New stuff in neuroscience

I except something as true if it's proven true.

No, you except something true if the mainstream authorities give it their stamp of approval. Nothing can be proven 100% to be true. And, without the background to understand how it was proven true, you're just taking somebody's word on it, i.e. holding them in a position of authority. In other words, you're drawing an arbitrary line in the sand you're comfortable with, which is general consensus.

I won't argue something is true because it meets an existential need as nearly every other member does. The short version is, I won't delude myself to think something is true. Now look at the conversations going on here. There's not one existential post that presents facts, instead posts are about hope that there's transcendence to human existence

You really need to stop projecting this view onto proponents. All you're doing by pointing this out to us over and over and over and over and over again is showing us your own fears about putting your own hopes into things, unless you can be really sure you won't be let down. Take a risk some time, why don't ya.

Most of us have our doubts, most of us know how to weigh the evidence, most of us aren't afraid to explore cutting edge research and we don't give a flying ____ if something is considered taboo by your precious mainstream synagogue. We know what we're doing and we don't need you to "enlighten" us. Thank you very much ;-)
 
Let's just leave it at this-->The idea that Steve001 could define existentialism is questionable.

It just seems to me that the materialist missionary claim that immaterialists of all stripes simply hope for some kind of God or spiritual connection is nothing but the inverted claim of the theistic missionary who claims no one is really an atheist but some try to deny God in order to engage in sin.

As I've noted elsewhere, the original question of the Hard Problem had no role for an epiphenomenal consciousness. There was nothing to pin one's hopes on. Only years later did Chalmers begin to think a genuine solution for mental causation might be possible.

Getting back to the thread topic, the aforementioned neuroscientist-philosopher* Tallis, however, is more amenable to free will despite being an atheist:

How Can I Possibly be Free?

...That intentionality cannot be understood in terms of the laws of physics may seem a rather startling claim. It will help to explore a very basic example: my perceiving a material object — more specifically, my seeing a material object. If you believe the kind of account that underpins determinism, the light from the object enters my eyes and stirs up neural activity, and this activity is the basis of my seeing the object — and, moreover, my seeing the object is nothing more than this neural activity. But this story is incomplete. For while the passage of light into the brain is an instance of standard physical causation, the gaze that looks out most certainly is not. It is different from a physical causal chain in two respects. First, whereas the directionality of the phenomenon of light passing into the brain is “downstream” from cause to effect (from the object that deflected the light to the neural activity in the brain), the directionality of the gaze is “upstream,” from the effect to its cause (the neural activity to the object of the perception). And second, whereas the “forward arrow” of the causal chain that includes the triggering of neural activity by the light extends without limit forward into the causal nexus, the “reverse arrow” of the gaze is finite: it refers to and so comes to a rest on the object, and does not, for example, refer or look beyond the object to the earlier history of the light.

This “bounce back,” this causal reversal, has crucial consequences...

*Note the distinction from Churchland's self-appointed "neurophilosopher" designation.
 
No, you except something true if the mainstream authorities give it their stamp of approval. Nothing can be proven 100% to be true. And, without the background to understand how it was proven true, you're just taking somebody's word on it, i.e. holding them in a position of authority. In other words, you're drawing an arbitrary line in the sand you're comfortable with, which is general consensus.
I must be the only one that does this right?



You really need to stop projecting this view onto proponents. All you're doing by pointing this out to us over and over and over and over and over again is showing us your own fears about putting your own hopes into things, unless you can be really sure you won't be let down. Take a risk some time, why don't ya.
There's always a new crop of members and things need to be said over and over again.

Most of us have our doubts, most of us know how to weigh the evidence, most of us aren't afraid to explore cutting edge research and we don't give a flying ____ if something is considered taboo by your precious mainstream synagogue. We know what we're doing and we don't need you to "enlighten" us. Thank you very much ;-)
I'm sure some do have doubts, but the remarkable thing is how adept people are at convincing themselves they don't.

P.S. I hope to never hear again k9 say read the literature and to hear the names of Sheldrake, Parnia, Eben Alexander, Radin. When your side stops referring to these experts I'll stop trusting the scientific consensus. Fair enough?
 
While speculating memories are somewhere else perhaps fulfills an existential desire it does create a conundrum at the same time that needs addressing. a. Where are those memories? Maybe in something akin to the cloud? b. How are they accessed? c. Why don't you, me or those folks sitting over there ever have stray memories of others intrude upon us?

