The One where Riggerjack schools brute on Free Will

[Ego]

What humans have that animals do not possess in any significant manner, among other features, is the "theory of mind" feature discussed above. Yes, the neuroscience says that the human brain/mind is different from animal minds.

Let's say for the sake of discussion that human and animal brains are very different. What is the difference that allows for free-will?

Theory-of-mind allows me to imagine myself in the head of others, which is a very useful skill. Perhaps part of the evolutionary advantage of theory-of-mind is to help us to figure out what our own subconscious mind is going to do. We imagine ourselves in our own subconscious in the same way we imagine ourselves in the mind of others. Metacognition.

People are often troubled by churning ruminations where they constantly regurgitate thoughts and turn them over in their conscious mind before setting them to rest again. These ruminations might be the subconscious warning the conscious mind in advance to prepare for the executive order and could be the reason for the illusion of free will. But my ruminating mind just made that up so what do I know?

[Dave]

@Dragline - I'm in agreement with you. I understand the theory of mind humans possess that other life doesn't.

What I don't see is how it implies we have free will. I don't see having such awareness as evidence of free will. The human brain certainty has a lot more going on. But having more computing power and more programs running just makes the human a more complicated organism, in my opinion. It doesn't make it immune to causality chains and environmental influence. In fact, by definition nothing is immune to causality and environmental influence. Everything is a product of its conditioning and environment.

[Dragline]

It doesn't if you are defining "free will" in the Aristotlian or DeCartian sense, and if you are only looking at one brain -- although we haven't really talked about feedback loops and how one person sitting meditating or thinking without any outside stimulus can change their own thoughts, heart rate and other things. In other words, your "environment" also includes you.

What Ego mentioned above about post-hoc justifications/narratives for unconscious behavior is correct -- this is called "the interpreter" function of the brain and is an emergent property of the dominant hemisphere. But the brain can also imagine things that have not happened -- or have not happened yet. Memory and imaginations are created in the same way -- this is why some people get them very confused and cannot keep them in order.

"Free will" really only makes sense and becomes a useful concept when you are talking about a multi-brain environment -- i.e., a different level of order than one brain thinking to itself. Due to our innate "theory of mind", we attribute agency to others by default -- i.e., we believe they are acting through free will, or at least what they are doing doesn't have anything to do with us unless we have an interaction with them. Which in turn means they also attribute us to be acting via our own free will and we know they view us that way. Which then leads us to act/believe as if we have free will for the most part. Its a basic consequence of the emergent properties of the brain that include the "theory of mind" and "the interpreter." Its also a basic organizing principle of any society with more than one human in it.

This is also the reason that the question is a rather academic one -- one-brain environments are pretty unusual and limited and you can't study a brain and deduce anything about what its actually thinking. The point of saying its a complex system with emergent properties is that you are saying that reductionism will not work is that its not a matter of "not having enough data" to figure it out -- its just an impossible task.

And just to be clear as to what emergent properties are, here is how Michael Gazzaniga (pre-eminent neuroscientist) defines it:

"Emergence is a common phenomenon that is accepted in physics, biology, chemistry, sociology, and even art. When a physical system does not demonstrate all the symmetries of the laws by which it is governed, we say that these symmetries are spontaneously broken. Emergence, this idea of symmetry breaking, is simple: Matter collectively and spontaneously acquires a property or preference not present in the underlying rules themselves. The classic example from biology is the huge, towerlike structure that is built by some ant and termite species. These structures only emerge when the ant colony reaches a certain size (more is different) and could never be predicted by studying the behavior of single insects in small colonies. . . .

The key to understanding emergence is to understand that there are different levels of organization. My favorite analogy is that of the car, which I have mentioned before. If you look at an isolated car part, such as a cam shaft, you cannot predict that the freeway will be full of traffic at 5: 15 P.M. Monday through Friday. In fact, you could not even predict the phenomenon of traffic would ever occur if you just looked at a brake pad. You cannot analyze traffic at the level of car parts. Did the guy who invented the wheel ever visualize the 405 in Los Angeles on Friday evening? You cannot even analyze traffic at the level of the individual car. When you get a bunch of cars and drivers together, with the variables of location, time, weather, and society, all in the mix, then at that level you can predict traffic. A new set of laws emerge that aren’t predicted from the parts alone.”

