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Biology and especially neurobiology has made huge steps to understanding the brain and how human behavior comes to be. DNA (Genes are only a very small portion

Biology and especially neurobiology has made huge steps to understanding the brain and how human behavior comes to be. DNA (Genes are only a very small portion of our DNA, the interesting stuff happens in the other 95% of our DNA) interacts with the prenatal environment, the culture you grow up, the relationship with your parents, the levels of hormones in your blood, how warm you feel, how long ago your last meal was and many more factors to form human behavior. > And it leaves us with as much control over our ability to act as any other control No, there is no fundamental ability to control. We have some illusion of control. Don't mistake this for saying that humans can't change, we just have no control over how we change. Judges that decide over parole won't attribute their decision on the last time they ate, even if it is the single most important factor to their decision. It will be interesting to observe how society will react to this in the next 50 years when the science will become harder and harder to deny.

edmundsauto 5y ago
> Judges that decide over parole won't attribute their decision on the last time they ate, even if it is the single most important factor to their decision. This finding doesn't replicate[0]. In the original study, there was a more mundane explanation: "Defendants without representation have their hearings scheduled at the end of sessions, before breaks." You have much more confidence in the current research than I think is warranted. Genes are indeed a small portion of our DNA, but your statement that "the interesting stuff happens in the other 95%" is unbounded and poorly defined. Personally, I think we have some control over things, and probably less control than most people perceive themselves as happening. But this research is in its infancy and having trouble with basic replication, so holding a strong opinion is a recipe for making poor decisions off it. [0] https://www.annieduke.com/no-judges-dont-give-harsher-sentences-hungry-annies-newsletter-october-5-2018/ https://www.annieduke.com/no-judges-dont-give-harsher-senten...
- xorfish 5y ago
  Thanks for correcting the judge study. It seems that cases with a higher chance of success are also scheduled earlier as the time it takes is less certain. My understanding is that a portion of the remaining 95% are responsible for turning genes and whole chains of them on and off or something in between. There is no place in the physical world where this control could come from. The factors that influence are hugely complex and very hard to separate. Just because we do not understand how certain factors interact and influence our behavior doesn't mean we have control.
  - edmundsauto 5y ago
    Agreed! The really fascinating part to me is how we define control over ourselves. In the end, however, I suspect it doesn't matter - it's kind of like a reverse Pascal's Wager: it's better to think we have control, because otherwise why even try? Put a little differently, regardless of what the absolute truth resolves to - it's in my best interest to take the illusion of control.
    - xorfish 5y ago
      I think the world would be a better place if we accepted that we do not really have controll. Poverty and Crime are not moral failings. Presumably we would make the lives of such people far better if we attribute their missfortune to just bad luck. Redistributing wealth from people that got lucky is also simpler than if we'd attribute their success to their goodness.
      - edmundsauto 5y ago
        That's an interesting perspective. Are you saying that humanity as a whole would be better, if we built societal structures that acknowledge how much less control we have than we perceive? My comment was mostly about my own orientation towards the world. Maybe I do have control, maybe I don't - but I feel better (and hopefully have better outcomes) with the illusion of control/actual control, instead of letting go. OTOH, I also get a lot of stress relief from letting go and not trying to control things during meditation. Living is hard.
munk-a 5y ago
> No, there is no fundamental ability to control. We have some illusion of control. Don't mistake this for saying that humans can't change, we just have no control over how we change. Again - in a way this is something I entirely agree with but not in the important way. We are all automata in a society and society can attempt to fix broken components. Even if all your actions are just a result of past experiences - you yourself are no more meaningful and it's thus appropriate to assign you responsibility for your actions. If your experiences had shaped you differently then you'd probably make different ones - but you are who you are because of how you were shaped - and the you who is shaped in that manner is responsible for the actions you've taken. Hypothetical other yous that had slightly different experiences don't exist and are therefore irrelevant - but you're responsible for what you do.
- xorfish 5y ago
  > you yourself are no more meaningful and it's thus appropriate to assign you responsibility for your actions. I don't follow this. We don't blame people for actions when we think that they don't have control over these actions. If someone has their first epileptic episode while driving a car and they kill someone because of it, we understand that they had no control and don't hold them responsible for the accident. Why should it be different if the causes are more complex and harder to trace back?
  - munk-a 5y ago
    I think that that difference we draw - the line between having responsibility for your actions and not - is pretty arbitrary. I think it's good that it exists since when we're at our most vulnerable it exists to protect us from ourselves (and some people spend their entire lives in such a state if they have a debilitating developmental condition) - but it mostly exists to give all of us folks in society a good deal of comfort that if things ever go really off the rails we'll be given more of an allowance to recover - thus preventing some doom spiraling where feeling mentally unbalanced makes you paranoid about what you're going to mess up in your life which leads to more unbalancing. And, on the otherside, we are a funny animal that takes comfort in the fact that we control our own destinies so, even if we don't - we'd like to empower ourselves as if we were in some manner. At a basic level our misunderstanding might be the fact that the ability to choose equates responsibility - without any responsibility (good and bad) your choices have no power - choosing to not do the shitty thing lets you avoid a penalty and so you can be happy with yourself. This equation of choice and responsibility is why punishment is so necessary (both big-j Justice like cops jail and the like - and little-j justice like being shunned, not getting a raise and failing to find an equal partnership in a relationship) so responsibility exists to add meaning to our lives. In fact denying it to people permanently (i.e. the developmentally disabled) does come with a strong cost to their sense of self - a lot of folks who live in support systems can struggle to define themselves, but, at the same time, neurodiversity means that different folks can find contentness in different ways. It's all terribly complicated I think.
kiba 5y ago
The fact that we have no "free will" and that there's always a reason for our actions at the end of the day doesn't constitute useful advice for automata like us trying to do better in the world nonetheless. Except maybe in how we think about justice perhaps. But that's not useful now.
- xorfish 5y ago
  > Except maybe in how we think about justice perhaps. But that's not useful now. This is a big one. Income and wealth inequality is another one. The only reason why someone should have more than someone else is to incentivize to increase the total cake. But you probably can redistribute far more without reducing the total cake too much.

