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Cake day: June 24th, 2023

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  • Hi there, gen Z person here. Things are bad but remember that, as always, you only see and hear about the vocal minority. No matter how poor American education standards are, it is irrefutable that Trumpism could not exist without idiots from all generations. The education paradigms we are emerging from cannot possibly be worse than those which produced tens of millions of conservatives and hundreds of millions of nonvoters. This is specifically because of those gen X leftists and millennial teachers you mentioned. We aren’t competing as generations–failures of the past become the lessons of the present because older generations also have smart people. So how do you know gen Z won’t do even better? Everything else aside, growing up under fascism creates widespread discontent. I’d say from personal knowledge that for every one gen Z kid that believes in the system are five who at least recognize it’s broken.

    Now, I won’t pretend to be particularly optimistic either; things are bad. However, I also want to believe that we can and will do better. And maybe I’ll be wrong, but at least I haven’t given up hope.








  • lithium only has one valence electron. it really wants to get rid of that valence electron. halogens such as the pictured fluorine, chlorine, bromine, and iodine have seven valence electrons. they really want to obtain one more valence electron to form a stable outer shell. thus, the lithium donates its electron, forming an ionic compound





  • i’d agree that we don’t really understand consciousness. i’d argue it’s more an issue of defining consciousness and what that encompasses than knowing its biological background. if we knew what to look for, we’d find it. also anesthesia isn’t really a problem at all. in fact, we know exactly how general anesthesia works

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2908224/

    and Penroses’s Orch OR theory was never meant to explain anesthesia. it’s a more general theory concerning the overall existence of consciousness in the first place. however, anesthesia does relate to the theory, in that it could play a role in proving it (i think? not a primary source but it’s where i found that info)

    besides that, Orch OR isn’t exactly a great model in the first place, or at least from a neurological standpoint. even among theories of consciousness, Orch OR is particularly controversial and not widely accepted. i’m no expert and i could be misunderstanding, so please correct me if i’m missing something that would indicate Orch OR is considered even remotely plausible compared to other consciousness theories. this paper certainly had some things to say about it in the context of the validity of theories of consciousness (see V.1 class I).

    other theories seem more promising. global workspace theory seems particularly well supported by neurology. its criticisms mainly focus on how GWT fails to truly explain the nature of consciousness. but is that an issue any theory can resolve? again, the problem lies in the definition of consciousness.

    then we have integrated information theory. it’s a more mathematical model that aims to quantify the human experience. but you know what? it’s also controversial and highly debated, to the point that it’s been called pseudoscientific because it implies a degree of panpsychism. it’s clearly not a perfect theory.

    point is, you’re right. we don’t really get consciousness. we have some wild guesses out there, and penrose’s theory is certainly one of them. genius as penrose is, Orch OR isn’t empirically testable. we don’t know, and maybe can’t know - which is precisely why neuroscience searches elsewhere