NotObviouslyARobot

NotObviouslyARobot t1_jabe551 wrote

Reply to comment by Mustelafan in Neuroscientist Gregory Berns argues that Thomas Nagel was wrong: neuroscience can give us knowledge about what it is like to be an animal. For example, his own fMRI studies on dogs have shown that they can feel genuine affection for their owners. by Ma3Ke4Li3

The inverted spectra problem isn't a problem for the example I gave.

The hypothetical humans in the problem do not exist.

Real, flesh and blood humans exist.

Even if two real humans have isomorphic relationships with color, and try to paint the same thing, they'll make choices in how they use color. When creating art, not making choices is not an option. Their subjective experiences mean they won't make the same choices.

They'll choose colors in different orders. They'll mix paints differently. There will be minute motor differences. They'll perceive something, translate it to their own inner world, and then transport it out again via fine motor skills & paint.

In the final product, they -won't- have produced the same work of art, because their subjective humanity ensured that their processes would not be isomorphic. At the same time, they will have communicated details of their inner subjective experience, in an objective fashion--using a known medium. Even if you train the artists, or the elephant artists, this process is going to happen.

We've defined objective reality via consensus--and the sheer body of evidence surrounding the average experience of what redness is, is well-established. It can -feel- different from person to person & this difference can be readily communicated.

Nagel's Bat is a hypothesis designed to be untestable & immune to evidence.

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NotObviouslyARobot t1_ja8chcn wrote

Reply to comment by MonsieurMeowgi in Neuroscientist Gregory Berns argues that Thomas Nagel was wrong: neuroscience can give us knowledge about what it is like to be an animal. For example, his own fMRI studies on dogs have shown that they can feel genuine affection for their owners. by Ma3Ke4Li3

There actually is a way to know/feel what you, or other humans see in terms of color. It's called painting/art.

Even if you're trying to be 100 percent representative, your individual perception introduces itself Claude Monet did this deliberately, showing others how he perceived the world. Information goes through your eyes, is processed by the seeing "you" and then goes out through your hands.

With regards to Nagel's bat, you'd have to find a medium both we, and bats, are capable of interacting with on an abstract level. This may not be possible, not for any philosophical reasons, but simply because bats don't appear to engage in creative pursuits.

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NotObviouslyARobot t1_j23pp7q wrote

Reply to comment by Songmuddywater in What would food look like if we could scale up lab grown meat? by sandcrawler56

It's not any more immoral than veal, or dairy

The real question is how much FBS we need for a given cow-equivalent of lab-grown meat. If it's a 1:1 ratio or any similar low ratio cow-wise, it won't take off--and it's pointless to even discuss it because economics will kill it.

Cows take 18-24 months to reach slaughter weight. A cow can get pregnant once per year. The pregnant cow slaughter takes at least 3 herd animals or more out of the market.

Doing FBS production with beef cows doesn't make sense. The only way FBS would make economic sense is if you wanted to use producing it to "retire" older dairy cows--in which case...there's very little difference in the net cruelty.

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NotObviouslyARobot t1_j23it4r wrote

Reply to comment by strvgglecity in What would food look like if we could scale up lab grown meat? by sandcrawler56

"They require consistent maintenance. They also incur annual taxes that are never recouped. You also can't just sell your home, unless you simultaneously secure a new place to live."

All of the above also applies to owning a business asset, especially property. I'm about to go upgrade all the lights in a business property over the weekend. I've done lots of maintenance on it. It makes us money, but we can't just sell it unless we simultaneously secure a new place to do business. It also depreciates.

Real-estate value is determined by the amount of the purchase loan approved for the property, or the amount of money flowing around a market. This is why we have the USDA rural development program.

That new 300K development next to your 120K development isn't going to negatively alter your property value. In fact, it usually has a positive effect by increasing the number of dollars in the local real estate market--and by helping drive businesses to the area. This is one reason why the practice of Redlining was so harmful to older African-American neighborhoods.

There's an observed social behavior in humans called gravitation. Gravitation says that our geographic preferences follow a distance decay function. IE, the closer things are, the more likely they are to interact--and larger groups of a particular thing, have more drawing power than smaller groups of the same thing.

What drives down real-estate values is large centers of gravitation disappearing or being built far enough away from you that they draw people away in a cascading effect.

Homeownership is an investment. Like any investment, it can be good, bad, succeed wildly, or go tits up.

