southsamurai

Nah, it can be annoying, but cross posting is a good thing. It decentralizes content. Not all instances are federated with all the others. Multiple communities is healthy for the fediverse. So cross posting is also healthy. Yeah, it would be nice if there was a way to collapse cross posts, but I’d rather deal with it than have things get too narrow.

Now post flooding? That can get old fast. Chill. Spread that shit out. We ain’t gotta see it all at once.

It’s not a literal trap, it just looks similar to a deadfall trap, well baited with beer and wood

It supposedly has an edge in terms of pulling out oils in particular.

My problem is that, as you said, it’s harder to find, and I have a limitation in what I can use to begin with.

I can’t say, when I have used a powder vs a liquid in the past that the difference is so significant that I would bother to hunt down a powder that also fits my niche needs. But if you’re not limited, I would say it’s worth it on average

As someone who is always right, I can definitively say that when someone wrongly thinks the world revolves around them, they are the most annoying thing compared to someone simply being wrong in my presence. They should know the world revolves around me smdh.

Legit though, solipsistic narcissism is more entertaining than inaccurate pedantry, so I go with the knowitall

Hmmm, but that standard, I would err on it being inseparable, and mostly on the side of being a benefit.

Any complex life form needs complex environmental feedback of some kind, because if it’s anything like life as we’ve conceived of it, it needs external energy (food in our case) and avoidance of damage (no matter how mild the environment).

Sentience is just a high grade of that fundamental concept. It’s the difference between something like a plant that grows towards light and away from competitors; and something like a shrimp that makes a constant loop of processing external stimuli vs internal algorithms that predict probable outcomes.

As such, it can only be a benefit on an evolutionary level that the form of sentience become as complex as the niche the organism needs to fill/exploit that niche. A shrimp only needs a low grade of sentience because it’s a fairly simple and small niche. An eagle would be a higher complexity sentience because the scale it functions in is massive and involves wider risk/reward variables, with attendant import to outcomes.

I don’t think any organism will develop more sentience capabilities than it needs for long, nor will it keep it for long once a given level of need is past. If eagles all get sent to a large underground bunker, they don’t need the brain power to process everything, nor the energy it takes to maintain it. You’ll end up with a simpler processing of stimuli. Less flexibility, but also less “stress” from repeated decision making.

None of that requires thought though. Decisions on that scale “is a rabbit going to fight back enough that I should avoid it”, where accumulated data in memory can be used to guesstimate outcomes, they don’t require a conscious process, any more than us catching a ball does. To the contrary, thinking about some things makes them harder to do well. If an eagle had to think its way through snagging a running rabbit, it would be fucked.

And that’s really where sentience ends: thought. When there’s a “self” to make a decision based on conflicting stimuli and memory.

So I don’t think sentience can ever be more of a drawback than a benefit. By its nature, it happened because it was a more successful way of surviving long enough to breed.

Well, anyone watching would already know I’m fucked in the head. So I doubt they’d be surprised when I went on a killing spree for having been violated like that

What? You think the nanobot drones disguised as vaccines are new thing?

When the world shits on your neck, go out hard

What’s your definition set? Are you using sentience as being the same or different from consciousness and/or sapience? There’s multiple usages for sentient as a term, and this is a complex enough subject that I don’t want to waste your time yammering on about the wrong thing lol

Only being pushed into them by a lolcow

Too friendly sometimes. I’ve had to punch a cow for trying to push me in a pond for the lolz. As in the cow was doing it for the lolz.

Also, punching a cow hurts because those damn skulls are hard.

Also, punching a cow seems to amuse them.

Also, it will not prevent them from trying to push you in a pond again.

Also, carry a brush if you’re fishing at a farm pond. Or, really, doing anything in a cow’s space. Because that will make them super friendly.

Also, brushing cows can make them too friendly, to the point that will bump you around trying to get brushed until you almost get pushed into the pond

Point is, cows are fuckers.

I’ll answer with a question that should well serve as an answer

What boycott?

Devolve into anxiety

You win an outie going into your innie!

In fairness, I have a weird capacity that’s the opposite of aphantasia. Some people can’t picture things in their minds, the same way some people don’t have an inner voice. I call my thing hyperphantasia.

