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

On the dangers of seeing human minds as predictive machines

aeon.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 172 posts

Re: On the dangers of seeing human minds as predictive machines

#41

Post by abellerose »

pdonis wrote: post #40
abellerose wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The understanding of free will being an "illusion" opens a few doors for approaching life. One of them being how society is structured and regarding healthcare, housing, finances, education.. Anyway, people cast their votes by the beliefs as well and currently we're living in social systems designed from the belief of have free will. The idea of someone earned what they have, contrary to someone worse off and people…

> when you realize the foregoing about free will is untrue and you really take the time to adapt your thinking to the understanding of free will being illusion. I assume you become more compassionate You assume wrong. The most brutal totalitarian governments in history have been built on the same understanding of humans that you describe. So that understanding can go either way: it can make you more compassionate, or…

Feel free to email me for further discussion. I have the impression you don't understand my definition of free will compared to your own definition. I will express here that the idea of making a conclusion by the past in history isn't fair or even comparable to what I could argue against people doing under the belief that people have free will. Anyway I'm not convinced by what you've expressed against my views and would appreciate a longer discussion by email if you're up to it. I fundamentally think it's morally wrong to keep someone in the dark from reality by deceiving them about their will or life outcome and especially if that person is homeless or suicidal for example.

Re: On the dangers of seeing human minds as predictive machines

#42

Post by wombatmobile »

passivate wrote: post #34
0thgen wrote: post #3

The author writes about how describing humans as predictive engines will 'encourage us to reduce our fellow humans to mere pieces of machinery' ^ this is pretty much a fluff statement. it's basically a hand-wavey sliperry slope argument that can be made about any theory in animal/human research. i could also make the claim that thinking about humans as predictive learning engines will encourage to consider our determ…

A few non-fluff sentences: "Consequential decisions in law enforcement, military and financial contexts are increasingly influenced by automated assessments spat out by proprietary predictive engines." "These prediction engines have primed us to be receptive to the idea of the predictive brain. So too has the science of psychology itself, which has been concerned since its founding with the prediction and control of…

The author wants society to be more compassionate and less exploitative. That's all.

Why?

To make life more enjoyable and less challenging for everybody.

Imagine a world in which the resources of e.g. Facebook were dedicated towards increasing happiness and usefulness through connecting people to sources of emotional satisfaction, rather than increasing shareholder wealth through targeted advertising.

How?

The author doesn't say.

The challenge is to think of an economic system in which vendors can act selfishly but consumers benefit virtuously. One example is the car industry. Before Henry Ford brought mass transit and higher wages to society, individuals had less freedom, fewer choices, and more dependency on feudal overlords.

The problem so far with the digital economy is that it hasn't yielded the same transition in society, at least, not so obviously. In many ways it's the opposite. More engagement leads to more frustration and unhappiness.

The rise of surveillance capitalism is negative for personal development because it is based on an economic model of exploitation i.e. spying to make ads sell more stuff. To change this, advertising would have to change so that the KPI are not just clicks and conversions and blind revenue. The KPI should be consumer satisfaction and personal development, and societal development. That's not impossible. It just hasn't been done yet.

Re: On the dangers of seeing human minds as predictive machines

#43

Post by yters »

Thiez wrote: post #35
yters wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could also be the case the human mind transcends computation, i.e. a transfinite, yet limited, halting oracle, and as such is logically impossible to reduce to a Turing machine. To insist this is not the case merely based on materialism is begging the question. It is a very simple and formally rigorous point, but gets obscure by high fallutin philosophical language like "reductionism".

Is there any reason to believe that the human mind has these amazing computation-transcending powers? What would be the mechanism behind it? Unless there is evidence for these suggested special powers of the human mind, it looks to me like another instance of Russell's teapot.

Programming is one of the most obvious. Mathematics is another. Human success in both is easiest to explain if we are halting oracles of some variety, albeit not perfect, but still transfinite.

Re: On the dangers of seeing human minds as predictive machines

#44

Post by mongol »

pdonis wrote: post #40
abellerose wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The understanding of free will being an "illusion" opens a few doors for approaching life. One of them being how society is structured and regarding healthcare, housing, finances, education.. Anyway, people cast their votes by the beliefs as well and currently we're living in social systems designed from the belief of have free will. The idea of someone earned what they have, contrary to someone worse off and people…

> when you realize the foregoing about free will is untrue and you really take the time to adapt your thinking to the understanding of free will being illusion. I assume you become more compassionate You assume wrong. The most brutal totalitarian governments in history have been built on the same understanding of humans that you describe. So that understanding can go either way: it can make you more compassionate, or…

I agree with almost everything except that to say that famine and homeless can be caused both by human choices and accidents or events outside of human control.

Re: On the dangers of seeing human minds as predictive machines

#45

Post by pdonis »

abellerose wrote: post #41
pdonis wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when you realize the foregoing about free will is untrue and you really take the time to adapt your thinking to the understanding of free will being illusion. I assume you become more compassionate You assume wrong. The most brutal totalitarian governments in history have been built on the same understanding of humans that you describe. So that understanding can go either way: it can make you more compassionate, or…

Feel free to email me for further discussion. I have the impression you don't understand my definition of free will compared to your own definition. I will express here that the idea of making a conclusion by the past in history isn't fair or even comparable to what I could argue against people doing under the belief that people have free will. Anyway I'm not convinced by what you've expressed against my views and wo…

> Feel free to email me for further discussion.

