8 ms·

What you can’t imagine clearly, you value less

221 points by dnetesn 4y ago

telesilla 4y ago
From what I know about the brain, it is more of a prediction machine than anything else, based on prior input. It seems reasonable for the majority to be unconcerned with what cannot be reasonably predicted, and as the article states, for artists to imagine possible futures on our behalf.
- pixl97 4y ago
  I'd say two things. Filter and predict. Both of these things are done to conserve energy and survive.
  - pmichaud 4y ago
    My guess is that filtering is downstream of prediction, because filtering is making a prediction about which input will be useful, then acting on that prediction.
    - theptip 4y ago
      I think the Predictive Processing model would describe it as each layer only signaling “surprisal” to the layer above when the input diverges from the prediction. You could call this filtering if you like, or just an efficient delta representation.
- hypertele-Xii 4y ago
  Artists aren't limited to possible futures though, I'd encourage more of them to imagine the impossible, as well.
  - coldtea 4y ago
    The impossible as opposed to the merely not plausible, isn't really alluring for art, as it's neither a depiction of what's there (art as mirror), nor a warning (artist as Cassandra or sensitive guard), and not even a call to arms (art as politics, utopia). In other words, it doesn't relate to the artist and us. It only relates when there's a thread that connects what's imagined to where we are, where we might be, or where we want to go.
    - lostmsu 4y ago
      Obviously false statement, given the genre of fiction. Also, objective impossible is wildly different from any individual subjective one.
      - coldtea 4y ago
        >Obviously false statement, given the genre of fiction. Obviously we are aware of the genre of fiction. Or science fiction for that matter. Or superhero comics, or supernatural stories, and so on. So my point wasn't that e.g. vampire fiction doesn't exist or isn't interesting to writers and reader. But nothing in the genre of fiction is really about the impossible. That is just metaphor and plot device for what was, is, or can be. If there's a superhero with laser eyes and super-strength, it's not about the superhero, but about the idea of heroism, the responsibility of power, the connections with people, the repercusions of actions, and so on. It's the connection with the existing and the possible that makes it interesting. The non-realistic part is just background.
        lostmsu 4y ago
        Art is background. Without background Romeo and Juliet is just "love could be a strong feeling", and Back to the Future is "time travel has an unsolved grandfather paradox".
        coldtea 4y ago
        You got it backwards here. The heart of the art is in the intra-personal conflicts and human aspect observations, and the skeleton is the plot. The background is just (literally) a backdrop. Which is why you can set Romeo and Juliet in 20th century America, or Antigone in space - as many have done, and the heart of the work is still there just fine.
club_tropical 4y ago
Behold, one of the most dangerous and toxic forms of stupid: the LABCOAT-FLASHER. Do not fall for the verbal trickeries and hypotheticals - they are the syntactic sugar masking various POISONS: 1) There is no “you” that is meaningfully apart from “your brain”. This trickery is meant to dissociate you from your body and backdoor sneak-in the labcoat-flasher as a co-conspiritor against yourself. It is every bit as gaslighting as a mom saying “why your hands don’t want to clean your room”. 2) Crystal ball, aka “if you knew you wouldn’t get caught” or “if you knew a child would get harmed”. These are always bad faith, 100% or the time, no exceptions. Nobody has ever experienced a crystal ball like this. NO GOD, of ANY faith, has ever made guarantees like this. The only thing this trickery is meant to serve is for the labcoat-flasher to control the imaginary future via the imaginary crystal ball and PROSECUTE YOU NOW for transgressions in his imagination. This is the girlfriend mad you for cheating on her in her dream and demanding you grovel at her feet for an apology. 