
It’s Complicated: Unraveling the mystery of why people act as they do - Hooke
https://theamericanscholar.org/its-complicated/#.WUgzS1LMzv0
======
hyperion2010
This is true even at a personal level. If you think you know why you act the
way you do but you have never done an experiment to validate it you have a
pretty good chance of being wrong. Even for simple things, like how fast you
drive, is it the speedometer and you are looking at it, or is it how your
engine sounds, and if turn up your music do you drive faster and is that
because you are more aroused/excited, or is it because you can't actually hear
how loud your engine is? Or maybe it is something else entirely.

~~~
dwaltrip
Everyone is living in fairytale narratives that we spend decades crafting for
ourselves. And doing so has some great benefits! But it is also can be very
problematic at times.

I've been trying to figure out how to live while minimizing the extent of my
personal fabricated narrative. It's a bit tricky... As with many things, I
think basic awareness of the phenomenon is the first productive step.

~~~
ux-app
>I've been trying to figure out how to live while minimizing the extent of my
personal fabricated narrative.

sounds interesting. Do you know of any suggested reading on the topic?

~~~
kleer001
5 dried grams of magic mushrooms. Or listen to 40+ hours of lectures from Alan
Watts.

~~~
lxmorj
5??????

~~~
ryanlol
You're right, 7 will work much better.

On a more serious note, look into 4-AcO-DMT. Essentially mushrooms without the
unpleasantness of actually having to eat mushrooms.

~~~
nojvek
How does one even get access to this?

~~~
ryanlol
Perhaps easier than the mushrooms, various "chemical supply companies" will
sell it to you for "research" and not ask many question. There's a list of
such companies on the "RCSources" subreddit wiki.

It's definitely a good idea to get any chemicals tested before consuming them.
I doubt they'd intentionally send you the wrong chemical, but I guess shipping
mixups could happen. Energy control runs an excellent testing service
[https://energycontrol-international.org/drug-testing-
service...](https://energycontrol-international.org/drug-testing-
service/submitting-a-sample/)

------
taurath
If you haven't seen the lecture from Robert Sapolsky (author of the book the
article is summarizing) on Depression, do yourself a favor and see it now!
He's wonderfully eloquent and approachable even to the laymen in giving the
neurobiological underpinnings of what is a terrible illness.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOAgplgTxfc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOAgplgTxfc)

~~~
alexvoda
Thanks indeed. It clarifies a lot. We are lucky to live in a period when
sufficient knowledge on the subject has accumulated and has been put together
for us to have some understanding of how it works. Going from here to finding
fixes is a long way since there are a lot of variables, but at least we have
an idea of how the leverage points in the system interact.

------
md224
> there is no homunculus (or soul, or separate entity) calling the shots for
> you, but even if there were a mini-me inside of you making choices, that
> mini-me would need a mini-mini-me inside of it, ad infinitum.

I find it kind of amusing that people think free will is an illusion. It's a
great illustration of how you can get people to believe anything, including
things that violate their most fundamental perceptions.

This "Science disproves free will" thing has the epistemological hierarchy
reversed: one of the surest things I know is my own will. Before Descartes
could proclaim "I think, therefore I am" he had to _choose_ to make that
proclamation.

The argument that free will can't exist because it involves infinite regress
is not particularly convincing: if anything, we should _expect_ that our
agency springs from something as bizarre as a causal singularity.
Consciousness is weird as hell, and I expect the true nature of consciousness
will turn out to be weirder than we can imagine.

~~~
adjkant
So your belief in free will comes from "It's going to turn out to come from
something really weird"? That's not convincing either.

I don't believe in free will, but I believe that there will always be the
illusion because the computing needed to know anything before it happens is
far too much, and if you knew, it would add another layer of things you'd need
to compute, meaning you still wouldn't know your choice ahead of time.

I agree that the infinite regress argument is not convincing - it proves
nothing. I would point to science, physics, etc, which is much more factually
supportive of it. Of course you can point out quarks, quantum computing, etc,
but my argument is that the "randomness" is simply a system we have yet to
understand.

More importantly, you highlight something else - choice is not the same as
free will. Yes, we all have choices we make every day. They seem to be our
will because we don't understand how they were made down to the particles.
Whether or not there is free will, there is always choice. So the question is,
when is the lack of free will actually relevant? I find that a lot of people
apply it in ways that don't make sense when it actually does offer insight in
certain interesting areas such as ethics.

