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If you do accept the leap of faith that a nonbiological entity that is convincing in its reactions to qualia is actually conscious, then consider what that implies: namely that consciousness is an emergent property of the overall pattern of an entity, not the substrate it runs on.
How to Create a Mind
Ray Kurzweil
28. Feiler Faster Thesis:
The pace of society is based on the rate at which news breaks. As the world becomes increasingly networked, the news cycle accelerates, causing events—national debates, scandals, etc—to move faster and receive ever less consideration.
Everyone, a New MEGATHRE...
@G_S_Bhogal on Twitter
In the book Change, the therapist authors (Paul Watzlawick, John H. Weakland, and Richard Fisch) discuss the case of a rebellious teenager, suspended from school by the principal because he was caught dealing drugs. He was still to do his homework at home but was forbidden to be on campus. This would put a big dent in his drug-dealing business. The boy burned with the desire to get vengeance. The mother consulted a therapist, who told her to do the following: explain to the son that the principal believed only students who attended class in person could do well. In the principal’s mind, by keeping the boy away from school he was ensuring he would fail. If he did better by working at home than in class, this would embarrass the principal. Better to not try too hard this semester and get on the good side of the principal by proving him right. Of course, such advice was designed to play into his emotions. Now he desired nothing more than to embarrass the principal and so threw himself into his homework with great energy, the goal of the therapist all along. In essence, the idea is not to counter people’s strong emotions but to move with them and find a way to channel them in a productive direction.
The Laws of Human Nature
Robert Greene
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