i dont understand why they claim that they can predict your choice while they predict only 60% while i can predict 50% just by chance that means that can cant really predict what hand you will lift.
@metaldude82 I would question the validity of this experiment. I done a search and found out they also were told to remember when they made the choice. So your lying there knowing you have to press a button and remember when you pressed it! - If the brain sends signals to your hand and you have locked in your decision by remembering it well the corresponding hemisphere that controls that hand will do something.
Nothing is shocking about this but it is misleading. The right hemisphere controls the left and vice versa. Pressing the button is a physical action and of course an area of the brain would start to light up in anticipation of the physical movement. You have a real soul and the body is just a vessel. Don't let very simple experiments like this fool you. You have a free will.
@AustralianCannonball Again, am I the only who finds the mere fact that these "choices" were made in a planned experiment significant? Meaning that the mere planning likely had an effect on mind and brain of the individual in the video.
This is important. Does anyone else find the fact that making a "choice" was a planned event in these types of experiments? Meaning just based on that aspect of planning/preparation, we should question the validity of these experiments. Anyone agree?
This will go a long way in terms of understanding each other and learning to love each other. We shouldn't hate people for being who they are. Even if they are a serial killer. Hating a serial killer is akin to hating an alligator.
5:46 - why would that be shocking? What would be shocking for me, not to mention scary, is if our consciousness was an entity independent from our biology (a soul if you wish). That would be confusing, would raise so many other questions and would not make any sense.
A consciousness as a "software" which is run on a brain the "hardware" would be so much easier for me to take in.
I do not understand (or agree with) the conclusions these guys present.
So, the brain lights up and 6 seconds later the button is pushed.
But, how do the research discriminate the brain lighting up is a conscious thought vs a non-conscious thought? Couldn't the brain lighting up be all conscious thought?
Punishment for the sake of vengeance is illogical given the increasing validity of determinism. This is why capital punishment is an atrocious practice. However, punishment for the sake of rehabilitating the individual, or at least to protect others from the individual, is perfectly acceptable.
@ZeroHex5412 Punishment for the sake of vengeance is perfectly logical. It deters the person, and others like him who know that that's what happens if you do harmful acts, from committing harmful acts in the future.
@absoluteIyflabulous I don't see how crimes of passion differ from normal crimes with respect to deterrence. Are you trying to say people who do crimes of passion can't be deterred by punishment? That a person who kills his wife over an affair would have done it anyway regardless of punishment?
Crimes of passion are not elicited by irresistible urges, just hard-to-resist but resistible urges. Therefore deterrence is still perfectly logical for it reduces their occurrence.
@absoluteIyflabulous I mean, think about it, if you are steamingly angry and then immediately after meet a police officer, do you hit the officer or do you control yourself? This example proves people can indeed control themselves and thus can be deterred from crimes of passion.
Deterrence works on the assumption that people consider the consequences of their actions before they do something. We don't even need to invoke the idea of a crime of passion to know that this isn't always the case. People make stupid decisions in the heat of the moment without considering the repercussions. Once you admit this, then surely you can see how a deterrent won't prevent a person committing murder when confronted with the sight of their spouse with someone else, for example.
@absoluteIyflabulous Think about it this way. What if you found your spouse in your bed with someone else. But also in the room would be a large and stoic man with an axe standing guard next to the bed. Do you think the mere presence of this man would deter you from killing your spouse? Very likely so.
The purpose of criminal law is to be like that man, scaring people away from harmful acts.
@absoluteIyflabulous Of course not everyone will be deterred since the law is not precisely alike the man, but nobody is under the illusion that criminal punishment will deter everyone. The point is that it will deter a lot of people, which is its function and the reason it's justified.
@absoluteIyflabulous Besides, imagine for a moment what would happen if crimes of passion were to go unpunished. Every crime would suddenly be a "crime of passion" because people would commit crimes they know they wouldn't be punished for.
@absoluteIyflabulous That's why everyone who can in principle be deterred should be held responsible for their actions. That is everyone except people whose cognitive system responding to deterrence isn't working (the insane), and for them there's involuntary civil commitment.
It's not just the insane though. Sociopaths aren't necessarily insane. There's usually intent, premeditation, and intelligence with their crimes. But, they don't possess empathy. So, even though they may not be out of their minds, they still lack some necessary deterrents that would stop them from doing something widely seen as immoral. Some people aren't crazy. Some just don't care. And you can't blame them. They just don't.
@itzahazylife Of course psychopaths don't care for the suffering they cause. That's what it means to be a psychopath. But that only means that they should be punished more surely and severely to deter them from inflicting harm in the only language that they understand.
Imagine I wouldn't care if I tortured you? Would you be prepared to admit I couldn't be blamed for torturing you just as long as I don't care whether I do so? Sounds like the most confused reasoning I've ever heard.
@itzahazylife Both moral blame and deterrence are both irrelevant to whether the person inflicting suffering cares for the suffering he inflicts. It's completely irrelevant.
People who can be deterred from harmful acts with the threat of criminal punishment should be deterred by the threat of such punishment. And if a person can't be deterred then we already have a mechanism in our society for dealing with those individuals: Involuntary civil commitment.
just because you had brain activity before you thought about the decision doesnt mean you dont have free will.just because you thought about choosing a choice doesnt mean you are going to choose that choice.
"just because you thought about choosing a choice doesnt mean you are going to choose that choice."
That is exactly what it means. Watch the video again, you clearly didn't understand it. In fact the subject didn't even know he was making a decision until 6 seconds after he had already made it..he couldn't possibly had chosen left if his brain had already chosen right. That is appears to him that HE is making a choice is merely an illusion.
Obviously the human being is socially, geografically, etc. defined but ethics needs the claim that, at least at some extant, a human is free. Without freedom there is no responsability, without responsability there is no justice, without justice there is no moral. Freedom is an ethical necessity.
You still have free will, to say you have no free will because a long brain process that an outside source can track knows your decision before you is dumb.
You are your brain and you made that decision. Your thoughts aren't instant and thats the only reason why this happened.
Our moment to moment decisions are based on our moment to moment thoughts. If I'm asked to choose from a list of menu items, there's an illusion of free will. If I order the steak instead of the other items, it's because of the culmination of thoughts that happened to arise in my conscious mind. Those thoughts then lead me to choosing the steak. We don't have control over our moment to moment thoughts..Therefore, we don't have free will.
Very exciting experiment and results, but the video itself is degrading, with its dramatic music and shallow, pre-programmed conversations between the two people.
@mchattie2222 you're right, its definitely a positive thing that this video exists (for the numbers like you said), I'm just a bit frustrated because when I heard about this experiment from a friend, I wanted to google for it to learn more, but all I could find is a 1-page article and this video, both of which explained things on a very shallow level.
The interesting thing about experiments like this is how they shed light on the philosophical concept of what free will is even supposed to be. The participant is being asked to simulate a random choice. So the choice isn't really meaningful, but more like the neural equivalent of rolling dice. On the other hand if the participant was asked to raise their left or right finger as the answer to a specific question (say, to signify YES or No.)
... then their answer would be determined by prior knowledge, not by their will. So what is free will? What is the will free to do? Freedom has to be contrasted to some other state. If we assert that free will exists it means we're also positing an unfree will.
That's silly. It's not a 100% prediction.... I wouldn't think. It's just that the person is more used to doing one thing then another. And he didn't have reason to choose the less common action. If he simply varied his behaviors more, he would be much less predictable.
it's nothing to worry about. feed in the basic thoughts you want inyour brain and ur moment by moment descesionsit will be in harmony with them. It makes you be more careful about the fundamental thoughts you harbor...
4:22 Mathematician, Prof Marcus Du Sautoy's eyes waters up during the mindblowing revelation of this Neuroscience research. That reality and life is nothing but electrical impulses.
