BREAKING NEWS: Sarah Palin says something.

inimalist

See, Cenk on TYT probably gave the best "The Right is responsible" opinion that I have seen so far. I haven't seen anything about this guy's politics specifically, but I think it is fair to say that he hadn't read Anne Coulter's last book, and wasn't a Bill O'Riley fan.

From what we have seen, he reminds me a lot of a friend I had back in Ontario. Lets call him XX. So, XX, like the shooter in question, is anti-government and all that jazz, but also like the shooter (or so it seems), goes WAY further than that.

I actually sort of took offense to hearing people claim that being "against the government" was the same as Republicanist "Small Government", or that it meant you could be labeled a Republican. Several posters in this thread alone challange that idea, and I bet one would be hard pressed to find even a modest correlation between being "anti-state" and political violence.

So, XX is anti-state, but he is anti all parts of the state, in the same way that it seems the shooter was. Not because of politics, but because they think the state is (literally) brainwashing people, or responsible for conspiracies, or that nonsense. These are not Republican or even conservative ideas, they are simply a set of beliefs, that if someone buys into, would almost by default make them against the state in practice, rather than people like the Republicans who claim to be anti-government in principle.

This also goes a lot further in explaining the possible racist connections too. David Icke, while not being an anti-semite himself imho, does travel in a crowd with anti-semites, and his rhetoric doesn't need much interpretation to be seen as anti-jew. Alex Jones, the theocrat, says many things that border on racism, and again, it would be a very small leap from his rhetoric to anti-semitism. These people are hugely popular in both conspiracy and nazi movements, so I think that is a way better fit than is some Republican-Nazi theory (data for this paragraph from "Them: adventures with extremists" by Jon Ronson, which everyone should read today).

But then, why? Why did this guy shoot a politician and XX not? XX is totally non-violent, though, tbh, one could spin his upbrining in such a way that he would seem the "textbook" case. Further, why is there so much fear and violent paranoia surrounding politics in America? We don't see this in Canada, or anywhere else that I am aware of... Obviously the revolutionary history, but that can't be the only reason.

So what do we make of people like Palin then? I honestly don't know, but I can't imagine she is doing anything to help that violent anger that some crazies might have. Did her idiocy help motivate this shooter directly? I can't say there is any evidence of that... Did her map and crosshairs contribute to a political landscape where violence is not only seen as acceptable, but in fact encouraged? again, this would be hard to prove in any absolute way, but it seems very likely.

Bardock42

Originally posted by inimalist
I just died a little inside

also, Unicron
http://i199.photobucket.com/albums/aa158/Bardock42/Babylon5Quote.jpg

inimalist

Originally posted by Bardock42
http://i199.photobucket.com/albums/aa158/Bardock42/Babylon5Quote.jpg

V14PfDDwxlE

Bardock42

Lol, it's like a classy Christian Bale.

inimalist

Originally posted by Bardock42
Lol, it's like a classy Christian Bale.

a drunk christian bale too

Bardock42

If you made Citizen Kane and had to sell Frozen Peas now, wouldn't you have a drink before?

inimalist

Originally posted by Bardock42
If you made Citizen Kane and had to sell Frozen Peas now, wouldn't you have a drink before?

it was all just leading up to Unicron

but yes, I'd also probably be drunk

Bardock42

Originally posted by inimalist
it was all just leading up to Unicron

but yes, I'd also probably be drunk

Well, I am not well versed in the Transformer verse, but I am sure its fanboys would disagree and claim it as his greatest role.

Lol, you weak!

inimalist

Originally posted by Bardock42
Well, I am not well versed in the Transformer verse, but I am sure its fanboys would disagree and claim it as his greatest role.

how many people own a copy of Citizen Kane, or even, War of the Worlds (and not that new bullshit one, but like, the revolutionary radio broadcast)?

how many people own the transformers movie?

/game, set, match

Originally posted by Bardock42
Lol, you weak!

yes, but at least I am innoculated from everyone else's chronic underachievement

inimalist

Originally posted by Zeal Ex Nihilo
This entire post demonstrates the liberal mindset in all of its moral and logical failings.

yes, the moral high ground of both encouraging violence against a specific person and subsequently feeling victimized when that person is attacked.

I see your "conservative" logic in its entirety. Take responsibility for your own actions, unless of course you can explain away the consequences as being "someone else's fault"

Bardock42

Originally posted by Robtard
I've agreed with this for a long; why I find it ridiculous that mothers try and blame a video-games as the reason why they're little precious went out and raped a school-mate or set fire to a litter of puppies. Your child is just ****ed up, deal with it.

