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yanqui
climber
Balcarce, Argentina
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Dec 15, 2017 - 04:26am PT
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Humans usually have better guides to decision-making than a coin toss, yanqui.
One exception to "usually" is if humans want to decide whether or not a large number is prime. In this case "coin tossing" is only a part of the process, but it is a fundamental part. There are other examples as well. However you are probably right when you say "usually". Still, I wonder how much of our thinking process might involve some degree of randomness (if not consciously, then perhaps subconsciously).
If I could observe your choice of which path to take over a long series of events, I could better compare you with the coin.
I recall this cool talk about probability, I heard some time ago (I looked for it on youtube, but I couldn't find it). So the guy giving the talk used Wall Street as an example. It was clear the lecturer thought "success" on Wall Street is primarily based on luck (whether or not that's true, I don't know, but his analysis was interesting). Anyways, he took this manager who had beat the market 20 years in a row, as an example. Everybody was claiming the manager was a genius. So the probability professor asked: was this "skill" or was this "luck"? He said, imagine beating the market to be like flipping a coin. Heads you win, tails you lose. In this case, since the odds of tossing twenty heads in a row are less than 1 in a million, this seems to lend support to the idea that guy had skill in his decisions. However, now think of like this, the lecturer said. There was not only one person flipping a coin, there were more like 5,000 coin flippers (managers of funds on Wall Street). And they weren't just flipping coins for twenty years (trying to beat Standards and Poors) they've been doing it for maybe sixty years. So now ask: if 5,000 people flip a coin each year for 60 years, what is the probability that one of them has a run of 20 heads? As I recall, it turns out to be on the order of 80 to 90 percent probability that such a run shows up (I'm being a little loose with the numbers, but roughly all this is correct). So the lecturer said: instead of trumpeting the genuis-like success of this manager, the financial papers should have said: expected run of twenty years beating the market finally shows up!
Just in case, though:
If you flip a fair coin you do not make a free choice, yanqui. You make an arbitrary choice.
In my view, if you could make a free choice you should be able to make the same choice every time, if you felt like it.
Did you see my own attempt to answer my question (which was not rhetorical) in my previous post? The Stephen Cave article already makes this point, so essentially I was agreeing. In terms of the second point, it may be necessary to "freedom" that you can make the same choice, but it's definitely not sufficient: alcoholics , drug addicts, obese people, people with debilitating compulsions, that kind of thing, may make the same decision "every" time, but then admit to themselves that their choices are not free.
Cheers, I'm taking my dogs for a walk.
Edit to add: effing Google seems to have removed the English spell check option from my browser, which is giving me grief!
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Dingus McGee
Social climber
Where Safety trumps Leaving No Trace
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Dec 15, 2017 - 05:49am PT
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Empty awareness is not a thought, nor is it the absence of thought --largo
These words are an attempted meaningful? description from a state of mind while in meditation before getting to complete emptiness. While meditating we can get to a mindset where we no longer can or do differentiate. From this vantage, we get such statements from the experience as, both poles were the same, exactly the same .
From my adventures, while meditating, when at "true emptiness" there is nothing of content to bring back for discussion, yes seemingly identically equal to zero content to report to others of such experiences. When in full emptiness, nothing is going on except the feeling of awareness. "I" cannot get rid of this feeling except maybe the persistence rate of this feeling. The feeling persists without content.
If the awareness feeling does vanish my experience report/understanding is that I dozed off to a sleeping state of which I have nothing, the null set, to report as for content & the feeling of awareness.
The useful aspect of learning to get to emptiness, in my case from meditation [ I think this is how it happened] is that I now can briefly get there while awake. One can think of it as being able to totally clear the mind field or slate of any content.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Dec 15, 2017 - 06:45am PT
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MH2: Let's see if Largo says he doesn't know what a thought is.
You can pick on me, if you want. I’d be in that camp. I’ve spent many hours watching them, and I can’t say what they are. Since I can’t, I’m not even sure that the word “thought” really refers to anything or not. The same thing holds for mind, of course.
This is where some of us part paths with the rest of you. Looking closely at anything brings resemblances and experiences and certainly many theories and words, but what ARE we really talking about?
Honestly, Andy, what’s really wrong or problematical about saying that one doesn’t know just about anything? Does it make me a fool? Is the position too full of irony to share with others socially? Would it seem to freeze one into paralysis because one wouldn’t know what to do? (That last one doesn’t really happen, IMO.) Does it take away the fun or comfort in having some ground under one’s feet?
What I see (most of the time, unless i’m having an argument with my wife) is a freedom that comes from having almost no reference points, spontaneously arising, dripping with potential and possibilities that can’t be enumerated. When nothing is concrete or serious, then one is a “nowhere man.” Then one sees total equanimity, absolute loving-kindness, infinite compassion, and a calm joy.
(I know. Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it?)
In what one might call “one’s best moments,” aren’t those four things present?
