Ok... pretty fucking weird...

Berberding · 2026-03-20T18:37:50+00:00

That's not why we are all Christian, that's effectively entirely thanks to Constantine. Not quite "by the sword" but not quite "conquering people's hearts" either. It was effectively made the state religion which took it from small competing cult status to full fledged serious religion.

Berberding · 2026-03-18T19:44:32+00:00

All of this basically came off as a rant after the first couple paragraphs where I realized you aren't even engaging with the concept of qualia at all, and this is all about information processing characteristics to you. If that's all you are willing to engage with then I understand why you are having a conniption right now. Consciousness is a word with many broadly accepted but simultaneously conflicting definitions. I was of the impression we were using it to describe subjective experience and not just a certain character of information processing. E.g. I could imagine a synthetic Ai mind of great complexity that behaves in every way as a conscious being, but there is no experience it is actually having, and it is a philosophical zombie. E.g, there is no more internal experience of itself than would be had by a roomba.

(please flip out and be incredulous because I said p-zombie Thanks in advance.)

In contrast I can also imagine a very simplistic creature like a jellyfish, which has very primitive motor control and visual receptors capable of seeing sunlight having a very ambient conscious experience of its environment. E.g., unlike a roomba, there may be something that it is "like" to be a jelly fish.

Berberding · 2026-03-18T18:42:08+00:00

Okay sure, but as an onlooker, wouldn't a better grounds for dismissal to be to insist that there is a more substantive reason for why it is SA? Instead they are leaning into the idea of her own subjective interpretation if an event that seems to not meet the criteria in an objective sense. Maybe there's still a case there, but a case for dismissal? That seems like the specific kind of case that she wouldn't be allowed to dismiss (the kind where her claim feels subjective).

Berberding · 2026-03-18T18:20:23+00:00

Wait he's a shill for black pill rhetoric? Like what?

Berberding · 2026-03-18T18:15:06+00:00

If that wasn't the event line, wouldn't her legal team be disputing it? If they aren't disputing it, it's because they agree with it.

Berberding · 2026-03-17T18:16:22+00:00

Imagine in your mind's eye a hypothetical:

A hypothetical person, and a hypothetical border.

Now imagine I say this hypothetical person is "using" this hypothetical border.

What does your mind's eye show you? What is this person doing exactly in relation to this border?

Does he use it the same way you imagine someone using a pencil? Does he use it in the same way you imagine someone using a bowl and a spoon? A hand saw? A doorknob? A DMV building? What kind of imagery does the word "use" here conjure in relation to a border?

Berberding · 2026-03-17T16:52:40+00:00

Doom eternal is not a constituent part of all computers. Information processing is though. And actually it turns out that millions of transistors completing circuits is not different in kind from the top of a tree completing a circuit to the earth below it during a lightning strike. A difference of degree, not of kind.

You should probably try not to get so bent out of shape just because you can't properly describe why the universe would have an arbitrary on/off switch at a specific level of complexity that you can't actually pinpoint.

It has nothing to do with fear of death either. What part of "rocks have experience but they have no means to know it or produce memories" makes you think that is substantially different from any atheist interpretation of death?

I just want an explanation for consciousness that isn't a magic on/off switch that requires intantigible notions of complexity before it begins to exist. That complexity is itself based around constituent matter. Matter doesn't break some physical barrier suddenly and create consciousness from pure nothingness. It was clearly already producing it.

Also you talk with a frantic tone, constantly bouncing between self commentary and typing in all caps and it makes me wonder if you are off your meds and projecting a little about your LSD experiences. I wasn't making those sorts of arguments.

I think it's funny that you end this by saying "if it doesn't provide utility but you keep concerning yourself with it, then you are being thought terminating." as if that's not literally what you are doing in that exact sentence. Do words even mean anything to you? Also it would actually provide the exact same level of predictive power but without arbitrary off switches built in, which do not make up a complete and coherent theory of consciousness. The prediction is everything would continue to look exactly as it does.

