Minute-by-minute, your thinking and actions are the product of the matter and energy that is you moving around and interacting. Specifically, your biochemicals and electricity in your brain have a huge impact on your thoughts and actions.
This is an entirely wrong metaphor, for the reasons described in Explaining vs. Explaining Away and Angry Atoms. The fact that you consist of atoms or cells or ants or telepathic dogs doesn’t tell anything about the amount of control you have over your decisions, minute-by-minute or in the long term.
I thought the OP was making the point that we’re not self-modifiable software stored in byte-addressable memory, so much of how our brains work and how they change over time are not under our direct conscious control.
And he also made the point that if we want to take some conscious control, we may need to use a very kludgy pathway—for example, pumping iron before making a sales call so as to increase testosterone levels.
I suspect that what V_N is reacting negatively to is the naive-seeming use of words like “electricity” and “chemicals” in the posting as if they were two powerful, but mysterious brands of magic. But I didn’t see anything objectionable in what the posting actually said.
It’s true that control we have is limited, but a condition like “biochemicals have a huge impact of your thoughts” doesn’t in itself argue for that claim, because the biochemicals could be implementing your own decisions. Compare with “the random seed has a huge impact on which solution a randomized algorithm will choose”.
The OP did give a couple of examples (caffeine, testosterone) which I think made his point clearer: we are heavily influenced by biochemicals in ways that can not be considered part of a rational decision algorithm, and we can indirectly change how our brains work (and make ourselves more rational) by understanding such influences and exerting control over levels of such chemicals.
The character and extent of this influence are the central questions, and these were not addressed. There is a huge number of factors that influence my decisions in irrelevant ways. I type a letter on the keyboard 100 milliseconds earlier or later; make a typo and then correct it or not make it at all. I read a comment containing some text, and have completely different thoughts depending on the text.
These factors control which actions I take and which thoughts I have, but they don’t exert a systematic influence over relevant metrics of my decisions. Likewise, even though coffee has a systematic influence on a relevant metric of my activity, the extent of this influence is insignificant on the scale of decisions that I take based on other considerations.
The arguments given in the post don’t support its claims, even if the claims are in some sense correct (I believe so), and the arguments describe true facts.
This is an entirely wrong metaphor, for the reasons described in Explaining vs. Explaining Away and Angry Atoms. The fact that you consist of atoms or cells or ants or telepathic dogs doesn’t tell anything about the amount of control you have over your decisions, minute-by-minute or in the long term.
I thought the OP was making the point that we’re not self-modifiable software stored in byte-addressable memory, so much of how our brains work and how they change over time are not under our direct conscious control.
And he also made the point that if we want to take some conscious control, we may need to use a very kludgy pathway—for example, pumping iron before making a sales call so as to increase testosterone levels.
I suspect that what V_N is reacting negatively to is the naive-seeming use of words like “electricity” and “chemicals” in the posting as if they were two powerful, but mysterious brands of magic. But I didn’t see anything objectionable in what the posting actually said.
It’s true that control we have is limited, but a condition like “biochemicals have a huge impact of your thoughts” doesn’t in itself argue for that claim, because the biochemicals could be implementing your own decisions. Compare with “the random seed has a huge impact on which solution a randomized algorithm will choose”.
The OP did give a couple of examples (caffeine, testosterone) which I think made his point clearer: we are heavily influenced by biochemicals in ways that can not be considered part of a rational decision algorithm, and we can indirectly change how our brains work (and make ourselves more rational) by understanding such influences and exerting control over levels of such chemicals.
The character and extent of this influence are the central questions, and these were not addressed. There is a huge number of factors that influence my decisions in irrelevant ways. I type a letter on the keyboard 100 milliseconds earlier or later; make a typo and then correct it or not make it at all. I read a comment containing some text, and have completely different thoughts depending on the text.
These factors control which actions I take and which thoughts I have, but they don’t exert a systematic influence over relevant metrics of my decisions. Likewise, even though coffee has a systematic influence on a relevant metric of my activity, the extent of this influence is insignificant on the scale of decisions that I take based on other considerations.
The arguments given in the post don’t support its claims, even if the claims are in some sense correct (I believe so), and the arguments describe true facts.