Devil or Divine

How can someone distinguish whether an influence or the cause of something is from evil or from God?

Its commonly considered that the devil can be very deceiving and manipulative, so it seems likely he would often attempt to pretend to be a positive influence, or perhaps even pretend to be a Godly influence. This seems like it could make it difficult to tell whether an influence is from the devil or from God. 

It could be hypothesized that a way to determine God’s influence is to consider what seems good and helpful in general, or what seems to follow the Bible. But if the devil is as deceitful and manipulative as could be, then he would likely create an illusion of good as a method of deceit for someone that wants to do good. He could do the same with the Bible by manipulating someone into thinking something is implied by the Bible. This might explain many bad deeds in history which people have done, claiming it is in the name of Christianity. 

Perhaps the main difference for capability of influence between the 2, would be that God is superior and capable of overpowering. This in itself doesn't make the source of an influence distinguishable for a person, but combined with a genuine request from God, it could. In a post from a few yrs ago; Willing Gods Will, I considered how and why God would influence our thoughts and decisions if it is our will for him to do so. So if someone requests God’s will, God would have the superior power to influence that person. The way God would then influence that person would differ depending on the person and perhaps their typical way of thinking, as further considered in a post from a few yrs ago; Method of Guidance. 

So since humans are flawed and their perception and interpretations are included in that flawness, assessing by themselves, whether something is good and from God could be taken advantage of by the devil. But if someone is able to interpret an influence after asking for God’s guidance, this seems like an effective way to distinguish any influence of being from the Devil or Divine.

Conscious Commonalities

Besides the basic function of consciousness, what more detailed aspects come in common with various forms of consciousness?

Hypothetically, other forms of consciousness besides human consciousness could occur in animals, AI, aliens, and God. It could be considered unproven and unverified that any of these have consciousness (which could potentially also be said for humans, but I would dispute), but if they did have consciousness, either regularly or sparsely, what details would likely be similar to human consciousness? 

As for the basic function and definition of consciousness, I’m basing this from my hypothesis that consciousness is at minimal memory access of factors and their interaction (as further outlined in this previous post; Conscious Comprehension). 

Consciousness could occur without general intelligence in isolated instances, such as may be the case with some smarter animals when they somewhat understand that an action or object causes a reaction, but this is rare, otherwise they would continue to learn concepts using general intelligence. 

For an entity to recurrently have consciousness using general intelligence, it seems likely to have a subconscious memory bank with a lot of data, and some form of reinforcement triggers (such as instinct) in order to learn. For an entity to access memories of factors and the function of cause and effect between them, general intelligence would make this significantly more likely to recur, as a result of generally learning new things in it’s environment and how things cause one another (or interact).

Without a memory bank of recently perceived data, it seems unlikely memory access of interacting factors of data would ever occur naturally, such as with humans, animals or potential aliens. And assuming memory access of perceived data develops through natural selection as an advantage for survival while interacting with the environment, reinforcement triggers would be required to influence the individual to have certain reactions to variables within the environment. 

A potential difference with consciousness that develops artificially, is data can be downloaded to the memory bank, rather than the memory of factors being acquired through perception of the environment. Since this type of consciousness wouldn't be developed through natural selection for survival, it wouldn't necessarily have reinforcement triggers to influence its reaction within an environment. It would still need reinforcement triggers if it was to learn and become more intelligent, but these triggers could reinforce another goal other than survival. 

Additionally, artificial consciousness could be programmed to occur and recur without the ability to learn and without reinforcement triggers, if it is programmed to simply access memory of data and the interaction of factors within that data. That form of consciousness seems less significant, meaningful, and relevant without reinforcement triggers of positivity (such as emotions for humans), and without any capability of learning, advancing, or adapting. 

In all, from hypothetical examples of naturally developing and recurring consciousness, it seems general intelligence is required. Including the additional potential of artificial consciousness, memory access to a data bank of recently perceived data, learnt using subconscious reinforcement triggers seem to be the meaningful Conscious Commonalities.

What is critical thinking?

