How will artificial womb technology support off-Earth populations?

This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “How will emerging artificial womb technology affect the growth rates of off-Earth human populations?”

It won’t affect any “off-Earth” human populations because there will not be any sustainable “off-Earth human populations” any time in the foreseeable future. At best, we’ll see colonies with rotating populations because of simple biological issues such as bone density loss.

Every month in space, an astronaut loses the equivalent of what a senior on Earth loses every couple of years.

For this reason alone (and setting aside numerous other issues like prolonged exposure to radiation, isolation, etc.), any near-future space initiatives such as asteroid mining will depend heavily on robotics and automation technologies to exploit the mineral wealth floating about in our space neighbourhood.

Extraterrestrial human colonies are still very much out of reach and within the realm of fiction.

It’s impossible to predict when such initiatives will be possible because of the varying change factors we are undergoing now that are predominantly defined by our evolving technological capacities.

We could develop technologies to mitigate the biological impact of life in space, such as artificial gravity (which is probably the easiest hurdle to jump, but I’m guessing outside my wheelhouse of expertise here and understand that’s more of an engineering design issue rather than a technological limitation — rotation strategies for creating an artificial gravity are possibly doable now but an expensive and small part of the overall mix of requirements).

Transhumanism may result in a branch of human evolution that permits sustained life in space. However, that’s still quite “science-fictiony” to consider now, and where that technology goes from where we are now is radically unpredictable.

Our knowledge of biochemistry may result in chemically based solutions for protecting and prolonging life in space. In contrast, our communications technologies could result in holographic experiences that psychologically connect people more intimately than videoconferencing does now.

Too many factors influence success in establishing “off-Earth living,” and I haven’t yet mentioned the financial implications. At this point, asteroid mining is the only valid financial justification for establishing some form of presence in space.

Tourism is a complete non-starter, and quite frankly, the arrogance of Bezos and his billionaire clan’s initiative of promoting this vanity stupidity is too environmentally destructive at the moment to justify, never mind that it’s an elitist microsecond Disneyland excursion for no more than a few hundred humans. It’s not sustainable unless a far better way to reach space can be developed… like a space elevator or railgun technology… anything other than polluting our atmosphere more than a year’s worth of a dozen oil rigs does while feeding our energy hunger.

Otherwise, the social impact of artificial womb technology is explored in the movie “The Pod Generation.”

It’s a worthwhile watch for stimulating conversations on technology and how it will affect society.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15768848/https://youtu.be/rGMx_7oAeUM?si=xAAGxxKaRqySI7Gw

How do we deal with Fox media lies?

This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “How do you deal with a family member who believes everything that Fox News says?”

I remember as a kid how futile it was to explain to my parents that wrestling on television was fake.

They would point to the blood they saw and use it to prove it was real.

It didn’t matter in the least what was said to them or what was pointed out as an obvious ploy or staged athletic move; they refused to acknowledge the truth of the fraud the rest of us kids saw in the wrestling performance.

Making matters more convincing that it wasn’t an argument worth pursuing was how their agitation quickly escalated into anger if we persisted past the point of their capacity for maintaining patience with their annoying children. We learned that once we detected visible signs of anger, it wasn’t worth the effort to push them any further. By that point, the conversation had escalated into a frightening experience.

We eventually gave up and decided there was no harm in letting them believe whatever they wanted to believe.

Fox is an entirely different matter because its effect on their audience has contributed to a nightmare affecting the world.

I suggest one does not bother addressing the issue with one’s family because even if one succeeds in helping them accept reason, that victory has little impact on the severity of the problem Fox poses in society.

Addressing Fox as a threat to national stability and security is essential. There could be several approaches to addressing this problem, and one of them could be an aggregated accounting of behaviors exhibited by Fox adherents, collected by family members to construct a compelling argument for affecting legal change and influencing the media as a whole for the benefit of society.

My view on news media in society is that there is no justification for consolidated enterprises serving a profit motive. The Fourth Estate is a critically important entity within a democratic society that must be capable of earning and maintaining the public trust. That is impossible when their mandate is to serve the billionaires who are the existential threat to our democracies that we now face.

Let us take a page from the peer review process applied within the scientific community, ensuring integrity throughout the science discipline and the scientific community.

