Denying Problems When We Don’t Like the Solutions (perhaps somewhat off-topic)

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://today.duke.edu/2014/11/solutionaversion

[font face=Serif][font size=5]Denying Problems When We Don’t Like the Solutions[/font]
[font size=4]Duke study sheds light on why conservatives, liberals disagree so vehemently[/font]

November 6, 2014

Editor's Note: For a copy of this study, contact Troy Campbell at [e-mail].

[font size=3]Durham, NC - There may be a scientific answer for why conservatives and liberals disagree so vehemently over the existence of issues like climate change and specific types of crime.

A new study from Duke University finds that people will evaluate scientific evidence based on whether they view its policy implications as politically desirable. If they don't, then they tend to deny the problem even exists.

“Logically, the proposed solution to a problem, such as an increase in government regulation or an extension of the free market, should not influence one’s belief in the problem. However, we find it does,” said co-author Troy Campbell, a Ph.D. candidate at Duke's Fuqua School of Business. “The cure can be more immediately threatening than the problem.”

The study, "Solution Aversion: On the Relation Between Ideology and Motivated Disbelief," appears in the November issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (viewable at http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/psp/107/5/809/).

…[/font][/font]

Follow the link to see exactly how this applies to politicized views regarding “climate change.”

Briefly, Republicans are much more liable to believe in “Global Warming” if the suggested solution is free market based. If the solution is more government regulation (for example, a “carbon tax”) then, they don’t believe the problem exists!

[pscot]

1. I think Hatrack's Principle covers it

Or the Tragedy of the Commons. Or the fact that we're just tool monkeys and don't have a damned clue. Everyone will understand it eventually.

[OKIsItJustMe]

3. No, I don't think those are sufficient explanations

For example, "we're just tool monkeys." OK, so... why is it that you and I are apparently able to transcend our fundamental "tool monkeydom" but others are not?

[pscot]

4. When CSPAN first appeared

I was impressed with the intelligence and insight some of the members of Congress showed. Then I watched them vote, as a body, to fund the Contras and mine the harbors of Nicaragua. Some members protested fiercely, but it made no difference. It was a WTF moment. Individually we may get it, but the LCD is what governs our behavior. Look at the election we just had, as a result of which James Inhofe becomes the point man on climate change initiatives and Murkowski takes over energy.

The collective rules. At bottom we're still just animals, driven by group norms and imperatives and raging hormonal tides. It's impossible to over estimate the effect of testosterone on the state of the world. We are very intelligent apes, but we're still apes. And it's starting to look as if intelligence offers no long term selective advantage. If it did we might think twice before destroying the viability of the only habitable space in at least a 4 light year radius. Just my opinion of course.

[GliderGuider]

5. You and I "believe" we are able to transcend our tool monkeydom.

We're not.

That belief is just as much a comforting self-delusion as all other beliefs.

[OKIsItJustMe]

6. Nonsense

Apes might be taught to swing hammers or use saws. They will not build a cathedral. Nor would they paint its ceilings.


It's not that they lack creativity. However, ours exceeds theirs.

We have greater capacity to spoil our world. We also have greater capacity to heal it, primarily because we have greater capacity to comprehend it.

[The2ndWheel]

7. Spoil or heal, it's all just change

With both upsides and downsides to the same change, no matter the change.

[OKIsItJustMe]

8. Is this what you had in mind?

While it has a certain appeal, I don't know that it is “all just change.”

[The2ndWheel]

30. That about sums it up

It's sort of like you and GG in this post. You're both right, at the same time, depending on how and what you look at it.

[GliderGuider]

33. Very true!

The differences between worldviews come not so much from the facts in evidence as from the assumptions we apply to those facts to produce conclusions.

OK and I can look at the very same set of facts and come to completely different conclusions, because our assumptions going in are different.

Assumptions (especially in a social context) are quite hard to identify, are a LOT harder to validate than facts, and tend to be bound up with our emotions and core values. That deep psychological rootedness makes assumptions very resistant to change, and also makes us quite willing to do battle to defend them. As OK and I have demonstrated.

[GliderGuider]

9. “Tool monkey” is two words, each of which describes a different aspect of Homo sapiens.

The “tool” reference is to the technological and creative abilities we are endowed with by virtue of our ginormeous neocortex.

The “monkey” reference is to our thermodynamically-shaped, genetically-embedded, instinctually-mediated growth imperative, which we can no more shake than a chimp can shake his own instinctual urges. It's part of the wiring of every species.