@kanibals100 Yes, I have read about these experiences. From what I understand, there have also been experiences where a person used his/her "free won't" to suppress the "decision" that his/her brain has already made. I also know that there have been experiences where pure thought has changed brain structure. For example, Alvaro Pascal-Leone's experiments where he had subjects just think about playing a keyboard. I was just wondering what side you are on?
@kanibals100 No, there just needs to be one having the illusion. However, there doesn't need to be a conscious person having an illusion of consciousness, just an unconsvious person.
Also, you are so stupid. My facts are facts backed by science, you're just being a retard.
no one sad that conscious is an illusion they just made an experement that shows that 1 second before the disecion there is "some" brain activity not more
@kanibals100 You, sir, are a retard. You laugh at facts, and then you fail to understand even the most basic of neuroscience. If your decisions are made before you're even aware that they're being made, you're obviously not the one making the decision.
That's called logic, sir. Stop being retarded and use it.
who sad that this brain activity has somthing with your disicion?
maybe it just shows that the brain prepering to think that all you should read more about this in wiki even the experts dont agree about that and the feild remains contarvocial
I suppose that there are existing aspects of the body that are already superfluous, like the appendix. Does this apply to consciousness as well? Is consciousness merely the byproduct of an earlier stage of evolution? This at least prompts the question as to why it is even there.
This is a fascinating video. Evidently some decisions can be predicted on the basis of observable brain patterns. It suggests that any binary decision could be modeled and predicted in this way. First, we would document the brain pattern that lead up to one option, then document the brain pattern that lead to the other option; and then if we found either the one or the other pattern, we could predict the conscious decision. Is this true? Can all binary decisions be predicted in this way?
So what I gathered from this is that it's illogical to judge or reward people because you have to keep in mind that those "accomplishments" or "miss doings" happened because of ones environment. So if one becomes a criminal and you judge him he can one way or the other give the blame to his friends, family etc and they can also do the same until the beginning of time. So should our goal be to find the root causes of these problems and that way lessen crime? Therefor isn't punishing illogical?
@rektator Punishing is not illogical if it works. I am not saying it always does, however, and certainly most efforts should be at preventing rather than punishing, which does not entail we should avoid punishing altogether. Oh and remember that the judge is equally part of that environment you are talking about, and hence does not have a choice but to punish if necessary ;)
@gsimard85 I think that punishing is illogical because it doesn't matter for the punisher does it work or not. We shouldn't punish people we should help them to understand why they shouldn't do what they did and if a judge punishes somebody it doesn't even matter will they be mentally healthier later on the punishment.
I just think that we as human beings should evolve some point over the need to punish because we don't need to punish we need to stop the anti-social behavior that is destructive.
@gsimard85 And to achieve that we should find out what makes people act as they do. So we should search the components of our society that poisons people and should address those problems efficiently. I know, may sound like a some kind of utopia but still I think this is the way to go.
@gsimard85 And to achieve that we should find out what makes people act as they do. So we should search the components of our society that poisons people and should address those problems efficiently. I know, may sound like a some kind of utopia but still I think this is the way to go.
@rektator I dont see why punishing people for crimes they have commited would be illogical. Punishments can work preventively, preventing others from doing the same crimes.
I believe that we all have an intrinsic feeling when going about our everyday lives that we do have free will. We can all sit and think of determinism and how every action we do is due to causality. Yet while thinking about having no free will, we still do it with the same intrinsic feeling of free will.
@Soryoe But punishing people who do "bad" things doesn't change what happened and it doesn't address the root causes of why people do what they do. And like some studies has shown that more equal countries have less criminals than less equal countries (might want to read The Spirit Level by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett).
The understanding that you have consists of your experiences and your experiences consists of your environment. Deterministic or not there is atleast some causality there.
@rektator Sure, punishing people doesn't change a system which, if it was better, would reduce crime by a few percentage points. But punishing people is necessary to counter the incentive to do bad things. If people are punished for their harmful acts it eliminates the incentive of gain from harmful acts and thus reduces their occurrence.
Punishing people who do harmful acts changes plenty, just not for that exact person but for people in the future who might be tempted to do the same
@rektator Besides, punishment is a way of deterring the person from committing similar harmful acts in the future. Hence punishment for crimes makes perfect logical and rational sense.
You really need to read the Pinker's book that we discussed earlier. It addresses, among other things, exactly this issue in a pretty much conclusive way.
I thought "conscious" meant conscious and "unconscious" meant NOT CONSCIOUS ! [even though its all interlinked as explained in vid.] So if our decisions and actions are made in our unconscious 6 secs before we are conscious of it - does that not indicate our unconscious is conscious ? If so, then there is a paradox here..how can unconscious be conscious?
There are two problems with this experiment. For one thing, how does the younger guy know that the older guy did not make the decision before he even grabbed the switches? Second, even if he did not already make the decision, all you have to do is apply Freudianism and come to the conclusion that he unconsciously made the decision "six seconds" before he did so consciously.
The actual research shows that the predictive quality is about 60%. So, its better than random. It would be interesting to see what kind of brains are harder to predict. That could be just as revealing.
This guys only found out one thing- that Descartes' thinking (and Freud to a large extent) was wrong. That's all. Nothing actually changed in his life except a silly -albeit seemingly profound- idea. It would have changed anyway if he did much more than maths. If he forgot all about the experiment he'd go on living his life exactly the same way. Maybe he'll do that anyway.
me too was as scared and shocked as this guy at the end of the video but I need to ask a few questions can someone help as I am very scared now. What does this mean then he knew he was deciding to click buttons so he chose the ones he was going to press 6 seconds before he realised it. It was still him making the choice what about thinking without acting. I lay thinking about my day tomorrow who is controlling that ? free will or what I am soo confused help this is soo scary :(
Oh well there goes the underpinning of morality, and the legal system! Bit by bit science is demolishing everything we thought of as true for the last thousand years or more. Great!
@metaldude82 I think the standard ideas about the nature of consciousness and it's relationship to the the external world (reality) is profoundly misunderstood. As a result the standard explanations of morality is wrong and the idea that the law produces justice is a joke. I have my reasons for thinking this but their is hardly enough room to give them here let me just say that everything you experience is an electro chemical reaction that could in theory be reproduced in a test tube.
@vudu8ball Personally, I find myself being in between a mentalist and interactionist. I assume you know what those are. I do not doubt that there are neural correlates with just about everything and that such things could be put in a test tube. However, the qualia and mental content cannot. Whether that mental content is an experienced illusion, a thought, or whatever.
@metaldude82 I am not intimately familiar with the formal discussion of this issue but I am sure there is no such thing as "soul, spirit, etc." So what is left? Consciousness arises from the physical world. What we experience is not the "World" but rather the activity of our brain. I believe their is some correspondence between events in the "World " and events in your brain but it is not a one to one correspondence. I suppose people with more consistent correspondence survive longer.
@vudu8ball Interactionist means that soul and brain interact with each other to produce the human mind. When the brain is damaged, the interaction is altered. It supposes that existance of a soul. The best way I can explain mentalism is to tell you to imagine a hologram being able to knock down a person. Now, put thoughts in place of the hologram and think of thoughts being able to change brain structure. Experiments like those of Alvaro Pascal Leone provide strong evidence that this happens.
@vudu8ball Actually, no. It just means free will isn't as free as we'd like, and so judgment is snide. However, bad influences can still be taking out of society. That's what jail is for. Not punishment, but safety.
@vudu8ball Haynes makes a straw man argument; a case against dualism, but in fact free will and consciousness is argued from substance-monist worldview. And conscious choices are determined/selected/partially influenced by digital information embedded at the Plank scale, when the quantum function collapses or not. These are non-computable functions in the Orch-Or model of Roger Penrose. Also Gregory Chaitin work on Godel's sheds more light with irreducible complex "Omega".
3:11 makes a great point. People misunderstand determinism to claim that "we" are hostage to our brain, as though "my" desires exist distinct from and in opposition to my brain. But this dualism is an illusion.
