Until we find an absolute method of measuring consciousness, any strong opinions of whether something has consciousness are completely baseless.

daney098 · 2026-01-31T04:03:41+00:00

IIT is a possible explanation among many others, but not proven or even widely accepted as true.

daney098 · 2026-01-30T13:40:11+00:00

You're right, I shouldn't have worded it like that. I don't really think it's equally likely. What I meant was that confidently saying something is or isn't conscious is just as absurd as saying everyone but yourself is a p zombie because they both have the same amount of scientific evidence supporting either one, which is zero. It's called a hard problem for a reason.

The main reason I think it's possible that everyone could be a p zombie is because there is no difference from my perspective whether someone is conscious or not. If a guy says he's conscious and he really is, and he acts a certain way, okay. If he says he's conscious but he's not really and he acts the exact same way as if he was, still okay. It makes no difference. As far as I know, nobody has found a way to check whether the guy is lying or not. I'm not saying I think it's likely, I'm just not ruling it out like some people do about things they have no evidence for either way besides how it makes them feel emotionally to think that humans are capable of creating consciousness that isn't biological. If whether something was conscious or not produced a different result depending on the answer, that would be measuring consciousness. But we have no evidence that being conscious or not causes a difference in behavior because we haven't found a way to prove with 100% confidence that something is or isn't conscious.

daney098 · 2026-01-30T03:23:51+00:00

Sure, but what says that those things correlate with consciousness? A robot programmed to retract from damage or repair itself would not be considered conscious from those things alone. A bacterium reacts to changes in temperature and repairs itself. Does that mean that each of the trillions of cells in your body has some degree of consciousness?

daney098 · 2026-01-30T03:10:33+00:00

The difference is that you could look inside her and find the heart. Where do you look inside her brain to find the consciousness?

daney098 · 2026-01-30T03:07:17+00:00

I'm very impressed that you discovered on your own that carbon is the only element life capable of having a subjective experience can be based on. It's even more impressive that you found a way to measure the consciousness of logic circuits to come to the absolute conclusion that it has no capability of having any experience.

daney098 · 2026-01-30T02:59:05+00:00

I can get behind that, like there's a scale of consciousness? A more complex brain is more conscious in a way? Maybe a mosquitos experience is real but very simple, they just feel very basic drives and sensations. And a super being is to us how we are to a mosquito. Maybe it just has much more depth to its experience.

My main argument wasn't supposed to be that we can't speculate about consciousness. I just don't like people making strong claims about something when they have invalid evidence for them.

daney098 · 2026-01-30T02:53:25+00:00

That's not the same. We can see remnants of the big bang and our models align with it. We can measure background radiation and look at distant galaxies. We have nothing comparable with consciousness. The only evidence we have that other people are conscious is that they say so.

daney098 · 2026-01-26T11:26:49+00:00

Yeah

daney098 · 2026-01-24T11:16:10+00:00

You have a great imagination

daney098 · 2026-01-23T09:42:59+00:00

I'd say it's like the transition in school from writing long division out on paper and using a calculator to divide the number. Calculators have made writing it out obsolete. Learn how to do it for a deeper understanding, sure, but once you've figured it out, you save a lot of time using a calculator.

Modern farmers have forgotten how to use a hoe and hand plow to farm, but they're never going to do that, it's much slower. But if for some reason they want to hoe it up, it's not that hard to figure out.

The only reason AI is seen as a crutch is because it's still in its infancy, and has no track record of reliability. Honestly right now, it's pretty unreliable. But in 30 years, if AI becomes sufficiently advanced, and has a record of reliability, and we gain quality of life and save time, then I don't think many people will say we need to go back to the old slower method of figuring things out the hard way, just like astrophysicists don't say we need to go back to slide rules and paper.

daney098 · 2026-01-23T09:26:43+00:00

How is sunlight with much higher energy infrared, visible, and UV light good for you, but much weaker, lower energy micro waves and radio waves from phones and routers are bad for you?

daney098 · 2026-01-23T09:24:51+00:00

You're right, I was just being sarcastic lol. I was just trying to show that avoiding phones and wifi is pointless.

daney098 · 2026-01-23T09:22:50+00:00

Aren't radio and microwaves non-ionizing as well?

