Curious Wonder web notes

"Free will is another enigma. How can my actions be a choice for which I am responsible if they are completely caused by my genes, my upbringing, and my brain state? Some events are determined, some are random; how can a choice be neither? When I hand my wallet to an armed man who threatens to kill me if I don't, is that a choice? What about if I shoot a child because an armed man threatens to kill me if I don't? If I choose to do something, I could have done otherwise—but what does that mean in a single universe unfolding in time according to laws, which I pass through only once? I am faced with a momentous decision, and an expert on human behavior with a ninety-nine percent success rate predicts that I will choose what at this point looks like the worse alternative. Should I continue to agonize, or should I save time and do what's inevitable?"  -Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works, ch 8 pg 558 "Free will is an idealization of human b...

Perspective is what makes experience Subjective. Measurement is what makes things Objective. Idealization is what makes concepts Abstractive.    Subjectivity My experience of this table in front of me can be enriched, gradually, increasingly the more perspectives I take of it; I can look at it to gather its brownish color and different angles will return different shades of brown depending on its specularity and where the light is coming from; I can knock on it to gather sounds from it, whether it's hollow or dense, wooden or metal; I can touch it to feel its texture and temperature, a warm finger will make the table feel cold, and a cold finger warm, conductive materials exaggerate this effect; I can smell and taste it to detect the kinds of chemicals that might be on it. Key properties/features of perspective these experiences I've gathered from the table are available only to me, specifically the version of me that experienced them earlier, though a "watered down"...

Access-consciousness has four obvious features. First, we are aware, to varying degrees, of a rich field of sensation: the colors and shapes of the world in front of us, the sounds and smells we are bathed in, the pressures and aches of our skin, bone, and muscles. Second, portions of this information can fall under the spotlight of attention, get rotated into and out of short-term memory, and feed our deliberative cogitation. Third, sensations and thoughts come with an emotional flavoring: pleasant or unpleasant, interesting or repellent, exciting or soothing. Finally, an executive, the "I," appears to make choices and pull the levers of behavior. Each of these features discards some information in the nervous system, defining the highways of access-consciousness. And each has a clear role in the adaptive organization of thought and perception to serve rational decision making and action.  "How the Mind Works" Ch.2 pg.138 by Steven Pinker each feature of access con...

Related reading for the concept of the 5 moral spheres read Jonathan Haidt's book "The Righteous Mind" for his Moral Foundations Theory & Steven Pinker's The Moral Instinct  article. for the concepts of Progressive and Conservative used in this blog, read  The Marriage of Progressive and Conservative Values   Harm, Fairness, Community, Authority, Purity These five spheres in some way tie back to the wellness of the individual, with harm being the most direct. I'll briefly explore them here since they're already covered extensively in Haidt's book and Pinker's article.  Harm sphere involves avoiding harm, specifically avoiding being the source of harm to others.  Fairness improves social cohesion by ensuring that individuals can trust that the benefits they provide to others will be reciprocated. Community involves loyalty to the group's goals and its members and it acts as the other side of fairness in terms of reciprocation. Additionally fail...

"No, the mind has to get something out of forming categories, and that something is inference. Obviously we can't know everything about every object. But we can observe some of its properties, assign it to a category, and from the category predict properties that we have not observed. If Mopsy has long ears, he is a rabbit; if he is a rabbit, he should eat carrots, go hippety-hop, and breed like, well, a rabbit. The smaller the category, the better the prediction. Knowing that Peter is a cottontail, we can predict that he grows, breathes, moves, was suckled, inhabits open country or woodland clearings, spreads tularemia, and can contract myxomatosis. If we knew only that he was a mammal, the list would include only growing, breathing, moving, and being suckled. If we knew only that he was an animal, it would shrink to growing, breathing, and moving. On the other hand, it's much harder to tag Peter as a cottontail than as a mammal or an animal. To tag him as a mammal we nee...

"Information is a correlation between two things that is produced by a lawful process (as opposed to coming about by sheer chance). We say that the rings in a stump carry information about the age of the tree because their number correlates with the tree's age (the older the tree, the more rings it has), and the correlation is not a coincidence but is caused by the way trees grow. Correlation is a mathematical and logical concept; it is not defined in terms of the stuff that the correlated entities are made of. Information itself is nothing special; it is found wherever causes leave effects." "How the Mind Works" by Steven Pinker, Ch.2 pg.65