3) This one is harder, because it sounds good, but it is worth making explicit because it is used against you as a form of control: human egalitarianism. See, nobody actually believes this, not in the here and now among the living 7 billion humans let alone all the imaginary descendents for centuries to come. A true and complete belief in this would make you a LITERAL SLAVE, spending every second and every disposable income on sponsoring the mass of humanity unrelated to you. The labcoat-flasher himself doesn’t believe this either, but he hopes you won’t focus on him - no, he will start with your well-meaning and generous (if ultimately strictly-speaking untrue) belief that all humans should be equal and will take your benevolence, stretch it “to its logical conclusion” far beyond it was ever meant to go, wrap it up around your throat and CHOKE you with it. This is the girlfriend demanding you take a second job to buy her the $100,000 crocodile skin Hermes Birkin purse she wants because that is her love language and you said you cared about her- or do you not love her? Mendacious to its core, this kind of manipulative gaslighting rhetoric they boldly call “research” is the parochial pastime of labcoat-flashers like this Sangil “Arthur” Lee. It is a step in their vain chase for tenure or funding or some Young Researcher Award (TM). It never did and it never will have anything to do with reality or truth or any honest pursuit of such.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- 4y ago
chiefalchemist 4y ago
> If you’re smart, people say, you should work toward a good future, sacrificing fun and pleasure in the present. Yeah, this is the conventional wisdom, but that doesn't make it right. Life is a tricky beast. You can do "all the right things" - and many of us do - and still have suboptimal outcomes. Furthermore, thinking about the future is a luxury of leisure. That is, day to day, when the vast majority of your energy is focused on survival, the future is not a priority. It is literally the least of your worries. The future can't feed you, etc. Agreed, that's a cycle that is self-defeating. But breaking out of such a defensive shell is counter to how we're wired. Possible? Yes but extremely difficult under persistent pressure and immediate real life stress. Even in the First World there are plenty living a defensive lifestyle. The future? That's someone else's.
- kjkjadksj 4y ago
  The only truth is in personal hedonism I am convinced.
Trasmatta 4y ago
> In fact, having depression is generally much worse than having diabetes As a T1 diabetic, the fun part is that diabetes is highly correlated with depression. So it's very common for depression to follow diabetes. Sucks to have to deal with both. It's a vicious cycle, because depression makes it harder to manage your diabetes, and poorly managed diabetes is correlated with more severe depression symptoms. Not exactly an "either or" problem. I'd rather just have depression, because at least there would be hope for treatment and remission. My diabetes will never be cured.
- throwaway_51122 4y ago
  As a fellow T1 diabetic, I fully agree. I'd much rather have no diabetes and full-fat depression (assuming both conditions can be properly medicated) than the other way round - and I already have low-fat depression thanks to decades of untreated ADHD. A hypoglycemic "attack" can kill silently in the middle of the night. And trust me, I have way more frequent "suicidal" thoughts than hypos on an average day (quotes because I know I'm not going to follow through). Of course this isn't meant to be a pity party of who has it worse, this is more of a note to the author/readers. (Fortunately my ADHD diagnosis + medication seems to be helping a good bit.)
  - Trasmatta 4y ago
    Hugs to you. T1 diabetes is so awful and hard. The daily burden is something non diabetics just can never fully understand. It's something that's with you always. We understand the burden of living on the knife's edge of life and death better than almost anyone.
    - throwaway_51122 4y ago
      Thank you, hugs to you too :)
avgcorrection 4y ago
My brain isn’t into the future because of climate change, the threat of WWIII/nuclear war, The Economy, possible future pandemics like the one of 2020, and not being able to retire until I’m 70. But please do Gee Wiz me all you want about logical fallacies, nautil dot us.
- adhesive_wombat 4y ago
  > not being able to retire until I’m 70 I genuinely think that is optimistic. I'm not at all sure retirement will really be a thing in a couple of generations. Certainly the 20-40 year retirements that are dangled don't seem likely for many people.
  - avgcorrection 4y ago
    Well yes. Exactly.
PaulHoule 4y ago
Yeah, the kid who eats 2 marshmallows gets fat 30 years later, the one who doesn’t eat marshmallows at all ends up ding the best.
lob_it 4y ago
Willful ignorance explains methane with climate change, the opiod epidemic and even inferior calories and the correlation to obesity (high fructose corn syrup in beverages or where it does not belong for example). Many 21st century innovations replace/supersede/override/make moribund and verify why hypothesis, theory and fact was agreed to, just as they have done in centuries past. Working with incorrect data has all kinds of random effects. The lead in fuels could have lowered IQ enough for the brain to not even be in the present :p https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/20-of-the-greatest-blunders-in-science-in-the-last-20-years https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/20-of-the-grea... https://www.npr.org/2021/08/30/1031429212/the-world-has-finally-stopped-using-leaded-gasoline-algeria-used-the-last-stockp https://www.npr.org/2021/08/30/1031429212/the-world-has-fina... I kinda laughed at the fiction genre comments. Its a very simple analogy.... Doo doo comes out of my butt. Aliens have the same mouth and same ass :)