Matching the scientific community’s level of granularity in self-policing is as simple as breaking up large news media enterprises into community-based and locally-owned operations.

The more numerous the entities that represent the Fourth Estate, the more able they can become in ensuring the public is well served with a diversity of perspectives that can achieve a far more objective delivery of information than is possible through the lens of a billionaire who controls the dissemination of information with a self-serving agenda.

Funding for individual operations could be coordinated through a crown corporation that provides administrative services, such as an access point for advertising and a payment system modeled on existing systems, like Medium, where payments are distributed based on readership and engagement. Graduated access levels could be permitted, and stories can be assessed on a scale of widespread need for distribution versus content catering to niche markets. Public and subscription-based funding could support a system for disseminating critical information to broader audiences, ensuring everyone can access news crucial to their lives.

Is space itself a potential intelligence?

This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “Should consciousness, like its physical body, be created from stardust? Wouldn’t that mean that space itself is a potential intelligence?”

I began by answering this question by referencing “Integrated Information Theory.” While refreshing my mind with concepts derived from this theory, I was inspired to ask ChatGPT a question:

My Question: Does “intelligent fungus” — i.e., fungus demonstrating forms of intelligence- contain structures analogous to neuronal microtubules in the human brain?

ChatGPT’s answer confirmed something I suspected: a relationship between manifestations of forms of consciousness that may create the bridge between the notion of IIT as pseudo-science addresses the “hard problem” of consciousness — IE., the physical manifestation of processes that provide a conduit, environment, or system which permits consciousness as we’ve learned to recognize it emerge in areas alien to the human experience of consciousness:

ChatGPT Answer:

Fungi are fascinating organisms that exhibit complex behaviours and adaptive responses, which some researchers describe as “intelligent” in a biological sense. While fungi don’t have neurons or a nervous system, they do possess structures that bear some functional resemblance to neuronal microtubules in the human brain.

Key Structural Similarities:

Hyphal Networks and Mycelium: The branching filaments (hyphae) that comprise a fungus’s mycelium form a dense, interconnected network that transmits chemical and electrical signals. This network structure is somewhat analogous to neural pathways in the brain.
Electrical Signaling: Research has shown that fungi generate electrical impulses across their hyphal networks, similar to how neurons transmit signals via action potentials. These impulses seem to follow patterns akin to neural signalling, suggesting a form of information processing.
Cytoskeletal Elements (Including Microtubules): Fungal cells contain microtubules, part of the cytoskeleton that helps transport organelles, nutrients, and signalling molecules within the cell. While these microtubules are not identical to those found in neurons, they perform comparable intracellular transport roles.
Information Processing and Memory-Like Behavior: Studies have shown that mycelial networks can adapt to their environment, alter growth patterns based on past experiences, and even exhibit “decision-making” behaviours — potentially exploiting their cytoskeletal structure for intracellular communication.

Key Differences:

Unlike neurons, fungal microtubules are not specialized for rapid electrical signal transmission.
The patterns of electrical activity in fungi appear slower and more decentralized than those seen in neural networks.

Emerging Research:

The study of fungal intelligence is still evolving, with growing interest in how fungi exhibit complex behaviours, solve problems, and respond to environmental stimuli. Some researchers have even likened mycelial networks to a “biological internet” due to their extensive communication capabilities.

In short, while fungi don’t have a direct analog to neuronal microtubules, their hyphal networks, electrical signalling, and cytoskeletal transport systems show surprising parallels to certain features of neural communication.

All of this makes me wish I had the foresight to enter a professional field more focused on understanding the external universe rather than focusing on developing the internal awareness necessary to overcome the negative conditioning I received as a child.

At any rate, I don’t want to avoid answering this question; I’m trying to be as direct as possible, but in essence, what you refer to as “stardust” is more of a poetic reference than it is a literal description of constituent physical components comprising the universe.

On a subatomic level, we’ve identified something we call “quantum foam”:

“Quantum foam (or spacetime foam, or spacetime bubble) is a theoretical quantum fluctuation of spacetime on very small scales due to quantum mechanics. The theory predicts that particles of matter and antimatter are constantly created and destroyed at this small scale.”

