>We feel that our actions are voluntary when they follow a decision and involuntary when they happen without decision. But if a decision itself were voluntary every decision would have to be preceded by a decision to decide - An infinite regression which fortunately does not occur. Oddly enough, if we had to decide to decide, we would not be free to decide.
When Lewis Carroll discusses a similar logical problem in "What the Tortoise Said to Achilles" it comes from the perspective of a Zeno paradox which cannot be resolved in the same way.
Essentially, Achilles says "A, therefore Z." Tortoise says, "Well, suppose I don't see the connection here, you have some symbols on this side and some symbols on that side, could you help me?" So Achilles modifies this to, "A, and A implies Z, therefore Z." And the Tortoise says, "well, that sounds very good and I trust your proof that A implies Z but I'm still not seeing the connection here. Could you help me connect those left hand things to the right hand thing?" So Achilles modifies this to "A, and A implies Z, and (A and A implies Z) implies Z, therefore Z." And the Tortoise says, "aha, of course '(A and A implies Z) implies Z' ... but wait, now that I've written that down, I again don't see the connection here...". Essentially the point is that our generic rule that replaces "x and x implies y" with "x and y" is a process which lives outside the declarative scope of formal logic. (In the Curry-Howard isomorphism: you can have a value of type `x` and a function which turns values of type `x` into values of type `y`, but these are definitions, and there is no way to capture the true process of applying the function to the value -- just another declaration of another function which has type `x → (x → y) → y` which is by itself never involved in a process.)
(As an amateur physicist, I hasten to remind everyone that Zeno won in the end; there is a context which Zeno could have never foreseen where a Zeno paradox makes a certain kind of motion impossible. The reason nobody can travel faster than light is that if you take your spaceship and try to race a light beam, first you throw down a beacon, and then you accelerate to speed c/2 relative to that beacon -- in your shiny new reference frame, due to the constancy of the speed of light in inertial reference frames, the light beam is still moving at speed c away from you.)
Zeno's paradoxes are about convergence of infinite series, something quite puzzling back then. But the infinite regress problem here (or in related free will questions) is not about convergence.
When reading any articles about psychology now I always have in the back of my head the question "How many of these studies have been reporoduced?"
There are a lot of valuable insights from this kind of research but right now it's hard to know which are the valuable ones and which ones are just air.
I had a bit spooky experience more or less 1 year ago. It was an emotionally intensive period, at certain moments my body was giving off reactions that I wasn't in control of. My mind wasn't completely detached from the situation I was in, but enough so I was just watching myself... doing things.
This experience made me think in what state my mind will be at later ages. I'm quite young now, and I've heard from so many people that at later ages one's thought process is not as fluid or creative as it is in youth. It made me think of all these moments of brillance I've had the pleasure of experiencing will vanish as I age. I'm speaking of arriving at solutions to problems without consciously thinking about them, like all of the sudden the solution just pops in your head and, comparing to the state that you are in, moments ago, having no clue what to do with the problem at hand, suddenly you precisely know what to do. I have done nothing to achieve or deserve this trait, but still, knowing that it will be taken away some time later and having no control over the process, is depressing.
You're throwing a baseball, but at the last moment you spot a kid running into its path. You tried to stop your arm but it was already in motion. You decided half a second too late.
> It really is too bad that we are hardwired to suck at being corrected.
Why do you think that? Speak for yourself.
The foundation of human society is transmission of knowledge and skills. We spend a great deal of our time learning from others, which involves correction based on observation of others as well as instruction from others.
When people are receptive to being corrected, they are very good at being corrected. When they resist being corrected, they are very bad at it. Why do they resist? Probably because we often find ourselves in social situations where accepting criticism from others is considered submissive and a penalty to social standing.
People who consider each other equals tend to be very receptive to mutual correction.
People who are vying to be the dominant one in a relationship are very hostile towards being corrected.
If you disagree with my statement, aren't you also saying you don't believe in confirmation bias? It's more or less proven that we behave this way (seek out information that supports our beliefs, discard/adjust information that doesn't.)
Why do you think that?
I don't, actually; I think I'm awesome at being corrected and just happen to be right most of the time. Fortunately I'm often able to catch my biased, subconscious reactions before I say anything.
There's another reason to resist being corrected: your colleagues are in the middle of having a knee-jerk reaction to something you did for good reason, and they can't explain why they don't like it in this instance, only in general.
Different people have different ways to being corrected.
I like to question things to the point of it might loo like I dislike being corrected, but I am just digging for more information to prove me wrong. I like to make an analogy on scratching on a old flesh-wound with dried blood.
It's gross to people around you, but satisfying to yourself, because you enjoy the pain.
(I don't know what this has to do with the article, but it's an interesting question)
Sure, why not? Games are just a simulation of something, and an AI assist removes some of the user-interacting parts of that simulation.
You don't need to manually reload your weapon in Counterstrike, nor do you need to worry about where to place your feet. Similarly, you don't need to pathfind for your units in Starcraft, nor do you need to manually fetch every single resource.
It depends on how you define "you". If it's the conscious self, then it does exist, even though it's anywhere near in control of as much as it believes. It's more like it's sometimes notified of what happens in the hood, and it got some veto on that.
there's no separation, you and your brain are not 2 different things. The interface (what most people call "you") is that, just the interface. The real "you" is everything..
