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I find these animal behavioural studies fascinating. There is always the risk of personification clouding our understanding, when we observe similarities to hu

I find these animal behavioural studies fascinating. There is always the risk of personification clouding our understanding, when we observe similarities to human behaviour. But another angle is de-personification of our own behaviour. That seems insightful in all sorts of way. Certain behaviours, like "war," almost certainly predate cognitive modernity... modern human consciousness. Gwynne Dyer, a historian of war, had some interesting comparisons of humans and chimps. Many interesting similarities. In any case, the ways that we rationalize our warfare, tribalism and such cannot actually be the reason for war. The warfare predates even our ability to formulate such rationalizations. This has a lot of applicability in our personal lives. Is the reason I did X really Y, or is Y a post fact rationalization?

HenryKissinger 6y ago
Are you saying that humans are partially automatons pre-programmed to behave in certain specific ways in certain situations? What are the implications of a theory like that for free will?
- vczf 6y ago
  Not GP, but my understanding is that free will is weak, not strong. You can suppress a desire to eat a donut (requires willpower) but can't prevent the thought/desire from arising on its own when presented with the stimulus. Similarly, we can suppress the desire to go to war after a provocation. However, we can't choose to not feel furious, at least for an instant. Thoughts and feeling tend to arise on their own, and free will is about whether we accept or reject them.
  - nitrogen 6y ago
    Free will is itself still just an electrochemical process running in a physical brain. It's subjectively real, but the inputs that drive that subjective feeling are still either deterministic or random.
    - dalbasal 6y ago
      "either deterministic or random" is a possibly dangerous dichotomy. Some things are neither determined nor random, in the "arbitrary" sense of the term. A child that grows up in a musical household is more likely to become a musician. That's neither random nor determined. In populations, or over repeated instances, these can resolve to near deterministic results. At the individual level, they are more random seeming.
      - _0ffh 6y ago
        Don't know about the danger in there, but what else would you want to add to the mix besides determinism and randomness? I don't know of anything else that could possibly have any influence, unless you want to go supernatural.
        AgentMatt 6y ago
        I share the sentiment of the parent with regards to "either deterministic or random" sounding off to me. I wanted to propose "stochastic" as a better term, but apparently "random" and "stochastic" are synonyms. [1] What it comes down to is that "random" to me has a connotation of arbitrary, unpredictable. Whereas "stochastic" to me suggests a deterministic process with random influences. So maybe the sentiment is better expressed as making sure it is clear that deterministic and random are the two extremes of a continuum, rather than an either/or distinction. [1] https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/114373/whats-the-difference-between-stochastic-and-random https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/114373/whats-the-di...
        dalbasal 6y ago
        That is what I meant, which is why I said "in the arbitrary sense." I think our language is lacking here. In technical terms, neither random nor stochastic imply evenly distributed. In casual conversation, "random" does. "Emergent" may be a better term for what I meant. Randomness (in the casual sense) is an ingredient in a stochastic process leading to non-random, even effectively deterministic results. The comment I was replying to: "the inputs that drive that subjective feeling are still either deterministic or random." The ingredients which lead someone to suddenly sing a son apropos of nothing (seemingly random/arbitrary) are the same as those leading someone to pull their finger away from a flame... seemingly deterministic.
  - laumars 6y ago
    What makes you decide you want to surprise the desire to eat the donut? Is that free will or was that impulse also determined from other stimulus such as body shaming, underlying health problems or financial hardship preventing one from impulse buying? I do think if you unravel how every decision is made and the origins behind those opinions then you ultimately end up with every reaction being a result of either biology or circumstance.
    - vczf 6y ago