It seems like the two biggest misconceptions about determinism that scare people are: (1) They think it implies we are "enslaved" or "hostage" to our brain, and (2) determinism implies fatalism, which couldn't be further from the truth.
Funny however in America we value big bank accounts, flashy cars, lots of sex, good fattening food, For some Drugs, religion. And some even value America likes its the number one country...The aberrant behavior produced in America that people are conditioned to is purely from our environment Crime, poverty, gangs, religion, aberrant music, TV and movies. Because our brain has no mechanism early on to distinguish that witch is relevant only accepts the associations picked up from the environment.
Its simple...There is no freewill...Decisions values and behavior do not come from WITHIN the human. They are reflections of your environment. Freewill means you do something without cause but if you grew up in Nazi Germany you would likely be a racist Nazi often killing and raping Jews blacks and gays... if you grew up in the amazon with headhunters you would be a headhunter that hunts and values heads all decisions values and behavior comes from the environment.
@teewilson333 It can hardly be called simple. But your argument is a good one--it took psychology up until 1968 and a book by Dr. Walter Mischel to really argue what you've just stated. While I don't think he opposed concept of free-will, he did believe that environment overwhelmingly determined behavior. Like any good theory, it leaves room to be challenged. Mankind has a unique ability to revolutionize old ideas and alter the surrounding environment, which alters his own behavior.
@GambitFox79 **Now that I really think about it, B.F. Skinner would be the guy that you'd most agree with, since he believed Free-Will was an iliusion.
@GambitFox79 Well said. I would argue that all choices are caused whether by a association, mechanism in the brain or a feeling. If a fly lands on your arm we have the "Choice" to slap it but the fact is...IF we didn't have a responding mechanism in the skin we wouldn't feel the fly thus it is caused. We get hungry but we have the "Choice" to not eat...But if we didn't "Feel" like we were hungry we wouldn't eat. A good premise for life is copying other's. A headhunter can't steal a car we can.
@GambitFox79 People think they choose to like blonde's or a redhead's. No your conditioned to like a blonde, redhead from movies book's etc. People think they choose to look at a persons body or there born attracted to certain body parts the legs, breast, hips etc No if you lived in a village with all naked people you wouldn't ever look. If you were beat up by blacks all the time the next time you see a black you cross the street and they say "Im avoiding them" No its a conditioned reflex.
@teewilson333 I don't disagree with the philosophy behind behavioral conditioning. There's no question that human behavior occurs at a physiological, unconscious level. I do, however, disagree with the notion that human behavior is fully explained by this theory alone. It ignores the way conscious thinking interferers with the environment. A man who controls his thoughts behaves differently from a man who always believes he is the victim of environment and circumstance.
@GambitFox79 I don't understand =( Thinking, talking, moving, eating, sleeping..that all interferes with the environment so when you say conscious thinking i don't understand. When you say a man who controls his thoughts behaves differently from one who believes himself to be a victim of a environment i don't understand =(. Both control thought but they behave differently because of different associations picked up from the environment. What is your perspective? Feel free to private message me.
That only favors the notion that the mind isn't pre-cognitive of the future. Much like if the body is in immediate danger; it becomes absolutely apparent that nothing in particular is choosing to dodge a car, or run away, or to fight back.
How can there be a decision when there is nothing to decide? There is only choice, no chooser.
If the brain generates consciousness then I think it will be because the brain contains something that we don't understand, something profound and beyond our knowledge of nature. If not, then I await the time when man creates a robot that is self aware.
This test needs to be expanded. We need some external stimuli to make a choice. Show the guy two pictures, two colors, anything where he would have to choose a preference and see at what point the decision is made.
Of course Hameroff has a different take on all of this -backwards time effects in the wave-function. Some of the Libet experiments took this same 6-10 second delay and played with it to show that it would either entail future knowledge or changing the history of the brain.
Just remember when you turn the corner and see someone you can choose to greet them or not in about a second or two -not six.
to have discovered it could only go one way, as the man said, would require making the prediction from the stimulus, not after watching the machine react.
You see the machine react before the person knows they are going toward a particular decision... so you can see what it decided before it can see that itself... but IT still made the decision, seeing it happen is not "predicting it"...!!!!
I experience thoughts this way naturally, unconscious thoughts form before I get involved.
@pyrrho314 A prediction of that type would only be possible if we knew everything about the subject (his experiences, DNA, environment, etc.) As we do not know everything, we can only show this: Before we are consciously aware of a decision being made, it has already been decided for us by our unconscious mind. It is much easier to explain that we do not have free will by showing that all of our actions are decided by something we have no control over (our identity and u conscious mind).
@MrMadmanbob : except no, no one said the will had to be conscious to be free. Those other parts of your mind are made of nerves, if they are willing, then "you" are willing... the you that things it's "the real you" is just a part of the brain whose job it is to think that. There is unconscious will. It interact with conscious will (essentially you can make something unconscious, more conscious).
@pyrrho314 Just because the nerves in your mind determine what you do does not mean that they are willing. Your unconscious is basically a representation of what you want. Your actions will mirror the desires of your unconscious. However, you cannot control what you unconsciously desire and thus do not "generate" them in the manner most would consider part of free will.
@MrMadmanbob : all I said is it doesn't mean your not willing, just because the part you think of as conscious isn't in total control. It has its influence. So does the rest of the mind and body... and enviornment. Distribution of influence and of will itself is not a denial of will. It only means will is a system which is hardly a surprise... everything is a system. You can influence what you unconsciously desire. I'm always depressed people don't realize that, or won't admit it.
i cant understand why people tend to have a problem with the statement "there is no such thing as a free will"... i mean, it doesnt change anything really. because it was this way all the time and now we just "discovered" it... where is the problem ? Well i can understand if some religious fags do have a problem with that statement but everybody else should be perfectly fine with it or not ?!
so if we think in terms of school...six seconds before the end of an exam...we already know wether we failed or not...or in a fight, you could figure out what the other dude might do 6 secondes befor he does it...but then it will take six more seconds to counter his attack...which means that....too much data.....needs six seconds...
How is the decision implicated into the brain if it is made round about 6 seconds earlier than what we are conciously thinking it is? Doesn't that imply a greater "I" whitch is looking into the future of 6 seconds - because many decisions are made within a fragment of a second just while we sense the cause of a decision and take the action... OR the world is actually 6+ seconds slower than we percieve it! :D
@chockfish There is a distinction to be made between the subconscious and conscious mind. We experience thoughts as though the appear out of the void. So there is measurable neuronal activity before we experience the thought into our normal waking consciousness. Why we are only aware of this last bit of information in our conscious minds might be explained away through evolution. Filtering out most information, or the behind the scenes work, so we can focus on whats important for our survival.
@reddypraveen We would probably see a lot of predisposition... imagine, for instance, and argument between a couple. I think both brain scans would be stucked at some "He/she's wrong" image, hehehe.
@mthrnaturesson This is a straw man - the researchers are not making the claims you represent. While it is a fact that decision making is a neuro-cognitive operation, every scientist knows that it depends on an interaction between the organism and its environment. Genetic determinism has been falsified, but that is NOT what this line of research in cognitive neuroscience is trying to advocate. Instead, modern neuroscientists advocate for a biopsychosocial model of human behavior.
@Gnomefro "...choices were unrelated to what was going on around you and that would, IMO, mean it wasn't a choice at all. It would just be "shit happens"."
If it wasn't the enviroment that was the reason of the action it's not likeley it would happend?
What do you mean with "shit happends"? There must still be a sort of cause and effect.
If you believe in religion, there isn't much difference. God has predestined your future, right? Same thing.
If you're not a creationist then realize that, as human beings, our primary concern is our happiness. Happiness remains the goal. There are pros and cons here, but making the pros outweigh the cons in your personal life is what matters.
