> a real estate agent just walked into my home without any notice

Just open the door stark naked, you are in your private home.

Contractor costs are insane, our recent experience. Gas heater wouldn't start:

-- diagnosis: $180 flat fee

-- quote for replacing a failed igniter: plus $300, one week waiting for parts

-- I found the part on eBay and replaced it myself for $20, delivered in 2 days

Trimming an (admittedly large) tree in the backyard: $2,500. One guy in the tree with a chainsaw, 3 guys carrying branches to a wood chipper truck.

OTOH, there are people who just don't retain information from hearing it. In college, it was useless for me to attend lectures without taking notes, I would immediately forget most of them. Now taking detailed notes and reviewing them at the end of the day, that was my superpower.

> just to check how things are going

If you work remotely, a certain fraction of managers always carry a suspicion: he is probably slacking off right now, maybe napping; let me call and check.

If the company does not want you to work, just coast and enjoy. I feel zero guilt when I slack in an overcrowded noisy open plan office too.

You would think arithmetic should be deterministic, but just days ago I received paper mail from IRS saying my tax software computed federal tax underpayment penalty incorrectly, and they are refunding me > $300.

Software licenses usually explicitly disclaim all financial damages. I assume Intuit does too (I don't use Turbotax myself).

If an LLM hallucinates your income or deductions, the IRS is not going to go after the LLM, it's going to go after the taxpayer. I can't believe what I'm seeing in some of these replies. Making a mistake on your taxes is at best, a stressful letter from the IRS, and at worse, prison time. Place your trust appropriately.

Intuit actually will indemnify any penalties in case of filing errors on their part.

> we can't explain why neurons firing results in us feeling/experiencing the world

Feelings/experiences are specific patterns of specific neurons activating. Why is that hard?

P-zombies cannot be argued about, if you reject their existence your opponent will call you a p-zombie (happened to Dennett).

It's a fair point, though. If one rejects a subjective experience without any doubt, the most plausible explanation is that they don't have that subjective experience.

If I tell you that I see numbers as colours, and you say "that's not possible", I would assume that you don't have synesthesia [1]. I wouldn't doubt the fact that I have it [2].

Similarly, if some people argue that consciousness is not something like I describe, I would naturally assume that they don't experience it the same way as I do.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia

[2] Someone I know has synesthesia. I don't have any way to confirm or deny that. All I can say is I don't have it.

> It’s a subjective experience argument.

"Earth is flat" is also a subjective experience argument. Yet mostly nobody takes it seriously anymore. I hope "qualia" will be like this soon too.

"Earth is flat" is an objective statement. "I experience consciousness" is subjective, similarly to "I am experiencing pain". If someone tells me "pain doesn't exist" while I know it exists (because I have experienced it), I can be certain that that person is wrong. Even though I can't prove it to him.