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It’s Complicated: Unraveling the mystery of why people act as they do

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Re: It’s Complicated: Unraveling the mystery of why people act as they do

#181

Post by zzzzzzzza »

amasad wrote: post #87
zzzzzzzza wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"mainstream science maintains that we're neither individuals nor have free will" lol. You haven't even bothered trying to give a definition of what free will is... The definition of which is something for philosophers to debate. What I think you mean to say is, at the level of human perception, mainstream science maintains the universe is deterministic (as opposed to non deterministic (which quantum mechanics might b…

I probably shouldn't be replying to people who end sentences with "lol". But ok, I'll bite. >You haven't even bothered trying to give a definition of what free will is I assume you read the article and we're using that as context in our discussion as people do when they're discussing articles on HN. >The definition of which is something for philosophers to debate. Not really, there are three accepted mainstream philo…

I assumed you were assuming a "homunculus" definition of free will. (which is reasonable since you give three different philosophical positions on it yet didn't indicate which you subscribed to)

"Actually based on your previous sentence you seem to believe that -- not me." If you really aren't an individual it's not that hard to extend... You are a collection of finite state machines... Same conclusions apply. However as far as people are concerned you might as well assume a "homunculus" theory since the transitions they care about happen inside a first person narrative (for the most part). Kind of like how classical mechanics isn't exactly precisely true, but still best at explaining macroscopic behavior.

"Look into studies done on patients with severed brain hemispheres. It shows you that there is more than one competing selves." It shows you that each half of a brain is capable of qualifying as "human". It does not show you there are two competing selves in humans whose hemispheres are connected. Kind of like sometimes one twin absorbs the other in the womb. I bet if you take a random grown adult, partially lobotomize them, entirely remove half their brain, if they're not completely disabled they'll be more on par with dog than human level intelligence.

Re: It’s Complicated: Unraveling the mystery of why people act as they do

#182

Post by gaius »

personomas wrote: post #107
ux-app wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I've been trying to figure out how to live while minimizing the extent of my personal fabricated narrative. sounds interesting. Do you know of any suggested reading on the topic?

>> I've been trying to figure out how to live while minimizing the extent of my personal fabricated narrative. > sounds interesting. Do you know of any suggested reading on the topic? The Bible, there's no better. Jesus preaches and teaches truth, truth will erode this false fabricated narrative.

Right, this is like how prayer works. Not by the intervention of a deity but by forcing you to think through what you want and why you want it, thereby helping to create the mental preconditions for going about getting it. "God helps those who help themselves" in other words.

Re: It’s Complicated: Unraveling the mystery of why people act as they do

#183

Post by kleer001 »

myrandomcomment wrote: post #138
kleer001 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

5 dried grams of magic mushrooms. Or listen to 40+ hours of lectures from Alan Watts.

Molly with friends.

No, MDMA will give you exactly the opposite effect. It will encourage and cement connections to culture/s and social bonds. It just effects your serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine levels. What magic mushrooms (and other psychedelics like LSD) do is increase the communication between distant parts of the brain that don't normally communicate. That will lead you away from consensus reality, not deeper into it.

Re: It’s Complicated: Unraveling the mystery of why people act as they do

#184

Post by kleer001 »

ux-app wrote: post #118
kleer001 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

5 dried grams of magic mushrooms. Or listen to 40+ hours of lectures from Alan Watts.

hehe thanks for the tip, but I don't trust my own psyche enough for those kinds of experiments, even though I'm deeply curious of what I'd experience.

Listening to lectures is pretty benign and you can stop any time. And they're legal everywhere. Here's one to get your started.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXvoYGrnuv8

Re: It’s Complicated: Unraveling the mystery of why people act as they do

#185

Post by matt4077 »

MacsHeadroom wrote: post #143
matt4077 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not sure what this exactly means, but the "universe is deterministic" is part of what mainstream science claims. It doesn't. Quantum physics is as mainstream as they come, and so is chaos theory. But determinism doesn't actually have much to do with "free will". There are many known indeterminate stochastic processes, yet nobody would claim that they possess free will, i. e. radioactive decay.

QM and chaos theory are both fully deterministic, even though future prediction is impossible in practice in some cases. We only call them non-deterministic because we can't ever hope to determine outcomes ahead of time in practice- NOT to say that the outcome isn't ultimately from a natural flow of causality. In fact, ultimate causal determination is proven for both. Consider Broglie–Bohm. There is no true randomnes…

That's not the current consensus in regards to QM.

