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  1. Upsetting the Medical Industry Applecart

    by , 09-28-2013 at 03:27 PM (Memories of the 28th Century)
    I wasted some time Friday taking part in a group that a hospital was using to gather comments about their planned opening of a new branch, and to get suggestions on how they might improve services. It started with a lengthy presentation that seemed to be designed to focus thinking on a few narrow issues related to people getting medical treatments. That was after an introduction that clearly stated that they wanted to hear anything. It seemed perfectly insincere; they wanted to hear anything, but ...

    Updated 09-28-2013 at 07:37 PM by PeterL

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  2. Preparing for Contingencies, Part 1

    by , 09-25-2013 at 08:50 AM (Memories of the 28th Century)
    The Earth is a wonderful place. It is the home of our species, and it is pleasant in innumerable ways, but we all know that the Earth is not formed in a way that maximizes utility, beauty, or anything. The nearly spherical shape and the axial tilt cause seasonal variations are annoying or worse. There are advantages in having changes in seasons, but we could manage it without having such great differences in the length of day and night. There may be people who think that I have this opinion because ...

    Updated 09-25-2013 at 05:00 PM by PeterL

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  3. Parallels In Meanings

    by , 09-18-2013 at 11:59 AM (Memories of the 28th Century)
    I thought that I had already written a neat little piece on metaphor, but I can’t find it. Maybe I didn’t actually write it but only thought about writing it, or maybe I don’t have a copy of it. That was back in the days when I was reading everything by Umberto Eco (He has written more since then, so I will have to read some more.) Eco has a section in The Role of the Reader about metaphor, and I will have to reread that, or skim it at least. He wrote of circuitous paths from item A to the meaning ...
  4. Parallel Development

    by , 09-13-2013 at 02:40 PM (Memories of the 28th Century)
    It's one thing to assert that the waking consciousness is just a user interface; it would be more interesting to give instructions for observing the actual operating system in action. The Gods could certainly do that, but I don't think that it would be easy for a human to know the operations of another's mind that well; although fMRA allows people to see what a brain is doing in reaction to certain stimuli, etc. Those brain researchers have also made arms move and so on, so perhaps they will eventually ...

    Updated 09-14-2013 at 02:04 PM by PeterL

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  5. Who Is in Charge? Or what is Consciousness?

    by , 09-10-2013 at 02:25 PM (Memories of the 28th Century)
    A discussion that touches on the matter of multiple levels of consciousness came up recently on the Philosophy Forums, where I waste a little time on most days. The post was in regard to the power of humans to have “self-agency,” fundamentally the idea that individuals are independent operators. This hinges on what the “self” is. If you think that your waking consciousness is the thing that is yourself and that makes the decisions to act, then you have missed some important matters. What we usually ...

    Updated 09-10-2013 at 05:49 PM by PeterL

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