Pens, however, can write a wide range of angles.

Which just means it would have been even easier to make the supplemental angle add up! Ugh.

Yeah I was wondering why it added up to 192°. Maybe I’m a freak, but I would’ve measured ambient temperature and drawn a supplementary angle. Also what scale is that thermometer on? That room is either really hot or almost freezing.

it’s a stoner thought that for all I know is totally true, but it’s so impossible to either prove, model or test

That’s basically true for every hypothesis about consciousness, though. That’s why it’s called a hard problem. Like yeah, we can map neuron activity and record what the subject says they were thinking about. But that doesn’t tell us what consciousness itself is.

And those “stoner thoughts” are how we conceptually narrow down the possibilities via internal consistency, and maybe get to something we can test. Just because we haven’t developed a test for a hypothesis doesn’t mean it’s impossible to do so. And even if a test is impossible, that doesn’t mean the hypothesis isn’t true. It just means we can know whether or not it’s true.

We don’t really have models to compare too. We have hypotheses, but how do you test them? Is consciousness an electromagnetic phenomenon? Is it purely mathematical? Can it exist in gravitational systems?

We know precious little about the universe. We have snippets of data about our immediate locale, and ever-changing theories about our not-so-immediate locale. We are specks on a rocky speck orbiting a fiery speck on the outer spiral arm of a bigger speck.

Maybe consciousness is a fundamental force. Maybe it is emergent and the universe thinks a billion times slower and bigger than we do. We just don’t know, and we didn’t really have any way to measure one way or the other. That’s the tricky bit about subjective experience.

I don’t think it’s any more “desperate” than any other theory. The only default position is solipsism: mine is the only real consciousness, and all the rest of you could be inventions of my mind or clever automatons. Once you start generalizing more than that, any line is kinda arbitrary. You either wind up at the universe, or you have to come up with a good reason to stop; and I don’t think we have the physics to confidently place that line.

What measurable neurological means?

Who knows what energetic structures exist within galactic super clusters? Energy is constantly exchanged in the universe.

Grid Iron League Football

The LFL (Lingerie Football League) was pretty close. Apparently they’re reviving it

Some people want to see the world.

Panpsychism seems logically more possible than the alternative. If consciousness is an emergent property of complex systems, the universe is probably conscious because it’s the most complex system there is.

Sure, how do you detect conscious effort from outside?

I’m inclined to believe every dynamic interconnected system is “conscious” to some degree. Not 1:1 with human consciousness obviously, but the same base phenomenon.

The main problem is that there aren’t very good metrics to distinguish how primitive a consciousness is. Where do you draw the line between consciousness and reflex? Is each of your cells conscious in its own impossibly tiny way?

GURPS also forgoes initiative for speed based turn order.

Not them, but I think I’ve got a bead on it, assuming you treat it as a general concept and not a trademark:

It’s basically the Platonic ideal of a game lobby. Kinda like what Miiverse was supposed to be, or Ready Player One. They were both after my time but I think maybe kinda like Club Penguin or Roblox? Like an overworld with a custom avatar that you can socialize in and sync into other apps or games together.

It does seem basically inevitable, fast forward gaming 10 years and I’d be surprised if something like that wasn’t the norm.

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

The invention of gunpowder

Some people are wealthy because they provide a valuable, well-paid skill (neurosurgeons, for example). Some people are in positions of power because they sincerely want to make their communities a better place.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s probably more likely to get there through sociopathic greed. But that doesn’t mean they are all horrible people.

Are you talking about specific wealthy, powerful people?

I don’t think night shift Barbie is doing the science part of medicine.

That was me with black in high school. I looked like a stage hand, but it only took me a minute or two to get dressed.

Maybe, many relevant acquaintances have spoken very fondly of my balls, up to and including my wife. But maybe that’s just me.