If the overall point is that an employee of a company that has complete access to your systems, has complete access to your systems, that hardly seems to rise to the specificness of the claim "The Windows Flaw That Cracks Amazon Services". The supposed Windows flaw is irrelevant to the fact all systems are equally vulnerable in such a context, by much more mundane means.
Still, since I have been a customer of Amazon EC2 for several years and know something about it, and have had such security discussions with my clients' CEO in originally selecting them--the article, to address its claims credibly, should at least address the actual security context as Amazon asserts it is, say, here:
Amazon Corporate Segregation
Logically,the AWS Production network is segregated from the Amazon Corporate network by means of a complex set of
network security segregation devices. AWS developers and administrators on the corporate network who need to
access AWS cloud components in order to maintain them must explicitly request access through the AWS ticketing
system. All requests are reviewed and approved by the applicable service owner.
Approved AWS personnel then connect to the AWS network through a bastion host that restricts access to network
devices and other cloud components, logging all activity for security review. Access to bastion hosts require SSH public-
key authentication for all user accounts on the host. For more information on AWS developer and administrator logical
access,see AWS Access below.
AWS Access
AWS developers and administrators on the Amazon Corporate network who need to access AWS cloud components
must explicitly request access through the AWS ticketing system. All requests are reviewed and approved by the
appropriate owner or manager.
Account Review and Audit
Accounts are reviewed every 90 days; explicit re-approval is required or access to the resource is automatically revoked.
Access is also automatically revoked when an employee's record is terminated in Amazon's Human Resources system.
Windows and UNIX accounts are disabled and Amazon's permission management system removes the user from all
systems.
Requests for changes in access are captured in the Amazon permissions management tool audit log. When changes in an
employee's job function occur, continued access must be explicitly approved to the resource or it will be automatically
revoked.
Certainly, this claim could be contended with or otherwise discussed as to the degree of risk posed by the "crack". Handwaving "an Amazon employee could" is rather... light, though.
Jesus said: When you see your likeness, you are pleased. But when you see your images which came into existence before you, which neither die nor become manifest, how much you will have to bear!
--Thomas
Adding some Old Earth counterpoint here. Viewing the images is left as an exercise for the reader.
Sounds exactly like what an RCS like Subversion is good for.
Each user pulls down the directories relevant to him/her from the overall repository, updates at will from the central source, and pushes up changes at will with a couple of mouse clicks.
TortoiseSVN will even give you handy little icons on your local folders in Explorer to tell you if what you have in your local directory isn't synced with the central server, and it's two clicks to make that happen. I actually think you don't want to "force synchronization" on an ongoing basis, seems like a great way to overwrite a lot of your developers' (and others') ongoing work.
Jesus said, "The kingdom of the father is like a certain woman. She took a little leaven, concealed it in some dough, and made it into large loaves. Let him who has ears hear."
--Thomas
Now they just need to find that "certain woman"...
It might be useful for me to clarify my stance on a few things in reference to your comments here, now that this has become an actual discussion beyond my 3-word quip we started with.
There are a lot of different viewpoints under the general term "ID" (which I take to mean as scoping to exactly what it says, no more, no less--design by an intelligence, how and "who" being independent questions that are largely philosophical rather than scientific, at least at this point).
I do not question that a great deal of explanatory power is offered by reference to standard mechanisms of natural selection. I do not dispute that the Earth is billions, not thousands, of years old.
And, indeed, my knowledge of genetics is limited--I am a software developer by profession. What troubles me here at Slashdot, though, is a kind of automatic dismissal of even inquiring into the possibility of design as a causal factor in our genetic makeup. I do believe that it is often the case, now that the topic has become very politically polarized, that the naturalistic evolution position overstates its case, on particular issues, as "fact" when in reality it remains a theory undergoing constant refinement (we can refer to the continual modification of "the" structure of the "tree of life" for a direct example). I have no expectation that the broad structure of evolutionary theory will be discarded at any point, my interest lies more on the "edge cases" where ambiguity, and therefore worthwhile analysis, exists. And I do think that often confirmation bias comes into play on the part of the "established" evolutionary models.
Which, to me, is counterproductive and really contrary to the nature of science. If in fact, there do exist any Irreducibly Complex biological structures, this does not preclude viability on either side of what generally ends up being a theism-atheism split on the issue. One could happily be an atheist even in the case of a clear IC structure being identified, with the conjecture that, say, an extraterrestrial race genetically engineered the modification--much as a theist can consider even in the absence of an IC structure that evolution is essentially a "biology factory" which was in itself designed by God.
