I’m not telling you to do anything, it’s all hypothetical: Could you decide that punching yourself in the face—hard—is enjoyable? It seems like if you could decide that right here and now, that’d be a real easy way to make life (as good as it may be) even better.
Cards on the table, I’m pretty sure we all know the answer. No, we cannot decide to improve our lives by cutting off digits or socking ourselves in the nose, because those things are damaging, and we cant simply decide to make them feel good. I feel very confident that I can’t convince you to to it. (Thank goodness!)
The things that we can change our emotional reaction to are things that we were conditioned by an external stimulus (tradition or trauma or whatever) to have a certain reaction to. The decision to change is always driven by discomfort with that emotional reaction, another stimulus. Nobody is going to decide that they need to stop enjoying social affirmation, for instance, unless there’s some powerful, outside factor driving that decision.
In short, if we all react to the same stimulus in predictable ways, where’s the free will?
Could you decide that punching yourself in the face—hard—is enjoyable?
In the past, I have participated in auto mutilation, yes. At a certain point you want to feel anything.
The decision to change is always driven by discomfort with that emotional reaction, another stimulus.
You’re right! And it’s very scary, facing the thing that’s causing the discomfort.
That’s why I spend so much time trying to occupy my mind with puzzles, code, games, alcohol. Anything to distract me! Anything to direct that racing mind towards. But in the end I had to face the discomfort, walk inwards, towards it, to find where it came from.
It wasn’t my body, it wasn’t the calculating part of my mind.
In short, if we all react to the same stimulus in predictable ways, where’s the free will?
Luckily we don’t all react to the same stimulus in the same way. We can look back and learn from past mistakes.
If it’s free will, why would somebody not do it if it would make their life better? All of the reasons that I can think of are either in-born traits (e.g. anxiety, ego, getting more pleasure out of drugs than other people), or external influences.
No, I mean you, right now, with your free will.
Luckily I have free will. I don’t need to do what you tell me to do! I get to decide myself.
And so do you: you can decide what you want to do ❤️
I’m not telling you to do anything, it’s all hypothetical: Could you decide that punching yourself in the face—hard—is enjoyable? It seems like if you could decide that right here and now, that’d be a real easy way to make life (as good as it may be) even better.
Cards on the table, I’m pretty sure we all know the answer. No, we cannot decide to improve our lives by cutting off digits or socking ourselves in the nose, because those things are damaging, and we cant simply decide to make them feel good. I feel very confident that I can’t convince you to to it. (Thank goodness!)
The things that we can change our emotional reaction to are things that we were conditioned by an external stimulus (tradition or trauma or whatever) to have a certain reaction to. The decision to change is always driven by discomfort with that emotional reaction, another stimulus. Nobody is going to decide that they need to stop enjoying social affirmation, for instance, unless there’s some powerful, outside factor driving that decision.
In short, if we all react to the same stimulus in predictable ways, where’s the free will?
In the past, I have participated in auto mutilation, yes. At a certain point you want to feel anything.
You’re right! And it’s very scary, facing the thing that’s causing the discomfort.
That’s why I spend so much time trying to occupy my mind with puzzles, code, games, alcohol. Anything to distract me! Anything to direct that racing mind towards. But in the end I had to face the discomfort, walk inwards, towards it, to find where it came from.
It wasn’t my body, it wasn’t the calculating part of my mind.
Luckily we don’t all react to the same stimulus in the same way. We can look back and learn from past mistakes.
We can share experiences, learn from eachother.
We can look eachother in the eyes.
I’m sorry that you’ve had such troubles in the past. Learning from past mistakes isn’t an example of free will, though.
Doing so, or not doing so, either one is a choice out of free will. 😉 or is also the outside world that enforces that?
If it’s free will, why would somebody not do it if it would make their life better? All of the reasons that I can think of are either in-born traits (e.g. anxiety, ego, getting more pleasure out of drugs than other people), or external influences.
Anyway, LLMs can learn from past mistakes, too.
Because they don’t want to get better :(
Well, why would somebody not want to get better? Would somebody decide that of their own free will for no reason at all?