Same for me. I spent the first 45 years of my life breathing almost entirely though my mouth. Then I tried some nasal spray that was great, but made the situation worse when I inevitably overused it, so I went to a doctor. I had been told when I was a kid that I had polyps, so I went to see about getting them removed. She put me on Flonase, which at the time was prescription, and since then I've been able to breathe through my nose unless I'm sick. It has been a significant quality of life improvement for me.
How is it known or tested to verify that "animals don't choose compassion over selfishness, they merely make an instinctive survival cost-benefit analysis"?
I'm not disputing it, but I've never understood how we can say definitively that animals are doing the same things we do, but they are doing it out of instinct.
Is there something more than prediction going on? I'd like to understand why there would be studies like this: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2307.02477 if it's all just prediction. Are there some algorithms that are called "reasoning", that are somewhere between prediction and full-blown reasoning?
It was probably a bad choice of words, but chosen for a reason. I'm guessing of course, but I think the people that picked those words knew what they were doing. They wanted to appeal to people who think the police do more harm than good.
This is all speculation based on things I've heard, so take it with a big grain of salt.
I used to be on a forum with somebody who posted about having an excellent relationship with his dead wife. He said they interact regularly. He was not religious. Normally I would think he's a crackpot or somebody trying to sell something, but he was not either of those things. He came across as very honest and intelligent and sincere. The forum had nothing to do with life after death, but it came up occasionally. His other comments were always very rational.
There are others, e.g. Bernardo Kastrup, who think that there is a single consciousness, and that life as a human (if I understand correctly, any physical life) is like when somebody has multiple personalities. When we die (according to Kastrup) we "remember" that we are part of that consciousness.
I think panpsychism in general is a non-religious basis for at least the possibility that consciousness doesn't have to be physical. Consciousness could be fundamental.
To be clear, I don't believe any of those things, but I don't rule them out either.
The same goes for religious belief. My reasons for not believing might be due to perspective. I doubt that my dogs had any clue as to why I put them on a leash. I (and humans in general) could be in a similar situation, and that would change a lot. I suspect we are in a similar situation as far as making assumptions that work for us, but are not necessarily grounded in reality. I think it's very likely that there are things that we don't and maybe can't understand.
I used to be convinced that NDEs were either made up, or the brain rebooting or something like that. I'm not so sure about it anymore. I'm not religious (not anti-religious either), but there are a lot of options between nothingness and a religious expectation of an afterlife. Maybe these NDEs are indicators of something else. I was surprised to see that almost 20% of people that "die" report them. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6172100/
I'm not diminishing anything. I'm just not willing to condemn people without taking into account extenuating circumstances.
People regularly justify things that are not justified. When there's a lot of pressure, rationalizing is very easy. It's not even easy to realize that something is being rationalized.
I'm not justifying the unjustifiable. I'm saying that a person doesn't have be morally "bankrupt" to do something bad. Condemning people as morally bankrupt without taking into account extenuating circumstances is certainly not justified.
Or a person with a sick kid, or who is about to be evicted, or who made some bad financial decisions or for some other reason is about to run out of food money. In those situations it's very easy to rationalize that the good outweighs the bad.
I've only been in a similar situation once. I could barely sleep at night for a week before I finally told them that I couldn't do it. In my situation I would have taken a financial hit if they decided to let me go, but my wife works and I have savings and there was no immediate threat, and it still was a difficult decision.
My experience with ham radio has also been positive. I've been a ham for about 14 years now, and I can't recall any bad experiences. Most of the contacts are barely more than signal reports, but any conversations I've had have been at least cordial.
I can't speak for bityard, but I think that pointing out that there have always been complaints is just saying that there are always unhappy people regardless of the state of the hobby. Most people don't talk about something if there's no problem. The people that speak up are unhappy with something. That can make it seem like the problems are common, even if they are rare. That's my take on it anyway.
My wife and I are from the U.S. She's from Belarus, but has been in the country for 30 years. We went to France about 10 years ago. I was semi-expecting the stereotype (rude, arrogant), but everybody we met was nice. One guy at the hotel seemed standoff-ish at first, but he was very friendly by the time we left a week later. Pretty much everybody we interacted with was pleasant and helpful. We tried to use the few French words we knew (thank you, please, hello, goodbye type of thing), but for the most part we had to speak English. I think almost everybody we interacted with spoke English, at least a little. This was in Paris mostly, so maybe that's not representative. I was generally impressed with the people.