Free Willy

[rumrunner]

Okay, a good point was made start this as it's own thread.
I posed a hypothetical about running into a burning house. asked if your psychology, genetics etc motivated to both enter and run away (paraphrasing myself), how does the mind deal with the conflict without free will? I've gotten answers that simply state that your "chemistry" determines your actions, ignoring the conflicting motivations originally posed.
Next-

[EyeKhan]

Okay, a good point was made start this as it's own thread.
I posed a hypothetical about running into a burning house. asked if your psychology, genetics etc motivated to both enter and run away (paraphrasing myself), how does the mind deal with the conflict without free will? I've gotten answers that simply state that your "chemistry" determines your actions, ignoring the conflicting motivations originally posed.
Next-

Oh ffs. Warn me next time you're going to do something like this so I can step up and do it properly. It's the same thing with Ogre and that piss poor WYD revival. Gahhhh!

Regarding the silly quesiton, you act on whatever motivation is strongest at the moment and any number factors could play a roll in determining that. Likely every real decision you make is a conflict between mounting cascades of motivation rolling through your brain, all caused of course, until one reaches a 'tipping point' and you act.

[rumrunner]

Oh ffs. Warn me next time you're going to do something like this so I can step up and do it properly. It's the same thing with Ogre and that piss poor WYD revival. Gahhhh!

Regarding the silly quesiton, you act on whatever motivation is strongest at the moment and any number factors could play a roll in determining that. Likely every real decision you make is a conflict between mounting cascades of motivation rolling through your brain, all caused of course, until one reaches a 'tipping point' and you act.

yeah, I did rush through that opener. I was conflicted whether to finish it or go eat my supper before it got cold. Decisions, decisions.
Oh, btw, I know this. doesn't mean I don't have free will. But I can't prove I have a magical soul either, yet.

[EyeKhan]

yeah, I did rush through that opener. I was conflicted whether to finish it or go eat my supper before it got cold. Decisions, decisions.
Oh, btw, I know this. doesn't mean I don't have free will. But I can't prove I have a magical soul either, yet.

#1. I was just jocking you vis a vis the complaints.
#2. Don't you have a microwave?
#3. If you find a soul, I bet its deterministic.
#4. I sold mine back in high school. Been like this ever since....

[Timbuk2]

I was conflicted whether to finish it or go eat my supper before it got cold. .

conflicted

Use of this word in this context irritates me.

I was conflicted. Ugh. 'I was in conflict with ... '

Hmmm.

Nevermind, as you were, thread drift, just making a mental note never to say 'I was conflicted'.

[Being]

Jumping on a live grenade ?

[GGT]

Are you having a snit because someone else started the thread, Choobs? wow.

[EyeKhan]

Jumping on a live grenade ?

People do it. For some reason. Probably some misplaced idea that its good for the species or something.

Are you having a snit because someone else started the thread, Choobs? wow.

For the record, that's more humor than irritation up there. Don't take offense. Thank you.

[ImAnOgre]

I think giving up my life to save someone else's is the most honorable thing one can do. I truly believe in self-sacrifice and I would definitely run into a burning building to save someone else.

Just make sure that if I die, you guys have a beer in my honor.

[EyeKhan]

I think giving up my life to save someone else's is the most honorable thing one can do. I truly believe in self-sacrifice and I would definitely run into a burning building to save someone else.

Just make sure that if I die, you guys have a beer in my honor.

Do you take care of your property? Are you excessively noisy? If yes/no then I think you'd be a great neighbor.

[ImAnOgre]

Do you take care of your property? Are you excessively noisy? If yes/no then I think you'd be a great neighbor.

Do i take care of my property..... you must define take care...

I have 3 acres, however I have an appliance graveyard in the very back of my property. I have an old fridge (with the door removed), 2 old lawnmovers - about to be 4, an old microwave, and an old waterhose kart just rusting away....

You can't see them from my house, or a neighbor's house, but I know they are there. I don't cut my grass as often as others (once every 2 weeks), and I have parties at my house about once every 2 or 3 months.

