It's clearly useful to visually distinguish objects which reflect 400nm light and objects which reflect 700nm light. Colour sensations is how we do that.

I don't see how it is useful to distort the picture with a fiction.

It's not that either humans or dogs (or neither) is seeing the "correct" (mind-independent) colour when looking at an object that reflects 500nm light; it's just the case that 500nm light causes different colour sensations for humans and dogs.

A fiction is something invented or untrue. Color is a fiction. So it follows that the less color the less fiction, and therefor more accurate. Given that the dog sees a less variety of color according to your spectrums, and color is a fiction, it follows that the dog sees less fiction. Isn't that so?

My opinion is the opposite: that the dog is less-equipped to see the world, not only because it has only a fraction of the cones we do, but because it sees less of the world as a result.

I don't think color is a sensation because sensations occur within the body, while colored objects occur outside the body in a space independent of the mind.

Is it possible to smell and taste things more accurately? Does the world contain smell and taste even when we're not smelling and tasting things?

Well, yes, dogs have better hearing and smell.

I was strictly speaking about colors, though. If color is a fiction, why are we adding fiction to whatever it is we’re adding the color to?

The eagle has 20/5 eyesight, more rods and cones, and see much better. According to color factionalism they invent color, too, and somehow paint the images with their brain, but why would animals with such great sight distort their sight with color?

There are plenty of species that don't need vision at all. Why is there a question of a species needing color?

There are species that have color vision because for those species it was adaptive to have color vision, and via biological evolution such sensory capacities evolved.

The is a question of a species needing color because, from the perspective of color fictionalism, color is a fiction. I’m just not sure why a species would adapt to a fictional view of its surroundings.

No, just that it is possible to see thing more accurately, for instance if the world is without color, maybe it would better to see it without color. Why would a species need color?

What national abortion ban?

“Bloodbath” was a lie, the “very fine people” hoax, that he is going to implement Project 2025, that he wants a national abortion ban, that he wants to ban IVF, that he incited a crowd to storm the capitol, that police died on that day, that J6 was the worst attack on America since the civil war.

Considering the color fictionalism position, if the world is without color then I suppose a scene of greys is what it must look like. And the implications are crazy. We must have evolved into beings who paint the world with color, and somehow were able to stay within the lines this whole time. In fact we must have invented color at some point. Of course it’s all untenable.

Kamala won that debate. She is far superior at the political act, groomed as she was to be a puppet. It was pure skill or she got the debate questions beforehand. But her lies went unchecked, allowed to list off the common anti-Trump hoaxes. She even said something like J6 was the worst attack on the US since the civil war, and on the eve of 9/11. She’s a brick, but she can play the part, and sometimes that’s all people want.

People with complete achromatopsia are not blind.

I wonder if someone with achromatopsia views the world more accurately given that it is without color.

Not sure what you mean by "how it really looks", just as I wouldn't be sure what you'd mean by "how it really smells" or "how it really tastes".

I just mean seeing it without the sensation of color. What do you suppose it looks like?

My claim is that pain and colour are sensations, and the fiction is that colour is not a sensation but a property of the ball.

Is the world outside your head without color in your view?

Perhaps we would be able to numb the sensation of color like we could the sensation of pain, and see the world how it really looks.

I don’t doubt there are such activities. People try to make money by getting views on social media all the time, often by making political propaganda. What makes it a campaign or something nefarious?

I don’t believe any of it, and I’m certainly not scared of social media and tic-toc videos. I mean, who cares?

It’s a nonsensical pretext to censor and control social media, spy on Americans, and if the past is any indication, to gaslight the electorate.

Fact? It’s complete bullshit, itself an influence operation. It’s just a list of trigger-words to activate the drones. “Putin”, “Russia”, “Trump”, “right-wing”, “influence”, and Kamala gets some help with her campaign.

The “Russian influence” canard returns. We now know they are using it as a pretext for surveilling American and Canadian citizens, which is the true crime.

Absolutely. I have no qualms with people using those verbs. Philosophically speaking, however, my concern is only if it is true or false, and the use of those verbs falls under one category and not the other.

But other mechanisms such as a cortical visual prosthesis can help (or will be able to help in a few decades). Much like a cochlear implant helps where an ear trumpet can't.

It will definitely help and will improve the quality of life of those who cannot see. But if seeing is using the eyes to perceive the environment, that isn’t sight. That’s all I’m saying.

They hear because of the cochlear implant, much like I can see the words on the screen because of my glasses.

You can see the words on the screen because your eyes still function enough to be able to see. No amount of glasses can help the those with total blindness see, however.

If they can hear, why do they have a cochlear implant?

