Ignorance is what makes our daily life possible and bearable.
Not literally, figuratively as in saying that what you take to be “you” is an illusion.
It’s more like thinking about them as such renders humans more machine than man. The more science advances the more it depicts us as sophisticated machines.
You’re just avoiding it now
It’s an analogy. Not even a very good one, since we have more computing power than any computing machine. Here’s what logic looks like:
Premise: “The cat is on the mat.”
Premise: “Anyone who is on the mat is happy.”
Conclusion: “The cat is happy.”
Now, do that with your premises, and conclude that science is making us unhappy.
Well it would go like this:
Human happiness is dependent on viewing humans as more than machines.
Science frequently depicts much of our processes being mechanical and automatic, which casts doubt on our agency and selfhood, among other things.
Science undermines human happiness.
I remember posting a link to some thinker who said something along the lines that increasing automating things would eventually lead to an unconscious universe. I think it was in reference to AI automating things but I’m not sure.
but it got me thinking about us humans and how we can know we are conscious when it seems like so much of our lives is automatic. We don’t control our likes, who we fall in love with, what convinces, what we enjoy, etc. So at that point can we even say we are aware when so much is automatic? More to the point can we even say we aren’t machines at that point? I posted a quote from that link which highlights this about how biology and evolutions leads to so much of our lives, even the “alien subroutines” that is our unconscious which we try to weave some story out of to explain what’s up.
Heck, that’s what emotions are apparently, just brain constructions:
Or what AI could have in common with babies and animals:
Even how changing the brain could change the self:
Or even what thoughts are:
So knowing all of that stuff, how can you say we are not machines…
It’s still an analogy. We are more complex than any machine ever constructed, so no one can say we are equivalent to them.
This is not a premise, it’s a conclusion. Some examples of a premise
Humans experience happiness
Happiness has causes
Individual humans differ in what causes their happiness
There are physical causes, chemical reactions, involved in human feelings
Thoughts and feelings are not completely understood
Once again, I posted several videos showing otherwise. Check out the one about the self and thoughts.
And it’s not just by anyone either it’s from arguably the most famous neuroscientist who brings in other neuroscientists too. Just see this one regarding brains and algorithms:
They are talking about how AI is basing it’s models on human thinking. What else would it do? What would we base intelligence on? That’s us trying to understand our minds, not seeing that our mind is a machine. Predictive learning is how we discover reality and get to know people.
31 if i predicted that I would get dopamine from something, then I wouldn’t the dopamine hit
Not according to what the guy in the video emailed me:
Thanks for the message.
In broad strokes I would say “we are at least complex machines” like, but not identical to the systems we are now discovering how to build like LLMs and Reinforcement Learning models.
However, biological brains still have many secrets to divulge and I strongly suspect that our algorithmic understanding of brain function may just be the beginning of understanding exactly what has evolved. And let’s remember that the artificial systems are extensions of our minds and so they are themselves part of the products of biological evolution.
Thanks for the question,
Read Montague
You can’t see it. He says what I’m saying.
and
There’s also the rest of the quote, not to mention this which explains further how our experience is constructed, even our emotions aren’t spontaneous but predicted reactions based on history and context: Reddit - Please wait for verification
Or the section of this video taking about subjective realities:
Even the dude himself (David Eagleman) says that much of what we do is drive by unconscious biological processes and that consciousness is only a small player in what we do (again famous neuroscientist just reaffirming that we are more like machines than anything else):
Hell even neuroscience casts doubt on what we take to be real: Google Search
You are putting up some great stuff. Too bad you are missing it. Sam is not known for brevity. Sometimes I have to pause him, think about, then start up again. Here’s my notes on three minutes starting at 7:30
“There’s a sense of I or me is in the head…”
It feels separate from the world and the body
There’s a sense of a “ghost in the machine”, operating in our head that can pay attention to things, either the world or thoughts in the mind and other feelings
This “third” thing is the unchanging subject to whom experience refers, the “thinker” in addition to the flow of thought. The “I” that has intentions. There isn’t just an experience happening, there’s an “experiencer.”
In meditation, if that experiencer is interrogated, that’s the illusion. In neuroscience terms, the experiencer could be relinquished and there would only be the physical and the experience. The representation of the world, and your body in the world are still there, your body and brain (you) is still there. Your sense then is, that you are identical to experience.
Keep going after 10:30 for more clarification.
Well my current mental state prevents me from seeing things positively right now, everything is bad. I’m still reeling from the google links I showed you about reality being a controlled hallucination. Color, sound, smell not being real is hard to grapple with but pain being not “real” is another one. I’ve heard Sam say this before but he never really extends it to daily life.
This doesn’t help either: The Possibilian | The New Yorker
Yeah. That’s what you need to work on.
Not really sure how and so far no one I’ve met seems to know.
I mean when I talk about the constructed nature of reality there’s not much to say since neuroscience backs it up. Like…I’m not sure how to deal with how we only experience a model our brain projects on the world, makes me wonder what’s real or not.
I’d also direct you to the last section of the “what is a thought” where he likens thoughts to motion and also to how neurons don’t know what they are modeling or something like that.
Also I’d like to redraw your attention to this again: Edge.org
Behavioral and brain science detects chinks in our synthetic, neurologically generated edifice of reality. Research on sensory illusions indicates that percepts are simply our best estimate of the nature of physical stimuli, not a precise rendering of things and events. The image of our own body is an oddly shaped product of brain function. Memory of things past is also fraught with uncertainty; it is not the reading-out of information from the brain’s neurological data bank, but an ongoing construct subject to error and bias
Apparently even the image of our own body isn’t reliable….
You’re just repeating yourself. The Sam Harris things should really be the end of this.
It’s more like dealing with the uncertainty that neuroscience raises and how to move forwards in life with that knowledge. The part about our brains constructing reality and that we don’t directly experience it, the stuff about the body, Sam Harris and the self.
Especially one of the earlier videos I posted with David and that clinical neurologist talking about the line between brain damage and personality. At what point does something become a disorder and when it is it “you”? And that had me doubting whether what I’m feeling is a disorder I have or if it’s just part of who I am.
It’s things like that which I read from neuroscience that disrupt my experience of life and have me doubting and questioning what’s real.
EDIT: with Sam Harris I’m not sure how one is supposed to live with no self stuff: Google Search