All the cool neocortical stuff simply acts in service to our biophysically-generated growth imperative. Neocortically-mediated behaviour never acts against that imperative when operating at the social level. Evolved psychological social entrainment mechanisms prevent degrowth excursions that would be harmful to the group. Except for occasional individuals, we (i.e. any large social mass of humans) are as stuck with the dynamics of growth to and beyond the carrying limits of our environment as any troop of monkeys.

[OKIsItJustMe]

10. Uh huh

It’s useful to look at “Human nature” as a product of “Nature.” Long before the term “tool monkey” gained it’s popularity, I was a fan of Desmond Morris.

For what it’s worth, although we are primates, we are not monkeys.

However (for example) testing a new medicine on other primates is not the same as testing it on humans. We are different.

As for us being, “stuck with the dynamics of growth to and beyond the carrying limits of our environment as any troop of monkeys.” Well, this is an article of faith for you, but not for me.

You see, it doesn’t match up with statistics. Total fertility rates vary dramatically in the world.


Here in the US, we could support much higher population, but our fertility rate has dropped. In Africa, they have a higher fertility rate than they can afford.

What’s the difference? It seems to be education.

http://www.thenational.ae/opinion/editorial/education-is-key-to-controlling-indias-population

[font face=Serif][font size=5]Education is key to controlling India’s population[/font]

November 12, 2014 Updated: November 12, 2014 06:03 PM

[font size=3]…

There is little doubt that India needs to address its population explosion, but it needs to do so using a safer and more practical approach: education. Experience elsewhere shows an inverse correlation between birth rates and women’s level of education. This is demonstrated within India by Kerala – the most literate state – which has managed to keep its population stable at 34 million. By comparison, Bihar has 99 million people and that is rising faster than the national average.

Education promotes a shift from the quantity of children in favour of the quality of life. The impact of improving education will take time to filter through into birth rates but it ought to cause the Indian government to rethink its population-control strategy.[/font][/font]

This is what separates us from other primates; for millennia, we have been accumulating knowledge. That hard won, expanding base of knowledge is what allows us to control populations, and gives us the ability to do what other “monkeys” cannot.

[GliderGuider]

11. Yet despite all those falling fertility rates,

Aggregate consumption continues to increase. In this instance, falling fertility rates is a red herring - we have simply transferred some of our growth imperative from population to more consumption. I=PAT, remember?

[OKIsItJustMe]

13. I’m sorry… do you expect to turn a battleship on a dime?

One of the measures we like to use around here are carbon emissions.

Here’s a handy chart:

Assuming that by nature, we as individuals consume more and more, how is it that some of us are producing less CO[font size="1"]₂[/font] than we were ten years ago?

Well the obvious answer is that we must be using much more clean energy. It's all of those windmills and solar panels! (Right?) Well, no, I don’t think that’s it. Energy use per capita looks quite similar.

It must be the economic downturn!

Wow! No, apparently it’s not that! Emissions are actually going down -vs- GDP!

Unfortunately, these graphs are limited to a few nations, and over a limited period of time. However, it does tend to show that (contrary to your article of faith) some of us actually are able to consume less over time.

Perhaps we aren’t quite the Malthusian rabbits you make us out to be!?

[GliderGuider]

14. Are we consuming less?

I notice that India and China (and all other developing nations) are conveniently missing from your graphs... The best spin I could put on your graphs is that developed nations are becoming more energy-efficient in their consumption, not that their consumption of real goods is falling.

Regarding the battleship, I don't expect us to turn it at all - no matter how much currency we put under it.

[OKIsItJustMe]

16. Some of us are consuming less

Your thesis is that it is our nature to consume more and more, and that we cannot overcome our nature.

It appears that residents of “developed” countries are able to.

Therefore, your thesis is false.

[GliderGuider]

18. Show me that developed nations are consuming less real goods.

Not proxied by energy or GDP. Overall declining absolute consumption.

I've seen no evidence for it.

[OKIsItJustMe]

20. Interesting

So, you believe that “concrete” is a valid proxy for “consumption” but neither energy use, nor CO[font size="1"]₂[/font] emissions are.

[GliderGuider]

21. Here is a look at a set of various raw materials and energy, with population growth

The consumption growth of all these raw materials and energy, since 1980, has outpaced population growth.

What's interesting is that the world consumption of steel was pretty stable until 2001 when China began their Great Leap Forward, Version 2.0. To me the this implies that much of the additional consumption growth is probably occurring in developing nations that are trying to get their piece of the pie.