edmundsauto 5y ago

> Judges that decide over parole won't attribute their decision on the last time they ate, even if it is the single most important factor to their decision. This finding doesn't replicate[0]. In the original study, there was a more mundane explanation: "Defendants without representation have their hearings scheduled at the end of sessions, before breaks." You have much more confidence in the current research than I think is warranted. Genes are indeed a small portion of our DNA, but your statement that "the interesting stuff happens in the other 95%" is unbounded and poorly defined. Personally, I think we have some control over things, and probably less control than most people perceive themselves as happening. But this research is in its infancy and having trouble with basic replication, so holding a strong opinion is a recipe for making poor decisions off it. [0] https://www.annieduke.com/no-judges-dont-give-harsher-sentences-hungry-annies-newsletter-october-5-2018/ https://www.annieduke.com/no-judges-dont-give-harsher-senten...

xorfish 5y ago
Thanks for correcting the judge study. It seems that cases with a higher chance of success are also scheduled earlier as the time it takes is less certain. My understanding is that a portion of the remaining 95% are responsible for turning genes and whole chains of them on and off or something in between. There is no place in the physical world where this control could come from. The factors that influence are hugely complex and very hard to separate. Just because we do not understand how certain factors interact and influence our behavior doesn't mean we have control.
- edmundsauto 5y ago
  Agreed! The really fascinating part to me is how we define control over ourselves. In the end, however, I suspect it doesn't matter - it's kind of like a reverse Pascal's Wager: it's better to think we have control, because otherwise why even try? Put a little differently, regardless of what the absolute truth resolves to - it's in my best interest to take the illusion of control.
  - xorfish 5y ago
    I think the world would be a better place if we accepted that we do not really have controll. Poverty and Crime are not moral failings. Presumably we would make the lives of such people far better if we attribute their missfortune to just bad luck. Redistributing wealth from people that got lucky is also simpler than if we'd attribute their success to their goodness.
    - edmundsauto 5y ago
      That's an interesting perspective. Are you saying that humanity as a whole would be better, if we built societal structures that acknowledge how much less control we have than we perceive? My comment was mostly about my own orientation towards the world. Maybe I do have control, maybe I don't - but I feel better (and hopefully have better outcomes) with the illusion of control/actual control, instead of letting go. OTOH, I also get a lot of stress relief from letting go and not trying to control things during meditation. Living is hard.

munk-a 5y ago

> No, there is no fundamental ability to control. We have some illusion of control. Don't mistake this for saying that humans can't change, we just have no control over how we change. Again - in a way this is something I entirely agree with but not in the important way. We are all automata in a society and society can attempt to fix broken components. Even if all your actions are just a result of past experiences - you yourself are no more meaningful and it's thus appropriate to assign you responsibility for your actions. If your experiences had shaped you differently then you'd probably make different ones - but you are who you are because of how you were shaped - and the you who is shaped in that manner is responsible for the actions you've taken. Hypothetical other yous that had slightly different experiences don't exist and are therefore irrelevant - but you're responsible for what you do.

xorfish 5y ago
> you yourself are no more meaningful and it's thus appropriate to assign you responsibility for your actions. I don't follow this. We don't blame people for actions when we think that they don't have control over these actions. If someone has their first epileptic episode while driving a car and they kill someone because of it, we understand that they had no control and don't hold them responsible for the accident. Why should it be different if the causes are more complex and harder to trace back?
- munk-a 5y ago
  I think that that difference we draw - the line between having responsibility for your actions and not - is pretty arbitrary. I think it's good that it exists since when we're at our most vulnerable it exists to protect us from ourselves (and some people spend their entire lives in such a state if they have a debilitating developmental condition) - but it mostly exists to give all of us folks in society a good deal of comfort that if things ever go really off the rails we'll be given more of an allowance to recover - thus preventing some doom spiraling where feeling mentally unbalanced makes you paranoid about what you're going to mess up in your life which leads to more unbalancing. And, on the otherside, we are a funny animal that takes comfort in the fact that we control our own destinies so, even if we don't - we'd like to empower ourselves as if we were in some manner. At a basic level our misunderstanding might be the fact that the ability to choose equates responsibility - without any responsibility (good and bad) your choices have no power - choosing to not do the shitty thing lets you avoid a penalty and so you can be happy with yourself. This equation of choice and responsibility is why punishment is so necessary (both big-j Justice like cops jail and the like - and little-j justice like being shunned, not getting a raise and failing to find an equal partnership in a relationship) so responsibility exists to add meaning to our lives. In fact denying it to people permanently (i.e. the developmentally disabled) does come with a strong cost to their sense of self - a lot of folks who live in support systems can struggle to define themselves, but, at the same time, neurodiversity means that different folks can find contentness in different ways. It's all terribly complicated I think.

kiba 5y ago

The fact that we have no "free will" and that there's always a reason for our actions at the end of the day doesn't constitute useful advice for automata like us trying to do better in the world nonetheless. Except maybe in how we think about justice perhaps. But that's not useful now.

xorfish 5y ago
> Except maybe in how we think about justice perhaps. But that's not useful now. This is a big one. Income and wealth inequality is another one. The only reason why someone should have more than someone else is to incentivize to increase the total cake. But you probably can redistribute far more without reducing the total cake too much.