Yes. It is what we call "evidence". We see a correlation between loosing an arm and changes in the the person's personality or other attributes. Of course, it does not prove causation and it does depend on the nature of the observed change and existing alternate explanations that can more easily explain the same evidence (say: they guy became sadder from not having an arm). OTOH, if we were to observe for instance that cutting an arm makes you forget things, I would call that evidence that memory lives in your arm, yes. It is how we constructed our (meagre and amazing at the same time) biological understanding after all. That said, you are nitpicking on a very small part of my true argument here.

Perhaps I misunderstood you arguments. Let me check. I see two interpretations of you wording:

1.- That you believe there is some sort of "afterlife" and/or some non-biological mechanism to preserve some part of what we consider a "person" separate from their biology. Thus calling the biological theory "faith based".

Which is what I interpreted and I see as making not only vague definitions of personhood/consciousness but huge assumptions in the existance of undefined non-biological mechanisms.

2.- That you believe we should hold no belief at all, give that there is no enough scientific evidence to prove anything.

Which might be what you mean. This is more subtle but no particularly practical. Science often holds tentative beliefs and theories (even if they are all open to falsification or refinement) since else we would not even be able to prioritize experiments! it is true that in the presence of uncertainty we need to keep open minds, but not all theories should be considered equally probable, even if there is no possible evidence for either. This is where Occam's razor helps ("one should select the solution with the fewest assumptions"): a theory where "once a person stops functioning biologically, nothing else happens" has fewer moving pieces / assumptions that "once a person stops functioning, there are a bunch of other things that happen". Thus it presents a higher likelyhood of being correct.

Another way to think of this is probabilistically: each statement that we make about reality has a chance of being true or false. A composite statement where many statements are made have a total probability made of the multiplication of their respective probabilities which probability gets smaller and smaller the more statements are made. ( P(x ^ y)

In practice, you will act consistently with some belief or theory if it matters at all. Suppose that I tell you a meteorite is going to kill you tomorrow. You have no way of proving it either way, nor any evidence either in support of it or against. You are unlikely to just stand aloof and say "no one really knows" and shrug. You will estimate, consciously or unconsciously, and depending on my credibility and the base chances you assign to a meteorite falling on top of you (the bayesian prior), you will chose to believe Im right or believe Im wrong, and act accordingly. So keeping an open mind and not jumping to conclusions is, as I said, healthy, but I do not believe that we can (or should) hold no belief at all and threat all theories the same.

This is a flawed argument, see a post I made above with detailed explanation and links as to why. Science is not about proving things, it is about adjusting beliefs based on the balance of evidence. The only valid proofs I know are over mathematical constructs.

On the contrary, you seem to be assuming hidden/magical/obscure forces that extend "life" past the destruction of a body into "some other" realm. Those are SEVERAL and HUGE assumptions. I believe spikesahead is making little assumptions at all: "I see a live person, now I see a dead person, end of story".

His biological explanation is also supported by some actual science/evidence, like the fact that brain accidents can dramatically change personality and other personal attributes that many attribute to a "soul".

Hope it helps :-)

My 2 cents to you otherwise excellent post: "nobody really knows" is a step in the right direction, but only the first step. Some people tend to interpret it as self-justification: "since nobody really knows (or can prove otherwise), then my ow belief is as valid as anyone else's". This is a common refuge of the believer, the idea that if I can't be proven wrong I can be content and in equal footing with any other hypothesis, while simultaneously ignore all the other universe of possible explanations (anyone can invent a new one in 5 minutes) as not as good as their own, even while they can access the same defense.

True rationalism goes one step further, where the burden of proof is shifted to the one making a statement about reality (ockam's razor and bayesian priors apply here). Overall, the right answer IMHO to "Is death the end?" is "there is no evidence to indicate it is not, nor any compelling logic that explains why it cannot, nor a simpler (more probable) explanation, so until that changes the rational choice is to assume it is.".

The same goes for most of the other "nobody knows" answers out there: accepting uncertainty and living with it is healthy, but if practical choices become necessary you will need to act according to some belief, and there is always one that demands less (fewer supernatural actors or unseen/magical forces for instance), and is hence the most probable and the one that maximizes your chances of making a good choice. Most of us do that even unconsciously, for instance by having an aversion to committing suicide even if I strongly assert there is something better afterwards.

I agree! Humanity in general has a long tradition of doing what is convenient (for me) rather than what is right (for everyone). It is not black and white though, some companies (usually NOT the big ones, who I suspect build enough bureaucracy to create a large bystander effect) do put the good of society above their profits, again, probably failing to become the biggest companies but not failing their mission and values.