So the world population is still growing at ~77 million per year (despite falling fertility rates) and the consumption of raw materials and energy is growing even faster than the population. That looks to me like "ongoing growth", no matter how you spin it.

[GliderGuider]

22. A better look at the world's primary energy consumption

No fiddles with "Energy per capita" or "Energy per dollar of GDP"

If total energy use is climbing, total CO2 emissions are climbing, the total consumption of raw materials is climbing, and the population is climbing - that's called growth.

[OKIsItJustMe]

23. Hmmm… You’re entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts

http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/usinventoryreport.html


http://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/news_docs/pbl-2013-trends-in-global-co2-emissions-2013-report-1148.pdf

[GliderGuider]

24. What facts have I presented that were incorrect?

Last edited Thu Nov 13, 2014, 07:42 AM - Edit history (1)

You just seem to be objecting to the conclusions I've drawn.

[OKIsItJustMe]

25. No…

You claim that it is in our nature to constantly expand, breeding like Malthusian rabbits, using as many resources as we can, constrained only by their supply.

I pointed out that there is a segment of the world population (i.e. the “developed” nations) where the Total Fertility Rate is less than replacement, and for which emissions and energy use are dropping in recent years.

This proves your claim false. But you wave your hands and say, “If total energy use is climbing, total CO2 emissions are climbing, the total consumption of raw materials is climbing, and the population is climbing - that's called growth.”

True! In the “developing world” populations are growing, and energy use is increasing. However, my point stands.

Whether in total, or per capita, carbon emissions and energy use are decreasing in the US and in some other “developed nations.”

[GliderGuider]

26. I never said anything about Malthusian rabbits.

In fact, my original comments weren't directed at population growth at all. You introduced the concept of fertility rates and directed the conversation towards the specific idea of population growth.

I started off talking about our "growth imperative", which to me is a general term that encompasses growth in either population or per-capita consumption. Remember that my main concern is about our impact on the planet, which is the product of our population and our per-capita consumption. I then said that in developed countries some of our growth urge had shifted from population to consumption, and much the same thing is happening now in developing nations.

All species grow in terms of their impact on their environment until they reach some external limit. With most animal species this limit is in food supply, though environmental factors (especially droughts or freezing temperatures) play a role. Humans have a broader envelope and more maneuverability within it, but the same principle applies because the evolved factors underlying reproduction and survival are essentially the same for us as for any animal species.

I take a globalized, species-wide view. For me as long as growth in both human numbers and aggregate consumption is occurring, we have not demonstrated an ability to voluntarily restrain our growth urge in the absence of an external limit. The fact that different groups do different things in different places at different times does not mean that the circumstances that drive the behaviour in one country or region can be generalized to the species - especially when something as evolutionarily antithetical to survival as voluntary de-growth is being considered.

You may not think de-growth in either numbers or consumption is necessary, that the problems can be fixed by doing things smarter and more creatively. If that, or something like it, is really your position, then this may at the core of our disagreement. It represents a fundamentally different worldview from mine, and such gaps are rarely bridgeable through debate.

[OKIsItJustMe]

27. Have I misrepresented you?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1127&pid=77411
“You and I "believe" we are able to transcend our tool monkeydom.”

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1127&pid=77621
… Except for occasional individuals, we (i.e. any large social mass of humans) are as stuck with the dynamics of growth to and beyond the carrying limits of our environment as any troop of monkeys.


Entire nations do not count as a large social mass?

[GliderGuider]

12. Here's a look at what's been happening to TFR and consumption rates

The proxy for consumption in this example is the world's per capita use of cement.



Per-capita children (TFR) is falling, but per-capita consumption is climbing faster.

TFR data is from the UN, cement data is from the USGS.

[OKIsItJustMe]

15. So, for you, “Concrete” = “Consumption”

I would propose that “concrete” ≈ “development.”

(The “developing nations” will pave roads, build permanent structures…)

[GliderGuider]

17. It's a proxy, yes. nt

[RiverLover]

2. Well that explains it!

[Bill USA]

19. conservatism ... image

recommended!!

[hunter]

28. There's plenty of denying problems when we like the solutions too.

Thus all the posts about wind or solar power, electric or fuel cell cars, shutting down nuclear plants, positive developments in fusion power, etc., etc. are all a sort of denial, implying that this high energy, high environmental impact civilization will be somehow be "saved" by alternative technologies.

It won't be saved.