~~~
md224
How is free will not the same as choice? A lack of free will is an inability
to exert agency through choosing. Determinism removes the possibility of
choosing.

If you have no free will, you can't express yourself... nothing you do will be
the product of your desires. Weren't you free to choose the words you wrote in
your reply?

~~~
wvlia5
You're being quite naive, not understanding what the issue is.

Of course everything you do will be a product of what "you" "decide" to do. In
that, completely naive & day-to-day, sense of the phrase, "you" do have "free
will".

But how did that "decision" come to be? Was there a cause for it to happen? If
so, what caused it? If it was caused by deterministic laws of physics, then
that doesn't sound much like "free will". If it was random, it doesn't sound
like "free will" either. What is "free will" and how does it start
electrochemical reactions in your brain which will result in a movement of
your hand? What is "you", which posseses "free will"?

------
peterwwillis
Does nobody else find this to be time-wasting drivel? We do what we do because
we're apes with hats.

Any thing that acts does so with a system. The system determines the actions.
This is true for the laws of nature as much as a football game. Even if
someone cheats, they're cheating because of the system of the game.

> "Sapolsky concludes that World War II really was the worst thing humanity
> ever did to itself."

Really? Really now? Thousands of years of slavery, war, discrimination, class
struggle, superstition, genocide, and at least a few centuries having to wear
really stuffy clothes in the summer, and six years of war was the worst thing
that happened? I didn't read the book, but this is a farcical idea that
requires aggressively downplaying all of both the atrocity and perpetual minor
trauma of recorded history.

The worst thing humanity ever did to itself was religion, but second to that
was politics, so WWII can take the silver medal. Ironically, the best thing
humanity ever did to itself was war, as it necessitated the development of
technology to maintain hegemonic dominance.

------
J-dawg
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the analogy to taking away an epileptic's
driving licence.

 _People who regularly suffer epileptic seizures are not allowed to drive, for
example, but we don’t think of this ban as “punishing” them for their
affliction._

 _“We’ve successfully banished the notion of punishment in that realm. It may
take centuries, but we can do the same in all our current arenas of
punishment.”_

I've long thought that one of the cruelest things about our justice system is
that it barely takes into account the terrible circumstances that someone
might have been through before they become a criminal.

Is the epileptic analogy really the right one, though? By that analogy, we
would pre-emptively remove freedoms from people who've had a bad upbringing,
or a genetic predisposition to violence. That sounds like precrime, and a very
dangerous road to go down.

I would love to see a more compassionate and rehabilitation-based justice
system, but I really don't think he has chosen the right analogy.

------
amasad
The schism between our science and politics is finally getting airtime.
Liberal western politics are based on individual liberty and free will.
However, mainstream science maintains that we're neither individuals nor have
free will. Do we try to reconcile both views? Or do we drop one in favor of
the other?

This, by the way, is also the subject of Homo Deus: A Brief History of
Tomorrow, by the same author behind Sapiens.

~~~
elihu
If we assume that free will doesn't exist (which I don't agree with, but for
the sake of argument we'll assume it doesn't), one might still expect people
to make choices that maximize their own well-being and it isn't too much of a
stretch to suppose that such choices are more often than not good for society,
or at least more so than a planned society where most choices are made for you
by some authority.

One can argue for democracy, free speech, and other modern liberal ideas on
the basis that they produce a more stable, prosperous society.

This assumes that we've already decided that stability and prosperity are
attributes that society should have.

I think science is a great tool for figuring out what the consequences of a
particular action are likely to be, but it's not a tool that will tell us
which of several outcomes we should prefer.

~~~
techbio
Optimism and Hume notwithstanding the outcomes regarding prosperity and
stability may be bestowed upon the society as a whole without the choices by
individuals having individually assisted their own life outcomes.