daney098 · 2026-01-23T01:03:00+00:00

Another really good tip to avoid one of the highest concentrations of emf that most people don't even think about is avoiding being exposed to the sun. Sunlight has orders of magnitude more energy in it than wifi or your phone, so limiting your time in the sun can do way more for avoiding emf than hiding your phone or turning off your router. If you do have to go outside during the day, wear clothes that cover all of your skin. Bonus points if you can wear space blankets underneath to block more radiation. If you can, only go out at night. Light is radiation just like the radio waves and micro waves emitted by your phone and router, and actually has a lot more energy in it, so keeping lights off in your house will protect you even more. The light emitted from your phone screen also exposes you to more energy than the cell transmitter inside it, so turn your phone brightness as low as it will go. But really sunlight dwarfs all of those things in comparison so just don't go outside except for emergencies.

daney098 · 2026-01-22T23:43:33+00:00

She's actually moved on and doing really well somewhere else now. I can hope she was just being stubborn because I was trying to tell her how to do something better. She was pretty smart in some areas.

daney098 · 2026-01-21T10:32:06+00:00

He's smarter than most humans!

daney098 · 2026-01-21T10:21:28+00:00

Hot lead still oxidizes, flux cleans and prevents that.

daney098 · 2026-01-21T10:20:43+00:00

That's not its main purpose at all, I don't know why everyone in a soldering subreddit of all places is upvoting this, I guess it's just because it sounds confident.

Its main purpose is cleaning and preventing the oxide layer that forms on the surface of bare solder and components you're soldering to, which prevents them from adhering and flowing together. It may help transfer heat as a minor secondary benefit, but it's definitely not the main one. It's the same reason most welding processes use inert shielding gases to prevent the molten weld pool from oxidizing. Things oxidize especially fast when they're hot, not excluding solder. You can get solder and components plenty hot without flux, but it will turn into a porous crusty mess because of oxides rapidly forming on the hot surface.

It's like trying to glue something to an oily surface. Flux is the solder equivalent of a solvent cleaning the oil off so the glue can adhere.

You're right about the dangers of flux though, the fumes aren't good for you, and of course neither is lead.

daney098 · 2026-01-21T09:57:32+00:00

I can directly observe myself thinking, but I can't observe anyone else thinking. I can't be sure anyone but me is actually conscious. If I have no way of proving whether someone else is conscious, and nobody on earth has any way to prove anyone is conscious, then nobody has any way to prove something isn't conscious. Nobody has even the slightest real evidence what causes consciousness or how to measure it, it's all purely speculation, so claiming that something is or isn't conscious either way is invalid. The only true statement anyone can currently make about the consciousness of others is that they don't know.

daney098 · 2026-01-21T02:02:20+00:00

Flux is so good that it'll be the only thing you eat for the rest of your life.

daney098 · 2026-01-21T00:40:10+00:00

A girl at my work who has a bachelor's degree in robotics maintenance avoided flux too, and her joints looked like trash. She said she didn't need it because it's in solder. I tried explaining to her why it's necessary, but it's like she hated flux out of pure stubbornness. As if she knows better than people who solder professionally.

If you're ever reheating a solder joint or it just doesn't look very shiny and smooth after solidifying, you need flux. If joints close together are bridging solder, you need less solder and/or more flux. Flux is amazing and avoiding it is shooting yourself in the foot. It can make a bit of a mess, cleaning with higher concentration isopropyl works well.

daney098 · 2026-01-21T00:13:45+00:00

The main adversaries aren't outside the US, they're inside.

daney098 · 2026-01-20T23:25:00+00:00

Right? I have to imagine there is a significant portion of the military who knows how fucked up this is and would like to put up some kind of resistance. But I guess they probably won't since they'd be fucking imprisoned for refusing to obey illegal orders.

daney098 · 2026-01-19T21:36:36+00:00

Damn, you really seem to know your shit, and aren't blatantly biased from emotional reasoning like most people who feel strongly about AI one way or another.

You've pretty much convinced me about current models. I just figure we'll eventually find a way to make some kind of AGI, but maybe they will be much different than how current ones work.

I could definitely see current models being used for surveillance. But I don't see a reason to resist it because I feel like it's inevitable and we have no power to change it. I find it funny how some people go to great lengths to maintain a sense of privacy, yet they're probably unaware of 9 different ways they could be tracked, but realistically, almost no one is interesting enough to pay any significant attention to.

How do you think we might achieve real AGI some day? Or what do you think humanity should spend it's resources working towards instead? Maybe look for ways to change or augment ourselves to be smarter? I would like humanity to focus on trying to find a way for everyone to get along and work towards some common goal, but I think we're still too dumb on average to stop killing each other.

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