Responsibility and purpose, too, is still realistic because it helps towards our happiness. At any rate, not all science is fact.
@ArminVonLiberty Hi you seem like you know what your talking about I know its 4 month later but would like your opinion. I believe in evolution, Richard Dawkins theory etc. What worries me is this predetermined thing. If there is no free will and with have no choice whatever happens will always happen then I don't see how we can be happy because we are really controlled and only viewing something 6 second later what we did not decide. Is this not unhealthy and very scary ? why go on :( ?
@koda215 Recall that this video was just a demonstration. Neuroscientists probably could not predict *everything* the guy was going to think or do. If that were the case, mind reading would be a new scientific discovery.
There's a bright side to this - we can feel less guilty and worried about the bad things in our lives, right? consciousness is a mystery; surely if we're actually *aware* of the lack of free will, then we're not robots. Some sort of freedom must lie within our consciousness.
@ArminVonLiberty Hi you seem like you know what your talking about I know its 4 month later but would like your opinion. I believe in evolution, Richard Dawkins theory etc. What worries me is this predetermined thing. If there is no free will and with have no choice whatever happens will always happen then I don't see how we can be happy because we are really controlled and only viewing something 6 second later what we did not decide. Is this not unhealthy and very scary ? why go on :( ?
There is no homounculus in the brain, no little I making the decisions. I am well aware of Libet and its what made me realize that Free will is an illusion designed to keep us locked into the matrix which is itself an illusion.
Recently I have wavered a little having read the books of Anthony Peake, which put forward the hypothesis of Eternal Recurrence. The many worlds theory is not only an effort to do away with God, it may also explain the choices we seem to make.
Does this completely negate our counscious role in decision making process and ability to choose or it just sais that much of the metioned is done by our neural activity which we are unaware of? Sorry for the ignorance. :)
Free will do not exist. It's the environment that is the cause of it all. Free will is our times faith. It's a religion.
It does not matter what part of the brain that makes the decisions. All it have to go by is the information fed/created/limited by the environment. You are a part of the environment.
Without the faith to free will, we would not be able to have this system of laws and punishment we have today. Change the environment, and you will change the persons choice.
@gr0gg0 "Without the faith to free will, we would not be able to have this system of laws and punishment we have today. Change the environment, and you will change the persons choice."
That's false. Compatibilists have sorted out the legal part of it all ages ago. You can even keep the free will terminology in this situation, although it will reduce to the absence of coercion from other agents. In the end you keep responsibility for your actions because they are mostly determined in your brain
i dont understand why they claim that they can predict your choice while they predict only 60% while i can predict 50% just by chance that means that can cant really predict what hand you will lift.
kanibals100 1 day ago
@metaldude82 I would question the validity of this experiment. I done a search and found out they also were told to remember when they made the choice. So your lying there knowing you have to press a button and remember when you pressed it! - If the brain sends signals to your hand and you have locked in your decision by remembering it well the corresponding hemisphere that controls that hand will do something.
AustralianCannonball 1 week ago
people have been reading tells forever
theicediamond7 1 week ago
Nothing is shocking about this but it is misleading. The right hemisphere controls the left and vice versa. Pressing the button is a physical action and of course an area of the brain would start to light up in anticipation of the physical movement. You have a real soul and the body is just a vessel. Don't let very simple experiments like this fool you. You have a free will.
AustralianCannonball 1 week ago
@AustralianCannonball Again, am I the only who finds the mere fact that these "choices" were made in a planned experiment significant? Meaning that the mere planning likely had an effect on mind and brain of the individual in the video.
metaldude82 1 week ago
This is important. Does anyone else find the fact that making a "choice" was a planned event in these types of experiments? Meaning just based on that aspect of planning/preparation, we should question the validity of these experiments. Anyone agree?
metaldude82 2 weeks ago
This will go a long way in terms of understanding each other and learning to love each other. We shouldn't hate people for being who they are. Even if they are a serial killer. Hating a serial killer is akin to hating an alligator.
itzahazylife 2 weeks ago
I wonder what stimulus marcus was made to respond to. Was either a response to the left or right of any consequence? How can boxers avoid punches?
MrManifaces 2 weeks ago
ur personality ,the way you look is created for your destiny
WhiteMoonLights 2 weeks ago
@WhiteMoonLights No its created by your culture.
TheMidwestsk8ter 2 weeks ago
5:46 - why would that be shocking? What would be shocking for me, not to mention scary, is if our consciousness was an entity independent from our biology (a soul if you wish). That would be confusing, would raise so many other questions and would not make any sense.
A consciousness as a "software" which is run on a brain the "hardware" would be so much easier for me to take in.
PushMyCarr 2 weeks ago
Our lives are based on our decisions
Our decisions are based on our values.
Our values are based on our personalities.
Our personalities (this is where it gets X-Files) is found in our brain.
Our brain is wired by our DNA
And our DNA is pure luck.
CONLUSION: Luck is everything! :OMG!!!
HedgehogRebellion 3 weeks ago
I want to know who´s choice was to use thas kind of socks...
Albertojaikus 3 weeks ago
The thing is that to believe this you have to presume the infallibility of both the machine, the computer programme and the interpreter.
JonChase 4 weeks ago
Do we have the ability to measure our conscious mind? Or are all our measurements on the brain scanner indicative of our subconscious?
theduderabides 4 weeks ago
I do not understand (or agree with) the conclusions these guys present.
So, the brain lights up and 6 seconds later the button is pushed.
But, how do the research discriminate the brain lighting up is a conscious thought vs a non-conscious thought? Couldn't the brain lighting up be all conscious thought?
Gonna watch the video again.
mphello 1 month ago
they need to put derren brown in this thing
antdaole 1 month ago
Punishment for the sake of vengeance is illogical given the increasing validity of determinism. This is why capital punishment is an atrocious practice. However, punishment for the sake of rehabilitating the individual, or at least to protect others from the individual, is perfectly acceptable.
ZeroHex5412 1 month ago
@ZeroHex5412 Punishment for the sake of vengeance is perfectly logical. It deters the person, and others like him who know that that's what happens if you do harmful acts, from committing harmful acts in the future.
HannuMarijarvi 1 month ago
@HannuMarijarvi What about crimes of passion?
absoluteIyflabulous 1 month ago
@absoluteIyflabulous I don't see how crimes of passion differ from normal crimes with respect to deterrence. Are you trying to say people who do crimes of passion can't be deterred by punishment? That a person who kills his wife over an affair would have done it anyway regardless of punishment?
Crimes of passion are not elicited by irresistible urges, just hard-to-resist but resistible urges. Therefore deterrence is still perfectly logical for it reduces their occurrence.
HannuMarijarvi 1 month ago
@absoluteIyflabulous I mean, think about it, if you are steamingly angry and then immediately after meet a police officer, do you hit the officer or do you control yourself? This example proves people can indeed control themselves and thus can be deterred from crimes of passion.
HannuMarijarvi 1 month ago
Deterrence works on the assumption that people consider the consequences of their actions before they do something. We don't even need to invoke the idea of a crime of passion to know that this isn't always the case. People make stupid decisions in the heat of the moment without considering the repercussions. Once you admit this, then surely you can see how a deterrent won't prevent a person committing murder when confronted with the sight of their spouse with someone else, for example.
absoluteIyflabulous 4 weeks ago
@absoluteIyflabulous Think about it this way. What if you found your spouse in your bed with someone else. But also in the room would be a large and stoic man with an axe standing guard next to the bed. Do you think the mere presence of this man would deter you from killing your spouse? Very likely so.
The purpose of criminal law is to be like that man, scaring people away from harmful acts.
HannuMarijarvi 4 weeks ago
@absoluteIyflabulous Of course not everyone will be deterred since the law is not precisely alike the man, but nobody is under the illusion that criminal punishment will deter everyone. The point is that it will deter a lot of people, which is its function and the reason it's justified.
