It takes a minute per word average with the device anticipating his responses. It is not like you can ask him how his day is so far and expect an eloquent explanation of how things are going for that day within that day. More likely you can ask him if he is hungry and within a minute get a yes or no response. If you ask him to write a two hundred page book every year, you are instead asking him to allow his name to be signed as the author of the book for it to get better sales. I really pity him. I do however like the image. I liked the original animated one too. When I die, I fully expect everything I have ever said to be picked apart by those still living. We cannot bury subjects just because someone who once said something about the subject died. Bury the corpse. It is not connected to the person if they still exist after death. Do not bury the ideas. That is sheer folly. I never compared Fraud to the nazis nor any other government of the past. And people blow the lid off the nazi thing by exaggerating their crimes. *SOME* nazis were heinous monsters. Was *EVERY* person who was raised in Germany in the 1930s also a monster? Nope. But they are still to this day all in the same rotten historical situation. Those who saw their country fighting a stupid war and decided to follow the idiotic leaders to avoid the defeat of the entire nation were not monsters. They wanted to protect their families. They are dead by the way. How does it feel being the person doing exactly what you oppose so harshly? It really only takes a handful of monsters to make an entire nation look awful. I really doubt the common German citizen approved of the crimes of those few. Bear that in mind. *Edit* Also we are massively off topic. I should not have posted this at all. Impulsive I am...
Freud may have been wrong about a lot of things, but any argument that his work is not important is absurd. That would be akin to arguing that Newton's work was worthless because Einstein's theory is more correct. Science builds on the work of everyone that came before. And Freud was a pioneer. A lot of our historical heroes do not bear up to close scrutiny, but that doesn't mean that they were not important. Look at Thomas Edison, if you want a good example of a great person who possibly should have gone to jail for many of the things he did. A person can be important and accomplish great things, still be totally and imperfectly human. The two are not mutually exclusive. In any case, even if he wasn't an important person, I always say that you can learn from anyone -- if nothing else, you can learn what NOT to do, and that can be pretty valuable by itself.
I never said Freud was not useful to that stage of psychological understanding. In fact I did say that he wrote some interesting books. I have plenty of reasons to still hate him. But no reason to continue to bore everyone. Who said his work was not important? I hate the methods he used, and more than that, the justification he gave for those atrocities.
The question of free will in relation to science is very similar how science addresses the concept of perception. All processes of the human mind are a product of physical human faculties. So of course you can alter human perception by messing with these faculties. Likewise, it's no surprise that magnetic fields can change how a person makes decisions. Our brains operate through complex firing neurons, a largely electrical phenomenon. Magnetism and electricity are very closely bound forces that react to each other. Messing with the electrical processes of the brain is just as sure to cause a change as messing with the chemical processes. Also, with such a large philosophical question you kind of have to narrow down what constitutes "free will". Are my decisions "real" if my faculties are being constantly acted upon by outside forces? How "free" am I with all my physical limitations?
Since we shouldn't go off topic, I'll just say that I am still a firm believer in Free will in ways that science has not yet explained.
First of all, if it counts for anything at all, I made the thread. Feel free to go wildly off topic and tell me how you once dressed your neighbor's cat/dog up as a Pokemon thingamajig. Second, I have seizures, and as a result I have had many MRIs. Very very strong manetic fields are literally used to map the paths of electrons in the brain and the rest of the nervous system. I thought that surely I would be able to detect this much influence. Nope. Not a bit. Sunspots are not observed by people and animals dropping down to the ground because their electrons are not working as they were either. And a mild sunspot is at least several orders of magnitude more intense than any magnetic field Humans can generate upon a Human. In sum: We are not effected in any measurable way by magnetic fields. Now about that PokeCat....
So my understanding of science is spotty. My point is the same. Human faculties are effected by physical forces. This should in no way be surprising. Also, that is the most incredibly cute Pikachu I have ever seen and therefor demands a counter. Metapod used Harden....
[quote="OmniNegro, post: 33799, member: 3801" Sunspots are not observed by people and animals dropping down to the ground because their electrons are not working as they were either. And a mild sunspot is at least several orders of magnitude more intense than any magnetic field Humans can generate upon a Human. In sum: We are not effected in any measurable way by magnetic fields. [/quote] Yes and no... The problem is that magnetism (like gravity) is subject to the inverse square law. So something like a sunspot or even a power line will not affect a human being to any great extent, if for no other reason, than the fact that we are too far away from them. Furthermore, the human body, despite containing metals (such as iron) is not all that magnetic. Therefore magnetic fields do not NORMALLY have any significant affect (iron in the blood is not magnetic, contrary to what the crooks hawking magnetic wrist bands, and the like would want you to believe). That said, magnetic fields do have SOME affect, when applied in very close proximity to a specific part of the brain, as apparently, that's what experiments show. I know, at least in some species of birds and insects, that there are parts of the brain that ARE magnetic, and magnetite has been found in them. That's been posed as a possible explanation as to how they are able to navigate over long distances. So what you say, while having a lot of truth to it, may not actually be the whole story.
