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You imply hacking human minds to be more acceptable than hacking computers?

• jokethrowaway 5y ago
  Absolutely. It's the human mind's responsibility not to be "hacked", by which I assume you mean exploited to e.g. mindlessly scroll Facebook all day. If most people are weak enough to become matrix-like slaves to the machine, so be it. I don't believe in free will and I don't think we need to preserve human life in a certain way (e.g. the way our ancestors lived). Sure, a lot of people will fail this test, or maybe they prefer to live their life like that. I don't care, that's on them, that's their choice - or, better, the way DNA and the environment shaped this human shell. If instead you wiretap my device, you're attacking my privacy and I don't have a way to defend myself. You are committing violence.
  • batch12 5y ago
    If you don't believe in free will, why should anyone care about your will to preserve your privacy? Sounds like you only believe in your own free will.
  • IncRnd 5y ago
    If you don't accept that you have free will, than nothing you write or say has any meaning.
    • Saptarishi 5y ago
      To be fair, I too have ended up thinking that free will probably does not exist. Yet everyone else and I will always continue to behave and live as if it existed, that is my consolation.
    • hanche 5y ago
      It may be possible to believe you don’t have free will, yet act like you do and to find meaning in life. After all, given how hard it is to even define “free will”, how can we know for sure whether we have it? Now recent research seems to indicate (note the weasel words) that we have less of this “free will” stuff than we like to think. Yet hopefully, if you dig a little deeper, we find something that qualifies as free will, even if we live in a deterministic world. Which we don,t quite; see quantum mechanics. But a free will based on QM seems no better. Who wants a “free will” based on randomness? Please forgive my ramblings. I may have been reading Daniel Dennett too much, most likely with too little understanding.
      • IncRnd 5y ago
        If you are capable of acting as if you have free will, that is the proof you have free will.
        • hanche 5y ago
          I certainly would like to think so, but the argument seems circular. These things are so hard to reason about!
    • MichaelZuo 5y ago
      What someone says or writes could provide information useful for predicting the future. That by definition has meaning.
      • IncRnd 5y ago
        That's my point - that there is free will, otherwise no prediction has meaning.
        • MichaelZuo 5y ago
          That does not follow. Reduction in entropy generation surely has meaning, it has thermodynamic consequences, regardless of any ‘free will’ here or there.
          • IncRnd 5y ago
            Of course it follows. It is specious to look at entropic consequences, when you should look at the existent will being exercised to predict those consequences. You can't predict unless you have the will to perform a prediction. Having such a will to act, is free will. As another example - You are able to freely exercise your will to comment or not to comment.
            • MichaelZuo 5y ago
              ‘You can't predict unless you have the will to perform a prediction.’ I’m fairly certain fish can predict the course of future events, to a fairly high degree of accuracy, in relation to seasonal changes in water temp, food density, etc… e.g. spawning salmon
              • IncRnd 5y ago
                That's comparing apples and oranges. Perhaps, fish have free will, but this conversation is about human beings, where we have the internal laboratory apparatus required for introspection and determination. We can create hypothesis and tests, then inspect results. We are directly able to test, through choice, to prove that we have free will. It is foolish to compare yourself to a fish, though your ability to compare your mentality to that of a fish was your free choice made from your own free will.
• labster 5y ago
  There are several industries built around hacking human minds: advertising, pay-to-win mobile games, political consulting, user engagement services like Facebook, and of course literature.
  • tkgally 5y ago
    > and of course literature Of course. And education.
    • FeepingCreature 5y ago
      Eh, by that metric `sudo apt-get install` is hacking your system.
• einpoklum 5y ago
  No, I'm suggesting people be a bit more critical in their choices of who are "us". They are both "us" in some senses and "not us" in others.