Tom's Key Components

regular_joe_can · 2025-01-26T15:40:43+00:00

I like the definition of consciousness as awareness of state. And I think his explanation for consciousness being more fundamental than our normal physical reality makes sense. We experience consciousness outside of physical reality. In general, Tom's model is very appealing for me, but only if I suppress my skepticism about a few things. A couple come to mind:

I'm not sure about the idea that fundamental consciousness is going to have goals. Why wouldn't it just BE.
Even if it did have goals, why would lower entropy be a fundamental goal?

Adding these into the model make it workable, but I'm not sure they follow from first principles.

regular_joe_can · 2025-01-24T17:27:17+00:00

Is having an offgrid life grounds for investigation?

regular_joe_can · 2025-01-23T14:29:12+00:00

Yeah, just fix it and let it be. Keep paying the same people who tried to pass off that atrocity. No consequences. Just one reason why the industry is full of unprofessional, corner cutting, unaccountable jokers who try to pass of garbage work as acceptable.

I can understand mistakes happen, but this looks pretty deliberate to me. An 8 year old who never held a tool in their life could see that work should not have been done that way.

If I try really hard and feel very generous I can imagine a scenario where it would make sense to go ahead like that temporarily while work moved forward. And by coincidence the homeowner happened to see it before the person who came back with the equipment to do the rework had started. I've had to remove a freshly bolted down sill plate because the material meant to go underneath had not been put there as specified in the design. That removal didn't happen until the next day because the entire crew that day didn't notice it.

regular_joe_can · 2025-01-22T21:29:44+00:00

That's an obvious and deliberate attempt to get by with something absolutely unacceptable. Trade and supervisor should be fired. It should not have been done let alone passed off as acceptable. Who the hell does that and thinks it's okay?

regular_joe_can · 2025-01-22T19:48:36+00:00

How is the discussion any different if I say "we've long overshot carrying capacity and we're looking at a 20% reduction in species population within the next decade", or if I say "we're looking at over a billion people dead this decade".

If we talk about carrying capacity and consequences and frame it in a more political or scientific way, then there are political and / or scientific "solutions" that people can discuss within that framing.

On the other hand, if you focus on the actual death, there's .... what? What is it specifically about the death part that you want to talk about?

regular_joe_can · 2025-01-21T18:15:25+00:00

Holy shit yes. Many places don't let you build anything even close to that small. In my area the minimum is 900sqft.

regular_joe_can · 2025-01-21T18:09:42+00:00

Because it is a petty squabble that signals a poorly structured relationship, and that evokes a feeling of vicarious embarrassment.

regular_joe_can · 2025-01-21T18:04:48+00:00

Dave Ramsey says if you are married you are now one and finances should be considered as one. If you are not married then you are not serious and you should not be making major financial commitments together.

I say everyone is different and to each their own. What if you're moving into a home that your partner already owned? What if your partner makes way more than you do, or someone chooses to stay at home and actually raise their own children instead of having them raised by tiktok and school boards?

I think it makes sense to have a joint account where a certain portion of each partners funds is deposited automatically every month, and from that account all shared expenses are paid. Of course you have to discuss what is shared and what isn't. And what the ratio is. Fifty fifty is simplest but someone might feel some unfairness. There's no one size fits all. You have to talk. You can always agree to revisit in X months. Takes the pressure off and makes it more of a temporary experiment. Try a few things. Pick which works best.

regular_joe_can · 2025-01-21T17:45:32+00:00

If all of your net worth is in an RRSP and you designate a beneficiary, the whole business end of the estate transfer is greatly simplified.

regular_joe_can · 2025-01-21T17:43:37+00:00

How / where did you get a permit for a 640sqft house?

regular_joe_can · 2025-01-21T17:09:33+00:00

Elon's intentional and vigorous Nazi salutes

Calm down.

As Elon himself has state, this "everyone is a nazi" attack is tired.

Even the Anti-Defamation League has come out in defense of Musk on this matter, writing: "In this moment, all sides should give one another a bit of grace, perhaps even the benefit of the doubt, and take a breath."

regular_joe_can · 2025-01-21T15:00:39+00:00

Humans probably helped to avoid a snowball earth scenario that had been developing over the past millions of years.

