mtM

fan art of blue archive, a gacha game

i’d agree that we don’t really understand consciousness. i’d argue it’s more an issue of defining consciousness and what that encompasses than knowing its biological background. if we knew what to look for, we’d find it. also anesthesia isn’t really a problem at all. in fact, we know exactly how general anesthesia works

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2908224/

and Penroses’s Orch OR theory was never meant to explain anesthesia. it’s a more general theory concerning the overall existence of consciousness in the first place. however, anesthesia does relate to the theory, in that it could play a role in proving it (i think? not a primary source but it’s where i found that info)

besides that, Orch OR isn’t exactly a great model in the first place, or at least from a neurological standpoint. even among theories of consciousness, Orch OR is particularly controversial and not widely accepted. i’m no expert and i could be misunderstanding, so please correct me if i’m missing something that would indicate Orch OR is considered even remotely plausible compared to other consciousness theories. this paper certainly had some things to say about it in the context of the validity of theories of consciousness (see V.1 class I).

other theories seem more promising. global workspace theory seems particularly well supported by neurology. its criticisms mainly focus on how GWT fails to truly explain the nature of consciousness. but is that an issue any theory can resolve? again, the problem lies in the definition of consciousness.

then we have integrated information theory. it’s a more mathematical model that aims to quantify the human experience. but you know what? it’s also controversial and highly debated, to the point that it’s been called pseudoscientific because it implies a degree of panpsychism. it’s clearly not a perfect theory.

point is, you’re right. we don’t really get consciousness. we have some wild guesses out there, and penrose’s theory is certainly one of them. genius as penrose is, Orch OR isn’t empirically testable. we don’t know, and maybe can’t know - which is precisely why neuroscience searches elsewhere

is this any different from croc?

wow have we procrastinated real climate action long enough yet?

iirc some hardened firefox configs, including arkenfox, recommend using ublock ONLY. other privacy extensions like noscript aren’t worth using because ublock replicates all of their features plus more

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interesting. i’d say it’s not really that important, but then again i’d probably have a very different opinion if i didn’t have aphantasia.

no great options but Orion by kagi is much better than base safari since you can at least get extensions like ublock

sina olin ala olin sike?

i wonder how in the fuck anyone can possibly be surprised anymore. it’s almost like highly qualified experts have been warning us for literally over a hundred years. people panic and freak out, saying the climate apocalypse is coming and we’re gonna die if we don’t do something. fuckers, climate change isn’t coming, it’s already here - it has been for decades. it’s way too fucking late to avert a crisis. all we have left are consequences.

decomposers turn organic material from corpses into simpler nutrients like nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. for example, proteins are broken down into amino acids, which then decompose into ammonium and nitrates. these nutrients are absorbed into soil and consumed by plants

tldr: plants eat corpses after decomposers turn them into nutrients

if it was torturous then nobody would bother learning instruments

the only impulsive part of this acquisition is how willing you seem to be to give up. just try it again. and then if you’re not satisfied by how it’s going, that’s an excellent excuse to do it again. and the cycle repeats until one day, you are satisfied by how it’s going

yes, you’re definitely right. the accuracy is dubious no matter what. in the author’s words, their approach is “semi-scientific” and “guesstimating”. not once do they say their results are definitive. but if it’s the best qualified demographers can do with what we know, then there’s not much else to it

not op but i think your skepticism is justified

this seems to be where the image originally came from. the author explains the challenges with making speculations about historical populations in that post. the demographers, toshiko kaneda and carl haub, estimated 117 billion people have lived over the last 200,000 years. here’s the explanation given on the original post:

The majority of them lived very short lives: about one in two children died in the past. When conditions are so very poor and children die so quickly then the birth rate has to be extremely high to keep humanity alive; Kaneda and Haub assume a birth rate of 80 births per 1000 people per year for most of humanity’s history (up to the year 1 CE). That is a rate of births that is about 8-times higher than in a typical high-income country and more than twice as high as in the poorest countries today (see the map). The past was a very different place.

i think this is fairly reasonable, but original source is necessary. i think this is a more original source, and kaneda and haub are listed as the authors. their methodology seems to rely a lot on guessing, which makes sense. the 117 billion is probably not entirely accurate, but i’d say it’s a good attempt at estimating given what we know. there might be a more detailed paper somewhere but i didn’t really look too hard

dang i wish my players discussed the game outside sessions