So, from the standpoint of one's worldview, it isn't crucial either way. But from the standpoint of advancing science, it could be very interesting, and it would be a great loss to miss such a case due to the whole category of suggestions that a particular mutation might have been designed (intentionally caused for a particular advantageous outcome) being dismissed a priori for "political" reasons.
Now on your software analogy, I think there may be an element to the connection to the overall topic you may be missing. Let's note here that reusing those "features" and their implementation are squarely a case of design, by an intelligence, that intelligence being "us". If this kind of "code reuse" exists extensively in biology, that would weigh more strongly to the notion biology also had directly-designed elements, than the notion similar features came into place independently due to a random-mutation/natural-selection process, though, it is not impossible for that to have occurred. As you say, there is much we don't know about genetics. So long as it is indeterminate for a given case, though, I'd prefer to keep the question open and viewed with unbiased eyes.
Toward that question, it would probably be worth noting a pertinent difference between "current ID thinking" (e.g. Behe) and "mainstream" evolutionary theory. As I'm sure you are well aware, within the mainstream viewpoint, the majority of complex structures arise through successive series of mutations that are selected for due to some advantageous attribute--and indeed, no argument from me that many, many changes to biological structures do indeed happen this way. The particular distinction with this viewpoint that ID postulates (and ID tends to get "suppressed" so vociferously that most aren't ev
We may as well go all the way with your slippery-slope, and stipulate that by your terms, the human body must be immortal, because by your criteria any death would equally be a "design flaw".
But your premise is entirely erroneous. It is never suggested that this is the design intent (in fact, to be explicit regarding one ID scenario, it says we were made "good", not "perfect"--"perfect" being reserved for a future potentiality). Secondly, we have inevitable secondary consequences to such a "design objective" (if there were some reason to say it must be the objective, other than your whim)--such as overpopulation. Further, we have exacerbating circumstances (such as environmental damage) that are quite of our own making.
In short, this argument is a Straw Man based on the notion that the actual design objectives are to be determined by you, not the designer. And your design objectives wouldn't work.
Okay, so you retract your implication that my three words were the -only- argument I have for it, which you knew via your psychic powers, and now state only that I consider it "supportive" of it, correct?
In fact, given the broadness of how one might interpret those three words, I suggest that the sole reason you formed the interpretation you did, and the objection you did, is -you yourself- find it "supportive", and now are denying your own evaluation of your own brain, and projecting who has an issue onto me and Dr. Parker.
Take it up with Dr. Parker. He used the term "incredible", quite deliberately and with full awareness of the implications of the term. Even if -you- want to redirect to a semantic objection that holds no relevance, nor accurately recounts the statement--but happens to correspond what you personally wish he had said, had meant, or was the case.
And, of course, one could not possibly evaluate a position based on one sentence regarding it, ever, for any topic, nor is there even the beginnings of a rational thought on your part there.
''We had expected to find identical changes in maybe a dozen or so genes but to see nearly 200 is incredible,'' explains Dr Joe Parker, from Queen Mary's School of Biological and Chemical Sciences and first author on the paper.
I'll assume that the sentence fragment is an attempt to invoke Occam's Razor.
While you've misapplied it, as is usually the case, it does have the subjective advantage that Occam was theist.
So, I'll clarify. Occam's Razor in no way specifies what is true, or even more likely to be true. It simply indicates that for the purposes of conceptual economy, when -all else is equal-, the simplest explanation should be used. The slightest difference between two models either on the basis of evidence or reason disqualifies it from being applicable to a given situation.
And, well, it's not an assumption if you know it is fact. As usual, that you don't know something, never means no one else does either, for any topic. As usual, that you haven't experienced evidence, does not mean no one else has, nor is you having it required for it to be evidence. Again, as is always the case, for any topic.
Sounds like a false dichotomy to me. It is both an argument for the soul, and a necessary conclusion for deterministic materialism.
The particular sub-argument regarding the soul this represents is addressing what might be the means for "addressing" deterioration of the physical neurons and the apparent effects on consciousness per se--and the answer is that given complete information, all the data of all the neurons, all the configuration, all the topology, at any point in time (i.e. the complete consciousness at that time, even presuming material reduction) can be performed.
Naturally, pointing this out was primarily to address one of the first round of objections. The actual original argument for the soul was the implausibility of the brain having evolved in a naturalistic sense to "support" such specific during-death cognitive processes for little discernable biological advantage in the "normal world".
