I don’t expect things to change much where I live. I haven’t noticed any radical shifts over the past 15 years, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. As for the broader Western world, I think it’ll continue along the trajectory it’s been on for the past decade or so - with the populist right gaining more ground as more people either feel disowned by the left or simply grow fed up with them.

The overall trend will probably still be toward more liberal attitudes, but since the goalposts keep moving, I don’t expect the gap between the two sides to get any narrower.

Beyond that, medicine will improve, technology will improve, and people’s lives will keep improving globally - as they have been, even if it doesn’t always feel that way. I’m not particularly worried about the future. It is what it is, and I’ll deal with it.

Bass Test by The Chemical Brothers ofcourse.

Introspective narration or metacognitive awareness seems to better describe what you’re talking about rather than consciousness.

You’re calling it “semantic quibbling,” but defining terms isn’t a sideshow - it’s the foundation of a meaningful conversation. If two people are using the same word to mean different things, then there’s no actual disagreement to resolve, just a tangle of miscommunication. It’s not about clinging to labels – it’s about making sure we’re not just talking past each other.

And on the claim that consciousness – in the Nagel sense – is the one thing that can’t be an illusion: I don’t think you’ve fully appreciated the argument if your first response is to ask for scientific evidence. The entire point is that consciousness is the thing that makes evidence possible in the first place. It’s the medium in which anything at all can be observed or known. You can doubt every perception, every belief, every model of the universe - but not the fact that you are experiencing something right now. Even if that experience is a hallucination or a dream, it’s still being had by someone. That’s the baseline from which everything else follows. Without that, even neuroscience is just lines on a chart with nobody home to read them.

Then what do you mean when you’re using the word “consciousness”? Whose definition are you going by?

You might be referring to the split-brain experiments, where researchers studied patients who had their brain hemispheres separated by cutting the corpus callosum – the “bridge” between the two sides.

In these experiments, text can be shown to only one eye, allowing researchers to communicate with just one hemisphere without the other knowing. The results are fascinating for several reasons, especially because each hemisphere demonstrates different preferences and gives different answers to the same questions. This naturally raises the question: “Which one is you?”

Another striking finding, similar to what you were referring to, is that researchers can give instructions to the non-verbal hemisphere and then ask the verbal one to explain why it just performed a certain action. Since it doesn’t know the real reason, it immediately starts inventing excuses – ones the researchers know to be false. Yet the participant isn’t lying. They genuinely believe the made-up explanation.

As for consciousness, I think you might be using the term a bit differently from how it’s typically used in philosophical discussions. The gold standard definition comes from Thomas Nagel’s essay What Is It Like to Be a Bat?, where he defines consciousness as the fact of subjective experience – that it feels like something to be. That existence has qualia. This, I (and many others) would argue, is the only thing in the entire universe that cannot be an illusion.

For me, one of the biggest indicators is that I’ve actually changed my mind on several issues. I even keep a list of things I’ve changed my mind about or been proven wrong on. I don’t resist being wrong – I take pride in it.

Similarly, there are things I’ve changed my mind about and then later changed back to my original position. To me, that signals a certain mental flexibility and openness to new views, which I see as crucial for error correction.

Another thing that comes to mind is that there are topics where my opinions fundamentally differ from those of my peers. That alone isn’t concrete evidence of independent thinking, but at the very least, it shows a willingness to resist conforming under peer pressure.

It’s not a principle if it doesn’t cost you anything.

The answer here depends on your values. Is it more important to you to consume media intentionally and at a slower pace – even if that means missing out on a lot of objectively less important stuff – or do you place higher value on staying “in the loop”? The real answer probably lies somewhere between those two extremes.

But one thing worth considering is this: if your friend group consists of people who are terminally online, then of course most of what they talk about will be things they’ve encountered online. If you’re not like that yourself, then some friction is inevitable. It’s like hanging out with golfers when you don’t golf.

That previous comment was reference to you. I was going to give you examples untill you added:

(I’ll bet anyone here 5$ that this guy considers “racial minorities and trans people deserve human rights” to be an extremist position)

I see what you’re selling, and I’m not buying. I’m more than happy to debate people who act civilly and in good faith - that’s why I responded to the previous user. You, however, lost your chance.

Have a great day.

The ones calling everyone a nazi, racist and transphobe are a good example of the kind of people I’m talking about.

The media tends to amplify certain views - often from the far or activist left - that I see as quite extreme, making them appear more widespread than they actually are. I’ve seen this kind of agenda-pushing as one of the reasons we ended up with Trump in the first place. And because we didn’t learn from it, we got him a second time. I place a lot of the blame on the people acting this way - and the ones boosting them. I basically “called it,” so now, one of the few silver linings I feel in this situation is that those people got what was coming to them. That’s not how I feel rationally, but emotionally it’s there - it’s a kind of schadenfreude.

I can’t really see a true benefit beyond personal spite. Is that all it boils down to?

Isn’t that what this whole thread is about? Acting out of spite isn’t exactly rational.

Well, this is going to be really unpopular here, but: Trump, terms 1 and 2.

I don’t particularly like the man, and I likely wouldn’t have voted for him even if I could have - but the one bright side to him winning is that it made a ton of people I don’t like really mad. I know a good number of those who did vote for him don’t like him either, but they did it as a middle finger to the activist/extremist left - and honestly, I can’t really fault them for that.

Edit: Hit dogs holler.

I get the feeling that many Americans are under the illusion that most Europeans live in big cities like Paris or Amsterdam. And while it may be true that people in those cities have different shopping habits compared to Americans in similarly sized cities, that doesn’t reflect the reality for all - or even most - Europeans. For me and most of my friends, going to the supermarket once or twice a week by car has always been the norm.

It’s your friend’s claim I’m criticizing - not yours.

Europeans aren’t a homogeneous blob - we’re individuals. There’s no universal consensus among us about what counts as a reasonable distance to the grocery store.

No and never have as I simply don’t feel like I have the need for it. I didn’t even when my phone only had a physical numpad.

Never as I don’t drink tea nor own a microwave.

Depends on who I compare myself to and how one defines “rich.” To me, it means someone whose passive income exceeds their spending - and I’m nowhere even close to that… yet.

I don’t. I do it the boring way - buying cheap, highly diversified ETF index funds.

I just ran the numbers for the first time ever, and it adds up to 34 months - which I realize is a pretty privileged place to be. However, I’m by no means rich; I just live well below my means and invest all my savings.