Gskyer Telescope
www.popularmechanics.com

With over nearly 7,000 positive reviews on Amazon and a 4.4/5 rating, it's not hard to see why the Gskyer telescope is a fan-favorite. This option features a 70mm aperture and fully coated optimal lenses to offer a crisp, clear view of the night's sky.  Tech savvy stargazers will appreciate the smart phone adapter and wireless camera remote, making it possible to view constellations from your screen. Thanks to its adjustable, aluminum alloy tripod, this telescope is suitable for every member of the family.

    • RedDawn [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      I guess I don’t really see how the same logic doesn’t apply to an actual human brain, which itself is basically an organic computer

        • RedDawn [he/him]
          ·
          4 years ago

          Ok well, I disagree. And the article hasn’t changed my mind

          By viewing the brain as a computer that passively responds to inputs and processes data, we forget that it is an active organ, part of a body that is intervening in the world, and which has an evolutionary past that has shaped its structure and function.

          No, you don’t have to forget any of that to understand the brain as a computer, it just makes it a more complicated one.

            • RedDawn [he/him]
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              4 years ago

              I really just disagree with a lot in this essay, it seems like most of the “the brain is nothing like a computer” argument comes down to strictly limiting the definition of a computer to only include certain digital computers already developed by humans. At least the author seems to acknowledge that his opinion about consciousness being impossible to ever replicate with technology is one that a lot of scientists disagree with.

                • RedDawn [he/him]
                  ·
                  4 years ago

                  Yeah, I can’t say I really agree with that one either, but I am a materialist and that one is by an author who says he wrote a book called “why materialism is baloney” so I wouldn’t expect to agree with him.

                  Short of becoming the machine at least for a brief moment, we cannot know whether there is anything it is like to be it.

                  This is, again, something I could just as easily say about any human that isn’t myself.

                • RedDawn [he/him]
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                  4 years ago

                  In reply to your edit, I appreciate the links and the conversation. I’m not really equipped to defend my position in the way the article writers have defended theirs at the moment, I will just say that my basic argument is that matter is what is real, and human consciousness arises from the way physical matter is arranged to make a human, so it’s something that is replicable even if we don’t have the means to replicate it yet (and even if we might never).

      • space_comrade [he/him]
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        4 years ago

        Is it though? It's a common assumption but it's far from confirmed, our current models of consciousness are very rudimentary despite what techbros would like you to believe.

        Check out this article: https://iai.tv/articles/consciousness-cannot-have-evolved-auid-1302

        • RedDawn [he/him]
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          4 years ago

          I’ve kind of already had this conversation in this thread including reading some articles by that author, I’m not really convinced by him, and I think that his ideas rely just as much on assumption, if only different ones.

          • space_comrade [he/him]
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            4 years ago

            Can you explain why? I've yet to see a convincing rebuttal to the argument I linked, I'd like to hear it.

            • RedDawn [he/him]
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              4 years ago

              Tbh I’m a bit surprised you find that argument convincing to begin with, there are a number of issues with it that jump out at me

              our ability to subjectively experience the world and ourselves—is no exception: it, too, must give us some survival advantage, otherwise natural selection wouldn’t have fixed it in our genome.

              First this, the premise of the entire argument, is not true. This is not how evolution works, and the entire argument is based on this incorrect idea about evolution.

              A lot of the rest of it is semantic sleight of hand. Like

              There is something it feels like to see the colour red, which is not captured by merely noting the frequency of red light. If we were to tell Helen Keller that red is an oscillation of approximately 4.3*1014 cycles per second, she would still not know what it feels like to see red.

              The “something it feels like to see the colour red” not being the same thing as the wavelength of the color red doesn’t mean that both things aren’t the result of material reality. He’s making one argument “the feeling of seeing the color red is different from knowing the physical quantities that make the color red” (which is obvious) and passing it off as another argument “the feeling of seeing the color red is immaterial”, which he doesn’t actually offer any support or evidence of.

              Ultimately buying into his argument requires rejecting materialism, but he’s more or less just asserting that consciousness is this thing that can’t be the result of material reality, I don’t see any convincing argument in support of this assertion.

              • space_comrade [he/him]
                ·
                4 years ago

                Uh you didn't really do a good job responding to the argument, it seems like you didn't even read it properly and instead want to nitpick semantics.

                The point of the argument is, if phenomenal consciousness doesn't have a causal effect on the material world, why did we evolve it? If something is to evolve, that something has to have some causal feedback loop with nature, and in a physicalist viewpoint this is not so.

                You could argue phenomenal consciousness is an accident (a spandrel is the official term I think) but it's a hell of an accident if you ask me. I don't think you can really convince me that something that doesn't have a causal effect in nature evolved to align so well with what's happening in nature.

                I don’t see any convincing argument in support of this assertion.

                It's literally in the rest of the article, you should probably just read it in its entirety.

                • RedDawn [he/him]
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                  4 years ago

                  If something is to evolve, that something has to have some causal feedback loop with nature,

                  I literally JUST told you that this is not how evolution works, all you’re doing is restating the false premise.

                  The article is shit, the argument is shit, in fact it’s not even really an argument, it’s only an assertion so there’s not much more to respond to.

                  • space_comrade [he/him]
                    ·
                    4 years ago

                    Then how does it work then?

                    The article is shit, the argument is shit, in fact it’s not even really an argument, it’s only an assertion so there’s not much more to respond to.

                    Uh okay, I literally just wanted to have a discussion, why be a dipshit about it?

                    Also you do realize "matter is the only substance and everything comes from it" is also "just an assertion"? The point is to argue your assertions.