Ah the classic “Don’t install FireFox, it just messes things up.”

Seriously, I remember being a kid and keeping the family computer patched with duct tape and good intentions.

Actually had my now ex-stepdad slap me for running a virus scan because it was “Downloading Viruses”

I should buy some shroom chocolate

irl I’m a woman and I only have male friends… Okay I have ONE Female friend and I rarely see her anymore. I’m not avoiding her or anything, our paths just drifted apart.

And he’ll do it again if it means fucking over transpeople, the homeless, or Gavin’s wet dream; Homeless Transpeople

1. If EA is making new COD games then Activision really needs to sue for copyright infringement.

2. Which would you rather have? Yearly releases of beloved IPs or Rare sitting on Banjo Kazooie because this is totally the year when Sea of Thieves finally becomes Pirate Fortnite? Actually given how backhanded the Battletoads reboot was…

3. I’d rather have The Sims 4 get endless expansions if the alternative is that it’s abandoned altogether like so many other IPs EA owns like Ultima, Command and Conquer, Sim City, and Wing Commander

They’d rather oversaturate the fucking market place chasing an elusive Pot of Gold than go for the sure thing.

Kamela lost because she’s a woman

A game as new as No Man’s Sky being called classic? Dies of mortality

I find NDEs fascinating because so many have tried to debunk them and they keep failing.

At first they tried to say they weren’t real, but then they kept happening

Then they tried to say that were dreams but the effects were too profound

They tried to say it was oxygen starvation but people under an NDE tend to be lucid and those oxygen starved tend to be dizzy.

They tried to say it was a religious delusion but then a cursory glance over the NDEs show them to be too universal, the only thing that changes is whether someone sees Jesus or Buddha…

They even thought they had the smoking gun when the effects were replicated under DMT only to find that the human body doesn’t have enough native DMT to trip on.

So they started doing things like the AWARE study and the data keeps piling up. Machines that detect no brain activity and yet people accurately recalling conversations and seeing sights despite being incredibly close to brain death.

Even related phenomena like the Shared Death Experience and Terminal Lucidity were found.

Typically when something is superstitious nonsense it goes away when investigated.

NDEs do not

The best skeptics have is trying to say that the person recovering from brain death must have not REALLY been brain dead. To say that it doesn’t count as coming back from the dead if you came back from what is defined as clinical death.

This is moving the goal post, sure we can’t summon Capser up and ask him what being dead feels like… but… the data is still pointing in the direction of conciousness where none can exist. Conciousness that is powerful and lucid despite the “source” of it not working properly. Not just “kinda lucid” but more so than normal.

There are people who are born blind reporting what the room they were in looked like because their NDE let them see for the first time ever.

The human equivalent of me frying my mother board yet somehow windows is still booting up.

So at this point saying “Oh well you can’t point to a ghost so this means nothing.” Is as absurd as throwing out astrophysics because we haven’t found out how to make an FTL Drive.

Now I’m not saying this proves God or anything, but at some point you have to say “Oh well how about that.” To the thing that continues to happen

What we have are correlations, not causation. We still cannot point to a part of the brain and say “There it is, there’s conciousness.”

One theory is the idea that if enough brain power is gathered together it makes a conciousness as an emergent property.

Except, why can’t we make an AI? Why is it that putting a bunch of processors together doesn’t give us skynet? Why are chatbots that spew regurgitation the best we can do?

Where is the emerging conciousness in the AI?

We will never have it, because we are still missing what makes humans concious. At some point we need to stop laughing at the idea that it could be in some way quantum or undetectable and ask why neurology can’t answer the hard question.

He didn’t do that. He said “show me. Ok, now show me under controlled conditions”.

Except no he didn’t. The challenge was heavily criticized for among other things, having overly strict standards (moreso than most studies reasonably have), Randi himself having final say (no impartial judge), faking his own research, and him downright refusing any participants that weren’t using the same three stage tricks he debunked again and again.

I am not saying Psi is real or anything of the sort. I am saying that those who promote themselves as skeptics must be willing to be scientific or they’re just kooks working “for the other team”

To pretend Randi was scientific about his approach in the slightest is an insult to the the scientific method itself.

While I do not endorse the views and research of parapsychologist Rupert Sheldrake, he was asked about why he didn’t take on the challenge and what he had to say was deeply informative.

https://youtu.be/LLjUTvaKgdQ?

Now I’m not saying Sheldrake is anything amazing. I’m asking… why do we have a quack like Sheldrake sticking to the scientific method better than Randi? Why is Sheldrake the guy claiming dogs are psychic coming off as the guy talking sense?

How much ammo does that give woo peddlers?

It’s not enough to yell “FAKE!” As loud as you can and talk like you’re writing a rational wiki article. You need to actually stand for science and the scientific method otherwise you send horrible messages about what is and isn’t evidence and give New Age whackjobs the floor to say “Well if Randi has to fake studies, something Sheldrake caught him doing, to debunk psychic powers, why are we still questioning psychic powers?”

I don’t mean to sound mean or dismissive, but… I feel like I’m the only one who played the first Outer Worlds. It just feels like it’s one of those things that was supposed to be a thing, but wasn’t a thing.

Don’t get it twisted, I’m not complaining that they’re making a sequel. I’m relieved and hope it does better, I just remember more people complaining about Outer Worlds than talking about it. So I’m hoping this second chance for the franchise really helps it get off the ground (Unless it was a big hit and I’m just badly misinformed about how well it did)

But that 80 dollar price tag? Lemme tell you that’s not a consumer friendly choice, that’s Spacer’s Choice.

Nothing sickens me quite like Israel’s on-going genocide and America’s carrying water for it

Imagine that energy leaves Earth and you become something higher than man

Yes but they made a DLC apologizing for Roiland’s involvement which killed off the characters he voiced.

Saying “Oh that’s just near death. Never mind that we are seeing active consciousness where none should exist.”

Isn’t that just moving the goal post at the end of the day?

As far as I see there are correlations with the brain, but until I see a smoking gun I don’t feel it appropriate to say causation.

However I don’t think anyone out there, even the most diehard believer in whatever mysticism you fancy would go as far as to say there aren’t correlations.

That said correlations appear to be all there are.

Edited for clarity

I believe it is something simple we do not yet have the capacity to measure and that which can not be recreated as an AI.

Why do I believe it exists? Because I experience it constantly.

I am going to tell you something based on a true story about a spring in Rome believed to cure disease. For centuries even after the fall of the Empire fell people flocked to it believing the Gods blessed it with healing properties.

The scientific minded said bad to the whole thing and assumed it nothing but a legend that fools took stock in. However people continued to come and be healed, no one could explain it.

Until the invention of the Geiger Counter and the discovery of radiation.

The legend had been true all along. The spring had been mildly radioactive! It was killing off what was killing the patrons!

No one had anyway of knowing until suddenly they did.

I believe conciousness to be a similar story that we haven’t seen the end of. Perhaps free will is one as well.

I dunno we still see things like Terminal Lucidity and NDEs all the time.

The problem with Emergentism is that it doesn’t really have evidence beyond throwing our hands up and going “We can’t find anything in there that causes it but we see there’s conciousness. So… it just emerges somehow”

It’s just “spontaneous generation” (what people believed before Germ Theory) for the brain. It’s very “God of the Gaps” in a way.

I’d sooner put stock into the Orch-OR theory than take emergentism too seriously.