Controversy over consciousness

The question of what constitutes consciousness arouses quite a bit of controversy, around what is known as ‘the hard problem of consciousness’. Here is a description of what that is.

The hard problem of consciousness is the problem of explaining why any physical state is conscious rather than nonconscious.  It is the problem of explaining why there is “something it is like” for a subject in conscious experience, why conscious mental states “light up” and directly appear to the subject.  The usual methods of science involve explanation of functional, dynamical, and structural properties—explanation of what a thing does, how it changes over time, and how it is put together.  But even after we have explained the functional, dynamical, and structural properties of the conscious mind, we can still meaningfully ask the question, Why is it conscious? This suggests that an explanation of consciousness will have to go beyond the usual methods of science.  Consciousness therefore presents a hard problem for science, or perhaps it marks the limits of what science can explain.  Explaining why consciousness occurs at all can be contrasted with so-called “easy problems” of consciousness:  the problems of explaining the function, dynamics, and structure of consciousness.  These features can be explained using the usual methods of science.  But that leaves the question of why there is something it is like for the subject when these functions, dynamics, and structures are present.  This is the hard problem.
[Read more…]

Oil companies sued by California for lying about climate change

The state of California has joined several other states and municipalities in suing five major oil companies, charging that they had known for a long time from their internal science that the burning of fossil fuels was harming the environment and driving climate change but lying about it to the public.

California is suing five of the largest oil and gas companies in the world, alleging that they engaged in a “decades-long campaign of deception” about climate change and the risks posed by fossil fuels that has forced the state to spend tens of billions of dollars to address environmental-related damages.

State Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta filed the lawsuit Friday in San Francisco County Superior Court alleging that Exxon Mobil, Shell, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, BP and the American Petroleum Institute have known since the 1950s that the burning of fossil fuels would warm the planet but instead of alerting the public about the dangers posed to the environment they chose to deny or downplay the effects.

“Oil and gas companies have privately known the truth for decades — that the burning of fossil fuels leads to climate change,” Bonta said in a statement, “but have fed us lies and mistruths to further their record breaking profits at the expense of our environment. Enough is enough.”

[Read more…]

We need a more thoughtful approach to weight

Fat people have a hell of a time navigating the world. If they are out in public, they get stared at, they hear things said about them made in stage whispers, and sometimes outright rude comments made directly to them that reflect common public opinions that they are lazy, indisciplined, and gluttonous. They are the victims of body-shaming and find it hard to shop for clothes.

They also receive lots of gratuitous advice, even from strangers, about how to lose weight and the health risks of not doing so, even though they have heard these things many, many times over, know all of them well, and many have made determined efforts to lose weight and either failed or lost it in the short term only to gain it back later. Many do not go to doctors for their annual checkups or even if they are not well because all too often, the doctor will simply assume that the problem is due to their weight and give them the same old lecture.

This was not always the case.
[Read more…]

False labeling in foods

A lot of thought goes into how food is marketed to people, using the packaging to try to entice them to think that it may be tastier or healthier or more environmentally friendly or otherwise better than it really is. Most of us tend to be at least somewhat skeptical about these claims and not take them at face value and as long as the products are not downright harmful, are willing to overlook the exaggerations snd even outright lies that are told us.

Not Spencer Sheehan, a lawyer in New York state, who has taken upon himself to carefully examine the products that are sold in stores and, if he finds that they have been shading the truth, to sue them. The New Yorker magazine of September 11 has a long piece about his efforts.
[Read more…]

I am a bad scientist

On Monday, April 8, 2024, there will be a total eclipse of the Sun, visible over a large swatch of the US and people are pretty excited about it.

The total solar eclipse will begin over the South Pacific Ocean. Weather permitting, the first location in continental North America that will experience totality is Mexico’s Pacific coast at around 11:07 a.m. PDT.

The path of the eclipse continues from Mexico, entering the United States in Texas, and traveling through Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. The eclipse will enter Canada in Southern Ontario, and continue through Quebec, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Cape Breton. The eclipse will exit continental North America on the Atlantic coast of Newfoundland, Canada, at 5:16 p.m. NDT.

[Read more…]

Women and endurance running

It was not that long ago that women were considered such fragile creatures that they were not allowed to compete in endurance track events, with ‘endurance’ being 800m and over.

The BBC has a nice article on the topic. It appears that there was a woman who competed in the very first Olympic marathon event in 1896 but little is known about her. That was not all.

The day after the men’s marathon event at the first modern Olympic Games in Athens in 1896, Stamata Revithi, a 30-year-old mother from Piraeus, ran the same course unofficially in five and half hours. external-link
…

Thirty years later, in 1926, an English woman, Violet Piercy, ran the London Marathon course unofficially in 3:40:22 and completed two official marathons in 1933 and 1936. The Sunday Mirror quoted her as saying her 1936 race was to “prove that women could stick the distance.”

