What we need is free markets; a disintegration of the regulatory barriers that prevent the lower middle class from building small businesses and employing the underclass.

It'll never happen, though.

Frankly I see things going in a very socialist direction, and very much or the worst. The people will get $2000 a month or so, but they'll pay for it with what few remaining freedoms they have.

So each instant of consciousness integrates the smells, sounds and sights of that moment of experience. And consciousness is simply the feeling of this integrated information experience.

Please explain, then, how the consciousness of coma patients continues to exist without any of those inputs. And before you break out the tired "ah, yes, this is the brain synthesizing consciousness in the absence of said inputs, much like the way one hallucinates under sensory deprivation" please explain how the consciousness of briefly brain dead patients continues through their brain death.

I've read into most of the modern theories of consciousness and they don't hold water when compared to our anecdotal, experiencial understanding of consciousness.

We'll get there, but not until the scientific community experiences a massive paradigm shift.

Well for me it was heartbreaking. It was 2008. I was full of Hope and praying for Change. I voted for Obama. I figured he was probably lying about most of what he said but, hey, if he even went in that direction it'd be terrific.

In the preceeding years he violated every singular solitary compaign promise he made, legally sanctioned the indefinite detention of American citizens, started killing with drones on foreign soil, and surveilling with them domestically and in a fascist flourish began signing into law bills quite literally written by corporate lawyers. He makes Bush look like a Weather Underground operative.

The police state, in the time since, has become completely out of control. I see another news story about police brutality or straight homicide with a badge every day. They're passing out 13,000 Mine Resistant Armored Personell vehicles domestically this year. Our post office is putting in orders for machine guns.

While marijuana is slowly approaching legalization, fascist authoritarian market restrictions in Canada have already handed their entire medical market over to a small handful of supercorporations and legislation to do the same is already in the works here in California, where I cultivate medical marijuana as a livlihood. So my American Dream of 40 acres and a bong is on shakey ground, too.

But then again, I'm American, and America isn't a Democracy, it's an Oligarchy. Your nation is also most likely an Oligarchy, though I can't say as I know.

Wow, way to fail completely to notice all those men suffering in various works of art, literature and pop culture.

There are lots of suffering people in art because suffering is both interesting and relatable; it is a universal human experience. Y'know, comedy-tragedy, all that. Nobody wants to see a bunch of people sitting around being content and kind to each other. That's not interesting at all.

Siddhartha Guatama, Einstein, Epictitus, Bill Hicks, George Carlin

   I'm sorry, as much as I loathe law enforcement infiltrating activist groups through any means whatsoever this is just ridiculous.  "The Honeypot" is a classic intelligence technique, and a good one. It normally relies on a woman to seduce a male target.  If that were the case here you'd have some group screaming about how making female officers engage in sexual relationships is sexism.

the gross innards and outer shell are removed and then the meat is cooked.

As a cook and a New Englander I find that bothersomely inaccurate. I hate to blow your day, but lobster is always cooked alive and served 100% whole, unless the lobster meat is part of another dish (i.e. lobster salad, lobster mashed potatoes, etc), in which case somebody else tears it apart. Where I grew up, on the shoreline, digging in and dismantling the lobster is part of the experience. We gift each other expensive sets of tools designed solely for dismantling and eating a whole, cooked lobster.

With shrimp and crayfish preparation can vary, but cooking whole isn't uncommon, although serving whole is.

Like Babu, in high school I stood by resentfully while watching other girls—white girls, pretty girls—flirting with boys and going out to dances and dating.

Apparently she was too busy staring at them with envy to notice all the chubby, awkwardly dressed uncomfortable white girls standing right next to her thinking the same exact thoughts. There's no racism here. If anything there are culturally insensitive parents who shouldn't have tried to make their daughter reflect their homeland's culture in an American high school.

I speak from experience, here. I was engaged to a Bengladeshi immigrant that had grown up here from the age of 8. She even had an accent. Like absolutely every American adolescent that has ever been she struggled to fit in and define her sexuality and self in high school. Her parents, however, didn't seem to mind western culture and allowed her to embrace it. In the end, no doubt because her parents authorized her efforts to fit in, her race if anything added an edge of "exotic" and she was actually one of the more popular and sought after girls in her high school. Her sister was a bit homely, a lot like I image the author of this piece to be, but fared quite a bit better than her frumpy white counterparts; again, her race offering an "exotic" edge.

I'm sorry but I had to say it. Frumpy chicks never have fun in high school. This girl's story sounds like so very many similarly proportioned white girls I've known in life. I mean, replace her folks with out of control helicopter Christian Scientists or something and the story wouldn't bee much different.

Yea, I'm generally the same way and, in my experience, that just attracts them even more. The less you care, the courser and less PC you are, the less you get all chivalrous, the more determined they get. If you wanna chase them away, be a gentleman.

The way you say that I get the impression the whole site is put together and managed by that one fella.....is it?? That's....incredibly impressive if it is.

I'm sure those people heavily involved in the world's first viable alternative to nationalized currencies have nothing to worry about. I mean it's not like all the madmen with whole black ops armies at their disposal are heavily invested in controlling the world's currencies! .....wait....

WARNING: Country girls love to latch onto hipster types like yourself who come through their local university in the hopes the hipster will take them away to the city, where within a few months they bail for some guy they met in their new busy city life. Been there, done that, seen it a bunch of times, too, watch for it.

Why is it not shameful to consume pornography alone in the privacy of your own dwelling whereas it is shameful to perform degrading sexual acts with complete strangers on camera for the world to see? Is that really a question that any rational person could take seriously?

Furthermore I contend that if "the bully" were to take the producer up on his offer, he would not become a hypocrite. Firstly he is doing it very publicly, with the foreknowledge that his identity will likely be used as a selling point. Secondly, it is a conquest for a man, because they must demonstrate a high value in terms of sexual potency and appearance in order to be selected for such a role. In this case he is being selected for his marketing value as a high profile individual at the moment. Conversely, it is a shame for a woman because she must simply be willing, she has done nothing of any particular merit and presents no particular value beyond her willingness to participate. Thus, he has nothing to hide or be shameful of.

Y'know with mainstream Hollywood veritably erupting with propagandist drek that's more marketing than film I struggle to see this as a bad thing, being a film buff.

Would Russia's abandoning the dollar be any reason for China to join them and do the same? I can imagine that would be...worse.

.....yea what the hell are those funky mice for?

that hedweb looks like interesting stuff. I've been thinking a lot lately that it seems society is making the transition into post-scarcity, this intersects nicely with that.

That just broke my heart a little bit. Okay a lot.

Any emerging technologies you consider possible candidates for this successor?

I'm a sort of reddit expat. I'm kind of sick of reddit; the level of discourse is shamefully low and it's popularity and size make it a great target for corporate and NSA shenanigans.

Much more than that the level of discourse I've encountered at reddit is pitifully low. I'm on this self-improvement trip and trying really hard to restrict my online interactions to those that feed my mind, rather than feed from it. It'd be really nice to have more intelligent conversations with people who actually accept logic, reason and empirical data.