6 ms·

that is absolutely fascinating and also makes me extremely uncomfortable

incangold 3y ago
Same. We are so, so profoundly not what it feels like we are, to most of us anyway. I am morbidly curious how people are going to creatively explain away the more challenging insights AI gives us in to what consciousness is.
ly3xqhl8g9 3y ago
It's probably way worse than we can imagine. Reading/listening to someone like Robert Sapolsky [1] makes me laugh I could have ever hallucinated about such a muddy, not even wrong concept as "free will". Furthermore, between the brain and, say, the liver there is only a difference of speed/data integrity inasmuch as one cares to look for information processing as basal cognition: neurons firing in the brain, voltage-gated ion channels and gap junctions controlling bioelectrical gradients in the liver, and almost everywhere in the body. Why does only the brain has a "feels like" sensation? The liver may have one as well, but the brain being an autarchic dictator perhaps suppresses the feeling of the liver, it certainly abstracts away the thousands of highly specialized decisions the liver takes each second solving adequately the complex problem space of blood processing. Perhaps Thomas Nagel shouldn't have asked "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" [2] but what is it like to be a liver. [1] "Robert Sapolsky: Justice and morality in the absence of free will", https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhvAAvwS-UA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhvAAvwS-UA [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_It_Like_to_Be_a_Bat%3F https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_It_Like_to_Be_a_Bat%3F
- sclarisse 3y ago
  The biggest problem with the current popular idea of “free will” is that people think it means they’re ineffably unpredictable. They’re uncomfortable with the notion that if you were to simulate their brain in sufficient detail, you could predict thoughts and reaction. They take refuge in pseudoscientific mumbling about the links to the Quantum, for they have heard it is special and unpredictable. And that’s just the polar opposite of having a meaningful will at all. It is good that you are pretty much deterministic. You shouldn’t be deciding meaningful things randomly. If you made 20 copies of yourself and asked them to support or oppose some essential and important political question (about human rights, or war, or what-have-you) they should all come down on the same side. What kind of a Will would that be that chose randomly?
  - MarcoZavala 3y ago
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- MarcoZavala 3y ago
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nomel 3y ago
This is why I suggest that curious individuals try a hallucinogen at least once*. It really makes the fragility of our perception, and how it’s held up mostly by itself, very apparent. * in a safe setting with support, of course.
- Aerbil313 3y ago
  I can confirm lucid dreaming does the same.
causi 3y ago
Neurology is full of very uncomfortable facts. Here's one for you: there are patients who believe their arm is gone even though it's still there. When the doctor asks whose arm that is, they reply it must be someone else's. The brain can simply refuse to know something, and will adopt whatever delusions and contortions are necessary. Which of course leads to the realization that there could be things we're all incapable of knowing. There could be things right in front of our faces we simply refuse to perceive and we'd never know it.
- mcguire 3y ago
  Oliver Sacks' A Leg To Stand On is a lengthy discussion of that, including his own experiences after breaking a leg---IIRC, at one point after surgery but before he starts physical therapy, he wakes up convinced that a medical student has played a prank by removing his leg and attaching one from a cadaver, or at least sticking a cadaver's leg under his blanket. (ISTR he tries to throw it out of bed and ends up on the floor.)
- ly3xqhl8g9 3y ago
  Famously, our nose is literally right in front of our faces and the brain simply "post-processes" it out of the view. After breaking my arm, split in two, pinching the nerve and making me unable to move it for about a year, I still feel as if the arm is "someone else's", as if I am moving an object in VR, not something which is "me" or "mine".
tokamak-teapot 3y ago
Just wait until you notice how much humans do this day to day
Joeri 3y ago
If that makes you uncomfortable you definitely should not go reading the evidence supporting the notion that conscious free will is an illusion. https://www.mpg.de/research/unconscious-decisions-in-the-brain https://www.mpg.de/research/unconscious-decisions-in-the-bra...
- mcguire 3y ago
  My impression is that the understanding of that research that comes up with statements like "But when it comes to decisions we tend to assume they are made by our conscious mind. This is questioned by our current findings" is based on dualistic reasoning. The idea that there should not be any neural activity before a conscious decision is straight-up dualism---the intangible soul makes a decision and neural activity follows it to carry out the decision. An alternative way of understanding that result is that the neural activity that precedes the "conscious decision" is the brain's mechanism of coming up with that decision. The "conscious mind" is the result of neural activity, right?
- BaculumMeumEst 3y ago
  i always thought that the concept of free will didnt bother me. but it turns out i just didn’t understand what it implied. oh dear. if it turns out that true, it’s truly amazing how well we convince ourselves that we’re in control. but if our brain controls our actions and not our consciousness, then what is the purpose of consciousness?
  - stevenhuang 3y ago
    Perhaps there is no purpose to consciousness. Perhaps it's a phenomenon that somehow arises independently ex nihilo from sufficiently complex systems, only ever able to observe, unable to act. Weird to think about.
    - Aerbil313 3y ago
      Can conscious experience ever arise from matter? Even if the said matter is neural networks? This seems utterly nonsensical to me.

