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I'm not sure I'd frame it that way. We seem to make decisions with our subconscious brains and our "rational" brains primarily rationalize a justification for t

by jshen 3y ago

I'm not sure I'd frame it that way. We seem to make decisions with our subconscious brains and our "rational" brains primarily rationalize a justification for that decision. Our brains are less concerned with being right than they are with justifying our subconscious behavior and fitting in with our tribe. Another example, our brains care far more about achieving and maintaining status than about being right. We seem barely capable of objective thought at best.

pdonis 3y ago
> We seem to make decisions with our subconscious brains and our "rational" brains primarily rationalize a justification for that decision. There is research that is claimed to show this, but it doesn't. All it actually shows is that the process of making a decision takes time, and involves many different parts of the brain. There is no separate "rationalization" that comes after the decision is made. It's all part of a single process that can't be decomposed into such separate parts. In any case, all this is irrelevant to what I said. I said we humans have the concept of "actually being right". We don't always live up to that concept, but even making that observation, as you have, shows that we have the concept. If we didn't, we could not even make statements like this one of yours: "our brains care far more about achieving and maintaining status than about being right." > We seem barely capable of objective thought at best. I think you have a sadly impoverished view of human thought.
- jshen 3y ago
  My view is based on the science. Regarding the research that supports my claim, studies have been done to isolate the different parts of the brain where they tell one part to do something like get water, then they ask the other part of the brain why they got the water and it makes up a reason because it's not aware of what happened in the other part. This is eerily similar to LLMs hallucinating.

by jshen 3y ago

pdonis 3y ago

> We seem to make decisions with our subconscious brains and our "rational" brains primarily rationalize a justification for that decision. There is research that is claimed to show this, but it doesn't. All it actually shows is that the process of making a decision takes time, and involves many different parts of the brain. There is no separate "rationalization" that comes after the decision is made. It's all part of a single process that can't be decomposed into such separate parts. In any case, all this is irrelevant to what I said. I said we humans have the concept of "actually being right". We don't always live up to that concept, but even making that observation, as you have, shows that we have the concept. If we didn't, we could not even make statements like this one of yours: "our brains care far more about achieving and maintaining status than about being right." > We seem barely capable of objective thought at best. I think you have a sadly impoverished view of human thought.

jshen 3y ago
My view is based on the science. Regarding the research that supports my claim, studies have been done to isolate the different parts of the brain where they tell one part to do something like get water, then they ask the other part of the brain why they got the water and it makes up a reason because it's not aware of what happened in the other part. This is eerily similar to LLMs hallucinating.