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Evidence that addictive behaviors have links with ancient retroviral infection

sciencedaily.com

11–20 of 229 posts

Re: Evidence that addictive behaviors have links with ancient retroviral infection

#11
post #6

I have some bad news for you: your perception of free will is a by-product of your ignorance of how your brain works. Every decision you think you make is actually just a bunch of neurons firing, and those neurons were built by your DNA.

Don't take away the illusion of free will when you can't give it back. Some people might actually like to think that they have free will. Or at least you could ask them which pill they want beforehand ;-)

Re: Evidence that addictive behaviors have links with ancient retroviral infection

#13
post #7
post #6

I have some bad news for you: your perception of free will is a by-product of your ignorance of how your brain works. Every decision you think you make is actually just a bunch of neurons firing, and those neurons were built by your DNA.

No one actually believes this, including you. You may say you do, and even think you do, but you don’t. Everyone acts as if they and others around them possess free will. We act that way because that’s what we believe. Honestly, I don’t think we understand enough about consciousness and how it arises from physical brains/bodies to make such an extraordinary claim like “there is no free will,” when the entire history…

> as if they and others around them possess free will.

How would we "act as if they don't" ?

Re: Evidence that addictive behaviors have links with ancient retroviral infection

#14
post #6

I have some bad news for you: your perception of free will is a by-product of your ignorance of how your brain works. Every decision you think you make is actually just a bunch of neurons firing, and those neurons were built by your DNA.

One of many holes in this theory is that the mind that believes it has free will is also the one that created the conceptual model of neurons, so we could also be wrong about that too.

Re: Evidence that addictive behaviors have links with ancient retroviral infection

#15
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one actually believes this, including you. You may say you do, and even think you do, but you don’t. Everyone acts as if they and others around them possess free will. We act that way because that’s what we believe. Honestly, I don’t think we understand enough about consciousness and how it arises from physical brains/bodies to make such an extraordinary claim like “there is no free will,” when the entire history…

They don't actually believe it. Deterministic processes in their brain are making them THINK they believe it.

There's literally no way to know whether this is true or not, so it's not worth discussing as if any one of us knows what the truth is. If you feel like you have free will, that's important. If you feel like you don't, oh well, but don't let your beliefs interfere with other people's choices (or their deterministic actions, in this case).

Re: Evidence that addictive behaviors have links with ancient retroviral infection

#16

Every time I find interesting (and frighting) that we are nothing but a collection of ourselves and virus and bacterias, written down to our DNA and RNA or living together with close dependence deep in our guts (literally). Going further, a lot of what we do unconciously is just what a virus or something else "did" to survive or spread in the past, and our free will isn't that free... Edit: "did" wasn't meaning that…

We aren't just a product of that, we are also a product of human sexual selection and epigenetic inheritance of individually acquired traits. Many of your important traits (such as general intelligence) were acquired in part by conscious processes by your ancestors.

Re: Evidence that addictive behaviors have links with ancient retroviral infection

#17
post #13
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one actually believes this, including you. You may say you do, and even think you do, but you don’t. Everyone acts as if they and others around them possess free will. We act that way because that’s what we believe. Honestly, I don’t think we understand enough about consciousness and how it arises from physical brains/bodies to make such an extraordinary claim like “there is no free will,” when the entire history…

> as if they and others around them possess free will. How would we "act as if they don't" ?

If I punch you, will you blame me?

Re: Evidence that addictive behaviors have links with ancient retroviral infection

#18
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one actually believes this, including you. You may say you do, and even think you do, but you don’t. Everyone acts as if they and others around them possess free will. We act that way because that’s what we believe. Honestly, I don’t think we understand enough about consciousness and how it arises from physical brains/bodies to make such an extraordinary claim like “there is no free will,” when the entire history…

They don't actually believe it. Deterministic processes in their brain are making them THINK they believe it.

The point is that this is a distinction without a (usable) difference. "Free will" is an ill-conditioned question that comes from dualist assumptions.

Re: Evidence that addictive behaviors have links with ancient retroviral infection

#19
post #6

I have some bad news for you: your perception of free will is a by-product of your ignorance of how your brain works. Every decision you think you make is actually just a bunch of neurons firing, and those neurons were built by your DNA.

i am not my genes, i am my connectome (a hypothesis): https://www.ted.com/talks/sebastian_seung

Re: Evidence that addictive behaviors have links with ancient retroviral infection

#20
post #6

I have some bad news for you: your perception of free will is a by-product of your ignorance of how your brain works. Every decision you think you make is actually just a bunch of neurons firing, and those neurons were built by your DNA.

This is only bad news to people like you. In theory, finding out whether free will truly exists or not should make absolutely no difference to our lives because the universe would continue on the same way regardless. Only pessimists let such knowledge prevent them from doing things.
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