The Secret Shame of Middle Class Americans

[jacob]

The cone of light problem is not inherent to the brain. It's similar to critical thinking ability which could be learned even if it currently isn't.

[Ego]

Will is a matter of degree, say from 0% to 100%.

How did I get to the point where this morning I woke up, stood on my bathroom-will-scale and weighed an 89% or a 24%?

[jacob]

@Ego - It's like deciphering one of these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoregre ... ng_average

How did I get to the point where I prefer Thinking over Feeling? I probably started out being born being less sensitive to whatever comes out of my limbic system ... then this sensitivity increasingly atrophied while I became better at logic, and so on. Ditto free will which follows from observing and understanding to which degree personal action influences cause and effect. Without sufficient consideration, I will not see the connection and thus I will believe in luck (randomness). Conversely, if I believe there's no such thing as randomness I might be led to having to invent various explanations for events that become stranger and stranger in direct proportion to the belief that everything has a cause that's directly related to me, e.g. synchronicity.

[GandK]

How did I get to the point where this morning I woke up, stood on my bathroom-will-scale and weighed an 89% or a 24%?

Does this matter, though, other than for the assignment of blame for ongoing negative choices? It doesn't help make better ones, IMO. Once you have new information, it's 100% on you to use it. Or not. It's like the climate change debate. Are we going to stand around blamestorming and eschatologizing, or are we going to do things differently now that we know better?

[IlliniDave]

...

How did you become the person who learned to say "No"? What mechanism within your brain allowed you to change your behavior and quit spending money on stupid shit?

...

I am unable to see where anything other than luck enters the equation.

Learning to defer gratitude is one of the early steps of typical human development/maturity. It just happens later in some of us later than in others.

But if you want to take the point of view that the world and everything in it is completely random and that nothing exists aside from luck then it does no good to have a random conversation about it here. In the context of the conversation I referred to, her point was that somehow I had luck and she did not which is not possible under the everything is luck hypothesis unless you allow for the possibility that I levered my "luck" to accomplish a specific goal over the course of several decades where she did not.

In my view, much of what people attribute to "luck" is simply being aware and willing to act when preparation and opportunity meet.

[SilverElephant]

Once you have new information, it's 100% on you to use it. Or not.

But this is the point, isn't it? "Once". What if you never obtain new information? What if, due to prior conditioning, that new information does not register as a signal in your brain?

@jacob: Right, agreed. But does that say anything vis-à-vis my above sentence?

Of course, it can be successfully argued that with today's information abundance, pretty much everyone comes into contact with the critical concepts with deal with here fairly quickly.

[BRUTE]

so, determinism?

[jacob]

@SE - That's a question of nature vs nurture. I'm saying that things like critical thinking and out-of-the-box thinking are a question of nurture whereas something like agency seems to be more a question of nature. Now, is it possible to "nurture" people in the sense that the loss of critical/nonbox thinking is effectively irrecoverable. Yes, probably.

[Ego]

How did I get to the point where I prefer Thinking over Feeling? I probably started out being born being less sensitive to whatever comes out of my limbic system ... then this sensitivity increasingly atrophied while I became better at logic, and so on.

I agree. Here's the thing... How did you become better at logic?

Newborn Jacob had 0% control over the wiring of his neurons, his neurobiology, his environment.... et cetera.
At the moment of little Jacob's first decision he still had 0% control over those things. So the basis of that first decision was pure luck. Little Jacob's mind was rewired slightly as a result of the "decision" but he had 0% control over the rewiring. Every subsequent decision and the resultant rewiring was based on that first one. If we had a powerful enough computer we could model the complex neural wiring that grew and watch the stimulus/response, neither of which you controlled.

It is easy to become an apologist for other's shortcomings with this line of thinking. As well as one's own behavior.

Absolutely agree 100%.

1) That does not make it less true.
2) To deny it because I don't like the repercussions is a form of self-delusion.

It is a self-delusion I perform moment by moment. Much like this guy....

“People have free will when they ‘feel’ they have free will,” says Professor Kahneman. “If we didn’t believe in it, we would have no responsibility.”

But if you want to take the point of view that the world and everything in it is completely random and that nothing exists aside from luck then it does no good to have a random conversation about it here.

Does this matter, though, other than for the assignment of blame for ongoing negative choices? It doesn't help make better ones, IMO. Once you have new information, it's 100% on you to use it. Or not.

Well, it is interesting to think about the nature of reality. Also, the moment I learn that I am nothing more than the sum of my experiences plus genetics - let's call that moment the X moment - from that moment on I am operating in a world where I had the X moment. It becomes part of my experience. My neural wiring has changed ever so slightly, forever. From then on every decision I make is based on this new knowledge.