I'm sorry, but who mentioned existential concerns in the discussion between you and I? I have been ignoring the other's posts in this thread, mostly, and focusing on yours. If I were to assume memories are non-local, which I don't but I'll play the role, where does that bridge the gap to the need for existential desires? Why couldn't I believe that memories are non-local but upon brain death I am unable to access all experience? Memories included.

As for your questions, maybe something akin to the cloud, who knows, do you? How are they accessed? Well, I'd guess a mechanism lol Gosh, do you know also? No? Then why posit the question when "I don't know" is a perfectly fine answer? Why don't you, me or those folks sitting over there ever have stray memories of others intrude upon us? I think some do. I think there is a lot of literature about anomalous information transfer including the memories from others annoying their day to day activities. Reincarnation with past life memories, sudden telepathic instances. I'm not saying I'm arguing for the veracity of the claims but you've heard of that stuff before, right? So why even ask such questions when you know the answers because you've participated in the forums before.
 
I'm sure some do have doubts, but the remarkable thing is how adept people are at convincing themselves they don't.

Do you have any doubts about the truth of materialism? Because in light of Ethan's post it seems this statement could be interpreted as containing a high degree of ironic content.
 
While speculating memories are somewhere else perhaps fulfills an existential desire it does create a conundrum at the same time that needs addressing.
a. Where are those memories? Maybe in something akin to the cloud? b. How are they accessed? c. Why don't you, me or those folks sitting over there ever have stray memories of others intrude upon us?

It's not ambiguous. Simple forgetfulness is when you forget where you placed your keys or when you know you know something (ex.a name), but just can't recall it in the moment. You've heard the expression "it's on the tip of my tongue"

I have no ideological war with myself ( or anyone else for that matter) to preserve my world view. I except something as true if it's proven true. I won't argue something is true because it meets an existential need as nearly every other member does. The short version is, I won't delude myself to think something is true. Now look at the conversations going on here. There's not one existential post that presents facts, instead posts are about hope that there's transcendence to human existence. My posts question the need for this. Do you understand me better now?

Bollocks. You post as if you are immune to bias, which is just preposterous. You seem quite convinced that all psi is nonsense, despite not having looked at the data for years. I understand you did when you were younger, but a lot has happened over the past couple of decades or so.
 
Kastrup published a piece (actually the second part of a two-part essay) with neurologist Tanzi, Chopra, and some other dudes on the subject of materialism and the brain (Admittedly I'm a little worried about people like Deepak Chopra and Eben Alexander making themselves the go-to guys for immaterialism.):

Getting Real About Brain Science – A Challenge to the Current Model (Just Kastrup & Chopra):

The authors of the Cell article, along with the entire field of neuroscience, anchor their faith on the starting assumption that the mind must be explainable through the brain. They are turning their backs, then, on what the philosophy of science teaches.
1. Theories are right about what they include and wrong about what they exclude.
2. There is no such thing as direct, objective proof about any theory of existence (known in philosophy as ontology).
3. Data has no meaning unless it is interpreted, and interpretations are bound by the observer’s starting assumptions.

These three points are enough to level the playing field when it comes to competing worldviews and scientific paradigms. In a word, everyone has a story, and everyone believes their story. Even contradictory stories can be valid and fit the same data. This startling conclusion applies to any situation where competing stories are told: marriages when they break apart, defendants protesting their innocence in court, and the most sophisticated theories in science. Sticking to your story convinces you that you’re telling the truth when in fact you are just defending a way of seeing.

The starting assumption of neuroscience, that brain=mind, is particularly weak, but that’s the nature of paradigms as they start to crumble around the edges. Their proponents defend them more stoutly. There is absolutely no data to indicate that neurons can think; they merely light up on an fMRI as thinking occurs, which isn’t the same thing. You could construct a setup so that a 100-watt bulb lights up over your head every time you have a bright idea, but that doesn’t mean the light bulb caused the idea. Neuroscience ignores this obvious flaw when it arrives at the same false conclusion, using neurons instead of a light bulb.