There has to be some degree of separation at some point though. For all I know, there could be more than one "me" experiencing life as processed by my brain at any given time, but the self cannot possible be the complete interface as a whole. If it were so, then the self could not continue to exist if a portion of the interface were removed, but it can, regardless of it being a less than optimal condition.
It exists conceptually, as a representational model only. It uses symbolic systems of thought and language to perpetuate the illusion of a separate self.
"All boundaries are merely useful fictions." -Buckminster Fuller
Agreed. I think much of the western received wisdom on animal cognition actually comes from religious attitudes of the unique specialness of man and his God-given dominion over the birds and beasts.
In general I think we are still adjusting to what science tells us about who "we" are.
For example, we know we're animals. As animals, we experience a concept of "self." So why would we assume that no other animals experience a concept of self?
We know that the mind arises from the brain. So why would we make a distinction between our concept of self and the "other" parts of the brain? The title of the above article is essentially clickbait, in my opinion. There is no scientific basis for distinguishing between the brain and the self.
It seems like there is a fundamental difference between awareness of a fit back signals from various systems (fear, hunger, cold, pain, etc.) and awareness of the self as an separate entity. Animals obviously have fit back awareness but probably does not have the concept of the self, like toddlers and young children.
Self comes with language acquisition, which rewires the brain. That's why almost no one remember their baby days, it seems.
Before that language conditioning you are a perfect animal.)
Oh ok. Looking up what you told me i learnt that what I thought was 1 concept called conciousness, could be defined as 2 separate but related concepts - Qualia and self-awareness.
Looking up the wiki article, it seems most animals don't pass the mirror test of self-awareness although few have (such as primates, dolphins, magpies).The mirror-test has been criticized by some as human-centric approach which could give false negatives meaning possibly more animals could be self-aware.
Your connecting of awareness and language is interesting. Do you have any sources to look at (articles, books ,etc)? Quite interesting field really.
I've read about various research data that suggests animals may very well have a rich internal life which may well indicate they have their own "you" minds (although I can't cite any off the top of my head right now...)
I agree that an unqualified sweeping statement - possibly just regurgitated from various religious sources - shouldn't be blindly accepted. That sort of religiously-prescribed attitude also conveniently justifies maltreatment of animals at slaughter, even though research suggests that, e.g. the slitting of an animal's throat causes far greater suffering rather other more modern approaches.
The User Illusion by Norretranders discusses this in depth. He relays an estimate that our conscious bandwidth is roughly one millionth of the total bandwidth of our subconscious mind. Incredible!
It's literally one of the most fascinating books I've ever read that completely changed my view on a lot of things. I wish there were an updated version based on more recent research.
Perhaps part of our minds is a "module" or "function" that helps us infer what is in the minds of others based on their behaviors. No doubt this would be helpful in social animals. This "module" infers what is in our mind based on our feelings and behaviors. Then we ascribe agency to that "mind", give it a name, and call it "I".
Daniel Dennett delves into an idea similar to this in his essays 'Where Am I?' and 'Self as a Center of Gravity'. I think he explains it a bit better than the parent comment which I found to be a bit too forceful. That can't be helped though, its not something you can sum up in a couple sentences.
The first one is a (fictional) story many people here might be interested in so I highly recommend it. If you are still interested read the second which delves deeper into personal identity but without the story.
I didn't really like the article. It was too conversational with unnecessary anecdotes. While reading it I was pretty much annoyed by how the writer didn't respect my time and couldn't just spit out what their main idea was. Like I shouldn't need to read three or four paragraphs to find out if the topic is something I already know about or interesting to me.
This article is basically a fluff entertainment piece for people who just enjoy reading for the sake of it and want to feel smart for it when they're done.
>While reading it I was pretty much annoyed by how the writer didn't respect my time and couldn't just spit out what their main idea was. Like I shouldn't need to read three or four paragraphs to find out if the topic is something I already know about or interesting to me.
And yet, you did the same thing for your comment.
Anyway, your preferred style of writing does exist and its called a research paper. Thankfully, the world is big enough to accmodate other styles of writing.
Thanks! (/s) I expressed a positive sentiment to counter your negative one. If you simply want a list of all the facts about the human body, you know where to look.
My line of thinking when I saw the headline was very similar. If you believe that your brain decides something without you, that just means you don't have a good understanding of who/what you are.
Or it could mean that what you think of as "you" can't access the parts of your brain that makes decisions. Just like it can't access how you digest food.
We have a slightly bizarre illusion of separate consciousness, but it's impossible to grow into a full adult human without being connected - in many different ways - to the wider human network.
Great point. Humans growing up without others we call "feral"
Have you read Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral mind? A psychologist analyzes historical signs of "consciousness", like the transition in the Ilyad of men's motivations shifting from parts of their bodies & god puppeters to their "will".
One of his interesting conclusions is that schizophrenic voices were these connections, or in hackerspeak, daemons or programs running. With so many programs competing for attention at once, the "consciousness" program was formed to "decide" how to spend its newly alloted attention.
Peter Watts, marine biologist, explores this in his Firefall series (fiction) - the idea of consciousness arising out of conflict. It fits nicely with the folk wisdom that in "Flow", there is no sense of self.
.. why do I feel like this exact discussion has been repeated on HN before? Like different neurons of the HN-brain are running across this idea of "automatic decision making" and sending it up to the neo-cortex (front page), again, and again..
I know! but there is a big difference between "sharing" an article, and "liking" an article and having it show up on friends' feeds. its the difference between actively and passively sharing a viewpoint
-Alan Watts, Way of Zen