Opinionhaver

Bass Test by The Chemical Brothers ofcourse.

Stereograms? Yeah I can. I've even made them myself.

Introspective narration or metacognitive awareness seems to better describe what you're talking about rather than consciousness.

You're calling it "semantic quibbling," but defining terms isn’t a sideshow - it’s the foundation of a meaningful conversation. If two people are using the same word to mean different things, then there’s no actual disagreement to resolve, just a tangle of miscommunication. It’s not about clinging to labels – it’s about making sure we’re not just talking past each other.

And on the claim that consciousness – in the Nagel sense – is the one thing that can’t be an illusion: I don’t think you’ve fully appreciated the argument if your first response is to ask for scientific evidence. The entire point is that consciousness is the thing that makes evidence possible in the first place. It’s the medium in which anything at all can be observed or known. You can doubt every perception, every belief, every model of the universe - but not the fact that you are experiencing something right now. Even if that experience is a hallucination or a dream, it’s still being had by someone. That’s the baseline from which everything else follows. Without that, even neuroscience is just lines on a chart with nobody home to read them.

Then what do you mean when you're using the word "consciousness"? Whose definition are you going by?

You might be referring to the split-brain experiments, where researchers studied patients who had their brain hemispheres separated by cutting the corpus callosum – the “bridge” between the two sides.

In these experiments, text can be shown to only one eye, allowing researchers to communicate with just one hemisphere without the other knowing. The results are fascinating for several reasons, especially because each hemisphere demonstrates different preferences and gives different answers to the same questions. This naturally raises the question: “Which one is you?”

Another striking finding, similar to what you were referring to, is that researchers can give instructions to the non-verbal hemisphere and then ask the verbal one to explain why it just performed a certain action. Since it doesn’t know the real reason, it immediately starts inventing excuses – ones the researchers know to be false. Yet the participant isn’t lying. They genuinely believe the made-up explanation.

As for consciousness, I think you might be using the term a bit differently from how it's typically used in philosophical discussions. The gold standard definition comes from Thomas Nagel’s essay What Is It Like to Be a Bat?, where he defines consciousness as the fact of subjective experience – that it feels like something to be. That existence has qualia. This, I (and many others) would argue, is the only thing in the entire universe that cannot be an illusion.

For me, one of the biggest indicators is that I’ve actually changed my mind on several issues. I even keep a list of things I’ve changed my mind about or been proven wrong on. I don’t resist being wrong – I take pride in it.

Similarly, there are things I’ve changed my mind about and then later changed back to my original position. To me, that signals a certain mental flexibility and openness to new views, which I see as crucial for error correction.

Another thing that comes to mind is that there are topics where my opinions fundamentally differ from those of my peers. That alone isn’t concrete evidence of independent thinking, but at the very least, it shows a willingness to resist conforming under peer pressure.

It's not a principle if it doesn't cost you anything.

The answer here depends on your values. Is it more important to you to consume media intentionally and at a slower pace – even if that means missing out on a lot of objectively less important stuff – or do you place higher value on staying “in the loop”? The real answer probably lies somewhere between those two extremes.

But one thing worth considering is this: if your friend group consists of people who are terminally online, then of course most of what they talk about will be things they’ve encountered online. If you’re not like that yourself, then some friction is inevitable. It’s like hanging out with golfers when you don’t golf.

I read a book by Alan Weisman titled The World Without Us, which covers this very specific topic. According to it, among the very last man-made structures left after hundreds of thousands – if not millions – of years would be the Channel Tunnel between England and France. Another notable example would be the stone faces on Mount Rushmore, as well as some old steel bridges built in an era when engineers couldn’t yet calculate structural load precisely, so they simply overbuilt everything.

When I open YouTube it gives me an edless feed of recommendations tailored to me. I don't care what other people are watching. If there's a tab with the title "trending" I've probably just never clicked it. I'm not even tempted to go see.

That previous comment was reference to you. I was going to give you examples untill you added:

(I’ll bet anyone here 5$ that this guy considers “racial minorities and trans people deserve human rights” to be an extremist position)

I see what you’re selling, and I’m not buying. I’m more than happy to debate people who act civilly and in good faith - that’s why I responded to the previous user. You, however, lost your chance.

Have a great day.

I spend hours on YouTube every single day and I have no clue what a "trending page" is.