An MRI machine can send a BB through your body with the force of a bullet and keep it going. Sunspots are quite measurable on Earth even through the atmosphere and even accounting for the inverse square law. Either way, I stand by my claim that Humans are not effected by magnetism in any measurable way. I simply doubt the validity of science done by people selling those idiotic wristbands and such. There is exactly zero evidence that can actually be confirmed that we are effected by magnetism. *Edit* And yes, I did read your link in page one of this very thread. I simply doubt it. They say "magnetic fields created confusion in the neurons" and the first thing to come to mind is those stupid magnetic wristbands again... They are using an MRI to do every bit of that in the test. I have been in three dozen MRIs. If I had a BB with me, the machine would have killed me and shredded half the effing room with the ferrous metal BB. It is in no way a subtle procedure with regards to magnetism. And I will say it again, I was not effected in any way. I tried thinking of different things to see if there was any difference. But there simply was not. I am Bi-Polar, so I always have to evaluate my responses to see if I am being reasonable. I have a clear memory of those moments in the MRI while doing just that. No deviation was present.
I'd just like to throw my agnostic logic into the ring. What difference does it make if we are living in a deterministic world if we have no way of predicting human behavior? Think of turin's halting problem; there is no way of determining what an algorithm will do without running it with given input. There is no way to determine what man will do or think prior to him doing so. Even if we have no free will, since we cannot understand the full complexity of man the actions of man are indistinguishable from free will. We simply have no means of determining that man does not have free will as the only way to determine the actions of man would be to fully recreate the man's brain in the exact state it is in prior to a decision and enter in the given input. I'd wager that will be forever beyond our means. Perhaps guilt and sin are illusions as we are nothing more than biological computers. But since we can never claim with certainty what leads to a particular decision we may as well assume there is choice and free will and all the implications of such an assumption. Such concepts are useful towards modifying human behavior. So in the end it makes sense to believe in free will even if there is no free will. The existence of free will is irrelevant. Since it is impossible to predict the behavior of man there is no practical implication to the non-existence of free will assuming we have no free will. We may as well have free will as we must operate under the assumption of free will because from our perspective the actions of man are indistinguishable from free will. And I'd just like to state that if good and evil did not exist it would be necessary to invent and respect the existence of such useful concepts anyway so they may as well objectively exist.
To be fair, you do have a nice penchant for exaggeration. That's my job, by the way, stop stealing it. For what it's worth, Mythbusters showed off exactly how strong an MRI is. It sucked that container of lead based ink right into it. Guns will be pulled against the machine from your hand. A BB does not contain enough mass nor enough potential velocity from that, to shred half a room, or the entire MRI machine. Yes, you could be messed up, but only by really bad luck MRIs are not Magentars after all. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetar From there. I'll edit out the little tiny annotations if you want.
I don't know exactly what some of this has to do with free will . In any case, before we decide whether we actually have free will, we'd have to define it (a whole lot of arguments could probably be settled just by figuring out that two people are discussing apples and oranges). In my mind, free will means that what you decide is not predetermined. It may be influenced, but it can go in more than one direction not determined either by physics, or chemistry, or by an outside entity. The question then becomes whether or not a subconscious decision is representative of free will. Judging from what I've read,I think that a lot of scientists have assumed, rightly or wrongly, that it is not. But in my mind, there's no way of proving that. You'd, essentially have to not only replicate the individual but also the entire universe with him, and run parallel experiments that show that the decision is not actually determined by anything other than the individual, him or her-self. My thought is that your subconscious is just as much representative of an individual as his conscious mind. The fact that a decision is made before one is aware of it, may not actually prove anything. If this is the case, then an individual can still be held responsible for an action, even if he had no conscious decision to take that action, since consciousness of one's actions would then be irrelevant. It's almost mind-twisting to think that way, but It still makes a kind of sense (at least to me). But I'm curious if anyone would agree with me.
I not only would agree, I do agree. I think that our subconscious is directly tied to the conscious. They operate together. Just because we call the choice to breath involuntary, that in no way means the subconscious is limited by those restrictions. People can train themselves to not breath for the purpose of deep diving. So how exactly is that involuntary? These are just terms we use. They mean nothing really. They are handles for concepts that are difficult to explain. We Humans may not always understand our choices, but we make them nonetheless. Every choice is made even if it is not acted upon. That too is a choice.
Lol. Why not just make a singular derail thread for us to go rant and rave about nonsense in. No specified topic. Just whatever. David and I are seemingly incapable of keeping on topic anywhere. *Edit* Thank you Daynab. We appreciate the maintenance.
This is actually what I came here to say, and it's already been said quite eloquently. Nicely done, Haldurson.
