Do you really have free will?

[OldSkool]

2 hours ago, Mike said:

In this old mode of investigating free will

Well consider me old fashioned cause I have no desire to engage in centuries old exercise in mental masturbation when the answer is plain and simple but ignored.

[Nathan_Jr]

Or the actor could just stand in silence on stage and do nothing and wait for his cue. (Like a duck.)

Is the actor FORCED to flub lines?

[waysider]

For the most part, this discussion has been an exercise in futility. The issue is not "black/white, yes/no, either/or" in essence. The real question is what potion and how much of our decision making is influenced by conditioning as opposed to what portion and how much is governed by conscious decision. Obviously, there are infinite combinations possible.  

[Mike]

6 minutes ago, Nathan_Jr said:

Or the actor could just stand in silence on stage and do nothing and wait for his cue. (Like a duck.)

Is the actor FORCED to flub lines?

The point is, the correct lines don't come out. 
The actor is not "free" to emit them, speaking with the analogy.

If the actor wants the correct lines to come out, he must read and study and memorize them.  That is work.

Same with free will.  If we don't do the work of preparing our synapses for a free will "performance," then we will remain locked in our old, wrong way of deciding on this issue.

[So_crates]

4 minutes ago, Mike said:

Same with free will.  If we don't do the work of preparing our synapses for a free will "performance," then we will remain locked in our old, wrong way of deciding on this issue

And who decides what is the right way of deciding and what is the wrong way of deciding?

[waysider]

5 minutes ago, Mike said:

The point is, the correct lines don't come out. 
The actor is not "free" to emit them, speaking with the analogy.

If the actor wants the correct lines to come out, he must read and study and memorize them.  That is work.

Same with free will.  If we don't do the work of preparing our synapses for a free will "performance," then we will remain locked in our old, wrong way of deciding on this issue.

This... From a person who apparently does not understand the concept of improvisation or character immersion.

[Nathan_Jr]

26 minutes ago, Mike said:

If we don't do the work of preparing our synapses for a free will "performance,"

What is this work?

 

Edited July 24, 2023 by Nathan_Jr
Where is the popcorn emoji?

[Rocky]

On 4/2/2023 at 3:45 PM, Rocky said:

 

 

Waysider said, this morning, "For the most part, this discussion has been an exercise in futility. The issue is not "black/white, yes/no, either/or" in essence. The real question is what potion and how much of our decision making is influenced by conditioning as opposed to what portion and how much is governed by conscious decision. Obviously, there are infinite combinations possible.  "

----

Not that anyone's contribution to this discussion is wrong, but I offer the following to refocus on the original post.

----

Some time ago, Mike posted about, let's say, limitations on human free will.

While I didn't find the case he made to be particularly compelling or coherent, I did start to recognize some of my actions IRL did not and do not match what I thought I intended.

In the course of my (somewhat compulsive) reading explorations, I found a book The Loop: How Technology is Creating a World Without Choices and How to Fight Back.

Some notes I've made from the book:

• if we don't familiarize w/mechanisms of our brains we'll be vulnerable to those who prey on us and will run the risk of being blind to the effects thereof.

 

• our unconscious (subconscious) minds powerfully shape our lives

 

• unconscious tendencies are the control surfaces by which technologies will shape our lives

 

• cultural forces work to convince us we make independent choices when we do the opposite

 

• even years before scientific consensus on controversial findings, nascent understanding becomes bases for entire industries; hence, surveillance capitalism
  
   
• two researchers (as a team) wrote key papers 1971-1979 and their findings are still challenged, but have become foundation for industries in behavioral guidance 

 

• unconscious biases manifest (in decisions) under pressure and moments of uncertainty

 

• research subjects (people) faced with situations they didn't understand were powerfully influenced to make choices they didn't understand, producing scenarios likely to constrain future thinking

 

• 99% of our waking activity is strictly automatic and habitual

 

• our brains are shortcut machines, desperate to hand off difficult cognitive tasks

 

• many (nearly all) of what we think (believe) to be well-considered choices are, in fact, offhand, instinctive decisions 

 

• "although research has show inferences from [observing] thin slices of nonverbal behaviors can be surprisingly accurate, there is no good evidence trait inferences from facial appearance are accurate.