If we do survive as a technological species it will be by radical social changes, most especially the abandonment of our "consumer" society and our current theories of economics.

The greatest challenge isn't sources of energy or material, it's in making the transition to a low energy, low environmental impact, high technology society in a gentle, non-catastrophic manner.

[OKIsItJustMe]

29. Naturally, this is your opinion

In my opinion, in the short term, we probably need to keep cutting energy usage (partly through efficiency) and convert to cleaner energy sources.

In the long term, I suspect we will have relatively high energy usage, based on nuclear fusion.

[hunter]

31. "... based on nuclear fusion."

God Forbid!

In these times I wouldn't tell a soul if I got fusion to work.

If I did, then welcome to Borg Earth, it's worse than fossil fuel or fission powered earth...

[OKIsItJustMe]

32. “…worse than fossil fuel…”

An interesting claim. However, one I reject as baseless.

[hunter]

34. Turning the earth's biosphere into a pulsating blob of human protoplasm...

... or a Borg-like species is not my idea of utopia.

Fusion powered ocean container ships, and later space ships, these are my nightmare scenario.

I'd rather live in a world where the human population was voluntarily declining, people were generally happy and very well educated, and I'd often see a California Condor soaring overhead as I walked to the neighborhood pub.

Let us leave to posterity a mostly undamaged rich earth-nest to the bears, dogs, cats, marine mammals, squid, fungi, social trees... who knows?

The descendants of a successful intelligent species create their own universe, moving beyond this one.

Less sophisticated intelligent species die of a fusion or antimatter powered drug overdose in Mother Nature's basement and nobody mourns their passing, especially not Mother Nature.

At this stage of our development we humans would not be mourned.

[OKIsItJustMe]

35. “At this stage of our development we humans would not be mourned.”

Which is mourned more? An adult or a young child?

[hr]

“Let us leave to posterity a mostly undamaged rich earth-nest to the bears, dogs, cats, marine mammals, squid, fungi, social trees... who knows?”

Understand this… humanity will not go gentle into that good night. If humanity dies, we will likely take the whole ecosystem with us (certainly all the things you list.)

[GliderGuider]

36. And if humanity lives we will also take down the ecosystem.

This is why, rather than working for either survival or extinction, I prefer to simply bear witness the passing parade.
It's an amazing time to be alive - full of all the sorrows and joys a complete person could possibly ask for.

[OKIsItJustMe]

39. This is an article of faith for you

It is not for me.

Our great strength as a species is our ability to learn. We are intelligent creatures who can adjust our patterns of behavior. New activities, which our genes never imagined, become “second nature” to us. (How preposterous is it that we can ride bicycles? or fly airplanes?)

Our greatest challenge will be to learn quickly enough, but, honestly, comparing our environmental consciousness today to what we had 50 years ago… we’ve come quite some way.

Consider: You know enough to despair! (That requires a level of environmental consciousness which simply did not exist just a few generations ago.)

So, no, I don’t think we’re going to die off. We didn’t die off during the last ice age, and we had a lot less going for us then.

We are faced with several challenges, but we are incredibly adaptable. If we can make it through the next hundred years or so, I think we’ll be OK, and, yes, I think the biosphere will be OK too.

[GliderGuider]

41. And likewise, your articles of faith are not mine. nt

[hunter]

37. The universe is very big.

It's not about us, our gods, or our planet.

It's about who we are and what we want to be.

[GliderGuider]

38. Viktor Frankl...

"Man's Search for Meaning"

[OKIsItJustMe]

40. How very nihlistic of you.

So then, logically, it’s not about the rest of the creatures around us either. So, why do you care about their survival?

[hunter]

42. I'm not a nihlist in any way.

Ethics are deeply important to me.

Nevertheless, I analyze problems with the tools of evolutionary biology and science in general.

The universe isn't going to recognize humans as anything exceptional.

In the history of life on earth, most species don't persist.

[OKIsItJustMe]

43. I'm talking about “existential hihlisim”

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

… With respect to the universe, existential nihilism posits that a single human or even the entire human species is insignificant, without purpose and unlikely to change in the totality of existence. …

[GliderGuider]

44. Is there a problem with that position, in your opinion?

It sounds to me like the only reasonable conclusion that a rational, non-religious person could come to. It certainly describes my worldview quite well.

[OKIsItJustMe]

45. It may be held to be logically valid

It is (however) heartless.

We have yet to find evidence of life elsewhere in the universe. (It seems likely that it exists, but we haven’t found it yet.)

