I think that its emergence is weak but I see no resolution to the hard problem of consciousness any time soon, so for the time my opinions about it are ideas that I find compelling and intuitive and not grounded in facts and evidence. Weak emergence does posit some form of pansychism in the sense that sentient-like behavior can emerge in other brains and even that characteristics that we might associate with sentience might emerge from other phenomena present through the universe. But, because of the same reasons that the hard problem is hard, it is also hard to study and learn about these phenomena.

I can try to explain a little better what I meant.

I don’t believe we have “free will” in the sense that the mind is separate from the body (dualism) and that it is able to break the laws of physics by altering our physiological processes. I don’t think that the non-determinism of quantum mechanics in itself gives us agency, and our mind does not have a mechanism to select how a particular wavev function collapses (not a fan of the Orch OR model).

So, in this traditional sense my answer is “no, we do not have free will”

But I think that the existential crisis and feeling of a lack of agency stems from the model of sentience that one believes. If one rejects dualism, posits that consciousness is an emergent property of the brain, but then ascribes only very loosely a mechanism to consciousness such as ‘complex information processing gives rise to consciousness’, then sentience appears to be just some unexplained quirk that is not essential and just happens to be there. Combining a lack of dualism and free will with consciousness being a useless quirk is what (I think) creates the existential crisis associated with a lack of free will. I used to fall into this camp of thought and resolved the crisis through a logic such as: “Yeah, there is no free will, living is nice though so I am happy that I can accidentally experience the world”.

What pushed me to re-assess this way of thinking originally was reading through a paper about teaching a dish of neurons how to play pong](https://www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273(22)00806-6). At first it did not make sense to me how one can possibly provide feedback to a group of isolated neurons such that it could learn to play a game. What ‘reward’ can you give a group of neurons to push them to do what you want?!

I looked into Karl Friston, the last author of that paper, which led me down a path of study. I discovered Judea Pearl, who formalized causal reasoning in a way that lets us build statistical models to move from correlations to counterfactual causes. This makes it possible to teach causal inference even to machines.

Karl Friston’s work and other researchers in the field argue that the brain is a computer built for causal computing. This idea underpins the Bayesian brain, Predictive Coding Theory, Active Inference.

In Karl Friston’s Active Inference book, sentience is proposed to emerge as a result of the prediction engine. What we experience is not actually what our senses already experienced, but instead it is what our brain expects that we will sense in the next instant. This model of reality that is built by our brain in its attempt to perform its basic function (link causes to effects in order to predict the next stimulus).

One idea is that consciousness emerges because the predictive brain is creating a ‘model’ that does not exist in physical space and so it needs imagination to explore it. The imagination of things that do not exist is essential to the process of generating counterfactuals, and counterfactuals are at the core of the causality machine. To show that A causes B, you need to imagine a situation in which A is not present and estimate the likelyhood of B. One idea is that it is precisely in the creation of a world without A that sentience emerges.

A lot of these ideas are not falsifiable, so it is difficult to say that this is indeed the mechanism of consciousness. But some of the ideas are falsifiable, and those ideas have helped these researchers teach neurons how to play pong, so I think they might have a point.

So, then, I find it plausible that consciousness is not a quirk but an essential feature of our brain. To me this resolves the free will crisis because my consciousness is not an accidental outcome of physical processes just chaotically whizzing by but an actual feature of the machinery that is me.

So these outputs are experienced. And that experience of making predictions is me. Am I the one experiencing the predictions as well?

So this sentence confuses me: “This prediction machine is me making predictions and choices.” Am I making the predictions or is it the CPM?

I am this machine and I follow the laws of physics. I am part of physical reality, and my sentience is a feature of who I am. If I do something it is because I chose to do so, and the fact that I chose to do so in accordance to the law of physics does not remove my agency.

Thoughts and muscle movements come about through the opening and closing of ion channels that allow information to travel through neurons and for muscle fibers to contract and relax. ‘Free will’ in the sense that our mind is separate from our body and that it can somehow open those ion channels is a combination of dualism and molecular telekinesis, so I do not believe that, no.

But I do believe that consciousness is an essential emergent property of our brain. What we experience might be the output of a causal prediction engine in our brain that is making a prediction about the immediate sensory experience in a way that we can respond to stimuli before they happen. In that sense, yes, I do believe in free will because that conscious output that I experience is me! This prediction machine is me making predictions and choices.

I think that a materialist framing of free will requires accepting some model of consciousness in which consciousness is not just a weird accident but is a physical phenomenon that is part of us. An essential feature of how our brain works. This is not yet demonstrated (very difficult if not impossible to do so), but I think it is. Then ‘free will’ and ‘a material system following the laws of physics’ is no longer a contradiction.

Xni’pek

In the Netherlands I use adjuma pepper instead of habanero and mix sweet orange juice + lime as the sour orange replacement.