It was clear to all with their eyes open that women could run 26.2 miles, but cynical attitudes lingered based on imaginary evidence and often outright lies.

[Read more…]

Two-tier health care in a post-Roe US

When the US Supreme Court overturned the Roe v. Wade precedent, we knew that it would result in the red states proceeding to ban abortion in almost all instances, even in cases of rape or incest or when the life of the mother is in danger from the pregnancy. What may not have been anticipated is how wide ranging the ripple effects might be. We seem to be moving into a situation where we have two health care systems, one for the blue states and one for the red states, where the red states do not just not have access to abortion but also lose other services as well as lose people who can afford to move to other states.

Idaho is a good example of what is happening where small towns in red states are in danger of losing all obstetrics and gynecological services since physicians are worried that by providing medical care for problematic pregnancies, they may be laying themselves open to criminal prosecutions.
[Read more…]

Coincidences happen all the time

I had been trying for a couple of days to remember the first name of someone I knew but had not met for a while and it had slipped my mind. I find it frustrating when something is on the periphery of my brain but I cannot quite haul it in. The name I was seeking was Shira, which is not a common one. Then I got an email from one of the many advocacy mailing lists that send me stuff and the first name of the sender was Shira. If I were one of those people who think that there is some grand cosmic plan at work and that there are messages revealing its secret workings that could be decoded, I might have thought that this coincidence had some secret meaning, though the only one I could come with was that the universe felt it was important for me to recall the name.

Of course, I dismissed this as just a coincidence but some people tend to be impressed when, for example, they dream about someone they had not been in contact with for a long time and then they hear from them or learned that they had died. There is a tendency to give enormous weightage to events of this sort, seeing them as premonitions.
[Read more…]

Benefits of walking

While I am generally aware of the negatives of a sedentary lifestyle and the benefits of exercise, my own physical limitations rule out all strenuous forms of exercise. Hence I was interested in a new study that says that just walking, which I can do at least in limited amounts, can provide significant benefits.

The study, published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, suggested that walking at least 3,967 steps a day started to reduce the risk of dying from any cause, while 2,337 steps a day reduced the risk of dying from cardiovascular diseases.

Above these cutoffs, each increase of 1,000 steps a day was associated with a 15% reduction in the risk of dying from any cause, while an increase of 500 steps a day was associated with a 7% reduction in dying from cardiovascular disease.

“Our study confirms that the more you walk, the better. We found that this applied to both men and women, irrespective of age, and irrespective of whether you live in a temperate, subtropical or subpolar region of the world, or a region with a mixture of climates,’ Banach said.

“In addition, our analysis indicates that as little as 4,000 steps a day are needed to significantly reduce deaths from any cause, and even fewer to reduce deaths from cardiovascular disease.”

For younger age groups, the sharpest improvement in health was seen in individuals taking between 7,000 and 13,000 daily steps, while for those aged 60 years and over, it was between 6,000 and 10,000 steps.

For some time now I have been experimenting with how many steps a day I am capable of realistically doing. Too high a goal can become onerous and result in getting discouraged and giving up, while too low a goal may not help much. I finally arrived at an average 6,000 steps a day as my optimal level so I was glad to see that it seems worthwhile.

I do not do the steps all at once, though. I do it in four or five stages a day and try to mix up indoor and outdoor walking. I also used to, when driving somewhere, try and park my car closest to the destination but now I actually park far away just so that I have to walk a bit. Little things like that can increase the step count without becoming a burden.

It struck me that this is something that technology has helped a great deal. We now have pedometers that can count steps automatically, either built into one’s phone or as a cheap separate unit, making the targeting of goals easy. Before we had them, one would have to specify goals either in terms of the distances walked per day, which are very hard to estimate, or one would have to specify the total time that one walks, which is hard to keep track of.

Some good news about the Sackler bankruptcy case

The Sackler family are a really odious bunch, making enormous amounts of money by having their company Purdue Pharmaceuticals aggressively push the opioid OxyContin that their company made and providing all manner of inducements to doctors to overprescribe them, resulting in the massive opioid drug addiction problem that exists right now in the US. They then posed as philanthropists, giving money to various institutions and having their names plastered all over various buildings in universities and museums and galleries. I have written about the actions of this disgusting family many, many times.

The law finally caught up with them and they were sued and the company subjected to massive fines. But even then, they exploited the bankruptcy laws to shift the burden to the company after siphoning off money to them personally while not having to admit guilt, and getting total immunity from future lawsuits that will leave their personal fortunes intact. They did this by making sure that their bankruptcy case was heard by a bankruptcy judge who is notorious for letting wealthy people off easily.
[Read more…]