 

• There are two (decision) systems at work in our brains. System 1 makes snap judgments, without conscious analysis/effort; System 2 involves actual analytical intelligence.

These notes are from the first couple of chapters.

Intuitively, it seems to me this research and reporting, with overtly stated focus on technology, can be used to take new looks at historical events to recognize patterns involving the pervasive nature of cults worldwide in contemporary times. Notably, twi, the LDS church, and JWs... but also many more.

I have long recognized the significance of my younger life exposure to the Catholic Church/religion as having "primed" me for PFLAP and twi.

Edited July 24, 2023 by Rocky

[Rocky]

https://alexandercenter.com/alexandertechniquebooks.html

[Rocky]

https://curiositystream.com/video/8174

My Music Brain, a documentary highlighted by having Sting have an fMRI to measure electrical activity of a master musician. 

Here's a quote that caught my attention: "the deepest parts of your brain are ordering you to move."

[Rocky]

Another quote, "what interests him [scientist (an actual academic) Petr Janata, who teaches at UC Davis] is how movement, music, and emotion influence each other."

Edited July 31, 2023 by Rocky

[Rocky]

 

[Rocky]

In the video above, Eagleman goes so far as to say if there is free will at all, it is a bit player in the brain.

[Mike]

On 7/30/2023 at 5:18 PM, Rocky said:

Another quote, "what interests him [scientist (an actual academic) Petr Janata, who teaches at UC Davis] is how movement, music, and emotion influence each other."

This sounds like intra-thread communication, with the recent AOS thread.

Although making music has been an elusive mystery all my life, I finally did get to experience dance and responding to music and emotion with movement.  This experience came late in life, just 10 years ago, so it is very fresh, and it is refreshed several times per week.

I noticed something odd about music and movement.  There is an odd reward to dance that I think may be involved with music making also. Please forgive me if I already explained this somewhere here.  This odd reward comes when dance steps exactly match the music beat, and are in very precise synchrony in time.  This reward disappears when this exact match drifts out of sync.

 

My theory on this reward is that it’s some kind of micro-squirt of adrenalin or endorphins or some other exotic brain juice.  Here is how I understand it:

A common type of occurrence is to be doing chores at home, and as I reach to a kitchen cabinet for something, the very second I touch the cabinet door a car outside backfires loudly.  So there is a time coincidence synchronization with my finger touching the cabinet and the loud boom from the car.

 

Most of the higher centers of my brain that notice this, eventually realize that it is a mere co-incidence in time of two events  that are causally unrelated.  These are relatively high centers of reasoning in the brain that spot this. 
 

But there are other, less well endowed (but faster) centers in the brain that have important jobs to do. One of them is the “significance register”  another is the “cause and effect” register, and another is the “danger register.”  These centers have no reasoning power, and they just scream their heads off when something is detected that falls within their job description.  

 

My best guess is that some of these centers cause a micro-squirt of brain chemicals.  Like the “significance center” or the “causal center” may cause quick strong feelings to be attached to event of  my finger touching the cabinet.   These squirts could be a lot like what we hear about in “runner’s high.”

 

 

So, in the kitchen, the reasoning centers (though slower) are able to  “hush up” the lower centers, and assure them that it was a mere non-causal co-incidence.  This takes a little effort, as I look at my finger with the feeling that “I caused the boom” by touching the cabinet.  But that feeling is hushed up pretty quickly and I brush it off with an amused smile.

 

BUT ON THE DANCE FLOOR it is a different story.  There I take a step that is exactly synchronized with the beat of the music (from much practice) and the brain centers are squirting over and over and over with the music.   Meanwhile the higher reasoning centers have given up in exhaustion to hush these centers.  The brain gets flooded with the pleasure of dancing from the many micro squirts involved with synchronized stepping to the music.  For fast songs this pleasure increases in intensity.

