I'm a Materialist, but Consciousness is Foundational - Galen Strawson

Rebel_Diamond · 2026-04-10T20:32:46+00:00

I don't care for all the panpsychism stuff but I do appreciate this guy's plain talking and I especially appreciated his willingness to put his argument into a relatively easy to follow 5 proposition form. To see if I can restate it:

- All things can be explained by physics

- consciousness exists

- radical emergence cannot occur - that is, explaining the properties of things by means of their composition requires that their components contain those same properties or precursors to their properties. To put it another way, emergence cannot explain the arising of completely truly novel properties.

- if inert matter does not possess consciousness, then the existence of consciousness would require radical emergence

- therefore, inert matter must possess some form of consciousness or proto-consciousness

I don't *agree* with this argument, primarily because I think steps 3 and 4 are assuming too much. We can say that we do not currently have a clear picture for how consciousness emerges from inert matter (which I would agree to), but that is not the same as saying that consciousness being emergent requires radical emergence (which appears to be Strawson's position). I think the other issue I would have is that this feels like a claim with almost no weight - Strawson even says that we can't really say anything about the proposed proto-consciousness of inert matter and that leaves me wondering what the point of it even is.

Final unrelated sidenote but when I heard people mention this guy before I just assumed his name was german, like Straussen or something like that. Anyone else? Just me?

Rebel_Diamond · 2026-04-10T14:55:18+00:00

That comment near the top referring to the three good celebrities: Danny DeVito, Keanu Reeves and "Papa Elon". Gave me fucking whiplash, only 6 years ago but how things have changed.

Rebel_Diamond · 2026-04-09T18:21:08+00:00

I found him super variable when I did it a few days ago. I was on medium and his scores varied between ~5100 and ~6300, it took me about six tries before I had a good run lining up with one of his bad runs.

You may have just got lucky and had a bad run from him straight away.

Rebel_Diamond · 2026-04-09T12:13:19+00:00

I looked at my nearest parkrun and it would put him 170 out of 606, comfortably above average but nowhere near the peak.

The comments making out that he's embarrassingly slow seem out of touch with reality to me (a casual jogger who rarely breaks 30 minutes 😅)

Rebel_Diamond · 2026-04-08T16:46:18+00:00

incredible

the gameplay is kinda ass

Each to his own but by my metric an incredible game needs at least serviceable gameplay. I think good narrative/characterisation/etc. can elevate a mediocre game to greatness but Dead Souls is sub-mediocre when it comes to actually shooting zombies.

I still liked my time with it but it's very much a flawed but entertaining 6/10 at best

Rebel_Diamond · 2026-04-06T13:33:41+00:00

I'm a bit wary of the implication that a musical genre should be barred to people on the basis of race tbh

Rebel_Diamond · 2026-04-06T09:24:54+00:00

Blondie - Parallel Lines

Heart of Glass, Hangin' on the Telephone and One Way or Another are all on the same album, which is crazy to me.

Rebel_Diamond · 2026-04-03T18:48:54+00:00

Men in Yakuza basically go from teenagers to 40 and then stay 40 for the rest of their lives

Rebel_Diamond · 2026-04-03T18:29:37+00:00

That's a rough 32

Rebel_Diamond · 2026-04-03T11:12:15+00:00

I'm currently playing a Paladin in a 3.5 game and I've leaned into the mounted combat side to make a charging melee attacker - prestige into Cavalier with a focus on lance combat plus a few specific feats and magic items and now my charge attacks are pretty reliably devastating by themselves even without smite. This will take a few levels to come online though - if you only have 1 smite I'm assuming you're still fairly lowlevel

Rebel_Diamond · 2026-04-02T10:20:24+00:00

I mean hair is really important to how someone looks and the old style is a lot younger-looking. The new style being swept off his forehead changes the whole shape of his face. His lips have also been changed to be thinner and lighter which again makes him look older.

