This really resonates with me. I consider myself to be on the spectrum, as does my wife, and I am frequently only a passive participant in social functions because I've learned that most of my normal interactions are "wrong" so I just watch and wait until we can leave.
I've had a Vive for a few months now and I hardly ever use it. I too was blown away at first. It really is an amazing experience when you first put it on and play a game like the The Blu but that sense of awe doesn't last long and you're left with a somewhat uncomfortable headset with less than stellar graphics and pretty boring games. These days I would much rather play a game like TitanFall 2 than any of the Vive games. Much more interesting.
Having said that, some of the non-game titles are great. Google Earth and The Body VR or whatever it's called, are fantastic learning tools.
Is it possible that the calculations you are performing afterwards are what is causing the waveform interactions to have definitive results? In other words, could the waveform interactions cause the waveforms to become coupled and cause the entire system to exist in a superposition until such time as a classical measurement is made?
It doesn't matter if you agree. Some of the world's 7 billion people likely believe that minds are like souls in a parallel ethereal plane and they could be severed, float around for a while, be attached to some other person and so forth. Regardless of whether anyone believes that it is just not true and conscienceness is an emergent propery of the person having it, and it doesn't really matter whether you or anyone else sees it that way.
It doesn't matter what you think conscienceness is or whether there is agreement on it. (Sorry if this is harsh.)
How can you be so confident? You have no proof of this (or at least have not demonstrated it) and are simply going on faith which is exactly what someone who says that consciousness comes from the soul is doing.
And even if consciousness is an emergent property of the structure of the brain, how could we have a simulated brain report that it is experiencing consciousness when we cant define what it is in the first place?
Suppose you couldn't define flight, and I said, of course flight is possible since birds fly so it would be possible to fly, flight is just the sum of the mechanical motions that it entails - whereas you claimed no, no, it's some kind of magic that Hermes, the god of flight deigns to imbue some creatures with. Even if you exactly copied every last muscle twitch in a bird with a mechanical version of the same, you claimed, there is no guarantee that Hermes would play along and magically make it fly, it could be an earthbound mechanical object, or even if it did appear to fly, since we don't have a good definition of flight how would we even know if it's really flying? It could just be appearing to fly but, since in our mythology Hermes doesn't make mechanical things fly, it really isn't flying...
it's not something that is even worth discussing. of course if you made an emulated version of a brain in a VR with the same structure and neurological action and it reported consciousness, then it would be conscious, of course, yes. This is like asking whether NES games can "really" be running in a browser, even if the browser is emulating an NES system and includes the code of the original cartridge. Is the game "really" running? Can you "really" play it? Meaningless questions. If the VR person with the same brain topology as a human and hundreds of billions of neurons reports consciousness then of course it has it. why would being emulated suddenly make it different from all 7 billion humans running natively in the world, especially if theoretically it could be compiled from the same source code (which we have a copy of, DNA was sequenced in full in the 90s).
Since my comment was about a thousand years out, there's no question and we don't need to discuss these things. It's open and shut. I don't need to give any citations.
So let's say that perhaps biological neurons are an antenna which picks up on a universal consciousness energy field and imbues consciousness into a brain and that thus far, or even 1000 years from now, this property has gone undetected. Simulating the known properties of the brain may make a program that functions in all respects like a brain but does not have consciousness. It might report that it has consciousness because that is some function of another property of the simulation however in this case we would know that it is not true.
I find it amusing that you think a topic as widely studied and disputed as consciousness is "open and shut" because of some assumptions that you choose to make. Nonetheless, I do appreciate hearing your perspective so thank you.
Yes, I may be butchering this (didn't read the link below) but perhaps in Descartes's philosophy the pineal gland is like a connection to the soul, sure, like an antenna to an ethereal world, in a physical organ.
I completely discount this possibility and think it's not worth discussing. So, you are right that my mind is very closed to any alternatives to what I've stated, though as in your example of an antenna, we could describe such alternatives rigorously. Not worth our time. (IMO). Thanks for the replies.
The digestibility of the carbs in sweet potatoes is highly dependent on the way they're cooked. Boiling them leads to a fairly low glycemic index and glycemic load, whereas baking them essentially turns them into candy: http://www.livestrong.com/article/295025-the-glycemic-index-...
I should probably have specified that when it comes to foods like that which are high in carbohydrates I won't eat a significant amount or I'll get knocked out of ketosis just like everyone else would.
I rarely eat foods that are primarily carbohydrate based since that defeats the purpose of going keto, but if I do I try to find alternatives (sweet potato replacement for regular potatoes) and even then I severely restrict the amount that I eat. Sweet potatoes have important nutrients in them like beta-carotene, vitamin A, manganese and copper. It is as far as I'm aware always preferable to get vitamins and minerals directly from your diet rather than supplementation.
For me at least it's important to get creative with what I eat. Staying Keto is a long term goal for me and while I started off doing Keto as a means to lose weight the immediate health benefits convinced me to stay Keto for the foreseeable future. While it's possible to do keto off nothing but cheese, bacon, avocadoes, eggs and low-carb greens such as spinach and broccoli it can get boring.
As long as my body stays in ketosis and I'm covering my body's nutritional needs I believe strict moderation rather than completely cutting all carbs is an acceptable way to diet. While it is completely possible to eliminate all carbs from your diet it is not requisite for staying in ketosis, though you of course do not have much margin for error before you knock yourself out of ketosis. Good news is it's much easier to get back into ketosis if you overshoot your daily carb allowance compared to the initial adaption period where you have to be very strict in order to adapt your body to keto.
For people who are dealing with insulin resistant type health conditions like diabetes type 1, 2 or even pre-diabetes there might be entirely different dietary requirements and a very strict emphasis on eliminating all carbs may be appropriate. When it comes to carefully managing health conditions with potentially severe health ramifications that's something which requires cooperation with a physician.
For most people, as long as you stay beneath the protein and carb limit you're completely fine.