Considering each word of the concept separately, “critical” is generally understood as analyzing and outlining problems (connected to the word “criticize”), or alternatively can mean extremely important (such as “critical infrastructure”). “Thinking” refers to the brain's memory access, usually consciously, rather than subconscious. Putting these 2 terms together should give a fairly straight forward understanding of the concept of Critical Thinking as; important conscious analisis and distinguishment of problems. 

In order to determine problems in any given circumstances using critical thinking, generally the best method is to take an unbiased objective perspective and use rationality to evaluate which components cause a less preferable outcome. Understanding cause and effect is “critical” for determining the cause of a variation to an outcome, such as a variation that is less preferable. 

In complex circumstances, many components are involved, so understanding the cause of an alteration of outcome, involves perspective isolation of particular components and their cause and effect. Once this objective perspective has been taken of an understanding of the isolated component which causes the less preferable outcome (or problem), alteration to that particular component can be intuited for a more preferable outcome (or solution). 

The alternative to critical thinking could be considered; being emotionally reactive or using intuition. Since it is an alternative to critical thinking, basically by definition it would be a method without using rationality and understanding of cause and effect. Using intuition is more of a concept of subconscious memory access which is less effective and accurate for complex scenarios. 

This overall concept of thinking in a way of being critical, by analyzing problems through the process of objectively determining the particular cause of such problems and consecutively determining solutions, can be applied to such a vast array of situations in one's life, that it should suitably be considered vitally important, or critical. 

Contextual Consciousness

What does it mean to be conscious of context, and what effect does this have?

Basically contextual consciousness could be described as; holding the perspective of greater context by being aware of how specific factors in any given situation interact and affect larger circumstances. 

The minimum requirement to be conscious is to access memories of a factor's interaction with another factor, as I summarized in a blog post from 5 yrs ago :Conscious Comprehension. But to be contextually conscious, involves being aware of many factors and their interactions which comprise any context. 

Situational awareness would be 1 very common type of contextual consciousness, which refers to paying attention and keeping in consideration the scenario which someone is in. Being aware of the situation is a broad spectrum form of consciousness, since the individual has to be aware of many factors regarding their circumstances, and how those factors interact with each other, as well as affect themselves. The quantity and variety of factors involved in most situations, and the complexity of the interactions make situational awareness more broad, as well as difficult to keep in mind, but often very useful. This awareness helps more accurately understand how their actions will affect other aspects, and how other factors will affect them themself.

For eg, someone could be situationally aware that they are in the circumstances of an office work meeting. So they are conscious of the presence of others in the meeting, and the hierarchy of interaction of those others and themselves, as well as conscious of the purpose of the meeting of sharing certain information relative to the business. Being aware of this situation benefits the individual to act appropriately and share effective information when it's relevant. 

Contextual awareness can go beyond situational awareness though, since there can be many contexts outside of an individual's direct and current circumstances. Using the previous eg, to go beyond the direct current situation, the individual could also be conscious of; how the actions of the business are affecting their city long-term, or how their own career is going in relation to the job they are doing, or how technology developments of that business will affect people years into the future, etc. 

Context can also apply to something completely unrelated and irrelevant to the individual that is being conscious. For example, someone could watch a video of 2 people getting in a fist fight in another country. They can be conscious of the context of those 2 people and why they are fighting. Or someone could be conscious of a new discovery of a planet light years away, and the context of where that planet is in relation to its star and galaxy. 

Overall, contextual consciousness is so widely applicable that it can be used to be aware of how virtually anything is affected by anything relative to it. In a way it is applying the concept of being conscious of something, twice. Being conscious of how something interacts with something else, but also being conscious of how that interaction and those factors interact with other factors within the circumstances. 

To try to understand how contextual consciousness works, is to be contextually conscious of contextual consciousness. 

Conceptual Memory

Does saving concepts in memory cause open mindedness? 

Saving a concept in the subconscious, using conscious comprehension, allows further ease of access to that concept as a neural combination. Neural pathways can reach the concept easily, and factors within the concept are more interchangeable upon a new scenario with new factors applicable to the same concept. 

Details of any concept are more difficult to access when a mind uses conceptual memory, rather than factoral memory, because when you access the concept as a memory from your subconscious, the memory cannot include multiple factors and their interaction. Accessing subconscious memory is accessing a neural combination representing only a factor, not the interaction of a factor, as that would be conscious memory. 