      Emotions, typically. Most decisions are made with emotional compute, influenced by biology, past experience, and present psychological state. At the same time, being mindful and observing those emotions (predicted pleasure from the flavor, predicted guilt...) does interrupt that emotional processing and allow a "decision" to be reached in a completely different way. Free will may only exist subjectively, but mindfulness does free the self from the emotional decision-making of the monkey brain.
      - laumars 6y ago
        But you’ve also cited that emotions are the result of stimulus. Both hunger and anger (in the examples you’ve given) are the result of conditions external to ones free will. The positive spin on this is if we are going to apply a software development mindset to free will then you can also argue that the value of software isn’t its sentience but it’s usefulness. For example computer games don’t need sophisticated AI to be enjoyable. So however we argue the definition of free will, that shouldn’t take anything away from the experience of life.
- marcosdumay 6y ago
  Hum... I can't tell if you are sarcastic. The internet really sucks this way. But if not, well, have you really never noticed? And yeah, theories of free will better support only partial freedom, otherwise they have no chance.
- dalbasal 6y ago
  That's some feisty old philosophical language.... To put it in more poetic terms (Leonard Cohen's), I think free will is overrated. We very often act because because we are compelled to act, or not to act. Back to the original topic or bird warfare... What I mean is that whatever compels (or maybe convinces) woodpeckers to warfare may be similar to what compels or convinces humans to do the same thing. If not birds, chimps. The debate about free will are poetic in nature, imo. It's a matter of what we call things and how feel about them. Less so about what things are.
- air7 6y ago
  I always feel like the gloomy conclusion that we humans have no free will is always just two logical jumps away and we just prefer not to take them.
  - jasperry 6y ago
    All meaningful choices are driven by motives. What makes life interesting is that, pressured by unpredictable stimuli from the outside world, we can understand ourselves better and find new ways to move toward our goals. The control we have over our destiny comes from our ability to adapt and grow that way, not from the fact that our brain can somehow flip random coins. The answer to this possibly ill-posed question about "free will" doesn't need to make us gloomy; it doesn't need to have any bearing on how we feel about our life.
  - yetihehe 6y ago
    I like the idea of hitting people who say we have no free will. I tried it once, but it's counter-productive for discussion. Subject was more occupied with the fact of hitting him than with continuing discusussion if my action should have consequences or not (no free will = I didn't do it out of my own will, so why should I suffer consequences).
    - watwut 6y ago
      Possibly the subject war preprogrammed to seek punishment after being hit?
      - yetihehe 6y ago
        No, he was totally stumped, did not speak with me that evening and later said that he still doesn't know why I hit him. We were drunk at the time and philosophical discussions between drunk people are rarely valuable in my experience.
    - s1artibartfast 6y ago
      I think your problem is that you assume free will is a prerequisite for accountability, consequences, or justice. When my computer breaks, I either fix it or replace it. I don't ask if the computer actively chose to break. Assume there is a robot programmed to walk around punching people, do you ignore it because it isn't making choices? Similarly, if a person is walking around punching people due to a combination of random and deterministic factors (no free will), do you ignore them?
- celim307 6y ago
  We are just the biological process whose end result is the singularity. We are the stepping stone for the final consciousness
  - dalbasal 6y ago
    Perhaps for the first consciousness.
clairity 6y ago