"Consciousness is an emergent property. From moment to moment, different modules or systems compete for attention and the winner emerges as the neural system underlying that moment’s conscious experience. Our conscious experience is assembled on the fly, as our brains respond to constantly changing inputs, calculate potential courses of action, and execute responses like a streetwise kid."

[Dave]

Hmm, I continue to agree with everything you say, and find it very interesting!

Your point regarding feedback loops and the meditation example is one close to home for me. As a meditator for some time, I would confirm that "your environment includes you" is very consistent with my experience. This begs the question of what are "you" exactly.

Consciousness itself is an evolving stream of activity that is conditioned by the moments leading up to it and the current environment. With respect to meditators changing heart rate and such, this is driven by internal stimuli. It does not fall outside causality chains, it's just more challenging to see this without strong mindfulness. As one gains experience meditating, you become an observer of your mind and its interworkings, and interesting insights about all of this can arise.

I really enjoyed the other parts of your post, thanks for explaining all of that so well.

[Ego]

@dragline, I understand your definition of emergence and agree that watching a single ant is not going to tell me everything I need to know to understand a massive anthill. But I am still not seeing that you answered how actual free-will emerges from complex interactions. "We don't know", would be a fair answer, if not for the fact that there seems to be quite a bit of evidence that the feeling of free-will is the thing that emerges, not free-will itself.

That feeling, I believe, is really no different from phantom limb syndrome experienced by amputees. The amputee feels like the limb exists even though it does not.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzSS7wOpIwY

[BRUTE]

@Ego:

it might depend on what is meant by "free will". the experience most humans describe when they talk about free will is that there were several options, and they picked one, for some reasons. this is not incompatible with 100% determinism. it's like a computer running down a decision tree and somehow introspecting the process a bit.

in a way, the "free will" determinists (like brute and Ego) are arguing against is a straw man. if causality is true, everything has a cause. of course nobody can prove that something un-causal (in-causal?) exists. what would that even mean - nothing happened, and as not a result of it, something else happened? something happened, and as not a result, something else happened?

brute hypothesizes: there shall exist a coin-toss machine. connected to it is a video camera. the camera records the machine making a coin toss. if the whole apparatus including coin-toss machine and video camera is considered "the consciousness", didn't that consciousness "decide" and observe itself deciding? sure, the coin toss was deterministic. but the machine "experienced" itself making the toss.

edit:

the type of "free will" that would disprove determinism would be one that allows anti-causality. brute can't even imagine what that would mean. brute thinks this isn't the "free will" proponents are arguing for.

[Dragline]

@dragline, I understand your definition of emergence and agree that watching a single ant is not going to tell me everything I need to know to understand a massive anthill. But I am still not seeing that you answered how actual free-will emerges from complex interactions. "We don't know", would be a fair answer, if not for the fact that there seems to be quite a bit of evidence that the feeling of free-will is the thing that emerges, not free-will itself.

That feeling, I believe, is really no different from phantom limb syndrome experienced by amputees. The amputee feels like the limb exists even though it does not.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzSS7wOpIwY

I suppose it depends on what you are defining as "actual free will". I've already agreed with you that the Aristotlian or Descartian notion of this is not biologically correct if that is what you mean. On the opposite side of the coin, one might say that determinism is a also misnomer, since you can't actually use it to determine anything in terms of looking at a brain or brain scans and determining what someone is consciously thinking. Thus, there's no "free" will and no "determining" as this debate is classically framed. Both concepts are wrong in their original conceptions; further, saying one is wrong does not make the other accurate. But both concepts are accurate on a more limited basis if reframed and put into the proper context.