I'd agree with most of this, though they needlessly weaken the strength of their position by saying things like "These three points are enough to level the playing field when it comes to competing worldviews and scientific paradigms." They later note that contradictory stories can fit the same data, but this still IMO leaves the door open to any story of convenience. This would have been a good time to discuss what it means for a metaphysics to offer intelligible accounts for the world. Their mentioning of the Aristotelian conception of the world being an inspiration to Kuhn - which preceded the quoted part above - might also have been elucidated as from what I've read the existing Scholastic theologians would correct a lot of what Aristotle assumed.

The following also feels like an overstatement:

The only thing that keeps alive the promise that the brain will one day explain consciousness is neuroscience’s blindness to any explanation other than the one assumed to be true in advance. The latest experiments in quantum physics have rendered all but untenable the notion that reality exists outside consciousness. (See Kim, Y.-H. et al. (2000) “A Delayed Choice Quantum Eraser,” described in detail in a Wikipedia entry devoted to it. An even stronger stand is taken by Gröblacher, S. et al. in “An experimental test of non-local realism,” which physicsworld.com discussed under the header “quantum physics says goodbye to reality.”). If all of reality is in consciousness, then obviously the brain – as part of reality – is also in consciousness, not consciousness in the brain. As such, a different way of seeing is required under which the brain is merely the image of particular processes in consciousness; the brain is not the generator of consciousness.

The realism tests falsified specific classes of realist models for physics. I agree it's a big deal, but the results aren't actually enough to say goodbye to reality.

All of reality doesn't have to be in consciousness for consciousness to be a fundamental constituent of reality - the Aristotelian conception they mention above, Hylemorphism, is another option. I'd also at least have mentioned the Combination Problem for Accretive Panpsychism.

Part 2 follows next.
 
A Challenge to the Current Model (Part 2) (Deepak Chopra, M.D.; Bernardo Kastrup, Ph.D.; Menas C. Kafatos, Ph.D.; and Rudolph Tanzi, Ph.D.)

Let's imagine that a brain scientist has been backed into a corner by this argument. He can always say, "Don't bother me. I'm an expert, and I know what I'm doing." But if the cornered brain scientist takes the argument seriously, he can push back on several rational fronts. He might say the following:

"You claim that the old paradigm doesn't work anymore, but thousands of useful findings are being produced. There's no end in sight. Treating the brain as the thing that creates the mind is enormously productive. You can't deny it."

True, but imagine a sailor before Copernicus. "The Sun still rises in the East and sets in the West. Because that's a fact, my ship can go anywhere in the world navigating by the Sun. You can't deny it."

Admittedly I don't know about navigation, but I think this is a good example of how a model can provide useful gains while ultimately being false.

So brain science can't be challenged unless we can get outside the brain. Copernicus made his breakthrough by getting outside the limitation of seeing the Sun rise and set every day. But he didn't get outside the brain, which is much harder to do, nor did Einstein, Heisenberg, and other modern geniuses we look to to explain reality. But they actually said one profound thing that current brain science does not always consider: The world is in the mind, not the other way around.

Getting outside the brain -- meaning outside the picture of reality that the brain produces -- requires a new paradigm. That's really the nub of the matter. The old paradigm is comfortable staying inside the brain, using its processes to explain everything else, giving the brain a privileged position in the entire universe: It's the one physical object that can think. This is like giving God a privileged position in the Book of Genesis: God is the one thing in the universe that didn't have to be created.

Does it make sense to mention Aristotle in Part 1 and then go back to a straw man critique of the Scholastic version of the Cosmological Argument?

The new paradigm stops turning the brain into God. It's obvious that the brain had to be created, and whatever did that isn't the brain.

I'm a bit confused by this whole digression into a comparison of the naturalist explanation with the strawman Cosmological Argument. I realize there's a metaphor here trying to separate the phenomenal brain from whatever the true reality is, but I think Hoffman might've been consulted here as he did a better job in Peeking Behind the Icons (link leads to relevant quote).

Once this obvious fact is accepted, a better set of ideas can be accepted at the same time:
  1. The brain, being an ordinary physical object, doesn't create the mind, which isn't physical. (Is it just gray gel infused with chemicals and electromagnetic signals that makes you love your children or want to look good on your next date?)
  2. Something beyond the brain creates the experience of the world. The brain, in fact, is just another experience, so it is disqualified as the creator.
  3. Once you throw out the brain as the creator of experience, it's plausible that the mind creates experience. There's no reason to disbelieve this, and every reason to believe it, since all experiences are mental.
  4. Getting outside the brain is easy once you accept that the mind is running the show.

