Free will or lack of.......

[onetruth]

22 minutes ago, WesD said:

If you receive an automated thought by its very nature your brain automatically wants you to think of that, it would be very counter intuitive to cut itself off mid thought and offer something else up. Surely by virtue the thought our brain sent us, it would want us to follow it through and run it’s natural time span before moving us on with something else?

 

Its strange how our our attention span differs with subjects we are interested in to those we aren’t. 

Another point to make about this is that the brain is, of course, not a perfect machine.  Millions of years of evolution is just millions of years of chance mutation.  Hardly surprising that even human brains "malfunction" in this way.

[the village idiot]

Book title below:

 

"The Self Illusion. Who do you think you are?"

Edited January 5, 2018 by the village idiot

[the village idiot]

19 minutes ago, onetruth said:

Really interesting.

I don't think you can have mid-thought in the same way you can have mid-sentence.  I imagine the thought process might go something like this (new line for each thought)...

 

Think of fruits.

Apple.

Banana.

Carrot.

No, not carrot.

Pear.

Think of fruits.

Orange.

Yoghart.

No, not yoghurt.

Where did yoghurt come from?

(Hahaha).

Think of fruits.

My elbow is itching.

Think of fruits.

Stop thinking of fruits.

Tomato.

Is tomato a fruit?

Stop thinking of fruits.

My elbow is itching.

Roll a cigarette.

That really is a hugely beneficial post.

 

There is a huge difference between the way we believe we think, and the way we actually do.

 

It's an important realisation.

[onetruth]

13 minutes ago, Mortimer Firewood said:

Anybody wish to give there veiws on the Ego how’s it formed what does it protect.

Given the way you've worded that I suppose you mean Freud's definition of ego.  I think (and I'm way out of my comfort zone here!) it was the part of the psyche that made judgments, including moral judgments and judgments about what was real or unreal.  It protects the id, which is (I think) the basest bodily and mental desire-factory part of the psyche (hunger/pleasure&pain/etc.)  As I say, way out of my depth!

 

The word "ego" is used in all sorts of different ways, though.  I think even Freud changed how he used it in his later work.  

[WesD]

16 minutes ago, onetruth said:

Another point to make about this is that the brain is, of course, not a perfect machine.  Millions of years of evolution is just millions of years of chance mutation.  Hardly surprising that even human brains "malfunction" in this way.

Is it malfunctioning or obeying?

We learn or our brain learns so you would think with experience the brain would learn to slow thoughts down and not let them be interrupted before throwing you another unless of course danger is involved in which case it would interrupt out of instinct and possibly reaction but we can break every thought pattern if we want to we can sporadically change subjects or topics so either it’s a lot of malfunctioning or it’s obeying as we are breaking the thought process on purpose. 

[onetruth]

19 minutes ago, WesD said:

Is it malfunctioning or obeying?

We learn or our brain learns so you would think with experience the brain would learn to slow thoughts down and not let them be interrupted before throwing you another unless of course danger is involved in which case it would interrupt out of instinct and possibly reaction but we can break every thought pattern if we want to we can sporadically change subjects or topics so either it’s a lot of malfunctioning or it’s obeying as we are breaking the thought process on purpose. 

I'd agree with that.  On balance though, I think malfunctioning is more likely than obeying.

 

Imagine a computer programme that has to add up until it reaches exactly 100, starting at 1, and going up by 2 at a time.  It will go 1,3,5,7... ...97,99,101,103,105...

No matter how much "experience" it accrues, it is never going to learn to slow down!  If the brain is an imperfectly programmed computer - quite a reasonable description I think - it will continue to "malfunction". 

Edited January 5, 2018 by onetruth
malfunctioning!

[onetruth]

11 minutes ago, onetruth said:

Imagine a computer programme that has to add up until it reaches exactly 100, starting at 1, and going up by 2 at a time.  It will go 1,3,5,7... ...97,99,101,103,105...

No matter how much "experience" it accrues, it is never going to learn to slow down!  If the brain is an imperfectly programmed computer - quite a reasonable description I think - it will continue to "malfunction". 

Ignore that, it's crap.

 

What I was driving at was - although our brains can learn, if there are "bugs" in the system, no matter how much experience is gained, we can't learn the bugs away.  Now I've typed it out, I'm not sure even I believe it!

 

Bed-time, methinks...

Edited January 5, 2018 by onetruth

[the village idiot]

41 minutes ago, WesD said:

Is it malfunctioning or obeying?

We learn or our brain learns so you would think with experience the brain would learn to slow thoughts down and not let them be interrupted before throwing you another unless of course danger is involved in which case it would interrupt out of instinct and possibly reaction but we can break every thought pattern if we want to we can sporadically change subjects or topics so either it’s a lot of malfunctioning or it’s obeying as we are breaking the thought process on purpose. 

It's a bit misleading to think in terms of malfunctioning or obeying as this implies that the brain should have a specific optimal state, and that it is in service to an identity of some description. This is why onetruth put the word malfunction in quotation marks.

 

Brains really are just automatic information processors. They do what they do as a direct result of what they have. The brain doesn't know what it's doing, it just does. And so, by extention, do we.

Edited January 5, 2018 by the village idiot

[onetruth]

41 minutes ago, the village idiot said:

It's a bit misleading to think in terms of malfunctioning or obeying as this implies that the brain should have a specific optimal state, and that it is in service to an identity of some description. This is why onetouch put the word malfunctioning in quotation marks.

 

Brains really are just automatic information processors. They do what they do as a direct result of what they have. The brain doesn't know what it's doing, it just does. And so, by extention do we.

I'm not sure that's what WesD was saying.  If I remember rightly (and it's a bit hard to follow when you can't read the quoted text in a quote), he suggested that when a train of thought is diverted to another line of thought, this was in obedience to (something).  My point was to suggest that, as our brains structure is just what evolution happened to knock out (rather than being something carefully designed or optimised), it is quite reasonable to suggest that trains of thought could be derailed through "malfunctions" of the system.  My clumsy use of quotation marks (both here and there) was more an acknowledgement that they are the way they are because of chance, rather than being something that is supposed to function a particular way.   

 

I am not certain that brains can entirely be reduced to "just automatic information processors", though it may well be the case.  It is possible to design an AI that can design another AI to fulfil specific goals, but I don't think AIs can evaluate their own goals.  Human minds certainly seem to be able to do that (as we are doing now, perhaps).

Edited January 5, 2018 by onetruth

[the village idiot]

13 minutes ago, onetruth said:

I'm not sure that's what WesD was saying.  If I remember rightly (and it's a bit hard to follow when you can't read the quoted text in a quote), he suggested that when a train of thought is diverted to another line of thought, this was in obedience to (something).  My point was to suggest that, as our brains structure is just what evolution happened to knock out (rather than being something carefully designed or optimised), it is quite reasonable to suggest that trains of thought could be derailed through "malfunctions" of the system.  My clumsy use of quotation marks (both here and there) was more an acknowledgement that they are the way they are because of chance, rather than being something that is supposed to function a particular way.   

I think we are basically saying the same things here.

 

15 minutes ago, onetruth said:

I don't think AIs can evaluate their own goals

Not yet!

 

15 minutes ago, onetruth said:

Fun fact (completely unrelated): Graham's number (part of a solution to a maths problem) is so large that, were the human brain able to conceive it, there would be so much information in such a small volume of space, it would form a black hole.

 Excellent fun fact, and highly appropriate. My name is Graham and my brain certainly feels like a black hole at the moment. Hungry for matter and incredibly dense!