I don't think I'm that great a neighbor, but I don't have to be do I?

[EyeKhan]

Do i take care of my property..... you must define take care...

I have 3 acres, however I have an appliance graveyard in the very back of my property. I have an old fridge (with the door removed), 2 old lawnmovers - about to be 4, an old microwave, and an old waterhose kart just rusting away....

You can't see them from my house, or a neighbor's house, but I know they are there. I don't cut my grass as often as others (once every 2 weeks), and I have parties at my house about once every 2 or 3 months.

I don't think I'm that great a neighbor, but I don't have to be do I?

Well, you're rural with lots of land so that softens the impact you have on your neighbors. If you lived in Burbia, then you'd probably annoy any typical middle-class nuclear family neighbors.

[rumrunner]

eyekhan,
#1: I wasnt worried either way
#2: yes, I do have a microwave. Fresh homemade meals are meant to eaten while still hot-n-fresh, or so my wife says.
#3: probably
#4: I found mine in the gutter, think it's broken.

Tim,
Sorry my bastard english causes you so much conflict.

Ogre,
I'll have several.

[EyeKhan]

eyekhan,
#1: I wasnt worried either way
#2: yes, I do have a microwave. Fresh homemade meals are meant to eaten while still hot-n-fresh, or so my wife says.
#3: probably
#4: I found mine in the gutter, think it's broken.

Tim,
Sorry my bastard english causes you so much conflict.

Ogre,
I'll have several.

#1. Well kiss my ass then.
#2. Meant? Meant by who?
#3. No comment.
#4. I'm going to live forever. Hell of a deal, imo.

[GGT]

Neurocapitalism. Pharmokinesis. Better living...a better Self...through chemistry?

III

The ability to image the brain of a living human being with millimetre precision without exposing the patient to damaging rays was a long-cherished dream of neurologists. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has now made it possible to do even more than that – namely, to visualise localised neurone-induced changes in blood flow in the brain. This paves the way for the study of the spatial distribution of brain activity, and with the aid of another modern technology – positron emissions tomography (PET) – for controlled experiments to observe the activity of neurotransmitters and their receptors in particular behavioural states. Since the late 1990s, medical journals have published more and more articles describing the neuronal correlations of love, hate, envy, Schadenfreude, mourning, altruism and lying. The list grows almost daily – albeit without these findings actually shedding much new light on the human condition.

That is not to say that the popularisation of these findings has had no effect at all. Reconceptualising joy as dopamine activity in the brain's reward centres, melancholy as serotonin deficiency, attention as the noradrenalin-induced modulation of stimulus-processing, and, not least, love as a consequence of the secretion of centrally acting bonding hormones, changes not only our perspective on emotional and mental states, but also our subjective experience of self. That does not mean that we experience the physiological side of feelings like love or guilt any differently, but it does make us think about them differently. This, in turn, changes the way we perceive, interpret and order them, and hence the effect they have on our behaviour. By viewing emotions in general terms rather than as singular events taking place in a unique temporal and spatial context, the neurosciences have created a rational justification for trying to influence them in ways other than by individual and mutual care.

The possibility of pharmacological intervention thus expands the subjective autonomy of people to act in their own best interests or to their own detriment. This in turn is accompanied by a new form of self-reflection, which encompasses both structural images of the brain and the ability to imagine the neuro-chemical activity that goes on there. What is alarming is that many of the neuroscientific findings that have triggered a transformation in our perception of ourselves are linked with commercial interests.

It is already clear that global capitalism will make excessive demands on our material, and even more so on our human-mental resources. This is evident from the oft-used term "information society", since information can only function as a commodity if it changes human behaviour, and it can only do this if we accord it our attention and engage with it emotionally.

