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On the dangers of seeing human minds as predictive machines

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

#81

Post by solipsism »

danaliv wrote: post #10
solipsism wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if they understood the symptoms of mental illness occur because of physical changes in the brain. Instead a misinformed belief of a chemical imbalance exists What's the difference? And how does that difference impact how people are treated by physicians and nurses?

I read “physical changes” as structural changes in neurons and neural connections themselves, as opposed to the (at least popular) thinking that mental illness is down to imbalances in neurotransmitters. There’s at least some research around this related to addiction, namely that overexpression of ΔFosB produces changes to neurons in the reward pathways.

It sounds like a very naive and simplistic distinction. Neurochemicals and the structure of the neurons themselves are interrelated in very complex ways.

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

#82

Post by [deleted] »

Layke1123 wrote: post #80
pdonis wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I also accept that if I make bad decisions because of an addiction or deficient reasoning process, I willingly would accept a mechanism to correct said process or improve my deficiency. If that's what you want, you are free to choose to accept it, yes. If you're happy with how things are for you, more power to you. Just don't try to force your way of being happy on me. If I make bad decisions, for whatever reason,…

But you don't actually believe that! You would put someone in prison if they attacked you physically for no reason. You would willingly force that person into confinement until they no longer tried to inflict violence on you. You can't have ti both ways.

[deleted]

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

#83

Post by pdonis »

Layke1123 wrote: post #80
pdonis wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I also accept that if I make bad decisions because of an addiction or deficient reasoning process, I willingly would accept a mechanism to correct said process or improve my deficiency. If that's what you want, you are free to choose to accept it, yes. If you're happy with how things are for you, more power to you. Just don't try to force your way of being happy on me. If I make bad decisions, for whatever reason,…

But you don't actually believe that! You would put someone in prison if they attacked you physically for no reason. You would willingly force that person into confinement until they no longer tried to inflict violence on you. You can't have ti both ways.

No, you can't have it both ways. You didn't say you would willingly accept prison. You said you would willingly accept a mechanism to improve your deficiency. The way you have described prison elsewhere in this thread, you clearly believe that prison doesn't do that. So you wouldn't accept prison. You would only accept a mechanism that "improves your deficiency".

What I said is that I want to have the choice about how to improve. That doesn't mean I have the right to harm others with impunity. Choices have consequences, and if I make a bad choice that has the consequence that I get thrown in prison, well, that's the consequence of my choice. I personally avoid that consequence by not making choices that will predictably get me thrown in prison. Someone else might choose to do such things anyway--and yes, if they do that I won't stop the consequences from happening. Respecting someone's right to make choices doesn't mean choices don't have consequences.

If your objection is that the consequence of getting thrown in prison is somehow artificial, well, the natural consequence of attacking someone physically for no reason is that you get physically harmed or killed yourself. If you want to argue that letting that consequence happen is better than throwing the person in prison, given what prisons are like, sure, go ahead and argue that. But to argue, as you are, that respecting people's right to make choices means I should refrain from imposing any consequences at all on other people's behavior when it affects me is not only a non sequitur, it makes for an even worse society with even more suffering.

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

#84

Post by pdonis »

Layke1123 wrote: post #79
pdonis wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we should all stop what we are doing and fight child trafficking immediately. Are you doing that? If so, how are you posting here?

Well, I am debating against someone who claims free will is what will stop child trafficking. If I can convince you to move your position to mine, I can't influence others to also move to my position, and if all people end up viewing it similarly to me, I believe we will solve child trafficking.

> I am debating against someone who claims free will is what will stop child trafficking.

I have made no such claim. I have said that, on net, a society where people's right to make free choices is respected will have less suffering and more good things than a society where it isn't. But that doesn't mean no bad things will ever happen in the former type of society. Nor is respecting others' right to make free choices the same as "free will" by itself.

If you can't see why respecting other people's right to make free choices is inconsistent with child trafficking, isn't it obvious? Child traffickers don't respect the right to make free choices of the children they traffic in. So getting more people to respect other people's right to make free choices would obviously reduce the prevalence of child trafficking.

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

#85

Post by pdonis »

Layke1123 wrote: post #79
pdonis wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we should all stop what we are doing and fight child trafficking immediately. Are you doing that? If so, how are you posting here?

Well, I am debating against someone who claims free will is what will stop child trafficking. If I can convince you to move your position to mine, I can't influence others to also move to my position, and if all people end up viewing it similarly to me, I believe we will solve child trafficking.

> I am debating...

And to you, this counts as stopping everything you are doing and fighting child trafficking immediately? Hm.

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

#86

Post by pdonis »

Layke1123 wrote: post #78
pdonis wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can assert that believing people can't make choices in a true sense of free will causes other to suffer. I didn't assert anything about "believing people can't make choices in a true sense of free will". Nor did I assert anything about individual cases. Since you are apparently unable to properly understand statements that use terms like "choice", I will rephrase my assertion using your ultra-physicalist langua…

How can you claim things that happen inside the human brain have causal influences on things outside the brain and yet at the same time ignore the causal influences the outside world has on the internal brain processes? Information flow is a two way street if it can happen in one direction as far as I am aware. What you seem to not grasp is the idea that external events can influence your behavior.

> How can you claim things that happen inside the human brain have causal influences on things outside the brain and yet at the same time ignore the causal influences the outside world has on the internal brain processes?