~~~
skookumchuck
Societies where the choices are made by the government, not the individuals,
have not bestowed prosperity and stability on the whole.

~~~
brabel
China seems to be a counter example to that (and the largest example in the
history of mankind, with 600 million people having a prosperous life thanks
to, arguably, the government making decisions on their behalf, not to mention
it has been the most stable civilization on Earth despite a few periods of
instability), though on the whole, you might be right. I just wouldn't claim
that with nearly as much confidence as you do.

~~~
skookumchuck
China has free'd up quite a bit from the old centralized planning system, and
the material well-being has improved quite a bit since they did.

------
tucif
What would be a good book to read before this book? Or is it friendly enough
for someone new to behavioral science?

~~~
mabub24
I would highly recommend [P.M.S. Hacker's "Human Nature: The Categorical
Framework]([https://www.amazon.com/Human-Nature-Categorial-Framework-
Hac...](https://www.amazon.com/Human-Nature-Categorial-Framework-
Hacker/dp/1444332481/ref=pd_sbs_14_1?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=1444332481&pd_rd_r=TKX5RASJ63XYHS9H1K7D&pd_rd_w=lz7UT&pd_rd_wg=vLoFR&psc=1&refRID=TKX5RASJ63XYHS9H1K7D)).

Hacker is an excellent philosopher and a very clear writer. He starts from
broad categories to look at human nature and what it makes sense to say of the
nature of sentient animals, insentient animals, and inanimate things.

The main relevant chapters are:

1\. "Agents and Actors", 2\. "Teleological Explanation", and 3\. "Reasons and
Explanation of Human Action".

His main point is that many "unanswerable" questions in neuroscience and
behavioral science are simply nonsensical because they play with conceptual
confusions.

I would also highly recommend his sequel book "The Intellectual Powers: A
Study of Human Nature".

------
Atlantium
The human brain's electro-chemical makeup and its response to stimulus, both
from the other organs and through the external sensory organs, are the reasons
we act the way we do. Like the Human Genome project before it, this mystery
can be solved with large amounts of personnel, money and time. Do not complain
that it's complex (it is, we know, the sooner we commit the appropriate
resources the sooner we'll be finished). [And yes, I am doing something about
it - I'm a returned to school STEM-neuro student]

~~~
s73ver
No. Do not do that. The second that the cause/effect relationship is
understood down to a neuron level like that, advertisers will abuse that to
make things even more effective.

~~~
wutbrodo
This is truly peak HN. No matter how philosophical or universal the topic of
conversation, someone is still so mind-killed that their reaction is "how will
this affect advertising".

~~~
s73ver
Not mind killed. Just a realist. You and I both know that's what would happen.

~~~
wutbrodo
Dude, way to _still_ not get the point. Whether or not you're correct has
literally nothing to do with what I'm talking about. My complaint wasn't about
you being wrong, it was that your small-minded enough that even in a
conversation about the very nature of the human mind, your contribution is
about advertising.

It's just a more niche version of those people who manage to turn literally
every conversation into "yea and if the fucking _republicans_/_democrats_ get
their way blah blah". Whether or not they're correct in any given instance is
entirely besides the point.

------
xor1
Learning about Borderline Personality Disorder, Narcissistic Personality
Disorder, and the rest of the Cluster B disorders (and their comorbidity)
helped me understand ALOT about certain types of behavioral patterns that I
previously found completely mind-boggling.

------
givan
Call it anyway you want, lizard brain, flyers (Castaneda), Yaldabaoth
(agnostics), this force that pushes evolution on earth at great speed through
predatorial behavior like competition and flight or fight.

We humans are the most intelligent species and still can't overcome it, as a
civilization whatever political system or religion we tried no matter how hard
we try we can't seem to overcome it, we still have wars and violence.

When few succeed to inspire people to overcome it and fight without violence
like Mahatma Gandhi did they inspire humanity and are called saints by their
nation.

When an individual can control his own feelings to such an extent that
violence or anger feelings can no longer touch him we call him enlightened.

Maybe this force is not only trying to help us evolve but wants to teach us
something marvelous if we overcome it.