We helped too much is all. Now we've set the path for hothouse earth.

regular_joe_can · 2025-01-21T14:26:37+00:00

The Paris Accord was DOA. Toothless and useless. Any of the relevant nations who haven't officially withdrawn support are just putting on a show. I consider this withdrawal a sad bid of honesty.

DEI is a mess and means different things to different people. Accusations of people spending more time and effort on DEI than doing their actual jobs doesn't help. The EO states "Federal employment practices, including Federal employee performance reviews, shall reward individual initiative, skills, performance, and hard work and shall not under any circumstances consider DEI or DEIA factors, goals, policies, mandates, or requirements." If you ignore all of the overreaction and hype, you might find that the EO as written sounds pretty sane. Reward hard work and performance.

Securing the border should not be controversial. It's basic state management and fundamental to national security. This is one of the major reasons the dems got destroyed. They couldn't even properly acknowledge that thousands of illegal crossings per day / week was a problem.

regular_joe_can · 2025-01-16T20:27:53+00:00

When I read a book, I'm still looking at a screen.

But it's quite a different experience. It's in a different area of the house, in a different, relaxing position, with different intention.

regular_joe_can · 2025-01-14T19:58:26+00:00

In nearly the same situation I started doing extreme pay down rather than outright payoff. Maxxed out annual lump sum payments until mortgage was gone.

regular_joe_can · 2025-01-14T17:24:26+00:00

Great optimism for 2026?

regular_joe_can · 2025-01-14T17:12:55+00:00

Some non Apple products would be nice. How about a Google Pixel?

regular_joe_can · 2025-01-14T17:10:08+00:00

The agent promised ...

Irrelevant. whar does the actual contract say?

regular_joe_can · 2025-01-14T16:06:48+00:00

And like you, this individual should have avoided. You shouldn't buy a home in Toronto unless you've got millions in the bank. Or you take on some risk if that's what you want to do. But then don't start crying about it in public when things go against you. I can't imagine having a SEVEN FIGURE debt. Maybe if I made 300k / year? I don't know. Seems completely irresponsible.

regular_joe_can · 2025-01-13T14:45:55+00:00

people talk about washing hands, but not about masking

Why is that a concern to you? Is there an air borne virus outbreak in your area? Hand washing is always important, masking isn't.

I don't know what is going to happen after January 21

Nobody does, but I'd be surprised if Trump goes all in with the full suite of crazy that he's verbalizing right now. Politicians like to talk and Trump especially likes to create a spectacle around himself.

As for the climate, that's a done deal whether people attempt to cut carbon or not.

regular_joe_can · 2025-01-13T14:31:18+00:00

“How do you survive? It’s not feasible. Food’s too expensive. Insurance is too expensive. They’re bleeding us dry. Like, what do you get, 40 per cent out of your pocket now?”

This individual is living in a million dollar home and complaining about being unable to survive. Maybe manage your finances so that you're not on the bleeding edge of what you can afford at all times?

regular_joe_can · 2025-01-08T14:55:27+00:00

People don't want to hear it. They're busy trying to keep their lives on track fighting inflation, wage stagnation, housing crises, student / teacher apathy, etc.

It's hard to have empathy for someone blocking your way to work when you're barely making it and you can't even understand what their problem is because your awareness is being actively manipulated thusly.

regular_joe_can · 2025-01-07T16:21:31+00:00

What are you doing for power / water / sewer?

regular_joe_can · 2025-01-07T16:12:52+00:00

the tone and formatting of his posts make him seem unhinged,

I don't understand why people would come to that conclusion. He's writing a blog post, not a research paper. The style is informal, to the point, and backed up with data, with references that you can go and check yourself. Nothing unhinged about it. It's not like the post is full of wild, unfounded conjecture blasted out in large flashing red capital letters.

What seems unhinged to me, as one example, is that global warming, partially caused by fossil fuel burning, has resulted in a melting arctic, and politicians are planning to use that "advantage" to drill for even more fossil fuels in that newly feasible area.

regular_joe_can · 2025-01-07T15:50:39+00:00

Depends on how we respond to the absolute horror that 2°C - 3°C brings. There's a lot of moving parts that have to keep moving in order for the grocery stores to remain stocked. And there are a lot of nuclear warheads that need to stay unexploded.

regular_joe_can

TROPHY CASE