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It’s Complicated: Unraveling the mystery of why people act as they do

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Re: It’s Complicated: Unraveling the mystery of why people act as they do

#171

Post by richardw »

md224 wrote: post #62

> there is no homunculus (or soul, or separate entity) calling the shots for you, but even if there were a mini-me inside of you making choices, that mini-me would need a mini-mini-me inside of it, ad infinitum. I find it kind of amusing that people think free will is an illusion. It's a great illustration of how you can get people to believe anything, including things that violate their most fundamental perceptions.…

Try give up all your bad habits, today. You (or at least most) will find that our "free" will is barely free on the margin. We're able to change, but not in an instant decision, more like a chemical process - slowly, methodically, by working at our inner animal. Many can't change, just stay stuck in their habits for life, despite how free we believe we are.

> Before Descartes could proclaim "I think, therefore I am" he had to choose to make that proclamation.

Not at all. I could program a PC to say that. We believe he chose that. A determinist might say he had as much choice as a plant. A person with his characteristics, given his context, would say something like that. Now if he chose to take up gymnastics and run away with the circus, that would be more like free will. Try acting out of character. Quite hard.

Re: It’s Complicated: Unraveling the mystery of why people act as they do

#172

Post by lmm »

md224 wrote: post #81
adjkant wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So your belief in free will comes from "It's going to turn out to come from something really weird"? That's not convincing either. I don't believe in free will, but I believe that there will always be the illusion because the computing needed to know anything before it happens is far too much, and if you knew, it would add another layer of things you'd need to compute, meaning you still wouldn't know your choice ahea…

How is free will not the same as choice? A lack of free will is an inability to exert agency through choosing. Determinism removes the possibility of choosing. If you have no free will, you can't express yourself... nothing you do will be the product of your desires. Weren't you free to choose the words you wrote in your reply?

> If you have no free will, you can't express yourself... nothing you do will be the product of your desires. Weren't you free to choose the words you wrote in your reply?

My words are "my" choice and indeed the product of my desires, but that me and those desires are nothing more or less than the product of various mundane processes. I could never have been anything other than myself, and as such I could never have chosen any words other than these. (And if my choice of words was not determined then that just means they were random, which doesn't seem to make them any more an exercise of agency or free will - fundamental particles are able to behave just as randomly as we are).

I am a coherent existence because the causal relations from one thing to another really do go through a nexus that can be identified as me, but there's no free will there - what would it even mean to have free will?

Re: It’s Complicated: Unraveling the mystery of why people act as they do

#173

Post by real-hacker »

vinutheraj wrote: post #166
real-hacker wrote: post #144

Maybe the core of so-called 'free will' or 'soul' is just a random-number generator. Other than that, we are just many layers of deep neural networks.

Then the question becomes: can there be a really random number generator ?

Perhaps a pseudo random number generator, with the solar radiation level and the moon phase as seeds. ;)

Re: It’s Complicated: Unraveling the mystery of why people act as they do

#174

Post by ryanlol »

nojvek wrote: post #135
ryanlol wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, 7 will work much better. On a more serious note, look into 4-AcO-DMT. Essentially mushrooms without the unpleasantness of actually having to eat mushrooms.

How does one even get access to this?

Perhaps easier than the mushrooms, various "chemical supply companies" will sell it to you for "research" and not ask many question. There's a list of such companies on the "RCSources" subreddit wiki.

It's definitely a good idea to get any chemicals tested before consuming them. I doubt they'd intentionally send you the wrong chemical, but I guess shipping mixups could happen. Energy control runs an excellent testing service https://energycontrol-international.org/drug-testing-service...

Re: It’s Complicated: Unraveling the mystery of why people act as they do

#175

Post by alexvoda »

taurath wrote: post #77

If you haven't seen the lecture from Robert Sapolsky (author of the book the article is summarizing) on Depression, do yourself a favor and see it now! He's wonderfully eloquent and approachable even to the laymen in giving the neurobiological underpinnings of what is a terrible illness. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOAgplgTxfc

Thanks indeed. It clarifies a lot. We are lucky to live in a period when sufficient knowledge on the subject has accumulated and has been put together for us to have some understanding of how it works. Going from here to finding fixes is a long way since there are a lot of variables, but at least we have an idea of how the leverage points in the system interact.