Why not just have the discussion here?

> I have the impression you don't understand my definition of free will compared to your own definition.

I think you are trading on the ambiguity in the term "free will" to avoid having to confront the actual issues involved. That's why I used the less ambiguous term "making choices".

If you don't think people can ever make choices that make a difference in their situation, then you and I have a fundamental disagreement that I don't think will get resolved by any discussion. Also, if that's your belief, I think you are being inconsistent; you talk about "designing better social systems", but that very process involves people making choices that will make a difference in their situation (as well as the situation of many, many other people).

If you just think the amount of difference a person can make in their situation by making choices varies with the situation, of course I agree with that. But that's not a problem that can be fixed by "designing better social systems". It can only be fixed by being willing to call a spade a spade when people in power make choices that disempower others, so that people in power can be stopped from doing that. The biggest barrier to people being able to change their situation by making choices is restrictions put on them by other people, not some abstract claim about free will being an illusion. "Designing social systems" makes that problem worse, not better.

> I fundamentally think it's morally wrong to keep someone in the dark from reality by deceiving them about their will or life outcome

I think you are confusing your opinions with "reality". Telling people they don't have free will, or that free will is an illusion, is just as much of an opinion as telling them they do have free will. Neither is a statement of "reality". That's why I say free will is best viewed as a right: because in my opinion, believing that people have free will is respecting their right to make their own choices, and believing that people don't have free will is not respecting that right--which just means arrogating to yourself the power to make choices that disempower them. Respecting people's right to make choices is not a factual claim about people; it's a policy, which I think should be adopted because it will end up helping people.

> especially if that person is homeless or suicidal for example

I don't see how it's any help to a person who is homeless or suicidal to tell them free will is an illusion. Nor would it be any help to tell them it isn't. A person who is homeless or suicidal has much more pressing things to think about than whether or not free will is an illusion. And helping such a person has nothing at all to do with your own opinions or beliefs, much less foisting them on others in the guise of "telling them about reality".

Re: On the dangers of seeing human minds as predictive machines

#46

Post by pdonis »

abellerose wrote: post #41
pdonis wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when you realize the foregoing about free will is untrue and you really take the time to adapt your thinking to the understanding of free will being illusion. I assume you become more compassionate You assume wrong. The most brutal totalitarian governments in history have been built on the same understanding of humans that you describe. So that understanding can go either way: it can make you more compassionate, or…

Feel free to email me for further discussion. I have the impression you don't understand my definition of free will compared to your own definition. I will express here that the idea of making a conclusion by the past in history isn't fair or even comparable to what I could argue against people doing under the belief that people have free will. Anyway I'm not convinced by what you've expressed against my views and wo…

> what I could argue against people doing under the belief that people have free will

What sorts of terrible things do you think people do under the belief that people have free will?

Re: On the dangers of seeing human minds as predictive machines

#47

Post by pdonis »

mongol wrote: post #44
pdonis wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when you realize the foregoing about free will is untrue and you really take the time to adapt your thinking to the understanding of free will being illusion. I assume you become more compassionate You assume wrong. The most brutal totalitarian governments in history have been built on the same understanding of humans that you describe. So that understanding can go either way: it can make you more compassionate, or…

I agree with almost everything except that to say that famine and homeless can be caused both by human choices and accidents or events outside of human control.

> famine and homeless can be caused both by human choices and accidents or events outside of human control

Yes, I agree that accidents or events outside human control can cause bad things to happen. I would also point out, though, that how bad those things get has far more to do with human choices. There are many choices that people can make to be better prepared for accidents and events outside their control if and when they happen.

Re: On the dangers of seeing human minds as predictive machines

#48

Post by Layke1123 »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #37
Layke1123 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They will think its justified, just like the masses will justify taking all the hoarded wealth. Fairly distributing capital and power is the only reasonable solution in a world that is so obviously deterministic.

Never underestimate the adaptability of rhetoric.

While cute, it misses the point. If I say a car is coming, it is then up to the person to decide whether they step into the street or not. This is not a rhetorical argument.

Re: On the dangers of seeing human minds as predictive machines

#49

Post by Layke1123 »

meowkit wrote: post #39
Layke1123 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can someone point out why I'm being downvoted? Or respond to my comment rather than just shutting down discourse?

You write dismissively of capitalism is my first note. Capitalism isn't the boogie man people make it out to be. It's the optimization criteria for increasing financial capital over other forms of capital (natural, labor, etc), and corporatocracy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatocracy

Is writing dismissively of capitalism not OK? Can you make the argument that capitalism was and is always a force of good in the world? Is plutocracy considered a good and righteous thing?

Re: On the dangers of seeing human minds as predictive machines

#50

Post by Thiez »

yters wrote: post #43
Thiez wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any reason to believe that the human mind has these amazing computation-transcending powers? What would be the mechanism behind it? Unless there is evidence for these suggested special powers of the human mind, it looks to me like another instance of Russell's teapot.

Programming is one of the most obvious. Mathematics is another. Human success in both is easiest to explain if we are halting oracles of some variety, albeit not perfect, but still transfinite.

So you don't have any concrete examples, just broad topics that you have a vague feeling about?

I guess I am not truly human because I can't solve the halting problem in the general case. I'm probably also subject to Gödel's incompleteness theorem.

Post reply on HN