I have done no such thing. Obviously the causal influences go both ways.

> What you seem to not grasp is the idea that external events can influence your behavior.

What you seem not to grasp is that one of the key roles that causal processes inside a person's brain play is to control how external events influence the person's behavior. The brain is not just a big switchboard where input A always leads to output B. Of course, vastly oversimplifying what actually happens in people's brains in order to avoid having to question one's theoretical model is a common mistake, going back at least to B. F. Skinner.

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

#87

Post by pdonis »

Layke1123 wrote: post #77
pdonis wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Shouldn't I be on a killing spree according to your logic? Shouldn't I be repressing and hurting people left and right? No and no. Nothing I have said implies either of these things.

Then why is my outcome not worse for believing I don't have free will?

> why is my outcome not worse for believing I don't have free will?

You still don't get it. Your brain is doing the thing that I call "making choices", but which I called "causal processes" because you have trouble with words like "choices", whether you believe in free will or not. Those causal processes in your brain have a significant effect on your outcomes, whether you believe in free will or not. And how much of an effect the causal processes in your brain have on your outcomes, as compared with the effect that causal processes in other people's brains have on your outcomes, which is the thing I have said is important, has little or nothing to do directly with whether you or anyone else "believes in free will". It does have to do with whether you and other people respect other people's right to make choices, which I have also said is important.

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

#88

Post by pdonis »

Layke1123 wrote: post #76
pdonis wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you still support prisons that try to "rehabilitate" prisoners You don't get to declare by fiat what I support and what I don't. The fact that I can make choices does not make me omnipotent. You are simply failing to recognize the fact that everybody makes choices--including the people who set up our current prison system and who keep it running. If the prisons they are running are abusing people, that is their res…

I didn't declare it by fiat. You claimed no system should dictate how you behave, and yet you dictate how a person should behave. Your own argument defeats itself. "New mental paradigm" means you don't think like you used to. I.E., if you were ever religious, that was one mental paradigm. If you ever lose your religious beliefs, now you have a new mental paradigm to understand the world and operate in it. As for fixi…

> you dictate how a person should behave

Putting a person in prison because, say, they murdered someone, is not dictating how they should behave. It is imposing a consequence on their behavior.

Evidently you are unable to tell the difference between those two things. That doesn't mean there isn't one.

> As for fixing the prison problem, it absolutely does.

You are either extremely ignorant and naive, or trolling. Anyone who has seen One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest has seen an excellent depiction of what happens when people who think the way you describe actually get the power to implement their ideas. No, thanks.

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

#89

Post by pdonis »

Layke1123 wrote: post #75
pdonis wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You brain has hallucinated not just the outside world, but your internal world as well. Very interesting. I agree with these statements--yet I also think they are perfectly consistent with people making choices. In your ultra-physicalist language, human brains hallucinating "the outside world" and "the internal world" are just part of the causal processes that happen inside those brains. And those causal processes…

Those causal processes still have effects outside those brains does not remove the idea that your brain only exists because of external causal events, and your brain is only reacting to those external causal events. At no point is there a spontaneous reaction that is unpredictable according to the known laws of physics, therefore, you don't have free will.

> your brain is only reacting to those external causal events

No, it isn't "only reacting". It is processing the incoming causal events, in a very complex way that "only reacting" doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of describing.

> At no point is there a spontaneous reaction that is unpredictable according to the known laws of physics, therefore, you don't have free will.

This definition of "free will" is pointless. Obviously nobody can violate the laws of physics, so if "free will" means violating the laws of physics, of course it's impossible. But nobody cares about that kind of "free will". The kind of free will people care about is having their right to make choices respected. Your metaphysical claims do not address that at all; and from what I can gather of your image of what society should be, it would be a horror worse than the worst tyrannies in history.

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

#90

Post by abellerose »

pdonis wrote: post #62
abellerose wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main reason for me of suggesting email is because I simply don't find writing responses on HackerNews as a great medium to have a conversation that likely will be lengthy. Basically, there's no good way to quote or even make a list with bullets and I prefer my macOS mail interface than a html textbox. The phrase "making choices" is just semantics for the topic of free will being an illusion. There's no different…

> The phrase "making choices" is just semantics for the topic of free will being an illusion. I disagree. See my response to Layke1123 just now. > Knowledge is power in society. Does it change your fate? The answer is no Again, I disagree; see my response to Layke1123 just now. I understand the attitude you are taking; I just don't think it's a good idea. Believing this will cause more harm and more suffering. More o…

> I'm very sorry you went through what you went through. And how you deal with it personally, in your own life, is of course entirely your choice. But that very observation (see the irony?) illustrates the error in the general conclusion you are drawing from it.

No. I didn't have a choice at all. You keep using the word "choice" or assuming it when there's no choice and I'll repeat there's truly no choice. I think or act from a set of unique forces that interacted upon me in the past and even now. The only possibility things could've been different is if the starting point of the universe made the unique set of forces different and resulted in a different outcome because of it. Similar to everything else you write, I disagree.

I also am aware that the "feeling" I have from what happened to me and how I became aware about free will being illusion.. is outside my control as well like everything else in life. Anyway I think you're not willing to have a lengthy discussion by email and so for some reason by fate that won't happen. I'm always up for the emails though because it's an interesting topic that some people are destined to grasp while others aren't.

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