Someone smart once said, "All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better."

[jacob]

@Ego - I think philosophical disagreements are best solved by a nerf gun duel, so name your time and place

In lieu of that, maybe a computer analogy is a better than than ARIMA math. The human computer has three CPUs: neocortex, limbic, and stem for historical reasons and different humans are born with different CPUs and bus-systems for genetic/evolutionary reasons.

Shortly after being born, humans are capable of picking up different operating systems. Actually those O/S are better thought of as viruses that infect the brains capable of running them. For example, you can run a highly logical and complex program in a human whose neocortex has a high clock frequency; conversely, you can run a fun virus in a human with good stem connections; or a very romantic one in a human where the connection bus between the cortex and the limbic system is strong. Ditto, humans are subsequently capable of being selectively infected by controlling their environment, i.e. exposing them to predominantly one type of software. E.g. consumer society. Or finding various zero-day exploits (which in humans last a long long time), see Bernays.

The "ego" is one such virus/meme that infects pretty much everyone. (Zen Buddhists try very hard to purge this particular virus.)

In any case, under this model, I'm saying that humans are naturally predisposed to running certain "programs" (viruses, memes) and are to some degree capable of self-modifying such programs to various degrees depending on a self-awareness that spans anywhere from oblivious to deep.

[Ego]

The "ego" is one such virus/meme that infects pretty much everyone. (Zen Buddhists try very hard to purge this particular virus.)

I'm terrible with subtlety so if you are trying to say something you should just say it.

Nurf guns it is.

[jacob]

Ha! No slight insult intended. It's only that the idea of the "self" is the most universally held human-theme I can think of. I've yet to meet or hear of a human who thinks they're just a bunch of particles no different from the chair they're sitting on.

[BRUTE]

Ha! No slight insult intended. It's only that the idea of the "self" is the most universally held human-theme I can think of. I've yet to meet or hear of a human who thinks they're just a bunch of particles no different from the chair they're sitting on.

that the particles are no different is indisputable. brute believes the point of contention is the configuration of the particles.

also, jacob already lost this debate. free will doesn't exist in any meaningful way.

[jacob]

@brute - Actually, none of you guys really exist. It's just me being ERE and writing everyone's posts carrying on a conversation with myself all day long

[Dragline]

@brute - Actually, none of you guys really exist. It's just me being ERE and writing everyone's posts carrying on a conversation with myself all day long

Yes, this was my conclusion after meeting you in person. You and I are the only ones in this room.

To credit anyone else with existence would be a mere act of blind faith.

Now, Frank -- that's as real as it gets.

[JasonR]

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[7Wannabe5]

I think there are at least two different voices that need to be considered in this dialogue. A person who lives "rich" and can well afford it and is happy, and a person who lives "simple" and can't afford to live "rich" and is happy. Compare and contrast with IlliniDave's experience with friend calling him "lucky", I recently had a man who is happy with his career (asked him "Why?" and he said because he is now top dog) and affluent life-style tell me that he understands that I am "choosing to live like a Native American." and I was the one who silently added "Yet, I am allowing you to pick up the bill for dinner at this very nice restaurant." -lol. So, am I more "lucky" than IlliniDave ? or was it all my years of clever, disciplined avoidance of burpees that earned me a free bowl of Hiu Tieu AND the relaxed lifestyle of the idealized original human inhabitants of the North American continent?

[BRUTE]

brute believes that accumulating social and sexual capital is, if understudied by economists, as valid a strategy to ERE as any other. one could equate 7wannabe5's natural sexual capital with someone else's work ethic/natural inclination to practice a valuable skill.

[7Wannabe5]

I think it's more like having some constantly declining in value vacation property you inherited to take into account in your planning. Like, is it worth the hassle of tidying up the old cottage and putting on a new roof in order to get a renter this year? It hurts my brain when I read something like what Taleb said about you should always choose to rent rather than buy things you want to fly, float or f..., because it is hard to be a rational actor and an object at the same time. But, the rule of thumb is that if you do the work that people who have money want you to do then money will naturally flow in your direction. Sometimes people with money want you to develop a piece of software, and sometimes they want you to color your hair yellow and straighten it down your back. I think I am luckier than IlliniDave because I could make either choice, but probably nobody with money wants to see him with long yellow hair.

[BRUTE]

brute has only heard the version "if you want to drive it, fly it, ride it, sleep in, on, or with it, rent it"