Hello everyone! I'm JP, still undecided on pronouns (any for now). I tend to be a lurker even IRL (I'm the quiet person who just likes to be there), but I'd like to start participating more in the spaces I enjoy and maybe find some sense of community.
Lately I've grown tired of my hobbies, and I've been looking for new ones. Growing up I read a lot, I used to draw and write, I played a lot of videogames, and I practiced martial arts (Karate and Judo). Later in my teens I learned to play guitar and bass, some friends got me into anime and manga (although I don't watch or read many anymore), and like most people, I've enjoyed many movies and TV shows.
Recently I learned how to code (just the basics in Java, I still don't know how to build a full web/mobile app), I started learning gamedev in Godot (I did the basic tutorials for 2D and 3D games), and now I'm trying to learn 3D modeling in Blender, but I'm pretty slow and inconsistent. I also spend a lot of time online learning about social issues, probably to the detriment of my mental health.
Other hobbies I'd like to try in the future include cooking (I suck at it, but I'd like to get good); sewing, knitting and crocheting; painting, and I'd like to get into reading and writing again at some point. I'd also like to learn how to make music, since I only know how to learn songs, but not how to write, record or produce one. My favourite music falls into the "alt-rock/indie-rock" umbrella, and lately I've also been discovering post-rock, which I love.
Nice to meet you all! So far, Beehaw seems like a really nice place to be(e).
I really enjoyed this article. It's very validating to see that other people see the same issues as I do with pseudoscience, especially when spouted by reputable scientists.
The field of psychology, in particular, still feels riddled with pseudoscience everywhere you look (probably due to being so young compared to other fields), which has already severely undermined its reputation in the eyes of many people I've talked to.
I didn't know about IIT specifically, but I've definitely heard way too much quackery around the concept of consciousness. To me, the first issue that I find around this topic is the lack of an operational definition. There seems to be no agreement about what are we looking for exactly. If we are going to look for this human-made construct called consciousness, first we need a clear definition that allows us to measure it, and separate what is conciousness from what isn't. Once we have that definition, we can search for consciousness, and after that, then we can start making theories about how it emerges.