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 15, 2017 - 09:17am PT
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Empty awareness is not a thought, nor is it the absence of thought
Ineffable, and strangely like a paradoxical Biblical pronouncement. The Holy Ghost is neither a spirit nor the absence of a spirit.
Perhaps John has a point here. Thought or not a thought, a spirit nor the absence of a spirit, it's a particle...no, it's a wave. Wait, it's a particle...
Seems like when we delve into reality deep enough, John's Biblical pronouncements are as good as any. Never been big on Biblical quotes myself but I can see John's logic in this regards.
And Dingus, next time you meditate, try and differentiate or tease apart the "feeling of awareness" from awareness itself. Holding onto the feeling or sensate aspect of being aware allows you to have a physical reference point, a graspable something to get your head around when in fact awaereness itself is ungraspable (whereas a feeling is not). Note also your (probable) internal resistance to abandon the concept of awareness being a feeling or anything you can label, know, talk about in discursive terms, allowing awareness to be a kind of thing or mental object.
Letting go of your attachment to the "awareness is a feeling" concept usually involved a pretty significant internal struggle because it involves letting go of the knowable and graspable and falling into the void and becoming Mike's "nowhere man." Not easy.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
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Dec 15, 2017 - 01:45pm PT
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There's an interesting article in the New York Times about a researcher who has developed a new technique for studying brains and made some interesting discoveries.
Here are a few excerpts:
To Unlock the Brain’s Mysteries, Puree it.
Faris Jaar
Dec. 14, 2017
Discussing the findings of Suzana Herculano-Houzel
Many mental abilities once regarded as uniquely human — toolmaking, problem-solving, sophisticated communication, self-awareness — turn out to be far more widespread among animals than previously thought. Humans just manifest these talents to an unparalleled degree. Herculano-Houzel thinks the simplest explanation for this disparity is the fact that humans have nearly twice as many cortical neurons as any other species studied so far.
She has found that some species have especially dense brains, packing more cells into the same volume of brain tissue as their spongier counterparts. Birds appear to have the densest brains of all, but their brains are not particularly large. An emu, one of the biggest birds alive today, has a brain that weighs about as much as an AA battery. Were there a bird with a brain the size of a grapefruit, however, it would probably rule the world.
How, did our species gain such a huge lead?
The great apes, our closest evolutionary cousins, are the anomalies, with oddly shrunken brains considering their overall heft. Based on their body size, gorillas and orangutans should have brains at least as large as ours, with neuron counts to match.
It took 50 million years for primates as a group to evolve brains with around 30 billion neurons total. But in a mere 1.5 million years of evolution, the human brain gained an astounding 56 billion additional neurons.
Her hypothesis is that this was the result of learning how to cook our food.
We have about the same number of neurons as humans who lived 200,000 years ago, yet our respective abilities are vastly different. At least half of human intelligence derives not from biology but from culture — from the language, rituals and technology into which we are born. Perhaps that is also why parrots, dolphins and apes raised by scientists in intellectually demanding environments often develop a degree of intelligence not seen in their wild counterparts: Culture unlocks the brain’s latent potential.
The brain is more than a thing; it’s a system. So much of intelligence is neither within the brain nor in its environment, but vibrating through the space in between.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/14/magazine/to-unlock-the-brains-mysteries-puree-it.html?&moduleDetail=section-news-0&action=click&contentCollection=Magazine®ion=Footer&module=MoreInSection&version=WhatsNext&contentID=WhatsNext&pgtype=article
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Dec 15, 2017 - 05:24pm PT
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How, did our species gain such a huge lead?
By writing the rules of the game.
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WBraun
climber
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Dec 15, 2017 - 05:29pm PT
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In old days millions of years ago the human brain was much larger far more intelligent than the tiny present day and poor intelligent modern human.
The modern brainwashed fools all believe they have advanced.
Yes, they've advanced far backward into polished puffed up cavemen ......
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
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Dec 15, 2017 - 05:31pm PT
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Neurons which are reliant on a large protein source. Other large primates spend 8-10 hours a day feeding to get enough calories from raw vegetable sources to survive. Once humans learned to hunt, and to cook their food, their bodies spent less energy on digestion and had more left over for the brain which in turn grew more neurons.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
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Dec 15, 2017 - 05:36pm PT
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Neanderthals are one example of humans with larger brains than modern humans and they ate a lot of red meat. However, their brain was positioned differently. It grew toward the back of the head instead of extending on top. It is figured that it became more and more difficult for an upright walking mother to have babies born with this configuration and live through it. Possibly one of the contributing factors to their extinction.
Recently I learned through a DNA test that I am 1.5% neanderthal which is .2% more than the average for a European. Make of it what you will.
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WBraun
climber
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Dec 15, 2017 - 06:16pm PT
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I'm NOT talking about Neanderthals.
Actual intelligent advanced human beings million years ago in the Satya Yuga.
Far far more advanced than any people today.
There are a few left on this planet.
Very difficult to find these days because no one is actually looking for them.
