Philosophical Zombies….

There is a philosophical question about zombies.  

If there was a person shaped thing, and if you spoke to it: it replied like a person, if you touched it: it reacted like a person,  it smiled, it cried it did everything that a person would do…. BUT…. At no time did it have an internal experience…. It did not know that it “was”….  This is a philosophical zombie.

There are lots of discussions about this sort of thing… how would you know?  Most of the discussions come down to the fact that the only thing that someone truly knows is that they are themselves.   The argument goes that I know that I exist.  I know that I think, and that I make choices and that I am something.  In fact, it is the only thing a conscious being can be truly sure of .  “I think therefore I am” is the catch cry of the argument….

But

There is all sorts of evidence that I think bring the whole thing into question.

Split brain patients experiments have shown that if we do not have a reason for doing something… we make it up.

It has been found that nerves make preparations to move well before a person consciously decides they want to move.

We live our lives behind when we think we are living, by appreciable fractions of a second – we then make stories to fit with the facts later.

So an alternative hypothesis:

We are all philosophical zombies.  When people talk to us, we respond.  We do the expected thing at the expected time.  Physics determines what we do, what actions we take… but weirdly enough a side effect of our evolution has resulted in an operational system that insists on deciding it is in control.

So our environment, our biology and the physics of our electrochemical reactions determine what we (the zombies) do.  After it is done, our brain makes us think that we think we did these things, but it is as predictable and inevitable as any clockwork.

Just sayin is all.

Unspeakable things..

Question for you….

How many things are not investigated… or not known about because we do not speak of them?

How many brilliant writers, artists, philosophers did not happen because the person was too worried about what others might think of them?

How many questions do not get answered because the people capable of answering them are also the ones with parents, wives or husbands or even kids, who’s opinions might change if they were to publish their thoughts?

While I am on it… how many diseases do not get researched because talking about them is uncomfortable?…

Just sayin is all....

Captcha

On my coffee shop table this morning, the reflection from the Dell logo on my computer...
Looking for all the world like a Captcha to make sure you are not some sort of web bot....

Maybe this one is to make sure that the whole lot is real?

Procrastination....

Ok... still not putting in anywhere near enough work on this talk I am doing on Monday...

Trying to work out..

Am I putting it off cause I am incapable of sustained concentration on ANYTHING now?
or
because I have never let myself down when doing a presentation of any sort... so I am just assuming I will wing it and it will work.

I hope it is the second one, cause otherwise this is going to get embarrassing!

So am I.

Heaven can you hear me? I'm calling from a land line 
I need a good connection I feel like I'm losing my mind 
The day is just about to break; I think it's safe to say, so am I.


(Eve 6)

Goes away

Last night, I was walking to have some dinner with 2 business colleagues...
there was some sort of sign up on one of the shops, in a language I did not understand... but it inspired a whole set of thoughts.
The thoughts did not get to the point of being words, but I had developed a whole set of ideas in a few seconds.  I thought they were definitely good.  I figured I would write about it all here.  It would not change the world, but might be the smallest bit of insight someone else could learn from.

We walked to have dinner.  And it was good.

And the revelation I had experienced just disappeared into the night...

Self Delusion 1.

It seems to me that most people go through life thinking of how without this constraint, or this choice, they could be doing completely different things with their life.

I am capable of so much, but I am choosing to hide it because of

• reason 1
• reason 2
•  
•  
• reason 127,241.

Increasingly I think that people are what they do... and only what they do.

There are parts of the brain, whose primary role is to stop you from doing things...and that is good - when this part of the brain works well, you have a successful person, if it works badly the person is an impulsive "now-junky" who will almost certainly end up in jail.

So if who we are, and how we are seen by society is determined by what we don't do, then pretending that we are so much deeper, or more complicated or more capable that what we show is pure self delusion.