So when a mind saves concepts as memories, more so than details, the mind can later more easily subconsciously access any given concept. At the time of subconscious access, the concept is only a factor (or generalized entity) within memory. Subconscious is inaccurate at distinction, so subconsciously accessing a concept is similar to seeing a car and considering it as 1 entity. But when you look under the hood at details, you see it is a combination of components, which is like conscious memory access.

If concepts are saved in the mind for subconscious access, at times needing a more detailed view, you can consciously look under the hood, and see what components make the combination of the concept. This allows someone to be open minded to new components being potential part replacements for the engine. Ie new components of any given concept. 

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 If all that's left in life seems to be obstacles, take a turn and face the obstacle, then see whats left.
Do this enough, and to a sufficient degree, and things will have turned around to be in the right direction. 

What is Left of Liberal?

Regarding modern mainstream liberal idealism, how much remains of the original concept of liberal? How does it compare to the more extreme politically left?

Wikipedia describes “Left-wing” as;

“Politics typically involve a concern for those in society whom its adherents perceive as disadvantaged relative to others as well as a belief that there are unjustified inequalities that need to be reduced or abolished.”

A technical definition for “liberal” that comes up on Google, is; 

“a supporter of a political and social philosophy that promotes individual rights, civil liberties, democracy, and free enterprise.”

Is this idealism still what mainstream liberal stands for? 

It seems it may be becoming more and more common for people in society to support politics and idealisms that are far enough to the left that they over focus on individuals or groups of people that they believe are disadvantaged. By over-focusing, they seem to disregard 

1) relevant details which affect whether the group or person actually is disadvantaged and the cause of what might be suppressing them, as well as 

2) disregard any negative unintended effects caused to others in an attempt to counter the supposed disadvantage. 

As for 1), relevant details in the cause of what seems to be a disadvantage are ignored, likely from the instincts to notice distress in others and feel pity. Then with a simple lack of conscious comprehension of understanding the cause of the distress, vague assumptions can be quickly made that there is an unfair system causing it. This would happen as the subconscious part of the mind tends to react to factors to a more generalized degree, categorizing a wide variety of details in the same rough group, and picking out patterns that are coincidence or unrelated. 

2) Once someone is focused on a certain victim (group or individual), the subconscious mind (steered by the instinct to make the scenario fair) disregards negative side-effects which are too detailed in cause and effect. Even when taking actions to attempt to counter the (assumed) disadvantage that they are focused on causes the same affective disadvantage toward another, this is often ignored because the subconscious mind is over-focused on the initial disadvantage that got their attention. 

It seems that since this section of the spectrum of idealism is driven mostly by instinct steering that which is moreso subconscious perception of more generalized factors, double standards and hypocritical stances are quite common, without the skills to comprehend the details of reasoning of cause and effect of the concept of any given topic. 

With this more emotional reactiveness, comes additional problematic effects for interaction with society. Being quick to anger and judge others that disagree, seems to be another common problem with a lot of people with leftist tendencies. This anger combined with a lower ability to comprehend concepts, causes someone to quickly and readily ignore any rationality explained by someone attempting to portray faults in their beliefs. Even when faults in their idealism are blatantly obvious, cognitive dissonance can still cause them to ignore the faults, and come up with excuses, including that the person who disagrees is evil. 

With modern larger populations and ease of communication through technology, joining any crowd that shows similar perspectives has become much easier. Echo chambers and acceptance and encouragement from an easy to find group are perhaps artificially excessive positive reinforcement, making it easy to blindly follow trending leftist views. 

It seems there is a combination of emotional reactiveness and reduced ability to consciously comprehend conceptual details, which is potentially dangerous for society as technology significantly increases the ease of spreading incorrect ideology. Besides being too quick to pick out a victim and incorrectly assume unfair opportunity, they disregard negative side effects of claimed solutions, and become angry and judgemental at anyone that points out faults. They receive excessive positive reinforcement from a herd mentality that shares faults in logic, and perhaps often society is so shifted from the more natural life that our instinctual minds are suited for, that consequences and practicality are more disconnected. So it seems that in modern day society, encouragement of emotional reactiveness and a disregard for conceptual comprehension is; What’s Left of Liberal.