The context for determinism is an individual brain. But all you can usually determine from an individual brain is that inputs have effects. You can't determine what those effects are going to be on consciousness (mind) even if you know the input and everything there is to know about the brain you are looking at. You can guess and you might be right some of the time with some brains, but you cannot know the way you know if you drop a ball on the earth it will fall to the earth, because the brain/mind relationship is not subject to reductionism any more than the other examples of emergence above.

The context for free will is the level of order when you are talking about multiple human beings/brains interacting, virtually all of whom possess "the interpreter" and "theory of mind" as emergent properties of their brains. In that setting the perception of free will in others and the innate acceptance of the concept ends up making it valid for all intents and purposes because of the feedback loops it creates. Your perception becomes your reality. It's quite an ingenious evolutionary development when you think about it, but its a social construction emergent from biology, not a biological construction in and of itself.

A society where people did not believe in each other's agency and act like they had it would not be a society of humans. Maybe they would be animals or computers or aliens or something else, but they would not be humans.

Regarding the amputee example, that again is a single human being/brain so the context is limited. But even that person may take subsequent actions to cure himself of those feelings (if he can) since he can use his other senses to gather inputs and notice the limb is missing. It is also an example of where reductionism is possible because you can easily see the limb is not there and give your brain a contrary input to the one it perceives. By contrast, there is virtually no way you can "not perceive" agency in yourself, unless you become completely fatalistic. Because you're only human.

[Ego]

A society where people did not believe in each other's agency and act like they had it would not be a society of humans. Maybe they would be animals or computers or aliens or something else, but they would not be humans.

I agree. We have to act as if we have agency to be a human among other humans.

[BRUTE]

why? what about agency is so human?

ps: alternate name for determinism - causality? also harder to disagree with.

[Ego]

Consequences play an important role in decisions made by the subconscious mind. Remove consequences and some might use that as the excuse to do.... whatever popped into their head.

And then this would technically be true. (NSFW)
https://youtu.be/Qv5fqunQ_4I?t=1m

By collectively pretending that agency exists we give society permission to punish transgressions and deter those with an inclination to transgress.

[BRUTE]

And then this would technically be true. (NSFW)
https://youtu.be/Qv5fqunQ_4I?t=1m

man, brute is old. he remembers that song.


brute isn't so sure about this "moral illusion" of projecting agency onto each other.

1)humans don't actually have agency: they didn't have a choice and pretending/projecting didn't make a difference
2)humans have agency: humans will do whatever they please and find justifications for it.

this is a bit like those "how do atheists have morals?" claims. just because brute doesn't believe in a supernatural being doesn't mean he feels like going around murdering humans. is the only reason he's not being murdered right now that humans are afraid of their god/agency?

[7Wannabe5]

Dragline wrote:
A society where people did not believe in each other's agency and act like they had it would not be a society of humans. Maybe they would be animals or computers or aliens or something else, but they would not be humans.



Ego said: I agree. We have to act as if we have agency to be a human among other humans.

AND By collectively pretending that agency exists we give society permission to punish transgressions and deter those with an inclination to transgress.

I would like to agree, because obviously this line of thought leads to the conclusion that old favored-socio-economic-racial-group high-IQ female citizens of affluent nations, such as myself, are the humanest humans because we are the least likely to transgress, unlike the sort of non-human-humans who need to have their ability to exhibit free will limited in the manner usually imposed on a vicious pit-bull (even though a pit-bull doesn't have free will?) In fact, I woke up this morning fretting about the fact that I might be in violation of the weed ordinance and felt compelled to go mow one of my lots. I wasn't even as concerned about the possibility of a ticket as much as I was compelled by some sort of total goody-two-shoes internal dialogue reminding me that I want to be part of the solution, not part of the problem etc. etc. etc. and I even picked up some litter that was not even litter that I littered too!!!

Unfortunately, I don't agree due to science. All social animals engage in behaviors that could be viewed as moral. Bruce Willis in some action movie fights against evil to save some children that are related to him. The Northern Mockingbird swoops down at my head aggressively as I hike down the path a bit too close to the nest of his young. Yay, Bruce, blow up those bad-uns!! Yay, Mockingbird, keep your nest safe from me!!

