rendx

Which is something the person will definitely experience as punishment, and might make matters only worse afterwards, especially if that "removal" doesn't include therapeutic processes (which is the current state of affairs mostly)?

I see a lot of parallels and a shared interest in removing/reducing violence. The title and summary of the linked book may give the impression that the focus is elsewhere; maybe the introduction will help to see more of the shared research interest, or make it clearer where you disagree on the approaches?

This does not align with my understanding of the research, e.g. https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annur... ?

> "Unfortunately, so far, the existing empirical work has not had a central place in policy, legislation, and political discourse (Loughran 2019, Nelken & Hamilton 2022). Unsurprisingly, scholars have been frustrated that their insights on, for instance, the inconclusive evidence for the deterrent effect of incarceration on violent crime or the evidence that treatment can help to rehabilitate have not had sufficient impact (Cullen et al. 2011, McGuire 2013).

> Empirical research has failed to sway policymakers and political leaders for many reasons, too many to cover fully here. For instance, one can broadly think about high levels of punitiveness in certain cultures and jurisdictions, such as the American context (Kleinfeld 2016, Muenster & Trone 2015). Moreover, there has been a penal populism where politicians have sold the public on a simplistic discourse that they need and want strict punishment against crime (Roberts et al. 2003, Windlesham 1998). Added to this is the discriminatory and racist framing of crime as part of a dog-whistle political strategy (Haney-López 2015). Another problem is a more general aversion to science, and a populist politics that drives on simplicity instead of nuanced, evidence-based policy (Huber et al. 2022). These headwinds foster a more challenging set of conditions not just for altering policy but even for the bare minimum of having robust and legitimate conversations about effective and ineffective punishment."

Or, for a lengthier investigation and many citations and projects, https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-end-of-violence-gary-sl... ?

("Twenty-five years ago, I sought out Gary Slutkin while searching for a solution to the gun violence we experienced in Los Angeles. I got far more than I hoped for. The methods he describes in his groundbreaking new book helped reduce our gun violence to historic lows and save thousands of lives.”—Charlie Beck, former chief of police, Los Angeles Police Department")

The cited report states that some cases in the United States involved children as young as 10. The average age gap (not mean age gap) across all 300,000 cases is ~4 years older for the male. I understand they pick extraordinary cases, but a single case is sufficient to understand why this is not working. "This is not the majority of cases" is a misdirection.

"He was aged 18. Mandy was 12. His grooming and abuse continued for years, fully sanctioned by Mandy’s mother, who spoke of God’s plan. He proposed to her four years later, and she tried to say no. After exhausting every possible way to escape what her parents were forcing her to do, she ran away, but as a minor, she had no power. Her parents were able to force her back home and into marriage." https://www.unchainedatlast.org/united-states-child-marriage...

That aside, there are plenty of developmental psychology arguments why you should not allow children to marry at 16; even if they wanted to and did it out of their "free will" (whatever that may be at 16). You will, again, breed dysfunctional families, and (not only) domestic violence.

Huh? Not when I joined in my region. I didn't have to provide anything.

I was 14, but the BBS owner and mostly old guy heavy metal user base only found out when I later showed up at their annual user group meeting - and we had lots of fun (and drinks) together! They even took me clubbing later with a fake ID, and I woke up heavily wasted in the BBS owner's student apartment and we had microwaved frozen pizza together. Fun times.

"CEDAW was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on December 18, 1979. Afghanistan has ratified this treaty. The United States has not."

"Today, the spectacle of America condemning child marriage abroad while refusing to adopt the international treaty that prohibits it is a moral and legal incoherence that undermines every word we say."

https://www.qasimrashid.com/p/the-taliban-legalizes-child-ma...

Huh? We seem to have a completely different read of his work, like the whole ZUI Zoomable Interfaces research? That is not about word processing at all. How to navigate and interact with multi-dimensional data.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00964-w (2025)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_mind

Plenty of examples of theories listed there, no? Picking a random one: "Open individualism states that individual personal identity is an illusion and all individual conscious minds are in reality the same being".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_mind_thesis

"the extended mind thesis says that the mind does not exclusively reside in the brain or even the body, but extends into the physical world"

To state it explicitly, I am not saying I believe in these alternative theories. I am also not stating anything about their probabilities. I just want to be accurate in my understanding, which is that multiple theories do exist and none of them have been proven or disproven. It is not known whether you only need a brain to think, or how much other regions like the nervous system spread throughout the body play a crucial role for "thoughts" to form.

If you discard a theory just because you judge there not to be sufficient evidence, you're working from a belief, and not from scientific reason.

In this particular thread, we're not even coming from "thinking" or "mind", but from sentience -- the stated idea that the "brain can feel pain", as brain alone (!). Depending on which physical regions and matter you include in "brain", it doesn't even have any structures that according to the current scientific consensus provide or relay perceptive data. Unless you believe in one of the many theories that place the mind outside of the physical structures of the brain.

We'll see!

I am saying: we can guess, but we don't know. I am not saying it's likely. I just want to remain precise in what are theories. It is a theory that consciousness "lives" inside the physical brain, as much as it is one that it doesn't. It is physically possible that it exists energetically and moves and stays with "the larger chunk of body".

Let's wait and see what happens with brain or head transplantation. :)

I am familiar with the works of Oliver Sacks, Paul Broks, and others, who have spent their lives researching damage to brains and the potential consequences for the psyche. I agree that it sounds like damage to the brain can have big impact, but none of that research, as far as I am aware, proves or even tries to argue that the brain is the only component necessary for consciousness to exist.

