She can be hotter than hell and a shallow pig will get tired of her in a few months and be looking for something new to feast his eyes on and wank to while she waits for his libido to return. Stupid excuse for variety. If they want variety? stay single. Do you have any idea how hard it is to carry a man's children and look like a porn star afterwards? Could YOU do it? Where is your responsibility to look good? I don't see very many men trying to look like a young hot guy. lol Style your hair for an hour or more every day. Put on a full mask of makeup for another 30 minutes. Whiten your teeth every day. Pay for a facial every week. Pay for hair color, extensions, cutting, styling, treatments. Pay for body color, hair removal, lotions and exfoliators. Pay for expensive lingerie to be a doll for you. How about paying for more boobs then what he's satisfied with? Or putting your boobs BACK the way they were before?? How about paying for the tummy tuck so you can hide that you had 2-3 of his children?? Or realizing they will throw your belly button in the trash and cut you a whole new one? Then there's pedicures, manicures, exercising every day, constant dieting. Women are now cutting up and bleaching their private parts to make it look perfect. This is all just the physical and money spent....we haven't even mentioned the emotional aspects. All the while, I haven't seen a real gorgeous "porn like" man in my age group at all. You should get what you deserve, and appreciate it...or yes.. you are a shallow pig I am. A woman's looks really is all I care about. We know....lol...and, I'm almost certain that you are full of bs with just about everything you say. lol But it is funny, so I like it. 
I'm glad you enjoy my thoughts. Thanks for saying so. |
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Scientific American (informally abbreviated, SciAm) is a popular science magazine. It is notable for its long history of presenting scientific information on a monthly basis to the general (but educated) public, through its careful attention to the clarity of its text as well as the quality of its specially commissioned color graphics. Many famous scientists, including Albert Einstein, have contributed articles in the past 167 years. It is the oldest continuously published monthly magazine in the United States.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_American Okay, find research on the subject that offers a different conclusion and I'll be happy to read and consider it. |
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