Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Evidence that addictive behaviors have links with ancient retroviral infection

sciencedaily.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 229 posts

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

#121

Post by toasterlovin »

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…

Whether or not you believe something is orthogonal to whether or not it is true.

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

#122

Post by zkomp »

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…

Not really the entire history of human thought; the actual philosophers who thought differently were harshly persecuted, their books burned, or if they saw it coming did not even dare to publish their true thoughts...

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

#124

Post by toasterlovin »

sutterbomb wrote: post #105
pavel_lishin wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

Well your ethics should shift considerably. Retributive justice is morally repugnant for someone who does not believe in absolute free will.

The existence of punishment changes the inputs to the system and, thus, changes the outputs of the system. The system in this case being the mind and it's output being behavior.

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

#125

Post by jhayward »

sutterbomb wrote: post #105
pavel_lishin wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

Well your ethics should shift considerably. Retributive justice is morally repugnant for someone who does not believe in absolute free will.

+1. The moral basis for much of our societal rules and behaviors is unsound if free will is incompatible with biology. We in the US do so many things based on Puritan moral views that are so very harmful and counterproductive to our goals, based on an incorrect understanding of how the world works.

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

#126

Post by asimpletune »

jostmey wrote: post #123

I see nothing here that suggests the link is causative. It could very well be that the toll of being an addict compromises the immune system leading to conditions that most people never get.

I think they would have to have a separate, additional experiment to rule out a causal relation.

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

#127

Post by neom »

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.

Just read about ibogaine if you'd like to learn about how possible and easy "curing" addiction can be. :)

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

#128

Post by coleifer »

mercer wrote: post #102
coldtea wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The more specific statements about addicts become, the more cautious I tend to be. That said, I do at least agree that your quote is rather particular to AA, and not shared by other programs, like SMART. The reason I hesitate to dismiss the AA view is that it strikes me as quite possible that, for a subset of addicts, any kind of hope of moderation can be disastrous. The way I see it, a less dichotomous perspective s…

AA is sometimes jokingly referred to as the last house on the block (NA is the last room in that house).

I know a great many recovered individuals that tried everything to get clean and only found success (and more importantly satisfaction) in 12 step.

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

#129

Post by magicalhippo »

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…

And what if it did?

For me, the most important aspect of free will is to be able to predict the outcomes and consequences of my choices, use that as feedback to select which decision to make.

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

#130

Post by jostmey »

asimpletune wrote: post #126
jostmey wrote: post #123

I see nothing here that suggests the link is causative. It could very well be that the toll of being an addict compromises the immune system leading to conditions that most people never get.

I think they would have to have a separate, additional experiment to rule out a causal relation.

It's not hard to test this hypothesis. All they have to do is look if the elderly show the same pattern as addicts. If they do, it suggest that a weakened immune system leaves the body vulnerable.
Post reply on HN