NDE's themselves are an example of that happening, I submit.
Outside of that, since you're doing that cat/dev/random, I'll suggest that if you are on, say, Amazon's EC2 cloud, you do exactly that any time you create a new server instance from a snapshot. On a more mundane level, the equivalent should be able to be done with a couple PC's, a big flash drive, and a hammer.
For further possibilities, I'd suggest we really don't know the specifics in cases such as recovery from amnesia--but to answer in the broad sense we are entailing other questions such as "why aren't people made immortal" or "why aren't people always healed", which have their own domain of discussion and rationale.
No, there is simply no reason to say that because complex physical things tend to be made by complex beings, that the complex beings must themselves be made by likewise complex beings.
In fact, you deny that right now, with regard to human beings.
Aside from that, saying the universe -logically must- be created by a complex being, is something you are saying, and are the only one here saying it.
Let me make my own arguments, rather than you making them up for me, please. Otherwise you are straw-manning me.
I am saying that it is a plausible conclusion regarding the complexity. And like you yourself would say "things humans make are designed, humans themselves are not", there is no reason to conclude that because one entity has the attribute attribute of being designed, all entities therefore must.
Your example is quite appropriate regarding human reconstructability of information--it can be thought of as "lost" if we ourselves as a practical matter can't recover it.
I am using it in the stricter sense of the link above:
This is controversial because it violates a commonly assumed tenet of science--that in principle complete information about a physical system at one point in time should determine its state at any other time.
That is to say, the information is your example isn't -lost-, it's just -lost to us-. Given complete information about the state of all matter in your post-disaster scenario, every minute detail about the original building, is, in theory, recoverable.
I would, naturally, be arguing a scenario in which an entity exists that has that complete information, and can "roll the clock back" therefore to any arbitrary point in time before that.
Not at all. The same 3-dimensional, interactive, perceptually-complete experience is reported under vastly different circumstances of death, affecting the brain in literally random forms of damage. Cancers, car accidents, asphyxiation, you name it.
The odds, again, if you don't like the PC analogy, is the odds of this--this in its complexity, this in its specificity--occurring after killing random sections of the brain with radiation. It's implausible that this in particular, a phenomenon happening to correlate so uncomfortably for you with certain worldviews--would happen as it does without intentional design.
What one would expect during generic "brain failure", is a completely random set of sensations and cognitive inhibition--much like an LSD trip. That isn't what is reported, and quantified in peer-reviewed studies, such as The Lancet's.
You assume it is forever lost, that is. In fact information is never destroyed (well, there's a debate regarding black holes...).
I see no reason not to suppose that like you "could" throw a fastball but cannot because your arm is broken, you "could" think with your highest level capacity, but cannot because of your neurons.
I see no real barrier to why the consciousness, running on "new hardware", could not be reconstructed in full. If there is data redundancy, or the equivalent of "metaphysical backups" (something of an assumed stipulation given my argument), it seems little different from standard means of data recovery.
You have a particular interpretation of the phenomenon, understood. You are still not specifying a rationale of how this would come to be, given your premises.
And, "emerge" is not a causal explanation, regardless of how frequently it used to handwave such without being such.
Definitely not likely as an adaptive selected trait where the situation literally never comes up in a biology-only context.
(Slashdot's new allowed-posts-per-time-unit is ludicrous. It is now directly impossible to have a meaningful thread discussion. Since I can't continue, I won't.)
And the idea that this would happen accidentally is absurd.
Perhaps you can whip up a quick program that will randomly overwrite bytes on your Windows OS such that it will interact with you as if it is the Commodore 64 sitting in the corner.
Not certain your meaning here, but I'm not arguing there are no other ways to induce the phenomenon. I'm asking why the capacity for the phenomenon came to exist in the first place.
You're a few dozen gnomish-underpants class causal steps between group pastimes and the DNA creating brain structure, if that's what you intended to "explain".
Slashdot Mirror
If the overall point is that an employee of a company that has complete access to your systems, has complete access to your systems, that hardly seems to rise to the specificness of the claim "The Windows Flaw That Cracks Amazon Services". The supposed Windows flaw is irrelevant to the fact all systems are equally vulnerable in such a context, by much more mundane means.
