The same thing happened in the Apple store I went to visit. Devices tend to zap you when you touch them. Maybe the problem is localized to certain regions?
Ah yes it is a 2 pin...ungrounded. Is there a way I can ground myself/and-or my laptop? I just had achilles tendon surgery so I can't really touch grass, so to speak proverbially (or literally?).
Yes its relatively dry. I had a humidifier but the fuse blew so I'm kinda stuck with what I've got. Is there any other way to dissipate charge in dry climates than humidity?
Yes exactly! That's how it started, but now it happens even when its not charging...and for my phones too. Maybe it's just a change in my perception, like what was subliminal before is becoming liminal now because I learned to pay attention to it?
It used to only happen when I had it plugged in, initially when I took my MacBook to Romania a few years ago and plugged it into the power grid there, they use a different frequency and I had to use an adaptor. But then it started happening in the US as well, and even after I switched from the 2020 model to the new M series, and now it happens to me even when its not plugged in anything, whether I'm grounded or not...that's why I'm wondering if they're actively changing the EM field encapsulation specs.
> I think it's just one of the bugs in our genetic code that evolution didn't shake out. I say that not as a biologist or anyone who has done any work in the field.
I'm just curious, do you know what the opinions about this stuff are from people that work in these fields, or that have dedicated their lives to it?
Yep that's a cogent, serious stance, and it sounds a lot like illusionism (famously argued by Daniel Dennett) or functionalism if you ever wanted to check out more about it.
It’s a serious stance, but the really interesting thing to me here is that its not a settled fact. What’s quite surprising and unique about this field is that unlike physics or chemistry where we generally agree on the basics, in consciousness studies you have some quite brilliant minds totally deadlocked on the fundamentals. There is absolutely no consensus on whether the problem is 'solved' or 'impossible,' and its definitely not a matter of people not taking this seriously enough or making some rash judgments or simple errors.
I find this fascinating because this type of situation is pretty rare or unique in modern science. Maybe the fun part is that I can take one stance and you another and here there's no "right answer" that some expert knows and one of us is "clearly" wrong. Nice chatting with you :)
> then isn't the experience just of "a surface attribute, of given spatial extent".
I don't know why this seems to be so hard for me to think about and even put into words, but isn't "the experience of the surface attribute of a given spatial extent" something other than the experience of the surface attribute of a given spatial extent itself?
I mean that the words we use to describe something aren't the something itself. Conceivably, you can experience something without ever having words, and having words about a phenomenal visual experience doesn't seem to change the experience much or at all (at least for me).
Maybe another way of phrasing this would be something like: can we talk about red blotches using red blotches themselves, in the same way that we can talk about words using words themselves? And then, supposing that we could talk about red blotches using red blotches (maybe the blotches are in the form of words or structured like knowledge, I dunno), can we talk about red blotches without ever having experienced red blotches? I learned this idea from Mary's Room thought experiment, but I still don't know what to think about it.
I'm actually curious here, because maybe our experiences are different. When you look at something red, before any associations or thoughts kick in, before you start thinking "this reminds me of fire" or analyzing it, is there something it's like for that redness to be there? Some quality to it that exists independent of what you can say about it?
For me, I can turn off all the thinking and associations and just... look. And there's something there that the looking is of or like, if that makes sense. It's hard to put into words because it's prior to words, and can possibly be independent of them.
But maybe that's not something universal? I know some people don't have visual imagery or an inner voice, so maybe phenomenal experience varies more than we assume. Does that distinction between the experience itself and your ability to think/talk about it track for you at all?
> It seems entirely possible that the "philosophical zombie" is an impossible/illogical construct, and that in fact anything with all the structure necessary for consciousness will of necessity be conscious.
Yes, and that's pretty much exactly the point: we don't know of any way of determining whether someone is a p-zombie or a being with conscious phenomenal experience. We can certainly have an opinion or belief or assume that sufficient structure means consciousness, which is a perfectly reasonable stance to take and one that many would take, but we have to be careful to understand that's not a scientific stance since it isn't testable or falsifiable, which is why it's been called the "hard problem" of consciousness. It's an unfounded belief we choose out of reasons like psychological comfort.
With regards to your latter point, I think you are making some sophisticated distinctions regarding the "map and territory" relation, and it seems you've hit upon the crux of the matter: how can we report "what its like" for us to experience something the other person hasn't experienced, if its not deconstructible to phenomenal states they've already experienced (and therefore constructible for them based off of our report)? The landmark paper here is "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" by Josh Nagel, and if you're ever curious it's a pretty short read.
With regards to "blindsight" since I'm not familiar with it and curious, how do we distinguish between loss of visual consciousness and loss of information transfer between conscious regions, or loss of memory about conscious experience?
> As noted, consciousness seems to just be the ability to self-observe, which is useful as another predictive input.
As far as I know, consciousness is referring to something other than self-referential systems, especially with regards to the hard problem of consciousness.
The [philosophical zombie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie) thought experiment is well-known for imagining something with all the structural characteristics that you mention but without conscious experience as in "what-its-like" to be someone.