HannuMarijarvi 4 weeks ago
@absoluteIyflabulous Besides, imagine for a moment what would happen if crimes of passion were to go unpunished. Every crime would suddenly be a "crime of passion" because people would commit crimes they know they wouldn't be punished for.
HannuMarijarvi 4 weeks ago
@absoluteIyflabulous That's why everyone who can in principle be deterred should be held responsible for their actions. That is everyone except people whose cognitive system responding to deterrence isn't working (the insane), and for them there's involuntary civil commitment.
HannuMarijarvi 4 weeks ago
@HannuMarijarvi
It's not just the insane though. Sociopaths aren't necessarily insane. There's usually intent, premeditation, and intelligence with their crimes. But, they don't possess empathy. So, even though they may not be out of their minds, they still lack some necessary deterrents that would stop them from doing something widely seen as immoral. Some people aren't crazy. Some just don't care. And you can't blame them. They just don't.
itzahazylife 2 weeks ago
@itzahazylife Of course psychopaths don't care for the suffering they cause. That's what it means to be a psychopath. But that only means that they should be punished more surely and severely to deter them from inflicting harm in the only language that they understand.
Imagine I wouldn't care if I tortured you? Would you be prepared to admit I couldn't be blamed for torturing you just as long as I don't care whether I do so? Sounds like the most confused reasoning I've ever heard.
HannuMarijarvi 2 weeks ago
@itzahazylife Both moral blame and deterrence are both irrelevant to whether the person inflicting suffering cares for the suffering he inflicts. It's completely irrelevant.
People who can be deterred from harmful acts with the threat of criminal punishment should be deterred by the threat of such punishment. And if a person can't be deterred then we already have a mechanism in our society for dealing with those individuals: Involuntary civil commitment.
HannuMarijarvi 2 weeks ago
guys watch the matrix and see for youselves
Korianne75 1 month ago
We are the sum of our cognitive functions.
TheAtheistSocialist 1 month ago
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TheAtheistSocialist 1 month ago
only problem... why two switches and not three? It would be much more accurate. Humans not always choose between two alternatives, but more.
MaikUniversum 2 months ago
just because you had brain activity before you thought about the decision doesnt mean you dont have free will.just because you thought about choosing a choice doesnt mean you are going to choose that choice.
DrakeVerde 2 months ago
@DrakeVerde
right to the point
@Nhora3 (with a bit of digression)
of course everyone is responsible for his actions
the same way i earlier considered religion as solid basis for mercy and forgiveness
and moral values i now am of different opinion
consider the breivik case i had no problems killing him
or if he ever apologizes send him to prison
for the rest of his life without sth. to write and internet access forever
minusdotminus 2 months ago
@DrakeVerde
"just because you thought about choosing a choice doesnt mean you are going to choose that choice."
That is exactly what it means. Watch the video again, you clearly didn't understand it. In fact the subject didn't even know he was making a decision until 6 seconds after he had already made it..he couldn't possibly had chosen left if his brain had already chosen right. That is appears to him that HE is making a choice is merely an illusion.
OddityDK 2 months ago
Obviously the human being is socially, geografically, etc. defined but ethics needs the claim that, at least at some extant, a human is free. Without freedom there is no responsability, without responsability there is no justice, without justice there is no moral. Freedom is an ethical necessity.
Nhoa3 2 months ago
The Buddha taught that there is no free will, only causality.
Find the nearest Theravada Buddhist monastery people!
MrGunwitch 2 months ago
You are merely a witness of the chemical reactions going on inside your mind. It's that simple.
majestic93 2 months ago
@majestic93
And funny how those chemical reactions caused you to type that.
mejercit 1 month ago
@mejercit How so?
majestic93 1 month ago
You still have free will, to say you have no free will because a long brain process that an outside source can track knows your decision before you is dumb.
You are your brain and you made that decision. Your thoughts aren't instant and thats the only reason why this happened.
gangstacrak2 2 months ago
So many seem to overestimate this video and want to jump to conclusions too fast.
metaldude82 2 months ago
Our moment to moment decisions are based on our moment to moment thoughts. If I'm asked to choose from a list of menu items, there's an illusion of free will. If I order the steak instead of the other items, it's because of the culmination of thoughts that happened to arise in my conscious mind. Those thoughts then lead me to choosing the steak. We don't have control over our moment to moment thoughts..Therefore, we don't have free will.
itzahazylife 2 months ago
That is why I consider rehabilitation rather than incriminating criminals
shakilmujeeb 2 months ago
Very exciting experiment and results, but the video itself is degrading, with its dramatic music and shallow, pre-programmed conversations between the two people.
TheCheshireCat3D 3 months ago
@TheCheshireCat3D what do except its bbc there a big corporation got to keep it simple for the numbers.
mchattie2222 3 months ago
@mchattie2222 you're right, its definitely a positive thing that this video exists (for the numbers like you said), I'm just a bit frustrated because when I heard about this experiment from a friend, I wanted to google for it to learn more, but all I could find is a 1-page article and this video, both of which explained things on a very shallow level.
TheCheshireCat3D 2 months ago
@TheCheshireCat3D have you looked into human behavioural evolution.
mchattie2222 2 months ago
@mchattie2222 no but I'd like to. Can you recommend a particular book/article?
TheCheshireCat3D 2 months ago
THIS VIDEO MUST BE DESTROYED!!! Kidding.
The interesting thing about experiments like this is how they shed light on the philosophical concept of what free will is even supposed to be. The participant is being asked to simulate a random choice. So the choice isn't really meaningful, but more like the neural equivalent of rolling dice. On the other hand if the participant was asked to raise their left or right finger as the answer to a specific question (say, to signify YES or No.)
xoxoguydebord 3 months ago
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xoxoguydebord 3 months ago
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xoxoguydebord 3 months ago
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@xoxoguydebord
... then their answer would be determined by prior knowledge, not by their will. So what is free will? What is the will free to do? Freedom has to be contrasted to some other state. If we assert that free will exists it means we're also positing an unfree will.
xoxoguydebord 3 months ago
That's silly. It's not a 100% prediction.... I wouldn't think. It's just that the person is more used to doing one thing then another. And he didn't have reason to choose the less common action. If he simply varied his behaviors more, he would be much less predictable.
PerfectDecalibration 3 months ago
@PerfectDecalibration W are reflections of the enviroment we come from free will is a joke
TheMidwestsk8ter 3 months ago
it's nothing to worry about. feed in the basic thoughts you want inyour brain and ur moment by moment descesionsit will be in harmony with them. It makes you be more careful about the fundamental thoughts you harbor...
007gumshoe 3 months ago
4:22 Mathematician, Prof Marcus Du Sautoy's eyes waters up during the mindblowing revelation of this Neuroscience research. That reality and life is nothing but electrical impulses.
ayoopdog 3 months ago
NOW my conscience is confused ....
SushantBhargav 3 months ago
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MrJonInDaHouse 3 months ago
deterministic Mechanism? hh the world is indeterministic so it can be that it could go only one way.
quantom mechanics disagree with the professor/
kanibals100 3 months ago
they can predict only 60% that dosent say anything
kanibals100 3 months ago
@kanibals100 Where does it say "only 60 percent"?
metaldude82 3 months ago
@metaldude82
i u want to read more about thouse experements,u can find it in wikipedia free will nerusince.
their are much more info then here.
kanibals100 3 months ago
@kanibals100 Yes, I have read about these experiences. From what I understand, there have also been experiences where a person used his/her "free won't" to suppress the "decision" that his/her brain has already made. I also know that there have been experiences where pure thought has changed brain structure. For example, Alvaro Pascal-Leone's experiments where he had subjects just think about playing a keyboard. I was just wondering what side you are on?
metaldude82 3 months ago
@metaldude82
i am with free will.
the field remains highly controversial.
dont forget that "brain activity" is you,they just dont understand how the brain works.
kanibals100 2 months ago
@kanibals100 There is no _conscious_ free will, just subconscious. And you can't be blamed for your subconscious, like it or not.
