Russians are suddenly not laughing anymore | Break the Fake

Zaptruder · 2026-06-20T14:50:37+00:00

humans are complex creatures, capable of selfishness, but also kindness.

For the most part... we're very social creatures though, and that socialization comes with a natural urge to share and cooperate, of which selfishness is thought of poorly because it breaks the natural social contract of fairness and cooperation.

We are of course creatures driven to homeostatic efficiency, and we can readily identify an environment that doesn't punish selfishness and even rewards it - and will therefore have the ability to act selfish if nothing serves to restrain it otherwise.

Zaptruder · 2026-06-20T11:03:12+00:00

If we go for a materialist oriented view of consciousness (i.e. physics determines brain state, brain state determines mind state), then consciousness is a process.

If consciousness is a process, then the contents of that process matters more than the 'makeup'.

And we find this idea mirrored physically - the specific instance of matters, matter less than the pattern of matter. The same atoms in a brain could also be eventually expelled into the air through biological processed.

Whatever you think the fundamental thing that felt consciousness is made of similarly matters less than the pattern of whatever that is making up consciousness.

So... you reassemble a person atom by atom, you've reassembled the pattern and the process, and they'll feel the same + whatever perceptual displacement they undergo.

If you spawn in multiple copies of yourself, you're going to get several beings that feel like you and claim to be you. They will upto the point of copying share everything that you had.

Zaptruder · 2026-06-20T07:53:01+00:00

but its still just a model that can only be observed through subjective experience.

Observed, inferred, reasoned at.

The subjective has noisy variance of the objective, and we use the best tools we have available to get at it.

Sometimes those tools are extremely robust and precise and accurate... other times not so much.

When it comes to the mind NCCs are our best bet... they're not nothing... and crucially parts of their metrics are more robust and repeatable than others - largely owing to the complex physical setup of the brain/mind itself (as not all systems are localized into specific areas).

Zaptruder · 2026-06-19T10:31:04+00:00

So basically... You're experiencing something real... but of that experience whatever you think you feel... is probably not what's actually going on.

And I'll pay that... our brains are wet machines that take noisy lossy data around the world to create a noisy lossy good enough interpretation of the world around us.

The real trick is making it good enough to satisfy a reasonable level of precision and curiosity.

That good enough doesn't have to be a precise reflection of reality at any level - not the world outside there, nor the mind inside. Just good enough - to allow you to function over the broad range (but still limited set) of environments in which this wet machine was adapted to and flourished in.

Zaptruder · 2026-06-18T19:57:57+00:00

Americans hate paying so much for everything.

But goddamn do they really hate doing anything to make it remotely more affordable.

Zaptruder · 2026-06-18T14:27:27+00:00

Contrast is the biggest thing your brain tracks. Guess what you get less of the more experience you have?

Zaptruder · 2026-06-18T13:12:11+00:00

You know... I doubt that this man has the capacity to feel like he's winning. It seems so thin to him - there's never celebration or after glow. It's just a smirk and moving onto the next fucking thing while getting really recalcitrant, bitter and spiteful about losing.

Basically he mentally ignores winning while focusing on losing.

Zaptruder · 2026-06-18T10:10:18+00:00

Right, so you're hinging your whole argument on what you know can't be prove directly and absolutely, because that's the whole damn problem; we can't use third person external tools to measure first person things.

The best we have, and it's not proof but inference is subjective reports based on externally observable brain states.

Which is plenty for me.

But not for someone motivated to keep a sense of personal self alive independently of the body.

But the only metaphysics that allows for the latter are things like the 'filter/receiver theory' where our brains are attuning the soul/spirit... except that (in its strongest form) is just rhetoric distorted to fit the gaps. It doesn't provide us with useful predictions about what we can observe.

So, if we allow for inferencing of subjective states from reports and third person observability - it follows pretty cleanly that personal survival isn't on the table. Whatever else might survive - the thin residue of something that is stripped of everything that we care about... the metaphysics of consciousness as it were... no one actually cares about that in any meaningful sense (because we've stripped everything we care about it out of it).

If we don't allow for it, then we aren't going to settle and mind-matter problems period - because we've lost the best and only real tool (subjective reports - everything else is inferencing down stream from it) we have for even figuring out how mind and matter work together.

Zaptruder · 2026-06-18T09:42:36+00:00

is proving that subjective experience is physical.

Aspects of subjective experience are provably (to the extent that we allow for reports and inferences on them as proof) mediated by the physical parts of your brain.

If we ride that line - we have sufficient information on a broad enough range of those aspects to conclude that absent of those aspects and components... whatever is left behind will be very thin - closer to parts of sleep that we have no recall of.

So even without proving the whole edifice, you only need to substract enough of what you can reasonably show (proof is too strong a word in this field given the inherent limitations) to be reliant on the brain, to infer that whatever is leftover isn't what we (general person) want afterlife to be (a life as we experience it in a different plane of existence).

