
Reason Won't Save Us - brycehalley
http://m.nautil.us/issue/77/underworlds/reason-wont-save-us
======
hprotagonist
_In his classic 1980s experiments, University of California, San Francisco,
neurophysiologist Benjamin Libet noted a consistent change in brain wave
activity (a so-called “ready potential”) prior to a subject’s awareness of
having decided to move his hand. Libet’s conclusion was that the preceding
activity was evidence for the decision being made subconsciously, even though
subjects felt that the decision was conscious and deliberate. Since that time
his findings, supported by subsequent similar results on fMRI and direct brain
recordings, have featured prominently in refuting the notion of humans
possessing free will._

and it's probably a data processing bug in the analysis!
[https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/09/free-
will...](https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/09/free-will-
bereitschaftspotential/597736/)

~~~
richk449
Nice article. I don’t believe in free will, but I never liked that Libet
experiment. So many tenuous connections had to be made to connect electrical
signals with free will, and most of the time people didn’t even bother trying
- they just asserted that because the impulse starts before you remember
making a decision, you have no free will. That sounds like a non sequitur to
me.

~~~
PixelOfDeath
I prefer Hitchens answer to the question: "We have free will, we have no
choice."

~~~
james_s_tayler
Try choosing to not be yourself or like the things you like or do the things
you do.

We're not so free.

I've always worked off a model of "constrained will". We have will, it is just
subject to a large number of constraints with a few degrees of freedom.

~~~
apocalypstyx
"Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills."

\--Arthur Schopenhauer

~~~
hprotagonist
so much for propaganda, then!

------
undershirt
> “Courage is the solution to despair. Reason can provide no answers.” –Ernst
> Toller (First Reformed, 2017)

I’ve felt the despair of this article for a time (and the quote above gave me
some peace), but some recent hope came from Daniel Schmachtenberger[1]. He
postulates that our conception of debate in our current information ecology
selects and _optimizes_ for bias. He refers to the Hegelian dialectic as an
alternative to debate—of an earnest synthesis from understanding both a thesis
and its antithesis, resolving paradox with a higher order model. I’ve heard
this described as steel-manning[1] another’s argument to find its signal (as
opposed to straw-manning the noise).

But Schmachtenberger, as well as Bret Weinstein I believe, proposes that the
game-theoretic win/lose dynamic of our current system is so entrenched that it
really selects for this type of narrative warfare which doesn’t promote this
type of open and honest information ecology for this to really work yet. So
there’s something to their post-game-theoretic frameworks (Bret’s “Game B”)
that make me a lot less fatalistic and anarchist about the whole complexity
game.

[1] The War on Sensemaking:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LqaotiGWjQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LqaotiGWjQ)

[2] a.k.a purva paksha:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purva_paksha](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purva_paksha)

~~~
scarejunba
Interestingly, this is quite easy to do if you focus yourself on achieving
knowledge (i.e. you attempt to falsify your hypotheses and test your beliefs
adequately). The real problem is that this isn't, maddeningly, a winning
approach. You can be right[0], know you are right, follow a logical chain to
the rightness and still lose. Superior knowledge guarantees nothing!

It's sort of like the amusing story of _The Wandering Earth_ (the short story,
not the movie). In an ecosystem where other things win, the smart approach if
you find truth is not necessarily to champion it. Sometimes you have to take
the Kolmogorov Option
[https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=3376](https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=3376)
Related: The Parable of Lightning
[https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/10/23/kolmogorov-
complicity-...](https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/10/23/kolmogorov-complicity-
and-the-parable-of-lightning/)

0: Or to hold a reasonable prior of a hypothesis, if you want to be strict

~~~
n4r9
Prof Daniel Cohen gives a Ted talk that I haven't watched but which, based on
write ups, gives a nice antidote to this. Simply adopt the attitude that
"losing" an argument is a good thing because you come away with a more refined
view of the world. the real winner is the person that makes cognitive gains.

~~~
scarejunba
That wasn't what I was referring to. The winning there isn't winning the
argument, which is really a trivial position to avoid. I first achieved it
when I was a teenager and consistently achieved it in my early 20s. I have no
reason to believe this is exceptional for anyone with a mild interest in
epistemology (Crocker's Rules, etc. are examples of these being rapidly
realized by individuals)

The thing I was referring to is winning at life. You can be less wrong (in the
sense described above) and lose at life.

I.e. the more refined view of the world does not monotonically move you
towards most conventional victories (improved prosperity, happiness, life
standards).

