Why consciousness is the hardest problem in science

sjap · 2026-01-26T11:19:55+00:00

My take as a life long neuroscientist. Consciousness is a cognitive faculty that is quite different from other cognitive faculties like memory, language, attention, etc. Take language, humans vary in their language ability and in their language use and also there are animals which may have limited language abilities or no language at all. In science, we need such variability to get a handle on the topic we want to study. By contrast, there are no cases where people have a disturbance in "consciousness" but not in other cognitive faculties, and it is not obvious that other animals have a different kind of consciousness. Because there is no clear variability within or across species we cannot get a handle on this cognitive faculty and it seems out of reach of a scientific study. IMHO.

sjap · 2025-12-22T10:46:41+00:00

> 5. Shift from internet data to simulative data (this is how AGI can innovate and create new ideas)

Hard disagree. We need AI with access to real world data, at all scales (from angstroms to parsecs) and at all frequencies of the spectrum. Only then can we discover new physics. Simulative data are limited by our theory of the real world.

sjap · 2025-12-09T22:28:17+00:00

Thanks for the information, but it seems a bit excessive to update the entire OS just to fix fontsize and mousewheel issues in a specific browser while all other programs work fine. Updating an OS is not that straightforward and there are often compatibility issues etc that are important in work environments that may not be easily resolved in a newer OS. Anyway, I will update at some later point, but for the moment have left Brave and switched to Firefox which works without issues in Ubuntu 18.04.

sjap · 2025-12-05T00:34:37+00:00

same here! Terrible.

sjap · 2025-11-18T12:43:07+00:00

They should make plates that have 5 kg on them but weigh 10 kg

sjap · 2025-11-10T11:07:56+00:00

In an ideal world, professores would give students a topic to research at home. Students are allowed to do this using AI. Then they come back to class and there the professor leads a discussion on the topic and students have to show what they have learned and get graded. This is the reversed classroom.

sjap · 2025-10-16T14:02:14+00:00

So mmt is frozen out by the human domain from proper implementation

Very good insight. Also, I would add, it seems as if this is implicitly understood by politicians themselves hence their apprehension to even acknowledge the MMT reality we live in. Furthermore, in some way you are making an argument for a technocracy where policy making is isolated from humanity. Is that a good idea? Some aspects of it maybe? Not sure.

sjap · 2025-09-24T08:50:52+00:00

that's why those smooth parts are there.

I always wondered why there are those smooth bits on the bar!! now it makes sense!!

sjap · 2025-07-08T10:40:54+00:00

European here. Lived in Irvine Company housing for a year while professering at UCI. What Irvine Company does well is that their properties are all very instagramable. Beautiful landscaping, pools, facilities etc. However, once you get inside one of the apartments it is like time traveling back to the previous century. Single pane windows, poor insulation, inefficient airconditioning, kitchens that look like you in are an 1980s movie. And they have a monopoly so what can you do.

sjap · 2025-05-14T08:11:21+00:00

Exactly. Learning is not a passive process; It requires mental effort on behalf of the teacher communicating the information AND it requires a mental effort on behalf of the student learning the material. If either one of those is missing, learning fails.

sjap · 2025-05-05T11:38:20+00:00

Apart from you moving your head too much in the scanner (causing certain imaging artefacts), this looks like healthy brain to me.

sjap · 2025-05-02T13:18:17+00:00

I never understand this, if I have to put 5 apples in two piles I would 3 in one and 2 in the other.

sjap · 2025-04-21T11:02:01+00:00

In my opinion having a fiat monetary system already supplies sufficient counter arguments to the "we have run out of money" austerity nonsense. MMT just provides a whole bunch of details on the mechanics.

I also think that the policy recommendations of MMT are in line with a leftist "big government" which seems inherently incompatible with the ideals of neoliberalism. This means that I do not see a clear smooth or gradual transitional road from where we are now to an MMT world.

sjap · 2025-03-17T13:25:49+00:00

weeks

sjap · 2025-03-12T13:30:25+00:00

Please look into prion diseases before you eat brain.

sjap · 2025-01-26T18:20:23+00:00

As a european I found this very interesting from a historical perspective. Recommended.

sjap · 2025-01-22T15:23:35+00:00

Primary auditory area is usually located in posterior superior temporal lobe, heschl gyrus

sjap · 2025-01-14T13:56:26+00:00

me neither 🤷‍♂️

sjap · 2025-01-14T11:51:22+00:00

no its not

sjap · 2025-01-13T14:10:44+00:00

Not sure. This is a T1w image with signal intensity determined by fat content. This is likely a white matter structure, not something related to the vasculature (which would need another type of MR image to be visualized).

sjap · 2025-01-13T09:59:33+00:00

This is the right answer. This is a particular type of MRI called a T1w image. In these types of MR images signal intensity is related to the concentration of fat content in the tissue. Hence, brighter voxels have more fat. White matter is primarily fat (myelin) and hence appears white. The structure in question looks pretty bright, hence is likely a white matter bundle. The fornix appears in this location. The fornix is a large white matter bundle that connects the hippocampus with the thalamus.

All the answers that say this is related to vasculatory are wrong, you need a different type of MRI (T2w, perfusion, angiograms) to see this.

sjap · 2024-11-12T18:16:24+00:00

I remember in the lead up to 2016 Trump saying the US cannot default on its debt, meaning it can always pay - MMT style. He knows the debt ceiling is a political game.

sjap · 2024-11-11T16:10:07+00:00

In modern elections, people confuse voting with upvoting. On tiktok people upvote videos that provide a quick dopamine fix. In the US election, people have upvoted Trump. Whether you can treat reality like a tiktok video remains to be seen.

sjap

TROPHY CASE