Iced1992 2 months ago
@Iced1992
you are so stupid if conscious is an illusion there must be the one who is in that illusion.
kanibals100 2 months ago
@kanibals100 No, there just needs to be one having the illusion. However, there doesn't need to be a conscious person having an illusion of consciousness, just an unconsvious person.
Also, you are so stupid. My facts are facts backed by science, you're just being a retard.
Iced1992 2 months ago
@Iced1992
facts? hahaha you are realy stupid
no one sad that conscious is an illusion they just made an experement that shows that 1 second before the disecion there is "some" brain activity not more
kanibals100 2 months ago
@kanibals100 You, sir, are a retard. You laugh at facts, and then you fail to understand even the most basic of neuroscience. If your decisions are made before you're even aware that they're being made, you're obviously not the one making the decision.
That's called logic, sir. Stop being retarded and use it.
Iced1992 2 months ago
@Iced1992
who sad that this brain activity has somthing with your disicion?
maybe it just shows that the brain prepering to think that all you should read more about this in wiki even the experts dont agree about that and the feild remains contarvocial
kanibals100 2 months ago
@Iced1992
I thoroughly enjoyed that retort :)
MrGunwitch 2 months ago
Such metaphysical bull.
byebyegiomar 3 months ago
I suppose that there are existing aspects of the body that are already superfluous, like the appendix. Does this apply to consciousness as well? Is consciousness merely the byproduct of an earlier stage of evolution? This at least prompts the question as to why it is even there.
noteagod 3 months ago in playlist noteagod's favorites
This is a fascinating video. Evidently some decisions can be predicted on the basis of observable brain patterns. It suggests that any binary decision could be modeled and predicted in this way. First, we would document the brain pattern that lead up to one option, then document the brain pattern that lead to the other option; and then if we found either the one or the other pattern, we could predict the conscious decision. Is this true? Can all binary decisions be predicted in this way?
noteagod 3 months ago in playlist noteagod's favorites
what documentary is this from?
S0up3rD0up3r 4 months ago
@S0up3rD0up3r The documentary is called "the secret you". Peace
terasus4 3 months ago
So what I gathered from this is that it's illogical to judge or reward people because you have to keep in mind that those "accomplishments" or "miss doings" happened because of ones environment. So if one becomes a criminal and you judge him he can one way or the other give the blame to his friends, family etc and they can also do the same until the beginning of time. So should our goal be to find the root causes of these problems and that way lessen crime? Therefor isn't punishing illogical?
rektator 4 months ago 11
@rektator Your right. We have to change the enviroment
TheMidwestsk8ter 4 months ago 3
@rektator Punishing is not illogical if it works. I am not saying it always does, however, and certainly most efforts should be at preventing rather than punishing, which does not entail we should avoid punishing altogether. Oh and remember that the judge is equally part of that environment you are talking about, and hence does not have a choice but to punish if necessary ;)
gsimard85 1 month ago
@gsimard85 I think that punishing is illogical because it doesn't matter for the punisher does it work or not. We shouldn't punish people we should help them to understand why they shouldn't do what they did and if a judge punishes somebody it doesn't even matter will they be mentally healthier later on the punishment.
I just think that we as human beings should evolve some point over the need to punish because we don't need to punish we need to stop the anti-social behavior that is destructive.
rektator 1 month ago
@gsimard85 And to achieve that we should find out what makes people act as they do. So we should search the components of our society that poisons people and should address those problems efficiently. I know, may sound like a some kind of utopia but still I think this is the way to go.
rektator 1 month ago
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@gsimard85 And to achieve that we should find out what makes people act as they do. So we should search the components of our society that poisons people and should address those problems efficiently. I know, may sound like a some kind of utopia but still I think this is the way to go.
rektator 1 month ago
@rektator I dont see why punishing people for crimes they have commited would be illogical. Punishments can work preventively, preventing others from doing the same crimes.
I believe that we all have an intrinsic feeling when going about our everyday lives that we do have free will. We can all sit and think of determinism and how every action we do is due to causality. Yet while thinking about having no free will, we still do it with the same intrinsic feeling of free will.
Soryoe 1 month ago
@Soryoe But punishing people who do "bad" things doesn't change what happened and it doesn't address the root causes of why people do what they do. And like some studies has shown that more equal countries have less criminals than less equal countries (might want to read The Spirit Level by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett).
The understanding that you have consists of your experiences and your experiences consists of your environment. Deterministic or not there is atleast some causality there.
rektator 1 month ago
@rektator Sure, punishing people doesn't change a system which, if it was better, would reduce crime by a few percentage points. But punishing people is necessary to counter the incentive to do bad things. If people are punished for their harmful acts it eliminates the incentive of gain from harmful acts and thus reduces their occurrence.
Punishing people who do harmful acts changes plenty, just not for that exact person but for people in the future who might be tempted to do the same
HannuMarijarvi 1 month ago
@rektator Besides, punishment is a way of deterring the person from committing similar harmful acts in the future. Hence punishment for crimes makes perfect logical and rational sense.
You really need to read the Pinker's book that we discussed earlier. It addresses, among other things, exactly this issue in a pretty much conclusive way.
HannuMarijarvi 1 month ago
I thought "conscious" meant conscious and "unconscious" meant NOT CONSCIOUS ! [even though its all interlinked as explained in vid.] So if our decisions and actions are made in our unconscious 6 secs before we are conscious of it - does that not indicate our unconscious is conscious ? If so, then there is a paradox here..how can unconscious be conscious?
brindow1 4 months ago
we got a hostage situation here
andrespereyda 4 months ago
There are two problems with this experiment. For one thing, how does the younger guy know that the older guy did not make the decision before he even grabbed the switches? Second, even if he did not already make the decision, all you have to do is apply Freudianism and come to the conclusion that he unconsciously made the decision "six seconds" before he did so consciously.
metaldude82 4 months ago
The actual research shows that the predictive quality is about 60%. So, its better than random. It would be interesting to see what kind of brains are harder to predict. That could be just as revealing.
qigong1001 4 months ago
This guys only found out one thing- that Descartes' thinking (and Freud to a large extent) was wrong. That's all. Nothing actually changed in his life except a silly -albeit seemingly profound- idea. It would have changed anyway if he did much more than maths. If he forgot all about the experiment he'd go on living his life exactly the same way. Maybe he'll do that anyway.
boringuser1234 5 months ago
me too was as scared and shocked as this guy at the end of the video but I need to ask a few questions can someone help as I am very scared now. What does this mean then he knew he was deciding to click buttons so he chose the ones he was going to press 6 seconds before he realised it. It was still him making the choice what about thinking without acting. I lay thinking about my day tomorrow who is controlling that ? free will or what I am soo confused help this is soo scary :(
koda215 5 months ago
lol at the socks.
perplexedmoth 5 months ago
Oh well there goes the underpinning of morality, and the legal system! Bit by bit science is demolishing everything we thought of as true for the last thousand years or more. Great!
vudu8ball 5 months ago 17
@vudu8ball You seem intelligent look up resource based ecnomy and check out this video
"Jacque Fresco - What the Future Holds Beyond 2000 - Nichols College (1999) "
TheMidwestsk8ter 3 months ago
@vudu8ball Are you being sarcastic? Please tell me.
metaldude82 3 months ago
@metaldude82 I think the standard ideas about the nature of consciousness and it's relationship to the the external world (reality) is profoundly misunderstood. As a result the standard explanations of morality is wrong and the idea that the law produces justice is a joke. I have my reasons for thinking this but their is hardly enough room to give them here let me just say that everything you experience is an electro chemical reaction that could in theory be reproduced in a test tube.