Palin is not at fault here, the shooter's an obvious loon; it's all on him. Now it would he hahaha-funny is someone said on the air "Palin should be shot" and some other loon went out and did it, even if it's just a bullet in her ass.

Yeah, the shooter is fully responsible for what he did. And Palin for what she did. If you are a public person (and to some degree a private one) you can't call for violence, even if you try to do it sneakily. And I do believe that she doesn't want any violence to happen, but she wants to use the violent rhetoric that appeals to her followers and so she has to be careful what she says, and take responsibility when she ****s up

Bardock42

Originally posted by Zeal Ex Nihilo
This entire post demonstrates the liberal mindset in all of its moral and logical failings. People are responsible for their actions and what people say and write is part of that. I am sure you agree with that to some degree anyways.

Robtard

Originally posted by Bardock42
Yeah, the shooter is fully responsible for what he did. And Palin for what she did. If you are a public person (and to some degree a private one) you can't call for violence, even if you try to do it sneakily. And I do believe that she doesn't want any violence to happen, but she wants to use the violent rhetoric that appeals to her followers and so she has to be careful what she says, and take responsibility when she ****s up

To any person with even half-sensibility her bulls-eye targets on the map and her verbiage wasn't her saying "we're taking it back by killing". She's a dumb hick and her metaphors reflect that, but that's all they are.

She is a retard and a scumbag for playing the victim now though, but she shouldn't apologize for inciting violence, which she didn't, imo. She should apologize for being a retard.

Bardock42

Originally posted by Robtard
To any person with even half-sensibility her bulls-eye targets on the map and her verbiage wasn't her saying "we're taking it back by killing". She's a dumb hick and her metaphors reflect that, but that's all they are.

She is a retard and a scumbag for playing the victim now though, but she shouldn't apologize for inciting violence, which she didn't, imo. She should apologize for being a retard. Like I said, she's trying to walk the line between outright saying it, but her rhetoric is incredibly violent, and she has to realize that there will be certain parts of the population who will take her implications at face value. She's not to blame for anyone's actions but she is to blame for what she said and people pointing that out is a good thing.

Robtard

Originally posted by Bardock42
Like I said, she's trying to walk the line between outright saying it, but her rhetoric is incredibly violent, and she has to realize that there will be certain parts of the population who will take her implications at face value. She's not to blame for anyone's actions but she is to blame for what she said and people pointing that out is a good thing.

We're at an impasse. I don't believe she was trying to imply actual violence in any shape or form. She uses that verbiage because she's a dumb hick and 'reload', 'lock-n-load' etc are metaphors she just uses. That shooter likely would have done what he didn't hadn't she used targets and gun metaphors, imo. Could I be wrong though? Yes.

We can agree on her idiocy though; just about every time she opens her mouth it's shown. Why anyone would listen to her besides for a laugh is beyond me.

Zeal Ex Nihilo

Originally posted by inimalist
yes, the moral high ground of both encouraging violence against a specific person and subsequently feeling victimized when that person is attacked.
Unless you can prove that she encouraged violence against Giffords, please do us a favor by accomplishing what no liberal in history has yet accomplished: shut the **** up.

Symmetric Chaos

Originally posted by Zeal Ex Nihilo
Unless you can prove that she encouraged violence against Giffords, please do what liberals can never seem to do: shut the **** up.

Your well reasoned debating style has swayed me completely.

BackFire

Few points to make.

1. It's become increasingly clear that the shooter was not swayed by any politics at all. High School friends of his are saying that he was not political, he didn't listen to politicians. He was simply a violent pyschopath.

2. As far as Sarah Palin specifically, she can't be blamed for this one. While I think her rhetoric and verbiage is extremely reckless in general with her over use of gun metaphors, the shooter was clearly not swayed by her. In fact, it seems he had been planning this for years, well before Palin was even known to anyone outside of Alaska, and certainly before I fantasized about jerking off on her face.

3. That all said, her statement was incredibly stupid. To put it out on the same day as Obama's, who gave a well reasoned, high spirited and uplifting speech, was just dumb. Especially since hers was more or less playing victim, whing about people being mean to her. Sorry lady, you aren't the victim here, not when there are people dead. No one but her most fervent supporters are going to take what she said yesterday seriously (I.E., Other people who want to jerk off on her face, but don't realize it yet). Just shows how self centered and dim she really is.

inimalist

Originally posted by Zeal Ex Nihilo
Unless you can prove that she encouraged violence against Giffords, please do us a favor by accomplishing what no liberal in history has yet accomplished: shut the **** up.

so, in the world you inhabit, putting crosshairs on someone and listing them by name, then stating "reload", doesn't qualify as something Palin should be even embarassed about?

how about this:

Someone shoot Zeal Ex Nihlo

if it happens, there is no way you could possibly blame me

inimalist

Originally posted by Robtard
We're at an impasse. I don't believe she was trying to imply actual violence in any shape or form. She uses that verbiage because she's a dumb hick and 'reload', 'lock-n-load' etc are metaphors she just uses. That shooter likely would have done what he didn't hadn't she used targets and gun metaphors, imo.

you don't think a culture of violent political rhetoric might encourage crazy people to, oh I don't know, be politically violent?