I don't think telling the blind that they can see is a great idea. Mimicking such function is obviously helpful, offering a better quality of life, but it is because the facts are apparent—the blind have trouble seeing—that they were able to get the help in the first place.

If I have a cochlear implant and perceive you say "hello" through my "artificial" means, and I say "Nos said 'hello,'" my statement is true under both correspondence and coherence theories of truth. That is, my saying you said hello corresponds to what actually happened and my use of language is consistent with your own.

We would have a different result if I hallucinated you saying "hello. "

None of this demands a direct realism. To demand a direct realism forces a definition of "artificial" to simply mean "other than typically human, " which in no way can be assumed to be more accurate than other methods. To call one method artificial assumes there is an otherwise natural and correct way, but that assumption is the entirety of this debate. That is, what is contested is whether the world as it appears is as it is or whether it has been artificially manipulated by the internal processes.

My position is that all perception is "artificial" if that term means it is an unaltered representation of reality.

The question is not whether I said "hello" but whether you heard me say "hello". But hearing me say "hello" and recognizing the signals from a mechanical device stimulating your auditory nerve are two different acts. Evidence of this is that one has to relearn how to "hear" using such a device.

By "artificial" I am speaking of the mechanism, for instance the cochlear implant. It was designed, built, and inserted by a human being, whereas the organs were not. In any case, the only things manipulated by internal processes, whether artificial or natural, are internal processes. That's the only extent to which internal processes can manipulate the world.

This is due to the uncontroversial scientific fact that perception is created by the brain regardless of whether the stimulus enters the brain through the normal means of sensory organs or whether it is hot wired directly through a probe.

One might perceive that he is running while in fact he is dreaming. In that case it would be an error to say he is running. It’s the same with sight and hearing. So while one might perceive that he is seeing or hearing with direct stimulation of some part of his brain, it is in fact untrue that he is. The environmental stimulus and the means with which it interacts with a fully-functioning sensory organ is a large part of acts such as “seeing” and “hearing”, and ought not be confused with some other stimulus. Stimulating a brain with some of the methods indicated is just an artificial way to illicit some of the biological effects of an actual, natural stimulus, but is in fact not the same act.

Right, American elections are unique in that respect, and in the way they’re conducted. Personally, I love the circus for sheer entertainment value, but the amount of money thrown around is obscene. Dark money from undisclosed sources kind of make the whole foreign influence rhetoric a huge sham. I rather some American oil company or lobby group have influence than a shell company company who need not disclose where the money is coming from.

https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2024/03/unprecedented-surge-in-dark-money-floods-2024-elections/

Thank you for your thoughts.

I don't believe in spectrums or any other kind of political geometry because people and populations are not shaped that way. You can place me wherever you wish on your own, but I find no affiliation with people I do not know, so any camp I might find myself in is wholly contrived and imagined,

I suppose I hold a more favorable view of human beings, and support a different theory regarding the formation of a state. I don’t believe many people would descend into chaos and crime should the state disappear tomorrow, and if some would, there is a vast majority of people who would oppose them. I hold to the conquest theory of state formation, that states begin as institutions to exploit the vanquished, and serves to protect the exploiters from threats from within and without. It’s mandate has never changed, except to absorb and replace initiative with obedience.

As such I fear the state for the same reason you fear the criminal, and for practically the same reasons. History attests to their numerable crimes and it isn’t too much of a stretch, I think, to call it a criminal organization. It’s little more than a protection racket. It survives on the exploitation of the people, through theft and forced labor. It commits murder and atrocity on an industrial scale. It moves quickly towards anything that accrues to its own benefit while slowly and begrudgingly towards anything that accrues to ours. It’s authority is illegitimate. That murder, theft, forced labor, all go unpunished, and even treated as a moral duty.

Perhaps worse than it’s numerous, daily, and unmitigated crime spree is the effects such a relationship has with flesh-and-blood human beings, living as they are in a kind of serfdom. I guess that’s like the social Darwinism you’re speaking of, except the culture isn’t treated here like a biological being. Every day we get state power and faith in State power increasing, social power and faith in social power diminishing. Reliance on the scraps from the state’s table increases, while reliance on oneself and one’s social circle dissolves. Forced and artificial cooperation replaces voluntary, natural cooperation. And so on, progressively, until full-on domestication.

At any rate, our preferences differ.

I think you know that I'm suggesting that our government ought to pay for these damages.

You mean the taxpayer, which also includes many of your victims. It’s not clear how that will rectify any injustice.

