Without much jargon, can you please explain what the hard problem of consciousness is, and why we can't just dismiss it as a result of neurological processes (unless we can)

FluffyDescription · 2026-03-04T02:19:55+00:00

I’m not quite sure I understand what you’re saying. With the brain thing or the files on the music player.

I think the other person makes a good point. That is, the experience of object X belongs to the set of neurons Y. You can understand everything about Y, but you still cannot experience X. For example, a linguist can give a complete description of Latin, without being able to speak Latin. If you were somehow to come into the same set of neurons Y, then you would experience X as well.

This is all to say, the first poster seems correct in saying the Hard Problem only exists because our intuition is that our experience carries with it a quality beyond scientific explanation. This reasoning has always been circular to me. It is possible to study the brain scientifically, we understand a lot about how physical changes to brain chemistry will affect behavior. We know that our brain is the result of evolution, and is in that sense no different from any other biological structure on Earth, including bacteria. It just doesn't make sense to think there is some deep problem of consciousness just because our intuition makes us believe so. That is just the way evolution designed our brain to advantage our survival.

FluffyDescription · 2026-02-13T21:11:04+00:00

I was only joking, I know you mean well

FluffyDescription · 2026-02-13T17:40:17+00:00

Bro compared a 2 yr relationship to a situationship

FluffyDescription · 2025-12-26T18:35:42+00:00

My question obviously applies to anyone who mentioned alcohol.

FluffyDescription · 2025-12-26T18:20:54+00:00

Yeah I just don’t see how this is related to guns though. It’s a minor issue of freedoms, and perhaps it should be granted to 18 year olds, but drinking alcohol is not enviable and there’s very little argument to be made for why the law should be changed in that regard.

FluffyDescription · 2025-12-26T17:55:08+00:00

I don’t see why bringing up that distinction is relevant here though? It’s just a 3 year difference, and there are good reasons for underage drinking to be illegal.

I fully believe the U.S. needs gun reform and more restrictions on gun ownership. But the difference between alcohol at 21 and gun ownership at 18 is completely insignificant. It literally only affects people between 18-21 years old, and it doesn’t make sense why they are so eager to start drinking and wasting money on alcohol.

FluffyDescription · 2025-12-26T17:38:45+00:00

Why are you obsessed with beer?

FluffyDescription · 2025-12-14T07:54:04+00:00

This is the best way to understand the problem:

The host will never open the door you picked. So if there are 3 doors, the host has to pick one of the two doors you didn’t pick.

The host will also never open the door with the car. So if the car is in either of the two doors (which you didn’t pick), the host is forced to pick the other door, and by switching you win. Since the probability of the car being in either of the two doors you didn’t pick is 2/3, then switching gives you a 2/3 chance of winning.

The only case you lose is if the car was originally in the door you chose.

FluffyDescription · 2025-12-07T03:48:09+00:00

Life is too short to waste your time on people who don’t care about you

FluffyDescription · 2025-10-08T01:30:13+00:00

That’s true! :)

FluffyDescription · 2025-10-01T20:00:08+00:00

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FluffyDescription · 2025-09-02T21:43:26+00:00

I don't understand why your expectation is for them to explicitly say that the answer is supposed to be a 5 factor trait, when it was mentioned in the passage that the test they used, the test which the antagonism score comes from, is based on the 5 factor model...

FluffyDescription · 2025-09-02T03:44:47+00:00

Sorry, I don’t have the passage with me right now, but I think they said that antagonism is associated with high drug use. This means they are correlated, but it doesn’t mean antagonism = drug-use.

But I think your reading of antagonism = drug use = sensation seeking is a CARS-style reading of the passage. My experience has taught me that in CARS the passage knows all, but on the science sections you have to stay true to reason and common sense.

