LunarGiantNeil t1_iui32e4 wrote on October 31, 2022 at 2:32 PM

Reply to comment by Extension-Ad-2760 in Conscious Reality Is Only a Memory of Unconscious Actions, Scientists Propose In Radical New Theory by mossadnik

Most people here are interpreting the data the way they want it to lead.

The research is showing that the experience of consciousness happens after the brain decides to do things, not that there isn't any active intervention by the higher level abstract thinking, reasoning, problem solving portions.

Nerves and brain matter interpret stuff, make recommendations, and bounce stimuli back and forth more than once. It's not all "multiple choice" made by the 'you' parts of your social and consciousness brain matter, true, but those parts DO get input.

So if you want to do something that you don't enjoy, like a diet, it's a wrestling match between parts of the brain and body. It's not a simple one-way decision chain and then it's over and decided.

People want it to be one way or the other. It's not.

Extension-Ad-2760 t1_iuigxzm wrote on October 31, 2022 at 4:07 PM

I fully agree with you here.

I think some comparison can be made to the way our societies are run. The leader (your consciousness) has final decision on the biggest decisions, but their decision is affected by hundreds of different other people, and their decisions by hundreds of thousands more (your subconscious. You could argue that in some cases the decisions are pretty much pre-determined, but that's only if the decision is just really obvious.

And these other people also do the more mundane jobs of actually keeping everything going (running your body).

And yet some people are convinced that either the leader has complete control, or the people that inform them do. No: they talk to each other, work things out, and neither truly has full control.