Go team grass! 😁

Ah, well, if he was wearing sneakers then the boots theory does not apply. I am not sure. You have many possible answers already… The actual answer might end up being quite simple though. He may have realized the grass was wet a second too late, and by that point chose to commit as he was wet already.

Best of luck raising funds! 👍 Pinned for extra visibility.

I just noticed that featuring will only pin to “All” and not “Local”. It is helpful to cross-post to a local community to pin it more visibly.

I walk a lot through grass and mud. Most of the times I am wearing water-repellent boots, but there have been times when I am wearing sneakers and I step into some wet mud or grass by habit and get them all wet. This person may be used to walking in grass/mud. Perhaps they work in the field, or enjoys hiking through wet grass and mud to find amphibians. So, that is one thing to consider: people experience different levels of discomfort when walking through mud.

You mention that he was wearing sneakers. Are you sure about that? Water-resistant boots make one extra comfortable about walking through wet terrain.

If the sidewalk was so broad that you could have two people side by side comfortably with extra space, then it is a bit weird but it could still be a habitual reaction to giving way to others.

Since I like walking on grass and I know that others might not, it is not uncommon for me to walk into grass to get out of the way. I also do this on the bike when the bike path is narrow because I am driving either a hybrid or an mountain e-bike and I know these handle the grass better than many other bikes.

Our relationship is built on tiny hills to die on. Of course, it is always playful 😜

She will use a common grammatical construction in Spanish (“a por”) that became technically correct in Spain (where she is from) long after the conquest. I am from Mexico, where that construction is not used (we don’t insert the “a” before “por”). So, when she uses “a por” I act like I don’t understand and argue that it is not in the spanish her ancestors taught mine.

I will know what they mean, but if I notice it is 12:01 I will absolutely take the opportunity to respond as if they meant 1 minute ago

The split between “Today” and “Tomorrow” is at midnight, not when one sleeps/wakes up.

This comes up often after midnight when my girlfriend asks me about “tomorrow”. Why discuss breakfast for tomorrow when we still haven’t had breakfast today??

I have banned multiple of those accounts for DM spam. Banned a new one just now.

I’m not sure this is a bot. I suspect it might be a real person who doesn’t realize how they’re coming across. Initially, I thought it might be a strategy to get attention, but if that were the case, I’d be surprised by their persistence with a strategy that isn’t very effective.

I suppose it is kind of effective if we are making posts about them… Hmm…

I prefer not making too many assumptions other than to assume no malice. But of course the DM spam will not be tolerated.

These are being developed by a Dutch company: https://www.oneplanetresearch.com/innovation/ingestibles-for-gut-health/

Only those who complete life without believing in a God pass into the next stage of the simulation.

Snowden’s Permanent Record book was a strong motivator for me.

Teach me a new tongue twister

No, not at all! As you grow older, it may not be as automatic as when you are in school. Many of the people that you interact with might be focused on their own stuff (work, partner, family, hobbies, finance) and not too motivated to expand or even have a “social life” in whatever free time they have (if they even do). But this is not everyone. There is still a lot of people at every age that do want a social life, you just need to put in a bit of effort to connect with them.

And, a tip, do not consider failed attempts at socializing as a “failure” on your side. Perceived rejection often boils down to people being very attached to their free time, and socializing not being on their list of priorities. If you keep this in mind then you do not need to feel discomfort from rejection, and you can be active in your search for like-minded people without worry.

Very interesting list! I am especially curious about Matt Brown’s videos. Thanks!

Fresh from the Farm Fungi - he is a mushroom farmer from Colorado. He has a ton of valuable information on growing mushrooms and running a business. He also has a few series of videos on very interesting experiments such as growing boletus, morelles, and cordyceps.

Microbehunter - he is a biology teacher that runs a microscope channel. His videos are very useful for learning the basics of microscopy.

Huygen Optics - I’m not sure about this guy’s background. He worked in R&D for Phillips in the 90s and he knows a lot about optics and chemistry, but I don’t know much more. He has built some equipment in has garage for sputtering metals on surfaces and has some pretty cool videos.

MissOrchidGirl - she is more popular than the others. She has great info about caring for orchids and a fantastic orchid collection.

Ben Felix - he is a portfolio manager with very solid financial advice. He supports his claims with research articles.

The “Slur filter” is a server setting. The filter makes use of a “regex” (a text matching algorithm) to automatically remove any text that matches those words. An admin needs to explicitly set the rules for that regex. The regex does not take language into account, it is a simple text matching algorithm.

The box is in the Admin settings page and looks like this:

I know that lemmy.ml makes use of a strict set of regex rules. The translation of the french word for “late” matches an ableist slur in English, and so it is removed by lemmy.ml. I am not sure about whether you can check regex for each individual server, but I believe that most instances don’t filter that specific word out.

EDIT: Ah, I found out how to check the regex. You can check an instance’s regex by going to the the URL https://{instance}.{TLD}/api/v3/site and looking for “slur_filter_regex”. For example, for lemmy.ml you would go to:

https://lemmy.ml/api/v3/site