 

The feeling this builds is one where I feel like I am in the band, causing the music to happen with my dance moves.  I get a feeling of belonging and connectedness with the band and with the other dancers (assuming they are also in good sync).  This feeling of oneness is very strong, and can be examined by introspection.  

 

I think much the same thing happens for members of the band.  When you think of it this way, they are simply dancing with the muscles of their hands and arms.

 

[Mike]

8 hours ago, Rocky said:

In the video above, Eagleman goes so far as to say if there is free will at all, it is a bit player in the brain.

Yes, I agree.    Free will is not needed all the time. 

Plus, most people "go with the flow" and don't exert themselves enough to strengthen their "free will muscle."   

I called my theory "Minimalistic Free Will" for this reason.

[Rocky]

32 minutes ago, Mike said:

Yes, I agree.    Free will is not needed all the time. 

Plus, most people "go with the flow" and don't exert themselves enough to strengthen their "free will muscle."   

I called my theory "Minimalistic Free Will" for this reason.

Again, characterizing your imaginations as "Your theory..." is narcissistic nonsense.

[waysider]

Does anyone else remember being taught (Advanced Class or Dealing With The Adversary, perhaps?) that the subconscious is a fallacy? Something about everything really being spiritual background noise or ...something. I think that was proposed as part of the idea behind throwing retemories at undesired thoughts, "keeping the birds from nesting where they land". We were supposed to be the ones who made the decision which thoughts to entertain and which to discard. Somehow, 50 years of life experiences have clouded the details for me.

[Mike]

2 hours ago, Rocky said:

Again, characterizing your imaginations as "Your theory..." is narcissistic nonsense.

No, the word "theory" works for me with no such baggage.

I think you get so lost in that Pop Psychology nonsense, that you overlook what is being communicated.

I use that word in it's common sense:

the·o·ry

[ˈTHirē]

NOUN

1. a supposition or a system of ideas intended to explain something, especially one based on general principles independent of the thing to be explained:

   "Darwin's theory of evolution"

   SIMILAR:

   hypothesis

   thesis

   conjecture

   supposition

   speculation

   • a set of principles on which the practice of an activity is based:
     "a theory of education" · "music theory"
     SIMILAR:

     doctrine

     dogma

     teaching

     principle

     ethic

     creed

     credo

      
   • an idea used to account for a situation or justify a course of action:
     "my theory would be that the place has been seriously mismanaged"

Edited August 10, 2023 by Mike

[Mike]

58 minutes ago, waysider said:

Does anyone else remember being taught (Advanced Class or Dealing With The Adversary, perhaps?) that the subconscious is a fallacy? Something about everything really being spiritual background noise or ...something. I think that was proposed as part of the idea behind throwing retemories at undesired thoughts, "keeping the birds from nesting where they land". We were supposed to be the ones who made the decision which thoughts to entertain and which to discard. Somehow, 50 years of life experiences have clouded the details for me.

This is why VPW's final instructions to TOP leadership was to come back to PFAL and master the collaterals.

 

God’s will is for every one of us to be released today from whatever prison is holding us. Prisons are not only made of bars of steel. The prisons of our secret sins, things in our lives which we don’t want to share with any other person in the world, are the most frustrating and defeating. The thoughts of self-condemnation that have been gnawing in the back of one’s conscious and subconscious mind for years and years – thoughts of sickness and disease, fear, worry, anxiety, suicide, death – are the most tormenting and wretched kinds of prisons. It is not God’s will for us to be so mentally bound; God’s will is just the opposite as He has given total release from all negatives.     BTMS p.4    

 

 Even though believers receive righteousness when they are born again, many people for lack of teaching still think that they are unworthy to receive the goodness of God. This satanic belief keeps driving deeper and deeper into their subconscious minds. If my being worthy of God depended upon my own strength, I would be a great failure. I know that I am weak in myself and I know that I am unworthy in myself, but Christ has made me worthy. So, no matter how I feel or what my feeble mind tells me, I am strong and in Him I am worthy.   BTMS p. 68  

[waysider]

33 minutes ago, Mike said:

This is why VPW's final instructions to TOP leadership was to come back to PFAL and master the collaterals.

