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Comment by donatj | Hacker News Reader

Right off the bat it fails epicly in its comparison of Gandhi to Epstein as bastions of good and evil, as apparently the author is completely unaware of Gandhi’s sleeping with children? What a horrible choice for the side of good, given Epstein’s horrendous misdeeds.

What a horribly written horribly reasoned article. Very frustrating to read.

> But if Reality is itself a very general form of consciousness, and my consciousness is a specific form of that general form of consciousness, it follows that Reality is present within my consciousness.

No it doesn’t follow. You are fully capable of experiencing things that are not reality. That’s just poor reasoning.

I work hard to keep my tone online positive but this article is simply religion presenting itself as science, and it enrages me.

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> completely unaware of Gandhi’s sleeping with children

I was unaware, and searching suggests you are referring to him sleeping naked in the same bed as a 17 or 18-year-old, without touching them, supposedly to test his celibacy.

Which is, quite frankly, hilariously innocent compared what "sleeping with children" implies, particularly in the context of being contrasted with Epstein.

> None of the women who participated in the brahmachari experiments of Gandhi indicated that they had sex or that Gandhi behaved in any sexual way. Those who went public said they felt as though they were sleeping with their aging mother.

If this is horrible enough to outweigh the good in his life, hell better make room: we're all coming.

I share your disdain.

Half the people talking about panpsychism are just bloviating in-between hits on DMT and are hoping to achieve Nirvana and merge with some Jungian collective unconscious, but are usually completely ignorant of that entire concept.

Panpsychism doesn't mean everything and everywhere is tripping on acid having a great time. Panpsychism is actually kind of terrifying; just think about what it must feel like to be one of a trillion trillion trillion hydrogen atoms suddenly recruited into a massive supernova and then drifting alone for 5 billion years and being washed through the entirety of life's evolution on Earth, taking part in a trillion different DNA molecules and cell walls; not having any clue about what you've been a part of or why. Being a horrible-looking blood-sucking mosquito downed by a bug-eyed frog, munched on by a croc, farted out a horse...or frozen into a granite hunk in the dark bowels of the Earth for eternity. No, panpsychism doesn't mean your preference for the Yankees over the Mets are somehow the moral code of the universe, or that damn squirrel with a twinkle in its eye is the manifestation of the all-knowing god, you fool (author).

> just think about what it must feel like to be one of a trillion trillion trillion hydrogen atoms [...]

Usually the models of Panpsychism have a spectrum of consciousness and associate complexity of the thing with consciousness. So sure, let's say atoms have some consciousness, they have as much as is seen by a first look, that is their behavior and intelligence shows it, and it's not much, basically zero. A rock probably has more. It probably has rock-like consciousness, it has rock-behavior and rock-thoughts. It probably likes being a nice rock, hosting all those crystals, flowing through places sometimes slowly, sometimes flying off from a volcano, sometimes dissolving in a melting pool, merging with other rocks' rock-consciousness. Of course there are grumpy rocks too, just like there are many kinds of humans. And so on.

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