My point is rather that, at the very least, we should deny them the easy excuse of saying "my hands are tied, I'm obligated to increase profits above all else", by debunking that lie. Of course, it is an improvement, not a full solution.

I understand the sentiment but, with all due respect, to be 5-insightful your post would need to be at least true. It is not. "As the U.S. Supreme Court recently stated, "modern corporate law does not require for-profit corporations to pursue profit at the expense of everything else, and many do not do so." " here or here The more we allow this misconception to be echoing in the public mindset, the more we allow companies to get away with it.

Moreover, even if the vaccine WAS risky (it very, very likely isn't), I find it pretty disturbing that we don't consider it a necessary risk and embrace it for the greater good. Apparently we are quite ok with putting a machinegun in someone's hands and calling him a hero. But god forbid some idiot risks his health much less to save much more...

As a citizen of a different country, the thing that surprises me the most is the fact that votes where "almost entirely on party lines". How can that be in such a moral, high-stakes, historical situation? In my mind that very fact can only be explained logically in a few ways:

- Political echo-chambers are so strong that even decision by career politicians (supposedly part of a well-informed, trained elite), are unable to find or reason about truth or right and wrong. OR
- You have a democracy that does no care about truth or morals at all, you government by the people is just a bunch of power games.

In either case it smells like a rotten, corrupted carcass of a republic. And it makes me sad as you are a country that in the past has contributed to the enlightenment and advancement of humanity. Don't keep asking yourselves if this or that event like this one can be your downfall, you have already fallen.

Some quick counter-arguments:

- Historically, on every jump you mention people moved from BASIC jobs to more COMPLEX jobs that society as a whole could not even afford before (entertainment for instance). That is farming to industry to services to information... etc. We are in essence escaping from the things machines can do better than US. Machines are getting better faster than humans and will surpass our ability to do ANYTHING. Whenever that happens there would be nowhere to jump to.
- Even in an optimistic scenario, transition will be painful. We should not make policy based on the fact that things could become stable eventually.
- You forget that while this process goes along, the rich will continue to gather more wealth. As in, the real estate that is NOT being automated.
- In history, as in investments, past performance is no future guarantee. What happened before tells you for sure that something can happen again. Check the logic. It does not necessarily predict what will happen. As you might have noticed, history has been full of surprises, and we are indeed in the frontier of very disruptive technology.

The important thing is this: do we want to be prepared for the possible changes or just go blindly ahead believing we are safe. Hint: our choice is not going well for global warming at least.

That is 'a' (rather than 'the') definition for market. It is extremely common nevertheless to expected the return for an investment to be monetary profit, not whatever you get in return. Else even NGOs and other non for profit institutions would qualify as "the market". So I'm ok with my use of "market" if most people get my meaning, which is the entire point of language and definitions IMHO.

Except that crowfunding has never been an "investment". You get no shares, you get no money back (certainly not more money that you put in) and the risk would be ridiculously high. It has always been about trowing a piece of disposable income for a nice idea that you would love to see realized, in the off chance it happens. ESPECIALLY if the market would never attempt such a thing. Neither the people with the dreams, nor the people that indulge in patronage deserve to be called fools.

I admire your courage and determination, seriously.

Sadly, the truth is that with lack of education and refined propaganda machinery it is not hard to buy vote with money. The problem with democracy is that it puts power in the hands of people, which have little chance to wield it in coordination. An informed vote is hard, almost impossible, since the complexity of society and politics is huge, the number of players huge and any individual's time to catch up and remember history very limited.

And that, without even going into the fact that there is an entire machinery to define the candidates before you get to use the vote you value so much.

So the odds are not in your favor, my friend. That said, I agree that stoping to exercise whatever power you yield, no matter how small, is to give up all power entirely. So keep voting, and, IMHO, vote for the bottom-feeders and shake the status-quo. Even a non-winning candidate that does well can gather publicity and influence that then has a chance to grow over time.

Can you make the parallel with the 7D experience I get at the cinema? The fact that I'm still missing 3 or 4 dimensions pisses me off!

The universe: it goes all the way to 11! ...but you really only need 10 ;-)

Your vision is too narrow. You mention the dollar as something American will be able to move completely away from if they wanted. This is false. No matter what you call the circulating currency, at the end of the day the rich hold a vast proportion of practical wealth, even more unequal than income. I'm talking houses, land, transportation, farms, infrastructure, mining, etc. All enforced by police and army in established political and geographical boundaries.. Change your money into another denomination all you want, you are most definitely still playing the game. Want out? You can go trade with other people on deep international waters or in space...

Just need to point out that it does not. Especially since it only includes things like the effect to a single person, for very narrow times/events. This chart, while amazing, is not comparing total levels of anything!