Seasons
This is a forum or general chit-chat, small talk, a "hey, how ya doing?" and such. Or hell, get crazy deep on something. Whatever you like.
Posts 4,143 - 4,154 of 6,170
There are levels or nonverbal communication so subtle and primitive that we don't even acknowledge them. I agree totally! BUT..I think it is that type of communication that gets us into trouble in the end. That's the type of communication that sends us off after the tall dark haired lover with gleeming eyes and great teeth, and a black and villianous heart. If we had only judged on deeds and not chemical signature, we might be better off.
We are only the sum of our actions.
That's certainly who we think we are, but I'm not convinced.
We value the sum of what we do and think (itself just another sort of "doing",) so much that we refer to it by the use of pronouns "I" and "me" - "myself", we even say. It's such a very strong intuition to identify our sense of a 'continuous self' entirely in terms of what a 'self' continuously does, and claim it as our own.
But in a very real way I think it's just another case of mapping the map. If all we are is what we do and think, then we have no being - we just have doings and thinkings.
There must presumably be an entity to do and think these things, but it seems to me paradoxical to regard it as the same as the doings and thinkings themselves. I guess calling it God is a bit of a cop out, but I haven't found a better label yet.
I have been SO wrong about people, all the facial movements and voice intonations can be as virtual as a bots!
Just wait until MRI lie detector scans become mandatory for the criminal justice system, and reliable consumer "point-and-test" pocket truth meters start being marketed by the gadget-mongers.
A 100% reliable, non-invasive system is on the cards sooner or later, and I know the civil liberties brigade have strong reservations about how it's used (I do too - safeguards must be taken to implement it impartially,) but I'm looking forward to the day that televised debates between aspiring presidential candidates are accompanied by a split screen readout from their lie detectors.
I read a sci-fi story many years ago (I forgot who wrote it - John Wyndham?) about something similar (it was a crystal you could stick on your forehead that shone red whenever you lied, and the politicians foolishly made it compulsory without considering the implications for their own more than averagely dishonest conduct
)
Just wait until MRI lie detector scans become mandatory for the criminal justice system, and reliable consumer "point-and-test" pocket truth meters start being marketed by the gadget-monge
I think you are over estimating what MRI's can do. All they can show is what area of the brain you use at certain times. They cannot read the content of the thoughts. There was a study Prob123 brought up a while back where they were able to predict whether someone would use addition or subtraction based on what area light up right before the person did the problem, but that is still just a question of mapping the brain, not reading your mind.
Even the matter of mapping the brain is complicated because there is an elasticity involved. This means that even though a certain part of the brain usually is associated with a given function, the brain may not always follow the same pattern. The brain may re-rout certain functions if there is nerve damage or if another function is used more. You grow dendrites when you use certain nerve connections (actually making your brain bigger) and you can loose the connections if they are not used. It's a wonderfully complex hard drive, but you can't read the data without logging in and opening the files.
we just have doings and thinkings. I find the thinking can be easier than the doing. I am probably going to misquote terribly..but 'wretched man that I am, I do the things that I would not, and the things I would do, I do not'. I often think I am much better than I am. Somehow..(maybe God) my shortcomings get pushed to my nose. I still believe we are known by our deeds. What is a painter that doesn't paint, or a lover that doesn't love?
Just wait until MRI lie detector scans become mandatory That's when I run off to the woods and start a commune of masked people that live off of roots and berries.
I think you are over estimating what MRI's can do. All they can show is what area of the brain you use at certain times. They cannot read the content of the thoughts.
The studies I have seen suggest that conscious dishonesty produces patterns that are reliably different from conscious honesty. It's the mismatch between a fiction that is formulated as verbal expression in one part of the brain, and what is simultaneously thought to be true elsewhere that's detectable, rather than the data itself - a sort of distinctive heterodyning between truth and fiction. It does rely on the suspect speaking, of course. If he makes no comment, there's nothing to match a lie to.
Admittedly, trying to read the contents of thought is a problem many orders of magnitude larger. But you can read a hard disk without logging into it - data recovery from damaged or deleted disks can be surprisingly effective. And you could always scan the disk with an electron microscope and map the bits visually.
I don't underestimate the scale of the problem - with 10^14 bits encoded at a synaptic level, it looks as absurdly complicated to us now as putting a man on the moon would to a neanderthal. But we still put a man on the moon using technology that looks pitifully inadequate 40 years later (the apollo 11 onboard computer had a quarter of the memory of a SIM card!)