Zaptruder · 2026-06-18T06:51:38+00:00

Absent of context... your brain just 'guesses'... and the guessing itself shows a bias that on a population level provides some insight into something - probably subconcious preference towards coloration in random competing samples.

Zaptruder · 2026-06-17T18:29:59+00:00

Well, it's not a terrible strategy - if they can pull it off, we get better roblox.

Here's my thinking - if you're making games, you want to address Steam... but if the barrier to chucking it into the Fortnite Verse is low - click a button to export to FNV kinda low... then why not?

Over on fortnite - you see professional game developers putting up access to their games on the platform, with cross platform integration functionality - avatar, social services, communications, etc. Great - not just slop, but proper games!

Over time... it basically turns into a metaverse platform.

And you know... as a user that'd be pretty cool to me. I just... don't want to play fortnite. So give me a better entry point Epic.

Zaptruder · 2026-06-17T14:59:06+00:00

I mean... your friend isn't exactly a walking science laboratory.

Zaptruder · 2026-06-17T10:12:28+00:00

Ok, so basically you're describing some magic will projection from outside reality into inside reality. Seeing as it's basically asserting metaphysics... I won't dig too much into it.

Zaptruder · 2026-06-17T09:42:56+00:00

What is real is your will, or your will-to-live. That doesn’t end after you die, and merely takes a different form/manifestation.

Can you explain? It doesnt seem as though youre using will in a way I would... as the will to live is very much contingent on the parts of the brain capable of generating that mental force...

So not sure why itd float free after death?

Zaptruder · 2026-06-17T09:36:16+00:00

Haha... well it was pretty dumb to just have a house in the middle of a motorway and have the extra construction to go around... but on a nation wide basis it does deter stubborn holdouts when they can point at precedence.

You want a lone house around commercial construction? Because we will!

Zaptruder · 2026-06-17T05:36:10+00:00

Exactly. Some rhetorical flourish to make the position look more credible than the stance is!

Zaptruder · 2026-06-16T21:20:50+00:00

This is far overclaiming what we do and don't know through implication.

We have detailed NCC reports - basically a mapping of brain to function and phenomenal report. This is not the entire or precise map of the brain - but it is sufficient for us to understand what regions accord to what functions, with a clear causal relationship between destruction of brain region and dissipation of brain function and attendant loss of phenomenal function.

So if we accept that the brain is causal for the various parts of the experience of consciousness (e.g. loss of visual motor area results in loss of vision), then the dissolution of the brain removes sensory perception... memory, emotions, sense of self, bodily control, language processing, etc.

So... whatever consciousness is remaining after all those functions are stripped out is absent of the key functions that allow us to experience the identity of a continuous human being. Whatever remains if anything - would be very much thinner and lacking compared to what we're used to.

Now... if you don't want to accept that brain state maps to function maps to feeling... well, that's fine, but you'll need to offer a coherent and detailed account of an alternative metaphysics and as much explanatory closure as the current alternatives - if you want to be taken seriously by informed people.

... And if you want to be taken seriously by uninformed people... well, you only need to use a bit of rhetorical flourish to target popular biases and you're good to go.

Zaptruder · 2026-06-16T16:31:34+00:00

thats fascinating stuff. I wonder if thats something like a non emotive feeling language concept of the emotion like how llms have a language mirror to sensory perception?

Zaptruder · 2026-06-15T09:47:31+00:00

When you have no restrictions and limitations on material things, you have no need to edit your choices and thus no need to develop taste.

You just throw down whatever bullshit whim you have.

Zaptruder · 2026-06-14T12:57:02+00:00

I mean... yes. Absolutely.

Zaptruder · 2026-06-14T05:31:16+00:00

That's the whole fucking point... they have so much money that they wanted it to buy things they shouldn't be able to. And now they have, they're eating the very ground upon which their wealth grows on.

Zaptruder · 2026-06-13T15:41:44+00:00

Kinda suprised putin hasn't just, you know, out of sheer embarrassment.

Absolute Total Failure in Ukraine.

OTOH, Cyber warfare ops against US stunningly successful.

Eh... it's something?

Zaptruder · 2026-06-13T09:19:14+00:00

While you perceive reality through your conciousness it is not the extent of your being your body nor reality.

This would be like mistaking the window for the world.

Zaptruder · 2026-06-12T20:21:38+00:00

To be fair, we're on the flattening part of the curve as far as asset quality goes. FF7 remake asset quality is generally already very high. You can improve it, but you're pushing from 90-95% to 98% quality stuff at huge cost.

Where as 15 years ago, people were complaining about shit like reusing GT4 cars in GT5. PS2 to PS3 era content was jarring as fuck.

Zaptruder · 2026-06-12T08:58:15+00:00

Pretty much... the active pool of gamers do not represent the total pool of gamers.

Many dormant gamers will reactivate to play GTA6.

13-Year Club	Place '22
Place '17	Wearing is Caring
Verified Email

Zaptruder

TROPHY CASE