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Hameroff has made the case that plants might be conscious. We are conscious in a way that boils down to something like: 10 million consciousnesses pr second, while for a plant, it might just trigger ones every 5 seconds.. and the more advanced the animal, the more conscious.

I think the study shows that microtubules uses quantum as how I've read the study. And the neurons also uses the microtubules. See: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jpcb.3c07936 Every cell in the body uses microtubules AFAIK, but when Stuart Hameroff (co-author of the ORCH-OR) has used sedatives on patients, he can make them unconscious. This is where the hypothesis stems from. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orchestrated_objective_reduction The hypothesis also says that the neuron has an immense amount of speed (hz), way more than previous thought of. I'm not sure if i agree with you that humans are the only ones with free will (if i understand you correctly).. I think this is quite possible in other animals and perhaps even cells, although in a way more primitive sense than ours. I've seen some videos and read some articles both from Penrose and Hameroff.. So I don't think this is "popular science BS". In most cases I would tend to agree with you. Thanks for the reply!

The law of the United States does not allow the government to treat individuals differently depending on whether they are Anglo versus Hispanic. Yet, in Great Falls, local police did more than once violate US law in that respect, the first case even making it to the Supreme Court. On the other hand, in Turkey there was an actual law that prohibited the use of Kurdish (also Arabic and Kabardian) in public venues. The difference between the two cases is that in the former we have an aberration contra legem and in the latter we have an actual law. Again, I ask, even beseech you to keep to context. I do not call Israel a “Jewish State”, I understand that expression to simply mean “A state where Jews are granted the fundamental right of existence”, which has been denied them for shocking millennia. Israel is a “Jewish State” only in the sense that Kenya is an “East African Country” in the ethnic sense. The difference between Israel and Turkey in that respect is that Turkey had explicit laws encoding the ethnic Turkish nature of the nation, just as Syria is an “Arabic nation” at the expense of Kurdish, Aramaic, Armenian, and so on: and Syria therefore denies fundamental rights to “foreign” ethnicities such as Kurds. Social media labeling is not proof of anything about the nature of governments, please name a concrete fact that established encoded ethnic discrimination. A close example from US history is article one, section two of the Constitution of the United States which does not address individual rights, but which reduces the body-count of persons w.r.t. enumeration for the House of Representatives in a state in terms of whether the person is free or not, irrespective of their race. You cannot find anything even vaguely close to that in the law of Israel. Hamas’ action are entirely without reason, but they are not without cause: the cause is an underlying wholly irrational ideology of hatred. Now, in regard to the resolution that you cited, passed by Knesset, the preamble which has no enforceable content does make an improper ethnic / religious declaration, just as we find in most Middle Eastern countries, and I condemn that preamble accordingly. You completely ignore the parts of the law that say for example “Those who are not Jewish have the right to honor their days of rest and their holidays”.

“To collapse correctness into propriety is to obliterate the essential character of thought” (Haugeland 1998, 317; further, 325–43; see also Rasmussen 1982; 2014, 337–41; Rand 1966–67, 47–48; Peikoff 1967, 104; 1991, 143–44). ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Haugeland, John. 1998. Truth and Rule-Following. In Having Thought – Essays in the Metaphysics of Mind. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Peikoff, Leonard. 1967. The Analytic-Synthetic Dichotomy. In Rand 1966–67, 88–121. ——. 1991. Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand. New York: Dutton. Rand, Ayn. 1966–67. Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. Expanded 2nd edition. New York: Meridian. Rasmussen, Douglas B. 1982. Necessary Truth, the Game Analogy, and the Meaning-Is-Use Thesis. The Thomist 46(3):423–40. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Identity elements for arithmetic There is an identity element in mathematics-venues from sets, groups, vector spaces, Lie algebras, and associative algebras to things less algebraic and more topological, such as uniform spaces and Abelian topological groups. Indeed there is an identity element in any other venue qualifying as a mathematical category (having such an element is one requirement for qualification as such a creature). Under the morphisms of the category, the identity element transforms any element in the category into itself. That is what is going on also, I have noted, when it is ordinarily said that A is A. I mean in the simplest and most usual meaning of A is A, not the fuller meaning such as when we say a thing is the something it is (added by Avicenna, wielded by Rand). Aristotle took the first-figure syllogisms as obviously valid. With assumption of a few other propositions taken as truly valid (they do appear valid), he was able to show that all the other forms of syllogism could be reduced to the first-figure form. Therefore, he concluded, those other forms of syllogism are also valid. Later on, others (e.g. Leibniz) showed that if you used A is A as a premise in a syllogism, you could prove by syllogism those “other propositions taken as truly valid.” So in logic, the identity mapping of A to itself brings, with a little reworking, a streamlining of theory of the syllogism—fewer assumptions. I’d expect those self-mappings (mappings are a kind of morphisms [the morphisms for the category Sets], but people are more comfortable talking of mappings, so that’s why I’m using it) to be useful in streamlining the theory of groups, the theory of the natural or the real numbers, and so forth. That’s not the kind of usefulness most folks are concerned with, but it is a usefulness for adventurers in mathematics and logic. And that usefulness is itself an objective finding within those disciplines, just as I've found that it pays to sharpen an axe for efficient chopping. That the identity element for multiplication takes any number into itself (and, so, takes itself into itself) under the mapping is not chatter on arbitrary stipulations, but a readout of character of a realm.