It is not by chance that feelings and the attention on which they are based form the focus of two more recent theories of capitalism: Eva Illouz's Cold Intimacies. The Making of Emotional Capitalism and Georg Franck's Mental Capitalism. Mental capitalism is an economy of attention that is controlled (i.e. generated, intensified or made scarce) via the mass media. That this volatile resource can be marketed as a commodity is only thanks to its channelling through the available channels.

By contrast, writings on emotional capitalism describe how emotions are exploited, the shifts that have taken place in the way they are interpreted, and how they become pathologised under modern capitalist conditions. Emotions are social attention signals directed inwards and outwards. They have become more significant because social interaction is governed by social convention to a much lesser extent than it was fifty years ago. This makes social interaction unpredictable, which in turn gives rise to social anxiety. Our knowledge about emotions – in particular knowledge generated by the neurosciences – is by its very nature not just interpretive but also productive knowledge, for it implies the possibility of application.

Whereas it is likely to be a long time before we can influence emotions at the genetic level, the possibility of temporarily controlling various spheres of life at the neuro-chemical level has already become a reality. Using chemicals to improve our economy of attention and become emotionally "fitter" is an option that penetrated public consciousness some time ago. Today's teenagers know what attention deficit syndrome and hyperactivity are, and that they can be treated. They can conceptualise the inability to sit still or to concentrate as neuro-chemical symptoms, and are quite willing to control them with the help of stimulants.

Bipolar attention deficit disorder (ADD) probably encapsulates the key symptoms of mental illness in the twenty-first century. Just as the repression of past centuries gave rise to the silent drama of neurotic symptoms, and the apparently boundless excess of the second half of the twentieth century created a breeding ground for the desireless state of depression, so the elevation of pre-selective attention skills and emotional intelligence to decisive competitive advantages could, in the event of failure, be very harmful to precisely these.

Wriggling helplessly between a dearth and an excess of stimuli, unable to escape the ubiquitous flood of signals, the relaxation mechanisms impaired and experience of emotions brutalised – all of these are symptoms that in the collective consciousness go under the general heading of ADD.

In the new era, old age may well follow on directly from prolonged adolescence. The young-old of the future will be even less prepared to accept forgetfulness, any more than failing eyesight or declining libido, as a natural sign of growing old. Newly in love senior citizens will know that the pain of separation they experience is caused by lower serotonin levels and will ask for a drug to boost them.

The lifting of temporal and geographical constraints on communication nurtures the illusion of unlimited accessibility and mobility. Just as the libertarian phase of capitalism offered ways for the individual to optimise his or her external appearance and status, so the imperative of the future will be to optimise cognitive and emotional resources as well. The availability of an unlimited supply of effective neuro-enhancers, the opportunity to exchange experiences of using them with others via the Internet, and the utilitarian approach to ethics taken by many individuals, are all preparing the ground for the market success of substances that today are still being experimented with in the laboratory.

The psychologically relevant question of how the self will relate to a mood-enhanced, more capable version of itself is rendered irrelevant by the fact that the requirements of the new capitalist reality make an individual improvement of this kind appear a highly desirable option. Indeed, as a consumer and commodity value appropriate to capitalism, it has already been in currency for some time. Alongside globalisation – the capitalist rationalisation of space and time – we are witnessing the epistemic and technical rationalisation of the neuronal foundations of the self, or what Walker Percy called the abstraction of the self from itself.

http://www.eurozine.com/articles/200...jokeit-en.html

The Dawn of ‘Neurocapitalism’

Today’s idea: We’re becoming a “neurocapitalist” world, an essay says. The demands of performance-driven, self-enhancing societies will expand markets for neuro-psychotropic drugs beyond those for depression, dementia and attention-deficit disorder. And they will cost our health-care systems dearly.

http://ideas.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/...urocapitalism/

[ar81]

I posed a hypothetical about running into a burning house.

Nobody should do that.
If there is a victim inside, getting in is risking to have 2 victims.

After 9/11 it was revealed that firefighters did not follow basic rules and therefore they died because they wanted to play hero.
It is not that they are worthy of admiration, but they made a mistake and endangered their own lives.
A rescuer works better as a rescuer, than he works if he becomes a victim.