temptemptemp111 4y ago
MadScott 4y ago
"Lee and his colleagues confirmed this by looking at people’s brain activity with an fMRI when they’re making decisions about the future. They used a brain decoder to detect a “neural signature of the vividness of prospective thought” What twaddle. fMRI will tell you quite a bit about blood flow etc. but "brain decoder" is bullshit. It's like taking a thermal image of the primary PCB and saying you've just backed all of the operating system and secondary code out of the image. The author will continue to push the button, write down the number and have a career, but imagine the future harm they're doing by furthering such an appallingly fraudulent approach.
- joe__f 4y ago
  I've seen people make that analogy before and I do think it has merit. As far as I'm aware it's pretty much the standard approach in neuroscience though and not special to these authors
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
menotyou 4y ago
I am an aphant, I can not imagine anything. While I can appreciate to have a good income and always had good paying jobs, I was never really interested in making a career and becoming filthy rich. Possibly because I can not imagine myself in this situation. On the other hand I was always better then others on making long term strategic plans. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia
- alar44 4y ago
  I'm so sick of hearing this. You can imagine things. That's not even what Aphantasia is.
  - mathstuf 4y ago
    Sure. I have aphantasia too. I cannot, for the life of me, picture or accurately describe my mother's, wife's, or child's face from memory. They're as abstract as a random actor's face to me in those ways. I know details about them, but it's like remembering a list of items, not describing a picture I'm looking at. I can recognize them faster than others, but good luck getting a police sketch of them from me. What I do have are notions and feelings about things when I think about them. If you ask me my favorite foods, I have to sit and remember how I feel about various foods like some kind of rolodex (though over time I'll remember the items from repetition, any such rankings are like this). I don't know how to compare the "vividness" of such things beyond notions of "that seems familiar" or "I don't remember ever encountering that", so this article doesn't really feel like it's about me at all. Of course, I'm also one of the most patient people around, so maybe it's just that the difference between "2x later" and "1x now" is close enough for me to wait in more instances than most since they're both just evocations of feelings and notions rather than things I can literally visualize and compare like some mental "spot the differences" puzzle.
  - partomniscient 4y ago
    Why are you sick of it? Some people can't 'imagine' at all. The clue is in the name. Just because you can conceptualise without images doesn't mean you can imagine. Imagination without images is not imagination by definition. Its totally what aphantasia is. There's no picture, there's just an abstracted idea.
philip1209 4y ago
This seems like the prospective corollary to the more retrospective "failed simulation effect": https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/rZXcwEgXWbHjLemAM/the-failed-simulation-effect-and-its-implications-for-the https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/rZXcwEgXWbHjLemAM/the-failed...
sniperjoe360 4y ago
The way I see it, this whole article seems to reframe the age old debate between utilitarians and deontologists (moralists) He tries to bridge the two philosophies by suggesting a more vivid imagination of the future consequences increases the present utility. Then you will do what you ought to do, not just out of duty, but also out of a better appreciation of how to maximize future utility for others. But in the end, such an approach is a bit unsatisfying. Like the trolley problem, such a framing of consequences in purely utilitarian terms comes out ultimately to be value judgement on the threshold of utility that would cause you to act. A value judgement is subjective, and how do you make the subjective decision? Utilitarian or deontology? Do I have a solution? Absolutely not. Just pointing out this just a reframing of an old dilemma.
heynowheynow 4y ago
Regan didn't understand social services or mental healthcare, and so eliminated them.

