Brit Girls - Fat

[the village idiot]

1 minute ago, Stubby said:

How long was it after your brain told you to write this did you think Ah !  I'm gonna write this ......

 Somewhere between 7 and 0.5 seconds apparently.

 

You can put a person in a brain scanner with an option of two buttons to press (left and right). The person viewing the scan can predict with 80% accuracy which button the subject will press up to 7 seconds before the subject reports being concious of making the decision!

This finding destroys the notion of free will for me.

 

As we develop better brain mapping techniques it is very likely that the 80% will rise to 100%.

[Stubby]

1 minute ago, the village idiot said:

 Somewhere between 7 and 0.5 seconds apparently.

 

You can put a person in a brain scanner with an option of two buttons to press (left and right). The person viewing the scan can predict with 80% accuracy which button the subject will press up to 7 seconds before the subject reports being concious of making the decision!

This finding destroys the notion of free will for me.

 

As we develop better brain mapping techniques it is very likely that the 80% will rise to 100%.

Could we adapt this for betting on horses some how ?

Edited December 21, 2017 by Stubby

[Stubby]

You new I was gonna say that I bet .....

[WesD]

13 minutes ago, matelot said:

Ohh sorry, I must apologise for starting a thread that people have found interesting enough to respond to.

 

I bet you're a real laugh down the pub.

In case you haven’t noticed it’s gone wildly off topic. 

[the village idiot]

Just now, WesD said:

In case you haven’t noticed it’s gone wildly off topic. 

[WesD]

Just now, the village idiot said:

Carry on, it’s a better topic. 

[WesD]

Going with the 2 buttons theme wouldn’t most people press the button on their dominant side ie left handers left button right handers right button?

[the village idiot]

4 minutes ago, Stubby said:

Could we adapt this for betting on horses some how ?

The truth of the matter is that the series of causes for our brains to be in a particular state in any one moment are so fantastically complex that we will never be able to map them all out in order to predict exact behaviour in our complex world.

 

The things that our brain delivers to our conciousness are derived from a mind bogglingly long series of events, over which we had no control, stretching back not just to our births but through the experiences of our ancestors and right back to the beginning of time itself!

 

If I hadn't lost you all already, I surely have now!

[the village idiot]

7 minutes ago, WesD said:

Going with the 2 buttons theme wouldn’t most people press the button on their dominant side ie left handers left button right handers right button?

I think the two buttons were next to each other, operated by the same hand. But even if they weren't, the experiment was conducted several times with each subject.

[the village idiot]

Another good example which seriously calls into question the existence of free will is the case of Charles Whitman.

 

In the 1960's Whitman shot his girlfriend and mother before climbing the clock tower at a nearby university and shooting at students, killing 14. What an evil bar steward you would no doubt think?

 

The story gets more intriguing when you consider his suicide note in which he claimed to love his partner and his Mum, and he couldn't fathom why he was prone to huge aggressive outbursts and very violent behaviour. He asked for his brain to be autopsied after his death to see if they could find anything wrong.

 

The autopsy was carried out and they found a golf ball sized tumour pressing on his amigdula in his brain. The amigdula is an old part of the brain heavily involved in aggression and emotional response. A tumour in this area easily explains away his awful actions.

 

So now you have to ask yourself who was to blame, Charles Whitman or the brain tumour. Without the brain tumour he would't have done it. He had no control over the tumour, he didn't know it was there.

 

The telling point here is that all aspects of our brain development and it's neural firings resulting in our actions are exactly analogous to that brain tumour. We don't pick any of it! 

 

Are we truly responsible for our actions?