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blueSGL t1_itsji9p wrote

I'm sure I saw a Lex Friedman interview with a neuroscientist who said that experience is a post hoc narrative of events and that you can watch the brain make decisions about choices using fMRI where the choice is fixed in before the conscious observer thinks it is. Annoyingly I can't remember who he was interviewing.

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Jordan117 t1_ittombr wrote

>You invest so much in it, don't you? It's what elevates you above the beasts of the field, it's what makes you special. Homo sapiens, you call yourself. Wise Man. Do you even know what it is, this consciousness you cite in your own exaltation? Do you even know what it's for?

>Maybe you think it gives you free will. Maybe you've forgotten that sleepwalkers converse, drive vehicles, commit crimes and clean up afterwards, unconscious the whole time. Maybe nobody's told you that even waking souls are only slaves in denial.

>Make a conscious choice. Decide to move your index finger. Too late! The electricity's already halfway down your arm. Your body began to act a full half-second before your conscious self 'chose' to, for the self chose nothing; something else set your body in motion, sent an executive summary—almost an afterthought— to the homunculus behind your eyes. That little man, that arrogant subroutine that thinks of itself as the person, mistakes correlation for causality: it reads the summary and it sees the hand move, and it thinks that one drove the other.

>But it's not in charge. You're not in charge. If free will even exists, it doesn't share living space with the likes of you.

-- Peter Watts, Blindsight

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whenhaveiever t1_itsoxv6 wrote

That sounds like this study, and ones similar to it, which has been interpreted that way, but could be interpreted differently as well.

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Article_Used t1_itso49o wrote

annaka harris? am on that episode now. the one with jeff hawkins is good too, in a similar vein

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BinyaminDelta t1_ittlayk wrote

It was an interview from before Annaka, and maybe a few months back if I recall.

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