TranscendentalEmpire
@TranscendentalEmpire@lemmy.today
- Comment on YSK that everything the New York Times about Donald Trump actually happened 1 week ago:
I don’t think many people really blame journalists so much as they blame the news media corporations that employ them.
Yes, if you are well informed and are actively looking for this type of journalism it’s widely available. However, you also have to know how to sift through the mountains of articles that conflict with this article run and promoted by the same organization.
The problem is that these companies are essentially advertising platforms whose motivations are not based in journalistic integrity, but to maintain user engagement.
But instead, the american public prefered to trust influencers such as Joe Rogan, Charlie Kirk, Ben Shapiro, Tim Pool, Benny Johnson.
I think this is an inherent reaction to be expected when people lack trust in mainstream institutions. You can’t expect people to not seek alternative knowledge when what you see around you does not reflect the story being sold over the television.
Trust in institutions can take decades to build, and all these inconsistencies with reality can eat away at that trust in a much shorter period of time. When the tickers on the bottoms of the screen constantly tell you the economy is doing better than ever and you’re having to work overtime to put food on the table. When every news outlet is agreeing with the president about invading a country because they have weapons of mass destruction. With decades of these conflicts with reality… of course people are going to seek alternative sources of information.
- Comment on If you receive a high medical bill, don't pay it immediately. Ask for an itemized bill first. 2 weeks ago:
For now… With the rise of right winged parties in Europe it would not surprise me if they start chipping away at universal care.
- Comment on If you receive a high medical bill, don't pay it immediately. Ask for an itemized bill first. 2 weeks ago:
The games that hospitals and medical providers play with bills is unreal.
As a medical provider at a hospital I can attest that we really have little to no control over any of your medical billing. Not saying that mistakes don’t happen, we are dealing with tens of thousands of people and billing departments usually have a lot of employee turnaround.
That being said, the vast majority of things like duplicate bills, incorrect bills, and redundant documentation is a byproduct of dealing with private insurance companies.
Even if we’ve already done a prior authorization the insurance company can suddenly decide that we didn’t provide the exact right information, or that we didn’t have the right type of referral, or even used the wrong color of ink pen… They can deny a claim, which usually will prompt the billing department to automatically send you guys a bill. At which point you guys call us understandably upset, which prompts us to start the whole authorization process over again.
Dealing with Medicare and especially Medicaid is so easy compared to private insurance, as they have a very clear motive to erect as many reasons to deny or delay coverage as possible. The entire reason the American healthcare system is so archaic and management heavy is because we have to deal with private insurance.
I can guarantee the medical providers hate the situation more than anyone. The day after the United ceo got assassinated was one of the more jolly days I’ve seen at the hospital for years. It was almost unreal to hear my older and very uptight professional colleagues crack jokes about a man being murdered in provider meetings.
- Comment on If you receive a high medical bill, don't pay it immediately. Ask for an itemized bill first. 2 weeks ago:
Yes a spreadsheet sum of potentially incorrect items, which the only way you’d know about is if you see the items, not the summary. Hence OPs post.
Not saying that it’s impossible… But, the way most of these codes are input is when a provider scans in a medication or procedure before they administer it.
Electronic medical records systems like Epic basically streamline physician notes with medical billing. It’s actually a lot easier nowadays to accidentally forget to input a billing code than it is to add extra billing information.
Tbh if you get a large and unexpected bill from the hospital, a more effective route is to ask if they have a hardship, charity care, or financial assistance program.
Hospitals, especially state funded ones like the one I practice at are so used to people not being able to pay their bills that we regularly have to write off a ton of medical care. They are usually more than happy to drastically discount care for people who are willing to pay for even part of their bill.
- Comment on Most of the misery in the world is the direct result of too much money in too few unscrupulous hands. This is not only the cause of the vast majority of human suffering, but also of climate change, wh 2 weeks ago:
There was no option. So everyone used them more and more. That’s been the story ever since. It’s a Faustian bargain. You get comfort and success now and someday your ancestors will suffer.
I mean that’s just a false narrative. We’ve know about the negative effects of fossil fuels on the climate since the early 20th century. Back then there may have been no other viable alternative. However, that’s not the case after the beginnings of the nuclear age in the 1950s.
The only reason we have been as dependent on fossil fuels is because of fossil fuel corporations influence over government. No one is saying that we needed to completely divest from fossil fuels all together. If we just used it for things like plastics, fertilizer, or just divested from using it for power plants it would have prevented the crisis we are having today.
- Comment on 3 weeks ago:
I guess I’ll mark that down as religious indoctrination.
- Comment on 3 weeks ago:
The true purpose of us humans is to live and make life.
What dictates “true purpose” here? What need does making more life fulfill?
Your argument is either based on religious indoctrination, or a poor understanding of biology and evolution.
- Comment on First-In-Human Trial Of CRISPR Gene-Editing Therapy Safely Lowered Cholesterol, Triglycerides 4 weeks ago:
Lol, so your claim is that people with excessive cholesterol levels require it because they are making more brain…?