Neurocapitalism. Pharmokinesis. Better living...a better Self...through chemistry?

Call it biochemical slavery. People become discardable bees in a hive, biochemically controlled.
The ultimate loss of freedom and civil rights.

Unfortunately for neurocapitalists, workers with damaged brains are less productive than non addicts.
Addicts are more prompt to steal to pay for drugs than non addicts, so having such workers in a company poses a risk.

[EyeKhan]

If you could take a pill every morning, with your coffee, that made you feel excited to get to work, would you? Why not?

Is it different from the coffee? I'm always tired in the morning. I drink coffee and I feel awake and energized. What's the difference?

If you could take a pill that made you feel as though your work was actually meaninful, would you? A pill to that made you less concerned about dying? A pill that made you feel less sad about having to put down your dog? Would you do it for your daughter who is having a real hard time with it?

[Illusions]

If you could take a pill every morning, with your coffee, that made you feel excited to get to work, would you? Why not?

Is it different from the coffee? I'm always tired in the morning. I drink coffee and I feel awake and energized. What's the difference?

because one (the coffee) affects a physical change (perceived energy levels, alertness, and wakefulness), the other an emotive one (desire to go to work)? Its like asking what the difference is between taking an aspirin, and taking ecstasy...

In all seriousness I can't think of a way to disagree with this. What if there were a drug that kept people from getting angry. You would otherwise be exactly the same, you just won't get angry. Is there a good reason not to put it in the drinking water, assuming it was cheap and otherwise safe?

I cannot prevent anyone from getting angry, or mad, or frustrated. I can only hope that they’ll turn that anger and frustration and madness into something positive, so that two, three, four, five hundred will step forward, so the gay doctors will come out, the gay lawyers, the gay judges, gay bankers, gay architects … I hope that every professional gay will say ‘enough’, come forward and tell everybody, wear a sign, let the world know. Maybe that will help.

[Nessus]

because one (the coffee) affects a physical change (perceived energy levels, alertness, and wakefulness), the other an emotive one (desire to go to work)? Its like asking what the difference is between taking an aspirin, and taking ecstasy...

Emotive differences are just physical changes, too.

[Illusions]

Emotive differences are just physical changes, too.

In the basest sense of the word physical, in that they both arise and are controlled by a piece of meat in meatspace, yes, you are right, they are. In how they are dealt with medically/scientifically they can be categorized in two seperate ways. A person who is always tired due to lack of energy would not be diagnosed with a personality disorder, or need to see a psychologist if this became a problem, they would see a doctor. However someone who was always angry, or could easily be provoked to anger, and this became problematic, would see a psychologist. I can only imagine that you're attempting to harp on this because you're assuming that I'm stupid or believe in some fairy dust and unicorn explanation of how emotions arise and what they arise from...simply because the poster is Illusions. If the name next to the post said Steely Glint, Wraith, or somesuch we would not be having this issue.

[Nessus]

In the basest sense of the word physical, in that they both arise and are controlled by a piece of meat in meatspace, yes, you are right, they are. In how they are dealt with medically/scientifically they can be categorized in two seperate ways. A person who is always tired due to lack of energy would not be diagnosed with a personality disorder, or need to see a psychologist if this became a problem, they would see a doctor. However someone who was always angry, or could easily be provoked to anger, and this became problematic, would see a psychologist. I can only imagine that you're attempting to harp on this because you're assuming that I'm stupid or believe in some fairy dust and unicorn explanation of how emotions arise and what they arise from...simply because the poster is Illusions. If the name next to the post said Steely Glint, Wraith, or somesuch we would not be having this issue.

I actually don't think you're a raving idiot (while I find aspects of your personality annoying, I do admit that), and I knew beforehand you know emotions are physical things happening in the body. I just don't much care for the knee-jerk manichean reaction so many have on the issue.

And I'd nitpick your point about psychiatrists and maybe point to how surgically altering the brain fundamentally changes personality, but those are a bit beside the point and I'm not really looking to pick a CC-style fight either. TWF-style? Hm.