221 points by dnetesn 4y ago

From what I know about the brain, it is more of a prediction machine than anything else, based on prior input. It seems reasonable for the majority to be unconcerned with what cannot be reasonably predicted, and as the article states, for artists to imagine possible futures on our behalf.

pixl97 4y ago
I'd say two things. Filter and predict. Both of these things are done to conserve energy and survive.
- pmichaud 4y ago
  My guess is that filtering is downstream of prediction, because filtering is making a prediction about which input will be useful, then acting on that prediction.
  - theptip 4y ago
    I think the Predictive Processing model would describe it as each layer only signaling “surprisal” to the layer above when the input diverges from the prediction. You could call this filtering if you like, or just an efficient delta representation.
hypertele-Xii 4y ago
Artists aren't limited to possible futures though, I'd encourage more of them to imagine the impossible, as well.
- coldtea 4y ago
  The impossible as opposed to the merely not plausible, isn't really alluring for art, as it's neither a depiction of what's there (art as mirror), nor a warning (artist as Cassandra or sensitive guard), and not even a call to arms (art as politics, utopia). In other words, it doesn't relate to the artist and us. It only relates when there's a thread that connects what's imagined to where we are, where we might be, or where we want to go.
  - lostmsu 4y ago
    Obviously false statement, given the genre of fiction. Also, objective impossible is wildly different from any individual subjective one.
    - coldtea 4y ago
      >Obviously false statement, given the genre of fiction. Obviously we are aware of the genre of fiction. Or science fiction for that matter. Or superhero comics, or supernatural stories, and so on. So my point wasn't that e.g. vampire fiction doesn't exist or isn't interesting to writers and reader. But nothing in the genre of fiction is really about the impossible. That is just metaphor and plot device for what was, is, or can be. If there's a superhero with laser eyes and super-strength, it's not about the superhero, but about the idea of heroism, the responsibility of power, the connections with people, the repercusions of actions, and so on. It's the connection with the existing and the possible that makes it interesting. The non-realistic part is just background.
      - lostmsu 4y ago
        Art is background. Without background Romeo and Juliet is just "love could be a strong feeling", and Back to the Future is "time travel has an unsolved grandfather paradox".
        coldtea 4y ago
        You got it backwards here. The heart of the art is in the intra-personal conflicts and human aspect observations, and the skeleton is the plot. The background is just (literally) a backdrop. Which is why you can set Romeo and Juliet in 20th century America, or Antigone in space - as many have done, and the heart of the work is still there just fine.

club_tropical 4y ago

Behold, one of the most dangerous and toxic forms of stupid: the LABCOAT-FLASHER. Do not fall for the verbal trickeries and hypotheticals - they are the syntactic sugar masking various POISONS: 1) There is no “you” that is meaningfully apart from “your brain”. This trickery is meant to dissociate you from your body and backdoor sneak-in the labcoat-flasher as a co-conspiritor against yourself. It is every bit as gaslighting as a mom saying “why your hands don’t want to clean your room”. 2) Crystal ball, aka “if you knew you wouldn’t get caught” or “if you knew a child would get harmed”. These are always bad faith, 100% or the time, no exceptions. Nobody has ever experienced a crystal ball like this. NO GOD, of ANY faith, has ever made guarantees like this. The only thing this trickery is meant to serve is for the labcoat-flasher to control the imaginary future via the imaginary crystal ball and PROSECUTE YOU NOW for transgressions in his imagination. This is the girlfriend mad you for cheating on her in her dream and demanding you grovel at her feet for an apology. 3) This one is harder, because it sounds good, but it is worth making explicit because it is used against you as a form of control: human egalitarianism. See, nobody actually believes this, not in the here and now among the living 7 billion humans let alone all the imaginary descendents for centuries to come. A true and complete belief in this would make you a LITERAL SLAVE, spending every second and every disposable income on sponsoring the mass of humanity unrelated to you. The labcoat-flasher himself doesn’t believe this either, but he hopes you won’t focus on him - no, he will start with your well-meaning and generous (if ultimately strictly-speaking untrue) belief that all humans should be equal and will take your benevolence, stretch it “to its logical conclusion” far beyond it was ever meant to go, wrap it up around your throat and CHOKE you with it. This is the girlfriend demanding you take a second job to buy her the $100,000 crocodile skin Hermes Birkin purse she wants because that is her love language and you said you cared about her- or do you not love her? Mendacious to its core, this kind of manipulative gaslighting rhetoric they boldly call “research” is the parochial pastime of labcoat-flashers like this Sangil “Arthur” Lee. It is a step in their vain chase for tenure or funding or some Young Researcher Award (TM). It never did and it never will have anything to do with reality or truth or any honest pursuit of such.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
4y ago

