Is an Agreeable Definition of Consciousness in the Offing?

All too often I see consciousness described as an inner dialogue of me with me that no one else can hear. There were words and sentences … oh, my. But studies actually show that most of our “thoughts” are preverbal, with words being applied only when we attempt to explain to ourselves or others what was running through our heads. Think of it as a variation of dream research, just when you are awake.

And when are we going to get an adequate definition/understanding of what thoughts are. Surely that needs to precede or t least accompany such a thing for consciousness.

And while early consciousness explorers didn’t dome up with much in the way of answers, they did come up with some very good questions. And example of which is “Has the reader never asked himself what kind of a mental fact is his intention of saying a thing before he has said it?” (William James)

And it is recognized that whatever mental activity is going on, its form isn’t fixed. Some “thoughts” are images, others fragments of words, others scents or other sensory information, and others cultural feelings (love, appreciation, etc. in other words nonsensory).

Alluding to dreams as a surrogate for consciousness, dreams are often cobbled together out of sights and sounds from memory. A common dream I had when young is racing across my junior college campus because I was late for a test, as I raced, the test became a final, but also I couldn’t remember where the classroom was, because I hadn’t gone to class for weeks. This often morphed into a search for a bathroom, which were inevitably locked, under construction, or backed up (ew!). This later part of the dream I was able to “interpret.” It meant I had to get up and go to the bathroom to empty my bladder.

People tell me these incredible descriptions to their dreams, something I do not experience. They speak of immense levels of detail and my dreams are like fast cut movies, the minute I “see” something the scene cuts away to another locale. Chaos, utter chaos. But that may be a conclusion reached from my memories, which are vast and detailed. (I can still read snatches from pages of a textbook I had when in high school. What value that had escapes me, but it was something I remembered (probably distorted all to hell as memories are very, very (Very!) plastic.

So, do you think we are on a path that might lead to better understanding of what our conscious mental processing consists of (and I hope our subconscious mental processing, too)?

The realization of what seems to be the case, namely that thoughts are mostly not made of words, words only come to them when we try to explain or communicate the thoughts sits well with my ideas that dreams, psychedelic visions, and whatnot are nonverbal and only get “interpreted” when we try to explain/understand them. This is why the woman experiencing a NDE and senses a glowing figure tells us she “saw Jesus.” The interpretations come pre-packaged as cultural tropes.

And as someone who teaches the mental side of a sport, the realization by one researcher, Christoff Hadjiilieva, that “The big lesson of meditation,” Hadjiilieva said, “is that the mind cannot be controlled,” is very interesting.

Fucking Trump

Minutes after the Supreme Court truncated Mr. Trump’s ability to impose tariffs on imported goods the White House released a fact sheet explaining that Trump had signed a proclamation “invoking his authority under section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974” to impose “a temporary import duty” a Global 10% Tariff on all Countries, which will be effective almost immediately.”

The Congressional Research Service, which provides legislative research and analysis to lawmakers, explained that: “Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 directs the President to take measures that may include a temporary import surcharge (tariff) when necessary to address “large and serious United States balance-of-payments deficits’ or certain other situations that present ‘fundamental international payments problems.’ Section 122 has never been used, and therefore courts have had no occasion to interpret its language. Some news reports have noted this provision appears to authorize the President to impose across-the-board tariffs on imports in some circumstances.”

So, the law says “large and serious United States balance-of-payments deficits” or certain other situations that present “fundamental international payments problems” as being causes, but Trump, in a fit of petulance, made his 10% add-on “global”. He is claiming, therefore, that every damned trading partner of the U.S. presents “fundamental international payments problems.” Gosh, I wonder what data he is looking at? (Hint: None.)

The law does, however, place limits on such tariffs, which may be imposed by the president for “a period not exceeding 150 days”, and are “not to exceed 15 percent”.

So, this seems to be a case of CBT, Cry Baby Trump, throwing a tantrum … for five months. And the logic behind this, as usual, is nonexistent.

And considering the current status of Republican administration competence, it will take approximately five months to implement the new policy. Yea, Trump, aka The Mango Mussolini, aka The Tangerine Toddler, aka Donald Duck-the-Draft, aka Emperor Erraticus, The Oaf of Office, Whiney the Coup, The Tantrum of the Opera, Vlad’s Agent Orange, Genghis Don, etc.

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An Argument Against Naturopathy/Homeopathy

The State of Alaska’s House Labor & Commerce Committee is considering a bill that “would unwisely permit the practice of naturopathy, a discredited form of pseudoscience, in the state of Alaska.” (Source: CFI Director of Government Affairs and Policy, Azhr Majeed)

Naturopathy is not a name people bandy about. Most people, however, are aware of homeopathy which is really what is being considered in the bill above. (I think the term naturopathy is a substitute term to avoid the negative reputation of homeopathy. The term naturopathy was invented 80 years after the term homeopathy.)