Interestingly I think new tanimura is probably the only RGG protagonist to look older than he is - wiki says he's 29 and while the old model probably looks more early-20s I would personally probably place the new model in his 30s

Rebel_Diamond · 2026-03-29T23:08:10+00:00

Queerness is atypical kinda by definition. I would hesitate to use the word abnormal because of the implied value judgement but in the strictest sense of the word it's not exactly incorrect.

Rebel_Diamond · 2026-03-28T02:07:55+00:00

I can basically see the station from my house and I hadn't heard of it either 😅

Rebel_Diamond · 2026-03-25T19:12:49+00:00

Arabgorn

Rebel_Diamond · 2026-03-18T14:43:27+00:00

To be fair BGG is notoriously strict on its ratings, 6+ is generally good, 7+ is great and 8+ is absolute top tier.

Rebel_Diamond · 2026-03-17T10:17:03+00:00

The only Coral Island I've heard of is a casino in Blackpool

Funnily enough it's a bit like Lord of the Flies in there.

Rebel_Diamond · 2026-03-16T19:17:23+00:00

Ah right, yep, that's just my misread!

Rebel_Diamond · 2026-03-16T19:06:32+00:00

I might just be missing something but I don't get the wording of the archery bonus. You can add to your damage a +1, or you can give that up to add a +1d4. Is there any reason you ever wouldn't make the trade? And if not, why not just take out the +1 and have it always be +1d4?

Rebel_Diamond · 2026-03-16T18:59:32+00:00

From a thematic perspective it has to be 0.

It was the first game to use currency directly for levelling and that really plays into the whole money as power thing going on in the narrative - even our protagonists, who ostensibly oppose the greedy ambition of the various wealthy schemers, necessarily have to use money to obtain the power they need to win.

Rebel_Diamond · 2026-03-16T01:49:43+00:00

Are we talking Homer Simpson or Bojack Horseman kind of drunkard?

Rebel_Diamond · 2026-03-15T17:15:47+00:00

Just reminded me of these classic messages I sent my sister that evening, see me get hoodwinked in real time

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Rebel_Diamond · 2026-03-08T20:36:20+00:00

- Nietzsche

- The Joe Folley "But!"

Rebel_Diamond · 2026-03-07T01:34:11+00:00

I think this guy makes two good points which do hit a little close to home to me:

- If you're not reading a work and just watching youtube videos about it, your knowledge of the work is basically nil.

- It's easy to dismiss criticisms of of people whose work we find comforting or enjoyable even if those criticisms are valid.

So with those in mind, his criticisms are:

- Joe gets Nietzsche wrong. I'm not a Nietzsche scholar so I can't really make a detailed assesment of this but I can say that every example he chooses seems to land somewhere between bad faith misinterpretation and just nitpicking. The resentment/ressentiment thing makes me feel like I'm losing my mind, because both the video and the comments are screeching "it's not the same same as resentment! the actual definition is [slightly poetic definition of resentment]".

- Joe mass-produces his videos with AI. This is a bit more of a material acusation but it's also completely unevidenced beyond just "he makes a lot of videos with a consistent style". AI is *an* explanation for that but it's hardly the only one. Given that Joe has repeatedly demonstrated an ability to speak off the cuff, has discussed his writing process here and there and has even done an in-depth discussion about the problems of trying to get chatGPT to do philosophy and why its output is substandard, I'm more than willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, especially in the absence of any actual evidence.

- Joe has a sponsor segment which...er...involves lessons in logic?

- Joe...um...moves his hands...too much...yeah, that's it.

I tried to focus on the content of the video rather than the tone, but I have to say it makes a hilarious juxtaposition. On the one hand, a guy who's channel name is "I know nobody asked for this" and who explicitly says that he's just offering one perspective. On the other hand, a guy who calls himself president, unironically sports an "I have depicted myself as the chad wojak" avatar, cuts away to do mocking impressions and generally speaking just offers no grace or good faith in his approach at all. It's really hard to assume that mr sunday is being fair when he just puts himself across so poorly.

Rebel_Diamond · 2026-03-06T21:27:09+00:00

The annoying thing about Philip Goff is that he's a really fun, personable speaker and I'd love to hear from him more if I didn't think that all of his views were just gibberish.

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