“A rat isn’t exactly seeking an optimum level of food, it’s seeking an optimum ratio of ventromedial to ventrolateral hypothalamic stimulation, or, in rat terms, a nice, well-fed feeling.”
So if I move my hand away from a hot pan, am I actually seeking to: “move my hand away from a hot pan” or
“avoid touching the pan” or
“avoid being burnt” or
“avoid pain receptors in my hand being activated” or
“avoid neural signals in my brain that correspond to pain” or
“avoid the feeling of pain”?
Someone needs to do some buck-stopping or else the master-slave model will turn into a master-slave1-slave2-slave3… model. Although come to think of it, that might me more correct.
(EDIT: Note to self, line spacing is weird, I’m off to look in the wiki)
Moving away from a hot pan is a reflex action. You’re not seeking anything, it’s done before “you” even enter the picture. But in the general case, it’s a combination of consciously avoiding bodily damage (you don’t want your skin burnt off), and avoiding pain, which is a correlate of bodily damage.
Avoiding pain is probably the stronger motive, since lower animals who can’t think far enough to worry about long-term bodily damage will do the same and since something that causes pain but not damage (that Bene Gesserit box in Dune Paul had to stick his hand in, for example) will cause the same effect.
The buck-stopping problem is a confusion of levels. On the conscious, human level, goal is to minimize pain (the human doesn’t even know there’s such a thing as pain receptors unless ze knows some neuroscience). On the unconscious inhuman level, “goal” is meaningless, and it would be better to talk about transmitters moving down electrochemical gradients and such.
I like this, actually. I think this is very much the model: fractal at different levels of scale. A more integrated person has alignment of the master-slave decisioning at all levels, whereas a discontinuous person may have confusion at different levels which might be expressed as eg unco-ordinated. This applies to the physical, emotional, and other levels of the human condition.
“A rat isn’t exactly seeking an optimum level of food, it’s seeking an optimum ratio of ventromedial to ventrolateral hypothalamic stimulation, or, in rat terms, a nice, well-fed feeling.”
So if I move my hand away from a hot pan, am I actually seeking to: “move my hand away from a hot pan” or
“avoid touching the pan” or
“avoid being burnt” or
“avoid pain receptors in my hand being activated” or
“avoid neural signals in my brain that correspond to pain” or
“avoid the feeling of pain”?
Someone needs to do some buck-stopping or else the master-slave model will turn into a master-slave1-slave2-slave3… model. Although come to think of it, that might me more correct. (EDIT: Note to self, line spacing is weird, I’m off to look in the wiki)
Moving away from a hot pan is a reflex action. You’re not seeking anything, it’s done before “you” even enter the picture. But in the general case, it’s a combination of consciously avoiding bodily damage (you don’t want your skin burnt off), and avoiding pain, which is a correlate of bodily damage.
Avoiding pain is probably the stronger motive, since lower animals who can’t think far enough to worry about long-term bodily damage will do the same and since something that causes pain but not damage (that Bene Gesserit box in Dune Paul had to stick his hand in, for example) will cause the same effect.
The buck-stopping problem is a confusion of levels. On the conscious, human level, goal is to minimize pain (the human doesn’t even know there’s such a thing as pain receptors unless ze knows some neuroscience). On the unconscious inhuman level, “goal” is meaningless, and it would be better to talk about transmitters moving down electrochemical gradients and such.
I like this, actually. I think this is very much the model: fractal at different levels of scale. A more integrated person has alignment of the master-slave decisioning at all levels, whereas a discontinuous person may have confusion at different levels which might be expressed as eg unco-ordinated. This applies to the physical, emotional, and other levels of the human condition.