Science proves choice is noise


Recommended Posts

  • Replies 157
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

When a scientist tries to be a philosopher, the results can be weird.

Some choices are made in the lower part of the brain and they feel like we made the choice at the higher. That's been documented for years. But the scientists dreaming of their Noble Prize try to make that mean ALL choices and the faculty of volition itself.

That's what they choose, but let's take them at their word. That idea is only noise in their brains. It really came from the part of their brains that governs their asses. :smile:

Scientists, without blinking, build bigger and better bombs for dictators. And they award each other for it. That's a literal and practical result of how they do philosophy.

Michael

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Scientists, without blinking, build bigger and better bombs for dictators. And they award each other for it. That's a literal and practical result of how they do philosophy.

Michael

The bombs work more reliably than the philosophy

Ba'al Chatzaf (a designer of the radar terrain map guidance system for cruise missiles --- pre. GPS).

My baby is what they will use if the GPS is ever knocked out.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Clods at UC-Davis used a blank screen and a dot to "prove" that choice is random, a result of noisy static in the brain, like an AM radio receiver listening to nothing between two weak signals. They ought to give an award for this, Best Bullshit Science Grant of The Year.

Drudge links to The Independent

What the scientists actually said:

“[Though] purposeful intentions, desires and goals drive our decisions in a linear cause-and-effect kind of way, our finding shows that our decisions are also influenced by neural noise within any given moment."

Not sure how you managed to get the title of this thread from this.

And, strictly speaking, choice is an illusion, since all thoughts are the outcome of purely deterministic physical laws.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

And, strictly speaking, choice is an illusion...

I'm so glad to hear that.

So if the Redskins fans keep choosing to use the name Redskins, it's only an illusion.

Problem solved.

:smile:

Michael

Now that was nicely played, sir.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The issue here may be simplistic science journalism, or even 'science by press release.' LiveScience jazzed up the UC-Davis press release, did an email interview with one of the study authors, fished out a comment or two -- then applied a 'sexy' title. Then the LS article went on the wires and was reproduced with more speculation, less attention to the specifics of the findings in the published article.

This does not make the folks who wrote the journal article and conducted the research weirdly wrong, yes? It's a small interesting piece of work that will stand or fall in replication or extension. What struck me was that these "clods" were able to predict 'voluntary' choice from listening to the previously ignored "noise." I'm leaning towards the unsexy headline of "'Brain "noise" affects decision-making."

Here's the abstract. It's in the April 2014 issue of the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience:

Spontaneous Neural Fluctuations Predict Decisions to Attend.

Ongoing variability in neural signaling is an intrinsic property of the brain. Often this variability is considered to be noise and ignored. However, an alternative view is that this variability is fundamental to perception and cognition and may be particularly important in decision-making. Here, we show that a momentary measure of occipital alpha-band power (8-13 Hz) predicts choices about where human participants will focus spatial attention on a trial-by-trial basis. This finding provides evidence for a mechanistic account of decision-making by demonstrating that ongoing neural activity biases voluntary decisions about where to attend within a given moment.

Here's a bit more explanation of the research by one of its authors. from the UC-Davis press release. It helped me understand how a misreading of the article's import might lead to cloddishness:

The brain has a normal level of "background noise," Bengson said, as electrical activity patterns fluctuate across the brain. The researchers found that the pattern of activity in the second or so before the cue symbol appeared — before the volunteers could know they were going to make a decision — could predict the likely outcome of the decision.

"The state of the brain right before presentation of the cue determines whether you will attend to the left or to the right," Bengson said.

The experiment builds on a famous 1970s experiment by Benjamin Libet, a psychologist at UCSF who was later affiliated with the UC Davis Center for Neuroscience.

Libet also measured brain electrical activity immediately before a volunteer made a decision to press a switch in response to a visual signal. He found brain activity immediately before the volunteer reported deciding to press the switch.

The new results build on Libet's finding, because they provide a model for how brain activity could precede decision, Bengson said. Additionally, Libet had to rely on when volunteers said they made their decision. In the new experiment, the random timing means that "we know people aren't making the decision in advance," Bengson said.

Libet's experiment raised questions of free will — if our brain is preparing to act before we know we are going to act, how do we make a conscious decision to act? The new work, though, shows how "brain noise" might actually create the opening for free will, Bengson said.

"It inserts a random effect that allows us to be freed from simple cause and effect," he said.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's a small interesting piece of work

Rubbish. Subjects were free to glance left or right after stimulus. They could have used dogs or mice and got the same results.

Off you go, in disgrace, to the Ignore list.

Dun. Dun. Dun. Another one bites the dust.

Dun. Dun. Dun. Another one bites the dust.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

At most, it's one of those apparent quandaries that isn't a problem unless one makes it a problem. Look on it as animal survival mechanism still extant in the human brain - inaction through 'indeciseveness' by an animal renders it vulnerable, and often dead. Nature abhors inaction, after all. The background noise commands "Do something--anything!"