Still, since I have been a customer of Amazon EC2 for several years and know something about it, and have had such security discussions with my clients' CEO in originally selecting them--the article, to address its claims credibly, should at least address the actual security context as Amazon asserts it is, say, here:
http://awsmedia.s3.amazonaws.com/pdf/AWS_Security_Whitepaper.pdf
Amazon Corporate Segregation
Logically,the AWS Production network is segregated from the Amazon Corporate network by means of a complex set of network security segregation devices. AWS developers and administrators on the corporate network who need to access AWS cloud components in order to maintain them must explicitly request access through the AWS ticketing system. All requests are reviewed and approved by the applicable service owner. Approved AWS personnel then connect to the AWS network through a bastion host that restricts access to network devices and other cloud components, logging all activity for security review. Access to bastion hosts require SSH public- key authentication for all user accounts on the host. For more information on AWS developer and administrator logical access,see AWS Access below.
AWS Access
AWS developers and administrators on the Amazon Corporate network who need to access AWS cloud components must explicitly request access through the AWS ticketing system. All requests are reviewed and approved by the appropriate owner or manager.
Account Review and Audit
Accounts are reviewed every 90 days; explicit re-approval is required or access to the resource is automatically revoked. Access is also automatically revoked when an employee's record is terminated in Amazon's Human Resources system. Windows and UNIX accounts are disabled and Amazon's permission management system removes the user from all systems. Requests for changes in access are captured in the Amazon permissions management tool audit log. When changes in an employee's job function occur, continued access must be explicitly approved to the resource or it will be automatically revoked.
Certainly, this claim could be contended with or otherwise discussed as to the degree of risk posed by the "crack". Handwaving "an Amazon employee could" is rather... light, though.
1. Take a Windows server on Amazon Web Services, make a copy of the hard drive (which Amazon calls a volume),
If you can do this, the system is already compromised in a dozen different, less-interesting, ways.
The question is whether you can do this without already having the passwords, with EC2's existing security. I see no evidence from the article he can.
Without that, the claim is half gratuitous cleverness, half FUD of an attention-grabbing vendor name, to my eyes.
Jesus said: When you see your likeness, you are pleased. But when you see your images which came into existence before you, which neither die nor become manifest, how much you will have to bear!
--Thomas
Adding some Old Earth counterpoint here. Viewing the images is left as an exercise for the reader.
Hey, I get enough attempts at that here just from being theist. ;)
Sounds exactly like what an RCS like Subversion is good for.
Each user pulls down the directories relevant to him/her from the overall repository, updates at will from the central source, and pushes up changes at will with a couple of mouse clicks.
TortoiseSVN will even give you handy little icons on your local folders in Explorer to tell you if what you have in your local directory isn't synced with the central server, and it's two clicks to make that happen. I actually think you don't want to "force synchronization" on an ongoing basis, seems like a great way to overwrite a lot of your developers' (and others') ongoing work.
Jesus said, "The kingdom of the father is like a certain woman. She took a little leaven, concealed it in some dough, and made it into large loaves. Let him who has ears hear."
--Thomas
Now they just need to find that "certain woman"...
Two words: Genetic Fallacy
Which, somewhat ironically given the thread, is in the domain of types of invalid logical inference, not genetics.
Fair enough.
It might be useful for me to clarify my stance on a few things in reference to your comments here, now that this has become an actual discussion beyond my 3-word quip we started with.
There are a lot of different viewpoints under the general term "ID" (which I take to mean as scoping to exactly what it says, no more, no less--design by an intelligence, how and "who" being independent questions that are largely philosophical rather than scientific, at least at this point).
I do not question that a great deal of explanatory power is offered by reference to standard mechanisms of natural selection. I do not dispute that the Earth is billions, not thousands, of years old.
And, indeed, my knowledge of genetics is limited--I am a software developer by profession. What troubles me here at Slashdot, though, is a kind of automatic dismissal of even inquiring into the possibility of design as a causal factor in our genetic makeup. I do believe that it is often the case, now that the topic has become very politically polarized, that the naturalistic evolution position overstates its case, on particular issues, as "fact" when in reality it remains a theory undergoing constant refinement (we can refer to the continual modification of "the" structure of the "tree of life" for a direct example). I have no expectation that the broad structure of evolutionary theory will be discarded at any point, my interest lies more on the "edge cases" where ambiguity, and therefore worthwhile analysis, exists. And I do think that often confirmation bias comes into play on the part of the "established" evolutionary models.
Which, to me, is counterproductive and really contrary to the nature of science. If in fact, there do exist any Irreducibly Complex biological structures, this does not preclude viability on either side of what generally ends up being a theism-atheism split on the issue. One could happily be an atheist even in the case of a clear IC structure being identified, with the conjecture that, say, an extraterrestrial race genetically engineered the modification--much as a theist can consider even in the absence of an IC structure that evolution is essentially a "biology factory" which was in itself designed by God.
