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From: Arkalen <arkalen@proton.me>
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Making your mind up
Date: Tue, 9 Apr 2024 06:39:26 +0200
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On 08/04/2024 19:32, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
> Burkhard <b.schafer@ed.ac.uk> wrote:
>> Martin Harran wrote:
>>
>>> On Sat, 6 Apr 2024 17:48:09 -0500, DB Cates <cates_db@hotmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>
>>>> On 2024-04-06 2:38 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
>>>>> On Fri, 5 Apr 2024 16:29:20 -0500, DB Cates <cates_db@hotmail.com>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> On 2024-04-05 11:05 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
>>>>>>> There was quite an interesting discussion a few weeks ago on Free Will
>>>>>>> vs Determinism but it died a death, at least in part due to the
>>>>>>> departure of some contributors to the Land Beyond GG. I'd like to take
>>>>>>> up some of the issues again if anyone is interested.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> One point made by Hemidactylus that didn't get developed any further
>>>>>>> was the way that we sometimes give a lot of time and effort into
>>>>>>> making a decision - he gave the example of buying a car. It's also
>>>>>>> common for someone to want to "sleep it on it" before making a
>>>>>>> decision where the decision is important but it is not clear what
>>>>>>> decision is best. If a decision is essentially predetermined then what
>>>>>>> is the point of that time and effort or sleeping on it?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Do you not see that this argument depends on the belief that there was
>>>>>> an *option* to make the decision earlier under different conditions
>>>>>> (lack of 'thinking it over' and/or 'sleeping on it'). IOW that free will
>>>>>> exists. You are 'begging the question'.
>>>>>
>>>>> It's actually the complete opposite, I am starting with the assumption
>>>>> that there is no free will and asking what then is the point in
>>>>> deliberating over the various options.
>>>>
>>>> See, right there. My claim is that 'deliberating over the options' is
>>>> what you are determined by the circumstances to do and is part of the
>>>> circumstances that determines what you follow it up with. Assuming that
>>>> there is some "point" beyond this is assuming that free will exists.
>>>>
>>>> You seem to be taking things a
>>>>> bit further and saying that if determinism exists then there aren't
>>>>> any options to begin with but that is just a variation in emphasis, it
>>>>> doesn't address the question of why we spend so much time pondering
>>>>> those options when they don't even exist.
>>>>
>>>> It's because the "pondering" is part of the determined action.
>>
>>> That just takes us full circle back to my original question - what is
>>> the point or the value of that pondering if the decision is
>>> predetermined?
>>
>>> In evolutionary terms, I can see various disadvantages to that
>>> pondering. The brain is the most demanding organ in our body,
>>> consuming around 20% of the total energy used. Pondering a decision
>>> can often distract us from other important things we should be using
>>> our brain for and can indirectly have a very negative affect on our
>>> lives. It seems to me that it would make sense to weed out unnecessary
>>> demands unless they have a clear evolutionary advantage. I can't see
>>> any such evolutionary advantage in pondering being added to a
>>> predetermined process.
>>
>> "And thus the native hue of resolution
>> Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of though"
>>
>> sure, procrastination, or Hamlet-syndrome, can be
>> wasteful, and even dangerous - though in Hamlet's
>> case it also prevented him from committing suicide,
>> and there you'd have part of the answer.
>>
>> The main problem with your analysis is that
>> it assumes that evolved traits come cost-free. But
>> that's of course not the case - they are typically messy
>> compromises. An influential recent book has been
>> Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. He differentiates
>> between two modes of thought: "System 1" is fast,
>> instinctive and emotional; "System 2" is slower,
>> more deliberative, and more logical. In Neurosymbolic
>> AI, we try to replicate this these days on machines.
>>
>> The "fast mode" works often, but we need to learn when
>> to switch to "slow mode". But of course we can never
>> be sure if, at any given point in time, we have
>> all the relevant information, and identify all
>> they implications. So "taking time off" works
>> often enough to counteract System 1 reasoning
>> to be an advantage, and prevent us from
>> premature decisions, even if it sometimes means
>> wasted effort - and when it becomes pathological,
>> it can of course be positively harmful and require
>> professional intervention.
>>
> Is rumination (overthinking) the curse of System 2 deliberation? Maybe it
> cannot be helped so either it’s not free will or instead free will as a
> catastrophizing train wreck?
> 
> Paralysis by analysis is also detrimental, but so is System 1 impulsiveness
> or shooting from the hip in some instances.
> 
> What is it called when System 2 deliberation is applied so many times that
> the result in a given circumstance becomes habit or second nature? Does it
> become the intuitive backgrounding of System 1?
> 

I don't know the answer but that's my guess too. I bet the way this 
works is that System 2 is able to feed data into System 1 that it can 
learn from the same way it learns from experience. Except with a huge 
discount because System 1 is mostly a black box from a "changing how it 
works" perspective, and it probably wouldn't be adaptive to do too much 
of that anyway (System 2 is good but not *that* good).

That actually reminds me of Anil Seth's ideas on free will in "Being 
You" which probably works out to exactly this. Basically his take is 
that "free will" isn't about the past but about the future. It's asking 
"could I have done differently" not from a determinism perspective but 
to answer "could/should I do differently next time & how". If we assume 
decisions are mostly System 1, for this to work requires System 2 to be 
able to influence System 1's intuitive backgrounding.