You are what you read, even if you don't always remember it • Hacker News Board

Re: You are what you read, even if you don't always remember it

#281

Post by robertlagrant » Thu, Apr 25, 2024, 11:43 AM UTC

vasco wrote: post #265

robertlagrant wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> an idea that also just appears in consciousness that is, for inexplicable reasons, more compelling than other ideas at the time so that is the choice that your brain reasons to follow This seems to be an idiosyncratic definition of free will.

On the other hand, I think it's simplistic to equate picking options from a mental list as "free will". I think the point you are replying to is valid because if there's free will, it's not just "choosing from a list". The list itself (the options you present yourself) has way more impact on your behavior than what you choose, even. So the matter of the question is, do you have free will in forming a list.

> do you have free will in forming a list

This seems like a separate question. Having the power to choose doesn't mean you have every conceivable option in mind, nor that you have the power to exercise every choice, nor even that you like any of the choices.

Re: You are what you read, even if you don't always remember it

#282

Post by nuclearnice1 » Thu, Apr 25, 2024, 11:44 AM UTC

7thaccount wrote: post #259

teekert wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you walk the footsteps of a stranger, you will learn the things you never knew you never knew.

But can you paint with all the colors of the wind? In all seriousness, I liked that line you quoted in the song. I wonder if there is a literary term for that repetition. It's not alliteration I don't think as the words themselves repeat.

polyptoton?

Re: You are what you read, even if you don't always remember it

#283

Post by xianshou » Thu, Apr 25, 2024, 11:49 AM UTC

Reframing inevitably in the direction of AI, this also expresses the difference between, for instance, pretraining and retrieval in LLMs. People expect large models to memorize the dataset and are frustrated when it doesn't, even more so when it does but only partially and not thoroughly enough to rely on. But pretraining data : large models as books : people, building a world-sense that is refined and augmented through fine-tuning (for people, specialized training) and retrieval (for people Google searches, Stack Overflow, etc).

People complain about the extent to which we anthropomorphize GPT-class models, but I gain just as much from backporting the analogies that work for LLMs to my own experience.

Re: You are what you read, even if you don't always remember it

#284

Post by namero999 » Thu, Apr 25, 2024, 11:51 AM UTC

strogonoff wrote: post #190

csomar wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We can overcome our biology, our predilections, and many of our shortcomings. We have to consciously choose to do so though. Hmm, no we can't. And the few people who seemingly can do that, it's because their biology/environment allowed that. So kind of circling back to determinism. Free will is a myth that's used to lock people up. If you slap someone in the face, we'll lock you up somewhere because we don't know i…

If you believe in determinism, then it is likely you also believe in physicalist monism (“there is only the matter and consciousness arises/derives fully from it or is an illusion”). Normally there is not much I can say to change your mind on that, but just note—there are other views, like idealistic monism, which unlock other possibilities wrt. free will, and which cannot be disproven or proven compared to physicali…

I'll just echo this, in that monistic idealism (especially, as a personal preference, in the declination of analytical idealism) is a worldview able to supersede the incongruous, untenable and for the most part, epistemically moot physicalism/materialism, which is sadly still considered the default mainstream worldview.

As parent said, many open questions and interpretations become relatively trivial under idealism, while preserving 100% of our scientific understanding and method.

Re: You are what you read, even if you don't always remember it

#285

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Apr 25, 2024, 11:52 AM UTC

y04nn wrote: post #25

Don't forget that you are the result of all the past sensory interactions that you experienced in your whole life, people you interacted with, books you read, advertisements, songs, news headlines, etc. Even if you think you don't remember them, at one point in your life it was processed by your brain and may have changed some posterior decisions you made, thus making you what you are now. Since I realized this, I am…

[deleted]

Re: You are what you read, even if you don't always remember it

#286

Post by qwery » Thu, Apr 25, 2024, 11:56 AM UTC

jebarker wrote: post #271

y04nn wrote: post #25

Don't forget that you are the result of all the past sensory interactions that you experienced in your whole life, people you interacted with, books you read, advertisements, songs, news headlines, etc. Even if you think you don't remember them, at one point in your life it was processed by your brain and may have changed some posterior decisions you made, thus making you what you are now. Since I realized this, I am…

If there's "no going back" doesn't that imply you don't have free will and therefore you can't really choose what you do and don't do?

If you want to read it literally, no. They can't "go back" without deciding to do so, which would be continuing to choose what to do.

If you read it as the common English phrase "there's no going back", no. It's just a thing people say in place of something more dry like "I will continue doing this for as long as I feel I should which I currently think is a long time or forever but saying that would be a bit ridiculous".

Re: You are what you read, even if you don't always remember it

#287

Post by FrustratedMonky » Thu, Apr 25, 2024, 11:57 AM UTC

Nietzsche said something similar, I believe he advocated picking 100 books and just reading them deeply, thus curating by not reading every junk book that came along. But can't find the quote where he said that, or his list.

Does anybody have a link to Nietzsche's reading list? It seems it is hard to find things on the internet lately.

Re: You are what you read, even if you don't always remember it

#288

Post by segmondy » Thu, Apr 25, 2024, 11:59 AM UTC

AvAn12 wrote: post #255

This gets to some of the difference between human intelligence and LLM training. The machine remembers everything verbatim (plus a vector representation). Most people have faulty memory but somehow make a deeper encoding of the impact a book or life experience had. Agree there is some analogy between vector encoding vs the mind’s representation — but it’s a loose analogy. LLMs and search etc are useful tools for sure…

The machine doesn't remember everything verbatim.

Re: You are what you read, even if you don't always remember it

#289

Post by ZeroMinx » Thu, Apr 25, 2024, 11:59 AM UTC

piloto_ciego wrote: post #84

NERD_ALERT wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free will hasn’t been proven. It’s up in the air how much is predetermined, and how to even define “free” in the context of free will. Even if we do have free will it’s still influenced to some degree by our biology.

My Diogenes answer would be to walk across the room and slap you: “if I didn’t chose to do it you cannot be angry at me.” That’s tongue and cheek sure, but the point I feel stands. Free will is certainly constrained, and our material and biological conditions do matter - there’s no amount I can will to make myself fly, but they are not necessarily as rigid of constraints as many would have you believe. We can overcom…

> tongue and cheek

tongue-in-cheek

slap

Re: You are what you read, even if you don't always remember it

#290

Post by 8bitme » Thu, Apr 25, 2024, 12:05 PM UTC

> the goal of a book isn’t to get to the last page, it’s to expand your thinking.

I would apply this to fiction books too. Some people consider reading fiction books a waste of time.

But fiction books too can expand your mind by exploring ideas that may not be possible in non-fiction books or exploring the same ideas but in a way that non-fiction books cannot achieve easily or at all.