These 2 paragraphs conflict with what was taught in subsequent classes, such as RM, DWA, etc.

It was presented within the structure of the official PFAL series of classes. It was not in what you like to call TVTs.

There was an example given using a pitcher of red kool-aid to illustrate. In the example a pitcher of red kool-aid was described as being placed under a faucet of clear, running water. Incrementally, the red water was displaced by clear water until all the red water was gone. The "birds nesting" example was from Orientalisms.

edit: It became the rationalization given for the "en garde!" usage of retemory cards/verses.

Edited August 10, 2023 by waysider
wording

[Mike]

12 minutes ago, waysider said:

These 2 paragraphs conflict with what was taught in subsequent classes, such as RM, DWA, etc.

It was presented within the structure of the official PFAL series of classes. It was not in what you like to call TVTs.

There was an example given using a pitcher of red kool-aid to illustrate. In the example a pitcher of red kool-aid was described as being placed under a faucet of clear, running water. Incrementally, the red water was replaced with clear water until all the red water was gone. The "birds nesting" example was from Orientalisms.

edit: It became the rationalization given for the "en garde!" usage of retemory cards/verses.

I also vaguely remember something about the subconscious being bogus, but I can't remember where or any of the details.  

It was this vague memory that was jolted when I started reading the collaterals again in recent decades, and saw those two references I cited above.  

I should search the AC transcripts available: 1971 and 1979.

 

[OldSkool]

31 minutes ago, waysider said:

These 2 paragraphs conflict with what was taught in subsequent classes, such as RM, DWA, etc.

I think the only one surprised by outright contradictions in wierwille's theology is mike, who tries with all his might to "unsee" them and rationalize reality away to make room for wierwille: the self-help pseudo christian who favored gnostic and other occultish doctrines.

[Nathan_Jr]

3 hours ago, waysider said:

Does anyone else remember being taught (Advanced Class or Dealing With The Adversary, perhaps?) that the subconscious is a fallacy?

I shouldn't, but I do wonder WITAF this means.

I shouldn't, but I do, nonetheless, wonder what WTF he thinks subconscious and fallacy mean.

 

2 hours ago, waysider said:

subsequent classes, such as RM, DWA, etc.

RM? DWA?

 

2 hours ago, waysider said:

There was an example given using a pitcher of red kool-aid to illustrate. In the example a pitcher of red kool-aid was described as being placed under a faucet of clear, running water. Incrementally, the red water was displaced by clear water until all the red water was gone.

Wow. The ultimate irony.

[Nathan_Jr]

2 hours ago, Mike said:

Prisons are not only made of bars of steel. The prisons of our secret sins, things in our lives which we don’t want to share with any other person in the world, are the most frustrating and defeating. The thoughts of self-condemnation that have been gnawing in the back of one’s conscious and subconscious mind for years and years – thoughts of sickness and disease, fear, worry, anxiety, suicide, death – are the most tormenting and wretched kinds of prisons. It is not God’s will for us to be so mentally bound; God’s will is just the opposite as He has given total release from all negatives.

This is not a novel idea, as I suspect you know. It is not a cookie given to especially to victor for him to "teach." This is an ancient concept that did not originate with with first century Christians, and it is not not limited to the ancient Near East.

 

2 hours ago, Mike said:

many people for lack of teaching still think that they are unworthy

I never thought I was unworthy and was never taught unworthiness until I took "the class."

[Mike]

2 hours ago, waysider said:

There was an example given using a pitcher of red kool-aid to illustrate. In the example a pitcher of red kool-aid was described as being placed under a faucet of clear, running water. Incrementally, the red water was displaced by clear water until all the red water was gone.   ....    The "birds nesting" example was from Orientalisms.

 

I looked in the two AC transcripts but the word "subconscious" never pops up.

The birds nesting sounds like how random thoughts taken in might speak to the subconscious is the only way I can see this.

I tried and tried to see how the pitcher with red water illustrates the subconscious.   Is it supposed to illustrate extremely faint red water appearing clear, and the red part is so thin it is subconscious?