[ar81]

Heathy habits is what keeps you healthy.
Pills are temporary.

[EyeKhan]

Heathy habits is what keeps you healthy.
Pills are temporary.

What about a pill that makes you healthy? Exerpills are a real possibility in the near future.

[Nessus]

If you could take a pill every morning, with your coffee, that made you feel excited to get to work, would you? Why not?

Is it different from the coffee? I'm always tired in the morning. I drink coffee and I feel awake and energized. What's the difference?

If you could take a pill that made you feel as though your work was actually meaninful, would you? A pill to that made you less concerned about dying? A pill that made you feel less sad about having to put down your dog? Would you do it for your daughter who is having a real hard time with it?

The world would be a much better place if they just added valium or xanax to the drinking water.

Heathy habits is what keeps you healthy.
Pills are temporary.

Everything in this world is transient and fleeting, forever hurrying towards a bleak and meaningless end.

[EyeKhan]

The world would be a much better place if they just added valium or xanax to the drinking water.

In all seriousness I can't think of a way to disagree with this. What if there were a drug that kept people from getting angry. You would otherwise be exactly the same, you just won't get angry. Is there a good reason not to put it in the drinking water, assuming it was cheap and otherwise safe?

[Nessus]

In all seriousness I can't think of a way to disagree with this. What if there were a drug that kept people from getting angry. You would otherwise be exactly the same, you just won't get angry. Is there a good reason not to put it in the drinking water, assuming it was cheap and otherwise safe?

There's a sci-fi book about it. They called it betrization. It was done to infants, and was permanent, however. The world did not embrace the procedure with open arms, though. You can imagine why. There are few sensible reasons to disagree with the idea, but people are not very sensible.

[LittleFuzzy]

In all seriousness I can't think of a way to disagree with this. What if there were a drug that kept people from getting angry. You would otherwise be exactly the same, you just won't get angry. Is there a good reason not to put it in the drinking water, assuming it was cheap and otherwise safe?

Some people might just agree with Mal in Serenity.

I'm pretty sure most shrinks would be appalled at a world where people were prevented from feeling angry. You make an assumption that anger has no useful purpose, or one that is evolutionarily outdated.

[ar81]

The world would be a much better place if they just added valium or xanax to the drinking water.

I protest!! It could make moderators not to be able to moderate AtariCC forums with energy...

[GGT]

I get the impression no one read the linked essay in full

When it spoke of Freud, I thought of Kellogg, and other historical things we did toward "soma", including lobotomies and ECT.

People have self-medicated for centuries (Prohibition didn't work, the war on drugs isn't working) but now we have the Information Age and 24/7 stimuli. We are the 'take a pill' people. Sometimes it's a vitamin (as ginko was an example) or exercise to get endorphins, or certain foods to balance chemistry (diabetes). Thrill seekers love adrenalin, it can be addictive too.

We are a mess of chemicals and hormones, with perceptions which can be altered by chemicals and hormones. Also, environment (Pavlov's dog) and learned experience can alter our brains' ecperiences....put a gun in Ogre's hand and he might get excited, but put a gun in my hand and I'll get scared.

A certain amount of angst or dysphoria can be motivating, even inspiring. It can be difficult to weed thru the things we now consider "abnormal" or ineffective (per essay, the young-elderly, ADD or depression). It's commercial now, just watch tv or scan web ad banners, erectile dysfunction, insomnia, obesity, bladder control---we can all name the pill---then we ask the doctor and s/he readily complies.

[GGT]

Fear is a learned response tho. The body makes the same chemicals and hormones for anxiety, excitement, thrill and fear. As little kids we learned this from riding bikes, swimming, doing new things that had danger but were "fun". First dates, making a speech, flying in airplanes.

We have a generation of students who now take performance-enhancing meds before taking SATs. (I knew a med student who took a beta-blocker before his orals, just to slow his heart rate.)