while you make an interesting point at the end, that framing seems to be jumping the gun (something you rightfully warned against in relation to deterministic vs random, downthread). political conflict is much more complex and has many more gradations than just peace or war. on the "elephant queen" documentary, the narrator noted that the bulls rarely ever fight, but rather, upon meeting have a quick "discussion" whereby the lower status bull defers to the higher status bull and then they share some food to cement the relationship (not unlike a lot of human interactions). war is rare because it's so costly, no matter the pre- or post-hoc justification. just yesterday, i watch 3 hawks in the skies over my LA neighborhood (where hawks are rarely seen in the middle of the day). it seemed like 2 of them were chasing an interloper away, but it could just as well have been them hanging out for awhile on the prevailing winds and then deciding to go somewhere else after a bit. it's hard to know what's going on with a few minutes of observation. it was quite interesting to watch nevertheless! also, the issue with personification (which we tend to be overly concerned about) is not that we see our own behaviors in other animals, but that we become certain about the cause and effect for those other animals.
- dalbasal 6y ago
  What's the frame you find premature?
  - watwut 6y ago
    Not him but: > the ways that we rationalize our warfare, tribalism and such cannot actually be the reason for war It can. War is just using violence to get what you want or need. It is not something special. Animals being violent do not prove anything about our reasons for war.
    - dalbasal 6y ago
      War is a specific behaviour, more complex than just violence. It has all sorts of characteristics.
      - 6y ago
naringas 6y ago
i'd go as far as saying that most (even all?) rationalization is post-fact. If you can reason a plan and then follow it is because of past experience, you've done similar things before.
DFHippie 6y ago
This comment presupposes that we know more about consciousness and what beings are conscious than I think is justified. Also what beings are capable of rationalizations.
s1artibartfast 6y ago
The warfare predates even our ability to formulate such rationalizations. This has a lot of applicability in our personal lives. Is the reason I did X really Y, or is Y a post fact rationalization A hypothesis that I find very fascinating is that all consciousness is a post fact process, and that free will and control are illusory.
- eternalban 6y ago
  You are ruling out the possibility of unconscious (in the Jungian sense) and subconscious components of human will.
  - s1artibartfast 6y ago
    Correct, this is my deterministic take.
    - eternalban 6y ago
      So, - the un-conscious processes are fully deterministic. - all consciousness is a post fact [deterministic] process. - [thus] free will and control are illusory. The first thing that jumps out here is: what purpose does consciousness serve in this system? You have effectively reduced consciousness to the status of the appendix of the psyche: an entirely useless thing with the defining feature of having an entirely erroneous perception of the state of affairs. Related to that then is the fact of the existence of a boundary between conscious and subconscious content of the psyche. I assert that your position compels you to hold the very boundary between consciousness and subconsciousness to be "illusory" as well. It is in fact this 'illusion' of 'being' that has driven your ego to pretend to godlike powers such as choice, and will. Are we even having this conversation? ;)
      - s1artibartfast 6y ago
        >The first thing that jumps out here is: what purpose does consciousness serve in this system I dont know, but could throw out a few ideas. One is that consciousness is part of a post processing step for memory storage, abstract analysis, or feedback loops. Another possibility is that is an unnecessary artifact or emergent property, more the laryngeal nerve than the appendix of the brain. >I assert that your position compels you to hold the very boundary between consciousness and subconsciousness to be "illusory" as well. I don't think that the boundary is illusory as much as arbitrary, from a functional perspective. The Ego is clearly not aware of processing below a certain level, but where that level lies is meaningless to an outside observer. The biology of consciousness is a funny thing. Brain imaging has been able to detect what decision a person makes up to seven seconds before they are conscious of it [1]. You can perform a hemispherectomy removing half of the brain and people are still conscious.[2] IF the removed half was put in a second body, could it be conscious as well?? As far as I am aware, there is no scientific evidence for free will, and no plausible mechanism is physics. [1] https://www.wired.com/2008/04/mind-decision/ https://www.wired.com/2008/04/mind-decision/ [2] https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/treatments/17092-hemispherectomy#:~:text=Hemispherectomy%20is%20a%20surgical%20procedure,hemisphere%20from%20the%20unaffected%20side https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/treatments/17092-hemis....

