The other day I listened to Sean Carroll talking to David Chalmers about consciousness, among other related things. I won't summarize it here, go listen for yourself or read the transcript.

What I will do is shortly write down where I stand on some of these questions. Not because I think I have anything new to say, but to clarify it for myself and have a reference to see if I change my mind in the future.

Is there a "hard problem" of consciousness? I am not totally convinced. Maybe subjective experience is just what it feels like to have a brain that continuously hallucinates and updates a model of its body and the world around it. (Which reminds me that I should read more by Anil Seth.) I don't think this justifies calling consciousness an "illusion" though.

Dualism? No. Even if "property dualism" might not directly contradict the physical world, I find it much more of a stretch to assume some new fundamental property of matter than to just admit that we don't yet understand how matter makes minds.

Emergence. I am ambiguous about that term. Yes, it can be abused as a handwavy "magical" process that explains nothing. But it makes sense to have models of the world that work att different levels of description, as longs as the higher-level ones can, in principle, be reduced to and understood in terms of the more fundametal models.

Are philosophical zombies conceivable? I don't think so. An entity cannot behave the same way as a conscious being without a sophisticated mental model of itself and the world, and if subjective experience comes along with these, then there are no zombies.

Do we live in a simulation? Probably, but this makes surprisingly litte difference. Randomness in quantum mechanics and a finite observable universe? Very convenient ways to save calculation effort. Still, we want to understand as much as possible of how it all works and since the rules seem to be consistent throughout, without the gods intervening, it does not matter at all for every-day life, how the universe came about. Which is not to deny that the answer to this is ultimately interesting.

Addendum, 2018-12-14: By coincindence it turned out that, when I after a few months pause took up listening to Eliezer Yudkowsky's From AI to Zombies again, I had left it right at the beginning of the zombies chapter. Now that I am through it and its follow-ups, I cannot do much more than agree with Eliezer, since I found the reasoning convincing and couldn't have said it anywhere close to equally well.

In summary: While one might find the philosophical zombies conceivable, they are not in fact logically possible.

It is possible to convince oneself that not buying stuff is better than to do it. I mean this not in a superficial sense like thinking of a good argument why it would be better to refrain from a purchase, but in the deeper sense of mentally exercising to get off the hedonic treadmill. Letting the brain's reward respose trigger not by clicking "Buy" on that webshop, but just before, and then closing that browser tab, happily avoiding another thing that might have been nice to have, but ultimately neither necessary nor fulfilling.

Related to that, I find that renovating and repairing things can be very rewading as well. The shoe rack or the table start to look shabby? Give them a new layer of paint! It probably takes less time than finding a replacement anyway. Get a sewing machine! They are a truly ingenious invention. Those dog toys or clothes for exercising need not be pretty, just functional.

Most important I find the insight that, sure, there are newer better nicer versions of anything that you have, but it is liberating not having to think about the next new thing, as long as the old one does the job and is good enough. My six year old laptop is quite beat-up by now and will not make it that much longer, but it is still fully functional and I am happily pushing the environmental and mental burdens of replacing it further into the future.

Snapped a few weeks ago during a run around the Red Cloister.

As probably the last person on the internet, I started reading economist Tyler Cowen's blog Marginal Revolution a little while ago. It is as worthwhile as everybody says. Also, his Conversations make a good addition to your podcast player, with quite an illustrious list of guests.

The old kitchen stove in our cottage is fully functional and I like lighting it for breakfast. When it is still on around noon, there is no need to use electricity for lunch.

At the gym earlier today I listen to the latest episode of Very Bad Wizards. I was slightly disapppointed that neither of them knew what a Klein bottle is, but I liked the update on the replication crisis in psychology (from 42:30 onward).

Retraction watch, @retractionwatch

While I certainly approve of drunk podcasting, the converstation between Tamler and his step-mother was a bit too inhoherent. The portrayed craziness on US campuses seems quite remote from a Swedish perspective, but usually Europe just lags behind and soon follows suit...

I listened to the full back-log of Very Bad Wizads during this summer's gardening and home improvement projects. Rarely did I need to skip an episode, so if you like the genre of "two dudes talking" and are even slightly interested in psychology and philosophy, give David and Tamler a chance.

The forest floor just behind our street in Brussels is in full hyacinth bloom right now, just like famous Hallerbos.

In my recent list of books I omitted the two that I have not finished yet. But even so, I am more than half-way through both and will most likely not find their remainders less excellent.

• Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene is of course a very famous book; and now even I know why. How selection pressure can steer behaviour in animals (us humans not excluded) is truly enlightening. I especially liked that the author co-reads the audio-version himself, which makes his included later commentary on the over 40 years old text extra entertaining.
• The Elephant in the Brain is written by Kevin Simler & Robin Hanson and was released earlier this year. It is about how unaware we are about our actual motivations. We deceive ourselves to get away with selfish acts while at the same time looking good and noble in our own eyes, and hopefully those of others.

I cannot put it into words yet how but the two books are very much related to each other. I mean in a deeper sense than that they are about behaviour.

Spring is very late this year in northern Europe. Finally, things are looking up though.