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i don't know how they expect to 'establish a consciousness baseline' without a theory of information processing that can explain subjective experience. what is the algorithm that makes something experience? simulating a human brain on a computer will no more produce subjective experience than simulating a bladder will produce actual piss on your desk, as far as we know. it might tell us something about how consciousness works regardless, just as a bladder simulation can inform us about how a real bladder works even though you couldn't replace someone's actual organ with the simulation. regardless i am sure the information processing capabilities of humans will be more fully outclassed by computers eventually, or well enough to justify replacing paid human workers at least. although even current primitve LLMs require a lot of energy. like any other industrial revolution it will only be used to extract more profit instead of bettering society.

crossbows were more likely to be wholly owned by the local lord/baron and given out during wartime and taken back after, while longbows were relatively commonly available (if not exactly cheap or easy to make) civillian hunting tools as well as weapons of war. crossbows are the rich lord's peasant levy weapon of choice since it leaves the peasants disarmed afterwards as the crossbows are too expensive (difficult to manufacture metal crank parts etc. compared to 'self bows' like the english longbow that can be made entirely out of one piece of wood with a little experience with curing) to not take back after issuing. plus, since crossbows are simpler to use and require less training, the lords would invest less in military training for their civilians/militias, leaving the more vulnerable to military domination when they didn't have their lord's crossbows in hand, whereas many places encouraged longbow practice and military tradition to ensure they had enough bowmen should they need them for war, creating a decentralized military power base and cultural attitude of resilience and self-reliance among the populace. crossbows were a way to centralize military power in the hands of the aristocracy, not some kind of proletarian worker's weapon of choice (which was probably either a staff, a club, a repurposed woodcutting axe, an improvised spear, or a simple hunting bow). there were exceptions to this general trend like the Taborites (who were a peasant indurgency that was famous for using crossbows, murray bookchin claims they were a kind of proto-anarcho-communism), especially in places without bow traditions (mainland europe for example) and as time went on and political power in general became more centralized (in places with longer traditions of centralized power, china for example, the crossbow was more common due to more standardized 'state armies' compared to ad-hoc european feudal militias). its kind of like early factories, sure there might be nothing inherently and essentially wrong with the centralization of production itself, but the way it was used historically was at the behest of and for the benefit of the ruling classes. for example, the prominence of crossbows in continental Europe (they abhorred missile weapons compared to many other cultures, bow training had to be forced by decree after military experience proved this to be disastrous) is almost solely due to Italian city states (such as Genoa) mustering entire platoons of only crossbowmen that they would hire out as mecenaries. Crossbowmen often were paid double that of an archer, even though the bow took more training. think about why that might have been if they are supposedly the 'weapon of the people'

being bad at things we enjoy is existentially invalidating despite the lack of 'real stakes'. it's like having receding hairline, like obviously it's toxic AF to judge someone in a moral/ethical sense for balding, but as someone who is losing their hair it makes you feel like something is fundamentally 'inferior' about you compared to those who are not. you see people that have what you always wanted to have with no effort, they seem like they are just intuitively, instinctually, effortlessly 'better than you'. one of my best friends has always been effortlessly good at FPS games like that, constantly getting ridiculous scores like 100 kills to 17 deaths in short fast paced multiplayer games like call of duty, and its like they don't even play more than me, they haven't been doing it as long as me, i put in at least as much effort if not more so to win, but i can never even approach that level of skill. my K:D ratio is constantly negative, i can hardly ever break even let alone go 3:2 with 100 kills in less than 7 minutes. my thumbs are simply not that dextrous on the controller joysticks and never will be. it makes me feel like my existence is invalidated, that i was stupid for being interested in the things that i enjoyed doing and the games i enjoy playing, that my life is a waste of time that will only end in meaningless failure. i don't think its even 'irrational' as much as it is 'overly rational' in the sense of nihilistic naturalistic fallacy vulgar materialism. it's objectively better to win than to lose, 'self improvement' doesn't matter if you can't achieve it no matter how much effort an analysis you put into it. i don't lose in FPS games due to tactical mistakes, they are simply all faster at aiming than me because i am in my mid 30's and they are younger and have more efficiently functioning nervous systems. I am physically, objectively worse than them in a very real if limited and low stakes sense, and regardless of the fact that it is 'not an important arena' it is existentially invalidating in the sense that we all want to be the Effortless Beautiful Chosen Hero that succeeds inevitably and instinctually. failure reminds us that we 'are not special', that we have no special talent or skill that makes us unique, that the universe does not care about our success or failure any more than any other random chaotic physics event, that we are just another blank, bland NPC in the background of the rich beautiful successful people's lives and we will never be like them no matter how hard we work or try because the deterministic chain of causality just did not work out that way for us and its too late to do anything about it.