Not in the least a dilemma or contradiction with free will, which is as potent, if not more so, now that science has caught up with our introspected suspicion, and told us what we subconsciously knew. And man has free will despite, because of, and over and above, this primitive faculty. It "fits"!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's a small interesting piece of work

Rubbish. Subjects were free to glance left or right after stimulus. They could have used dogs or mice and got the same results.

Off you go, in disgrace, to the Ignore list.

At the risk of myself being relegated to DeVoon Sheol along with Scherk and Greg the Moralist (something of an OL Hell for Scherck and me), and as somebody who has read Scherk for 3-4 years with great interest, if not agreement, you owe it to yourself to reconsider. :laugh:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

And, strictly speaking, choice is an illusion, since all thoughts are the outcome of purely deterministic physical laws.

At least yours are--we can start from there (and build?).

How did you deterministically determine this? You didn't of course; those damn "laws" did. What I can't determine is how you determined--how you are the passive voice of truth. Couldn't those laws have made you into a liar? No--for if you can lie you can tell the truth and know the difference. Enter, moral agency. Exit you--that's your choice, right?

Oh, BTW, how do you know "physical laws" are "purely deterministic"? And might you be confusing/conflating "thoughts" with thought content?

--Brant

the brain is in the organism, for a reason, and the type of brain goes with the kind of organism--that is, man has a conceptual brain, for a reason (the smaller the brain the less the ability of the organism to do any of that determining itself): to go to the moon, to modify his environment enough to live almost anywhere on Earth's earth, etc.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

the brain is in the organism, for a reason, and the type of brain goes with the kind of organism--that is, man has a conceptual brain, for a reason (the smaller the brain the less the ability of the organism to do any of that determining itself): to go to the moon, to modify his environment enough to live almost anywhere on Earth's earth, etc.

The brain is primarily an internal controller for some bodily functions and a sense data integrator. The brain is really not that good a logic machine. It has a high error rate.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Link to comment
Share on other sites

the brain is in the organism, for a reason, and the type of brain goes with the kind of organism--that is, man has a conceptual brain, for a reason (the smaller the brain the less the ability of the organism to do any of that determining itself): to go to the moon, to modify his environment enough to live almost anywhere on Earth's earth, etc.

The brain is primarily an internal controller for some bodily functions and a sense data integrator. The brain is really not that good a logic machine. It has a high error rate.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Sigh.

--Brant

Link to comment
Share on other sites

At the risk of myself being relegated to DeVoon Sheol along with Scherk and Greg the Moralist (something of an OL Hell for Scherck and me), and as somebody who has read Scherk for 3-4 years with great interest, if not agreement, you owe it to yourself to reconsider. :laugh:

Thanks for the note, PDS. I tend to be a contrarian, which is not always welcome on an Objectivish site. I don't think Wolf is up to the challenge of sustaining an argument on this particular field of study. The scientists are clods, so ...

At most, it's one of those apparent quandaries that isn't a problem unless one makes it a problem. Look on it as animal survival mechanism still extant in the human brain - inaction through 'indeciseveness' by an animal renders it vulnerable, and often dead. Nature abhors inaction, after all. The background noise commands "Do something--anything!"

Not in the least a dilemma or contradiction with free will, which is as potent, if not more so, now that science has caught up with our introspected suspicion, and told us what we subconsciously knew. And man has free will despite, because of, and over and above, this primitive faculty. It "fits"!

Lawd, how many tomes and articles have come down the pike on Free Will?

Tony, if you are interested in the study, as I am, you might be confused, as I am, about some of the concepts. I looked for "occipital alpha-band power" and research work that includes it as a factor of prediction. In the abstract, the authors suggest "an alternative view is that this variability is fundamental to perception and cognition and may be particularly important in decision-making." They are not alone in linking the brain wave 'noise' to pre-conscious bias, attentional states, learning and so on.

I am by no means up on work in the immense field of cognitive neuroscience, but with a little reading I find out the kind of research corner carved out around decision-making and "occipital alpha-band power." I think it's pretty neat. Here's an example of alpha waves ('formerly noise') under at least partial conscious control (from 2012):

Alpha waves close your mind for distraction, but not continuously, research suggests

Alpha waves were long ignored, but gained interest of brain researchers recently. Electrical activity of groups of brain cells results in brain waves with different amplitudes. The so-called alpha wave, a slow brain wave with a cycle of 100 milliseconds, seems to play a key role in suppressing irrelevant brain activity. Researchers recently discovered that when distracting information can be anticipated in time there is an increase of the power of this alpha wave just before the distracter. Furthermore, the brain is able to precisely control the alpha wave so that the pulse of inhibition is maximal when the distracter appears.

Here's another intriguing finding, from 2009.

