Trying to scan a monkey’s brain, while it’s awake and interacting is not a trivial task. MRI scanners are uncomfortable for humans, and we know what is going on with the big scary machine.

An anti-memetic counter agent.

While I’m not on Adderall, I am on a stimulant.

The fuzzy, buzzy sensation is a sign you’re in overload. At least for me, the drugs are most effective when I can’t notice them, in the moment. When I look back on a day, however, I can easily see the effects.

Also, my partner can tell if I’ve missed my meds or not, before I can.

Deep ocean algae farms might do it. Oil companies have brought up and side lined research on it for decades however.

Our bodies often know what they need. Cravings are often how they communicate it. Electrolytes taste amazing when you need them.

Interestingly, our brains seem to contain a fairly good lookup between smell and nutrition. An interesting diet I’ve seen is to get a good selection of fruit and vegetables. For each meal, sniff them. If any smell particularly good to you, base a meal off of them.

I’ve found a significantly atypical response to caffeine is a massive indicator of ADHD. It’s not 100%, but well passed 80%, based on my completely anecdotal experiences.

Sidenote:

People with ADHD tend to be friends with people with ADHD

My wife was sure she didn’t have ADHD, and nor did I. After we were both diagnosed, over half her friends are now either diagnosed, or fairly sure on also being Autistic/ADHD.

Outside is better, but inside is often a lot easier and almost as effective. Most glass blocks IR (heat). If you reflect it back out before it gets converted, it will exit fine. In practice it’s a few % difference, depending on the foil.

Margaret Thatcher was an absolute bitch. However, at least she had a spine.

Apparently, after the Falklands war, she personally wrote a personalised apology letter to the family of every UK soldier killed.

There are arsehole leaders who I can at least respect. Trump is not one of them.

That is pretty much my view on things. I don’t like it, but it’s what the evidence suggests. However, my internal thoughts still assume I have free will. It’s a useful lie.

Discworld’s Death put it quite well, in Hogfather.

All right," said Susan. “I’m not stupid. You’re saying humans need… fantasies to make life bearable.”

REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.

“Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—”

YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.

“So we can believe the big ones?”

YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.

“They’re not the same at all!”

YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME…SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.

“Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what’s the point—”

MY POINT EXACTLY.

We are not there yet. Some of the theories put the energy requirements within reach of the LHC. They were at the extremes of possibilities however, and none have been detected so far.

It’s a case of running out of terms. I was using it here as apparent, but not a “real” thing.

It’s a bit like a lot of visual illusions, we can often all see them consistently, but they don’t exist in the image itself.

In this case, consciousness is likely related to keeping our own mind functioning coherently. Providing a common virtual ground for the various parts of our brain to interact. There is no seat of consciousness, it’s akin to the operating system on a computer. Not required, but makes a lot of tasks massively easier.

I’m not expecting anything any time soon either. Though I can see someone like musk pumping far too much money into it at some point.

My point was however that the difference is just one of scale. We don’t need to predict the firings, just run it and compare it to nature. From what I’ve read, it behaves like a fly, including walking and grooming itself. This means there is no magic mystical difference between a real fly’s brain and a virtualized one.

Projecting further, there is no difference, other than scale, between our brain and the fly. Implying there is nothing mystical about consciousness.

If a human brain can be conscious, then a virtualized human brain can be conscious. If a virtualized brain can be conscious, then so can the computer it runs on.

The question then becomes do we WANT consciousness in an AI, what would it look like, and how can we detect/measure it?

https://xkcd.com/882/ This, but done retrospectively

There’s fundamentally not much difference between our brain and a fly’s, at the cellular level. We have fully simulated a fly’s brain already. When given a virtual body, it promptly started acting like a fly.

I don’t think LLMs are conscious or sentient. However, consciousness is likely just an internal illusion. There’s no obvious reason we can’t scale up from a fly to a human brain, other than difficulty. At that point you have a fully virtual brain that believes itself to be conscious, and can demonstrate sentience.

I’m from the UK. When I was out in Dubai, I worked through a 40-45°C midday without slowing down much, with plenty of water.

In the UK, the humidity and buildings mean I start slowing down around 25°C, 35°C has me basically a lost cause, in less I push myself hard. 40+ is hellish.

Northern Europe isn’t built for heat. It’s built to trap heat.

One of the goals is to minimise them. Most of those left are blindingly obvious, but unprovable. They are technically there, but just part of the base assumptions of the models.

E.g. we couldn’t do science if an all powerful being was deliberately messing with our results. We also can’t prove the universe isn’t a computer program, only rendering what a “conscious” entity is looking at, while back calculating the required history on the fly.

Object permanence is technically an axiom. The idea that things exist even when we aren’t observing them.

There’s also a problem with terms, particularly related to quantum mechanics. It uses the term observer. To a layman, that’s a person watching. To a scientist its any collection of atoms/fundamental particles that can cause the quantum waveform to collapse.

The results of the axiom are that things do exist when we are not observing them. Our observations don’t back propagate to retroactively bring them into existence. We can’t prove that however, though it’s fundamental to a lot of science making sense (quantum mechanics being the oddball).

It’s read by multiple fans, doing a chapter each. It’s been years since I listened to it however, so the details are now quite hazy.

That’s the correct one.

There’s also an audiobook version. Though it’s fan read, so a bit less consistent than most listeners would expect.