Freedomain Radio

I do think you have a good point Robert.  I was wondering the same thing and also, without dismissing the results of the tests with the “transcranial magnetic stimulation” device (which sounds like something that Marvin the Martian on Looney Toons would use),  I wonder why the readiness potential event wasn't part of the process that involves consciously thinking that you want to move your finger.  Like, if I want to think of a word, perhaps there is something that must be accessed from my unconscious first.

But the sequence seems very clear, which is that the unconscious impulse occurs first...

But my suggestion is to contact the authors of the study for further clarification.

Stefan Molyneux:

But the sequence seems very clear, which is that the unconscious impulse occurs first...

But my suggestion is to contact the authors of the study for further clarification.

I guess my question would be how do they know that the readiness potential is unconscious?  It seems like they are relying on the assumption that the person is only conscious of the impulse when they say they are conscious of it, but their other results seem to suggest otherwise, since a delay exists.

I will see if I can find the original paper for the study they cited and take a closer look.

Robert:

Stefan Molyneux:

But the sequence seems very clear, which is that the unconscious impulse occurs first...

But my suggestion is to contact the authors of the study for further clarification.

I guess my question would be how do they know that the readiness potential is unconscious?  It seems like they are relying on the assumption that the person is only conscious of the impulse when they say they are conscious of it, but their other results seem to suggest otherwise, since a delay exists.

I will see if I can find the original paper for the study they cited and take a closer look.

I was thinking about this last night.

This happens for me, but I'm not sure if anyone else's brain works like this.

Have you ever been drumming your fingers in a consistent pattern (or drumming anything, or trying to play the piano for example) without quite realizing it, and then suddenly your awareness "snaps" to your fingers, so you're now conscious that there IS a pattern, but you have a hard time trying to re-create it consciously, or drum your fingers in that same pattern as quickly and consistently as you did when the drumming was unconscious?

Maybe this doesn't happen for anyone else, and I know that anecdotal evidence does not a rule make, but I definitely say that my conscious pattern recognition and processing is MUCH slower than the conscious processing. The unconscious usually also happens first.

To Nathan's point - yes, one of the first things that was told when I went in to certify as an ESL teacher is that the mark of native proficiency or fluency is that the student does not have to "think about" or consciously choose the words he is using as he speaks. I definitely think there's an unconscious element to our speech - or at least to our word choices.

Stefan Molyneux:

But the sequence seems very clear, which is that the unconscious impulse occurs first...

But my suggestion is to contact the authors of the study for further clarification.

Right I do think that the most important point of this is that the unconscious is involved first in sequence.  I interpreted the researcher's conclusions to mean, even though they explicitly deny this, that there is some other external force driving us like some kind of Descartesean trickster.

I have thought about it some and realized that actions such as moving a finger, are one of the very first things we do after birth.  It's "automatized" as Branden or Rand would put it, and something we do unconsciously.  The same goes for driving a car, we don't consciously think about a truck barreling toward us in our lane and go through the calculation or simulation of what might happen if we do nothing, we don't really even decide consciously which way to swerve.  These reactions to danger happen unconsciously.

What I think they should compare this to is how we deal with new information that we have yet to process and automatize.

Here's a link to an article by the originator of the experiment <http://pacherie.free.fr/COURS/MSC/Libet-JCS1999.pdf> where he talks about the experiments he performed in the 80s, if anyone is curious.

I couldn't find a publically available version of the original paper, I got it through my university.  But it's called, "TIME OF CONSCIOUS INTENTION TO ACT IN RELATION TO ONSET OF CEREBRAL ACTIVITY (READINESS-POTENTIAL)" if you want to try to hunt it down.  The lead author is Benjamin Libet.

One thing he says in the original paper that I don't think he mentions in this one, is that for most of the trials the subjects were instructed "to let the urge to act appear on its own at any time without any preplanning or concentration on when to act," which seems equivalent to asking them to wait for an impulse to act.  It doesn't seem surprising then that there would be unconscious brain activity preceding the subject being conscious of the impulse, but this seems different from how his studies are often used which is to say that we cannot consciously chose to move.  I don't think the fact that we have impulses which are unconsciously driven is the same as saying that all of our movements are unconsciously driven.

This stuff is dynamite!  Thank  you for all your research, Stef!

Really well-constructed video. Gonna repost it as much as I can.

Thanks for the link, Robert!

I couldn't figure out how they timed the first consous urge to move, but that explains a lot.  The participant had to read a clock and say a reading.  It seems funny that the movement of their mouth forming a string of words came before the movement of their finger.  Or did it?

I watched this video and wanted to see if I understand the conclusions correctly. I understand the main point to be that a person is unable to reason and use logic and evidence if they have not done work towards self-knowledge. Am I understanding correctly?

If this is the case, it does help explain my confusion as to why the same logic, reason and evidence that convinced me of new ideas did not work the same way for others. However, I wasn't particularly aware of doing anything to gain self-knowledge or whatever. I thought I just had more time (and enjoyed it more which meant I TOOK the time) to study and consider the new ideas than other people did. So, they just didn't have enough information yet. And if they did, then they would be with me.

Then I started thinking that the reason they didn't seem to come around was because so much of what we think and believe come down to our life experiences. If they had done what I did, lived my life, they'd understand so much better. But I guess that's wrong?

Also, I'm wondering about individual aptitudes and interests we are each born with. For example, I've often been told I "think too much" and "have to analyze everything." And I agree that I will look at the same idea or article or whatever and have all sorts of questions as I try to make sure I understand and have figured it out. Or someone will state some opinion and I just have to make sure I understand and sometimes that irritates people. Now I understand that maybe that's because they have no self-knowledge and have never really even thought about why they believe what they believe. Correct?

But how much of what I do is just an effect of my personality and aptitudes and interests that I was born with? Or are we saying people are not born with such things? I can't say that could be true because it can be very clear how different individuals are when you have more than one child.

If anyone has any clarifications or corrections based on how I'm understanding this now, I'd love to hear them.

I've taken this BiB series to mean that we're all pretty much useless to reason and evidence based on our histories, without self-knowledge.  I think those of us that didn't reject philosophy immediately had some sort of pre-disposition to the conclusions that come from an application of reason and evidence, but we weren't capable of seeing why those conclusions were correct.  With some self-work, even without the help of a therapist, as encouraged here, it's possible that some of us that have come to the point that we're able to apply reason and evidence ourselves and be swayed by other presentations of it.  But I think what makes us different is simply that for whatever unique combinations of trauma and past experiences, we've been shaped to accept these ideas.  I don't know what implications this carries, but I think it's not a coincidence that many of us have recieved similar Myers-Briggs personality scores.  If our personality is shaped by our trauma and our ability to reason is equally effected, then it would make sense that we would be drawn to similar ideas.

I could be wrong, but these are some rough thoughts that I've had since watching this series.  What do you guys think?

I would not go so far as to say that we are immune to reason without self-knowledge, but rather that what ever reason and evidence conflicts with unprocessed trauma, unprocessed trauma wins almost every time, at the expense of the truth...

We can think of countless individuals who have incredible reasoning skills in areas unrelated to their own personal histories, but who then go rather funky, to say the least, when reason conflicts with history.

Paul C.:

I don't know what implications this carries, but I think it's not a coincidence that many of us have recieved similar Myers-Briggs personality scores. 

I never heard that before. What is the myers-briggs score that is supposed to be common among people here?

There are a few threads on it.  I think it was INTP or INTF that was most common.

Paul C.:

There are a few threads on it.  I think it was INTP or INTF that was most common.

I consistently score INFJ