No is claiming you shouldn’t have any cholesterol in your blood, just that there isn’t reason to have an elevated amount.
If your body actually needed the excess lipids being produced it wouldn’t be saturated in the blood, it would be getting used.
- Comment on First-In-Human Trial Of CRISPR Gene-Editing Therapy Safely Lowered Cholesterol, Triglycerides 4 weeks ago:
The body literally makes it because you need it
For what?
People with high cholesterol live longer…
I don’t think that’s really a conclusive study. It only focuses on people who are already 80 or older and ignores the majority of people who suffer from cardiovascular issues that don’t make it to their eighties because of it.
From this study you could also conclude that people who have a natural resistance to high cholesterol live longer.
Youd wanna lower arterial plaque so cholesterol doesnt get stuck?
Plaque forms when cholesterol lodges to the walls of arteries. This happens at a greater rate when you have more lower density cholesterol in your blood.
An arterial calcium scan is the best indicator for heart disease etc. Not cholesterol
But calcium buildups are formed from clacified plaque, which is made from cholesterol…
If all forms of high cholesterol were really beneficial Americans would modern day Methuselahs.
- Comment on Musk says Tesla is moving Full Self-Driving to a monthly subscription 4 weeks ago:
Kinda a crazy move considering that they were charging 8k for “fsd” before, and are moving to a monthly subscription of a hundred bucks a month.
You would have to own your Tesla for six and a half years for them to make the same return. My guess is that the hundred dollars a month is just the initial price which will drastically inflate over time. That or they are just going to raise prices by 8k and still charge you a subscription cost anyways…
- Comment on Is this even a question? 5 weeks ago:
I feel like 10-15 years ago Waffle House was a really decent greasy spoon diner for the money. I remember being able to get an all star special for five bucks. I just looked it up and they’re wanting $13-14 now…
- Comment on Hashtag spiritual hashtag truth 2 months ago:
Yeah, there was a website that had all the unedited transcripts and some recordings from crashes. I don’t think I remember reading any real prayers, that’s unless you count something like “oh God, oh god” as a prayer. Mainly just a lot of swearing and a mix of panicked or resigned statements. Most are just a couple sentences long, seems like most crashes go from fine to catastrophic very quickly.
- Comment on Is AI self-selecting through the stock market? 3 months ago:
people who actually want to spend $ hunt down that liquidity it will stay locked down on someones imaginary goldpile
Can’t do that… That would ruin everything. Just take out a loan against your imaginary goldpile.
- Comment on Mathematics disproves Matrix theory, says reality isn’t simulation 3 months ago:
Something tells me you’re not nuanced in the use of sarcasm…
- Comment on Mathematics disproves Matrix theory, says reality isn’t simulation 3 months ago:
Great rebuttal…really proves you know what you’re trying to talk about!
- Comment on Mathematics disproves Matrix theory, says reality isn’t simulation 3 months ago:
No it is proof that it is true because a system that does not have the data to create an experience cannot create the experience.
You claimed that dreams were unconstrained by sensory input… A limitation caused by the lack of sensory input is a natural constraint.
am 100% saying the body is a computer with sensory attachments I have no idea where you go the things about peripheral and central nervous system from.
Cognitive science? The brain and peripheral nervous system develop and act together. You cannot have one without the other, and if you damage one you damage the other. There is no natural or logical delineation from sensory input organs and the brain. A lot of the processing, especially from reactive functions don’t even require the brain, and are handled by just the spinal cord.
The idea that the body is a computer with sensory attachments is outdated. Our metal and physical development is a reaction of us engaging with our environment on a physical level.
reality is something we aren’t capable of understanding because it exists outside of our set of sensory input unless we can use tools to collapse information to within our range of sensory input.
I would say that reality consisist of what we can engage with in either a physical or metaphysical way. If it’s simply something that we can’t either mentally or physically interact with, then it is definitionally unimportant.
Tibetan buddhists are suggesting which is the non dual reality of experiencing things through the lens of perception.
While I accept a dualistic version of reality, I propose that perception alone is not what determines reality. I think embodied cognition gives us a much more accurate depiction of reality we engage with.
For example, without a body what is a bicycle? Through just pure observation alone, it is nothing but a chunk of odly shaped metal and plastic. It is our physical interaction with the bicycle that gives it its true meaning.
Reality is not just what we observe, it is what we interact with on a physical level.
- Comment on Is AI self-selecting through the stock market? 3 months ago:
It might be in the sense that the algorithm recognizes that it’s a new bubble to dump money into for a quick return. But that’s just what the stock market is nowadays. Corporations have cornered the rest of the markets through conglomeration or monopolistic exploitation, and have cut cost as much as possible. There’s not really a lot of ways to keep line going up other than throwing it into a new bubble and hoping you can get out before it pops.
Investment companies are just running out of places to keep their investments, which is why basically all tech corporations are massively over valued.