I believe that Ming vases have intrinsic value which their component chemicals do not. That value (in part) derives from their rarity.


However, Ming vases also have value because they were produced by living, breathing artists. It seems that life gives them value, even though they are not, themselves, alive.

If you truly held “existential nihilism” as a worldview, then, whether all life on this planet ceases or not makes no difference. There is no value in “saving” whales. It’s a pointless exercise. There is no point in “deep ecology” since life itself is without value.

You seem to place value on at least some life. Therefore, I don’t believe you follow the logic of “existential nihilism” consistently.

[GliderGuider]

46. None of us is entirely logically consistent. Humans are not very logical beings, after all.

In my case, I was a complete existential nihilist in my earlier years, largely due to my family influence. I was taught from an early age that the universe and everything in it has no intrinsic meaning; that all meaning is projected onto the universe by the people perceiving it.

Starting in my mid 50s I had a seven year fling with "intrinsic meaning". I came to the idea through Deep Ecology, and proceeded from there through a number of frankly spiritual beliefs, largely Hindu and Buddhist in origin. The driver for this shift was a morbid existential fear that arose from discovering what I came to call the Global Clusterfuck, and realizing that it was probably unsolvable. The idea that there might be something magical underlying the cosmos, not to mention some deep and divine significance to human existence, gave me a sense of comfort - a feeling of being at home in a less-hostile universe. It was a valuable experience, because it completely relieved my fear. As a result it has allowed me to be more objective about myself and the world.

Over the last few years I have investigated the nature of being human more deeply, looking for explanations for the apparent intractability of our collective behaviour. What I've discovered has caused me to swing back towards my original position. Because I no longer fear the operation of the universe, I feel more able to look more directly at what human beings really are, and how we actually operate. That investigation has led me to my current position - one in which thermodynamics, cybernetics, natural selection, ecology and evolutionary psychology seem to provide the best descriptions of what's going on here.

The deeper I have probed into the physical context of human nature, the less convinced I've become that we have much "free will" at all. From my childhood belief in humans as volitional agents in a mechanistic universe, I went through a phase where I believed that humans were volitional agents in a conscious universe. Over the last few years my position has retrenched. I have returned to my earlier belief that the universe is fundamentally mechanistic and that the only meaning it has is what humans impute to it. However, contrary to my childhood views, I'm now convinced that we possess very little actual free will. We are, of course, very good at crating and defending the illusion that we do. Oddly enough, my current views on free will have been strongly influenced by my Buddhism, specifically the concept of dependent origination. In a sense, such aspects of Buddhism were precursors of modern complex systems theory.

As you correctly surmised, such views arise from an intellectual view of the world. I am not by nature a heart-centered person. I've tried holding a heart-based viewpoint, but for me (at this point in my life anyway) it provides little additional explanatory power for the questions that haunt me: "Why are we driving full-speed toward a clearly visible cliff, and why is it so hard for us to even recognize the danger, let alone turn away from it?"

There is value in saving whales and other forms of life, but it's a value that we place on them, not some intrinsic value conferred by the mere fact of their existence.

There is also value in being kind to others, along with other moral values. But all morals are human inventions with utilitarian roots, they are not intrinsic, let alone context-free.

Human beings are a tiny part of a vast biosphere, and an infinitesimal part of the cosmos. Nature does not depend on our existence for continuity. When our species goes extinct it will have an effect similar to removing your hand from a bucket of water - the hole closes, and the universe keeps on going.

Because of this interpretation, I have abandoned all moral explanations for what's going on in the human world. Morality is important - to us. But like all meaning it's something we project onto the world and each other, not some immutable, inherent quality. The same goes for blame. This makes my views largely incompatible with politics of any sort, since that activity is IMO driven entirely by morality and blame. I now consider both of those ideas to be pointless, energy-wasting illusions.

Others may not find such views agreeable, but that's a separate issue. This is how I see the world these days.

[OKIsItJustMe]

47. “the only meaning (the universe) has is what humans impute to it"

Last edited Sun Nov 16, 2014, 07:26 PM - Edit history (1)

If humans have no “free will” the idea of us perceiving a meaning to anything (imputed or innate) seems counterintuitive to me (at best.) How can you decide whether something has meaning or not, without “free will” to make that decision?

Several years ago, I came to the conclusion that a hallmark of intelligence is the ability to intentionally alter one’s own behavior. (I was thinking about “Artificial Intelligence” at the time.) Instinctual behavior (or following programming) in my opinion, is not intelligent behavior.