Why call it a Jewish state if every religion is treated the same??? (and you talk about self-evident) What substantiation do you need to ascertain that a state belonging to a religion or ethnic group eventually will not respect individual rights? It may support adequate rights but when there is no separation of church and state, there will be favoritism. Below is from the Jerusalem Post unless that is also not credible. The fundamental fight is over the issue of settlements and land ownership and Israel's position is made clear. If people were treated the same, it would not be mentioned that the nation is unique to the Jewish people (not clear if it is religious or ethnic). Keep in mind, that this is not an argument to justify Hama's actions but to show that it did not happen for no reason at all. Also, the previous argument was not that some states don't fulfill what they say, it was against the notion that the actions of a nation are okay because it is the most civilized in the region. Read the full Jewish Nation-State Law https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Read-the-full-Jewish-Nation-State-Law-562923

There is the old statistician's joke, that 2+2=5 for large values of 2. (This is because of rounding to the nearest integer. 2 could be a rounded version of 2.49, and 2.49 + 2.49 is 4.98, and 4.98 rounds to 5.) So maybe 1 times 1 equals 2 for large values of 1 (such as the square root of 2, which rounds to 1). -- p.s. I am not being serious here

[deleted by original poster because it somehow got posted in the wrong thread]

That’s what’s known as context-dropping. The context of the discussion is the video that you didn’t watch, where a number of essential factual observations were made a propos Israel’s defense of its existence (and the anti-Israeli propaganda war). The cat predictably responded (since the posting of the video was directed against her and her ilk as partisans in this propaganda war), but didn’t respond at all productively, instead just making false counter-claims – purporting to disprove major factual claims of the original video, but really just pointing to a huge propaganda document and declaring “The truth is there, you just have to believe!”. I then requested even one concrete instantiation of a case from the document where the law of Israel treats Jews and Arabs differently. That is the context that defines what is relevant. Your quote, which also lacks substantiation (or source) has no bearing on the question of whether the law of Israel treats Jews and Arabs differently (which, again, it does not). Your quote, if it were true, might be relevant to a different question, for example “Is it the case that all existing government have acted immorally?”. We can stipulate that all governments have failed to implement the ideal of rights-protection as the proper function of government, that much has never need in doubt. Because that fact is so self-evident, it needs not be discussed, except as an instantiation of the concept “self-evident”. Taxes and trade restrictions, I rest my case. Palestine is not yet a nation, because it is unwilling to do what is required for existence as a nation. The primary difference between Palestine and Nazi Germany or contemporary Russia is that the latter two have better-organized armies and are better able to carry out wars of aggression against their neighbors. The Palestinians are much more overt in their declaration of an intent to drive the Jews into the sea, compared to Russia versus former and current colonies that they are trying to retake.