The foundations of homeopathy are basically these two:
Law of Infinitesimals (or Law of Potentization): This principle states that the curative potency of a substance increases as it is diluted multiple times, often combined with shaking (succussion).
Potentization/Dynamization: The process in homeopathy involving serial dilution and succussion (vigorous shaking) to unlock the “vital energy” of a substance. (Source: Harvard University)

In ordinary language, they claim is that diluting a drug or chemical makes it stronger. (You can always recognize a scam if they claim “adding water makes it stronger.”) So, if you run across someone who believes in this nonsense ask them to consider the following scenario:

A guy goes into a bar and asks for a whiskey and a pitcher of water. When he is served, he pours out half of the whisky and fills the glass with water from the pitcher. Then he empties half of that diluted beverage into the bartender’s sink, and fills it up with water again. He does this ten times. Then he downs the final liquid in his glass. So, question: do you expect this guy to fall off of his bar stool dead drunk?

If you do. You are a homeopath.

Is Greed Good?

(Hint: No, not just no, but fuck no!)

Currently people are talking about “the” AI bubble (not “an,” but “the”). Corporations are investing billions (possibly trillions) of dollars in companies developing what are called “artificial intelligences,” aka AIs. Since such an “intelligence” is a goal and not yet a reality, some are calling them “pretend intelligences” as they are, so far, only good at regurgitating materials created by actual intelligences.

Setting all of that aside, the focus of many of the postings right now is the “AI Bubble” which is that the AIs currently on offer are not making enough income to justify their investment. In fact they cannot make enough income to justify the investment, hence the “bubble” declaration and the focus on the damage that will be done by that bubble when it bursts, because financial bubbles always burst. (Many think the AI Bubble is the “Mother of All Bubbles” and could wreck the global economy.)

So, seeing these posts, I have to ask, why are these corporations investing so much money in the development of products that cannot produce enough income to justify the investment? The answer is simple: the corporations want to use AIs to replace a sizable fraction of their employees. You have already seen some of this happening if you have called for help to any company and gotten in a conversation with a chatbot, via “chatting” about your issue.

But if we stop to think about the effect of that replacement, we start from the thinking of the corporations. Corporations used to think of their highly trained workforces as an asset. But those days are long gone. Corporations now look at their labor costs as a liability. If only they didn’t have to pay all of those pesky workers … damn! Economics used to have somewhat of a soul, but that soul was sucked out by the likes of Milton Friedman of the Chicago School of Economics. Today economics is solely about profit and loss and has nothing to do with providing good jobs and services for the communities the companies exist in, etc.

So, modern corporations see the turnover from human workers to AIs as a reduction of losses … only. Estimates of as high as 40% of all jobs being replaced by AIs are dancing in their heads. But think about it. The executives of these corporations only see their stock prices soaring because their profitability increased. But looking past that, will stock markets even still exist? If 40% of corporate workers are canned, what happens to the economy when those folks no longer make an income and have no money to spend, or at least far less to spend. The job market cannot absorb all of those laid off workers, so what happens?

Also, a lower demand created by non-workers having less to spend means a lot of the currently marginal companies go belly up, creating more unemployment, creating even more uncertainty. And stock followers like uncertainty like they like the plague, so what happens?

I have to ask: Would the world be better off if there were less greed? We have no real need for billionaires, so why are we encouraging their existence? What if corporations were judged as to how good they are as corporate citizens of their communities? They keep insisting they are people, shouldn’t we expect them to act like good people instead of the psychopaths they currently are?

And how do the values of the products made by AIs hold up? Would you rather have an authentic painting by Picasso or ChatGPT? How good could a recipe be if an AI can’t taste the damned thing? How good can music be if the singer is an AI and the band is artificial. How likely are “they” to get “in the groove” or improvise, one bot riffing off of another?

Just because we can do something doesn’t mean we should, especially when the guide star of such efforts is making a profit, just making a fucking profit.

Was 9/11 Inevitable?

I just finished watching a documentary, A Good American, on Amazon Prime, one of the foci of which was a worker for the National Security Agency. He developed through his own initiative a way to track meta data from around the world to identify potential problems. Being a good American, he did not include meta data from U.S. citizens and the like to preserve their privacy rights.

But for his competition in the NSA, his approach had a problem. It was too cheap to implement and since it didn’t involve huge contracts for external contractors, many former and current employees of the NSA worked for such contractors, it was discouraged and downright sabotaged. Nobody was going to get rich implementing his approach and it was essentially complete in any case.

After 9/11, a suspicious official asked the team in charge of their banned effort to scan all the data collected by the NSA to see if the NSA missed anything. It took a day, day and a half but not only did they find evidence of the 9/11 plot, but they also identified the plotters and much more information that hadn’t come out yet.