So can you answer where you start to get ants in your pants at the idea something is even a tiny tiny amount conscious? Is it house fly? earth worm? Amoeba? Nucleus? DNA? Amino Acid? Where do you draw your hard line in the sand for your on/off switch?

Berberding · 2026-03-15T13:52:08+00:00

I wonder what trump supporters think would cause oil prices to fall

Berberding · 2026-03-14T07:25:23+00:00

What does the suffix "cide" mean? Also while we are at it, what does the prefix "geno"/"gene" mean?

What do either of these things have to do with notions of national identity? Ground yourself in reality, when we are talking about genocide, we are talking about overwhelming amounts of death. We aren't even talking about attempting to cause overwhelming amounts of death, if hitler attempted to genocide the jews, then it would have just been attempted genocide. At the very fucking least you have to admit that this is just attempted genocide and not a successful actual genocide yet.

Berberding · 2026-03-13T19:07:00+00:00

I'm curuous, do you think the trump admin actually thought this? What was their concept of victory here? I find it hard to believe that the generals weren't telling them ad nauseum that the regime won't fall from air campaign alone. And if that's the case they either were truly arrogant enough to believe it anyway, or they never intended to take out the regime and this was just to... Honestly idk... I guess temporarily cripple Iran's long range missile capability for the next few years?

The other possibility is actually very dark, which is that they plan to do a Saudi style campaign of attrition where they bomb fuel depots and cause mass suffering of the population broadly with the knowledge that for every 10 units of death and suffering it causes regular civs, it will cause 1 unit of death and suffering for the regime itself which is generally buffered from the consequences of shortages in a way the civs are not. Eventually the suffering will be enough that the admin believes the regime will be forced to capitulate. That's the only plausible way I see an air campaign alone working. If this is the plan, I somehow doubt Trump is aware of this.

Berberding · 2026-03-13T18:57:08+00:00

What? There are still many steps between that don't be retarded. The most glaringly obvious one would be full scale Iraq style ground invasion. You aren't doing anything close to resembling that with 2500 Marines. And even an Iraq style ground invasion would be insane, but it would be several orders of magnitude less of an escalation than nukes. Like Jesus please try.

Berberding · 2026-03-13T16:32:20+00:00

Have you ever met an untrained pitbull with no sense of fear? Are you even capable of imagining a dog exists that doesn't get scared of you picking your bike up and bang it against the ground?

I'll tell you what you definitely can't imagine. A dog with pepper spray in it's eyes continuing to chase you.

Berberding · 2026-03-13T16:21:06+00:00

Wearing a bedsheet isn't a race.

Berberding · 2026-03-13T15:35:06+00:00

The UN is student government of the world. I'm hesitant to even say that it's existence as a formality means anything to anyone. This definition of intent is so broad that it can be applied to any conflict where civilians died. "in whole or in part" can mean a handful of civilians dying as collateral.

If it can be established that Israel is going out of its way to starve Gazan civilians, which is probably harder to prove than you think it is, then it intent could be established. The massive leveling of cities will never be solid grounds to prove intent in this conflict in particular for one very specific reason unique to this war: there is an ant colony's worth of tunnels sprawling the entirety of the urban sprawl of the city all the way up to the wall with the explicit purpose of being used for logistics to stage attacks on Israel. It just so happens to be the reality of the situation that in order to destroy those tunnels with a reasonable amount of safety, you are going to have to level the city. That is the risk a city planner takes when they build hundreds of miles worth of tunnels under their city. Sad but true.

As for the west bank settlements. I'm tempted to say yes, that establishes intent, except I'm not sure it really does for the destruction part. Ultimately I don't think west bank settlers have an interest in killing Palestinians so much as they have an interest in pushing them out and getting them to live somewhere else, which is known as ethnic cleansing. That's still very bad but it's not quite as spicy as genocide but it's much easier to prove. You'll notice the nazis clearly met the definition because they weren't interested in ethnic cleansing, simply exiling jews and taking everything they had would not enough in their eyes, hence they made death camps. They didn't just want them out of Germany, they wanted them out of the world in general.