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, nobody is entitled to their own facts I meant it in the sense that a total ignorant on a subject has no moral right to have an opinion and to insist for it to be seriously considered by others. This is similar to the case of someone who never actually read something by Ayn Rand herself and dares to express an opinion. At minute 0:59 of Sabine's video is seen some kind of a reference, a title - "Terrence Howard: One Times One Equals Two". Looking it up, I got the place where T. Howard published his research. Unsurprisingly, it was not in the International Journal of Logic and Arithmetic,😁 but on... his Twitter account, under the pompous title "This is the proof to the World of Science and Mathematics that 1x1=2" (See here the tortuous story of publishing this Earth-shattering result). Clicking on the image, one can read T. Howard's "reasoning. He is NOT redefining the operation x, nor is he redefining the symbol 1 - which wouldn't be illegitimate. He means the ordinary arithmetic ! (This takes care of your "Her definition of multiplication is useful to her, Howard’s definition is useful to him, they are both entitled to their opinions") Now: his claim is that 1x1=2 is wrong because it is "unbalanced". This is best explained in one of his comments. Someone asks: "What about what they say that any number multiplied by 1 is itself. In this concept 1 x 1 has to equal 1". Terrence D. Howard answers: "That would contradict the law of action and reaction". 😕This isn't even funny... About If she wanted to illustrate the utility of multiplication, her example is misleading. She should have taken for ex. 3x7 or 7x3 (as you suggest in your own example). However, there is no argument from authority in Sabine's reasoning. As T. Howard is operating within the normal arithmetic, 1x1=1 is, as Sabine says (min 1:30), not an opinion, but the result of the definition(s) - of multiplication x and of the symbol 1. The exact way in which 1 x 1 = 1 (or N x 1 = N) logically (i.e. deductively) results from the definitions depends on what exactly one takes as definition and axioms, IOW how one separates premises from consequences. It seems that there are several approaches at the axiomatization of Arithmetic - see Wiki. It is useful to read for ex. about the Peano axiomatization, to see how a - relatively simple - axiomatization works.

In what sense? Injustice is going to be relevant. I will grant you that it is NOT conclusive. (I did not watch the video, I'm just responding the the current statements) It depends if you recognize the "so-called" Palestine as a national entity. But is it based on ranking in civilization? We are the most civilized country on earth and we got half a million people killed in Iraq and then said "Oops" we thought you had weapons of mass destruction. One of the most civilized countries in 1945 killed 6 million Jews. The civilization argument is absurd in that it will justify any horrific thing based on ranking in civilization. Immoral action by a nation is immoral irrespective of ranking in civilization. There are plenty of examples of highly-ranked civilized countries that commit uncivilized/immoral acts even in the present day. By definition, a state that is religious or ethnic states is going to be discriminating in its laws. An Islamic state is also discriminatory ... simply by definition. You don't have to look at their law books. It's inevitable. This will hold for a Jewish or Mormon state too. Producing a specific law that proves the point is unnecessary. What is the point of having a Jewish state if you can't discriminate in favor of Jews? Another complexity in this situation is that the "so-called Palestine" is now recognized by the OSLO accords go-between (Norway) as of the 28th of May even after all these horrific acts. We can't say Norway Sweden or Ireland or Spain are uncivilized nations (plus the other 140 nations that recognized so-called Palestine). So I'm wondering when it will not be referred to as "so-called". Is it a nation now? Or is this successful propaganda?

The claim is irrelevant, so there is no point in worrying over veracity. The cat woman made a scurrilous false claim about the law of Israel, AI’s claim that it has made certain reports is irrelevant since they are not about the question at hand. The focus on the question at hand comes from the video, which I hope you watched and understood. Consider this analog: US soldiers “discriminated” against German soldiers at the end of WWII when they liberated Germany, and against various people (Pashtuns mostly) in Afghanistan when we expelled the Taliban. So F-ing what? There is no evidence that Israeli soldiers violated the law of Israel in their operations in so-called “Palestine”. Big clue: “Arab” and “Palestinian” refer to wildly different things. When a country is at war for its survival, it is unreasonable to expect the level of de-policing that you find in the peaceful contemporary US. I requested page numbers for such supposedly supporting quotes, you supply no page numbers. I checked the document for that quote, and it is nowhere to be found. This kind of prevarication is why I dismiss these anti-Israeli propaganda sound bites are deliberately created lies intended to besmirch the name of the most civilized nation in the Middle East. Unfortunately, after these lies get written once, they get propagated across the internet by people with good intent. I’m saying, you should check your sources.

I was just wondering why you didn't link the Rogan episode. I do like Sabine so thanks.

Yes, but discrimination is also about the application of the law equally. Even Yaron Brook has admitted that there is a difference in how people can bid on land, which he objected to. But it all depends on who you want to believe. For instance, is the following credible? "Amnesty International has reported that in the West Bank, Israeli settlers and soldiers who engage in abuses against Palestinians, including unlawful killings, enjoy "impunity" from punishment and are rarely prosecuted, but Palestinians detained by Israeli security forces may be imprisoned for prolonged periods of time ..."

