It's more like people with religious and political motives like to frame this as if there's genuine debate around the issue rather than mountains of scientific evidence that keeps piling up about the nature of existence and all things residing within it.

I say political because believing in free will is correlated with believing in both extrajudicial and judicial retribution. In other words, people often choose to believe that people made terrible choices in lieu of their actual available choices according to a deterministic universe and that those people deserve to essentially be tortured in utterly inhumane conditions.

I think it's a mistake to even give these free will proponents a platform, same as fascist ideology. Belief in free will seems situated on a moral axis more often than it does a scientific/objective front. Many of these people I feel aren't arguing in good faith, which is ironic given the propensity towards a concurrent religious belief system.

It absolutely is. I tell everyone I meet that I'm interested in pursuits that lead to good feelings and that I do very little in the ways of pushing my body to extremes of discomfort (except maybe in a sexual capacity, where I'll eventually be rewarded with euphoria/bliss in the right environment) since I'm already constantly in a state of extreme discomfort (especially since the US refuses to administer opiates to chronic pain patients now, fuck all of the abuse surrounding the only drug that actually makes a dent in my pain).

Able bodied people look at me like I'm crazy because they simply do not understand how traumatic an experience like mine is. People don't want to look at their own privilege critically, just like the author. And it seems like a case of a severe lack of empathy, but that's nothing unusual for today's accepted discourse.

This is written by someone who's clearly never actually suffered. Their highest suffering being the equivalent of a hang-nail, it's easy to come to these moronic conclusions about life.

Let me tell you, most of my suffering hasn't been great for character growth. And I've suffered way more than most. Chronic pain now for two years straight, five major surgeries with a total of over 30 hours under anesthesia (and countless months/years recovering), five major mental health diagnoses including bipolar disorder..

I currently live my life trying to maximize pleasure, comfort, and happiness because those are the only things that put a dent in all of my afflictions. This derision towards a pursuit of happiness as the cornerstone of a good life is absolutely borne of ignorance of what a bad life or what real suffering is.

Author is idiot.

That's because Economics is as much a science as Astrology is. Also, Human societies are messy and unpredictable and a lot of the assumptions made about human behavior are flat out wrong, especially from the mind of someone indoctrinated into the Capitalist clergy.

The reason you get insulin resistance in the first place is because of

1. Too many calories in diet (excessive weight gain)
2. High carb intake (particularly if you eat multiple meals spread through the day or snack all the time, which causes a cascade of metabolic problems due to constant insulin spikes)

So it stands to reason that lowering carbs and losing weight will reverse the damage in most cases, kind of like how quitting smoking also reverses a whole lot of damage. Obviously, some damage will remain, but it's better than the alternative, which almost always ends in an earlier death and lower quality of life.

I mean I could secretly be an alien that has code in my DNA or hidden somewhere that's triggered by being in a certain position or environment or situation. If it's sophisticated enough I may simply be mimicking behavior in order to blend. I could also be generating a simulation and none of this is real, or this is a distant memory that my true self is viewing from another dimension.

Truth being that we'll never know 100% what existence is, but I do believe that reducing suffering in this reality is important, even if none of this ultimately matters, because subjectively to us as individuals, it does matter.

Well I'm on the schizophrenic spectrum (officially bipolar with psychosis and both visual/auditory hallucinations) if that helps any. Super strong with the neuroses am I. I'm able to manage my symptoms now that I'm fully self-aware of it but oh man was it difficult before I got a handle on it.

I've also done a shitload of psychedelics. Oh the crazy things I've seen and oh the euphoria and sheer terror I've witnessed. Beautiful and grotesque. Awe-inspiring and humbling.

MDMA, Shrooms, LSD, and DMT all turn off my inner monologue. What comes out is my most inner self, and she's a real crazy whirlwind of weird and awesome. She doesn't know the laws of physics or human culture very well, so she gets into trouble. It's like unleashing a being that's only ever existed in a purely simulated internal world that has no constraints at all and is suddenly in a world with constraints. She often forgets she inhabits a human body and that not everyone is so pleasure driven.

Anyway..

I clearly said "I personally think...", Which means it's my opinion.

However, to say we have no idea how consciousness is probably an emergent property of different systems in the brain is kind of just ignorant of current knowledge in neuroscience.

It's like all this ancient aliens shit when anthropology has a pretty good idea of how human beings created the pyramids.

I'm a person who always has a voice talking with myself. Reflecting on everything. Thinking about the past, the future.

On the right drugs I can silence that voice and just let stuff happen. It's a very surreal, liberating, but also somewhat frightening experience since it's not what I'm used to. But I can see the draw, I certainly get a lot more done and have a lot of fun that way.

It's like watching a movie. But it's your life playing out before you. And apparently a lot of people are kind of just running on instinct and their base programming. It's pure deterministic behavior.

I personally don't think there is a hard problem. I find that is one of the last refuges for spiritual beliefs, hiding behind overcomplication. Consciousness is an emergent spectrum and proponents of the hard problem seem to believe there needs to be some part of the physical body to point at when it's really the sum total of a lot of different parts.

It's similar to how creationists are never satisfied with all of the evidence in favor of evolution. Always asking for a new missing link between the missing links we've already found. It'd be great to have a complete accounting of all parts of the evolution of species, but that isn't happening and consciousness is likely similar.

If something mimics consciousness perfectly, it's effectively no different than being conscious.

We cannot ever truly know if the other people we interact with are fully self aware, or if they're just sufficiently sophisticated organic machines that are mimicing consciousness.

I certainly know individuals that make me question whether or not they're actually conscious of their own decisions. Do they have that recursive learning software that reflects on choices they've made or do they simply run on what amounts to instinct?

Define common sense.

Well-fucking-said. Kudos.

Even if we cannot eliminate all suffering, we should be striving to eliminate as much suffering as possible.

Much like how we view Utopian ideals. Or the idea of perfection.

You've assigned your own meaning to suffering that many other humans disagree with, while acting as if your opinion is an objective reality/fact. That's a heaping ton of hubris.

Everyone suffers but some suffer unnecessarily while others inflict it on those around them despite having the capacity to reduce or eliminate a lot of said suffering. In my life experience, people that espouse beliefs like yours tend to be extremely privileged or very religious or both. Check yourself before you wreck yourself.