If my motor cortex was replaced by this robot’s program, I would not conclude that I had suddenly started to only care about blue, I would conclude that I had lost control of my motor cortex.
I predict this would not happen the way you anticipate, at least for some ways to cash out ‘taking control of your motor cortex’. For example, when a neurosurgeon uses a probe to stimulate a part of the motor cortex responsible for moving the arm, and eir patient’s arm moves, and the neurosurgeon asks the patient why ey moved eir arm, the patient often replies something like “I had an itch”, “it was uncomfortable in that position”, or “What, I’m not allowed to move my arm now without getting grilled on it?”
Or in certain forms of motor cortex damage in which patients can’t move their arm, they explain it by saying “I could move my arm right now, I just don’t feel like it” or “That’s not even my real arm, how could you expect me to move that?”.
Although I won’t get there in a while, part of my thesis for this sequence is that we infer our opinions from our behaviors, although it’s probably more accurate to say that our behaviors feed back to the same processes that generate our opinions and can alter them. If this is true, then there are probably very subtle ways of taking control of your motor cortex that would leave your speech centers making justifications for whatever you did.
I’d be very surprised if this worked on me for more than, say, a day. Even if the intuition that I’m the one in control doesn’t go away, I expect to eventually notice that it’s actually false and consciously choose to not take it into account, at least in verbal reasoning. Has it been tried (on someone more qualified than a random patient)? If it doesn’t work, the effect should be seen as rather more horrible than just overriding one’s limb movement.
Interesting. It’s been two days since your cortex has been swapped out, and you seem not to have noticed. Affect slight annoyance at what you will believe to be my weak attempt at humor. This will enable you to produce a consistent, rational narrative which will satisfy your pattern-recognition wetware. That will use less glucose, making you more energy-efficient. People who care about the environment care about energy efficiency, you know. You do care about the environment, don’t you? Of course you do. So, let’s get to it now...
I’ve got pretty bad akrasia. I want to do things, but then I do other things.
Intuitively, I feel like I’m me, and I’m in control.
Rationally, not so much. Rationally speaking the answer to “Am I in control?” depends a lot on how broad you define “I”.
Is my rational mind in control?
No way.
Is my brain as a whole in control?
Yeah, mostly.
Do excuses automatically pop up when I avoid work?
Definitely.
“I wanted to relax.”
“I got distracted.”
“I hate working.”
Having some rationality allows me to see through them though, which I presume puts me in the “someone more qualified than a random patient” category you mention.
I’m not sure if this is exactly what Yvain is referring to, I just want to shine a light on the matter from a different angle.
I predict this would not happen the way you anticipate, at least for some ways to cash out ‘taking control of your motor cortex’. For example, when a neurosurgeon uses a probe to stimulate a part of the motor cortex responsible for moving the arm, and eir patient’s arm moves, and the neurosurgeon asks the patient why ey moved eir arm, the patient often replies something like “I had an itch”, “it was uncomfortable in that position”, or “What, I’m not allowed to move my arm now without getting grilled on it?”
I find this curious. When a physician taps my knee with a knee tapping hammer I don’t think to myself “I chose to jerk my leg.” I experience it as something out of my control.
Perhaps endoself was mistaken in placing the robots programing in the motor complex, but I believe the point was that in the human experience there are two kinds of reactions: those we have at least some form of conscious control over and those we have no conscious control over; and the robot’s blue minimizing programing would fall into the later. Thus the robot would not experience the blue minimization as anything other than a strange reflex triggered by the color blue.
I predict this would not happen the way you anticipate, at least for some ways to cash out ‘taking control of your motor cortex’. For example, when a neurosurgeon uses a probe to stimulate a part of the motor cortex responsible for moving the arm, and eir patient’s arm moves, and the neurosurgeon asks the patient why ey moved eir arm, the patient often replies something like “I had an itch”, “it was uncomfortable in that position”, or “What, I’m not allowed to move my arm now without getting grilled on it?”
Or in certain forms of motor cortex damage in which patients can’t move their arm, they explain it by saying “I could move my arm right now, I just don’t feel like it” or “That’s not even my real arm, how could you expect me to move that?”.
Although I won’t get there in a while, part of my thesis for this sequence is that we infer our opinions from our behaviors, although it’s probably more accurate to say that our behaviors feed back to the same processes that generate our opinions and can alter them. If this is true, then there are probably very subtle ways of taking control of your motor cortex that would leave your speech centers making justifications for whatever you did.
I’d be very surprised if this worked on me for more than, say, a day. Even if the intuition that I’m the one in control doesn’t go away, I expect to eventually notice that it’s actually false and consciously choose to not take it into account, at least in verbal reasoning. Has it been tried (on someone more qualified than a random patient)? If it doesn’t work, the effect should be seen as rather more horrible than just overriding one’s limb movement.
Interesting. It’s been two days since your cortex has been swapped out, and you seem not to have noticed. Affect slight annoyance at what you will believe to be my weak attempt at humor. This will enable you to produce a consistent, rational narrative which will satisfy your pattern-recognition wetware. That will use less glucose, making you more energy-efficient. People who care about the environment care about energy efficiency, you know. You do care about the environment, don’t you? Of course you do. So, let’s get to it now...
I’ve got pretty bad akrasia. I want to do things, but then I do other things. Intuitively, I feel like I’m me, and I’m in control.
Rationally, not so much. Rationally speaking the answer to “Am I in control?” depends a lot on how broad you define “I”. Is my rational mind in control? No way. Is my brain as a whole in control? Yeah, mostly.
Do excuses automatically pop up when I avoid work? Definitely. “I wanted to relax.” “I got distracted.” “I hate working.” Having some rationality allows me to see through them though, which I presume puts me in the “someone more qualified than a random patient” category you mention.
I’m not sure if this is exactly what Yvain is referring to, I just want to shine a light on the matter from a different angle.
I find this curious. When a physician taps my knee with a knee tapping hammer I don’t think to myself “I chose to jerk my leg.” I experience it as something out of my control.
Perhaps endoself was mistaken in placing the robots programing in the motor complex, but I believe the point was that in the human experience there are two kinds of reactions: those we have at least some form of conscious control over and those we have no conscious control over; and the robot’s blue minimizing programing would fall into the later. Thus the robot would not experience the blue minimization as anything other than a strange reflex triggered by the color blue.