I am not interested in beliefs in one theory over another. I am not even asking for probabilities. I am asking for a scientific approach, which is to detail all possible (potentially fringe) theories until they're proven wrong. Anything else is the business of religion.

    Singer, J., & Damasio, A. (2025). The physiology of interoception and its adaptive role in consciousness. Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 380(1939), 20240305. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2024.0305

    Aderinto, N., Olatunji, G., Kokori, E., Ogieuhi, I. J., Moradeyo, A., Woldehana, N. A., Lawal, Z. D., Adetunji, B., Assi, G., Nazar, M. W., & Adebayo, Y. A. (2025). A narrative review on the psychosocial domains of the impact of organ transplantation. Discover mental health, 5(1), 20. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44192-025-00148-y

    Boem F, Greslehner GP, Konsman JP and Chiu L (2024) Minding the gut: extending embodied cognition and perception to the gut complex. Front. Neurosci. 17:1172783. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2023.1172783

I don't see how this relates to the "seat of consciousness" (with)in a human body, or how the biological system works together to "form it". Or where thinking or memory storage or retrieval takes place. At least that was what I was talking about. You're talking about something else.

It is a theory that we think in the brain. As far as I understand it, and please prove me wrong, there are other, valid theories? It's unscientific to discard theories purely based on belief. You seem to be arguing from a certain belief, not from science.

The modern term for "soul" is "psyche".

Remember that the OP was asking: "How do you ensure that you aren’t torturing a brain that can’t see, hear or scream?" -- clearly refering to something... conscious?

I only gave one example and Wikipedia to start with. There's a lot of material out there if you're (rightfully) skeptical of that one paper. I don't even know what you're refering to as "their theory", as the way I read it, they're basically documenting various co-existing theories, and the authors don't disclose which one they find the most likely. I also don't see it as necessary for science to pick one; it's all about theories. I prefer documentation of all possible theories, and see no reason to dismiss one over the other unless they're disproven. I pointed to that paper, because any paper that talks about alternative theories shows the point I was making: We don't know yet. The point was not to claim that they've managed to put together good or bad arguments.

see e.g. Wahbeh, H., Radin, D., Cannard, C., & Delorme, A. (2022). What if consciousness is not an emergent property of the brain? Observational and empirical challenges to materialistic models. Frontiers in psychology, 13, 955594. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.955594

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness

Same for memory, which is "needed" as well for your question to make sense. The more current theories assume memories are stored not only in the brain, but throughout the body.

see e.g. Repetto, C., & Riva, G. (2023). The neuroscience of body memory: Recent findings and conceptual advances. EXCLI journal, 22, 191–206. https://doi.org/10.17179/excli2023-5877

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_memory

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_legal_assistance_treaty

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_exceptionalism

(I understand this case is about their books, but I feel it got a lot more heat due to the Spotify action.)

Please, dear Anna, don't disappear on us. We need you for the books! Plenty of sources for music around.

I would think that at least a couple dozen of those 100 random people will report to the police. These reports can be used in court, and may or may not convince the judge that you're also one of the victims. You'd also think there was other circumstantial material to be used either arguing for or against.

Compare to torrenting: Not a dozen of 100 people will independently and proactively report that they ran some "experiments". You're on your own with that story, and it sure sounds like an excuse (to me) even if it were true. Plenty of people end up in jail (or with fines) being innocent. Real world is not the movies. Real courts do not need 100% certainty to "prove guilty according to law".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_doubt

If you receive child porn in your mailbox and the package is caught, you better have a really good story. Like, prior documented proof of harassment.

In regards to your question, and Germany specifically: Media companies hire specialist lawyers. These lawyers prefer to sue in Hamburg, where the courts are known to be very media company friendly. It's just not likely that you ran some experiment and didn't upload anything, so you better have it documented well enough to convince the court.

How would you go about providing data/facts for that kind of statement? You make it sound like a fact, which I find difficult to challenge or explore. I don't even know which definitions of "addiction" to include (illegal drugs only? sugar? sports? gambling? prediction markets? cars?), and how to use that then to measure effectiveness of a "disease model of behavior" (vs other models? treatment options? treatment availability? social environment behavior? or what?). I'd guess even if you magically switched over "all therapy" to that model, and kept availability stable somehow, it would take some decades to show its effects.

What are you challenging exactly? And what alternatives are you comparing it to? It sounds like you're dismissive of the model and what kind of discoveries or attempts it may lead to explore it like that, but I cannot tell exactly, or on what grounds.

And I have no doubt that it will be so. Up to the present, man has been, to a certain extent, the slave of machinery, and there is something tragic in the fact that as soon as man had invented a machine to do his work he began to starve. This, however, is, of course, the result of our property system and our system of competition. One man owns a machine which does the work of five hundred men. […] Were that machine the property of all, every one would benefit by it. It would be an immense advantage to the community. All unintellectual labour, all monotonous, dull labour, all labour that deals with dreadful things, and involves unpleasant conditions, must be done by machinery."

Browsers do not "generate" fingerprints. They expose data that can be used to fingerprint users. You cannot "randomize" this; even if you were to return random values for, say, user screen size, with various visual side effects, it would just be another signal to fingerprint: "Oh, your browser is returning random values? Must be a Tor browser user".