I think Point 1 might've been better stated. It almost comes off as begging the question. The last question should've been cut out, since the efficacy/inefficacy of grey gel is the very thing we want to figure out. Point 2 was, again, better stated in Peeking Behind the Icons. That said the phenomenal brain being radically different from the actual brain does not necessitate Idealism. Points 3 and 4, IMO, show the problem with short points like this. I don't think these arguments retain their efficacy when shortened to this degree. At least not with this wording.

Our cornered brain scientist is someone with intellectual integrity. He's not going to squirm away by refusing to listen or stubbornly insisting on false assumptions. We have him sweating now, but he hasn't run out of denials: "Clever thinking, but you have no facts in your new paradigm. You just have ideas, and without facts, backed up by experimental data, an idea might as well be a fantasy."

This would be true if the mind were just another assumption like assuming the brain can think. Clearly the mind isn't an assumption. The mind is our portal to the real. In fact, the mind is the only portal to the real. You can't step outside it. Yet facts -- meaning measurements and data -- are necessary to science, which makes it hard for philosophy and its method of pure thinking to make headway.

I like this, but again I can't help but feel like this article is more confusing than it needs to be. Maybe this is the problem of having so many authors writing for one piece. This is essentially Berkeley's argument -> The go-to assumption here is going to be the question of solipsism, and I'm a bit surprised the article doesn't take the time to address at least the basic counterargument here.

To believe that the riddle of consciousness will be unraveled is to mistake a correlate for a cause. It's absolutely true that every mental event has a corresponding physical event in the brain. The way the process looks carries valid information about the process. Flames carry valid information about combustion because they are the way combustion looks when observed from the outside, not the cause of combustion. In exactly the same way, brain states carry valid information about subjective experience because they are the way subjective experience looks when observed from the outside. But they are not the cause of subjective experience.

This is good, I always did like the flames-combustion metaphor as it ties into the problem of the naturalist explanation of how the brain produces consciousness being akin to a child demonstrating how striking a match starts a fire. As Nagel notes finding the neuronal patterns responsible for subjective experience doesn't explain the question of why that particular arrangement led to the emergence of consciousness.

Instead of looking upon back-and-forth communication between different brain regions -- so-called "reverberation" -- as a cause of consciousness, the new paradigm would view it as a mechanism of amplification of certain contents of consciousness.

Insofar as it increases the footprint of certain subjective states, reverberation can indeed be viewed as a form of amplification. Instead of looking upon different neural processes as either conscious or unconscious, one would see them as either amplified or obfuscated, respectively. The moment certain contents of consciousness become amplified, they naturally obfuscate other contents, the way the Sun obfuscates the stars at noon. Obfuscated contents are still in consciousness, for the same reason that the stars are still in the sky at noon.

Maybe. Though one does have a possibly serious chasm to cross - if the phenomenal brain is argued to be different from the actual brain, why should the observed amplification tell us anything definitive about the true reality? That said I do like this as a potential starting point though I don't know if a leap into Idealism is the correct position. I'd definitely be interested in seeing what Tallis has to say though.

Now we can solve one of the world's great mysteries. How can mystical experience -- seeing angels, connecting with God, hearing the voice of your soul -- be real? There is no problem with them being real if, like breathing, other experiences are obfuscating them, or blocking them out. Remove the obstructions and consciousness can naturally include so-called mystical experiences.

Maybe. I think there's the problem of distinguishing between genuine encounters with real angels and hallucinogens of monsters/cartoons/whatever. Not to mention God and/or spirits/angels/machine elves/aliens are telling people different things.

Hearing this, our cornered brain scientist would probably be dazed and confused. He might sink to the floor with his head in his hands: "You're destroying real science with your damn philosophy." After a while he'll recover his composure, at which point he'll go back to his normal way of doing things -- but then where is his intellectual integrity? The new paradigm may look outrageous from the viewpoint of the old. Even so, it's the duty of science to take it seriously. This is how science progresses, by shunning hidden dogmas and stolid belief systems. Outworn assumptions are reaching their expiration date. We need to admit this to ourselves and move on. A higher, more useful science is waiting in the wings.