Everyone is looking in the wrong places.
Everyone is too far into their defective instruments and their restrictive self-made so called science .....
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yanqui
climber
Balcarce, Argentina
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Dec 16, 2017 - 03:45am PT
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In old days millions of years ago the human brain was much larger far more intelligent than the tiny present day and poor intelligent modern human.
IMO, one of the few interesting results from IQ testing is the so-called "Flynn effect", an observation that average IQs have gone up as much 20 or 30 points since IQ testing began. I'm not sure those results apply to ducks, though.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Dec 16, 2017 - 06:05am PT
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Nice last link, Jan! And good posts and links, yanqui. So, we're actually pretty close on this. I've argued all along on this thread that whatever mind is, it is something that evolved in the natural world, and that we can learn a lot by studying other animals. And it's clear, that you are not arguing for a "ghost in the machine", but rather for a more flexible definition of free will. HFCS has been saying the same thing now based I believe on a convincing argument from Steven Pinker. This would put you in the compatibilist camp, along with a bunch of smart people who have been studying this subject.
Although I'm nearly swayed (say, to the compatibilist camp), I've been influenced by reading the neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga. His studies suggest that these "decisions" are maybe not what we think. Based, in part, on some intriguing real studies of patients with brain disorders, he argues more or else for an experiencing self and a narrating self. The narrating self is always making up stories about what the experiencing self just experienced and "decided upon". It is always a step in time behind the experiencing self and, importantly, the decision itself.
So, here is the way decisions might work. Sure, there's a decision engine (the cat determining whether it's time to pounce), but it is probably mostly autonomous. In cats and in humans. In humans at least, an instant after the event, you "experience" meaning associated with that decision. Our sense of morals belongs with the narrating self. Here's a Gazzaniga link.
http://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/scientists/gazzaniga/
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Dec 16, 2017 - 11:55am PT
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The narrating self is always making up stories about what the experiencing self just experienced and "decided upon". It is always a step in time behind ...
Being suddenly awakened from sleep by a loud noise, the "narrative self" seems to have functioned before the noise, and provided an explanation for an unexpected event.
???
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Dec 16, 2017 - 01:02pm PT
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John, the way I would explain the sequence of events is like this.
1. An event happens (loud noise)
2. Experiencing self reacts to noise -- all sorts of things happen in the body because of the noise that are more or less subconscious. It's like muscle memory. But the experiencing self is mainly about being in the present.
3. Narrating self gives meaning to the event a split second after the event. The reason that the narrating self is always behind is that it requires the events and the experiencing self as input to it's story-telling engine.
Of course what really happens are not single, isolated events, but a stream of events from the world out there and a stream of consciousness that we experience. The narrating self gives meaning to those events, but it's after the fact. The distinction is crucial. The software engineer in me tells me that the way to look at it is as two different engines; a decision engine, and a storytelling/meaning engine. Both are highly elaborate, but it would seem that the decision engine is largely subconscious -- or at least automatic. What I mean by that is you just react. The storytelling/meaning engine then provides a coherent story for you. Something like that.
Edit: Hey, so it just occurred to me that my new answer for what is mind is ... experiencing the storytelling/meaning engine that evolved in humans...Duh! It's probably why are frontal cortexes are so big. There are a lot of stories out there!
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Dec 16, 2017 - 01:51pm PT
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I want to get back to the subject of randomness/chaos, as I sort of dropped that line of thought in my discussion with yanqui. I still think that it is a red herring in the free will debate, regardless of one's stand on compatibilism.
Whether or not there is chaos or randomness in the world would settle only one question in my mind, and I never thought it would be true anyhow. Was the world determined at the time of the Big Bang? Never interested me, really (of course it wasn't).
That's an entirely different question from Was the world determined for you a split second ago? I would say, yes, of course. I would call that determinism and incompatibilism, but, of course, everything relies on our understanding of words.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Dec 16, 2017 - 01:57pm PT
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Was the world determined at the time of the Big Bang?
this instantiation, yes
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Dec 16, 2017 - 01:59pm PT
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Jeez, way to undercut me, Ed!:>
On the other hand, you were the one who originally turned me on to Gazzaniga in a post here a couple of years ago must've been.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 16, 2017 - 02:27pm PT
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Was the world determined at the time of the Big Bang?
this instantiation, yes
--
If you are always looking at one side of the coin, you will always see that side and you might be right about what is there. You might also believe, based on your physical observations, that this side is the true side or the only side, especially if your criteria for what is real is derived entirely from that side. You might also believe that what you see and only what you see is "the world," and in it's own right is a continuation of the big bang, birthing or sourcing the ever morphing flux. After all, what physical "proof" do you have to believe otherwise?
That's called roping yourself into a perspective, based, of course, ON that perspective.
It's our nature to always try and attribute this to (fill in the blank), or anchor "it" in this, including evaluating and experiencing selves.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Dec 16, 2017 - 03:06pm PT
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^^^yep
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