HenryKissinger 6y ago

Are you saying that humans are partially automatons pre-programmed to behave in certain specific ways in certain situations? What are the implications of a theory like that for free will?

vczf 6y ago
Not GP, but my understanding is that free will is weak, not strong. You can suppress a desire to eat a donut (requires willpower) but can't prevent the thought/desire from arising on its own when presented with the stimulus. Similarly, we can suppress the desire to go to war after a provocation. However, we can't choose to not feel furious, at least for an instant. Thoughts and feeling tend to arise on their own, and free will is about whether we accept or reject them.
- nitrogen 6y ago
  Free will is itself still just an electrochemical process running in a physical brain. It's subjectively real, but the inputs that drive that subjective feeling are still either deterministic or random.
  - dalbasal 6y ago
    "either deterministic or random" is a possibly dangerous dichotomy. Some things are neither determined nor random, in the "arbitrary" sense of the term. A child that grows up in a musical household is more likely to become a musician. That's neither random nor determined. In populations, or over repeated instances, these can resolve to near deterministic results. At the individual level, they are more random seeming.
    - _0ffh 6y ago
      Don't know about the danger in there, but what else would you want to add to the mix besides determinism and randomness? I don't know of anything else that could possibly have any influence, unless you want to go supernatural.
      - AgentMatt 6y ago
        I share the sentiment of the parent with regards to "either deterministic or random" sounding off to me. I wanted to propose "stochastic" as a better term, but apparently "random" and "stochastic" are synonyms. [1] What it comes down to is that "random" to me has a connotation of arbitrary, unpredictable. Whereas "stochastic" to me suggests a deterministic process with random influences. So maybe the sentiment is better expressed as making sure it is clear that deterministic and random are the two extremes of a continuum, rather than an either/or distinction. [1] https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/114373/whats-the-difference-between-stochastic-and-random https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/114373/whats-the-di...
        dalbasal 6y ago
        That is what I meant, which is why I said "in the arbitrary sense." I think our language is lacking here. In technical terms, neither random nor stochastic imply evenly distributed. In casual conversation, "random" does. "Emergent" may be a better term for what I meant. Randomness (in the casual sense) is an ingredient in a stochastic process leading to non-random, even effectively deterministic results. The comment I was replying to: "the inputs that drive that subjective feeling are still either deterministic or random." The ingredients which lead someone to suddenly sing a son apropos of nothing (seemingly random/arbitrary) are the same as those leading someone to pull their finger away from a flame... seemingly deterministic.
- laumars 6y ago
  What makes you decide you want to surprise the desire to eat the donut? Is that free will or was that impulse also determined from other stimulus such as body shaming, underlying health problems or financial hardship preventing one from impulse buying? I do think if you unravel how every decision is made and the origins behind those opinions then you ultimately end up with every reaction being a result of either biology or circumstance.
  - vczf 6y ago
    Emotions, typically. Most decisions are made with emotional compute, influenced by biology, past experience, and present psychological state. At the same time, being mindful and observing those emotions (predicted pleasure from the flavor, predicted guilt...) does interrupt that emotional processing and allow a "decision" to be reached in a completely different way. Free will may only exist subjectively, but mindfulness does free the self from the emotional decision-making of the monkey brain.
    - laumars 6y ago
      But you’ve also cited that emotions are the result of stimulus. Both hunger and anger (in the examples you’ve given) are the result of conditions external to ones free will. The positive spin on this is if we are going to apply a software development mindset to free will then you can also argue that the value of software isn’t its sentience but it’s usefulness. For example computer games don’t need sophisticated AI to be enjoyable. So however we argue the definition of free will, that shouldn’t take anything away from the experience of life.
marcosdumay 6y ago
Hum... I can't tell if you are sarcastic. The internet really sucks this way. But if not, well, have you really never noticed? And yeah, theories of free will better support only partial freedom, otherwise they have no chance.
dalbasal 6y ago
That's some feisty old philosophical language.... To put it in more poetic terms (Leonard Cohen's), I think free will is overrated. We very often act because because we are compelled to act, or not to act. Back to the original topic or bird warfare... What I mean is that whatever compels (or maybe convinces) woodpeckers to warfare may be similar to what compels or convinces humans to do the same thing. If not birds, chimps. The debate about free will are poetic in nature, imo. It's a matter of what we call things and how feel about them. Less so about what things are.
air7 6y ago
I always feel like the gloomy conclusion that we humans have no free will is always just two logical jumps away and we just prefer not to take them.
- jasperry 6y ago
  All meaningful choices are driven by motives. What makes life interesting is that, pressured by unpredictable stimuli from the outside world, we can understand ourselves better and find new ways to move toward our goals. The control we have over our destiny comes from our ability to adapt and grow that way, not from the fact that our brain can somehow flip random coins. The answer to this possibly ill-posed question about "free will" doesn't need to make us gloomy; it doesn't need to have any bearing on how we feel about our life.
- yetihehe 6y ago
  I like the idea of hitting people who say we have no free will. I tried it once, but it's counter-productive for discussion. Subject was more occupied with the fact of hitting him than with continuing discusussion if my action should have consequences or not (no free will = I didn't do it out of my own will, so why should I suffer consequences).
  - watwut 6y ago
    Possibly the subject war preprogrammed to seek punishment after being hit?
    - yetihehe 6y ago
      No, he was totally stumped, did not speak with me that evening and later said that he still doesn't know why I hit him. We were drunk at the time and philosophical discussions between drunk people are rarely valuable in my experience.
  - s1artibartfast 6y ago
    I think your problem is that you assume free will is a prerequisite for accountability, consequences, or justice. When my computer breaks, I either fix it or replace it. I don't ask if the computer actively chose to break. Assume there is a robot programmed to walk around punching people, do you ignore it because it isn't making choices? Similarly, if a person is walking around punching people due to a combination of random and deterministic factors (no free will), do you ignore them?
celim307 6y ago
We are just the biological process whose end result is the singularity. We are the stepping stone for the final consciousness
- dalbasal 6y ago
  Perhaps for the first consciousness.