So, from the standpoint of one's worldview, it isn't crucial either way. But from the standpoint of advancing science, it could be very interesting, and it would be a great loss to miss such a case due to the whole category of suggestions that a particular mutation might have been designed (intentionally caused for a particular advantageous outcome) being dismissed a priori for "political" reasons.
Now on your software analogy, I think there may be an element to the connection to the overall topic you may be missing. Let's note here that reusing those "features" and their implementation are squarely a case of design, by an intelligence, that intelligence being "us". If this kind of "code reuse" exists extensively in biology, that would weigh more strongly to the notion biology also had directly-designed elements, than the notion similar features came into place independently due to a random-mutation/natural-selection process, though, it is not impossible for that to have occurred. As you say, there is much we don't know about genetics. So long as it is indeterminate for a given case, though, I'd prefer to keep the question open and viewed with unbiased eyes.
Toward that question, it would probably be worth noting a pertinent difference between "current ID thinking" (e.g. Behe) and "mainstream" evolutionary theory. As I'm sure you are well aware, within the mainstream viewpoint, the majority of complex structures arise through successive series of mutations that are selected for due to some advantageous attribute--and indeed, no argument from me that many, many changes to biological structures do indeed happen this way. The particular distinction with this viewpoint that ID postulates (and ID tends to get "suppressed" so vociferously that most aren't ev
We may as well go all the way with your slippery-slope, and stipulate that by your terms, the human body must be immortal, because by your criteria any death would equally be a "design flaw".
But your premise is entirely erroneous. It is never suggested that this is the design intent (in fact, to be explicit regarding one ID scenario, it says we were made "good", not "perfect"--"perfect" being reserved for a future potentiality). Secondly, we have inevitable secondary consequences to such a "design objective" (if there were some reason to say it must be the objective, other than your whim)--such as overpopulation. Further, we have exacerbating circumstances (such as environmental damage) that are quite of our own making.
In short, this argument is a Straw Man based on the notion that the actual design objectives are to be determined by you, not the designer. And your design objectives wouldn't work.
Okay, so you retract your implication that my three words were the -only- argument I have for it, which you knew via your psychic powers, and now state only that I consider it "supportive" of it, correct?
In fact, given the broadness of how one might interpret those three words, I suggest that the sole reason you formed the interpretation you did, and the objection you did, is -you yourself- find it "supportive", and now are denying your own evaluation of your own brain, and projecting who has an issue onto me and Dr. Parker.
Take it up with Dr. Parker. He used the term "incredible", quite deliberately and with full awareness of the implications of the term. Even if -you- want to redirect to a semantic objection that holds no relevance, nor accurately recounts the statement--but happens to correspond what you personally wish he had said, had meant, or was the case.
And, of course, one could not possibly evaluate a position based on one sentence regarding it, ever, for any topic, nor is there even the beginnings of a rational thought on your part there.
''We had expected to find identical changes in maybe a dozen or so genes but to see nearly 200 is incredible,'' explains Dr Joe Parker, from Queen Mary's School of Biological and Chemical Sciences and first author on the paper.
Yes, truly IncreDible.
I'll assume that the sentence fragment is an attempt to invoke Occam's Razor.
While you've misapplied it, as is usually the case, it does have the subjective advantage that Occam was theist.
So, I'll clarify. Occam's Razor in no way specifies what is true, or even more likely to be true. It simply indicates that for the purposes of conceptual economy, when -all else is equal-, the simplest explanation should be used. The slightest difference between two models either on the basis of evidence or reason disqualifies it from being applicable to a given situation.
And, well, it's not an assumption if you know it is fact. As usual, that you don't know something, never means no one else does either, for any topic. As usual, that you haven't experienced evidence, does not mean no one else has, nor is you having it required for it to be evidence. Again, as is always the case, for any topic.
Sounds like a false dichotomy to me. It is both an argument for the soul, and a necessary conclusion for deterministic materialism.
The particular sub-argument regarding the soul this represents is addressing what might be the means for "addressing" deterioration of the physical neurons and the apparent effects on consciousness per se--and the answer is that given complete information, all the data of all the neurons, all the configuration, all the topology, at any point in time (i.e. the complete consciousness at that time, even presuming material reduction) can be performed.