I see no problem with an aggrieved party seeking damages and retribution from their exploiters wherever and how it can be done. Should the estates of slave-owners and the wealth that they stole still exist, perhaps that can be done. And if you feel guilty for those crimes I see no problem with you paying others reparations.

But if you’re going to implicate anyone but the guilty parties and seek damages for anyone but the victims, maybe even their descendants, you’d be attempting to correct one injustice with another.

Much of Washington D.C. was built by slave labor. There is some serious back-pay owed, perhaps even to the descendants of those who were forced to work on it. Apparently documents which record who worked there still exist so it is conceivable that their descendants could be found and the US treasury pays what is owed.

But beyond that it cannot go. None of the victims nor the perpetrators are alive. Restitution is impossible.

Another Russian influence operation, straight from the desk of Putin himself to the propaganda of right-wing influencers.

But Putin is all in on Kamala.

Meanwhile a Chinese spy was found to be working for the Governor of New York.

That contradicts both, current and historic facts. See the last post for the beginning of a list of things that happened, and/or are currently happening. It negates the statement quoted above.

Then it should be easy to demonstrate. Manufacture my consent, or anyone else’s. I am willing to read any argument, marketing, or propaganda you can provide, and we’ll see if I willfully consent to any of it.

Give it a try.

To put the state's survival as a primary value, even though it has no organism upon which to apply any Darwinian principles in the first place, puts into immediate doubt what it is we really want to survive here. I say this because so far the supposed survival of the state appears to be no more than a noble lie, while principles regarding the control of others, the monopoly of land, a regimented society enforced by violence, or absolute power and the wealth and prestige that such a position brings, is the less-than-noble realities we're really hoping to maintain here.

Wisdom cannot be said to rule in a domain built upon falsehoods, so it's probably best to do away with the noble lie, especially if we hold that the stupid and bad cannot rule. The problem isn't so much that authoritarianism works or can lend to the survivability of the state, it's that such a state is illegitimate, unjust, and wholly immoral. Some variation or other of slavery does work to maintain the order, at least for a while, but that something works isn't always the best course of action when it comes to dealing with other human beings. And since the whole project is about dealing with other human beings, a rather prudent question might be whether we should treat other people like this and for these reasons. If utility is one's measure here, a question might be whether the slavery of other human beings is really worth the survival of the state, even if the state has zero biology? If we cannot attend to these questions then the whole project is as immoral as it is anti-social. All I know is, if your state were to disappear tomorrow the people who it was meant to keep in order would still be there, getting along fine enough, so the state's survival ought to be at best a secondary concern.

What is TFM?

To herd or control apes you have to commit violence against them, or proceed with the threat thereof.

A sheepdog gone rogue can herd a flock of sheep over a cliff without touching them.

How do they do with apes?

An authority must monopolize violence and use violence in order to institute “non-violence”. Just another contradiction among many. At any rate, speech is not violence, so I’ll just have to remain suspicious of such admissions.

The US is fucked, I guess, but it is the UK that is falling apart. Public services are on the brink of collapse. The gov is at the point where they are arresting people for social media posts, which is authoritarian, but also stupid because the prisons are too full. A shithole.

I think the appeal to communism is unemployment and early retirement, the dream that one might never need to work again. It’s as simple as that. Work limits one’s sphere of activity to work. Even Marx hints at it in his own picture of communism: society will regulate the general production so that he himself can pursue other interests when and how he chooses.

Just an aside, but the Chinese Communist Party celebrated its centenary just a couple years ago. That’s crazy to me, but not surprising. Maybe in another hundred they’ll reach their goal.

I have neurolink so I’m basically on auto update.

How to make a lizard appear human: have her talk about cooking or something. We certainly wouldn’t want her to talk about policies.

The social media handler for Kamala Harris went on X and called out Trump’s visit to Arlington, and the scandal deepens.

This paltry move was underscored by the fact that Harris, “the last person in the room” when it comes to one of the worst events in US history in Afghanistan, had never contacted any of these grieving families. Trump did, so he was invited to Arlington on the anniversary of their death. At any rate, they’re pissed at Harris, who not only didn’t phone any of the families, but also did some campaign propaganda at Arlington herself, the exact same thing she accused Trump of. It’s always projection when it comes to Trump’s haters.

Trump posted some of their responses to X and they’re quite devastating to Kamala’s “joyful” veneer. This, in combination with the accounts of Harris’ own staff, proves she’s just dog shit in lipstick.

Well, you knew what I wrote and then changed it to suit whatever it is you’re trying to do, pretending the whole time that I said one and not the other. That’s pure deception.

There is no contradiction. If I think a state ought to determine its own laws that does not mean I think it ought to prohibit anything it wants.