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NotObviouslyARobot t1_j20v42w wrote

Reply to comment by strvgglecity in What would food look like if we could scale up lab grown meat? by sandcrawler56

"A house is an investment the same way a car is. Meaning, it's not."

Wrong.

A house has earning power in the same way any suitable business location has earning power, regardless of whether or not you rent it out. The earning power incurred by owning anything is equivalent to the opportunity-cost of not owning something.

If my house costs me $300/mo. less than renting the equivalent, my home is creating real shareholder value for Myself, LLC, regardless of whether or not I'm renting it out.

There are two ways to make money in business: realize cost savings or improve sales. Owning a home is like investing in LED lighting to realize a smaller electric bill.

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NotObviouslyARobot t1_j209xov wrote

Reply to comment by mhornberger in What would food look like if we could scale up lab grown meat? by sandcrawler56

"I don't think there are masses of people clamoring to move to rural areas to live on former cattle ranches."

This...doesn't matter.

The same logic that makes homes investments and a way to build generational wealth, also applies to small landholdings--albeit homes are much less work. You get the land cheap, build a house, pay the taxes and the payments on the land for years, and then hopefully sell it after adding a shit-ton of value. This also protects the land from further development.

There are a lot of people who want to get cheaper homes in new suburbs after low interest rates

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NotObviouslyARobot t1_j1y7a9w wrote

Reply to What would food look like if we could scale up lab grown meat? by sandcrawler56

Realistically, farm animal genetics would hit a bottle neck and the various varieties we've bred start going extinct--driving mankind further into monocultures and reducing the genetic diversity of what we farm.

If lab-grown beef reaches a price point where it can seriously eat away at farmed beef's market share, then many ranches across the US will start closing--or trying to sell out for a housing development. I foresee consolidation in the cattle industry, and ever-larger mega-ranches taking up more, and more land. Think more Ammon Bundy types.

For a number of reasons, cattle becoming economically unviable for small landowners, will change the economics of owning land in the rural US. There's a lot of land you'd consider marginal for farming--yet with relatively low effort (and small cost of entry), you can grow hay and cattle, and effectively buy the land by doing so. Being AG also gets you lower property taxes.

This incentivizes landowners to sell out to developers as quickly as possible--and will further drive suburbanization & car-based cities.

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NotObviouslyARobot t1_j122sl1 wrote

Reply to Does anyone feel trapped here by vapournova

You're having an attack of existential pop philosophy. If nothing really matters. Everything matters.

Like, this moment in your life, will never happen again. Hold your breath and it passes...like tears in the rain.

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NotObviouslyARobot t1_j00mdqu wrote

Reply to Replacing toilet seal and found a plant growing...other than cleaning, is there anything else I should do before installing a new seal by critter_bus

The flange is always dirty in my experience. I reseated two toilets the other day.

Regarding this fix. About the only thing that can go wrong for you right now is the flange breaking. I would carefully clean everything up, reset the toilet with a new seal, and then test it. If it tests good, I would use blue painters tape, and a suitable silicone/caulk to caulk around the bottom edge of the toilet. Maybe use a root killing chemical product.

You can replace the flange if you like, but this depends entirely on what kind of flange it is. PVC flanges are easy. Cast iron flanges are hard.

As far as the better than wax ring goes, I find them inferior to a heavy duty Oatey wax ring

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NotObviouslyARobot t1_ix0k7n8 wrote

Reply to My toilet looks like it's about to fall into my kitchen and I have no idea what to do. by BigDogSlices

  1. Shut off the water.
  2. Remove the toilet. (Take the tank off, set the toilet on a mover's dolly
  3. Repair the plumbing, floor, and the subfloor
  4. Reinstall the toilet and test.
  5. Repair the ceiling.

As for the cause, a failing wax ring (or closet flange) is the likely cause--just shooting from the hip here as you probably would have noticed the smell of shit water leaking in large quantities

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NotObviouslyARobot t1_iufwe7b wrote

Reply to comment by aukir in U.S. Streams Are Drying Up. Data showed that in the South and West, streamflow droughts got longer between 1951 and 2020, regardless of threshold. Worse yet, droughts in these regions are becoming more intense by Wagamaga

Almonds use as much water as the entirety of residential uses in California. Restricting water-intensive agriculture on a regional basis has the greatest returns for the least effort.

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