Good question. I often watch Sabine's videos; I find her mostly rational, though not always. Her videos cover subjects I am interested in and help keep me up to date. Some of her videos discuss the scientific method and pseudoscience. On the other hand, I sometimes debate curious characters who believe that science is merely a game of words, numbers, and formulas. Despite being completely ignorant in specific fields (and often in general), they believe their arbitrary opinions should be considered on the same footing as those of specialists, for example, regarding why relativity or quantum mechanics is wrong. This is why I considered useful to post the link to OO, in Science and Technology section.

This isn't a false Left/Right statism dichotomy issue. It involves properly defined concepts and principles of man's nature in regard to reality and how ownership occurs. Any other arguments or ideas on the subject can be dismissed out of hand as arbitrary or subjective false interpretations and ignored because they don't reflect reality in even the remotest manner and are only produced to enslave mankind at their core. Engaging in debate on a subject like this is a complete waste of time in the same manner that engaging individuals who speak of mysticism is and improperly lends their false ideas the visage of being in the realm of the "possible" when they of course are not even remotely. "Does one own or not own property delivered by Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy?" is along the same lines and deserves the same "respect" and "discussion". All of these "discussions" with people representing objectively false and/or arbitrary nonsense boils mostly down to Clintonesk "It depends on what the definition of is, is" type subjectivist nonsense or worse (purely arbitrary and imaginary with zero relationship with reality).

That is an excellent point, demonstrating that ownership always exists one way or the other, in some form. Therefore it's how it comes about which is the disagreement between left and right. In other words, the argument is not ownership vs. no ownership. It can't be.

A brief video briefly bringing up the issue

Multiplication is a widely known operation. If we want to prove that it is worthwhile to talk about multiplication and to prove what 192837465 times 1618152205 is, we may be taking on a very big task. But it is clear that 1 times 1 is 1, and that any operation with the property that 1 operated on by itself is 2 is not multiplication, but something else. If we define multiplication for some pairs of numbers but not others, we make the study of multiplication unnecessarily complicated.

This succinctly summarizes not just this issue, but “the problem” in contemporary socio-epistemology. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, nobody is entitled to their own facts, and nobody talks about the proper method of evaluating conclusions. Somewhat surprisingly, the video spends 10 minutes on the topic but she provides the killer disproof in her refutation – falsification by definition – within less than 2 minutes. I was startled that she felt that more needed to be said, though there are two substantive questions of fact that could have been addressed in more detail. The first is to provide satisfactory proof of that the claim was made to the effect that Mr. Howard claims 1x1=2. I was recently sent a copy of “Letter from King Leopold II of Belgium to Colonial Missionaries, 1883”, and was curious about the authenticity of the letter (which is in English, not a language of 150 year old Belgium). I harbor a certain level of distrust as to the authenticity of the letter. I am not certain­ as to Howard’s claim (I haven’t obtained a copy of the book to verify the claim), but there is much more evidence that Howard made some claim than that Leopold II wrote that letter. For the sake of argument I willing to accept this claim (that 1x1=2) as “actually made”. Objectivists are very familiar with the problem of out of context quotes of Ayn Rand’s writing, so I would like to spend a lot more time scrutinizing the original text, though I would probably actually prefer to do something else. The second part, which could stand some improvement, is the much more problematic argument from authority, that 1x1=1 by definition. I understand that it takes more than 10 minutes to prove that by definition 1x1=1, because for one, it requires a very long discussion of self-evident vs. arbitrary definitions (who sets the rules that determine what it “means” to multiply?). Her definition of multiplication is useful to her, Howard’s definition is useful to him, they are both entitled to their opinions. Unfortunately, her exposition of the utility of multiplication kind of fails because we do not multiply 1x7 in computing that there are 7 apples. We are on the boundaries of numeric primitives, that there are cognitively primitive numbers like 1, 2, 3… and not 10, or 9, or any other number. We do indeed use some additive definition of 10 etc by parsing clusters into directly-perceptible subsets of clusters such as “5 and 6”). A less error-prone method and the only one usable for numbers larger than about 12 is actual counting off using naturally-occurring body parts as accumulators. So indeed, she has failed to provide even a shred of evidence that multiplication is useful. After a period of contemplation, I thought of some possibly useful applications of this concept of “multiplication”, for example planning for a party if there will be 19 guests and every guest gets 2 beers, then 5 six-packs will not be enough, to be safe I could get 8 six-packs. Try as I might, I cannot find any useful application of multiplication with 1 as a multiplier (also none with 0 as a multiplier, God forbid that I talk about 1.3 as a multiplier). I say, and I suppose Dr. Howard says, that she is pulling the wool over the eyes of the public. So even though it was initially surprising to me that she spent 10 minutes on the topic, in 2 minutes into the video, I observed an exponential acceleration of the argument, aided with the tool of authority. I do credit her with a small advance in science-education in her proposal of the unit “chopstick-Tesla”, because IMO “units” are or have not been well explained in science-math. Ultimately, I think she is going the right direction, but it is a mistake to rely on apparently arbitrary definitions. It is also a mistake to rely even in the slightest on social convention (anything that smacks of saying “all scientists agree by convention…”), when one is addressing (attacking) wingnut amateur pseudo-scientists, including actual scientists speaking outside their own area of specialization. A well-known problematic example of scientific social convention is the “scientific consensus” on global warming. It is irrational denialism to deny global warming, or any other scientific consensus, however, I am unaware of (and therefore claim the non-existence of) any controlled and objective survey of scientists proving that there is such a consensus on so-called global warming – and that this “consensus” is significantly more-established than some randomly selected unrelated equally politicized factual claim. I see all sorts of wingnut pseudo-science done on language, even by people with PhDs in some field of some sort, and wonder “How can one effectively combat this nonsense?”. Should one even bother? I think one should, provided that (a) one can correctly isolate an target audience (she’s not talking to the crazies but I am not sure who she is talking to – I would say it is more addressed to the scientists who already know the answer) and (b) one can adopt the premises of the intended audience and teach them something new. We can say that by definition the video is a success, and attempt to solve for a: who is she talking to?

