LastThursday

Nothing is aware, that's all it takes. Awareness is difference. Once nothing differentiates, the universe pops out.

In an ideal world the style of communication would take a back seat to the message of the communication. On the whole though, people are not aware enough to see past the style and they get fixated on it. That being the case if you want to communicate efficiently, then you have to tailor your style to your audience. Although in Leo's case I suspect his audience is tailored to his style. I don't exclude myself in that, but there will always be some weirdos who want their sensei to match their style. You should have skill enough to communicate in many different styles and have awareness enough to know when to use what. There's a place for condescension.

The tide comes in and the tide goes out.

It's probably true, but only because we don't know how to imbue a thing with consciousness. We can't even know what is or isn't conscious in principle. It's like an eye trying to look at itself. The best an eye can do is find a mirror and look at its own reflection. We can only look at reflections of consciousness in terms of a thing's behaviours and appearances. But a reflection is not the thing itself. Even using the word "conscious" is a reflection. We only think we know what the word "conscious" reflects. But we really don't. It kind of boils down to a matter of definition. We can call anything we like "conscious" if it follows some notion of behaving like a conscious thing. That's probably good enough.

Music to skydive to...

Hi ho! More music to work to.

I value all my friendships male and female, why wouldn't I? I find that each individiual relationship is different for me, so I can't say for certain what a female relationship brings that is different from a male relationship. But I would say in very broad strokes that I find women good for chatting about life and more emotionally related things - more people centric topics - and men more about things: hobbies, planning, activities etc. I would say some of my male friends are "emotionally stunted" (probably a bit harsh though, they're just unrehearsed at it), so I don't talk about my feelings and my mental life to them. But my male friends are more spontaneous than my female friends. None of my friends can I shoot the shit with about spirituality or self development however, can't win them all!

Of course it does. It's been around since the 1960's. Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) or Strong AI, is not here yet though.

I do and use them every evening. When I don't wear them I feel a lot more alert before bedtime and it's harder to sleep. I think you could get away with wearing them for clubbing, especially if they're stylish. Although ideally they should be wrap around to stop any stray blue light.

I would introspect deeply on that, you'll get better closure that way.

Can you eat it? Only as long as it also tastes like duck (sorry vegetarians).

From this point of view, everything is "real", including AI, humans and everything else. But also from that point of view, nothing can "have" consciousness, consciousness itself "has" everything - so consciousness is more like a canvas on which everything is painted. Asking whether the Mona Lisa is conscious wouldn't make much sense, the Mona Lisa is the canvas and the paint.

But what is being parroted? I think eventually it will be a duck for all intents and purposes and probably a lot sooner than people think. I'd give it about 15-20 years. They'll be a drive to create a humanoid robot stuffed full of AI (I wouldn't be surprised if this is driven mostly by the sex industry!). At that point it will be indistinguishable from a regular human, apart from a few quirks - it'll have fluid movements, facial expressions and great speech. But the philosophical point will still stand, it won't be conscious, just a very lifelike zombie. Although, they'll be a huge variety of less human-centric A.I. (there already is).

I think this is universal. But in an ideal world, any parent would want their child to be able to set themselves and maintain good boundaries - even if it's against them. I would love any child of mine to be mature enough to do this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_test (Clever bot I am)

I don't know if the question is even answerable. We can't even know with any certainty if the person standing next to us conscious. We can infer or guess that @LastThursday is conscious because he exhibits certain behaviours when we probe him, but we can't know. Maybe I'm just a clever bot. The best we can do is look at ourselves and say "yes, this other person does similar things to me, and I'm conscious, so must he be". So it is with AI. It's not even obvious that consciousness is needed to survive as a human - is an ant conscious - if so what's the point? AI is made in our image, so it's not surprising that we would want to ascribe consciousness to it, it gets ever closer to us. But unlike ourselves with our messy biology, we can peer inside the box of AI and know what it's doing, and it's just that: a box of electrons sloshing about, nothing more. Nothing extra emerges out of it other than what we've put into it.

Music while you work - or do other things: or

That's the key insight. We can extend that idea to everything in life. We want to aim for a life where we're masters at the art of not gripping on too tightly to anything, being loose and flowing, knowing when to release our grip and let go. Change is constant, and we should constantly change.

How do you know this hasn't already happened to you, but you actually said "yes"? Are you still you, or someone else?

Kraftwerk Vibes

Everyone is developing, just at different rates. A 70 year will see the world different than a 20 year old, even if they've never been into self development. Your parents have already had to develop just to bring you up.

I would listen to your intuition. I'm no doctor, but I wouldn't rule out infection of some sort: https://psychnews.psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/appi.pn.2015.3b14 , the most famous behaviour changing infection being Toxoplasmosis: https://www.cdc.gov/parasites/toxoplasmosis/gen_info/faqs.html It could even be an imbalance in your gut bacteria: https://atlasbiomed.com/blog/9-ways-gut-bacteria-and-mental-health-probiotics-and-depression-are-linked/ There may also be some sort of mild stress or trauma which triggered the depression that isn't immediately obvious to you. Maybe you can pinpoint something that happened just before the depression started. Perhaps losing a family member or an accident or some unresolved problem or other. Often stress presents itself in the body rather than the mind. You could also try to change your surroundings. Book yourself on a retreat for a month - it doesn't have to be solo - and see how your body reacts to that. Those are just ideas for further investigation.

Yeah no problems I get you. I applaud you for wanting to communicate in a more highly conscious way. We could all learn in this respect. I was just thinking out loud more than anything else - and sort of gesticulating towards those that wish the forum were different.