Also, I am having some difficulty figuring out how to reconcile the above with the fact that Homo Sapiens interbred with a number of other closely related species, and then likely contributed to their extinction, leaving a gap (temporary?) in what would otherwise be a smoother range of intelligent or simultaneous advanced brain and opposable thumb co-ordination behaviors. IOW, it seems to me that our shared delusion of being something more special or more moral (ha-ha-ha) than the other species we observe is due to the fact that we killed off all our closest competitors (after engaging in approximately 300 homo sapien male on neanderthal female matings resulting in offspring.) And, let's also not forget that 1 in 200 of us can sit smug in the moral superiority of knowing that we are directly descended from Genghis Khan. Yup, us humans are super-fantastic at surviving because we are so skilled at punishing transgressions.

My view of emergence which is based on the philosophy of perma-culture informs me that courtrooms and prisons are about as clever a way to deal with crime as Round-Up is a clever way to deal with a vigorous plant unconsciously acting in its own self-interest. I am hoping for, but not anticipating in my lifetime, some more better emergence.

[BRUTE]

"For instance, I heard this story yesterday and it blew my mind.

http://www.radiolab.org/story/211213-sky-isnt-blue/"

interesting, if not mind blowing per se.. this is the first time brute has heard of this phenomenon in the human visual system. it's very obvious in the audio system. the reason many Japanese can't tell the difference between "r" and "l" is because it simply doesn't make a difference in their language, so why would they notice?

similar phenomena can be observed in most languages when viewed with a bit of an outsider's view.

even music. when brute first heard electronic music as a child, he could not even tell where the songs started or ended. it was just noise.

adding meaning to sensory inputs is an interpretation. there's an almost infinite amount of sensory input, and most is not relevant. therefore it's filtered out until the mind learns the difference is important.

[jacob]

similar phenomena can be observed in most languages when viewed with a bit of an outsider's view.

Big part of the reason why I still speak American with an accent. American English has around 15 phonetic vowels (that's a small number btw!). Danish has 26ish!(*) What this effectively means for me is that I'm incapable of reducing my rather large set of "a"-sounds to the single one that Americans use. They always get me on the "a". I've yet to figure out how to pronounce almost every single "a"-phoneme the same. Conversely, Americans (w/o voice training or whatever it's called) can't tell me what I'm doing wrong except it just sounds ... foreign or "cute"

(*) Danish is one of the most vowel intensive languages in the world. You could cut out all consonants and still be 80% comprehended [by other Danes].

Conversely, I've tried to learn a consonant heavy language like polish (based on my [Danish] knowledge of about 20 consonants). Polish has 30+ of them. Total failure. Despite lots of trying I just didn't hear the difference. Tscchh ... Chhh ... tthhhh ... come again!?

BTW this observation has lots of bearing on this thread: http://forum.earlyretirementextreme.com ... f=3&t=8041 ... do you think Sapir-Whorf applies here?! I'm thinking it does!

PS: There's been a bit of study wrt cultural classification of color. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguisti ... ing_debate ... the more "advanced" or whatever the culture or the person becomes, the more they recognize. Personally I recognize just about the original Win3.11 colors including Green4. What's curious is that cultures recognize increasing amounts of colors in more or less the same order.

All languages contain terms for black and white.
If a language contains three terms, then it contains a term for red.
If a language contains four terms, then it contains a term for either green or yellow (but not both).
If a language contains five terms, then it contains terms for both green and yellow.
If a language contains six terms, then it contains a term for blue.
If a language contains seven terms, then it contains a term for brown.
If a language contains eight or more terms, then it contains terms for purple, pink, orange, and/or gray.