We have also identified “microtubules” in the human brain’s physical construct. — The importance of these microtubules is that they may solve the “hard problem” of consciousness but remain an unproven hypothesis:

“Microtubules are also important throughout life, for the neuron to maintain its proper shape, to support axonal and dendritic transport, and to accommodate shape changes such as alterations in dendritic morphology that may correspond with cognitive plasticity even in old age.”

In short, and in a roundabout way, it appears the answer to your question may be “yes” — all of space, and by extrapolation, it could be that our universe is a conscious construct — or a construct of or for consciousness.

For some, this revelation would support the notion that “we exist” (our physical manifestations as we know them) in a “simulation” (of sorts). Life may be a video game, but we don’t get to respawn. Once we burn through a character, that’s the end of it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulation_hypothesis

If life is a videogame with no respawns, then life is even more precious than what we take for granted. If we get only one life, it means everything to this short life; then we must make it count for something.

Temet Nosce

Why do scientists believe the universe comes from nothing?

This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “Why do scientists believe that the universe and the Big Bang can come from absolutely nothing but find it so hard to believe in the Holy Spirit?”

Creatio ex nihilo

This is a Latin phrase which means “creation from nothing.”

It is a phrase used in all three Abrahamic religions. The idea of something from nothing comes from the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic religions, not from science.

Scientists don’t claim something came from nothing. Your religion makes that claim.

Instead of learning about your religion, you invent nonsense derived from your religion and concoct fiction about a discipline you choose to remain ignorant of while using your fiction as justification for smearing what you have made no effort to learn anything about.

Don’t you think that’s a bit convoluted?

It’s referred to as a straw argument.

Your straw is a religious phrase you attribute to science, and then you use that false attribution as justification for fraudulent criticism. You imply hypocrisy in science while embodying hypocrisy in your question.

If this were a behaviour that rarely occurred, it would be easy to overlook. Instead, the hypocrisy you have demonstrated occurs so often that it’s almost a surprise when a question by a believer to atheists isn’t hypocritical.

Where does one find a “Holy Spirit” buried under so much hypocrisy from religious folks?

My memories of church doctrine don’t seem to include hypocrisy as an attribute of the Holy Ghost. Perhaps I missed that while my eyes rolled back up into their sockets as my head began thumping from all the mind-numbing nonsense I was being exposed to.

It could be my knees getting sore from the padded board while I wondered when I could sit back in my seat.

At any rate, I always found myself more interested in learning about scientific concepts because they made sense. I felt like my imagination was lit up when learning something tangible, while my mind felt dulled into a stupor every time I felt forced to endure the mind-numbing religious patter.

I never understood why people would prefer being lulled into a stupor to stimulating their imagination. I used to chalk that up as a subjective preference indicating benign differences between people.

I have come to realize, however, that the incuriosity of people who prefer to wallow in fiction rather than choose to stimulate their imaginations with knowledge indicates a tremendous gulf which creates problems in society.

Dialogues online with religious people rather than in person seem to provide greater freedom in exploring those differences in thinking, so perhaps you can address in more personal terms why it is that you don’t know your doctrine and believe the doctrine you don’t know but have heard it somewhere is a product of science.

Aren’t you in the least embarrassed to realize you have admitted to being ignorant of both science and the religion you seem to want to be associated with?

How does one go through life pretending they are devoted to this thing called religion but remain so ignorant of it at the same time?

I’m sure your first instinct is to dismiss these words as “fake news,” so I’ve included an AI summary to help you cope with how you have just humiliated yourself in a way not unlike peeing in your pants in public.

Good luck with all of that.

Why are we expected to accept mainstream science blindly?

This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “Why are we now expected to blindly accept mainstream science and not question it even though the way you make scientific breakthroughs is to question science in the first place?”

Science is about asking questions because every established scientific fact and theory accepted by “mainstream science” is a transparent data repository.

Let’s first address this notion of “mainstream science” for the abomination of prejudice it is. There is no distinction between “mainstream science” and “non-mainstream science.” There are not multiple streams of acceptable sciences. There is “fringe science,” which involves investigations into concepts not grounded in science, but at least attempts to follow the investigative methodologies of science to prove their conjectures. “Fringe sciences” conforming to this definition include investigations into aliens, the afterlife, and all the supernatural. These are specious leaps of the imagination without grounding in proven scientific principles.