I don't know what it means here for science to take this new paradigm seriously. I think I agree, to an extent, but some examples might be useful. Should physicists provide more tests to see if any model of realism can hold in physics? Should there be more consideration for immaterialist healing techniques? More Psi research?

Why is the more useful science more useful?

This last paragraph doesn't seem to offer much direction. I originally thought this was more about the limitations of science, but apparently this was a charge for Science to do...something...
 
The idea that Steve001 doesn't have an existential need for materialism to be true is highly questionable IMO.

But of course it's easier to write off others as hoping for transcendence, but really that's just ad hominem.
Right, the need for Steve to have complete certainty in one thing would be cause to reject a lot of what he says. Like other religious people, Steve needs some solid rock of certainty to get by day to day. If doubt entered into the equation, this would force Steve to begin analyzing different threads of evidence for himself. This is a difficulty for Steve ( as we've already seen him cry out for help to defend himself from Maaneli ), and would surely put him through some mental anguish. I guess some people are just lost causes.
 
To be fair, we don't know steve's background or history.

He may have had an incredibly frightening paranormal experience in his past, and the only way to function day-to-day is to constantly reinforce the idea that the frightening event DID NOT HAPPEN. He clings to his belief as his life raft, always one step away from being forced to face his fears and falling into an existential crisis.

Or maybe he just enjoys taking the path of least resistance. In any culture, the path of least resistance is to join the crowd. To be a follower. Authority will be happy to tell you how the world works - the easiest thing to do is just to go with it. In the present day western world, the easiest trend to follow is to learn and accept the materialist mythology.

He may even be a rare form of long-term troll who elicits reactions by acting as a caricature of a materialist. He gets a lot of attention by being the perfect example of the condescending, uninformed, science-worshipping materialist that many proponents imagine. He IS the embodiment of the materialist straw man. Like any straw man, It's hard to resist the temptation to knock him down. But if he's a troll, that's what he wants.

Any or none of these may be true, but we just don't know. But I do know that I have never seen him contribute to any discussion in a meaningful way, and after years of being here, he has never demonstrated that he has any deep understanding of the topics we discuss on this board. I am sure the new members and lurkers that he posts for are smart enough to determine this as well. I was a lurker for quite a while, and even then I could easily see that he contributed nothing here. That is why I eventually decided to just him on ignore. I suggest other members do the same.

However much I disagree with them at times, every other regular skeptic that posts here has at least attempted to engage with the material on some level beyond grade school comments like "this man is a fool". Maybe that is steve's true purpose on this board - to make the other skeptics look better by comparison.
 
Actually, I've seen Steve001 contribute meaningfully to topics once or twice.

Which makes the 'I'm not deluded, but you proponents are and so you should feel ashamed' stratagem all the more strange. It's also strange to see someone who doesn't believe in free will continually assert their resistance to delusion as a point of pride.

Hopefully he is reading up on intentionality*, in order to provide refutation to Tallis' contention that memories cannot be stored in the brain. (Well, Tallis also makes an argument from the philosophy of time, but I've admittedly not posted that part yet.)

Or he can post his credentials in science and philosophy that bring weight to his contention that Tallis is a "fool".

*Here's a starting point:

Now, if intentionality involves something “pointing to” or being “directed at” or “about” something beyond itself, and the mechanistic conception of matter underlying physicalism holds that there is no such thing in nature as something inherently and irreducibly being “directed at” or “pointing to” something else, then it seems at the very least difficult to see how intentionality could possibly be something material or physical. I had reason to make this point in my recent post on Chomsky. But though Stoljar quotes the same passage from Jerry Fodor that I cited there, he does not see (as Fodor does, though Fodor does not make explicit reference to the anti-Aristotelian mechanistic revolution) that it is the moderns’ own conception of matter, rather than the “paradoxes of intentionality,” that generates the difficulty.

Again, the point is not that the physicalist might not have a good response to points like the ones I’ve been making – I don’t think so, but that’s another issue. The point is rather that it misses the point to address the problem of intentionality as if the paradoxes Stoljar calls attention to were at the heart of it, and as if it had nothing to do with the nature of “the physical.” Both the commonsense point and the technical point (as I have called them) show that the problem has very much to do with the nature of the physical, and nothing essentially to do with the paradoxes.

