Comment on Help me understand littering
Angry_Autist@lemmy.world 1 month agoI don’t believe in free will or the self.
Do you not believe in computers or the internet either?
Comment on Help me understand littering
Angry_Autist@lemmy.world 1 month agoI don’t believe in free will or the self.
Do you not believe in computers or the internet either?
AndrewZabar@lemmy.world 1 month ago
You misunderstand what he’s saying. It’s a very fundamental biology/physiology/brain chemistry, etc. idea that takes some time to understand, if you should so desire. Technically, in the most absolutely biological sense, there is a valid position that states there is no free will. That the precise pattern of the billions or trillions of synaptic connections in the brain form a distinct recipe for a specific behavior in any given scenario.
That being said, despite it may be valid in one sense, it is just as invalid from the point of view that it is a very simplistic and also arguably not completely informed view. For the most part, therefore, arguing there’s no such thing as free will really is a vapid position, as it eliminates any and all concept of responsibility, of penalty, of society having a framework within which to coexist, and it also stops any discussion in its tracks. I understand the point of view but I find it useless.
Angry_Autist@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I have informally studied this subject for years, and minored in developmental psych, and I’m on the spectrum and human cognition is one of my special interests.
It’s all predicated on a bullshit misinterpreted experiment that has blown out of proportion because ‘publish or die’ is the only law of the land.
In Libet’s experiments he either was unaware of, or actively chose to ignore the existence of visual saccades when interpreting his results, and no one has had the balls to call him out on it because so many fuckdamn academic careers hinge on this being a tenable field of study, which it isn’t.
Your condescension has sent my IED absolutely through the roof and I am very thankful for my own continuing freedom that we were not in the same room as I would have had some well thought out and egregiously unkind things to say about your parentage and education.
The fact that the self exists is self evident, and the fact that I am capable of writing this to you is literal proof. The odds of randomly colliding atoms eventually producing a machine that can lie to itself about being free willed is greater than the number of estimated atoms in the known universe, let alone this tiny speck orbiting a tiny ember dancing in a rather obscure arm of just one of ten trillion galaxies.
NOTE: I am not saying the ‘self’ is a mystical eternal force that exists beyond our death, I’m just saying that every single scholarly work I have seen trying to disprove the self has been some of the most ridiculous navel gazing I have ever seen and I used to be an alt.philosophy usenet user.
bradorsomething@ttrpg.network 1 month ago
You can stop punching him, you made your point. 🙂
AndrewZabar@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Yeah I don’t have a clue what triggered him but now that I look again at his username, I think he acknowledges he’s just always angry? I don’t know. All I was doing was trying to be helpful but as the saying goes “no good deed…”
AndrewZabar@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I dunno how you felt condescended to; whatever demons you have triggering you, I can sympathize, but rest assured that was never my intention. In fact, I worried I was mangling it and not expressing my thoughts clearly.
I hope you sort out whatever made you so livid over what was at worst a poorly articulated explanation of something that is hardly meaningful enough to bother with. As I said, I find it without utility so who really cares.
Hoping you feel better. Oh, for the record, that sentence was condescension :-)
Angry_Autist@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Do I have to break out the crayons for you?
Dr. Benjamin Libet in the 80s did a series of tests on human cognition, involving people reporting when a certain configuration of a clock face occurred. This experiment is literally the watershed moment when psychologists and neurologists misinterpreted the results to be that “Humans actually act before they consciously choose to act” which is what started this entire faddish exploration of a nonexistent corner of the neurology and psychology fields.
Saccades are moments when your brain fills in your visual experience with false and blending data, usually during rapid eye movement. This is why sometimes when you look at a clock the second hand may seem to tick backwards one tick. It is your brain filling in the places where the movement of your eyes or other interruptions (like the hole in your vision your optic nerve makes but you almost never experience).
All of Libet’s ‘surprising’ findings are more reasonably and experimentally explained by saccades during the measurement steps than the explanation being that we are all deterministic self-modifying chemical cascades that can make more of ourselves and bear the illusion of selfhood. This concern was brought up before he published but never again and never since.
The reason why it makes me SO BLINDINGLY INFURIATED is that YOU ARE RIGHT NOW EXPERIENCING THE PROOF OF YOUR SENSE OF SELF’S EXISTENCE!
But because so many self-satisfied academics and rottube ‘surprising facts’ content creator’s careers now depend on that avenue of research being a valid path of study, all based on a near-as-self-disproving-interpretation as could possibly exist, no serious criticism of his methodology or interpretations is allowed in ANY level, academic, layman, or even just a fucking chat over a beer.
And it’s always some knowlessman making calming gestures while having zero basis of understanding other than that it’s the new edgy topic that comes in to quell discussions and both sidesism the whole thread to irrelevance.
Congrats for doing your job, I guess.
150 years from now when we really start to get a firm grasp on consciousness, the academics of that future (if we survive) will consider the denial of consciousness as a curious and misguided fad that led so many bright minds astray.