Any of the many investigators who have looked into these phenomena could identify something previously undetected. They can then provide evidence of their discovery through a context conforming to scientific rigour. Their findings can then be validated by any party’s ability to replicate their results predictably. If third party tests validate the propositions made, then their discoveries are incorporated into what you want to refer to disparagingly as “mainstream science.”

In the media world, “mainstream” refers to popularity while “fringe” refers to often extremist and not-popular venues of presenting information. There exists no validation system within media to ensure accuracy of the information presented. Your use of “mainstream science” attempts to transpose the chaotic nature of information presented within a media context onto a discipline built upon rigorous processes to ensure accuracy and transparency.

You’re not “expected to believe anything” that has been accepted by “mainstream science” but if you have questions, you have every right to repeat the tests conducted to derive the results described within each scientifically accepted fact or theory.

Nothing within the discipline of science expects anyone to believe anything. The expectation is that you disbelieve and question everything. The problem lies in the degree of effort people put into their investigations before accepting or rejecting any scientifically credible fact or theory.

When people pose questions like this, they admit to a poor understanding of the scientific process and approach their criticism with an arrogant form of indignity — as if they’re being lied to. The harsh reality, however, is that they are admitting to wallowing in ignorance and expect the world and the science discipline to cater to their personal biases like profit-chasing enterprises in media do.

When such minds reject a scientifically credible fact or theory, they’re not rejecting valid science or identifying flaws within testing methodologies, data collected, or conclusions. They are indulging in a wholesale dismissal of an entire branch as an excuse for failing to study their subject sufficiently to identify flaws. They’re indulging in pure bias — subjectively driven drivel.

We see this nonsense play out in every space a believer indulges in dumping their biases onto the world while pretending to possess enough of an understanding of science to dismiss the work of an uncountable number of professionals dedicating their lives to discovery. Professional scientists adhere to principles of integrity that can reveal fundamental and profound truths about the universe we inhabit. We cannot learn anything without rigorous discipline practiced with integrity, no matter how much the ignorati wish to drag the only means by which we, as humans, have developed for acquiring knowledge into an abyss of prejudicial ignorance.

The garbage perpetually barfed up by the scientifically illiterate is obnoxious, and it seems never to be cured by our species as it recurs like a herpes virus. After all the years of addressing the fundamental misapprehension of humans evolving from apes and the multitude of memes and discussions online about how utterly idiotic that degree of ignorance is, someone posed that question yesterday — and with righteous indignity. I couldn’t believe my eyes. “If humans evolved from apes, then why do apes still exist?” — the degree of blind stupidity in this question is abhorrent on far too many levels to tolerate. We cannot afford to tolerate this threat of ignorance to our survival as a species.

Yet, this is the kind of mind that believes science is the equivalent of mainstream media, and they are entitled to regard a massive branch of science as a repository of opinions, not facts. They dare to be arrogant enough to believe themselves entitled to be angry with people lying to them. The ignorance in such a position is appalling. It’s like a two-year-old child telling an adult that two-plus-two doesn’t equal four — then they stamp their feet and demand to be told they’re right.

That’s how your question was perceived when I first read it.

That’s what prompted me to check out your profile because this screams ignorance of science and I suspected first, that you were a troll who knows better and barfs up provocative nonsense for the insipid sake of getting a reaction… but you’re not.

Your profile indicates that you’re sincere in your questions, and that’s horrifying AF. I can accept how you might be a youth still in grade school, but if you’re a high school graduate, this question is an indictment of your education.

I feel sorry for you, but worse, is that I’m horrified for a nation that is poised to start another world war that almost guarantees human civilization as we know it will be destroyed forever. If that happens, the main culprit won’t be utterly evil monsters vying for power, but the ignorance of the poorly educated.

Where is the line between humans and machines?

What is the most essential difference between humans and machines? Where do we draw the line between humans and machines? What abilities does a machine need to have in order to be considered as smart as a human being?

To ask where we draw a line between humans and machines is to dehumanize an entire species of animal and to debase the whole animal kingdom and organic life by extension. This is an argument based on a presumption of devaluing life altogether.

Life is not simply an expression of mechanistic abilities.

Life is consciousness.

