jakelafort

Autumn’s: I agree. But while you pointed out a fairly overt case, realistically any and all of us are susceptible. Even when we try to adopt a state of objectivity and impartiality, the potential for bias has to be accounted for in many areas of study.

SPOT ON

Autumn, the problem with science is not science. It is scientists. I have shared this already but it struck me how Jane Goodall was disparaged as a young woman when she first shared her observations about chimps with older White male scientists. “Oh she is just being anthropomorphic, the dear and naive girl…

Her perspective was borne of…[Read more]

If you are an alien and seeking kinship and connection with another group of aliens and you first discover that they have gods and need to protect free speech ya best turn your ship in the direction of another planet or wherever intelligent life is developing.

How pathetic is it that we need to balance consequences of free speech with the value…[Read more]

I am guessing most of us on AZ think there are hereditary traits, proclivities,susceptibility to illness/disease, tendencies in intelligence and aptitudes. That is not to deny the relationship between nature and nurture.

There should be no issue in studying, describing and publishing those findings. But i think the notion that we are not equal or…[Read more]

Simon that is a hypothesis with Ashkenazi. My dad is 100 percent. And he is a freak of intelligence-or he was before his brain tumors. His two brothers also. I grew up wondering about genetics and intelligence cuz it punched in my the face over and over.

I may have indicated this one other time but one thing that is obvious to me is that perceived superiority and inferiority ought to have no place in justifying exploitation, genocide, oppression or marginilization. How is that nobody says this? Lets hope aliens intent on visiting or our burgeoning AI are more advanced than the troglodytes we are.…[Read more]

When ya bandy about highly contentious, ambiguous, amorphous, politicized ideological terms ya gotta define it or it is useless discourse. Scoring cheap dog whistle points is the last bastion to unfasten and requires redaction to achieve satisfaction.

“Oh i am not religious but i am highly spiritual.” I would probably conclude that i am talking…[Read more]

Robert i get that. However it is a semantic ambiguity that takes us to a conceptual ambiguity. What is evidence? What is meant by absence of evidence.

I think most people understand evidence to be something tangible that proves or tends to prove something. In legal matters it is the smoking gun. So lets suppose there is a police investigation of…[Read more]

However, it is easy to imagine scenarios where lack of evidence is evidence of absence.

Lets suppose AI springs to life with super duper intelligence that exceeds the combined cognitive sum of all humanity. Further lets suppose a confined area (Unseen’s messy closet with that distinct smell of moth balls) is being examined for pink elephants in…[Read more]

As a kid i understood the definition of atheism to mean denial, negation of gods. I think that aligns with defintion of letter a as a prefix. In recent decades it seems to me most people use the word to mean absence of belief. I could care less how it is defined. The point is that belief in gods is infantile and a big steaming stack of dog crap.

Why religion arose is probably multi-faceted. But i guess our tendency to impute agency to fucking almost everything was the sine qua non. Oh look i scratched my ass and picked my nose. And it rained! I sacrificed a virgin and the lightening ceased.

So religion was a kind of magic derived of the natural tendency to see cause and effect or…[Read more]

Unseen, if you read that original linked most recently by Autumn you will see that your query has been hypothetically addressed and to my mind intuitively it makes sense. At least read the conclusion. It is not an easy read.

Consciousness is a pure scientific question. We are biological units. Consciousness is a function of our biology. Questions about biology are scientific questions.

Autumn thanks for that link on Consciousness. Skimmed it. Was much better reading from the horse’s mouth. And i agree it is an interesting hypothesis.