The human brain's electro-chemical makeup and its response to stimulus, both from the other organs and through the external sensory organs, are the reasons we act the way we do.
Like the Human Genome project before it, this mystery can be solved with large amounts of personnel, money and time.
Do not complain that it's complex (it is, we know, the sooner we commit the appropriate resources the sooner we'll be finished).
[And yes, I am doing something about it - I'm a returned to school STEM-neuro student]
It’s Complicated: Unraveling the mystery of why people act as they do
21–30 of 190 posts
Re: It’s Complicated: Unraveling the mystery of why people act as they do
#22What would be a good book to read before this book? Or is it friendly enough for someone new to behavioral science?
I haven't read his new book, but I've read most of Sapolsky's older books and they're all excellent. "A Primate's Memoir" and "Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers" are my favorites.
Re: It’s Complicated: Unraveling the mystery of why people act as they do
#23The human brain's electro-chemical makeup and its response to stimulus, both from the other organs and through the external sensory organs, are the reasons we act the way we do. Like the Human Genome project before it, this mystery can be solved with large amounts of personnel, money and time. Do not complain that it's complex (it is, we know, the sooner we commit the appropriate resources the sooner we'll be finishe…
You've got it all figured out, don't you?
How does figuring out how computation works somehow eliminate all the variables in a multidimensional turing complete system?
What you claim is so simple is equivalent to solving the halting problem.
Re: It’s Complicated: Unraveling the mystery of why people act as they do
#24The human brain's electro-chemical makeup and its response to stimulus, both from the other organs and through the external sensory organs, are the reasons we act the way we do. Like the Human Genome project before it, this mystery can be solved with large amounts of personnel, money and time. Do not complain that it's complex (it is, we know, the sooner we commit the appropriate resources the sooner we'll be finishe…
No. Do not do that. The second that the cause/effect relationship is understood down to a neuron level like that, advertisers will abuse that to make things even more effective.
Re: It’s Complicated: Unraveling the mystery of why people act as they do
#25The human brain's electro-chemical makeup and its response to stimulus, both from the other organs and through the external sensory organs, are the reasons we act the way we do. Like the Human Genome project before it, this mystery can be solved with large amounts of personnel, money and time. Do not complain that it's complex (it is, we know, the sooner we commit the appropriate resources the sooner we'll be finishe…
We currently think that it is, but that's not to say that we won't turn out to be wrong. Maybe someday we will come up with a coherent model for how things like mood, your current gut fauna, the amount ambient light, what you ate/drank over the past few weeks, etc. affect how you act and do.
Well, what happens when/if we nail that model down and find out that it doesn't account for some wibbly-wobbly quantum going on in the dense electrical storms of our brains, which pulls in information from somewhere else from time to time? Don't try to answer a question like this authoritatively in the same paragraph that you mention you're currently a student...
Re: It’s Complicated: Unraveling the mystery of why people act as they do
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
I call it scarcity of resources. You won't see wars and what not when you have humanity with abundance of resources.
a) The problem is more distribution more than abundance. b) I bet that we'll have wars even if everyone has all they need. I'd like to be wrong.
a) World gdp per capita is less than $18.000, hardly what i would call abundance. We are still a few good decades away from abundance.
b) I bet that rich countries, where people have all they need, will not provoke wars or engage on unprovoked wars (unless for humanitarian reasons).
Re: It’s Complicated: Unraveling the mystery of why people act as they do
#27This is true even at a personal level. If you think you know why you act the way you do but you have never done an experiment to validate it you have a pretty good chance of being wrong. Even for simple things, like how fast you drive, is it the speedometer and you are looking at it, or is it how your engine sounds, and if turn up your music do you drive faster and is that because you are more aroused/excited, or is…
Not to mention major life decisions.
Re: It’s Complicated: Unraveling the mystery of why people act as they do
#28Call it anyway you want, lizard brain, flyers (Castaneda), Yaldabaoth (agnostics), this force that pushes evolution on earth at great speed through predatorial behavior like competition and flight or fight. We humans are the most intelligent species and still can't overcome it, as a civilization whatever political system or religion we tried no matter how hard we try we can't seem to overcome it, we still have wars a…
Well, if you look at the human brain, it's just a larger cortex on top of the primitive brain stem. So I think, simply looking at our brain architecture, we are will always be impacted by the emotional low level impulses that were the main drivers of behaviors of our ancestors.
Exactly this, although it's more a useful mental model / philosophy than a concrete nullifiable bit of science IMO.
In the meditation style I prefer, it's useful to think of the subconscious/primitive brain as an elephant that is somewhat under control of the driver (the modern brain).
Re: It’s Complicated: Unraveling the mystery of why people act as they do
#29The human brain's electro-chemical makeup and its response to stimulus, both from the other organs and through the external sensory organs, are the reasons we act the way we do. Like the Human Genome project before it, this mystery can be solved with large amounts of personnel, money and time. Do not complain that it's complex (it is, we know, the sooner we commit the appropriate resources the sooner we'll be finishe…
That's like saying that electrical circuits are the reason that a web browser shows a web page when click on a link.
There's no "home button transistor", but there may be transistors that, by their switching, control the appearance and action of the home button.
Mechanism isn't rationale.
Web browsers work because they were designed at a high level to accomplish a task, and a lower level of primitives was assembled (literally and figuratively) to implement the task.
When we talk about reasons for something, we normally have intention in mind, and we're talking in a high level abstraction mode. Mechanism is just an implementation detail. In the absence of a designer, mechanism doesn't cease to be an implementation detail; we don't have legs because of the signalling actions of cells in the embryo, triggered by DNA and proteins, cause fleshy buds to grow into bony appendages. We have legs so we can move around, and we can move around because in our ecological niche we're more successful moving around. The reason for legs doesn't lie in biology at the organ or chemical or physical level, because those are implementation details to the reason mode of thought.
Re: It’s Complicated: Unraveling the mystery of why people act as they do
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The answer to this is very simple. It was a joke. It had to be a number, an ordinary, smallish number, and I chose that one. Binary representations, base thirteen, Tibetan monks are all complete nonsense. I sat at my desk, stared into the garden and thought '42 will do' I typed it out. End of story.
You obviously did not go past the literal interpretation and he was talking about the literal interpretation. What I'm referring to is his choice of a number to represent the answer to life, universe and everything. Not a magical number, but just A NUMBER. It shows how futile it is to try and answer some questions in a mechanical/mathematical way. Some questions are not computable, and there is more meaning to life b…
I interpret it to be that the answer is whatever we make of it. Your interpretation tells me more about your mindset than about any actual truth. Taken that way, meaning is what we project on it. You project a number as futility; a numerology-leaning individual could project a different meaning.
You are both correct. It's a Rorschach test of philosophy.