Evidence that addictive behaviors have links with ancient retroviral infection • Hacker News Board

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

#91

Post by bluGill » Tue, Sep 25, 2018, 6:05 PM UTC

ergothus wrote: post #42

x220 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's a bit circular...I may choose to breed with someone, but i do that because I find them attractive (because DNA tells me what is attractive), because my (known in humans to be inaccurate) risk assessment says it is worth it, etc. Plus, of the countless decisions I make every day, almost none of them are conscious. I can retroactively justify them as if they had been, but studies show we are far less conscious t…

You cannot choose to breed with someone who is already dead. Even if you succeed in breeding with someone (alive), if their genes are not very good your children won't live to breed.

Thus if intelligence is a factor at all in survival (and it seems like it should be) your ancestors may not have had a choice but to select for intelligent.

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

#92

Post by pharrington » Tue, Sep 25, 2018, 6:05 PM UTC

ergothus wrote: post #42

x220 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's a bit circular...I may choose to breed with someone, but i do that because I find them attractive (because DNA tells me what is attractive), because my (known in humans to be inaccurate) risk assessment says it is worth it, etc. Plus, of the countless decisions I make every day, almost none of them are conscious. I can retroactively justify them as if they had been, but studies show we are far less conscious t…

The photo-electric radiation emitting from my computer monitor is considerably more than marginally distinct from the chaotic soup of interacting proteins and electrical sparks in my brain. Just a few seconds ago, I, of which my brain is certainly a part of, made a decision based off of the computer monitor that is in my environment.

Grappling with chaos and complex interacting and intertwining systems is very difficult. It helps to not be led too astray by the easier to access tools we have (such as verbal language), which help, but many of which are woefully inadequate towards a coherent understanding of these issues.

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

#93

Post by lovich » Tue, Sep 25, 2018, 6:08 PM UTC

hellofunk wrote: post #51

danharaj wrote: post #4

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. 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.

Dogs do it, albeit with human help. Considering that humans that grew up alone, ie. feral, seem to have no self control either I would think that dogs get to count too

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

#94

Post by ergothus » Tue, Sep 25, 2018, 6:11 PM UTC

milesvp wrote: post #84

ergothus wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a bit circular...I may choose to breed with someone, but i do that because I find them attractive (because DNA tells me what is attractive), because my (known in humans to be inaccurate) risk assessment says it is worth it, etc. Plus, of the countless decisions I make every day, almost none of them are conscious. I can retroactively justify them as if they had been, but studies show we are far less conscious t…

So, while yes, we have lots of fmri data that suggests our mind makes decisions for us, then convinces us that we made the decision conciously. I suspect it's a mistake to take this to the logical conclusion that we can make no conscious decisions. Even if consciousness is a complete illusion that our mind fabricated for us, we still seem to have some control over our reactions. I say this as someone who is teaching…

> I suspect it's a mistake to take this to the logical conclusion that we can make no conscious decisions.

And I don't! I consider it unproven, but a duality option definitely remains an option. Plus, there's always the default excuse that if I assume consciousness is reality when I can't in fact decide, well, then I can't be blamed for coming to that conclusion :)

That said, I think we really need to pay attention to how many "conscious" decisions we don't bother to be conscious for. I have a personal theory that consciousness is a state that is generally invoked only when the mind doesn't have a preset behavior - consciousness is invoked to ponder "what if" and decide what to do. Once we have prescribed behavior, consciousness shuts down. Thus, we might be "conscious" for only a few hours or even less in an average day. If so, we CAN be self-aware more often, but it takes effort.

Side Note: This theory is based in part on the idea that there's an advantage in minimizing conscious time - be that caloric requirements or an innate danger of being too aware. I've recently read some claims that hurt the caloric argument (brains are high caloric things, but that doesn't mean consciousness requires more calories) but the innate dangers of overthinking remain strong but vague and anecdotal.

Finding ways to make and support this theory without lapsing into it being an automatic (and thus not trigging awareness) response gets more tricky each time :)

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

#95

Post by Gibbon1 » Tue, Sep 25, 2018, 6:12 PM UTC

girnigoe wrote: post #22

wil421 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does this mean you could be tested for the specific gene?

Sounds that way to me: they're looking at a specific uncommon HK2

If they coun't how would they be able to make their claims?

I could see difficulties if there were multiple copies in different places or some such that would make a naive test non-diagnostic.

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

#96

Post by Iolaum » Tue, Sep 25, 2018, 6:14 PM UTC

redwards510 wrote: post #87

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…

I don't believe in free will because of a simple thought experiment. Maybe someone with a background in ML can chime in. Imagine we could perfectly map all your brain's neural connections at an instant in time to software. This is not out of the realm of possibility in the future, right? Now imagine we "asked" that model to make a decision. Any decision. Wouldn't that frozen-in-time model give the same answer every t…

This is not possible because of quantum mechanics. You cannot know the exact location and speed of particles in your brain and therefore cannot build a deterministic model to predict its behavior.

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

#97

Post by breischl » Tue, Sep 25, 2018, 6:17 PM UTC

ajuc wrote: post #78

bdamm wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This philosophical line of thinking is without much basis. In certain Buddhist teachings is the idea that we really only have about 60% free will. That is, 40% of our actions are not something we ever could have done differently, but there's still room for plenty of actual choice. Personally this seems pretty high, but even 10% truly self-directed free will would still be astounding. There's no scientific understandi…

> This philosophical line of thinking is without much basis. It has exactly as much basis as the alternatives, explains the world just as well, gives the exact same predictions, but needs less assumptions. BTW - why is lack of free will a downer? I perceive is as neutral.

>BTW - why is lack of free will a downer? I perceive is as neutral.

Not the GP, but lack of free will implies that people have no agency over their actions, and hence can't really take pride in anything they've accomplished. They're just squishy robots following their programming and lying to themselves about why they do the things they do.

Or at least that's one depressing way to interpret it.

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

#98

Post by coldtea » Tue, Sep 25, 2018, 6:17 PM UTC

hellofunk wrote: post #3

woliveirajr wrote: post #2

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…

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.

>Addicts and alcoholics can turn their lives around, even though they remain addicts for life.

The "addicts for life" is an American puritan view (by AA and other such groups) -- not some scientific fact. Certainly not the view everywhere in the world. You can have an alcoholic of 5-10 years that recovered and can still enjoy the occasional drink just fine without getting back to regular drinking.

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

#99

Post by javajammer » Tue, Sep 25, 2018, 6:19 PM UTC

redwards510 wrote: post #87

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…

I don't believe in free will because of a simple thought experiment. Maybe someone with a background in ML can chime in. Imagine we could perfectly map all your brain's neural connections at an instant in time to software. This is not out of the realm of possibility in the future, right? Now imagine we "asked" that model to make a decision. Any decision. Wouldn't that frozen-in-time model give the same answer every t…

It might give the same answer, but I'm not concluding much from the thought-experiment. The model takes as input its environment, which includes its past decisions. If you pose the same question to it twice, it might choose to do something different the second time just because it weighs "whimsy" as a positive. How random is its RNG? Can it tell? What would it do differently if it knew the answer to these questions?

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

#100

Post by manmal » Tue, Sep 25, 2018, 6:22 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #98

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.

> Addicts and alcoholics can turn their lives around, even though they remain addicts for life. The "addicts for life" is an American puritan view (by AA and other such groups) -- not some scientific fact. Certainly not the view everywhere in the world. You can have an alcoholic of 5-10 years that recovered and can still enjoy the occasional drink just fine without getting back to regular drinking.

Most institutions don’t want to let their clients go—why should AA be any different.