Sibling comment has a link to more (and reinforces the triviality of achieving
the more-information-mindset), besides SSC and Scott Aaronson
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21298154](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21298154)

------
thwarted
_Take a group of diehard anti-free-will determinists to the deciding World
Series game and have them watch their home team’s batter lose the Series … how
many would bother to attend the game if they accepted that the decision
whether or not to swing occurred entirely at a subliminal level?_

It's interesting that whenever the discussion of free-will comes up, it's
always in the context of someone making a decision on how to interpret if or
how someone else has free-will. The diehard anti-free-will determinists have
no choice in attending the game, and if they do or not is not dependent on how
they see the outcome of the game as deterministic or not. In this vein, the
classic free-will argument of if criminals deserve punishment if they don't
have free-will is an argument made from a hubristic point of view, as if those
deciding the punishment exist outside of determinism. This is often an attempt
to get anti-free-will types in a contradiction, similar to the claim/argument
that there no atheists in foxholes.

~~~
jadbox
Related to this, I'd recommend looking into Philosopher John Searle and his
thoughts on consciousness. He's pro-determinism and gives a good argument for
why free-will is an illusion but one an illusion we can never 'escape' from.

[https://www.ted.com/talks/john_searle_our_shared_condition_c...](https://www.ted.com/talks/john_searle_our_shared_condition_consciousness?language=en)

~~~
bermanoid
He's also famous for the Chinese Box thought experiment, widely derided by
everyone apart from his own students as the most high profile, idiotic,
uninformative, trivially debunked thought experiment of all time, which
teaches us negative information (in that it actually wastes time bringing up
useless shit that otherwise wouldn't receive scholarly discussion except that
he's an old white guy that was in the field early).

Searle is an absolute waste, nobody should engage with his drivel, ever,
period.

~~~
goatlover
Because of one thought experiment? It certainly generated a lot of
conversation for being so trivially debunked. But it's not like it's the only
thing he's ever talked about. And the old white dude reference is unnecessary.

But anyway, I think Searle had a point about semantics not being syntax with
the Chinese Room. They system doesn't understand anything other than how to
translate from A to B. And that's not what understanding language is about
(see the later Wittgenstein or any philosophy of language).

However, as Daniel Dennett pointed out in his rebuttal, although one can
produce a somewhat convincing fake to some people, similar to "passing" the
Turing Test with ELIZA or any bot we've created so far, a genuine Chinese room
would have to know the nuances of language at such a level that there would be
no question that it understands what Chinese words mean. So Searle was wrong
in his setup of the thought experiment, becuase it assumes the room is only
following syntatic rules, instead of understanding the web of context and
meaning that words take place in.

------
buboard
Such pessimism! But why not instead begin with a different set of assumptions.
Consciousness may well not exist, it's just a word. People have made up words
for patterns they perceive but do not exist all the time. Osiris does not
exist, afterlife does not exist, yet they moved thousands of tons of rock to
build pyramids.

\- Free will does not exist either, let's face it, the evidence will keep
getting more and more conclusive. So, why despair? Our brains are not "magic
machines acting on a dangerous world", our brains generate the world. Free
will is our little game.

\- All of our thinking is ex-post facto rationalizations. We seem to be good
at creating models of this generated world. There is no distinct boundary
between "reasoned thinking", "a hunch" and "trust your feelings", they re all
beliefs that stem from different sets of assumptions.

\- Our feelings are calculations, for which we don't yet have a model, but a
hunch (e.g. time is absolute) is not to be discarded lightly, but only when
reasoned thinking provides a much more satisfactory view of the world (time is
relative). Very few tools are of guidance in that respect, only Occam's razor.

\- The world that our brain generates includes the AI machines of the future,
for which we will have to somehow rationalize and reason about even without a
good model.

\- Until we build a better model of our individual and collective behavior,
our motivations and our beliefs, we must stick with the current
political/judicial model. Neuroscience has not yet deciphered human intention
to a comprehensive mathematical theory. Patience, we 'll get there.

~~~
seagullz
If "free will does not exist", are we free to choose whether to despair or
not?

~~~
buboard
What if we are not? What does that change?

