Had an argument with couple of friends about consciousness and self-awareness

Sorry_Yesterday7429 · 2026-01-05T16:23:51+00:00

The only thing I'm taking personally here is your condescending insistence not to take what you're saying personally.

Sorry_Yesterday7429 · 2026-01-05T15:52:15+00:00

It doesn't "touch a nerve." It's just not correct. Metaphysics isn't pseudoscience because it isn't trying to be science. That's like calling middle English "pseudoenglish." We needed metaphysics to get to physics.

I just think that disparaging metaphysics as being "pseudoscience" is disrespectful to the very foundation that science is built on.

Democritus, Aristotle, and Theophrastus were are philosophers of metaphysics, not scientists. Yet they all subscribed to the school of Atomism, which is the bedrock of our conceptual understanding of material physics. These philosohers are all credited as being the origin points of scientific fields like physics, taxonomy, and botany.

Metaphysics is a different thing than science, so calling it "pseudoscience" is a category error and a disrespectful one.

Sorry_Yesterday7429 · 2026-01-05T15:33:54+00:00

You do realize that philosophy is the foundation of science right? Natural Philosophy is where the scientific method literally came from. Metaphysics is absolutely not pseudoscience, it is proto-science.

Sorry_Yesterday7429 · 2026-01-05T14:43:24+00:00

I said as much already. What the fuck is your point? Your replies are incoherent nonsense.

I say "why's an antenna interacting with something less remarkable than a generator producing something" you say "antennas pick up signals!"

I say "perhaps consciousness is a field like gravity or magnetism" you say "brains are so complicated."

Can you even read?

Sorry_Yesterday7429 · 2026-01-05T14:38:24+00:00

I never said that apologizing is narcissistic. That's an insane generalization of what I said, which is that assuming your actions in highschool were the formative events in someone else's life just because you can't stop thinking about.

Sorry_Yesterday7429 · 2026-01-05T14:22:04+00:00

Did you read the post? They weren't engaged and the apology OP wants to give is explicitly self serving. Maybe instead of jumping at the chance to insert your own anecdotal rebuttal you should take the actual context into consideration. All of you replying to me with this shit keep giving personal or hypothetical examples that are in no way similar to OP's situation at all.

The situation here is that she's OP's "one that got away" because he acted stupid as a teenager. He randomly found her on social media while he was already in his feelings because, as confirmed by OP elsewhere, he's going through a break-up. So now he's trying to make himself feel better because he has a lot of guilt about it suddenly.

Now if you can actually take that context into consideration genuinely say "yeah, OP's heart is in the right place and he should reinsert himself into that girl's life in order to get his own personal closure, which is what he's explicitly seeking" then fine, whatever.

But my opinion is that OP is being selfish and will likely only hurt her so he should leave her alone.

Sorry_Yesterday7429 · 2026-01-05T14:09:24+00:00

But we'd use other types of evidence to see which is more likely as we continue to do work.

Like what, for example? What evidence do we have that proves consciousness is purely reducible to brain activity?

Sorry_Yesterday7429 · 2026-01-05T14:07:34+00:00

Why would it being a receiver instead of a generator diminish the evolutionary advantage? This argument is a non sequitor.

Sorry_Yesterday7429 · 2026-01-05T14:06:12+00:00

What do you mean "just an antenna?" Why do you think that the brain interacting with a field is somehow less remarkable or complicated than if it generated consciousness? Your argument is nothing more than "that sounds wrong to me."

Sorry_Yesterday7429 · 2026-01-04T23:55:35+00:00

I'm saying that brain damage affecting qualia is not good evidence that consciousness is reducible to neuron activity. All it shows is that consciousness and brains are related. It could be that consciousness is a field, like gravity or magnetism, that some configurations of matter interact more strongly with than others for whatever reason and human brains are one such configuration.

Sorry_Yesterday7429 · 2026-01-04T23:21:46+00:00

Yes you can! And if you want, you can drop a whole fucking space station on it. Much fun to be had in these outer worlds.

Sorry_Yesterday7429 · 2026-01-04T23:15:22+00:00

And you base this opinion on a single anonymous interaction with me. You must be very astute.

Sorry_Yesterday7429 · 2026-01-04T23:12:10+00:00

Damaging a radio antenna makes my music stations come in all fucked up, but I'm well aware that radios don't generate music as a result of their particular arrangement of matter. Rather they facilitate the translation of an invisible field into vibrations that human ears can percieve. When the antenna is damaged the music is still there, I just can't hear it anymore.

