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I wrote the post because I wanted to, but I didn't choose to want to.
by gamegoblin 4y ago
I wrote the post because I wanted to, but I didn't choose to want to.
- WalterBright 4y agoYou chose to write the post. You're not a hapless victim of your wants.
- AlexandrB 4y agoTo quote a song I like[1]: "Physics makes us all its bitches". [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isjKlXGSve0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isjKlXGSve0
- pdonis 4y agoPerhaps you didn't choose to want to, but that doesn't mean nobody can ever make choices, or even that nobody can ever make choices that can affect their wants.
- mbfg 4y agoPeople certainly make choices, and choices are important to you future and to people around you's future. The question is, did your conscience being have control over the choice you made, or did the meat sack make it.
- pdonis 4y agoThe conscious being is the meat sack: they are the same thing. So your question is based on a false premise.
- mbfg 4y agoI agree. I see the conscious as part of the meat sack that acts as a witness, a journaller of what the rest of the meat sack does. I only say that because for many people, they believe that consciousness has some control over what you do and what you think. That the conscious mind is what makes us "special". it makes us different than animals, for instance. And yes, perhaps our consciousness is more developed than animals in that we can notice what are meat sack does and journal it in a better way, but i see no evidence that it is in charge of anything.
- pdonis 4y ago> I see the conscious as part of the meat sack that acts as a witness, a journaller of what the rest of the meat sack does. That's not what our best current science about consciousness tell us. It tells us that consciousness is part of the process of what "the rest of the meat sack" does; that it's not possible to separate out a "witness" part that "journals" what the rest does. It's all one process.
- mbfg 4y agoyou can certainly separate what your ears and eyes are doing. You can separate what your conscious is doing to.
- hef19898 4y agoThat is some weird metaphysical shit. Or a weak excuse for a lack of impulse control.
- chronofar 4y agoThey didn't make an excuse for lack of impulse control at all, they simply claimed responsibility for the action while not taking responsibility for the thought, which is a perfectly reasonable, rational, and adaptive perspective.
- haswell 4y agoWhat is impulse control? The ability to make choices about actions based on some more adaptive criteria than the initial impulse itself. What is a choice in this context? A thought about weighing the costs of possible choices relative to their outcomes. What is lack of impulse control? Just a different thought, or the absence of the “right” thoughts. What are the right thoughts? Thoughts that we’ve formed thoughts about and “assigned” a particular status (by thinking). There is nothing metaphysical here and it all boils down to a really simple question: from where do thoughts arise? Scientists have observed activity in the brain that is associated with decision making firing up to 10 seconds before the subject became consciously aware of the decision. At a minimum, this raises serious questions about the nature of the decisions we make, and is understandably uncomfortable to consider.
- someweirdperson 4y agoMaybe you didn't want to write it, but only wanted to earn the karma? But of course you didn't choose to want to earn the karma either.