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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

#51

Post by coldtea »

amasad wrote: post #47
BurningFrog wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> mainstream science maintains that we're neither individuals nor have free will Citation needed!

How about the article you're commenting on? It said exactly the same thing, just different words.

The article (and several modern scientists and lots of classical philosophers) confuse free will with some external entity that can take decisions for our life while standing outside it (as some objective spectator).

In the end, those decisions, even if they were possible, would not be free will, but either arbitrary (random) or requiring some homunculus doing the thinking somewhere inside us.

Rather, I say, our will, and that's free enough, and as free as it gets, is mixed up in ourself: it is ourself. Our body, past history, experiences, brain structure, etc, define us, and their sum is what ends up taking the decisions.

Thus it doesn't even matter if our "conscious self" is not aware of a decision we've made as some studies say [1]. Our body is still us (in fact, that's all there is when we talk about our self, our body + our neural synapses as shaped by our life experiences from our trajectory in space-time). We are not some souls independent of our body/life story. We ARE our life story/body.

This means that determinism (that the universe makes us takes exactly a specific decision at every point etc), if exists, is totally combatible with such a notion of free will. Free doesn't mean "able to go random" but "expressing freely its owner" -- and since our will's owner is our body+history, it cannot but take a single decision each time, those that determine who we are, and thus our essence.

[1] http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080411/full/news.2008.751.ht...

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

#52

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

int_handler wrote: post #49
amasad wrote: post #38

The schism between our science and politics is finally getting airtime. Liberal western politics are based on individual liberty and free will. However, mainstream science maintains that we're neither individuals nor have free will. Do we try to reconcile both views? Or do we drop one in favor of the other? This, by the way, is also the subject of Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, by the same author behind Sapi…

> Liberal western politics are based on individual liberty and free will. > However, mainstream science maintains that we're neither individuals nor have free will. You are conflating government control and social interactions. Liberal western politics is based on individual liberty and free will in the context of government policy. Such policies are focused on reducing the control that governments have on individual…

"focused on reducing the control that governments have on individual rights and not how individuals are influenced by other individuals within societies"

The distinction here becomes very blurry very rapidly.

Governments are composed of individuals within societies. Individuals influence each other within a socio-political framework.

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

#53

Post by amasad »

int_handler wrote: post #49
amasad wrote: post #38

The schism between our science and politics is finally getting airtime. Liberal western politics are based on individual liberty and free will. However, mainstream science maintains that we're neither individuals nor have free will. Do we try to reconcile both views? Or do we drop one in favor of the other? This, by the way, is also the subject of Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, by the same author behind Sapi…

> Liberal western politics are based on individual liberty and free will. > However, mainstream science maintains that we're neither individuals nor have free will. You are conflating government control and social interactions. Liberal western politics is based on individual liberty and free will in the context of government policy. Such policies are focused on reducing the control that governments have on individual…

How am I conflating those things?

Also false on Homo Deus, it covers both and much of it is about governments, politics and policies. Happy to quote some, but really just open the book on a random page you'll probably see that.

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

#54

Post by elihu »

amasad wrote: post #38

The schism between our science and politics is finally getting airtime. Liberal western politics are based on individual liberty and free will. However, mainstream science maintains that we're neither individuals nor have free will. Do we try to reconcile both views? Or do we drop one in favor of the other? This, by the way, is also the subject of Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, by the same author behind Sapi…

If we assume that free will doesn't exist (which I don't agree with, but for the sake of argument we'll assume it doesn't), one might still expect people to make choices that maximize their own well-being and it isn't too much of a stretch to suppose that such choices are more often than not good for society, or at least more so than a planned society where most choices are made for you by some authority.

One can argue for democracy, free speech, and other modern liberal ideas on the basis that they produce a more stable, prosperous society.

This assumes that we've already decided that stability and prosperity are attributes that society should have.

I think science is a great tool for figuring out what the consequences of a particular action are likely to be, but it's not a tool that will tell us which of several outcomes we should prefer.

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

#55

Post by peterwwillis »

Does nobody else find this to be time-wasting drivel? We do what we do because we're apes with hats.

Any thing that acts does so with a system. The system determines the actions. This is true for the laws of nature as much as a football game. Even if someone cheats, they're cheating because of the system of the game.

> "Sapolsky concludes that World War II really was the worst thing humanity ever did to itself."