clairity 6y ago

while you make an interesting point at the end, that framing seems to be jumping the gun (something you rightfully warned against in relation to deterministic vs random, downthread). political conflict is much more complex and has many more gradations than just peace or war. on the "elephant queen" documentary, the narrator noted that the bulls rarely ever fight, but rather, upon meeting have a quick "discussion" whereby the lower status bull defers to the higher status bull and then they share some food to cement the relationship (not unlike a lot of human interactions). war is rare because it's so costly, no matter the pre- or post-hoc justification. just yesterday, i watch 3 hawks in the skies over my LA neighborhood (where hawks are rarely seen in the middle of the day). it seemed like 2 of them were chasing an interloper away, but it could just as well have been them hanging out for awhile on the prevailing winds and then deciding to go somewhere else after a bit. it's hard to know what's going on with a few minutes of observation. it was quite interesting to watch nevertheless! also, the issue with personification (which we tend to be overly concerned about) is not that we see our own behaviors in other animals, but that we become certain about the cause and effect for those other animals.

dalbasal 6y ago
What's the frame you find premature?
- watwut 6y ago
  Not him but: > the ways that we rationalize our warfare, tribalism and such cannot actually be the reason for war It can. War is just using violence to get what you want or need. It is not something special. Animals being violent do not prove anything about our reasons for war.
  - dalbasal 6y ago
    War is a specific behaviour, more complex than just violence. It has all sorts of characteristics.
    - 6y ago

naringas 6y ago

i'd go as far as saying that most (even all?) rationalization is post-fact. If you can reason a plan and then follow it is because of past experience, you've done similar things before.

DFHippie 6y ago

This comment presupposes that we know more about consciousness and what beings are conscious than I think is justified. Also what beings are capable of rationalizations.

s1artibartfast 6y ago

The warfare predates even our ability to formulate such rationalizations. This has a lot of applicability in our personal lives. Is the reason I did X really Y, or is Y a post fact rationalization A hypothesis that I find very fascinating is that all consciousness is a post fact process, and that free will and control are illusory.

eternalban 6y ago
You are ruling out the possibility of unconscious (in the Jungian sense) and subconscious components of human will.
- s1artibartfast 6y ago
  Correct, this is my deterministic take.
  - eternalban 6y ago
    So, - the un-conscious processes are fully deterministic. - all consciousness is a post fact [deterministic] process. - [thus] free will and control are illusory. The first thing that jumps out here is: what purpose does consciousness serve in this system? You have effectively reduced consciousness to the status of the appendix of the psyche: an entirely useless thing with the defining feature of having an entirely erroneous perception of the state of affairs. Related to that then is the fact of the existence of a boundary between conscious and subconscious content of the psyche. I assert that your position compels you to hold the very boundary between consciousness and subconsciousness to be "illusory" as well. It is in fact this 'illusion' of 'being' that has driven your ego to pretend to godlike powers such as choice, and will. Are we even having this conversation? ;)
    - s1artibartfast 6y ago
      >The first thing that jumps out here is: what purpose does consciousness serve in this system I dont know, but could throw out a few ideas. One is that consciousness is part of a post processing step for memory storage, abstract analysis, or feedback loops. Another possibility is that is an unnecessary artifact or emergent property, more the laryngeal nerve than the appendix of the brain. >I assert that your position compels you to hold the very boundary between consciousness and subconsciousness to be "illusory" as well. I don't think that the boundary is illusory as much as arbitrary, from a functional perspective. The Ego is clearly not aware of processing below a certain level, but where that level lies is meaningless to an outside observer. The biology of consciousness is a funny thing. Brain imaging has been able to detect what decision a person makes up to seven seconds before they are conscious of it [1]. You can perform a hemispherectomy removing half of the brain and people are still conscious.[2] IF the removed half was put in a second body, could it be conscious as well?? As far as I am aware, there is no scientific evidence for free will, and no plausible mechanism is physics. [1] https://www.wired.com/2008/04/mind-decision/ https://www.wired.com/2008/04/mind-decision/ [2] https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/treatments/17092-hemispherectomy#:~:text=Hemispherectomy%20is%20a%20surgical%20procedure,hemisphere%20from%20the%20unaffected%20side https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/treatments/17092-hemis....