~~~
seagullz
Your question "So, why despair?" becomes redundant then.

~~~
buboard
oh that's fair, however, not having free will does not mean one does not have
will at all. We re still motivated by our constitution as persons and animals,
we will choose to despair or not, just that decision won't be ex nihilo. In a
way it s rather comforting, like deciding to "sit back and enjoy the ride" .

------
magwa101
Gawd, each decade we extend our "reason" beyond what we thought possible.
We've always been at our limits. His weak example of batters is simplistic and
silly. Batters study the hand position so that they can recognize the pitch
type and make a probabalistic decision. Same goes for goalies who stop unseen
pucks, position, probabilities, stick/ice/shooter all rolled up into "Only god
saves more!".

------
zuminator
I agree with the overall premise, but I disagree with conflating our
physiological perceptual limitations with the psychological biases that color
our attempts to exercise pure logic and reason.

If you experience an optical illusion and it's explained to you, your
reasoning power will enable you to fully accept that your perceptions are
incorrect. But if you have a bias that causes you to have a strong opinion on
a controversial subject, even if someone tries to point out to you that your
bias is rendering your perceptions invalid, and even if you accept in theory
that that is the case, it likely won't change your strongly held belief.

For example if you have a _strong_ opinion regarding the existence of the
Christian God, and someone tells you that your bias is affecting your opinion,
you might concede that you have some kind of bias, but most likely you'll
continue to believe that your opinion is right.

~~~
narag
I believe that the strongest root of bias is society. Paraphrasing Sartre,
bias is the others. So I disagree with the other thing the author is
conflating: that society often holding ridiculous opinions is because
_individuals_ can't think rationally.

It's the other way around: individuals can't think very rationally because
they're pressed by society.

------
toxicFork
Whoever you are talking to, you need to be on a similar place when it comes to
the balance of reason and emotions. Otherwise you talk a language that is too
different.

So in one culture you talk with reason; in another, you talk with emotions. In
the full scale of the world - in the context of civilisation as discussed in
the article - there is too much variation among the people; especially among
the mix of cultures there are now in every country, so it can become very
difficult to come to agreements. This is because if you are not careful what
you are trying to say will make no sense to anyone.

One effective way is to identify who thinks how, allow themselves to organise
into groups based on how the ratios of reason or emotions, then address each
group in a manner that that group would understand.

------
hliyan
I too have come to wonder whether what we call "reasoning" is merely the same
faculty we use to make sense of observations in the outside world, simply
turned inward. Just a read-only abstraction layer on top of a complex mass of
patterns encoded into a neural network.

------
dsubburam
An approach to "free will" is to notice that it is an useful concept for
organizing our experience, and so, why not use it? How it's useful:

\- when we can say "this ought to happen", and work towards that to happen.

\- when we can say "I desire this but intend that", and follow-through our
intention rather than our desire.

\- when we can not model a person's action on a purely cause-and-effect basis,
and there appears to be an inherent unpredictability in their decision.

It is useful to say/think that there's "free will" at play, as there's a
certain character to the situations (and why not name it, so it's easier to
recognize).

Above three scenarios owing to Kant (Critique of Practical Reason). The first
two, we generally do not ascribe to other species, which might imply that they
have less free will than we do.

------
loopz
Some people are more prone to be dictated by feelings. The other part are more
prone to be dictated by logic. These groups will never agree!

Studies show people with brain injury unable to feel, are unable to make sound
decisions (pure rational thought). We know what happens when only feelings
decide, that would wreck society overnight.

Luckily, the way our brain works. Intuition/feelings come first, and then we
can rationalize and filter, based on logic!

~~~
ekianjo
> The other part are more prone to be dictated by logic.

you are right to say "prone to", because as a matter of fact what is happening
with logic is usually to give ourselves a reason to fall back on what we
believed in the first place. It's very hard to truly convince very rational
people that they are wrong (most people don't switch opinions)

~~~
TeMPOraL
It's a popular meme, but to me, it doesn't seem to reflect reality well.

Also, there's a parallel comment thread that points out the research
conclusions on which this meme is based might have been an effect of bad data
processing.

See:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21296422](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21296422).

------
denton-scratch
Thanks for the article.

I wonder if he's a Buddhist?

Most of the way through he seems to be making the case that consciousness and
will are illusory, and that we are indistinguishable from mechanisms. But
towards the end, he seems to allow that we can take measures to improve our
decision-making abilities.

My interpretation of Buddhist psychology is that, for the most part, our
behaviour (decision-making) is the result of "causes and conditions", i.e. our
actions are generally not "voluntary"; but that we can nevertheless, through
introspection and practice, improve our understanding and decision-making.

I think his poker-bot needs an "introspection circuit" to oversee and direct
the learning process. I do not accept his contention that poker-bots
demonstrate that deep-learning/AI can ever model a conscious mind without such
a circuit.

[Edit: I spent several decades studying Buddhism; I returned to an
uncompromising rationalism about 10 years ago, and I'm much better now.
Doesn't that suggest that people can change their minds?]

~~~
spicymaki
From a traditional Buddhist perspective free will is necessary. If everything
was predetermined, the entire path of practice to freedom from suffering would
be pointless. However the past karma has an large influence on the present and
cannot be ignored.