semi-optimism edit: in terms of actually successfully dealing with these kinds of thoughts, i just honestly ask myself if i really want to live/have lived the way it would take to acquire whatever skill i lack. sure, i might be jealous of the victor's success in the moment, but am i really jealous of the way they had to live to train hard enough to get that good? am i really jealous of the hours a day spent trying and failing over and over until improvement? would i rather have spent my time playing nothing but a single multiplayer game until i completely mastered it instead of experiencing a diverse array of different games? do i even want to have the same level of memorized map knowledge that renders a thrilling diegetic experience into a context-free standardized 'playing field'? do i really wish i spent all of my earlier years learning how to draw better or how to do complicated maths or program computers etc. instead of chilling and playing video games and having what scant few social experiences i could manage and studying a larger set of topics and hobbies? the answer to these questions is usually: not really. i might wish to retroactively spend my time on say, pursuing meaningful romantic relationshps instead of whatever i ended up actually doing, but not on 'more call of duty/halo/etc.'.

i think 'psychological horror' has to touch on less literal or obvious or physical threats to focus on the existential implications of whatever horror phenomena. even if there is a literal physical threat like in silent hill, the themes focus on things like the fallibility of perception and epistemological uncertainty about what is going on. you don't just fight monsters in a silent hill game, you fight the environment, you fight your own character's perception of reality, mostly safe abandoned rooms transform into rusty bloodsoaked horror dungeons, the people around you are often untrustworthy and just as dangerous as the monsters, no one knows why any of this happened in the first place and there really isn't a coherent scientific explanation.

compare the above example of silent hill to something like Resident Evil or the film Dawn of the Dead. Both resident evil and dawn of the dead do use their settings and lore to address more fundamental issues, but this is only via metaphor, and usually points to something less existential and more sociological or political. RE and DotD both have more or less scientifically plausible 'zombies', that the characters more or less understand as a mundane physical threat like a natural disaster or a terrorist attack. the existence of the horror elements may cause them to question society (consumerism in DotD, rampant military-industrial complex corruption/dysregulation/corporate terrorism in RE) but not reality or their own minds. its more of a sci-fi intrigue or a post-apocalypse scenario than a mind bending psychedelic terror experience.

i don't think i have enough kkkash to leave and even if i did i depend on weed to keep myself sane and can't get a job and don't speak anything but english so i don't think there are any options that are any better than amerikkka. i would 'organize' but i am a material/labor/morale burden on anyone around me, normal people don't want to talk to large adult visibly neurodivergent failpersons with resting face. there is no option other than further alienation and isolation and self-censorship (or futile adventurism) in this cursed hellscape for someone like me, but that was true before this election as well.

Treat Artificer - i am incapable of enjoying anything because i am preoccupied with ideas for what i would do differently to 'improve' it, my mind is a chaotic workshop full of unfinished forgotten creative projects and experimental prototypes that will likely never see completion.

also if a media IP has Cool Mechs i will enjoy it regardless of other problematic aspects, for example Fullmetal Panic! is a lame generic show about high schoolers/child soldiers being awkward, but also has one of the coolest mech designs of all time with the cold war soviet RK-92 SAVAGE. i watched like 1 or 2 episodes and completely hate the show, but the mecha designs are just about Peak Robot Design for me, i love the diesel/gas turbine engine instead of nuclear power idea, i love the cold war aesthetic, i love the fact that the SAVAGE is made by soviets, i love the rounded frog-like appearance. I love that it has mechanical analogue controls (high-sensitivity panels on the cockpit seat to control limbs without needing to move limbs too much in the cockpit) instead of being partially autonomous. i don't like as much the fact that its the default 'bad guy' mech for the NATO mercenary child soldier protagonists.

this is the older RK-91, powered by a diesel engine, note the up-armor panels used to modernize it, like putting ERA blocks on a T-60:

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this is the RK-92, powered by a gas-turbine engine:

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another fancier RK-92 (pic of a finished painted figure, not a model kit):

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here's a bonus interior/cross section view i found:

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i actually sanded the pieces to a model kit before assembly for the first time today. there were a few places i was sure i over-sanded but the parts seem to fit together perfectly regardless. the next skill i need to master is using capillary action to apply extra thin plastic cement, i saw a youtube video of a guy just holding pieces together and painting glue on the outside of the seam almost like a welding gun and was super impressed, it looked way easier than applying glue to one part at a time and rushing to put them together before it dries, and i appreciate when a modelling technique kind of resembles a real world construction technique, like using a pin vise to drill holes to attach other parts, makes me feel like a giant soviet propaganda poster industrial laborer . i also need to learn how to use gap fill material on all the models i have botched with lack of proper equipment/technique, or else i'll be tempted to risk breaking them trying to dissasemble for maintenance.

hell yea heavy metal guitar noises

i think you are correct, google images says the following are MICLIC carrying vehicles and they look very similar.

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i've heard of MICLICs ('MIne Clearing LInear Charges' for those not problematically obsessed with tools of war, a bunch of explosives attached in a line for clearing paths through minefields) before but have never seen how they are carried or deployed, it's especially interesting how it seems like the MICLIC tubes are inside of the 'turret' hull, underneath what i presume are at least lightly armored panels that fold out. I would usually expect something like that to be mounted on the outside of a vehicle in a tube or something (like a TOW launcher would be on the side of a Bradley turret in an external box). I wonder if the charges are particularly volatile or susceptible to incidental detonation or something.

bonus sci fi pic - this fashionable lad also carries a MICLIC tube!

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I don't agree with that. I don't see what's impossible about understanding consciousness as an emergent property of matter in the same way that many individual ants collectively bring feats that you can't explain looking at a single ant.

the problem is that every ant in the ant colony is ostensibly a purely physical phenomena (at least, we usually do not concern ourselves with the ant's subjective experience as much as their information processing capabilities - we watch their movement, monitor pheromones and chemical signals, note the structure and changes to their nest, etc., all very physical and mutually compatible ideas), whereas something like the concept of subjectivity is entirely incompatible with our ideas about physics. you can do 'information processing' without subjectivity very efficiently, as with any calculator or computer, so subjectivity seems entirely superfluous in the sense of a purely physical explanation.

The fact that we haven't gotten there just yet doesn't mean it can't be done, or that biology is completely independent from physics and/or psychology completely independent from biology.

you have to prove something is true before you believe it, assuming 'we will figure it out later with no significant modifications to our theory' is intellectual laziness/unsound epistemology. no one is saying that biology is completely independent from physics or that psychology is completely independent from biology, i am only saying that our understanding of such topics are far from a unified 'theory of everything' and are therefore incomplete in a non-trivial way at best, and fundamentally flawed or incorrect at worst. obviously the subjective component of human consciousness is somehow related to brain function, we can prove and accept this empirically without any kind of metaphysical claims or assumptions tacked on. obviously physics isn't completely BS, it helps us solve a lot of problems. but at the same time, we cannot fully explain (i.e. reduce, hence why i am arguing against 'reductivist physicalist realism' and not non-reductivist versions of physicalist realism such as the one you seem to espouse) psychology in terms of atoms and their locations and velocities and mass without losing information. the fact that you believe in 'emergent processes' itself means you are likely not a 'reductivist' physicalist realist like i am arguing against.

I just don't see how from "we don't understand consciousness" it follows "therefore it can't possibly be explained with physics in the way we understand physics".

usually when a theory fails to account for a phenomena, it is assumed to be flawed or incomplete somehow, and the significant explanatory gap for subjectivity in physics and information processing (what information processing algorithm produces a first-person experience? is there a fundamental particle or wave of subjectivity, a 'subjectron'?) would seem to imply a non-trivial incompleteness or flaw.

ppl in that thread really advocating for genetically modifying humans to live in space or remote controlling 'avatars' with quantum entanglement, when we could just have cool mecha instead, smdh...

imagine wanting to be this

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instead of this

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anthro-pessimistic biopunk, not even once

i don't think i'm confusing anything, for further clarification i am specifically arguing that reductivist physicalist realism - the belief that all of reality including consciousness can be 'reduced to' or entirely explained in terms of our current understanding of physics or a trivially modified version of it - a relatively common belief among 'reddit atheists' (see 'love is just chemicals' trope, 'meat computer' ideas, etc.) - entirely precludes the possibility of any kind of subjectivity whatsoever as an inherent logical consequence of its base assumptions. A mostly unmodified version of our current understanding of physics or information processing has no explanation for things like 'subjectivity' or 'consciousness' at a fundamental level, and therefore any worldview that would explain such phenomena in terms of physics will necessarily fail to account for, or erroneously posit the lack of existence of, such characteristics ('consciousness is an illusion'). kind of like the difficulty of finding a coherent way to unify quantum physics and 'macro' physics into a single 'theory of everything', the ideas in use are more or less incompatible - you can't really 'reduce' a thrown baseball and explain it purely in terms of quantum physics without losing important information, even though quantum physics is smaller scale/more 'fundamental' to macro phenomena.