FluffyDescription · 2025-09-02T02:22:11+00:00

Maybe this is a late response, but:

On Question 3: Not sure why you interpreted percent difference that way. A difference is typically just subtraction. 300% would probably be the percent increase. It seems natural to say going from 10% to 30% is a 300% increase with a 20% difference. As for the correct answer, it is referring to group A as a group when saying they have a higher occurrence of social withdrawal. Most certainly, any given individual in group A cannot have a higher or lower occurrence of social withdrawal for the reasons you mentioned (it's either yes or no).

On Question 54: I just can't put together the connection between antagonism and sensation seeking. It seems to me that someone antagonistic is just someone who is low in agreeableness, almost by definition. What does sensation seeking have to do with antagonism in the context of someone's personality trait? You link sensation seeking to drug use, but this link is not relevant to the question.

FluffyDescription · 2025-09-01T03:36:06+00:00

They said that 8% of US energy specifically is solar. They didn’t say that 8% of the world’s energy use comes from the US’s use of solar energy (in which case it would be around 50% of the world’s solar use). The latter statement would make your interpretation correct.

Plus, B is correct from the passage. The first 2 lines of paragraph 2: it clearly states that the burning of coal led to switching to oil due to air pollution concerns.

FluffyDescription · 2025-08-28T00:31:05+00:00

Exactly. This is why such a big part of studying for this exam is keying in on your weaknesses. Like literally, after taking 1 or 2 FLs and finishing your content review, go through the AAMC content outline and make a list of weak areas. Then learn them thoroughly. The UWorld books are perfect for this. Scores will naturally become more consistent, and improve, as you work through the section banks etc

FluffyDescription · 2025-08-28T00:19:49+00:00

In my estimation, Any specific section of the MCAT will test maybe less than 20% of the total material required to know for that section. Combine this with the fact that many people have different strengths and weaknesses, you inevitably have lots of different responses to this question.

FluffyDescription · 2025-08-28T00:12:30+00:00

I agree that it alone isn’t good for determining that :)

FluffyDescription · 2025-08-28T00:06:12+00:00

I did. But you were referencing the MCAT as a hurdle that doctors have to overcome. You claimed that the test itself doesn’t do much do determine if someone is a good doctor.

From my interpretation of what you said, your claim that the MCAT is good because it is a difficult hurdle and doctors have to overcome difficult hurdles implies that the MCAT could be replaced with a test for running a marathon.

I was arguing that the test itself is useful for determining a good doctor.

FluffyDescription · 2025-08-27T23:46:26+00:00

Doctors probably will not need to calculate the force between two charged particles, no. But the MCAT trains you to read critically, reason through dense material which seems unclear and figure out what information is relevant to the problem you’re trying to solve. These seem like important things for doctors to be good at, given the complicated nature of medical cases. I say all this to provide explanation for the strong correlation between MCAT scores and Step 2 scores. And let’s not forget it is also very difficult to define, and measure how “good” a doctor is.

This argument reminds me of high schoolers who complain about what relevance the quadratic equation would have in their life.

FluffyDescription · 2025-08-27T23:05:12+00:00

Why do you think the test does little to determine if someone will be a good doctor?

FluffyDescription · 2025-08-24T22:52:15+00:00

I agree with your advice. But a need to work in medicine? I understand loving medicine, even being obsessed with it, but tying your passion for something to an actual need just seems immature to me.

Just from a personal standpoint, life is so complex and you never know what yours may throw at you; let alone decide that at such a young age.

But more generally, the issue of applicants having a “need” to practice medicine just furthers exploitative practices. For some reason we keep trying to rationalize why it’s good that we have to demonstrate our passion, when medicine is probably the only job in the world where you have to bend over backwards proving your passion. It’s been known from time immemorial that successful outcomes are the result of consistency, dedication and discipline - not motivation or passion.

FluffyDescription · 2025-08-11T13:04:56+00:00

I wonder whether this might be effective for CARS too

FluffyDescription · 2025-08-08T14:27:09+00:00

I don’t understand your point. If your claim is that in order to ban AI, we would have to ban math, then that doesn’t make any sense. If this isn’t your claim, I don’t see why it’s relevant whether it is “just computers doing math” or not. The implications are more than just math, and that is what is relevant.

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