The fates of people who stand in the way of corrupt officials getting rich was predictable but when the hammer fell upon this small team of good Americans, it was heart wrenching.

Donald Trump, Mr. President Corrupt Asshole the First, is busy knocking the pins out from under this country, but he is not the one that put our country on shaky enough ground for him to do the damage that has been done. You will see quite a lineup of corrupt assholes preceding him. Watch the video and be prepared to be pissed off, very pissed off.

Say it Ain’t So, Max!

Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are part of the mystery that we are trying to solve. (Max Planck, one of Quantum Mechanics OGs))

Theists use such quotations in support of their blatherings, but again, the context trips them up. According to Google “Max Planck was a deeply religious and spiritual person throughout his life, though he did not adhere to a conventional “personal God” of traditional religion. As a lifelong Lutheran, he believed in an almighty, omnipotent, and intelligent God, often framing science and religion as complementary forces that pursue the same goal …”

Yes, Der Herr Doktor was pandering as so may religious people do. But can his statement not be true?

Let’s look at that. Consciousness “research” is a hot topic now. (I used quotes around the word research as it is used to cover philosophical speculations and most people think of research as being scientific research.) In consciousness studies a key point is self awareness. How is it that we are aware of ourselves, as an entity, and also aware of our own thoughts? That question wouldn’t exist is we were unaware of such, so what that means is we can study ourselves, which such studies are examples of so doing. So, is being part of the mystery we are trying to solve any kind of barrier to solving such puzzles? I don’t think so, but possibly Max did.

Postscript The quotation is in a Socratic dialogue with Einstein, included as an appendix to Planck’s 1932 book, “Where Is Science Going?”

Trump Promised No New Wars

In his first campaign Trump promised “no new wars” many, many times (as part of his stump speech, back when he bothered).

“I’m not going to start a war, I’ll stop wars.” (November 26, 2024)

“We want to have no wars,” Trump says when addressing military leaders (September 2025)

Send thoughts and prayers to Iranians … and stay tuned. Not only does Trump Always Chicken Out (TACO) but Trump Always Lies (He is a TAL man). He wouldn’t know the truth if it bit him in the ass, so he just makes shit up, almost entirely of lies.

Why Would Gods Create Moralities?

In the free will debate, many religious apologists/excusigists claim that their god gave us free will so we could freely choose to worship it. And since we have free will we can also choose to do wrong things, even patently evil things. (Bad humans, bad!)

So, then, according to this religious narrative, their god then gave us rules of behavior to guide our actions. WTF? This equates to “these rules are really really important and you must follow them, except you don’t have to.”

As I often encourage, let’s take a step back. If the creator god were to create human beings who did not want to do bad or evil things (I have known a great many of these folk in my life, they already exist), then there would be no need of moral rules or laws, no? If this were the case, could human beings choose to worship that god or not? I think so. There is no threat involved either way, so they are free to choose. This is not “free will” per se because some choices are off the table, but those choices aren’t on the table when the question is “Do you believe in this god and will you worship it?”

Only theists would think that not beleiving in their god is evil. Muslims who stop beleiving in Allah are to be killed. In Christian history, anyone who declared they didn’t believe in Jesus could be killed. (Christians have been Christians longer than Muslims have been Muslims and some lessons come only over time. It is no longer the practice of Christian religions to burn atheists at the stake. Hey, they had a near 600 year head start in weeding out the barbarities.)

If one doesn’t subscribe to the rules of a religion, not worshipping their god is an open decision, not a sin or grievous error.

It is easily seen why religions co-opt local moralities (usually via force or violence). So, the claim is “do not follow your rules, follow our rules.” This is part of the forced conversion game plan. In Islam, you either convert or agree to be a slave to Muslims, paying tribute as it were. Once you have converted, then the rules of their religion do apply to you and they will enforce them on you as that enforcement is part of the foundation of the religion. Without the threat of that violence people just wander away. European and Middle Eastern history is riddled with massive forced conversion campaigns, just ask any Jew. Enforcing moral rules puts the church hierarchies in a position of power. They can go around secular authorities and enforce their rules with impunity. (Sharia law anyone? It was the same in European Christianity when roving bands of “knights” had license to slaughter any villagers they found to be suspect, and any villagers who had just harvested a crop or brought in a flock of sheep or goats from a high pasture were automatically suspect because, well, the knights were hungry. Hunh, ICE agents before there was ICE.)

Competition v. Cooperation

Right now, politicians goaded by money from business elites are pushing the concept that competition is good in schools. And I am not talking about interscholastic sports (Friday Night Lights, etc.). They are saying that educational vouchers and charter schools provide competition that forces public schools to up their games.

Yeah, right. These business mavens are the same ones who are saying out loud that competition is for suckers and their goal is monopoly, giving them the ability to set prices all by themselves in their captured markets.