i am a militant agnostic. i don't know if there is a god, and neither do you. its crazy to me to fully believe in any specific spiritual lore without like direct personal experience, like maybe there is 'a god' but maybe its completely inhuman and incomprehensible, maybe its a giant fish, maybe its mind is composed of the EM activity of stars, idfk why people assume our language or our thought could capture something like that, if it even exists. believing that there is Definitely No God or Anything Else Humans Don't/Can't Understand seems epistemologically invalid. like yeah, i'm not going to decide how to live my life based on some bronze age account of some Sky Warlord who wants me to sacrifice my children and cut off parts of my penis and beat my slaves and never do anything thats Too Fun, idfk why people would assume bronze age patriarchical slave-owning mysoginists would have the FInal Say on stuff like that, but i'm also not going to just assume that reality is completely pointless and that we are all meaningless meat computers waiting for our homeostatic processes to fizzle out. I agree with 'materialism' in the sense that i think there are parts of reality that are outside my personal mind, but strict physicalist realism is metaphysically and existentially and semiotically barren as an ideology, why should i care if i or anyone else has healthcare/rights/life if our existence is pointless nonsense, lifeless particles knocking into each other deterministically, human consciousness an evolutionary spandrel, an information-processing fluke that only makes us suffer from our knowledge of the universe's meaninglessness. I have to believe that there might possibly be some reason for me to keep collecting new experiences or i would simply stop. i have to believe that , under better conditions such as communism, humans could spend more time on the questions and ideas that matter on a more fundamental level, instead of constantly struggling just to physically survive, and that there might be semiotically interesting paradigms to discover. i have to believe that conscious experience matters, or should matter, to me, that there really is something that differentiates living thinking beings from lifeless particles and the unconscious information processing of a calculator. otherwise there is nothing to distinguish humanity from a cancerous growth or mold, if 'nothing' is the beginning and the end i'd rather just cut out the middleman and get back to it and save myself and everyone else a whole heck of a lot of trouble and misery.

idk if it would help in this specific case, but i have successfully used plastic wrap to tighten ball joints, just wrap the ball with 1 or 2 layers of plastic wrap before attaching the part, maybe more layers if its still loose. if you are careful you can pre-cut or tear off excess plastic wrap so its barely even visible. Bandai models usually go together pretty conveniently, i have some allegedly 'snap-fit' maschinen krieger kits i paid upwards of 60-80 USD for each one, where there were gaps on almost every seam and none of the parts fit together great, i even had a polycap joint split in half somehow. i trimmed with clippers and a knife instead of sanding tho.

i am willing to defect to the aliens, especially if they let me pilot an alien mecha against the imperialists

SERIOUSLY! i read the lore entries in-game and almost every single thing they mentioned about the Hegemony was incredibly based despite being presented as some unspeakable orwellian evil lmao. like way more lines saying stuff like 'hegemony citizens all get healthcare and food and housing' than the bad stuff like 'they are ruled by a class of orphan oligarchs'.

sorry but i'm blocking you for this lol i have the badposting comm blocked for a reason

death to all IP lawyers. modern games are all fortnite clone over-the-shoulder battle royale microtransaction games, even single player games have microtransactions and locked over-the-right-shoulder cameras. every time i see a new game i have to temper my excitement until i see gameplay footage to check if it has that godawful fortnite locked-to-the-right-shoulder camera perspective, which they almost always do. all 3rd person games should either have centered cameras or the ability to switch which side the camera is on so i can aim around cover to the left sometimes instead of always moving right or having the disadvantage against those who can.

i hate modern gaming, i'm going to go play Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri (the Terran Hegemony did nothing wrong)

arguing that the Imperium are the Good Guys despite the fact they are Space Fascists because The Universe Is Just That Bad

arguing the Imperium are the Good Guys because they have Space Commissars and are therefore Communists doing Galactic War Communism, being literally ruled by Psychic Lenin's Preserved Corpse after the Horus Revisionism. Space Marines are the True Volcel Vanguard.

their beef with the Tau is like a weird Sino-Soviet Split