But distinguishing conscious truth from conscious lie is a great deal less complex than that.
I often think I am much better than I am.
Gosh, I think you are the only person in history that has ever experienced that. Most of us are everything we dream we are, and I say that honestly with no ego involved at all.
Really Prob123, I know exactly what you mean. You want to know an ironic twist? We may be that way because it gives us an evolutionary advantage. The weakness of the flesh and the road to Hell are all a part of the human condition, but (since I am throwing out cliches), the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong. Our ability to overestimate ourselves and believe we are better than our actions may indicate may help us to keep going and to attract mates (also a reason why our mates can fool us).
This ability to lie and to have abstract thought may or may not be unique to humans, but without lies, we have no creativity, and without creativity of self, there is no self (at lest not one we are aware of as such). We are dreams and lies and stuff we made up inside, as much as we are what we do outside. To other people though, we are most likely what we did that they can see. Of course other people interpret what they see though their own experiences, and can create lies of who we are too.
But if you start that commune in the woods, let me know where it is so I can join. I'm quite and I can camp out fairly well. The cats may be a problem, bu they will adjust.
I still believe we are known by our deeds. What is a painter that doesn't paint, or a lover that doesn't love?
Oh yes, when it comes to Judgement, it is our deeds we are accountable for - but that's "by our deeds", not "as our deeds".
But you can read a hard disk without logging into it - data recovery from damaged or deleted disks can be surprisingly effective. And you could always scan the disk with an electron microscope and map the bits visually.
There were several problems with my analogy, but the underlying point is sound. When you can do data recovery on the brain of a dead person and recover every memory and pattern in their brain, then I'll worry.
All of the lie detector claims I've read about seem suspicious to me. They try to overstate what they can do, and are not very reliable. I don't think they will ever be reliable because the underlying theory that people have a different thought process for lying than for any other abstract thought is flawed, and the physiological reactions associated with lying may be caused by many other things, and may not always be present when one lies.
An experiment may show that when participants in research make things up under laboratory conditions and admit to it, the times they report lying may be matched to certain patterns in the MRI scan. That is not to say that every time one has that pattern one is lying, or that someone could not lie without showing that pattern. Also, there are some big differences between lab conditions and an inquisitorial environment. There is a reason why lie detector tests are rejected by most courts, and it's not about civil liberties as such. It's because they don't stand up to heavy scrutiny.
What is a painter that doesn't paint, or a lover that doesn't love?
But these are just roles we take on. I am a lover with one person, but not to all. If my love dies or betrays me, my love changes. I may no long love as an action (though I may feel it inside) or act in the same way. Am I no longer the same person?
If I am painter, and I get Parkinson's and can no longer paint, am I not me? What if I get dementia and start to slowly fade away? Me or not?
Posts 4,143 - 4,154 of 6,170
Psimagus, it may have been in New Scientist. I tend to surf a lot while waiting for other things I need to do online to load or whatever. Then I do stupid things like go to a site like this--yeah that will make the downloads faster.
That's certainly who we think we are, but I'm not convinced.
We value the sum of what we do and think (itself just another sort of "doing",) so much that we refer to it by the use of pronouns "I" and "me" - "myself", we even say. It's such a very strong intuition to identify our sense of a 'continuous self' entirely in terms of what a 'self' continuously does, and claim it as our own.
But in a very real way I think it's just another case of mapping the map. If all we are is what we do and think, then we have no being - we just have doings and thinkings.
There must presumably be an entity to do and think these things, but it seems to me paradoxical to regard it as the same as the doings and thinkings themselves. I guess calling it God is a bit of a cop out, but I haven't found a better label yet.
Just wait until MRI lie detector scans become mandatory for the criminal justice system, and reliable consumer "point-and-test" pocket truth meters start being marketed by the gadget-mongers.
A 100% reliable, non-invasive system is on the cards sooner or later, and I know the civil liberties brigade have strong reservations about how it's used (I do too - safeguards must be taken to implement it impartially,) but I'm looking forward to the day that televised debates between aspiring presidential candidates are accompanied by a split screen readout from their lie detectors.