vudu8ball 3 months ago
@vudu8ball Personally, I find myself being in between a mentalist and interactionist. I assume you know what those are. I do not doubt that there are neural correlates with just about everything and that such things could be put in a test tube. However, the qualia and mental content cannot. Whether that mental content is an experienced illusion, a thought, or whatever.
metaldude82 3 months ago
@metaldude82 I am not intimately familiar with the formal discussion of this issue but I am sure there is no such thing as "soul, spirit, etc." So what is left? Consciousness arises from the physical world. What we experience is not the "World" but rather the activity of our brain. I believe their is some correspondence between events in the "World " and events in your brain but it is not a one to one correspondence. I suppose people with more consistent correspondence survive longer.
vudu8ball 3 months ago
@vudu8ball Interactionist means that soul and brain interact with each other to produce the human mind. When the brain is damaged, the interaction is altered. It supposes that existance of a soul. The best way I can explain mentalism is to tell you to imagine a hologram being able to knock down a person. Now, put thoughts in place of the hologram and think of thoughts being able to change brain structure. Experiments like those of Alvaro Pascal Leone provide strong evidence that this happens.
metaldude82 2 months ago
@vudu8ball Actually, no. It just means free will isn't as free as we'd like, and so judgment is snide. However, bad influences can still be taking out of society. That's what jail is for. Not punishment, but safety.
Anyone who isn't an American should know that.
Iced1992 2 months ago
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packe777 2 months ago
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packe777 2 months ago
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@vudu8ball Haynes makes a straw man argument; a case against dualism, but in fact free will and consciousness is argued from substance-monist worldview. And conscious choices are determined/selected/partially influenced by digital information embedded at the Plank scale, when the quantum function collapses or not. These are non-computable functions in the Orch-Or model of Roger Penrose. Also Gregory Chaitin work on Godel's sheds more light with irreducible complex "Omega".
packe777 2 months ago 4
@4:40 I thought he was going to sit on the steps and cry.
GambitFox79 5 months ago
he has awesome socks!
monoburgos12345 5 months ago
3:11 makes a great point. People misunderstand determinism to claim that "we" are hostage to our brain, as though "my" desires exist distinct from and in opposition to my brain. But this dualism is an illusion.
It seems like the two biggest misconceptions about determinism that scare people are: (1) They think it implies we are "enslaved" or "hostage" to our brain, and (2) determinism implies fatalism, which couldn't be further from the truth.
Tibberclaw 6 months ago
Funny however in America we value big bank accounts, flashy cars, lots of sex, good fattening food, For some Drugs, religion. And some even value America likes its the number one country...The aberrant behavior produced in America that people are conditioned to is purely from our environment Crime, poverty, gangs, religion, aberrant music, TV and movies. Because our brain has no mechanism early on to distinguish that witch is relevant only accepts the associations picked up from the environment.
teewilson333 6 months ago
@teewilson333 couldn't have said it better myself ( well i could have :P) but yes our culture influences greed basically.
Armahghetto 6 months ago
Its simple...There is no freewill...Decisions values and behavior do not come from WITHIN the human. They are reflections of your environment. Freewill means you do something without cause but if you grew up in Nazi Germany you would likely be a racist Nazi often killing and raping Jews blacks and gays... if you grew up in the amazon with headhunters you would be a headhunter that hunts and values heads all decisions values and behavior comes from the environment.
teewilson333 6 months ago
@teewilson333 It can hardly be called simple. But your argument is a good one--it took psychology up until 1968 and a book by Dr. Walter Mischel to really argue what you've just stated. While I don't think he opposed concept of free-will, he did believe that environment overwhelmingly determined behavior. Like any good theory, it leaves room to be challenged. Mankind has a unique ability to revolutionize old ideas and alter the surrounding environment, which alters his own behavior.
GambitFox79 5 months ago
@GambitFox79 **Now that I really think about it, B.F. Skinner would be the guy that you'd most agree with, since he believed Free-Will was an iliusion.
GambitFox79 5 months ago
@GambitFox79 Well said. I would argue that all choices are caused whether by a association, mechanism in the brain or a feeling. If a fly lands on your arm we have the "Choice" to slap it but the fact is...IF we didn't have a responding mechanism in the skin we wouldn't feel the fly thus it is caused. We get hungry but we have the "Choice" to not eat...But if we didn't "Feel" like we were hungry we wouldn't eat. A good premise for life is copying other's. A headhunter can't steal a car we can.
teewilson333 5 months ago
@GambitFox79 People think they choose to like blonde's or a redhead's. No your conditioned to like a blonde, redhead from movies book's etc. People think they choose to look at a persons body or there born attracted to certain body parts the legs, breast, hips etc No if you lived in a village with all naked people you wouldn't ever look. If you were beat up by blacks all the time the next time you see a black you cross the street and they say "Im avoiding them" No its a conditioned reflex.
teewilson333 5 months ago
@teewilson333 I don't disagree with the philosophy behind behavioral conditioning. There's no question that human behavior occurs at a physiological, unconscious level. I do, however, disagree with the notion that human behavior is fully explained by this theory alone. It ignores the way conscious thinking interferers with the environment. A man who controls his thoughts behaves differently from a man who always believes he is the victim of environment and circumstance.
GambitFox79 5 months ago
@GambitFox79 I don't understand =( Thinking, talking, moving, eating, sleeping..that all interferes with the environment so when you say conscious thinking i don't understand. When you say a man who controls his thoughts behaves differently from one who believes himself to be a victim of a environment i don't understand =(. Both control thought but they behave differently because of different associations picked up from the environment. What is your perspective? Feel free to private message me.
teewilson333 5 months ago
@teewilson333 There is freewill in a limited sense.
metaldude82 3 months ago
What a load of bollocks this is. Petty, outdated arguments.
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TheServiceWeb 6 months ago
@JohananRaatz
That only favors the notion that the mind isn't pre-cognitive of the future. Much like if the body is in immediate danger; it becomes absolutely apparent that nothing in particular is choosing to dodge a car, or run away, or to fight back.
How can there be a decision when there is nothing to decide? There is only choice, no chooser.
HylianSpirit 6 months ago
Its neither the brain nor the owner in control.... havent you seen the Adjustment Bureau?
MackerLiverpool 6 months ago
If the brain generates consciousness then I think it will be because the brain contains something that we don't understand, something profound and beyond our knowledge of nature. If not, then I await the time when man creates a robot that is self aware.
1simonmatthews 6 months ago
This test needs to be expanded. We need some external stimuli to make a choice. Show the guy two pictures, two colors, anything where he would have to choose a preference and see at what point the decision is made.
AgentKrieger 7 months ago
Of course Hameroff has a different take on all of this -backwards time effects in the wave-function. Some of the Libet experiments took this same 6-10 second delay and played with it to show that it would either entail future knowledge or changing the history of the brain.
Just remember when you turn the corner and see someone you can choose to greet them or not in about a second or two -not six.
JohananRaatz 7 months ago
He's forgetting that science allows for indeterminacy. And that that indeterminacy can cause itself with a self-recursing Zeno effect.
JohananRaatz 7 months ago
to have discovered it could only go one way, as the man said, would require making the prediction from the stimulus, not after watching the machine react.
You see the machine react before the person knows they are going toward a particular decision... so you can see what it decided before it can see that itself... but IT still made the decision, seeing it happen is not "predicting it"...!!!!
I experience thoughts this way naturally, unconscious thoughts form before I get involved.
pyrrho314 7 months ago
@pyrrho314 A prediction of that type would only be possible if we knew everything about the subject (his experiences, DNA, environment, etc.) As we do not know everything, we can only show this: Before we are consciously aware of a decision being made, it has already been decided for us by our unconscious mind. It is much easier to explain that we do not have free will by showing that all of our actions are decided by something we have no control over (our identity and u conscious mind).