But how, the physicalist might still ask, does dualism fare any better?
 
http://www.enneagraminstitute.com/TypeOne.asp#.VCLng-ehtaY

Possibly a type one:

Ones are conscientious and ethical, with a strong sense of right and wrong. They are teachers, crusaders, and advocates for change: always striving to improve things, but afraid of making a mistake.

Key Motivations: Want to be right, to strive higher and improve everything, to be consistent with their ideals, to justify themselves, to be beyond criticism so as not to be condemned by anyone.

We have named personality type One The Reformer because Ones have a “sense of mission” that leads them to want to improve the world in various ways, using whatever degree of influence they have. They strive to overcome adversity—particularly moral adversity—so that the human spirit can shine through and make a difference. They strive after “higher values,” even at the cost of great personal sacrifice.

Ones are people of practical action—they wish to be useful in the best sense of the word. On some level of consciousness, they feel that they “have a mission” to fulfill in life, if only to try their best to reduce the disorder they see in their environment.

Although Ones have a strong sense of purpose, they also typically feel that they have to justify their actions to themselves, and often to others as well. This orientation causes Ones to spend a lot of time thinking about the consequences of their actions, as well as about how to keep from acting contrary to their convictions. Because of this, Ones often persuade themselves that they are “head” types, rationalists who proceed only on logic and objective truth. But, the real picture is somewhat different: Ones are actually activists who are searching for an acceptable rationale for what they feel they must do. They are people of instinct and passion who use convictions and judgments to control and direct themselves and their actions.

In the effort to stay true to their principles, Ones resist being affected by their instinctual drives, consciously not giving in to them or expressing them too freely. The result is a personality type that has problems with repression, resistance, and aggression. They are usually seen by others as highly self- controlled, even rigid, although this is not how Ones experience themselves.

Dissatisfied with reality, they become high-minded idealists, feeling that it is up to them to improve everything: crusaders, advocates, critics. Into "causes" and explaining to others how things "ought" to be.

Can be highly dogmatic, self-righteous, intolerant, and inflexible. Begin dealing in absolutes: they alone know "The Truth." Everyone else is wrong: very severe in judgments, while rationalizing own actions.

Become obsessive about imperfection and the wrong-doing of others, although they may fall into contradictory actions, hypocritically doing the opposite of what they preach.
 
I'm just chipping in here for no particular good reason, please ignore me I'm sure everyone will anyway so I don't know why I said that....:)

Steve two zero's One said>

"P.S. I hope to never hear again k9 say read the literature and to hear the names of Sheldrake, Parnia, Eben Alexander, Radin. When your side stops referring to these experts I'll stop trusting the scientific consensus. Fair enough?"

In my opinion, all of the above are credible scientists trying to investigate legitimate data, not cranks and one, Sam Parnia is carrying out an investigation into possibly the most important question humans can ask, in which he has the full blessing of arch British sceptics French and Blackmore etc.....

His experiments have been ethically approved and properly conducted (as far as we know) so how can anyone suggest he is unscientific ? Patients in cardiac arrest attest that they have real OBE's and we need to find out it they do because if they do, the whole of the scientific hierarchy will have to kiss ass.
 
The whole concept of "memory" lends itself to be deeply and suspiciously incestuous to the nature of "time." I suspect it not too far fetched at all that the brain (and for that matter the body) can access its past states. in many ways this is a much more economical model than proposing prodigiously complicated forms of 'storage" that can never seem to be pinned down.

You were once a ten year old who ran along a beach. Where is that experience "stored"? I don't just mean what we refer to as the "memory" of the experience, I mean the experience itself. Really, this word "stored" refers to an implied retrospective, or virtual access, to an experience from a supposedly "more real" present moment. But of all things to do with the nature of time, the true existence of a "present moment" is the thing we should be most skeptical of.

I think the brain creates virtual access to past experience fields of its own states. In reality, those states have equal validity to the states that are happening now, and perhaps even the states that will form in the future. Since they are not memories, but in some sense the "event fields" themselves, no "storage" will ever be found (imo), unless one also finds "stored" the entire history of the world. No: the storage place for the history of the world *is* the history of the world. Likewise (imo) the secret storage of your personal event history *is* that event history...and nothing less.
 
Is it me or doesn't Steve001 remind you of Sniffy The Atheist or Open Minded Atheist from the previous forum...?
 
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