Same. We are so, so profoundly not what it feels like we are, to most of us anyway. I am morbidly curious how people are going to creatively explain away the more challenging insights AI gives us in to what consciousness is.

ly3xqhl8g9 3y ago

It's probably way worse than we can imagine. Reading/listening to someone like Robert Sapolsky [1] makes me laugh I could have ever hallucinated about such a muddy, not even wrong concept as "free will". Furthermore, between the brain and, say, the liver there is only a difference of speed/data integrity inasmuch as one cares to look for information processing as basal cognition: neurons firing in the brain, voltage-gated ion channels and gap junctions controlling bioelectrical gradients in the liver, and almost everywhere in the body. Why does only the brain has a "feels like" sensation? The liver may have one as well, but the brain being an autarchic dictator perhaps suppresses the feeling of the liver, it certainly abstracts away the thousands of highly specialized decisions the liver takes each second solving adequately the complex problem space of blood processing. Perhaps Thomas Nagel shouldn't have asked "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" [2] but what is it like to be a liver. [1] "Robert Sapolsky: Justice and morality in the absence of free will", https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhvAAvwS-UA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhvAAvwS-UA [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_It_Like_to_Be_a_Bat%3F https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_It_Like_to_Be_a_Bat%3F

sclarisse 3y ago
The biggest problem with the current popular idea of “free will” is that people think it means they’re ineffably unpredictable. They’re uncomfortable with the notion that if you were to simulate their brain in sufficient detail, you could predict thoughts and reaction. They take refuge in pseudoscientific mumbling about the links to the Quantum, for they have heard it is special and unpredictable. And that’s just the polar opposite of having a meaningful will at all. It is good that you are pretty much deterministic. You shouldn’t be deciding meaningful things randomly. If you made 20 copies of yourself and asked them to support or oppose some essential and important political question (about human rights, or war, or what-have-you) they should all come down on the same side. What kind of a Will would that be that chose randomly?
- MarcoZavala 3y ago
  [dead]
MarcoZavala 3y ago
[dead]

nomel 3y ago

This is why I suggest that curious individuals try a hallucinogen at least once*. It really makes the fragility of our perception, and how it’s held up mostly by itself, very apparent. * in a safe setting with support, of course.

Aerbil313 3y ago
I can confirm lucid dreaming does the same.

causi 3y ago

Neurology is full of very uncomfortable facts. Here's one for you: there are patients who believe their arm is gone even though it's still there. When the doctor asks whose arm that is, they reply it must be someone else's. The brain can simply refuse to know something, and will adopt whatever delusions and contortions are necessary. Which of course leads to the realization that there could be things we're all incapable of knowing. There could be things right in front of our faces we simply refuse to perceive and we'd never know it.

mcguire 3y ago
Oliver Sacks' A Leg To Stand On is a lengthy discussion of that, including his own experiences after breaking a leg---IIRC, at one point after surgery but before he starts physical therapy, he wakes up convinced that a medical student has played a prank by removing his leg and attaching one from a cadaver, or at least sticking a cadaver's leg under his blanket. (ISTR he tries to throw it out of bed and ends up on the floor.)
ly3xqhl8g9 3y ago
Famously, our nose is literally right in front of our faces and the brain simply "post-processes" it out of the view. After breaking my arm, split in two, pinching the nerve and making me unable to move it for about a year, I still feel as if the arm is "someone else's", as if I am moving an object in VR, not something which is "me" or "mine".

tokamak-teapot 3y ago

Just wait until you notice how much humans do this day to day

Joeri 3y ago

If that makes you uncomfortable you definitely should not go reading the evidence supporting the notion that conscious free will is an illusion. https://www.mpg.de/research/unconscious-decisions-in-the-brain https://www.mpg.de/research/unconscious-decisions-in-the-bra...

mcguire 3y ago
My impression is that the understanding of that research that comes up with statements like "But when it comes to decisions we tend to assume they are made by our conscious mind. This is questioned by our current findings" is based on dualistic reasoning. The idea that there should not be any neural activity before a conscious decision is straight-up dualism---the intangible soul makes a decision and neural activity follows it to carry out the decision. An alternative way of understanding that result is that the neural activity that precedes the "conscious decision" is the brain's mechanism of coming up with that decision. The "conscious mind" is the result of neural activity, right?
BaculumMeumEst 3y ago
i always thought that the concept of free will didnt bother me. but it turns out i just didn’t understand what it implied. oh dear. if it turns out that true, it’s truly amazing how well we convince ourselves that we’re in control. but if our brain controls our actions and not our consciousness, then what is the purpose of consciousness?
- stevenhuang 3y ago
  Perhaps there is no purpose to consciousness. Perhaps it's a phenomenon that somehow arises independently ex nihilo from sufficiently complex systems, only ever able to observe, unable to act. Weird to think about.
  - Aerbil313 3y ago
    Can conscious experience ever arise from matter? Even if the said matter is neural networks? This seems utterly nonsensical to me.