Naturally, pointing this out was primarily to address one of the first round of objections. The actual original argument for the soul was the implausibility of the brain having evolved in a naturalistic sense to "support" such specific during-death cognitive processes for little discernable biological advantage in the "normal world".
NDE's themselves are an example of that happening, I submit.
Outside of that, since you're doing that cat /dev/random, I'll suggest that if you are on, say, Amazon's EC2 cloud, you do exactly that any time you create a new server instance from a snapshot. On a more mundane level, the equivalent should be able to be done with a couple PC's, a big flash drive, and a hammer.
For further possibilities, I'd suggest we really don't know the specifics in cases such as recovery from amnesia--but to answer in the broad sense we are entailing other questions such as "why aren't people made immortal" or "why aren't people always healed", which have their own domain of discussion and rationale.
No, there is simply no reason to say that because complex physical things tend to be made by complex beings, that the complex beings must themselves be made by likewise complex beings.
In fact, you deny that right now, with regard to human beings.
Aside from that, saying the universe -logically must- be created by a complex being, is something you are saying, and are the only one here saying it.
Let me make my own arguments, rather than you making them up for me, please. Otherwise you are straw-manning me.
I am saying that it is a plausible conclusion regarding the complexity. And like you yourself would say "things humans make are designed, humans themselves are not", there is no reason to conclude that because one entity has the attribute attribute of being designed, all entities therefore must.
On information never being destroyed (with one possible known exception).
Your example is quite appropriate regarding human reconstructability of information--it can be thought of as "lost" if we ourselves as a practical matter can't recover it.
I am using it in the stricter sense of the link above:
This is controversial because it violates a commonly assumed tenet of science--that in principle complete information about a physical system at one point in time should determine its state at any other time.
That is to say, the information is your example isn't -lost-, it's just -lost to us-. Given complete information about the state of all matter in your post-disaster scenario, every minute detail about the original building, is, in theory, recoverable.
I would, naturally, be arguing a scenario in which an entity exists that has that complete information, and can "roll the clock back" therefore to any arbitrary point in time before that.
Not at all. The same 3-dimensional, interactive, perceptually-complete experience is reported under vastly different circumstances of death, affecting the brain in literally random forms of damage. Cancers, car accidents, asphyxiation, you name it.
The odds, again, if you don't like the PC analogy, is the odds of this--this in its complexity, this in its specificity--occurring after killing random sections of the brain with radiation. It's implausible that this in particular, a phenomenon happening to correlate so uncomfortably for you with certain worldviews--would happen as it does without intentional design.
What one would expect during generic "brain failure", is a completely random set of sensations and cognitive inhibition--much like an LSD trip. That isn't what is reported, and quantified in peer-reviewed studies, such as The Lancet's.
Feel free. But as you're lying to yourself, do note that I have nowhere stated this is my only argument or experience on the matter--and it isn't.
You assume it is forever lost, that is. In fact information is never destroyed (well, there's a debate regarding black holes...).
I see no reason not to suppose that like you "could" throw a fastball but cannot because your arm is broken, you "could" think with your highest level capacity, but cannot because of your neurons.
I see no real barrier to why the consciousness, running on "new hardware", could not be reconstructed in full. If there is data redundancy, or the equivalent of "metaphysical backups" (something of an assumed stipulation given my argument), it seems little different from standard means of data recovery.
You have a particular interpretation of the phenomenon, understood. You are still not specifying a rationale of how this would come to be, given your premises.
And, "emerge" is not a causal explanation, regardless of how frequently it used to handwave such without being such.
That this by happenstance would result in a particular, consistent, complex perceptual result is, again, absurd.
Try shorting out a half dozen PC's and see if they all spontaneously generate Doom 5 for you because of it.
Easiest way were it designed, yes.
Definitely not likely as an adaptive selected trait where the situation literally never comes up in a biology-only context.
(Slashdot's new allowed-posts-per-time-unit is ludicrous. It is now directly impossible to have a meaningful thread discussion. Since I can't continue, I won't.)
And the idea that this would happen accidentally is absurd.
Perhaps you can whip up a quick program that will randomly overwrite bytes on your Windows OS such that it will interact with you as if it is the Commodore 64 sitting in the corner.
Not certain your meaning here, but I'm not arguing there are no other ways to induce the phenomenon. I'm asking why the capacity for the phenomenon came to exist in the first place.
You're a few dozen gnomish-underpants class causal steps between group pastimes and the DNA creating brain structure, if that's what you intended to "explain".