~~~
felipeko
I call it scarcity of resources. You won't see wars and what not when you have
humanity with abundance of resources.

~~~
robotresearcher
a) The problem is more distribution more than abundance.

b) I bet that we'll have wars even if everyone has all they need. I'd like to
be wrong.

~~~
felipeko
a) World gdp per capita is less than $18.000, hardly what i would call
abundance. We are still a few good decades away from abundance.

b) I bet that rich countries, where people have all they need, will not
provoke wars or engage on unprovoked wars (unless for humanitarian reasons).

~~~
robotresearcher
The richest country in the world has been at war overseas almost constantly
since the end of WWII.

~~~
felipeko
And it went to war for the following reasons:

a) scarcity of resource (oil) / humanitarian reasons (whichever you prefer to
believe)

b) was provoked into it (because of cold war or terrorists)

~~~
wcarron
This is demonstrably false. You need only look at the actions of our
government (e.g. The CIA) to discern that the United States has gone to war
(or "military conflicts" or whatever they call them these days) for reasons
such as A) financial gain for private persons and companies B) financial gain
for politicians C) financial gain for the country D) political gain for
individuals E) extending a miltary based hegemony F) moral agendas (e.g the
War on Drugs) etc, etc. The United States is by no means some perfect rational
actor which engages in war solely for economic reasons or for "self-defense".

------
ouid
It's at least as complicated as all of mathematics, in the worst case.

------
real-hacker
Maybe the core of so-called 'free will' or 'soul' is just a random-number
generator. Other than that, we are just many layers of deep neural networks.

~~~
vinutheraj
Then the question becomes: can there be a really random number generator ?

~~~
real-hacker
Perhaps a pseudo random number generator, with the solar radiation level and
the moon phase as seeds. ;)

------
myrandomcomment
So I wonder now, how many murders are simply solved because it was I the
monument vs. solved for cases that were planned with cold hearted logic?

------
faragon
TL;DR: watching the movie "Taxi Driver" you'll learn more about about human
behavior than reading that article.

~~~
77pt77
Such as?

~~~
faragon
How volatile human behavior can be.

------
nope123
Per Deep Thought, the answer to life, the universe and everything is 42.

It's a very deep thought, if you go past the literal interpretation.

EDIT:

Before you down vote, read what I meant, since it is obvious that if you are
considering a down vote then you're not getting what I'm referring to, and
probably think I'm talking about numerology.

What I'm referring to is his choice of a number to represent the answer to
life, universe and everything. Not a magical number, but just A NUMBER. It
shows how futile it is to try and answer some questions in a
mechanical/mathematical way. Some questions are not computable, and there is
more meaning to life beyond the rational.

~~~
livingparadox
I've heard that its intended to be the ASCII code for "*" which represents a
wildcard (i.e., anything).

Is that what you had in mind or do you have different interpretations?

~~~
DougBTX
> The answer to this is very simple. It was a joke. It had to be a number, an
> ordinary, smallish number, and I chose that one. Binary representations,
> base thirteen, Tibetan monks are all complete nonsense. I sat at my desk,
> stared into the garden and thought '42 will do' I typed it out. End of
> story.

~~~
nope123
You obviously did not go past the literal interpretation and he was talking
about the literal interpretation. What I'm referring to is his choice of a
number to represent the answer to life, universe and everything. Not a magical
number, but just A NUMBER. It shows how futile it is to try and answer some
questions in a mechanical/mathematical way. Some questions are not computable,
and there is more meaning to life beyond the rational.

~~~
asdfasdf32r3
I interpret it to be that the answer is whatever we make of it. Your
interpretation tells me more about your mindset than about any actual truth.
Taken that way, meaning is what we project on it. You project a number as
futility; a numerology-leaning individual could project a different meaning.

You are both correct. It's a Rorschach test of philosophy.