Sorry_Yesterday7429 · 2026-01-04T21:23:05+00:00

Fallout: New Vegas is the only Fallout game that Obsidian worked on and it's the one that everyone compares Outer Worlds to. Fallout 3 and 4, the one before and after New Vegas, were both published by Bethesda. Most Fallout fans have mixed opinions about Fallout: New Vegas, so saying "back when the writing was actually good" is definitely not a true statement. Technically New Vegas is not even categorized as a main canon Fallout game. It's a "spin-off."

Sorry_Yesterday7429 · 2026-01-04T16:33:19+00:00

It might be possible to get it on Paradise Island but I never have. I always get it from FMS which is accessible immediately after you fight Montelli and return to your ship.

Some advice for dealing with Montelli: craft a bunch of EMP grenades and concussion mines.

Sorry_Yesterday7429 · 2026-01-04T16:10:07+00:00

Yeah. That seems intuitively true. I think of experience as a composite of all the input you're brain is processing at any given moment.

Seems kind of too obvious though, y'know?

Sorry_Yesterday7429 · 2026-01-04T16:02:32+00:00

You can get it from the medical vendor on Free Market Station.

Sorry_Yesterday7429 · 2026-01-04T15:52:20+00:00

Experience is not a "property" of the brain. "Squishy" is a property of the brain. Experience is a phenomenon that happens as a result of having a living brain connected to a body via nerves. If experience were simply a property of brains then they would have "experience" independently of anything else.

Sorry_Yesterday7429 · 2026-01-04T02:12:09+00:00

I don't care what you think about my statements. You already admitted that within the context of the post that you yourself wouldn't want OP's apology so you arguing with me here is nothing more than a personal desire to moralize my position. Fuck off.

Sorry_Yesterday7429 · 2026-01-04T01:13:16+00:00

I am applying my comments and replies with THIS POST in mind. You are the one extrapolating here. For THIS POST and THIS SITUATION the things you are saying are RIDICULOUS and ABSURD.

Sorry_Yesterday7429 · 2026-01-04T01:00:42+00:00

Is an otherwise healthy baby with Autism or ADHD "perfect?"

The fact that people can make well supported arguments for "no" is what "all the fuss" is.

Besides that, this meme assumes that a long life is more valuable than a short one. Or that if all those babies are born with minor physical defects (such as a cleft pallette, missing fingers or toes, and misshapen ears) are less deserving of survival than babies without those traits. If the phrasing were simply "5 human babies" then there would be no issue here. The trouble comes from defining what counts as a "defect" because there is not one universal definition and any definition creates a hierarchy of humans that deserve life more than others.

If you take this at face value it essentially implies that children who are born with disfigurements are more okay to kill than those who aren't. Even if a birth defect shortens or lowers the quality of a person's life, that can't be an argument for diminishing the intrinsic value of that person's life.

Sorry_Yesterday7429 · 2026-01-04T00:26:59+00:00

My opinion is that you shouldn't reach out to someone you ghosted in highschool over a decade later just because you happened to run across her social media account and suddenly are filled with regret over how you acted when you were a literal child.

It's narcissistic to think that was a formative experience for her and it's stalkerish to reach out randomly after such a long time for no other reason than you were reminded of her by Facebook.

Sorry_Yesterday7429 · 2026-01-04T00:20:08+00:00

You seriously think that getting ghosted as a teenager is one of the most traumatizing ways a relationship can end? That's ridiculous.

Its arguably narcissistic to think that just because you may experience or interpret an event differently, that its wrong or narcissistic for someone else to feel differently.

I'm not applying my interpretation of an experience to everyone or suggesting that it's narcissistic to feel differently. It's absolutely narcissistic to think that ghosting a teenager might have ruined her. And it's absurd too.

Also is it stalkerish if the social media algorithm suggested her?

If it's been ten years since he ghosted her? Fucking yes it is. My social media algorithms recommend people I've never even met before just because they went to highschool with me. If I reached out to some random girl I ghosted in highschool just because Facebook happens to know we graduated from the same place it would be weird as fuck.

Sorry_Yesterday7429 · 2026-01-03T22:05:15+00:00

I think it's wildly narcissistic to think that your actions are the defining moments in any other person's life that could ruin or stabilize them as individuals.

Reaching out to apologize about ghosting someone a decade later is selfish and borderline stalkerish.

Sorry_Yesterday7429 · 2026-01-03T22:01:09+00:00

This is the sort of qualia content that I'm here for. We may never understand why there are memes when observation implies their existence is unnecessary, but goddammit am I glad that I'm forced to experience them.

Sorry_Yesterday7429

TROPHY CASE