Tootfinder

I read "Then I Am Myself the World: What Consciousness Is and How to Expand It" by Christof Koch.
Interesting book which spends like 8 or 9 chapters detailing all the experiments which prove beyond much doubt that consciousness, and self awareness, is a thing done by a brain.
It describes how perception is a construction of a description, has a chapter called "computational mind"
And then spends the last two chapters describing why he thinks the mind can't be computed, because drugs have made him think experience is some kind of magic associated with highly interconnected causal structures.
Apparently, he thinks, once things become interconnected enough they become able to cause things independently of the physics running those connections.
Which is crazy, obviously. There's nothing causal in direct connections between neurons that isn't equally causal in modeled connections between virtual neurons.
All his evidence in the book from neural MRI scans to the effects of psychedelic drugs and symptoms of strokes and disease point to the brain simulating a virtual reality which is the basis of perception.
That simulated world in which we live is full of colour and shape and sounds and emotions and millions of mental constructs that are built to be correlated by the senses with the outside world, but are not equal to the world itself. We live in a dream constructed to correlate with reality.
But then instead of taking the next step: That consciousness itself is a property of a simulated being inside that mental model of the universe, a property which the brain simulates and applies to the virtual self that's doing the experiencing inside that model, he jumps towards some magic implying pan-psychism or that sufficiently interconnected networks become causally self-complete for some reason nobody can fathom.
Sure, colour and shape and emotions are all made up by the brain but experience can't be! For some reason.
You see in truth dualism is false, in that there is no spirit realm in which ghosts animate the matter of the body somehow.
Yet also, dualism is true, in that there is a simulated mental reality which we live in, computed by the brain in which all perception and experience are created, which is related-to but separate-from the unfolding complicated dance of energy that is the universe our bodies interact with.
People take some DMT trip, and the model of the universe emulated by their brain collapses and breaks. Their virtual simulated self inside their mind has these experiences of being one with the universe or the experience of feeling dead yet conscious or whatever, and these hippies think that the broken down simulated experience is real and reflects how consciousness is more fundamental than the atoms that make up the neurons in their brain.
Instead of realizing it shows them that their experienced universe is a simulacrum, they think they get a more direct experience of reality somehow. A consciousness more pure than any mere base atom.
"Then I am myself the world" is a great title. Everything you ever experience is created and simulated in your brain like a dream, the whole universe is inside your head. Even the fact of experience itself.
But that isn't the conclusion Koch reaches somehow, he just jumps from describing the evidence that this is so straight into ascribing super-causal magic consciousness to particular arrangements of atoms that integrated information theory suggest have high correlation, and thinks therefore conciousness is itself the entire universe.
Ah well, fun book. I like arguing in my head with authors that are wrong.
#reading #books #consciousness #thenIAmMyselfTheWorld

User Perceptions and Attitudes Toward Untraceability in Messaging Platforms
Carla F. Griggio, Boel Nelson, Zefan Sramek, Aslan Askarov
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.11212

User Perceptions and Attitudes Toward Untraceability in Messaging Platforms
Mainstream messaging platforms offer a variety of features designed to enhance user privacy, such as disappearing messages, password-protected chats, and end-to-end encryption (E2EE), which primarily protect message contents. Beyond contents, the transmission of messages generates metadata that can reveal who communicates with whom, when and how often. In this paper, we study user perceptions of "untraceability", i.e., preventing third parties from tracing who communicates with whom, with the g…

Credit risk for large portfolios of green and brown loans: extending the ASRF model
Alessandro Ramponi, Sergio Scarlatti
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.12510 h…

Credit risk for large portfolios of green and brown loans: extending the ASRF model
We propose a credit risk model for portfolios composed of green and brown loans, extending the ASRF framework via a two-factor copula structure. Systematic risk is modeled using potentially skewed distributions, allowing for asymmetric creditworthiness effects, while idiosyncratic risk remains Gaussian. Under a non-uniform exposure setting, we establish convergence in quadratic mean of the portfolio loss to a limit reflecting the distinct characteristics of the two loan segments. Numerical resu…

A visco-plastic constitutive model for accurate densification and shape predictions in powder metallurgy hot isostatic pressing
Subrato Sarkar, Jason R Mayeur, KPK Ajjarapu, Fred A List III, Soumya Nag, Ryan R Dehoff
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.11946

A visco-plastic constitutive model for accurate densification and shape predictions in powder metallurgy hot isostatic pressing
Powder metallurgy hot isostatic pressing (PM-HIP) is an advanced manufacturing process that produces near net shape parts with high material utilization and uniform microstructures. Despite being used frequently to produce small-scale components, the application of PM-HIP to large-scale components is limited due to inadequate understanding of its complex mechanisms that cause unpredictable post-HIP shape distortions. A computational model can provide necessary information about the intermediate…

Source Identification Problem for a Nonlinear Subdiffusion Equation
R. R. Ashurov, O. T. Mukhiddinova
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.11519 https://

Source Identification Problem for a Nonlinear Subdiffusion Equation
The work is devoted to the study of the inverse problem of determining the right-hand side of a nonlinear subdiffusion equation with a Caputo derivative with respect to time. Nonlinearity of the equation means that the right-hand side of the equation depends nonlinearly on the solution of the equation. The inverse problem consists of reconstructing the coefficient of the right-hand side, which depends on both time and spatial variables, under a measurement in an integral form. Similar inverse p…

Das Strecken und Recken der erschöpften Knochen nach acht abgeschlossenen Aufführungen und wer weiß wie vielen Generalproben zuvor neigt scih dem Ende. In ungefähr sechs Stunden hat der Spaß ein Ende und unsere Akrobaten und Akrobatinnen können sich dem Volke mit erhobenem Haupt stellen. Bis dahin aber wird noch so manch Dompteur auf eine "Fake-Meldung" hereinfallen ;) #dem25 ^mr

Integral Operators on Generalized Weighted Central Morrey Spaces over Local Fields
Salman Ashraf, Humberto Rafeiro
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.11494 https:/…

Integral Operators on Generalized Weighted Central Morrey Spaces over Local Fields
We introduce generalised weighted central Morrey spaces over local fields and obtain a quantitative estimate for the boundedness of the Hardy--Hilbert-type integral operator on these newly introduced spaces, albeit specifically in the context of power-weighted spaces. A similar estimate is also obtained for the Hardy--Littlewood--Pólya operator.

Latent Representation Learning of Multi-scale Thermophysics: Application to Dynamics in Shocked Porous Energetic Material
Shahab Azarfar, Joseph B. Choi, Phong CH. Nguyen, Yen T. Nguyen, Pradeep Seshadri, H. S. Udaykumar, Stephen Baek
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.12996

Latent Representation Learning of Multi-scale Thermophysics: Application to Dynamics in Shocked Porous Energetic Material
Coupling of physics across length and time scales plays an important role in the response of microstructured materials to external loads. In a multi-scale framework, unresolved (subgrid) meso-scale dynamics is upscaled to the homogenized (macro-scale) representation of the heterogeneous material through closure models. Deep learning models trained using meso-scale simulation data are now a popular route to assimilate such closure laws. However, meso-scale simulations are computationally taxing,…

Yupp, which rewards users in crypto for comparing answers from multiple AI models and giving feedback, emerges from stealth with a $33M seed led by a16z crypto (James Hunt/The Block)
https://www.theblock.co/post/358094/a16zcrypto-3…

Hierzulande wenig beachtet: Heute unterzeichnete #Deutschland einen 10 Jahre dauernden Liefervertrag für #Erdgas mit #Aserbaidschan
Der deutsche staatliche Versorger SEFE kauft beim aserbai…