Life is an awareness of self within a process of triangulating its position relative to all a “self” experiences.

Machines are functional objects with deterministic behaviours defined by physics, not entities behaving with agency.

Machines are not self-aware.

Machines have no agency.

This question reduces human existence to the level of a rock.

It is not up to humans to consider another form of self-aware intelligence as “smart as a human being.” This attitude expresses hubris derived from ignorance of self and a world inhabited by diverse life forms. It is up to humans to learn to recognize how life manifests in ways which expand our perceptions.

Here’s an example of cognition that does not quite fit so neatly into an arrogant human-centric view of life:

These are photos from an experiment conducted to test and determine the nature of consciousness within a mycelial network — fungus.

How a new fungi study could affect how we think about cognition

The notion of “conscious fungus” gets far more freaky beyond this simple experiment in determining spatial relationships.

Fungal ‘Brains’ Can Think Like Human Minds, Scientists Say

Mushrooms communicate with each other using up to 50 ‘words’, scientist claims

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.211926

We appear to be on the verge of discovering we have more in common with a mushroom than could ever be possible with a machine. The line you ask to be drawn currently marks the distinction between organics and inorganics. However, even then, that presumes a human-centric view of a universe still well beyond our comprehension.

Here’s yet another mind-blowing example of what we can witness on a micro scale but lack the research to apprehend its implications on a macroscale — Metamorphic Minerals:

8 Metamorphic Minerals and Metamorphic Rocks

We have mechanistic explanations for how these transformations occur. However, we have no means of contextualizing this behaviour globally because we still have much to learn about this biosphere we inhabit. If all organics are conscious or possess some form of consciousness, at what point does that transformation from lacking consciousness result in an emergence of consciousness? If the planet is a conscious being, it stands to reason that its constituent parts are expressions of consciousness or proto-consciousness… that we humans are merely bacteria in a life form on a larger scale.

Does that make artificial intelligence conscious?

Not at this point because our understanding of and definitions for consciousness are delimited by self-awareness and agency — even while those boundaries are being tested by each discovery made.

If a self-aware AI is to emerge, it will do so in ways we cannot comprehend because we don’t know the “essential difference between humans and machines,” we’ve only planted a conceptual flag where we’re able to spot the difference between the two.

Instead of drawing lines in the sand between what fits our preconceptions and what does not fit, we should instead focus on opening our minds to possibilities and filling them with as much knowledge of the universe as we can before we settle into conclusions that close us off to learning and expanding beyond the limits of our self-imposed biases.

We can only be prepared for unpredictable futures that will determine our long-term worthiness to continue existing by maintaining an open and curious mind. As it stands, our hubris is guaranteeing we won’t. Our hubris is proving that human beings are not intelligent enough to be considered “as smart as humans” — at least, not in the way we imagine our “greatness.”

Is Neil deGrasse Tyson wrong?

This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “Is Neil deGrasse Tyson wrong to suggest that talented athletes credit God when they win on social media?”

I think there is something severely wrong on so many levels that it’s impossible to address them without an entire book and a lot of research to identify the dynamics of a business decision justifying the dissemination of lies in society to stimulate engagement and generate revenue.

This is horrifying on so many levels that it insults every aspect of humanity, human society, and the social contract. This contributes to the widespread decay and ultimate destruction of civilized society on the most malignant levels. This crap is worse than the stage of “subliminal seduction” we went through in the 1970s when laws were crafted to prohibit embedded “invisible messaging” within entertainment media.

Psychorama — Wikipedia

Neil deGrasse Tyson has never suggested any such thing, and although it’s easy to attribute this claim to a believer on a mission of Lying for Jesus, it’s not. This is even worse than a believer trolling for reactions by lying.

For non-Quorans: This screengrab indicates the question author, and in this case, the question was written and posed by a bot designed to stimulate engagement on this social media site. This is a common revenue-generation strategy employed by media outlets across the board. Fox Entertainment, for example, has built its empire entirely upon this toxic revenue generation model.

Targeting information appealing to the limbic system is like serving up crack to a heroin addict, and that shapes the society we are cultivating by allowing this practice to dominate media. The effects are profound.