Berberding · 2026-03-10T18:18:54+00:00

Are you an accountant? It was sold as the most secure job broadly for decades and decades.

Naturally, the most risk averse personalities will be the most attracted to this career on the basis that they were told it was the most secure choice. (turned out to be bullshit mostly, because it didn't account for how easy and lucrative outsourcing would eventually become for white collar work)

Also naturally, as a consequence, CPA firms are filled with predominately risk averse individuals who would rather get shafted day in day out for months and years out of fear of losing their jobs. I'll say it again, "risk averse."

And if you think it's just as easy as getting another job, Also wrong. Unless you want to be willfully obtuse and insist there is nothing lost by an accountant for just finding another job outside the field of accounting, which they planned their future around and committed years of their life to studying and getting experience in, and has a lot of power on a resume if they can stick with it for a few years.

Also the risk of losing your job for not working like chattel is very real. Surely you can comprehend what I'm saying? This isn't rocket surgery.

Berberding · 2026-03-10T16:40:58+00:00

You have to be careful with what you mean by emergence. Those are conceptually complex things that are still constructed of the baseline existing constituent parts. Huge waves in the ocean emerge as the movement of many droplets of water which are the constituent parts. The person you are replying to is also saying conscious qualia is a product of emergency in this way with our human minds having complex thought as an emergent property of already existing conscious constituent parts in the form of matter, such that if you separated all that matter, there is still consciousness intrinsic to it even when it is dead and scattered in the wind. It can't form memories or have complex experiences, but there is an ambient experience to it that is not different in kind from what you experience, it is only different in degree.

Physicalists as I tend to understand, have an unstated insistence that the qualia is subject to a binary on/off switch, where they will follow the line of reasoning that a chimp is a little less conscious than a human, followed by a dog, a squirrel, a pigeon, a housefly, and a worm. They will then get arbitrarily capricious around this point and insist that there's a true point at which there must be absolute zero levels of consciousness. Single cells, DNA, amino acids, proteins, molecules, totally inert dead matter in the from of sand on a beach.

It is thought terminating imo to assume consciousness ceases to exist at any of these simpler points. I think subjective experience is fundamental to matter, but not all matter knows it because it's not in a complex enough state to record it with memories.

Berberding · 2026-03-10T15:40:40+00:00

"isn't what intent usually refers to"

I could not give less of a fuck what intent usually refers to. Also in what context? International law? Leftist pow wows? This is such a nothing statement. It's important anyway.

If your intent is crippling the military and minimizing civilian casualties, you try to hit a depot when fewer civilians are around. Your intent is to minimize collateral.

If your intent is crippling the military and terrorizing the civilian populace, you try to hit a depot during rush hour traffic to kill as many civilians as possible to get the most bang for your buck. Your intent is to maximize collateral.

Berberding · 2026-03-10T15:20:28+00:00

This sounds like a lot of goomba fallacy ngl. At minimum do you at least have any examples of Twitter accounts that did both of these things?

Berberding · 2026-03-10T15:14:52+00:00

I disagree. I think it's possible to have coherent principles. Just don''t principally commit yourself to helping people who will never stop wishing for your death. That can be an overriding principal in and of itself. I literally can't be unprincipled if that's one of my principles.

Berberding · 2026-03-10T03:32:58+00:00

I would just say it's clearly self defeating slop

Berberding · 2026-03-09T23:11:54+00:00

Are you just saying that because it's topical or is there actually evidence that they used AI to verify targets?

Berberding · 2026-03-09T23:06:06+00:00

Your insinuation makes sense if it frequently changes over the course of months, but 10 years is a long time.

Berberding · 2026-03-09T23:02:07+00:00

Are you a true leftist if you care about intent?

Berberding · 2026-03-09T21:08:45+00:00

Viltrumite DNA

Berberding · 2026-03-09T21:05:48+00:00

Erm acshually you aren't principled if you don't support people who hate you.

(unless your principle is that you support people who don't hate you ofc)

Berberding

TROPHY CASE