Re: It’s Complicated: Unraveling the mystery of why people act as they do

#186

Post by acover »

MacsHeadroom wrote: post #139
acover wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quantum mechanics? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Determinism#Modern_scientific_... Edit: why downvote this?

It's widely accepted that QM is fully deterministic, even if the future is unpredictable in practice. Broglie–Bohm, being an equivalent and sound interpretation, is poof of this. Quantum randomness isn't truly random. There's no free lunch for free will to be found in QM.

Sorry, I am reading conflicting information. The Wikipedia page seems to say the opposite.

> the result is not traditional determinism, but rather determined probabilities

> Thus, quantum physics casts reasonable doubt on the traditional determinism of classical, Newtonian physics in so far as reality does not seem to be absolutely determined.

> A critical finding was that quantum mechanics can make statistical predictions which would be violated if local hidden variables really existed. There have been a number of experiments to verify such predictions, and so far they do not appear to be violated. This would suggest there are no hidden variables, although many physicists believe better experiments are needed to conclusively settle the issue

This appears to be an open issue. With evidence pointing towards true randomness.

You mentioned the pilot wave theory. Is there experimental evidence in favor of it beyond standard quantum mechanics?

> Bohmian mechanics has never been widely accepted in the mainstream of the physics community. [0]

Thanks. This is all quite over my head.

[0] - https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-bohm/

Re: It’s Complicated: Unraveling the mystery of why people act as they do

#187

Post by wutbrodo »

s73ver wrote: post #180
wutbrodo wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is truly peak HN. No matter how philosophical or universal the topic of conversation, someone is still so mind-killed that their reaction is "how will this affect advertising".

Not mind killed. Just a realist. You and I both know that's what would happen.

Dude, way to _still_ not get the point. Whether or not you're correct has literally nothing to do with what I'm talking about. My complaint wasn't about you being wrong, it was that your small-minded enough that even in a conversation about the very nature of the human mind, your contribution is about advertising.

It's just a more niche version of those people who manage to turn literally every conversation into "yea and if the fucking _republicans_/_democrats_ get their way blah blah". Whether or not they're correct in any given instance is entirely besides the point.

Re: It’s Complicated: Unraveling the mystery of why people act as they do

#188

Post by vldx »

kleer001 wrote: post #183
myrandomcomment wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Molly with friends.

No, MDMA will give you exactly the opposite effect. It will encourage and cement connections to culture/s and social bonds. It just effects your serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine levels. What magic mushrooms (and other psychedelics like LSD) do is increase the communication between distant parts of the brain that don't normally communicate. That will lead you away from consensus reality, not deeper into it.

Not necessarily. MDMA could potentially enable you loose any feeling of self-concern -- no fear, insecurity and self-consciousness; that feeling of being 5 year old on the Christmas morning.

This might be especially beneficial for someone who is communicating predominantly w/ machines since a kid, and who might have trouble empathizing or relating w/ people.

In this short video Sam Harris describes it very eloquently.

http://bigthink.com/think-tank/sam-harris-discusses-mdma-and...

Re: It’s Complicated: Unraveling the mystery of why people act as they do

#189

Post by 77pt77 »

acover wrote: post #186
MacsHeadroom wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's widely accepted that QM is fully deterministic, even if the future is unpredictable in practice. Broglie–Bohm, being an equivalent and sound interpretation, is poof of this. Quantum randomness isn't truly random. There's no free lunch for free will to be found in QM.

Sorry, I am reading conflicting information. The Wikipedia page seems to say the opposite. > the result is not traditional determinism, but rather determined probabilities > Thus, quantum physics casts reasonable doubt on the traditional determinism of classical, Newtonian physics in so far as reality does not seem to be absolutely determined. > A critical finding was that quantum mechanics can make statistical predi…

> the result is not traditional determinism, but rather determined probabilities

This is the crux you should retain.

Re: It’s Complicated: Unraveling the mystery of why people act as they do

#190

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

taurath wrote: post #77

If you haven't seen the lecture from Robert Sapolsky (author of the book the article is summarizing) on Depression, do yourself a favor and see it now! He's wonderfully eloquent and approachable even to the laymen in giving the neurobiological underpinnings of what is a terrible illness. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOAgplgTxfc

Thanks for linking to this. This guy is extraordinarily thorough.
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