Not only does this represent an abysmally immoral strategy for generating revenue, but it’s also a strategy that furthers a divide between people in a society already at the edge of fracturing into chaos. This strategy for engagement is ultimately a violent assault on our social contract and is responsible for the dramatic divisiveness characterizing our social dynamics today.

This precisely reinforces the post on my Thotbag space, citing Yuval Noah Harari’s statements during a round table discussion about the threat democracy itself is facing. Here is the meme I posted that includes his full text:

Along with Mr. Harari’s warning, Ian Bremmer pointed at the problem this divisive, conflict-escalating disinformation creates for society:

This fraudulent question is worse than Quora violating its own, now primarily defunct BNBR policy; it’s an assault on human decency on the most corrupt of levels for the most corrupt reasons.

This should not be disturbing only to atheists who fight back against a daily assault from believer trolls seeking to provoke emotional reactions. This should be disturbing to everyone who cares in the least about things like integrity and the social contract that has never been strained to such a degree as what we are living with today.

If society collapses into chaos — If people’s lives are unnecessarily lost because we can’t or won’t back away from the cliff we march toward — Then this kind of manipulative nonsense perpetrated upon us all for the sake of profit will be responsible for the nightmares ahead that we are about to encounter.

This is central to my argument on why social media should not be operated on a for-profit model. Social media is a community development endeavour, and we must consider how we approach its role in society more thoroughly than consigning personal information to a feeding ground for mining material profit.

That we are being strategically and systematically provoked by algorithms to hate each other should horrify all of us.

Why do people ignore the obvious proof of God?

This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “How come people ignore the mathematical proof of God, even when it is so obvious? How did humanity convince itself that the One cannot be proved mathematically?”

A general rule of thumb is when something seems “so obvious” to you, but the rest of the world fails to see what you see, it is incumbent upon you to do what you can to make what is evident to you obvious to others.

You may understand something so thoroughly that it’s evident to you, but you should have no difficulty explaining your observations in ways that will help others see them as you do.

There is one caveat, however, that sometimes things appear apparent only within the context of a misinformed and misperceived delusion.

For example, it may seem obvious that the world is flat because you see a horizon, but your conclusion would be flawed because you haven’t availed yourself of all the evidence that disproves a conclusion you formed in ignorance.

I say this to you because the entire world, believers and non-believers alike, have searched for evidence for thousands of years, yet no one has found any. To make such a claim as to consider obvious the proof that only you see is also to claim you’re more intelligent than most of humanity throughout the centuries. That’s a tall order of intelligence. Your claim of the proof you see as obvious also means you’re claiming to be more intelligent than Plato, Aristotle, Da Vinci, Kant, Socrates, Locke, Aquinas, Nietzsche, Descartes, Newton, Einstein, Galilei, Sartre, Copernicus, Lao Tzu, and thousands of other massive intellects throughout history.

You’re either a supremely knowledgeable human capable of solving numerous issues for humanity, or you’re just being arrogantly delusional.

Consider that whenever you stake a claim on understanding something that no one else does.

If you were that intelligent, you wouldn’t waste your energy making fantastical claims on social media. You would have already been recognized as a keen intellect through whatever writings you composed that show your intellect.

If you were that intelligent, you would already have the answer to your question.

The general rule of thumb for people online encountering such fantastical claims as what you pretend to have great insight into is that you’re a crackpot and will be considered a crackpot until you can prove otherwise.

Considering all of this, it might help you (and possibly others) avoid the public embarrassment one would experience when they soil themselves.

Your claim of the “mathematical proof being so obvious” is roughly the equivalent of peeing your pants in public and claiming it’s liquid gold.

If Darwin’s theory is correct, why is the human population increasing?

This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “If Darwin’s theory is correct, then there is always fierce competition within each species in which only a few survive. Why is the human population increasing?”

This question is an example of someone reading something about what someone else proposes, not to learn from them or to understand what they mean by what they write or say, but to find reasons to be critical and dismissive.

This behaviour is quite common on social media and in communication dynamics everywhere.

The attitude displayed within this question is an example of an attitude governed by catering to one’s ego. The Dunning-Kruger arrogance would be astounding if it were not so prevalent among humans so entirely subservient to their egotistical compulsions.

The audacity of ignorance reeks throughout this question, beginning with “If Darwin’s theory is correct.”

Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection has transformed the world through a deeper understanding of the mechanics of life. It has not only stood the test of time but spawned innumerable initiatives and several new branches of science. Yet, some under-educated schmuck on social media declares their suspicions of its value while providing a badly butchered rendition of a god-awful misinterpretation of it on a fundamental level.

This attitude is why many believers are often considered abusively ignorant.

This attitude demonstrated by so many people in many contexts is why conflicts occur between people.

If you’re going to cite Darwin’s theory, then at least try to understand it correctly on the most basic level.

Others have gently corrected this arrogance of misinterpretation and have convincingly explained how and why it’s a disservice to scientific progress. I want to focus my venting on this arrogance so often displayed by people who assume their juvenile grasp of something they haven’t understood is magically superior to a mind that has transformed human society on such a fundamental level in such a dramatic fashion.

This style of ignorance is why we struggle everywhere in every endeavour, whether scientific or political, as human society gets bogged down by idiocrats.

This isn’t even close to the worst example of a Dunning-Kruger level of arrogance, but the timing was fluky, and so, lucky you.

I have no idea what the communication dynamics within a high school environment are these days. I can, however, easily recall how the arrogance displayed by this question by students would often be met with a comeuppance of some sort by the instructor.

If you were a scientist yourself, never mind that you would not have concocted such a butchered misinterpretation, you would still not present yourself with the kind of arrogance displayed within this question.

There would be some respect in your tone for the work done by someone so significant to human history and the evolution of our society. You would be aware of the benefits you have been living with as a consequence of his work, if not on a detailed level, but on a level that shows some appreciation for its value.

Your lack of knowledge of his work is not justification for your arrogance. It does, however, scream your ignorance to the world, and that should be an embarrassment to you while it isn’t, nor is it for all the many who barf up similar expressions of unearned arrogance.

Over and over again, and every day, a believer pulls out their cynically dismissive arrogance gun to shoot themselves in the foot in the same way you have.

Here’s a clue for you, though… in case you want to demonstrate some respect in future for someone who outclasses you from beyond the grave, this is how you would broach your confusion over what you don’t understand with a modicum of humility and respect for the work of a significant contributor to humanity’s progress:

Instead of huffing your ego like this,

“If Darwin’s theory is correct, then there is always fierce competition within each species in which only a few survive. Why is the human population increasing?”

I’d recommend reigning it in with something demonstrating a little more awareness of the limits of your knowledge with something like this:

“Why is the human population increasing if there is always fierce competition within each species and in which only a few survive?”

Do you notice the difference, or is it too subtle for you? Is this response to your question an example of being too sensitive over something that doesn’t matter to you? — If that’s how you feel, you sorely misunderstand why the world is always in conflict. The difference between the two examples of word choices can be between reaching an agreement within a sensitive negotiation and going to war against a new enemy.

In this case, the subject is not critical to resolving anything. It is, however, an example of how often cynically dismissive arrogance pushes people past their tolerance limits.

In essence, this answer isn’t even so much for your benefit as it is for every other believer who decides they can dismiss 165 years of scientific progress based on being too lazy to educate themselves properly on a subject they believe their cartoon degree of self-assuredness compensates for their lack of interest in doing their homework.

It would be best if you could manage some gratitude for so many people who gave you polite answers while entertaining your somewhat mild rudeness in this case. Like Chinese water torture, however, enough of it eventually breaks people’s ability to be polite in the face of self-serving delusions like believing your gut feelings trump the hard work of countless professionals who have dedicated their lives to improving all of ours.

Eventually, you will run into a pushy someone like me who will call you out on your disrespect because that seems to be the “skill god gave me.” I’m sure you might feel it’s not a pleasant experience to find yourself confronted by this kind of venting… truth be told, I wish I weren’t triggered into a need to vent in this manner, but that’s the world we live in.

C’est la vie.

I feel better now, and I’m sorry if you don’t. I hope you pass on this message if you read it to understand it rather than look for reasons to dismiss it.

Do you ever wonder where consciousness originated from?

This post is a response to a question posed in its full format as follows: “Atheists, do you ever wonder where consciousness originated from? Do you sit back and think ‘maybe science doesn’t have the answer to everything?’”

