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Evidence that addictive behaviors have links with ancient retroviral infection

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

#51

Post by hellofunk »

danharaj wrote: post #4
hellofunk wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also revealing how the unique ability of humans to overcome their fundamental biological nature can be quite impressive and inspiring. Humans have many natural tendencies that are not socially accepted, and better behavior can be learned and tendencies suppressed. Addicts and alcoholics can turn their lives around, even though they remain addicts for life.

> It's also revealing how the unique ability of humans to overcome their fundamental biological nature can be quite impressive and inspiring. That ability is itself part of the fundamental biological nature of humans, or whatever. The way you phrased it suggests a Cartesian dualistic interpretation.

I have heard it frequently mentioned by interesting scientists (most recently, by Neil DeGrasse Tyson) that this ability to live against natural biological tendencies is unique for humans among the rest of the animal kingdom. So while it may be fundamental to humans, it is not apparently fundamental to the general biology of the world, and humans appear to be an interesting exception.

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

#52

Post by lisper »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #33
lisper wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No one actually believes this, including you. I'm pretty sure that I'm in a better position to know what I actually believe than you are, and I'm telling you, I really do believe this. There are only three possibilities: either free will is an illusion, or dualism is true, or consciousness is the result of unknown new physics. The first is by far the most likely from a scientific point of view, and the evidence for…

I think what _nardi_ is trying to say is that there's no functional difference between having free will, and acting as if you do. What decisions do you make differently with your knowledge that free will is an illusion? What choices do you make differently? (fwiw, I agree with you; I just think it doesn't particularly matter now.)

> What decisions do you make differently with your knowledge that free will is an illusion? What choices do you make differently?

Interestingly, my belief in the illusory nature of free will has had a huge impact on my life. I'm a much more laid-back person than I used to be. I don't stress out so much over making mistakes. It has also helped me in a lot of practical aspects of my life. For example, it has helped me lose weight. I think about my desire to eat as my brain playing a sort of a trick on me, and that makes it easier for me to "decide" not to give in to the craving. I treat the part of me that wants to eat the cookie as a separate entity from "me" that just happens to reside in the same brain, and I interact with it through internal dialogs like I would a small child. It sounds weird, but it works, at least for me. I'm almost down to the same weight I was in college (and I'm 54).

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

#53

Post by lisper »

twodave wrote: post #41
lisper wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny you should bring up God. Just yesterday I published a formal proof that God is logically incompatible with free will: http://blog.rongarret.info/2018/09/the-last-word-i-hope-on-f... You might find this interesting as well: https://blog.rongarret.info/2018/01/a-multilogue-on-free-wil...

Can't believe I'm being drawn into this, but in my view knowing an outcome doesn't mean controlling it. It simply means knowing it. In the case of your proposed definition of God's omniscience, it helps to picture God existing outside of our timeline. If God can see the entirety of history and the future as if it were a long thread, then it's more like he's watching a video of something that already happened. To Him,…

> Can't believe I'm being drawn into this,

I know, right?

> but in my view knowing an outcome doesn't mean controlling it. It simply means knowing it.

Turns out knowing is enough to negate free will. Take a look at the proof.

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

#54

Post by lisper »

wu-ikkyu wrote: post #39
lisper wrote: 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.

>Every decision you think you make is actually just a bunch of neurons firing That's like saying "matter is just a bunch of atoms". The reality is not so certain. Our understanding of the fundamental nature of reality (physics) and consciousness (neuroscience/psychology) is still highly theoretical.

> matter is just a bunch of atoms

Well, it is.

> Our understanding of the fundamental nature of reality (physics) and consciousness (neuroscience/psychology) is still highly theoretical.

It's much more than that. No experiment has ever been done that contradicts either GR or the Standard Model. So unless the operation of the brain depends on new, undiscovered physics, we do in fact have all the information we need in order to completely understand the operation of the brain, at least in principle.

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

#55

Post by lisper »

nickwalton00 wrote: post #46
lisper wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny you should bring up God. Just yesterday I published a formal proof that God is logically incompatible with free will: http://blog.rongarret.info/2018/09/the-last-word-i-hope-on-f... You might find this interesting as well: https://blog.rongarret.info/2018/01/a-multilogue-on-free-wil...

Another similar thought experiment. Assume people have free will. What if you could go in the future, read a book and learn everything that someone did in their life. Would that contradict free will?

You can actually do that experiment. What you can't do is, after having gone into the future and read the book, is go back in time with that knowledge intact. And there's a very good reason why you can't:

http://blog.rongarret.info/2014/10/parallel-universes-and-ar...

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

#56

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

lisper wrote: post #23
nardi wrote: 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…

> No one actually believes this, including you. I'm pretty sure that I'm in a better position to know what I actually believe than you are, and I'm telling you, I really do believe this. There are only three possibilities: either free will is an illusion, or dualism is true, or consciousness is the result of unknown new physics. The first is by far the most likely from a scientific point of view, and the evidence for…

I don't think the evidence is overwhelming at all.

Free will isn't an illusion so much as a misleading oversimplification of a complex concept.

The traditional philosophical notion of free will assumes a kind of perfectly rational Platonic ideal of a thinking human who carefully weighs all future options before acting.

This is clearly nonsense, and should have been called out as nonsense much earlier in history.

In reality free will is a mash-up of all kinds of influences - rationality, misguided belief, instinct, genetics influencing brain structure and hormonal balance, culture, previous experience - in varying proportions.

They add up to a kind of meta-freedom - not necessarily rational, but not particularly easy to predict or control with any precision.

Your sense of self isn't aware of these influences, but that won't stop you acting with some form of independent agency - and that's still true even if there's a gap between your conscious model of your motivations, and the soup of real motivations that drives you.

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

#57

Post by hathawsh »

nardi wrote: post #7
lisper wrote: 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…

For me, acting as if people possess free will is a conscious decision. When I'm tired, I sometimes slip into my natural mode of thinking of everyone as automatons. I have to choose to believe that people are conscious. I have to remind myself that people are not merely robots, or even if they are, it's self-destructive if I think of them as robots.

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

#58

Post by WhompingWindows »

rfinney wrote: post #5

Link to PNAS research paper: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/09/19/1811940115 Human Endogenous Retrovirus-K HML-2 integration within RASGRF2 is associated with intravenous drug abuse and modulates transcription in a cell-line model Not all humans have the same HK2 viruses in their genomes. Here we show that one specific uncommon HK2, which lies close to a gene involved in dopaminergic activity in the brain, is…

Very sensible that the mutation relates to the dopaminergic activity, just based on our knowledge of the reward pathway and the effect of addictive drugs on dopamine. There may even been a positive feedback loop here, as any viral gene inserted that increases risky, impulsive behavior may also encourage procreation.

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

#59

Post by asey »

lisper wrote: post #23
nardi wrote: 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…

> No one actually believes this, including you. I'm pretty sure that I'm in a better position to know what I actually believe than you are, and I'm telling you, I really do believe this. There are only three possibilities: either free will is an illusion, or dualism is true, or consciousness is the result of unknown new physics. The first is by far the most likely from a scientific point of view, and the evidence for…

I'd argue that there are more than three possibilities. One addition, for example, is that the concept of free will is under-defined and an intelligible conversation can't be had about it. I encourage you to define free will without resorting to synonyms like volition, free choice, and the likes.

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

#60

Post by WalterSear »

nardi wrote: post #7
lisper wrote: 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…

Consciousness is an abstraction layer, rather than a illusion.
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