chiefalchemist 4y ago

> If you’re smart, people say, you should work toward a good future, sacrificing fun and pleasure in the present. Yeah, this is the conventional wisdom, but that doesn't make it right. Life is a tricky beast. You can do "all the right things" - and many of us do - and still have suboptimal outcomes. Furthermore, thinking about the future is a luxury of leisure. That is, day to day, when the vast majority of your energy is focused on survival, the future is not a priority. It is literally the least of your worries. The future can't feed you, etc. Agreed, that's a cycle that is self-defeating. But breaking out of such a defensive shell is counter to how we're wired. Possible? Yes but extremely difficult under persistent pressure and immediate real life stress. Even in the First World there are plenty living a defensive lifestyle. The future? That's someone else's.

kjkjadksj 4y ago
The only truth is in personal hedonism I am convinced.

Trasmatta 4y ago

> In fact, having depression is generally much worse than having diabetes As a T1 diabetic, the fun part is that diabetes is highly correlated with depression. So it's very common for depression to follow diabetes. Sucks to have to deal with both. It's a vicious cycle, because depression makes it harder to manage your diabetes, and poorly managed diabetes is correlated with more severe depression symptoms. Not exactly an "either or" problem. I'd rather just have depression, because at least there would be hope for treatment and remission. My diabetes will never be cured.

throwaway_51122 4y ago
As a fellow T1 diabetic, I fully agree. I'd much rather have no diabetes and full-fat depression (assuming both conditions can be properly medicated) than the other way round - and I already have low-fat depression thanks to decades of untreated ADHD. A hypoglycemic "attack" can kill silently in the middle of the night. And trust me, I have way more frequent "suicidal" thoughts than hypos on an average day (quotes because I know I'm not going to follow through). Of course this isn't meant to be a pity party of who has it worse, this is more of a note to the author/readers. (Fortunately my ADHD diagnosis + medication seems to be helping a good bit.)
- Trasmatta 4y ago
  Hugs to you. T1 diabetes is so awful and hard. The daily burden is something non diabetics just can never fully understand. It's something that's with you always. We understand the burden of living on the knife's edge of life and death better than almost anyone.
  - throwaway_51122 4y ago
    Thank you, hugs to you too :)

avgcorrection 4y ago

My brain isn’t into the future because of climate change, the threat of WWIII/nuclear war, The Economy, possible future pandemics like the one of 2020, and not being able to retire until I’m 70. But please do Gee Wiz me all you want about logical fallacies, nautil dot us.

adhesive_wombat 4y ago
> not being able to retire until I’m 70 I genuinely think that is optimistic. I'm not at all sure retirement will really be a thing in a couple of generations. Certainly the 20-40 year retirements that are dangled don't seem likely for many people.
- avgcorrection 4y ago
  Well yes. Exactly.