MrMadmanbob 6 months ago
@MrMadmanbob : except no, no one said the will had to be conscious to be free. Those other parts of your mind are made of nerves, if they are willing, then "you" are willing... the you that things it's "the real you" is just a part of the brain whose job it is to think that. There is unconscious will. It interact with conscious will (essentially you can make something unconscious, more conscious).
pyrrho314 6 months ago
@pyrrho314 Just because the nerves in your mind determine what you do does not mean that they are willing. Your unconscious is basically a representation of what you want. Your actions will mirror the desires of your unconscious. However, you cannot control what you unconsciously desire and thus do not "generate" them in the manner most would consider part of free will.
MrMadmanbob 6 months ago
@MrMadmanbob : all I said is it doesn't mean your not willing, just because the part you think of as conscious isn't in total control. It has its influence. So does the rest of the mind and body... and enviornment. Distribution of influence and of will itself is not a denial of will. It only means will is a system which is hardly a surprise... everything is a system. You can influence what you unconsciously desire. I'm always depressed people don't realize that, or won't admit it.
pyrrho314 6 months ago
Neuroscience meets Advaita. Love it!
itsonelouder1 8 months ago
i cant understand why people tend to have a problem with the statement "there is no such thing as a free will"... i mean, it doesnt change anything really. because it was this way all the time and now we just "discovered" it... where is the problem ? Well i can understand if some religious fags do have a problem with that statement but everybody else should be perfectly fine with it or not ?!
Kasseenzettel 8 months ago
@Kasseenzettel there is no "free"... but there is will.
pyrrho314 6 months ago 12
so if we think in terms of school...six seconds before the end of an exam...we already know wether we failed or not...or in a fight, you could figure out what the other dude might do 6 secondes befor he does it...but then it will take six more seconds to counter his attack...which means that....too much data.....needs six seconds...
a110075 8 months ago
@a110075 You are forget of reactions. Trained man can react on something in fraction of seconds. But is it really conscious?
JLarky 8 months ago
@JLarky i think it would be more your sub-conscious, not conscious
a110075 8 months ago
How is the decision implicated into the brain if it is made round about 6 seconds earlier than what we are conciously thinking it is? Doesn't that imply a greater "I" whitch is looking into the future of 6 seconds - because many decisions are made within a fragment of a second just while we sense the cause of a decision and take the action... OR the world is actually 6+ seconds slower than we percieve it! :D
chockfish 8 months ago
@chockfish haha well put.
KingGoddard 8 months ago
@chockfish There is a distinction to be made between the subconscious and conscious mind. We experience thoughts as though the appear out of the void. So there is measurable neuronal activity before we experience the thought into our normal waking consciousness. Why we are only aware of this last bit of information in our conscious minds might be explained away through evolution. Filtering out most information, or the behind the scenes work, so we can focus on whats important for our survival.
BornOfYouth 7 months ago
At the end of the clip, he goes outside and cries. LoL
rockos414 8 months ago
It would be interesting to see a conversation between two people
reddypraveen 8 months ago
@reddypraveen We would probably see a lot of predisposition... imagine, for instance, and argument between a couple. I think both brain scans would be stucked at some "He/she's wrong" image, hehehe.
Hayacafrita 8 months ago
Hi ...are results consistent across all spectrum of humans. Ie. Color,disease, age etc..
reddypraveen 8 months ago
so what would happen if you saw--a few seconds before it took place--the decision you were going to make and decided to change it?
zarthok1 8 months ago
This has been flagged as spam show
See more about this in zeitgeist moving forward on youtube
liutasx 8 months ago
@mthrnaturesson This is a straw man - the researchers are not making the claims you represent. While it is a fact that decision making is a neuro-cognitive operation, every scientist knows that it depends on an interaction between the organism and its environment. Genetic determinism has been falsified, but that is NOT what this line of research in cognitive neuroscience is trying to advocate. Instead, modern neuroscientists advocate for a biopsychosocial model of human behavior.
ArcadianGenesis 8 months ago
@mthrnaturesson I agree, this has been called the 'Hard Problem' of consciousness.
tastethepain28 8 months ago
Seen this Episode on TV
realnameunknown2011 9 months ago
@Gnomefro "...choices were unrelated to what was going on around you and that would, IMO, mean it wasn't a choice at all. It would just be "shit happens"."
If it wasn't the enviroment that was the reason of the action it's not likeley it would happend?
What do you mean with "shit happends"? There must still be a sort of cause and effect.
gr0gg0 9 months ago
What would happen if he saw the prediction before he decided?
SchmoopyTheSpy 9 months ago
Man, he looks so defeated :(
Rambowjo2 9 months ago
Comment removed
xMikuruChanx 9 months ago
@xMikuruChanx
If you believe in religion, there isn't much difference. God has predestined your future, right? Same thing.
If you're not a creationist then realize that, as human beings, our primary concern is our happiness. Happiness remains the goal. There are pros and cons here, but making the pros outweigh the cons in your personal life is what matters.
Responsibility and purpose, too, is still realistic because it helps towards our happiness. At any rate, not all science is fact.
ArminVonLiberty 9 months ago
@ArminVonLiberty Hi you seem like you know what your talking about I know its 4 month later but would like your opinion. I believe in evolution, Richard Dawkins theory etc. What worries me is this predetermined thing. If there is no free will and with have no choice whatever happens will always happen then I don't see how we can be happy because we are really controlled and only viewing something 6 second later what we did not decide. Is this not unhealthy and very scary ? why go on :( ?
koda215 5 months ago
@koda215 Recall that this video was just a demonstration. Neuroscientists probably could not predict *everything* the guy was going to think or do. If that were the case, mind reading would be a new scientific discovery.
There's a bright side to this - we can feel less guilty and worried about the bad things in our lives, right? consciousness is a mystery; surely if we're actually *aware* of the lack of free will, then we're not robots. Some sort of freedom must lie within our consciousness.
ArminVonLiberty 5 months ago
@ArminVonLiberty thanks for replying to me i appreciate it.
koda215 5 months ago
@ArminVonLiberty Hi you seem like you know what your talking about I know its 4 month later but would like your opinion. I believe in evolution, Richard Dawkins theory etc. What worries me is this predetermined thing. If there is no free will and with have no choice whatever happens will always happen then I don't see how we can be happy because we are really controlled and only viewing something 6 second later what we did not decide. Is this not unhealthy and very scary ? why go on :( ?
koda215 5 months ago
There is no homounculus in the brain, no little I making the decisions. I am well aware of Libet and its what made me realize that Free will is an illusion designed to keep us locked into the matrix which is itself an illusion.
Recently I have wavered a little having read the books of Anthony Peake, which put forward the hypothesis of Eternal Recurrence. The many worlds theory is not only an effort to do away with God, it may also explain the choices we seem to make.
whitenightf3 9 months ago
Does this completely negate our counscious role in decision making process and ability to choose or it just sais that much of the metioned is done by our neural activity which we are unaware of? Sorry for the ignorance. :)
MonteOG1 9 months ago
Free will do not exist. It's the environment that is the cause of it all. Free will is our times faith. It's a religion.
It does not matter what part of the brain that makes the decisions. All it have to go by is the information fed/created/limited by the environment. You are a part of the environment.
Without the faith to free will, we would not be able to have this system of laws and punishment we have today. Change the environment, and you will change the persons choice.
gr0gg0 9 months ago
@gr0gg0 "Without the faith to free will, we would not be able to have this system of laws and punishment we have today. Change the environment, and you will change the persons choice."
That's false. Compatibilists have sorted out the legal part of it all ages ago. You can even keep the free will terminology in this situation, although it will reduce to the absence of coercion from other agents. In the end you keep responsibility for your actions because they are mostly determined in your brain
Gnomefro 9 months ago
@Gnomefro So if you didn't believe it is the persons fault for their action you would see it as right to punch him? That was what I pointed at...
Who are the Compatibilists? According to them it's right and the free will exist? What did they base their fact on? Was