Brain Wave Patterns Can Predict Blunders, New Study Finds

Everyone makes an occasional error due to lack of attention. Now scientists have found a distinct electric signature in the brain which predicts that such an error is about to be made. The discovery could prove useful in a variety of applications, from developing monitoring devices that alert air traffic control operators that their attention is flagging, to devising and monitoring new strategies to help children cope with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

One more (from this year) spells out a bit more of the variability that is predictive:

The role of alpha oscillations for illusory perception

Alpha oscillations are a prominent electrophysiological signal measured across a wide range of species and cortical and subcortical sites. Alpha oscillations have been viewed for a long time as an “idling” rhythm, purely reflecting inactive sites. Despite earlier evidence from neurophysiology, awareness that alpha oscillations can substantially influence perception and behavior has grown only recently in cognitive neuroscience. Evidence for an active role of alpha for perception comes mainly from several visual, near-threshold experiments. In the current review, we extend this view by summarizing studies showing how alpha-defined brain states relate to illusory perception, i.e. cases of perceptual reports that are not “objectively” verifiable by distinct stimuli or stimulus features. These studies demonstrate that ongoing or prestimulus alpha oscillations substantially influence the perception of auditory, visual or multisensory illusions.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The brain is primarily an internal controller for some bodily functions and a sense data integrator. The brain is really not that good a logic machine. It has a high error rate.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Since you've repeatedly (and repeatedly) declared over the years you've been posting here that you have a brain but not a mind, what does the above statement mean about your ability at logic?

Ellen

Link to comment
Share on other sites

And, strictly speaking, choice is an illusion, since all thoughts are the outcome of purely deterministic physical laws.

At least yours are--we can start from there (and build?).

How did you deterministically determine this? You didn't of course; those damn "laws" did. What I can't determine is how you determined--how you are the passive voice of truth. Couldn't those laws have made you into a liar? No--for if you can lie you can tell the truth and know the difference. Enter, moral agency. Exit you--that's your choice, right?

The outcome of the deterministic laws that govern one's brain do not come in and supersede on a pre-existing "free will". There is no "me" that makes choices independently of my brain and the laws of reality. Rather, the outcome of those deterministic processes is one's "free will" to choose. People are nothing more and nothing less than atoms put together a certain way.

Oh, BTW, how do you know "physical laws" are "purely deterministic"? And might you be confusing/conflating "thoughts" with thought content?

Because they aren't arbitrary.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hitler--never woulda thought; he coulda been my Daddy!--sob!

No difference, other than how they are put together.

Nay, nay. A live person operates far from thermodynamic equilibrium. A dead person soon assumes room temperature. The engine is no longer operating. The dead rapidly approach thermodynamic equilibrium.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hitler--never woulda thought; he coulda been my Daddy!--sob!

No difference, other than how they are put together.

Nay, nay. A live person operates far from thermodynamic equilibrium. A dead person soon assumes room temperature. The engine is no longer operating. The dead rapidly approach thermodynamic equilibrium.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Yeah? Well, did you ever see The Night of the Living Dead?

--Brant

right between the eyes!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yeah? Well, did you ever see The Night of the Living Dead?

--Brant

right between the eyes!

No. I am too busy studying non-equilibrium thermodynamics.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Let's see now. A dead person and a live person--no difference, just a bunch of chemicals.

--Brant

me and Hitler--never woulda thought; he coulda been my Daddy!--sob!

No difference, other than how they are put together.

You seem to ignore a whole raft of consequences of a living, acting human being. Of a human conscious being having been determined bio-chemically, nature and maybe even nurture, in turn determines using indeterminacy. Hitler wasn't inevitable--or if he was, how could anyone prove it? With a non-falsifiable theory one can only prevail axiomatically. It's all looking backwards saying nothing could have been different, but try turning that around and successfully predict the near particular future.

When someone is exposed to an influence, a great deal of the effect of that influence is determined by how conciousness evaluates the experience. Determined isn't the same as necessarily determined.

--Brant

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You seem to ignore a whole raft of consequences of a living, acting human being. Of a human conscious being having been determined bio-chemically, nature and maybe even nurture, in turn determines using indeterminacy. Hitler wasn't inevitable--or if he was, how could anyone prove it? With a non-falsifiable theory one can only prevail axiomatically. It's all looking backwards saying nothing could have been different, but try turning that around and successfully predict the near particular future.

There is no such thing as "indeterminacy" in reality. Things are only ever "indeterministic" to the extent that we choose to ignore what is actually going on. In principle, it is possible to predict completely the near particular future, so in that sense, Hitler was inevitable.

Determinism is not a theory about how things are. It is a property of certain explanations. It cannot be said to be falsifiable or unfalsifiable.

When someone is exposed to an influence, a great deal of the effect of that influence is determined by how conciousness evaluates the experience. Determined isn't the same as necessarily determined.

--Brant

Consciousness is reducible to nothing more than physical processes in the brain. It is not something that acts "above" those processes. It is those processes.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now