Re: It’s Complicated: Unraveling the mystery of why people act as they do

#176

Post by aktenlage »

nvarsj wrote: post #154
sharkweek wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mindfulness, despite the recent buzzword-iness of it, has been an amazing tool for me. When I'm feeling any number of negative emotions (anger, anxiety, stress, etc.), or when my OCD flares up, it helps so much to simply pause, turn and face the emotion, address it, and say to myself "I am feeling this way because..." and calling out the trigger. It almost takes the teeth out of the negative feeling, making it pass a…

Sounds like CBT! Other things I've found that help is more sleep, and less caffeine. It's not talked about much, but I'm convinced caffeine exacerbates the kind of negative emotions and anxiety that affect us perfectionists. I don't quite have the willpower to give it up, though.

After very regularly drinking 1-3 cups of coffee per day for about 8 years, I stopped for the six weeks of this years fasting period. After a few days of headache and tiredness things normalized. I expected a big difference (whatsoever) but was underwhelmed. There might have been a positive effect of not drinking coffee, but I didn't notice anything significant.

Re: It’s Complicated: Unraveling the mystery of why people act as they do

#177

Post by aninhumer »

dwaltrip wrote: post #145
unit91 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet, you seem to know he can't.

Hardly. It just seems a bit presumptuous to claim firm knowledge of the fundamental, low level workings of one's brain. In general, I find these discussions often go on far too long without even bothering to define the terms. "Free will" itself seems to be an incredibly nebulous concept.

Indeed, I tend to think there is no coherent definition of free will. (Or at least, not one that leaves any doubt about whether we have it.)

Often people appeal to it as an intuitive notion, but the only notion of "will" we intuitively understand is the one we necessarily have.

Re: It’s Complicated: Unraveling the mystery of why people act as they do

#178

Post by aninhumer »

md224 wrote: post #62

> there is no homunculus (or soul, or separate entity) calling the shots for you, but even if there were a mini-me inside of you making choices, that mini-me would need a mini-mini-me inside of it, ad infinitum. I find it kind of amusing that people think free will is an illusion. It's a great illustration of how you can get people to believe anything, including things that violate their most fundamental perceptions.…

"Free will" is not a terribly well defined notion, but it's usually considered distinct from the concept of consciousness. Moreover, most people tend to define it in a way that is incompatible with a deterministic universe (indeed, in some cases that is the definition). One can of course be fairly certain that "I think", but that doesn't necessarily mean they can be sure "I decide". Once could instead imagine that our conscious experience is merely a strange phenomena caused by the entirely deterministic actions of our brain, and is merely along for the ride.

Now personally, I believe there is no coherent definition of "free will" which is meaningfully distinct from "will", and as such, in as far as it can be said to exist, we must have it. I'd love to be challenged on this, so I'm a little disappointed to see how many people in this thread seem to be making assertions without defining anything. These are incredibly subtle concepts that require precision if we are to have any kind of meaningful discussion.

Re: It’s Complicated: Unraveling the mystery of why people act as they do

#179

Post by peterwwillis »

Bakary wrote: post #155
peterwwillis wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know who thinks that humans value nonviolence but they clearly don't read the news. Species act to adapt to their environment and provide for their needs. Nature necessitates violence for adaptation and survival. In species with no natural predators, an abundance of natural resources, and no problems with genetic propagation, violence might not be necessary for survival. But in many species, even ones with no…

>You're ascribing with morality (a human construct) or are diminishing (it's actually constructive) a natural and productive act that supports virtually all life on the planet. I'm not sure what you thought I wrote but it's the opposite of what I outlined. My whole argument is indeed that morals are indeed a human construct, so that if someone laments the amount of violence, they should realize that to be able to mak…

> having a less violent society is very much an evolutionary advantage

I don't see how this is the case. We have a lot more violence than is necessary for adaptation or survival. I don't think our 'ingrained sense of fairness' is an advantage, I think it is similar to what already exists in nature, but is then broken down by our fragile emotional state and confused by our higher brain functions clashing with our evolutionary simple heuristics. It's like running a web app in AWS to control a shopping list and it's source code consists solely of algebraic expressions. It's cumbersome and problematic. I'm sure developing our higher brain functions was useful in our survival, but it clearly conflicts with our instinctual survival traits.

Re: It’s Complicated: Unraveling the mystery of why people act as they do

#180

Post by s73ver »

wutbrodo wrote: post #88
s73ver wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Do not do that. The second that the cause/effect relationship is understood down to a neuron level like that, advertisers will abuse that to make things even more effective.

This is truly peak HN. No matter how philosophical or universal the topic of conversation, someone is still so mind-killed that their reaction is "how will this affect advertising".

Not mind killed. Just a realist. You and I both know that's what would happen.
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