So, yes, they are lying, either deliberately or just passing on the lies of others because it suits their needs.

So, would competition between schools actually serve to increase the performances of the schools? It turns out that the mistakes are many and deep. At the deepest level, history shows us that competition produces cooperation, not the other way around. As one author, Glenn Borchardt, put it “First came the traffic accidents, then came the traffic signals.” Even conflicts, huge in scale, like wars end and produce cooperation in the form of new trade agreements, marriages, culinary diversity, best friends, and so on.

At this time the 2026 Winter Olympics is going on and at the top of the medal count charts is Norway, a tiny country. They must, like China, get kids involved in competing at very young ages and then weeding out the less proficient to end up with all those Olympic Champions and medalists, right?

Wrong.

Norway actively discourages competitions in their youths until they are well into high school. For example, a school will put on a run and time the kids running, but then no medals are awarding nor are the times posted, so the kids have no way to compare themselves against their classmates. Games, like soccer, are played but scores are not kept.

As usual, the education reformers, the edu-formers as I call them, have only half baked ideas, but because of their wealth and political leverage, they get their way more often than not. For example, there has never been a poll in which the public has stated it would like to have educational vouchers implemented. So, harkening to the people, the state legislatures, and how the federal government, has avoided them like the plague … wrong! Voucher systems have been implemented all over the country resulting in billions of public funds being transferred to private schools. A large majority of voucher users are already in private schools, so the parents of these children are just pocketing the money. Maybe the private schools benefit from people being more willing to send their kids there, because their tuition in part or whole is being refunded to them, but their kids were already enrolled! So, the educational funding, collected to support public schools is being funneling into the pockets of the elites who had already put their kids in those schools. (There is a long history of rich folks sending their kids to private schools and then resenting the fact that they pay taxes to education the great unwashed majority that doesn’t include their kids. That they benefit from having an educated populace escapes them somehow.)

A Small Fallacy … Amplified

I read Diane Ravitch’s blog every day (and if you are an education buff, so should you) and in today’s blog reporting on the decision of the New Hampshire legislature to exempt voucher students from taking the same tests public school kids take, the following goad appeared:

“So-called “education reformers” are all in favor of standards, tests, and accountability. Such a strategy, they insist, drives higher test scores.”

The pro-testing folks have put forth testing, lots and lots of testing, as the only way to improve the public schools. Can you pot the flaw in their thinking? In ordinary discourse it is usually stated in the form of a mis-attributed quotation: “Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is a definition of insanity.”

The problem is this: the fourth graders tested this year are a different batch of kids from those tested last year. You can compare the gross results, but not the individual results. Fans of educational research are familiar with the “pre-test v. post-test” research model. You start out testing kids as to how well they, say, jump rope. Then you “teach” them things that are supposed to increase their ability to jump rope, and then you test them again, in the “post-test.” Did the kids improve or not? You can tell this way. In these grand testing schemes, there are no pre-tests, only post-tests … on different groups of students.

Consider an industrial example. There is a team of guts stamping automobile fenders/ They place a sheet of flat steel into the maw of a massive hydraulic press and … Bam! The press stamps out a fender, which will need trimming to remove the excess metal, but that is not the job of the team. So, there is a stack of sheets. A team is timed as to how long it takes to stamp out 20 fenders. Then any errors are subtracted. Then the team is tested again … and again … and what do you expect to find? I expect consistency. The team know what they are doing. It is a repetitive task. They have been doing it for a long time and they have developed a recognizable pace of work.

But what if you wanted to improve the process? What would you do? To change the process at all you would need to change the starting material, the stacked sheets of sheet metal, the workers, or maybe the speed of the stamping press. If you don’t  make any substantive changes in the materials or the equipment or the process, what should you expect? You should expect consistency.

This is what we want from fourth grade teachers, to elevate the third graders provided them to being fourth graders, ready to start the fifth grade. But what if the latest batch of kids come to school dead tired, hungry, and suffering from various maladies: toothaches, headaches, nausea, allergies, colds, flu, measles, etc. Far worse than the previous batch, so how does that effect results?

The error made by these “eduformers,” these politicians with their heads up their asses, is they think students are distinct and separated from their environment, when actually they are inseparable from their environment. If their parents are worried about being deported, or losing their jobs, or losing benefits, the kids will pick up that vibe and be less likely to be able to concentrate on school work.

If these politicians really wanted to help, they do not, they would address things like hunger, gangs in the neighborhoods, drug dealing near schools, etc. Just as if you let the temperature in the fender stamping shop descend to –42° you wouldn’t expect your workers to be as nimble, environments do count. This is why even greedy-ass corporations create positive work environments to keep worker productivity up. (At least until workers can be replaced by “AIs” or robots whose work environment requirements are minimal.)