LastThursday

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.

I like the sentiment. We can only choose to take this on for ourselves though. Any prescription for how a group of people should conduct themselves will always have inherent bias, even if not intended - and this goes against freedom of expression. In a sense we need the good the bad and ugly for us to realise what's good, bad and ugly in the first place. That way we learn and grow the most, even if the experience is rough. This place is also very transient and people come and go constantly. How would newcomers immediately take on the task of "communicating in a concious, loving and healthy way", if they haven't experienced this before or don't know what it is? I'm guessing most of the demographic here are young inexperienced males with testosterone coursing through their veins. I don't have solid answers. One way is to obviously have rules in place (with their inherent bias) and to police it. Personally, I would have a zero tolerance policy on all the sorts of -isms, but there's always grey areas even here - who am I to be prescriptive on how to handle the edge cases? Or another way is to "lead by example", but this responsibility would then have to fall on those members that stick around long enough to employ it - I guess that's what your advocating for yourself.

Sheesh that's disturbing

I don't know what possessed me. (Done on Hugging Face Stable Diffusion site)

A child is always a blend of their parents' genetics. It's not always a 50-50 split of mum and dad, but on average it is. But genes are either recessive or dominant, so genes from one parent may override genes from the other. It's possible parents carry genes that they don't express (are not used), but do get expressed in the child (are used), because of the way combining genes works. You can also have genetic mutation. So it's possible you have a modified version of a gene that neither of your parents has. Generally mutations either have no effect or cause problems, rarely they can be beneficial. So yes, you can have different genetics from your parents, but the effects are normally subtle. Epigenetic changes happen constantly throughout your life, and they regulate which genes are on and off. There's some evidence that epigenetic changes can be passed through to egg and sperm. Epigenetic changes happen in response to your environment such as food intake, exercise and stress levels.

Fair enough. What you wrote resonated with me as I've been there - at one point I was physically struggling to even get out of bed, it's like my brain just wanted me to sleep 24 hours - it refused to "boot up". I just didn't care about anything. But, that is the definition of depression. In my case it wasn't so sudden but it crept up on me gradually over time. If you think you're genuinely depressed then seek professional help. Depression is very treatable and there's no need to suffer any longer than you have already. There's many different types of therapy, there will be something that helps you, go get it. In terms of motivation, I would say try and maintain a base level of engagement even if it's difficult. Even getting as little as 30 minutes of light exercise - say walking - and getting 30 minutes of sunlight every single day, will help a great deal. Try and maintain a good sleep schedule. And, if you can improve your diet then do that as well. It could be that it's temporary and you just need to relax into this new mode for a while and trust that things will right themselves again.

It's understandable that you miss your burning desire. But I don't think that's what's really important to you. It seems like this is more important: There are other ways to accomplish goals such as planning, routine, habits and getting together with other people. Consistency of action is often more important than burning passion. Many goals are long term or complex and to a degree need you to grind away day after day, this is a good skill to learn. And achieving your goals a different way may actually ignite your passion again. You want to create a virtuous feedback loop.

Do you want to be more attractive to women? Or is there another reason for wanting to be more masculine?

Is red vision the same as green vision? Red and green can be seen as different sensations or the same sensation, it just depends on how you frame it. Is the sound of my voice different from the appearance of me? Yes and no. The only reason to divide the world up into (say) vision and sound, is for convenience, it could be divided up differently or not divided at all. It seems that there is a greater commonality between red and green than there is between red and loud, but this is just an illusion. For example red and loud can be located in space, can having more or less intensity etc.