- Comment on Mathematics disproves Matrix theory, says reality isn’t simulation 3 months ago:
People blind at birth dream of perceiving hearing unconstrained by sensory input so yes it is true still even for people blind from birth. I have a friend who is this case actually.
Right, but your original claim was that it was unconstrained by sensory input. The fact that they lack the ability to dream up sensory information they have no previous sensory input for is proof this claim is not true.
My point is that you are making an unfounded delineation between sensory input and the brain. That the peripheral nervous system and the central nervous system should be viewed as a whole system reliant on each other, rather than a computer with sensory attachments.
There is nothing narcissistic about it because it only proves that we are individuals with individual experience, something that everyone has been aware of for a long time, we still all operate on the substrate that is outside of our body with its brain and sensory organs.
People having “individual experience” does not preclude people having shared experiences, and shared experiences do not preclude individuality. Your claim is only supported by an underdeveloped preconceived notion of perception and it’s effects on cognition.
What you are arguing is similar to Solipsism, which basically boils down to “I can only prove to myself that I process consciousness, and everyone else’s experiences are just subjective observations”. Which means if all observations are subjective in nature, then a person can only really prove that they themselves posses “real” consciousness.
Now that might not have been your original point, but it is the natural conclusion of the argument. And others have thought it out and argued against it for a long time. It’s known as the The Problem With Other Minds.
- Comment on Mathematics disproves Matrix theory, says reality isn’t simulation 3 months ago:
Dreaming is perception unconstrained by sensory input
That’s not really true… Dreaming is a cognitive function that is still limited by how we engage with our surroundings normally. Congeniality Blind people do not see in their dreams, and deaf people do not hear.
Reality is dreaming constrained by sensory input
Imo that is a bit of a narcissistic way to view reality. Reality is shared, and not defined by an individual person’s sensory input. There are natural laws that persist even if there is no way for a person to perceive them.
- Comment on Mathematics disproves Matrix theory, says reality isn’t simulation 3 months ago:
What I’m saying is that for example, dreams are not real, and yet they can and often are indistinguishable from reality, many even have dreams where they are aware they are dreaming and can control them the same way we can control what we do while awake.
I think to adopt that argument you have to be operating on some preconceived assumptions.
Dreams are “real”, in the sense that they are propagated by measurable physical phenomena. Just because some people can experience an amount of choice in their dreams, does not mean they are interacting with “reality”.
This is only possible because we have bodily systems for producing experiences
Again… Experiences needs to be defined. There are a lot of theories about how we engage with the world around us in both a physical and metaphysical way.
- Comment on Mathematics disproves Matrix theory, says reality isn’t simulation 3 months ago:
Our brains do in fact create our experiences with no contact to the world outside our bodies, its our sensory organs that give data to the brain to create our perception of experiencing things.
Ehhh… The claim that there’s a clear delineation between the central and peripheral nervous system is generally just a byproduct of how we teach anatomy. The more we understand about cognitive science and anatomy in general, the further we get away from the old understanding of the cns when it was treated almost like a computer that runs a machine.
I think it kinda depends on how you define an experience, but you’re kinda edging into an old debate known as the mind body problem in cognitive science and philosophy.
- Comment on Great Depression: Part Deux 3 months ago:
I don’t think anyone loves eating canned mixed veggies… But I admit, every once in a while I’ll make a fancy version of Mac and cheese and hotdogs.
- Comment on Great Depression: Part Deux 3 months ago:
Haha, I had a similar experience because of canned mix veggies. For a long time I didn’t think I liked beans because I always hated the texture of the canned lima beans. I also thought all veggies would taste the same because canned mix veggies all adopt an odd homogeneous taste.
- Comment on Great Depression: Part Deux 3 months ago:
Mac and cheese and hot dogs are probably less reliable than the canned mixed veggies. I don’t think anyone gets nostalgia for soaked mushie veggies .
- Comment on Great Depression: Part Deux 3 months ago:
Sorry, but this is like one of the many litmus tests for people who think they grew up in the middle class and then actually find out they grew up poorer than they initially thought.
Another good one was having canned mixed vegetables more than a couple times a week.
- Comment on Oh no my harvest is too bountiful 3 months ago:
Easy… I have a wood working shop at home. I can just trace the sword and carve… Wait a sec.
- Comment on Oh no my harvest is too bountiful 3 months ago:
I do work with a lot of moldable foam. I’ve always kinda figured if I get kicked from the field or get bored I can always build costumes or custom leather kink gear.
- Comment on Oh no my harvest is too bountiful 3 months ago:
I will not be negged into fixing your plate mail.
- Comment on Oh no my harvest is too bountiful 3 months ago:
Sort of a similar situation with me and renfair people. I build and fit people with custom orthopedic braces and prosthetics and have access to a metal and leather lab.
I wouldn’t claim anyone is overly flirtatious, but they do seem to get friendlier and ask a lot of questions about things like hand setting rivets.
- Comment on And I'm not sorry. 3 months ago:
I know this jewel Ive been holding on to for decades could create generational wealth for my family… But I’m going to throw this bitch in the ocean because I am old and sad.