Really? Really now? Thousands of years of slavery, war, discrimination, class struggle, superstition, genocide, and at least a few centuries having to wear really stuffy clothes in the summer, and six years of war was the worst thing that happened? I didn't read the book, but this is a farcical idea that requires aggressively downplaying all of both the atrocity and perpetual minor trauma of recorded history.

The worst thing humanity ever did to itself was religion, but second to that was politics, so WWII can take the silver medal. Ironically, the best thing humanity ever did to itself was war, as it necessitated the development of technology to maintain hegemonic dominance.

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

#56

Post by asdf8565 »

amasad wrote: post #47
BurningFrog wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> mainstream science maintains that we're neither individuals nor have free will Citation needed!

How about the article you're commenting on? It said exactly the same thing, just different words.

You mean the article that refers to a few cherry picked quotes but not actual research on the topic of free will?

... "Sapolsky quotes American cognitive scientist Marvin Minsky in support of the position that free will is really just “internal forces I do not understand.” ...

I never liked this argument. By saying it's "internal forces", subconscious struggles within myself, seems to conclude we've learned all there is to know about "physical reality".

We can't see beyond the boundary of our own reality (universe). To say we're certain reality only exists within those boundaries seems dubious.

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

#57

Post by owebmaster »

amasad wrote: post #38

The schism between our science and politics is finally getting airtime. Liberal western politics are based on individual liberty and free will. However, mainstream science maintains that we're neither individuals nor have free will. Do we try to reconcile both views? Or do we drop one in favor of the other? This, by the way, is also the subject of Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, by the same author behind Sapi…

I've been thinking about this recently. My conclusion is that a good arrange would is a strong state together with a free society. This is what happens in both current world superpowers, China and USA, but the former have a state a little stronger than its +1.5bi population while the latter has a "free society" stronger than the biggest government of the human history.

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

#58

Post by amasad »

elihu wrote: post #54
amasad wrote: post #38

The schism between our science and politics is finally getting airtime. Liberal western politics are based on individual liberty and free will. However, mainstream science maintains that we're neither individuals nor have free will. Do we try to reconcile both views? Or do we drop one in favor of the other? This, by the way, is also the subject of Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, by the same author behind Sapi…

If we assume that free will doesn't exist (which I don't agree with, but for the sake of argument we'll assume it doesn't), one might still expect people to make choices that maximize their own well-being and it isn't too much of a stretch to suppose that such choices are more often than not good for society, or at least more so than a planned society where most choices are made for you by some authority. One can arg…

You're echoing Hume's is-ought distinction which I generally agree with.

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

#59

Post by amasad »

TheCowboy wrote: post #42
amasad wrote: post #38

The schism between our science and politics is finally getting airtime. Liberal western politics are based on individual liberty and free will. However, mainstream science maintains that we're neither individuals nor have free will. Do we try to reconcile both views? Or do we drop one in favor of the other? This, by the way, is also the subject of Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, by the same author behind Sapi…

You could argue that it has been shown that it isn't so black and white, not all decisions are a result of pure free will in all cases. But there has not been some conclusion that there is no free will by "mainstream science" as it is still an open topic. It's also not necessarily contradictory for it to be a bit of both.

Do you agree with the following:

- Mainstream science operates on the assumption of physicalism.

- Mainstream science operates on the assumption that mind/consciousness is reducible to the brain organ.

- Mainstream science operates on the principle of causation.

What follows from that is that libertarian free-will is impossible. What you're left with is determinism (and compatibilism which isn't a scientific view, but a moral one).

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

#60

Post by techbio »

elihu wrote: post #54
amasad wrote: post #38

The schism between our science and politics is finally getting airtime. Liberal western politics are based on individual liberty and free will. However, mainstream science maintains that we're neither individuals nor have free will. Do we try to reconcile both views? Or do we drop one in favor of the other? This, by the way, is also the subject of Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, by the same author behind Sapi…

If we assume that free will doesn't exist (which I don't agree with, but for the sake of argument we'll assume it doesn't), one might still expect people to make choices that maximize their own well-being and it isn't too much of a stretch to suppose that such choices are more often than not good for society, or at least more so than a planned society where most choices are made for you by some authority. One can arg…

Optimism and Hume notwithstanding the outcomes regarding prosperity and stability may be bestowed upon the society as a whole without the choices by individuals having individually assisted their own life outcomes.
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