Wow, those spores are so bumpy, they are very interesting! Thanks for sharing :D

Hello ✌️ 😄

No. I think they both lose more than they gain here. It doesn’t make sense as a strategy. Ego clash is a simple explanation.

I bought a National Instrument’s data acquisition card (PCIe-6535B) not knowing that National Instruments is not very Linux-friendly and I was not able to get it working. At least it was a used card so I did not pay to much for it, but I learned my lesson not to assume compatibility.

Once I also used ‘rm -rvf *’ from my home directory while SSH’d into a supercomputer (I made a syntax error when trying to cd into the folder that I actually wanted to delete). I was able to get my data restored from a backup, but sending that e-mail was a bit embarrassing 😆

Thank you for your work!

Not intentional!

Took a bit of digging. The post was federated, but it showed up to me as “Removed by mod”:

Looking through the post’s moderation history, I find that the user was banned from community and then unbanned. I also see some removed posts from that same author to that same community around that same time.

My guess is that the most was removed by mod, then restored, but only the removal federated through and not the restore.

I have manually restored it, so you should be able to find it now: https://mander.xyz/post/977581/19535554

Wow, a really nice shot of a really nice frog!

Here, I’m assuming “it” is a conscious perception. But now I’m confused again because I don’t think any theory of mind would deny this.

Yes, the example of such a theory that is common is epiphenomalism. What I am contrasting in my answers is the epiphenomalist/hard-determinist framework with the physicalist/compatibilist one.

stimuli -> CPM ⊆ brain -> consciousness update CPM -?> black box -?> mind -?> brain -> nervous system -> response to stimuli

I can try to explain with such a diagram:

stimuli -> nerves -> brain input ports -> brain filtering and distribution -> Conscious brain processing via causal predictive modelling -> brain output ports -> nerves -> conscious action
                                                                                          |
                                                                                          -- > Unconscious processing -> brain output ports -> nerves -> unconscious action

So, the CPM is a process within the brain. The idea is that the brain is a computer that makes predictions by building cause-and-effect models. What is interesting about the mathematics of causal models is that the underlying engine is the counterfactual. The claim being made here is that mind itself is this counterfactual engine doing its work. The computational space that deals with the counterfactuals or “fantasies” is the essence of the mind.

This is not in any way a solution to the hard problem of consciousness. Rather, it is one of many frameworks compatible with physicalism, and it is the one I personally subscribe to. In this framework, it is a postulate that conscious experience corresponds to the brain’s counterfactual simulations within a generative model used for predicting and guiding action. This postulate does not prove or mechanistically explain consciousness. No physical theory currently does.

I’m going to stick with the meat of your point. To summarize, …

That is not quite how I see it. The linear diagram “brain -> black box -> mind” represents a common mode of thinking about the mind as a by-product of complex brain activity. Modern theories are a lot more integrative. Conscious perception is not just a byproduct of the form brain -> black box -> mind, but instead it is an essential active element in the thought process.

Ascribing predictions, fantasies, and hypotheses to the brain or calling it a statistical organ sidesteps the hard problem and collapses it into a physicalist view. They don’t posit a mind-body relationship, they speak about body and never acknowledge the mind. I find this frustrating.

That text was probably written by a materialist / physicalist, and this view is consistent within this framework. It is OK that you find this frustrating, and it is also alright if you don’t accept the materialist / physicalist viewpoint. I am not making an argument about materialism being the ultimate truth, or about materialism having all of the answers - especially not answers relating to the hard problem! I am specifically describing how different frameworks held by people who already hold a materialist view can lead to different ways of understanding free will.

Scientists often do sidestep the hard problem in the sense that they acknowledge it to be “hard” and keep moving without dwelling on it. There are many philosophers (David Chalmers, Daniel Dennett, Stuart R. Hameroff), that do like getting into the nitty-gritty about the hard problem, so there is plenty of material about it, but the general consensus is that the answers to the hard problem cannot be find using the materialist’s toolkit.

Materialists have is a mechanism for building consensus via the scientific method. This consensus mechanism has allowed us to understand a lot about the world. I share your frustration in that this class of methods does not seem to be capable of solving the hard problem.

We may never discover a mechanism to build consensus on the hard problem, and unfortunately this means that answers to many very important questions will remain subjective. As an example, if we eventually implement active inference into a computer, and the computer claims to be conscious, we may have no consensus mechanism to determine whether they “really” are conscious or not, just as we cannot ascertain today whether the people around us are conscious. In my opinion, yes, it is physically possible to build conscious systems, and at some point it will get tricky because it will remain a matter of opinion. It will be an extremely polarizing topic.

As far as I can tell, this is the legal document associated with the lawsuit: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.642027/gov.uscourts.nysd.642027.1.0.pdf

The most significant component of this claim is not the lawsuit itself (examples of frivolous lawsuits are common), but that BlackRock is the one suing. BlackRock doing this is the important and remarkable claim here.

I see no obvious connection between Roberto Faller and BlackRock. To me this looks like a frivolous lawsuit issued by a random inconsequential individual. So, then, framing it as BlackRock suing is blatant misinformation.

I could be missing something here, perhaps there is indeed a BlackRock connection that I was unable to identify. But that Medium article is certainly not explaining the connection. The CBS article does not mention BlackRock.

If there is no connection to BlackRock, then adding “BlackRock” to the title is not click-bait! It is a blatant lie.

You are a radical vegan

Unfortunately the universe consists of mostly empty space and the infinitely thin cut passess between sub-atomic particles, barely tickling the vacuum fluctuations

Vaccines cure autism

But me and you don’t want the same things

But a sociopath

Permanently magnetized

In my view, neuroscience may contribute to clarifying questions like:

• Do all brains support a conscious predictive model (CPM)?

• Does adaptive behavior in brainless organisms suggest a primitive CPM?

• What is the relationship between brain and mind?

But deeper questions, such as “What do we mean by mind?” or “Why assume weak emergence?” remain tied to the hard problem of consciousness, which currently lies beyond the reach of empirical science.

In trying to describe promising cognitive models, I buried my main point. I am not arguing that the brain and mind problem is close to a solution, or that science is close to resolving it.

Here is my actual point:

Certain materialist views unintentionally reproduce dualist thinking. Substance dualism claims that the mind exists outside physical law. Materialism, in contrast, holds that the mind emerges from brain activity. But when this emergence is explained only as complexity or undefined processing, a conceptual gap forms: brain -> black box -> mind. This reproduces dualism in practice, even if not in theory.

This gap renders consciousness a passive byproduct. It becomes a new kind of soul, unable to influence the body. A mind without agency.

Predictive processing and active inference models offer an alternative. They describe the brain as a generative system that continuously updates predictions based on sensory input. As summarized in a recent review:

Active inference casts the brain as a fantastic organ: a generator of fantasies, hypotheses and predictions that are tested against sensory evidence.

While these models do not resolve the hard problem, they help remove part of the black box. They suggest that consciousness may play a functional role in these feedback loops. It is not a detached illusion but a process embedded in how the brain operates.

For me, this shift changed how I think about free will. Not because it provides final answers, but because it allows me to see mental acts in a similar way to how I see muscle movement. These acts are constrained by physical laws, but they are still mine.

Dendrologist?