I think that in order to deal with the question of free will we need to take a step back and ask what we, the beings that potentially have free will, are. Let's try to build a brain step by step (and anyone with a neuroscience background, feel free to jump in and correct me). We take neurons A and B. When something (say, the optic nerve) sends a signal to neuron A, in the form of an electrical charge, neuron A stimulates neuron B. This is a fixed input-output pattern. Unless something gets broken (say, the cells in neuron A run out of the chemicals which allow it to generate an electrical charge), stimulating neuron A will always cause it to stimulate neuron B, and lack of stimulus to neuron A will always mean a lack of stimulus to neuron B. Now let's add neuron C. Under certain conditions, stimulating neuron A will cause it to stimulate neuron C instead of neuron B. This might be something like the intensity of the electrical charge, or whether neuron A has stimulated neuron B recently - as a layman, my biology knowledge doesn't reach this far. What does matter, however, is that the process is mechanical and automatic. For any given set of conditions, there is only one possible response within this network of three neurons. From here on out, we can keep adding as many neurons as we like, until we have a complete brain. But increasing the complexity of the system doesn't change the fundamental rules by which it works. Neuron A can't magically choose to stimulate B instead of C just because there are a billion other neurons further down the line. That leaves the brain operating a vast, incomprehensible number of fixed input-output patterns, where for each piece of input in a given brain state, there is only one possible output. Because the brain is receiving huge amounts of input every moment, including that generated by its own output (like thoughts that trigger other thoughts), the output is staggeringly complex. In fact, the output is the complete behaviour of a human being. But there's nothing in there that can step outside the system and say "no, I choose for those signals to travel differently". The road down which the electrical signals travel doesn't get to decide where they go, any more than an ordinary road gets to control the cars on it. To be sure, because these particular roads are made of living cells, they get to adapt to the signals according to instructions in their DNA, so the brain does grow and develop in response to experiences. But those experiences are the input, and everything else (including consciousness) can only be the output. This is a reductionist perspective. Unfortunately for free will, the only way to avoid the conclusion that free will is not only impossible but actually incoherent as a notion is to be a non-reductionist. And that means you have to postulate a soul, or some other kind of non-physical entity that can influence the physical matter of the brain without being influenced in return. At which point you are forced to throw evidence-based belief out of the window and basically say "I believe in free will because I want to".
I'm not sure that I agree with your conclusion -- In a previous post, I mentioned a thought experiment where you start with a completely mechanical being and keep adding on layers of complexity, you can potentially result in an admittedly mechanical being that has behaviors that are totally indistinguishable from an entity that you describe that has a 'soul'. Imho, you may as well label that entity as having free will, simply because you cannot distinguish its behavior from free will. The truth may be that the behavior is 100% deterministic (which, in itself is questionable, simply based on quantum theory). But it can also still 'fit the profile' for having free will. If something is indistinguishable from free will, then you may as well call it free will.
As someone who focuses on social science and analyzing systems of oppression, and from a lot of personal experience, I strongly believe that there are far too many factors for free will to exist in any form greater than a very small bubble of influence in a person's life. I don't think that makes life any less important, though, because those tiny decisions can be huge for a person's life and how things turn out. It's just not anywhere near as earth shattering as Libertarian ideas which lean towards "you can do anything if you set your mind to it!" From the time I was born and until I became an adult, my life options have narrowed dramatically in ways that I will never be able to totally comprehend. How I take on the remaining choices is definitely a meaningful thing, but my life is absolutely not without limit.
Limits definitely exist -- I had a friend who used to always say 'anything is possible' whenever he heard some odd claim. I tried to explain to him that there are limits and that actually, it's science that attempts to delineate exactly what those limits are. Choices can be limited by all sorts of factors -- I think a huge one is that you have to actually be able to conceive of something as being a choice. That's partly where role models come in. Seeing someone else choose something makes it easier to conceive of that choice as being an actual option. I hesitate to use the word 'ignorance' (even though that's technically what it is), so instead I'll say that we are limited by our own experiences. It may not be a physical limit, but it is just as real. Here's an example -- I grew up in a relatively decent area and in my family, it was expected of me that I would go to college and possibly become a professional of some sort (I can remember at a very early age, a great aunt talking to my dad asking about me and my brother "So which one is the Lawyer and which one is the Doctor?"). Those types of professions are seen in the culture/area I grew up in, as what we should aspire to. In more religious areas around here, almost everyone aspired to be a Rabbi (no joke, almost every other house in a neighboring town probably has someone who's either a rabbi, or studying to be a rabbi). When I moved to Ohio, I had a friend there who was telling me that her daughter is very smart and doing great in school. She was aspiring to become a hairdresser. She spent several years as a homeless person (before being taken in by a friend's family). To me, coming from my background, that seemed kind of strange, but I had to put it into perspective -- those were high expectations from someone who had spent years on the street.
