ParaSait

I think that meditation is a great means to self-reflection, and self-reflection, which gains you self-knowledge, is a means to a happier life. The process of meditation involves the minimization of sensory stimuli and clearing your mind. The reduction of sensory stimuli and temporarily ceasing to think about your worries leads to stress relaxation, which is also healthy. So, in that sense, I believe in meditation. But of course, the purpose of your meditation needs to be specifically self-reflection or relaxation. All those other claims about meditation I've frankly always found bullshit; a placebo effect at best.

Haha, just imagine if newcomers started to think that FDR is a podcast about balloons.

Since I am the one who is in full control of my body, I am responsible for my body. Therefore, I'm also responsible for the effects of my body's actions. Ownership fundamentally stems from responsibility: if I make a claim about something for example, it's my claim, because I'm the one responsible for making that claim (so, it wouldn't make any sense for you to correct some arbitrary other person if it's the claim that I made that is wrong). The same counts for materials. If I build a house with the body that I naturally own, that house is the effect of my actions, therefore it's my house. That way, you can technically see ownership of external stuff as an extension of the body.

Funny: Notice how at 0:47 he calls it "capitalism", and at 0:58, after the applause, it becomes "state capitalism". It's like the word "state" just sneaks in unnoticed.

Ssshhh, quiet down, can't you see he's secretly trying to disguise as PJ in an attempt to teach TZM some sense?

I am in no way a credible dream analyst, however I like writing down & analyzing dreams as a hobby, so with that in mind, I'll just tell you what I think. The whole dream represents your feeling about the FDR call-in shows. You try to think of a question to ask Stef, but can't come up with anything important enough to ask. I often feel this way about the call-in shows. I've never called in, because I always seem to find my own answers after reflecting on my own questions. The fact that you need to reserve a place in the call-in show long in advance really strengthens this feeling: if you're gonna call in, it must be worth it, and you gotta make sure it's a question you're not likely to answer yourself after some thought. The scene then switches to Stefan being really, really tall, and shortly after you also see him super relaxed in the car with headphones. This represents the fact that you consider Stefan to be a powerful thinker and fluent speaker, who easily gets the upper hand in the most difficult conversations. You may perceive him as a rather intimidating conversation partner. Stefan then says "Ok, I now need you to turn around and walk away". Stefan often has a lot of callers in the line and sometimes has no time to talk with all the people in it. This is just like an invitation into the show, only to be sent away afterwards. Have you been thinking about calling in to the show, and particularly thinking about these factors?

But exactly how would capitalism grow obsolete this way?

Of course, resources and energy will never be unlimited. You cannot compare it to data: data is, physically speaking, merely the arrangement of existing matter into a certain configuration in a manner that they represent a certain piece of information. I do believe however, if we allow the free market to thrive, which is after all the aggregate brain power of all of humanity to seek out maximum economic efficiency, we can achieve much more abundance than we have today. Just not unlimited. I kinda like the idea of 3D printers, but I have a hard time believing that they will revolutionize the way we produce goods. In their current state, they're incredibly inefficient means of production. The reason we have so many different kinds of production units around is because each one is configured to produce a certain kind of good in the most efficient way. I have a hard time believing that a jack of all trades like the 3D printer can ever beat these specific purpose production units. And how do you think every individual home owning their own production units can possibly be more efficient than a few factories + trade? Now even if we assume that 3D printers DO turn out to be totally gnarly and production gets moved into the home of the private consumer... I still don't really see what you get by "we wouldn't need capitalism anymore". Capitalism is an economy characterized by private property and private means of production. So what exactly then would change here? Trade won't just vanish either: we'd still need to trade resources to feed our 3D printers with. But maybe I just didn't get what you meant. Of course, things like the venus project are really cool and aesthetic concepts to think about. But just because it could be possible to build something like that, doesn't mean it would be economically desirable to do so.

"Open source" is the new phrase for "awesome". Kinda like "3D" or "2000" used to be.

Okay, just got home from work, so I'll just write my whole view on this now. There is no real objective definition of "consciousness". No, I'm not saying merely that we haven't figured out the definition, I'm saying that this whole consciousness thing does not actually exist. There is no fundamental difference between a human being and the simplest stateless reflex actor. So then why do we have this concept of consciousness? We fail to define it, yet we all seem to intuitively "get" what it is. The magic keyword here, is empathy. We, as beings that are capable of empathizing, are inclined to feel that things we believe process their senses in the same way we do, are somehow different from other kinds of materials and organisms. We feel this difference because empathy makes us profoundly change the way our brain reacts to it. This is why we care so much about whether or not an object is conscious. If we believe that an object is conscious (i.e., processing senses in much the same way we do), empathy makes us mirror the what we perceive are the feelings of that object. So, if we're speaking in a purely rational, objective sense, I see consciousness as a completely meaningless word. There is no property that actually exists in reality that makes the difference between "conscious" and "not conscious". If we accept this fact, it also makes sense why people have a tendency to mysticize consciousness. If there's an idea that we all intuitively "get", but is outside the grasp of rational clarification, we tend to ascribe it to the supernatural. This goes for consciousness as well as ethics (except those rare ethical theories like UPB -- ha!). Sorry if this sounds confusing. This post sounded so much clearer in my head, dangit. Feel free to ask me for clarifications or challenge my view.

Walker, I'm just wondering, do you believe that this conscious force is absolutely necessary for consciousness to exist, or do you believe that that's just how it happens to work in reality? And why would you think so (in either of these cases).

I wouldn't leap to the notion that many individual minds = automatically a big collective mind. That's only kind of a applicable to ants, because ants just function for the purpose forming a hive mind. But it's not the case for human beings. There are other emergent properties however. Think for example about the laws and properties of the market and other kinds of social effects.

I always found the word "consciousness" a bit vague, but I'd define it as the awareness of things that exist in reality. So what's fundamentally required for consciousness is the senses and a processing unit (the mind) that creates an awareness of what is sensed. Neither of these has to be anything supernatural and it is in fact possible to show how these processes can work with pure physical material. Now, you can say "but if I make a robot with sensors and an AI, that robot's still not conscious". Well, that really depends. Again, "consciousness" is IMO a bit vague, and you can subjectively judge that a robot isn't conscious, but I'd be inclined to say that you're only thinking that because can't empathize with an object that has a more simple form of consciousness than yours, so it doesn't feel like it's "truly" conscious. But then you can ask yourself the question: what exactly is "true" consciousness, anyway?

Don't mean to spoil anything, but Stefan always stresses that listeners should focus on his ideas, not on his person. And statues and busts are a trait of personality cults.

It was great. Indeed it all felt like a very surreal experience, meeting a whole bunch of people who don't talk about the weather, sports, politics, or repetitive spoon-fed tv news, but about things that matter. It truly felt like a hunger that was being satisfied. The amount of diversity in our group was really delightful. Everyone was so interesting and memorable. It also struck me how chill the whole thing was. I'm someone who easily gets shy and stressed, this was of course no exception, meeting a whole bunch of new people in a city I've never visited. But you guys just started chatting with me and I felt comfortable so remarkably quickly and easily. I had a real blast over there, thank you all for being so awesome.

Another thing I was thinking of is we could make mirrors on alternate video sites, like dailymotion and vimeo. This is of course a more work intensive process, maybe we can have someone do this for a fee. As a bonus side effect this is also probably a way to reach more people.