How preposterous is it that we can communicate by typing on a keyboard, attached to a computer, attached to a network to leave messages on a web site? (Which of our instincts prepared us for this behavior? How was typing useful in the African Savannah?)


Our ability to disobey or augment our programming, to transcend our basic instincts, suggests to me a more profound level of existence. Call it “the ghost in the machine,” “Buddha-nature,” a “soul” or some other term, as you like..

Continuing along on that line of reasoning, people have engaged in various practices over the years, intending to strengthen their souls (e.g. fasting i.e. intentionally eating less than one could.) These practices, it seems to me, would strengthen the “free will” they have over their own bodies.

There are all sorts of things you can conclude from the very fact that you are able to contemplate them “cogito ergo sum,” is just one. We can also conclude things about the universe from the simple fact that we exist and are able to consider the universe. (See "the anthropic principle.”)

“There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

[GliderGuider]

48. What causes the intention to alter one's behaviour?

As far as I can tell, every action we take is ineluctably determined by everything (literally everything) that has come before it. I see no ability to disobey or augment our programming, only an ability to deceive ourselves as to the reasons we follow it. That self-delusion is itself part of our biological programming, and includes the need and ability to develop ideas such as "Buddha-nature" or "soul".

What you express is a comfortable mainstream view of free will. I simply don't share it.

[OKIsItJustMe]

49. Determinism is akin to “predestination”

Determinism is great! I don’t have to feel guilty about environmental destruction, because I'm not responsible! I have no free will to stop myself! (It’s not my fault! My genes made me do it!)

Sadly, without “free will” it appears I am forced to feel guilty for my actions, but unable to adjust them accordingly. What a lousy design I have!

To me, if we are deterministic, we have no free will, and cannot be said to be intelligent. To which, you respond, “We have the illusion of free will, nothing more. We aren’t intelligent.”

To me this is absurd. If I have no free will, why do I waste time with self-delusion, pretending that I do?

http://now.dartmouth.edu/2013/03/neuroscientist-says-humans-are-wired-for-free-will/

[font face=Serif][font size=5]Neuroscientist Says Humans Are Wired for Free Will[/font]

Posted on March 11, 2013 By Bill Platt

[font size=3]Dartmouth’s Peter Tse ’84, an associate professor of psychological and brain sciences, says he has identified a neurological basis for free will in the human brain, challenging a majority opinion that has dominated neuroscience for the last 40 years.

…

How does this relate to the question of whether we have free will? Traditionally, people have said that either everything is determined before it happens, and you have no choice, says Tse, or everything is simply a matter of chance, which also excludes the possibility of choice.

“This is the bogeyman of the free will argument,” Tse says. “How can we have a middle ground between the two extremes of determinism, where you have no free choice in the sense that things could not have turned out otherwise, and indeterminism or chance, where you didn’t actually decide the outcome?

“The solution is that the brain can set criteria for future mental activity that will be met by future inputs.” This can follow a long period of consideration, or playing things out virtually in one’s mind, before an optimal set of criteria gets wired into synaptic weights so that the system is ready, should the right car comes along.

…[/font][/font]

[GliderGuider]

50. "If I have no free will, why do I waste time ... pretending that I do? "

Because it's the way you're wired.

The delusion of free will is an evolutionary advantage. It's rooted in the neurological impulse that most organisms from bacteria to humans have, to move toward food and energy sources that are detected in the environment. That reflex has become highly elaborated over time, and this elaboration allows humans to misinterpret its operation as free will. It's anything but - it's simply well-disguised neurology.

IMO.

[OKIsItJustMe]

51. It seems to me that delusion is only an advantage if we have free will

With no free will, I am not comforted by my illusion of free will. So, what is the point?

http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/features/are-we-free

[font face=Serif][font size=5]Are we free?[/font]
[font size=4]Neuroscience gives the wrong answer[/font]

by Daniel Dennett / October 16, 2014
Published in November 2014 issue of Prospect Magazine

[font size=3]For several millennia, people have worried about whether or not they have free will. What exactly worries them? No single answer suffices. For centuries the driving issue was about God’s supposed omniscience. If God knew what we were going to do before we did it, in what sense were we free to do otherwise? Weren’t we just acting out our parts in a Divine Script? Were any of our so-called decisions real decisions? Even before belief in an omniscient God began to wane, science took over the threatening role. Democritus, the ancient Greek philosopher and proto-scientist, postulated that the world, including us, was made of tiny entities—atoms—and imagined that unless atoms sometimes, unpredictably and for no reason, interrupted their trajectories with a random swerve, we would be trapped in causal chains that reached back for eternity, robbing us of our power to initiate actions on our own.

