Re:Self-Awareness Might Not Have Evolved to Benefit the Self...
by tsimionescu on Thursday July 18, 2024 @07:49AM
(#40994717)
As far as I know, those studies all look at minor "decisions", such as pressing the left or the right button after a sound is heard. They find that they can predict which button will be pressed earlier than the conscious decision to pick one was experienced.
However, there is no actual "decision" to be made there. It's a random choice, and it's not that random choices are not conscious decisions.
It's much harder to devise an experiment that looks at actual, meaningful, decisions. And I'm not talking about something extreme like "do I love this person" or whatever, just a real decision, like the ones you might make in an RPG ("do I help or kill this NPC").
Re:Self-Awareness Might Not Have Evolved to Benefit the Self...
by ithkuil on Friday July 19, 2024 @08:28AM
(#41005726)
I'm puzzled by the downvotes. Am I saying something obscene or against the rules of polite discourse? I mean, I could be wrong sure but I don't think downvotes are for disagreeing with what somebody says but for punishing behavior that lowers the standards of the forum. Am I really doing that with this comment? Do I need to cite all the articles and books I read to form this opinion or else I cannot state an opinion?
That's why there is a problem explaining consciousness in the first place. The more we dig the more elusive it is