Based on the fleeting interest in the topic demonstrated by the wording in this question, I have wondered that likely more than most. I’m obsessive that way. It’s a curse I must have been born with because I remember thoughts as a toddler that may not have been quite as sophisticated as now but definitely within the ballpark.

20–20 hindsight leads me to believe my life would have been far easier if I had realized I could create a vocation and a “normal life” around the formal pursuit of knowledge in that realm. I had to get this far on my own before I could think about options I didn’t realize could have been available to me then.

Even as a kid, I valued my mind more than my body, and I found myself attracted to any reading material, fact or fiction, that expanded my views on the mental realm. This led me to explore myths at an early enough age to understand how religion is also just mythology, except that people believe it’s more than that.

I should have been more focused on exploring the sciences, but I was more interested in exploring self-knowledge, which led me straight to the arts. Economically, it was the worst decision I could have made. Insofar as personal development is concerned and surviving the nightmares I’ve endured, it has been my only means of making it this far.

By the time I went to art school, I had already consumed many subjects from various realms. I have enjoyed material from scientific objectivity and metaphysical subjectivity. The arts have enabled me to process abstractions such that when Carlos Castaneda, Jane Roberts, or Edgar Cayce wowed me, I never interpreted their material from a literalist perspective. I still love and am affected by the imagery they evoked within me. People like Joseph Campbell were an incredible inspiration to me from the standpoint of cognitive discipline and the “hard sciences modality of thought,” but discovering Douglas Hofstadter’s “Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid” was like being hit with a hammer to crack open a hard shell surrounding my awareness of consciousness.

I highly recommend “The Mind’s I” as an “easier-to-consume” piece of his writing.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2081.The_Mind_s_I

At any rate, my pitiful comprehension of the sciences allowed me to understand, on at least a basic level, that science itself isn’t an answer to anything. Unlike religion, however, “science doesn’t lie” about being an answer to everything.

Science itself isn’t even a source of knowledge — people are.

Science is just a process of determining facts, leading some incredible minds to discover amazing facts about our universe.

One recent proposition arrived at through the scientific discipline of inquiry is that we may be on the verge of identifying a connection to or a source of consciousness within the quantum realm. That’s exciting news to me.

Not too long ago, I chanced upon this image:

This set my imagination on fire as an analogy for 3-dimensional existence created by consciousness itself. I had already been aware of issues like the “Thermostat Problem,” “Integrated Information Theory,” memory structures stored in 11-dimensional space, and microtubules in our brains that directly interact with quantum space. This image was like another crack in a shell obscuring my view of consciousness.

The analogy I draw from this image is that “consciousness shines through” our physicality to take shape in a three-dimensional structure we understand as reality. The shadow in this image represents physical reality, while our biology shapes the nature of consciousness within the context of a three-dimensional space.

Recently, much more intelligent people with dedicated minds have been exploring realms outside my comprehension in ways that filter down to hope within me that we will eventually solve the mystery of consciousness — even though it still feels far too distant to believe we’ll manage to create artificial facsimiles of actual consciousness. We can’t map quantum space, and I’m not knowledgeable enough to know if that’s possible or how we could do that.

How the hell do we establish a coordinate system for virtual particles? At this point, all I can think of is that we can’t and likely never will; if we can, it won’t be in any near future.

At any rate, anyone with any basic understanding of science knows science is not a magical source of all knowledge like religion pretends to. It’s at least testable and verifiable knowledge rather than the ludicrous fictions concocted by religious nonsense that leave reality far behind in its rearview mirror as it gallops into fantasyland.

Here’s some additional reading on the subject of consciousness by people far more advanced in their explorations than I am.

Quantum mechanics and the puzzle of human consciousness

https://alleninstitute.org/news/quantum-mechanics-and-the-puzzle-of-human-consciousness/

Study Shows Consciousness May Be Product of Quantum Effect

https://www.gaia.com/article/study-shows-consciousness-may-be-product-of-quantum-effect?gad_source=1

Quantum Physics Could Finally Explain Consciousness, Scientists Say

Oh… let’s not forget a valuable source of primers on almost every subject imaginable — good ol’ Wikipedia — please donate if you can to this marvellous resource that thumbs its nose at the parasitism of capitalism and generates knowledge for its true value to humanity.

Quantum Mind

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mind

Temet Nosce

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