…

There are three main sources for the scientists’ unsettling “discoveries.” First, there is the putative timing of subjects’ decisions. This line of thought grew out of the work of the neurologist Benjamin Libet in the 1980s, which seemed to show that our brains made decisions before we, the conscious agents resident in those brains, could put in our oars. Second, there is the putative fallibility of subjects’ introspective judgements of their own agency, as reported by Daniel Wegner in his 2002 book, The Illusion of Conscious Will, which disclosed systematic errors in people’s judgements of their own role in actions undertaken by their limbs. Third, there is the unrecognised influence on subjects’ decisions of contextual factors that shouldn’t be decisive, growing out of Stanley Milgram’s and Philip Zimbardo’s notorious experiments into authority and obedience with college students back in the 1960s and 70s. More recent work exploring all three veins has come up with some new findings, and these have been seen by some to strengthen or even confirm the case from science against free will. In each area, Mele provides accurate, jargon-free accounts of the experiments and what they do and don’t show. And in each case he locates what, in my opinion, are the most fundamental flaws in the reasoning by those scientists.

The mistakes are so obvious that one sometimes wonders how serious scientists could make them. What has lowered their threshold for careful analysis so catastrophically? Perhaps it is the temptation of glory. What a coup it would be if your neuroscience experiment brought about the collapse of several millennia of inconclusive philosophising about free will! A curious fact about these forays into philosophy is that almost invariably the scientists concentrate on the least scientifically informed, most simplistic conceptions of free will, as if to say they can’t be bothered considering the subtleties of alternative views worked out by mere philosophers. For instance, all the experiments in the Libet tradition take as their test case of a freely willed decision a trivial choice—between flicking or not flicking your wrist, or pushing the button on the left, not the right—with nothing hinging on which decision you make. Mele aptly likens these situations to being confronted with many identical jars of peanuts on the supermarket shelf and deciding which to reach for. You need no reason to choose the one you choose so you let some unconscious bias direct your hand to a jar—any jar—that is handy. Not an impressive model of a freely willed choice for which somebody might be held responsible. Moreover, as Mele points out, you are directed not to make a reasoned choice, so the fact that you have no clue about the source of your urge is hardly evidence that we, in general, are misled or clueless about how we make our choices.

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It is a fact that when faced with actually tough decisions—about whether to intervene in somebody else’s crisis, for instance, or to go along with the crowd on some morally dubious adventure—we often disappoint ourselves and others with our craven behaviour. This sobering fact has been experimentally demonstrated in the Milgram and Zimbardo experiments and a host of milder, less traumatic experiments, but far from showing that we are always overwhelmed by context, these experiments invariably exhibit the capacity of a stalwart few to resist the enormous pressures arrayed against them. Is there a heroic minority of folks, then, with genuine free will, capable of being moved by good reasons even under duress? It’s better than that: you can learn—or be trained—to be on the alert for these pressures, and to resist them readily.

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[GliderGuider]

52. Of course it seems like that to you.

The point, as I said above, is enhanced survival/reproductive probabilities.

All it takes to be "comforted" is a surge of serotonin and dopamine. Such a surge can be triggered by any number of neurological events, including and especially self-delusion.

[OKIsItJustMe]

53. Actual free will is more useful

I would say that we operate on several levels:

1. Hard wiring (for example, jerking your hand away from a fire)
2. Conditioned behaviors (Pavlovian training)
3. Biases
4. Learned behaviors (like riding a bicycle)
…
5. Willful behavior (I will go to the movies.)

It is useful not to have to “think” about everything we do. (I might forget to breathe!)

This allows me to decide to go to the movies, and decide to ride my bicycle there, and decide on a course to take, but I don’t have to “think” about how to breathe, or balance, or steer, or pedal…

I was really struck by the work of Mark Tilden. He developed walking robots governed only by simple feedback (a “nervous-network.”) Then, he added brains to them. The brains govern the behavior of the “nervous network.”
http://discovermagazine.com/2000/sep/featbiobot#.USQQD2cud8E
http://www.botmag.com/the-evolution-of-a-roboticist-mark-tilden/

[GliderGuider]

54. I'm with you on the first four

But I think that your fifth level can be derived from the first four.

For me the main utility in ditching the concept of free will was that I could finally stop blaming people for doing what they do. Those who want to continue with the blame and outrage will find "free will" to be a most supportive belief.