PaulHoule 4y ago

Yeah, the kid who eats 2 marshmallows gets fat 30 years later, the one who doesn’t eat marshmallows at all ends up ding the best.

lob_it 4y ago

Willful ignorance explains methane with climate change, the opiod epidemic and even inferior calories and the correlation to obesity (high fructose corn syrup in beverages or where it does not belong for example). Many 21st century innovations replace/supersede/override/make moribund and verify why hypothesis, theory and fact was agreed to, just as they have done in centuries past. Working with incorrect data has all kinds of random effects. The lead in fuels could have lowered IQ enough for the brain to not even be in the present :p https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/20-of-the-greatest-blunders-in-science-in-the-last-20-years https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/20-of-the-grea... https://www.npr.org/2021/08/30/1031429212/the-world-has-finally-stopped-using-leaded-gasoline-algeria-used-the-last-stockp https://www.npr.org/2021/08/30/1031429212/the-world-has-fina... I kinda laughed at the fiction genre comments. Its a very simple analogy.... Doo doo comes out of my butt. Aliens have the same mouth and same ass :)

temptemptemp111 4y ago

MadScott 4y ago

"Lee and his colleagues confirmed this by looking at people’s brain activity with an fMRI when they’re making decisions about the future. They used a brain decoder to detect a “neural signature of the vividness of prospective thought” What twaddle. fMRI will tell you quite a bit about blood flow etc. but "brain decoder" is bullshit. It's like taking a thermal image of the primary PCB and saying you've just backed all of the operating system and secondary code out of the image. The author will continue to push the button, write down the number and have a career, but imagine the future harm they're doing by furthering such an appallingly fraudulent approach.

joe__f 4y ago
I've seen people make that analogy before and I do think it has merit. As far as I'm aware it's pretty much the standard approach in neuroscience though and not special to these authors
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

menotyou 4y ago

I am an aphant, I can not imagine anything. While I can appreciate to have a good income and always had good paying jobs, I was never really interested in making a career and becoming filthy rich. Possibly because I can not imagine myself in this situation. On the other hand I was always better then others on making long term strategic plans. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia

alar44 4y ago
I'm so sick of hearing this. You can imagine things. That's not even what Aphantasia is.
- mathstuf 4y ago
  Sure. I have aphantasia too. I cannot, for the life of me, picture or accurately describe my mother's, wife's, or child's face from memory. They're as abstract as a random actor's face to me in those ways. I know details about them, but it's like remembering a list of items, not describing a picture I'm looking at. I can recognize them faster than others, but good luck getting a police sketch of them from me. What I do have are notions and feelings about things when I think about them. If you ask me my favorite foods, I have to sit and remember how I feel about various foods like some kind of rolodex (though over time I'll remember the items from repetition, any such rankings are like this). I don't know how to compare the "vividness" of such things beyond notions of "that seems familiar" or "I don't remember ever encountering that", so this article doesn't really feel like it's about me at all. Of course, I'm also one of the most patient people around, so maybe it's just that the difference between "2x later" and "1x now" is close enough for me to wait in more instances than most since they're both just evocations of feelings and notions rather than things I can literally visualize and compare like some mental "spot the differences" puzzle.
- partomniscient 4y ago
  Why are you sick of it? Some people can't 'imagine' at all. The clue is in the name. Just because you can conceptualise without images doesn't mean you can imagine. Imagination without images is not imagination by definition. Its totally what aphantasia is. There's no picture, there's just an abstracted idea.

philip1209 4y ago

This seems like the prospective corollary to the more retrospective "failed simulation effect": https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/rZXcwEgXWbHjLemAM/the-failed-simulation-effect-and-its-implications-for-the https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/rZXcwEgXWbHjLemAM/the-failed...

sniperjoe360 4y ago

The way I see it, this whole article seems to reframe the age old debate between utilitarians and deontologists (moralists) He tries to bridge the two philosophies by suggesting a more vivid imagination of the future consequences increases the present utility. Then you will do what you ought to do, not just out of duty, but also out of a better appreciation of how to maximize future utility for others. But in the end, such an approach is a bit unsatisfying. Like the trolley problem, such a framing of consequences in purely utilitarian terms comes out ultimately to be value judgement on the threshold of utility that would cause you to act. A value judgement is subjective, and how do you make the subjective decision? Utilitarian or deontology? Do I have a solution? Absolutely not. Just pointing out this just a reframing of an old dilemma.

heynowheynow 4y ago

Regan didn't understand social services or mental healthcare, and so eliminated them.