When I’m reading a book (or writing something), I can see and hear things as they’re described to the extent that I stop perceiving the real world fully. If the author describes smells, I sometimes get those. It’s a very immersive experience beyond what I’ve seen other people describe as their inner imagery. I’ve even gotten hints of feelings on skin if I’m deep enough and the descriptions are right.

I know I’m not the only person that experiences things that way, but it does seem to be rare based on responses when I talk about it online.

The human brain is wild!

I probably shouldn’t answer this tbh.

I have three main “voices”, plus a couple of situational ones. As you say, a talker that’s mostly “me”, my conscious self. A listener that isn’t just a listener that’s essentially my subconscious throwing up images and memory in response to my conscious self. Then there’s the other self, the third thoughts, the meta mind, whatever you want to call it.

That third voice is observing the “conversation”, and making commentary and corrections as needed. Like “that’s not how that really happened” when images flash up that are nebulous. Or “no, that’s not who you want to be, stop being a dick” when my conscious self is under stress. Or “go fuck yourself” when thoughts triggered by mental health issues come up.

Plus, and this isn’t some kind of bullshit DID¹ thing, I have fictional characters in my head. There’s this thing I do when I write or DM where I kinda spool up a virtual machine in my head where a character “lives”. These aren’t real entities, they aren’t split off from me, they’re just a construct that’s useful. They can be “deleted”, they don’t take over, nothing like that.

I can, however, have conversations with them if I do a bit of mental prep work to sort of fake forget that it’s just my imagination playing a game with itself. I used to participate in some Mastodon writing prompt hashtags and I’d sort of interview my characters with them sometimes surprising me with what they said. Alas, the instance I used shut down without warning, and I didn’t have a recent backup, so I lost most of it.

While I was writing that paragraph, one of my characters got switched on for a second and grumped at me. I know it’s not a person, it’s all imagination. But it is a fucking trip anyway.

Yeeeears ago, I was running a game. It included a deity coming back to life. During the process, I had been wrapping my head around what they’d be like, and one of the players had communed with the deity a good bit. During a session, the player had their character call on the god to manifest. My ass just started talking as the deity. Full on zero conscious control over what came out. It felt creepy but cool. This imaginary part of myself took over, my voice changed, I stood up and moved around, but none of it was “me”. My conscious mind was starting to freak the fuck out a little because it felt like the imaginary thing was taking over.

That wasn’t the last time it happened, but I’ve never been able to make it happen. Well, not to that degree anyway.

I guess what I’m saying is that my internal monologue isn’t a monologue. Shit gets loud up in here.

Edit: ¹

My bullshit DID thing, I don’t mean that did isn’t real. I mean that it isn’t me pretending to have DID or some other dissociative disorder. People do that, and it’s fucking weird

https://www.amazon.com/Koss-KSC75-Portable-Stereophone-Headphones/dp/B0006B486K

They may or may not be right for you, but the sound is way better than the price tag, and the price is low enough to be worth trying them. They have a Bluetooth version as well. No anc though. They’re as comfortable as it gets for clip ons.

Thing with buds is that you gotta find the right tips. Comply is the default brand because they make something to fit every damn size out there. So you may just need to hunt down new tips instead

Well, I have chickens, so that’s the obvious answer. But I already know what they’d say and it amounts to “feed me” 24/7

So, the next obvious answer is dogs because I love them so much. But, beyond the fantasy of it, I suspect that would end up depressing as fuck because not every dog has a good life, so what they say might drive me to homicide.

Which leaves rats. I’d go with “rodents” given the choice, but if I can only pick one, rats are the most problematic overall. The chance to talk to them and maybe negotiate them buggering off instead of getting killed would be both awesome, and possibly profitable when successful.

Eh, when it comes down to it, my concern isn’t country of origin, per se.

Since my concern is about the company making an item, and how shitty they are, you’d have to dig up some serious numbers to show me that a given Chinese company is significantly worse than a company from elsewhere, or that there’s a proven issue where the hardware had known vulnerabilities introduced by virtue of being Chinese in origin.

Both of which are entirely possible. But until I’m actually shopping for the hardware, I have way too many other things that I have to pay attention to to give a flying fuck, so this hypothetical is a zero fucks given for me. China isn’t inherently worse than any other country. It’s got flaws and virtues as they all do. Buying shit from any given country is picking exactly what flaws you prefer.