Yeah it could be I have non competent opinions about Sabine's motivations. ps out of curiosity , why did you post a link to her video

Mindreading? Maybe she doesn't have the motivations you ascribe to her or suspect her of having...

Either way it is still her being butt hurt. Why even comment on non competent opinion? ps maybe because Rogan's audience is so large and her video would get attention and Brilliant will be happy

Or that they (Howard) dares to have opinions in areas in which he is - demonstrably - not competent at all.

I like Sabine she's cantankerous. I watched some of the Rogan episode and thought Howard is a little off ,lol. But he did present some , at least on the surface, interesting ideas especially about negative space geometries. I am not familiar with the flower of life or why it is important per Howard to modern theoretical physics, but it had something to do with the geometry of the negative spaces. Not sure what to make of the modelling Howard showed that he claimed 'reproduced' Saturn down to its material distribution and incorporating the rings, I think it was based on 'his' vortices and their interaction with matter and his theory of gravitation as an 'outward in' push from the electromagnetic field as opposed to an attraction between masses. I think she is wrong to characterize Rogan's audience as stupid because they will listen for hours to alternative and perhaps outlandish scientific hypothese, I think she is more butt hurt they are treading in her domain. She isn't very appreciative of Kastrup's critizations of her defense of hidden variables either ,lol.

Have you read Peikoff's Understanding Objectivism? (This is a book based on a lecture course.) Peikoff described himself as having a "rationalistic" understanding of Objectivism for over a decade (I don't remember the exact number of years) before finally correcting that error. Understanding Objectivism has a lot of specific information about how to correct it. (He says he hopes to help other people correct the error more quickly.) (One important thing Peikoff says is that you shouldn't judge yourself as morally bad merely because some of your emotions are wrong. It's your actions, not your emotions, that make you good or bad. If you intercepted a bad emotion and didn't act on it in any significant way, good for you. You can train your emotions over time.) My theory is that emotions and generalizations come out of the same mechanism in the brain. (I think it's self-evident by introspection that emotions and generalizations come "out of the same place," as it were, but it is not self-evident that it is a "mechanism in the brain.") This leads some people to think (wrongly) that induction is the same as emotionalism, and that reasoning has to consist only of deduction in order to be valid. Because emotions and generalizations come out of the brain, they both have to be validated; they are not automatically correct or automatically incorrect; they have to be checked ultimately against reality. It is very common to check generalizations against other generalizations, but then you are only checking your brain's mechanism against itself, and this is a mistake if you assume the correctness of generalizations that aren't actually correct. You should be able to trace everything all the way to reality. With Objectivist principles, that is possible, but it will take practice. Most educated people are well familiar with deduction, with how to form and validate a deductive argument, and with various fallacies of deduction. They are not so familiar with induction, which is susceptible to its own fallacies (such as evasion of inconvenient facts in order to prop up false generalizations). There is also a lot of information about induction in Induction in Physics and Philosophy (by David Harriman, who worked with Leonard Peikoff to develop the book and a lecture series on the subject. Leonard Peikoff delivered the lecture series.)