Oh yeah ... if you really want to blow your mind, consider this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameralism_(psychology)

[Ego]

Oh yeah ... if you really want to blow your mind, consider this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameralism_(psychology)

This reminded me of Pribram's Holonomic Mind Theory which proposed that the mind is a hologram. I read about it years ago but the physics was over my head. Now that I think about it, holograms and fractals must overlap in some way. Dragline?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holonomic_brain_theory

[BRUTE]

Danish is one of the most vowel intensive languages in the world. You could cut out all consonants and still be 80% comprehended [by other Danes].

a Swede once told brute that "Danish is so hard, their children don't start talking until they're 4 years old" or something like that. he might also have implied that Danish is "dumb". what's with the Swedes and the Danes? some kind of rivalry?

BTW this observation has lots of bearing on this thread: http://forum.earlyretirementextreme.com ... f=3&t=8041 ... do you think Sapir-Whorf applies here?! I'm thinking it does!

hm, brute isn't sure if this is the exact level on which Sapir-Whorf applies? maybe Sapir-Whorf is just a special case of "input filtering", and mental models or lenses or ways of thinking are other cases? brute thinks "wealthy" and "middle class" humans generally use the same vocabulary for the same things, don't they? but it's certainly a similar effect.

Oh yeah ... if you really want to blow your mind, consider this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameralism_(psychology)

holy shit. 2000 BC? that's recent. it would make some sense. maybe that's why individualism is still such a rare phenomenon, and most humans are looking to obey some kind of idea or master. it's just a new development.

[vezkor]

What do random number generators and the human mind have in common?

They are unable to select values they do not know exist. Truly random number generators are as impossible as perpetual motion devices in reality.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_number_generation

I believe I am the result of genes plus experience. If I am the result of those two inputs then any decision I make is based on them. When offered the opportunity to pick any city in the world, I would be unable to choose one that I did not know existed and I would be unable to understand why my sub-conscious mind spewed up the one it did.

This gave me chills. I believe I'll take the next few months and re-think everything I thought I knew about why I think I did the things I did.

[Riggerjack]

http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/09/05/bo ... ncertainty

I wasn't sure about where to post this. I chose here, because the PP theory and control effects seem relevant to the part of this conversation tied to decision making, and the odd timing of decisions to actions. The odd notion that a human operator is a display function of a switch, rather than an operator of said switch is what happens when you have counterintuitive data, and a theory that fits it, poorly. Whereas PP is pretty intuitive (probably more so in programmers and intuitives) and not only fits the data, but then goes further in explaining neurological outliers, like autistic and schizophrenic people.

As is his norm, Scott Alexander makes no attempt to break this down into a 500 word businessinsider.com article. Rather, he sums up an in depth book in a few pages, with examples that work to demonstrate the principal in action. But this isn't a one minute link. If you have the interest, and ten minutes, click the link. If you have ten more minutes, here's his follow up:
http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/09/06/pr ... l-control/

[jacob]

What do random number generators and the human mind have in common?

They are unable to select values they do not know exist. Truly random number generators are as impossible as perpetual motion devices in reality.

Therefore nobody can have/experience any original thought(?!)

Rare exceptions, which for same reason are always found outside the humanities departments, beg to differ. I'm not going to make the case though.

[7Wannabe5]

Eh, humans have novel thoughts all the time, and what we mean by original thought is something like "novel thought of great value or utility from which many other valuable ideas were derived" Descartes got our panties all wadded up with the notion of quantification. However, quantification is absolutely reliant on the qualities of "discrete" or "boundaried" which are somewhat arbitrary and dependent on meaning assigned to sensory inputs processed as feelings. How many apple (or Apple? )How many ocean? How many freedom?

So, I can easily plan a meal (defined or boundaried as one unit of various foods served at same juncture in time) that would very likely be completely novel within the scope of all previous human experience. For instance, I might have a Crunchy Eel, Yellow Perch,Crab Roll, a Johnson-Brandywine heirloom cross tomato sprinkled with the finest imported sea salt, 2 gingersnap cookies manufactured in Canada filled with Pinconning super-sharp cheese spread, and a fresh-brewed mug of hand gathered and dried bearberry leaf tea. However, it is also highly unlikely that this novel construction of mine will prove to be a node of great future utility, unlike the General Theory of Relativity, the "Castle of Otranto", or the striking of flint.