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I have an unusual opinion about this, that I can only convince a tiny minority of :) I see the brain here as a completely mechanical thing. Your brain is very

by Peaker 13y ago

I have an unusual opinion about this, that I can only convince a tiny minority of :) I see the brain here as a completely mechanical thing. Your brain is very similar to other people's brains, and their sets of inputs to their brain is also very similar to yours. The decision you make is actually a physical process, the same physical process that happens in many brains all over the country. Whatever this physical process yields in your case, it will yield in all the other cases that are similar enough. So when you decide to vote, or not vote, you're not only deciding for yourself. You are also, in effect, making a collective decision with all those similar to you -- about what you will all do. This is somewhat similar to someone who decides to skip the gym just "this one time". Of course, the next time he planned to go, he skips it again. His brain and inputs (sets of considerations) are almost identical in all cases -- so whatever he decides in one of those circumstances is also a decision for the rest of the cases too.

baddox 13y ago
I definitely don't buy that interpretation. Unless you can point to some true mechanism by which my choices remotely affect the choices of other brains (beyond the obvious possibilities like verbally persuading people), I consider it to be pseudoscience.
- Peaker 13y ago
  Firstly, I don't claim this view of mine is in any way scientific. It cannot make predictions, be refuted, etc. It's just an interpretation of a model, not a model. Secondly, I am not claiming there is a causal effect going on remotely. I am claiming that the decision making process itself is a mechanism, and if it is identical to another, remote, decision making process, then whatever one decides, the other will decide too. Another way to view it, is that whatever caused A to decide X, will also cause identical B to decide X. Each of A and B believe they are deciding X independently, but in fact, both are identical and therefore not independent.
Cogito 13y ago
Regardless of any other arguments against this idea, I think that the key implied proposition is false; that there are other brains 'similar enough' to your own to share the same physical processes is extremely unlikely. There are more possible configurations of the neurons in your brain than there are atoms in the universe. Even worse, the future excited state of your brain depends on the current excited state of your brain. In order for the decision you make to be correlated to the decision of someone else's brain you almost certainly need to work at quite a few abstractions above the physical one. This comment is getting longer than I meant, but an interesting counter point to my previous statement would be that many brains will react in similar ways to the same stimulus, and this may be put down to a 'physical process'. An example might be reactions to attractive people.
- Peaker 13y ago
  I agree with most of what you are saying. The similarity is definitely not a physical one at an atomic level, but indeed at a very high level of abstraction. If we compare two computers running the same algorithm, one could be ARM, one could be using vacuum tubes. But if at a high-level of abstraction, they are running the same algorithm on the same inputs, they will yield identical results and not independent results. Similarly, I think the "algorithms" in our brains are very similar (or even identical) at some high level of abstraction.

by Peaker 13y ago

baddox 13y ago

I definitely don't buy that interpretation. Unless you can point to some true mechanism by which my choices remotely affect the choices of other brains (beyond the obvious possibilities like verbally persuading people), I consider it to be pseudoscience.

Peaker 13y ago
Firstly, I don't claim this view of mine is in any way scientific. It cannot make predictions, be refuted, etc. It's just an interpretation of a model, not a model. Secondly, I am not claiming there is a causal effect going on remotely. I am claiming that the decision making process itself is a mechanism, and if it is identical to another, remote, decision making process, then whatever one decides, the other will decide too. Another way to view it, is that whatever caused A to decide X, will also cause identical B to decide X. Each of A and B believe they are deciding X independently, but in fact, both are identical and therefore not independent.

Cogito 13y ago

Regardless of any other arguments against this idea, I think that the key implied proposition is false; that there are other brains 'similar enough' to your own to share the same physical processes is extremely unlikely. There are more possible configurations of the neurons in your brain than there are atoms in the universe. Even worse, the future excited state of your brain depends on the current excited state of your brain. In order for the decision you make to be correlated to the decision of someone else's brain you almost certainly need to work at quite a few abstractions above the physical one. This comment is getting longer than I meant, but an interesting counter point to my previous statement would be that many brains will react in similar ways to the same stimulus, and this may be put down to a 'physical process'. An example might be reactions to attractive people.

Peaker 13y ago
I agree with most of what you are saying. The similarity is definitely not a physical one at an atomic level, but indeed at a very high level of abstraction. If we compare two computers running the same algorithm, one could be ARM, one could be using vacuum tubes. But if at a high-level of abstraction, they are running the same algorithm on the same inputs, they will yield identical results and not independent results. Similarly, I think the "algorithms" in our brains are very similar (or even identical) at some high level of abstraction.