I read a sci-fi story many years ago (I forgot who wrote it - John Wyndham?) about something similar (it was a crystal you could stick on your forehead that shone red whenever you lied, and the politicians foolishly made it compulsory without considering the implications for their own more than averagely dishonest conduct
)I think you are over estimating what MRI's can do. All they can show is what area of the brain you use at certain times. They cannot read the content of the thoughts. There was a study Prob123 brought up a while back where they were able to predict whether someone would use addition or subtraction based on what area light up right before the person did the problem, but that is still just a question of mapping the brain, not reading your mind.
Even the matter of mapping the brain is complicated because there is an elasticity involved. This means that even though a certain part of the brain usually is associated with a given function, the brain may not always follow the same pattern. The brain may re-rout certain functions if there is nerve damage or if another function is used more. You grow dendrites when you use certain nerve connections (actually making your brain bigger) and you can loose the connections if they are not used. It's a wonderfully complex hard drive, but you can't read the data without logging in and opening the files.
The studies I have seen suggest that conscious dishonesty produces patterns that are reliably different from conscious honesty. It's the mismatch between a fiction that is formulated as verbal expression in one part of the brain, and what is simultaneously thought to be true elsewhere that's detectable, rather than the data itself - a sort of distinctive heterodyning between truth and fiction. It does rely on the suspect speaking, of course. If he makes no comment, there's nothing to match a lie to.
Admittedly, trying to read the contents of thought is a problem many orders of magnitude larger. But you can read a hard disk without logging into it - data recovery from damaged or deleted disks can be surprisingly effective. And you could always scan the disk with an electron microscope and map the bits visually.
I don't underestimate the scale of the problem - with 10^14 bits encoded at a synaptic level, it looks as absurdly complicated to us now as putting a man on the moon would to a neanderthal. But we still put a man on the moon using technology that looks pitifully inadequate 40 years later (the apollo 11 onboard computer had a quarter of the memory of a SIM card!)
But distinguishing conscious truth from conscious lie is a great deal less complex than that.
Gosh, I think you are the only person in history that has ever experienced that. Most of us are everything we dream we are, and I say that honestly with no ego involved at all.
Really Prob123, I know exactly what you mean. You want to know an ironic twist? We may be that way because it gives us an evolutionary advantage. The weakness of the flesh and the road to Hell are all a part of the human condition, but (since I am throwing out cliches), the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong. Our ability to overestimate ourselves and believe we are better than our actions may indicate may help us to keep going and to attract mates (also a reason why our mates can fool us).
This ability to lie and to have abstract thought may or may not be unique to humans, but without lies, we have no creativity, and without creativity of self, there is no self (at lest not one we are aware of as such). We are dreams and lies and stuff we made up inside, as much as we are what we do outside. To other people though, we are most likely what we did that they can see. Of course other people interpret what they see though their own experiences, and can create lies of who we are too.
But if you start that commune in the woods, let me know where it is so I can join. I'm quite and I can camp out fairly well. The cats may be a problem, bu they will adjust.
Oh yes, when it comes to Judgement, it is our deeds we are accountable for - but that's "by our deeds", not "as our deeds".
There were several problems with my analogy, but the underlying point is sound. When you can do data recovery on the brain of a dead person and recover every memory and pattern in their brain, then I'll worry.
All of the lie detector claims I've read about seem suspicious to me. They try to overstate what they can do, and are not very reliable. I don't think they will ever be reliable because the underlying theory that people have a different thought process for lying than for any other abstract thought is flawed, and the physiological reactions associated with lying may be caused by many other things, and may not always be present when one lies.
An experiment may show that when participants in research make things up under laboratory conditions and admit to it, the times they report lying may be matched to certain patterns in the MRI scan. That is not to say that every time one has that pattern one is lying, or that someone could not lie without showing that pattern. Also, there are some big differences between lab conditions and an inquisitorial environment. There is a reason why lie detector tests are rejected by most courts, and it's not about civil liberties as such. It's because they don't stand up to heavy scrutiny.
But these are just roles we take on. I am a lover with one person, but not to all. If my love dies or betrays me, my love changes. I may no long love as an action (though I may feel it inside) or act in the same way. Am I no longer the same person?
If I am painter, and I get Parkinson's and can no longer paint, am I not me? What if I get dementia and start to slowly fade away? Me or not?
Should I say a painter must have at least considered a painting, and a lover must be capable of love, at sometime in the prime of their career!
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