It doesn't really matter what we believe, though. Life goes on within us or without us...

[OKIsItJustMe]

55. It actually does matter

With free will, we can alter our behavior.

There are things we should not blame others for. (e.g. Simple reflex actions.—If I am hit by someone jerking their hand away from a flame, I can hardly blame them.)

There are things we should blame others for. (e.g. Intentional actions.—If someone, without provocation, punches me in the face. I will blame them.)

Rather than excusing everything, by saying “they cannot help themselves,” I prefer to use a variation on “Hanlon’s Razor”—“Never attribute to malice, that which is adequately explained by stupidity” (or ignorance.)

Our tendency is to follow “programmed behavior,” since that requires the least thought. However (by my way of thinking) true intelligence is the ability to transcend our “programmed behavior.”

Our “programmed behavior” you have identified with the growth imperative. I agree. We are programmed to eat, excrete and breed. To expand the gene pool.

However, as it turns out, we can learn new behaviors (like not using the Thames as an open sewar or not using the Cuyahoga as a chemical waste dump or not building housing developments over hazardous chemical waste.) Yeah, it may take us a while, but we can learn new behaviors.

It’s this ability which may get us through the next century.

[GliderGuider]

56. Look more closely at your examples.

All the examples you provide are ancillary to growth of both population and consumption. The changes were made to permit more growth without endangering the collective organism. The growth itself was not abated. At best it was redirected to another place or mode of consumption. That's the imperative at work. Your examples illustrate how we use our intelligence to enhance growth, not to restrain it.

You may blame who you wish. I prefer not to waste my energy on an emotion I see as futile and self-destructive.

[OKIsItJustMe]

57. Blame (or fault finding) actually is important

Once a fault has been found, it can be addressed.

“Hey! Stop doing that!” rather than, “C’est la vie!”

This does not inevitably lead to more growth. For example (some cultures) have learned that we should not overpopulate and have adjusted our behaviors accordingly. Farmers learned a long time ago to save some of their crop for seeding the next one. Fishers are learning not to catch all of the fish that they can.

Whether it is to enable further growth or not, people are learning that it is a good idea to take care of the planet.


You already believe in free will, otherwise you would not be trying to persuade people to change their ways. (Something they cannot do without free will.)

[GliderGuider]

58. Do you think I'm trying to persuade others?

It's certainly not my intention. I just point out what's happening, and sometimes offer my personal opinion on what I observe. Actions will change, or not. It's neither my job nor desire to be a change agent to the world. I'm not an activist, and never have been. I'm a quietist, perhaps most similar in perspective to Paul Kingsnorth.

For someone who believes in free will, blame is important. I'm not that person. You are. That doesn't mean that one of has to be right and the other wrong. The world is a lot bigger than that.

[OKIsItJustMe]

59. For someone who isn’t interested in persuading others, you certainly go out of your way…

… to prove a point.

How many graphs have you produced? What is your intention for those? (Of course, since you have no “free will” you also have no intention.) You produce them only because you must.

Why must you?

[GliderGuider]

60. Why must I?

I was raised in a scientific home that encouraged me to investigate the world, so I find it interesting.
I have a high enough IQ that I find it possible.
I gain enough attention and status (aka dopamine reinforcement) that I find it enjoyable.

That's why.

[OKIsItJustMe]

61. Fascinating…

In publishing things you seek to gain attention. But there’s no “free will” involved here.
You research, and share your research. But there’s no attempt to “persuade” your audience.

Aren’t you (at the very least) attempting to persuade them that you know what you’re talking about, and are worthy of status?

[GliderGuider]

62. It's all about reward feedbacks.

The rewards showed up early. My father was a research biochemist who gave me serious positive feedback for my demonstrated interest and ability in the sciences, as well as for thinking outside the box and for resisting authority. The dopamine rush I got from that approval cemented my approach to life very early. I found out very quickly that the more deeply and idiosyncratically I explored the world, the more approval I got.

My goal in demonstrating that I know what I'm talking about (or that even if I don't, my ideas are interesting enough to listen to anyway) isn't to change people's behaviour. It's all done for the dopamine release that comes from acknowledgement. There isn't a shred of "free will" in sight. It's all genetics, family history and neurotransmitter feedbacks.

I've tried to stop posting to DU four times now, but I can't. Dopamine is that addictive. The best I've been able to do is to move most of my activity over to Facebook - where there just happens to be even more dopamine available for someone like me.