~~~
denton-scratch
I thought that it was karma that led to your being born in an age in which a
Buddha had existed, karma that led to you encountering the teachings, karma
that led to you being able to become a monk, karma that led to your
introduction to a teacher, and karma that led to your success in your
practice. Nearly everything about the path is determined by karma, no?

But all of that kind of karma results from kind (or skillful) actions, and I
think the idea is that those moral/immoral actions have to be deliberate, to
have any impact on your karma. The way I heard it, most actions that bear at
all karma, only bear on karma for this life; actions that create heavy-
lifting, multi-life karma are rare.

See why I think the guy might be a Buddhist?

------
zzzeek
> We spectators are equally affected by the discrepancy between what we see
> and what we know. Take a group of diehard anti-free-will determinists to the
> deciding World Series game and have them watch their home team’s batter lose
> the Series by not swinging at a pitch that, to the onlookers, was clearly in
> the strike zone. How many do you think would be able to shrug off any sense
> of blame or disappointment in the batter? Indeed, how many would bother to
> attend the game if they accepted that the decision whether or not to swing
> occurred entirely at a subliminal level?

im kind of a determinist even though I don't enjoy it, I think if you're a
determinist and you still get up every morning, you've made some kind of
arrangement with the paradox of having no choice yet "having" choice such that
enjoying a baseball game is pretty low difficulty level among determinist
daily challenges.

------
laurex
We are possibly being driven to both great advancement and species destruction
by the emergence of what we call "consciousness" \-- the evolutionary
advantage of a theory of mind that allows for complex and powerful
collaboration and knowledge-sharing, with a sometimes counterproductive by-
product, the illusory concept of the self.

------
speedplane
I actually agree with much of this, "reason" as we know it, is not necessarily
an intrinsically beneficial thing, it's just had a decently long track record
of providing stability and improved standards of living.

For much of human history though, reason took a back seat to centralized power
and shared belief systems (even if they were not based on reason). E.g.:
Egyptian society could get a lot more done if everyone believed in the sun
god, and that the pharaoh was god-like. Shared beliefs, even if false or
unreasonable, increased stability and allowed society to better organize.

Roughly since the enlightenment, reason has had a similarly strong ability to
organize society, and the civilizations that embraced it have tended to live
longer than those that don't. In the context of history, it's arguably more of
a social tool than a underlying value.

------
gerbilly
The author is probably more qualified to discuss these matters than me, but it
still seems to me like he is getting trapped by his too rigid categorizations.

Just because we're not good at explaining our behaviour after the fact,
doesn't mean we lack agency or 'will.'

------
boyadjian
It is time to stop having a white color background on internet sites, it is
very aggressive for the eyes, instead, a sepia color would be much better.

------
norswap
So, this is an interesting exhibit. When people complain about postmodernism,
this is what they are complaining about.

Personally, I strongly disagree, though of course there are plenty of huge
obstacles in the way, most of them bake in our "human hardware". It doesn't
mean we shouldn't strive to get past them.

But make your own (rational :)) opinion.

------
mannykannot
There is something apparently ironic about any article presenting a rational
argument for the proposition that conscious reasoning is an illusion. I
suppose they are expected to work through epiphenomenalism.

------
83457
Couldn't help but think of Snow Crash when I saw this title.

~~~
minitoar
"See, I told you they'd listen to Reason," Fisheye says, shutting down the
whirling gun.

------
foobar_
Emotions and feelings are fixed and finite and give predictable outcomes.
Emotions can't save us either. Morals ... well, that's "reason" too.

------
choonway
We don't reason. We adapt. Even if a protagonist was dumped into an crazy
isekai world where science and math doesn't apply, he would still do ok.

------
ekianjo
> that conscious reasoning, the commonly believed remedy for our social ills

commonly believed? by who? I have never heard that claim before.

------
f137
Libet’s "preceding activity" is simply an example of branch prediction at
work.

------
mhh__
Possibly even worse, "Rationality will not save us" (Robert S. Mcnamara)

------
mapcars
>steer civilization away from the abyss

what is this abyss author is so afraid of?

~~~
hyperluz
Maybe, Oclocracy or another dictatorship.

------
mrwnmonm
Anyone decided his major after applying to it?

------
known
[https://archive.is/9QhKt](https://archive.is/9QhKt)

------
known
Reason + Priority + Adapt = Survival

------
dwoozle
You cannot Reason a man out of Thrall.