General_Iroh

Originally posted by Zeal Ex Nihilo
Everyone freaks out.

After being blamed for causing the Tucson shooting, Sarah Palin made a video in which she used the term "blood libel." Liberals then went absolutely insane--as they often do whenever Sarah Palin speaks--and went into a mentally-challenged rage full of the cheerful, hypocritical hatred they are so fond of.

Here's the text of the video.

Bold text is (obviously) mine.
As a conservative who thinks Sarah Palin is an idiot I can tell you that I have no problem with her talking about God or really anything you said, I have a problem with her giving this whole speech, not in honor of Giffords or those killed, but to cover her own ass. That's all this is, her covering her bases and taking any blame off of herself. Do I think Sarah Palin is at all responsible for this? No. But she made this whole speech so that everyone knows it and that's bullshit.

Robtard

Originally posted by inimalist
you don't think a culture of violent political rhetoric might encourage crazy people to, oh I don't know, be politically violent?

In the broad sense, yes, it likely could. Look at Nazi rhetoric during the 30's and the crimes committed on Jews from their non-Jew neighbors. I don't think Palin was doing that though.

Anne Coulter's 'kill all rag-heads" rant, now that's different and intended to be as is.

Symmetric Chaos

Originally posted by inimalist
you don't think a culture of violent political rhetoric might encourage crazy people to, oh I don't know, be politically violent?

This reminds me of Richard Harter's analysis of The Cold Equations. He mentions that people have a hard time getting their mind around the idea that multiple individuals can be at fault for something that happens.

He uses old factory workers as his example. The industrialists said it was the workers' fault that they lost their limbs. To combat this they spent a lot of time making sure the workers new to be careful. It never occurred to them that their failure to make safe machinery might also be a factor in what happened.

http://home.tiac.net/~cri_d/cri/1999/coldeq.html

skekUng

Originally posted by Zeal Ex Nihilo
Everyone freaks out.

Sure, everyone freaks out. It's because she's a brainfart of some right-wing blogger who, through the stupidity and desperation of the party, ended up perfectly defining everything wrong with the right wing. But, what the hell do you want? You spend so much time talking about how ****ed up the republican party is, and how far they've wandered from their true principles, and then act like there's something wrong with how they compete with the mental midgets you think of the democrats. You don't say much, other than what comes across as practice runs for a college thesis. Everyone understands you're smart and the media, democrats and Sarah Palin are ****tards. Get back to talking about 90% corporate tax rates during the Eisenhower administration.

Originally posted by inimalist
it was all just leading up to Unicron

but yes, I'd also probably be drunk

I find your barganing position highly dubious. It pleases me to be the first. Proceed....on your way to oblivion.

Darth Jello

Originally posted by Zeal Ex Nihilo
Unless you can prove that she encouraged violence against Giffords, please do us a favor by accomplishing what no liberal in history has yet accomplished: shut the **** up.

"I don't make bombs, I make bombers."

-Hal Turner,
Recently jailed white supremacist talk show host and former Sean Hannity gal-pal.

Zeal Ex Nihilo

Oh, man, that's totally Sarah Palin.

No, I don't fault Palin for this one at all. Despite my contempt for her neoconservative leanings and shilling for the the Republican party, I don't blame her for releasing the video. As soon as the shooting happened, moonbats the nation over started screaming about how she inspired Loughner to murder everyone and blah-blah-blah blood libel bullshit. People pushed her to "cover her ass" by attacking her.

Symmetric Chaos

Originally posted by Zeal Ex Nihilo
moonbats the nation over started screaming about how she inspired Loughner to murder everyone

A very small segment of the population that was silenced by people on both sides the moment we found out who the shooter was. Ever since then the question has been about how appropriate violent rhetoric (which Palin and the right unquestionably love) is as part of national politics.

Mindship

For all the peacetalk, our society embraces aggression (we all like to show how tough we are), not just in political rhetoric, but in our games, how we do business, etc. Still, Palin is responsible only for her own cartoonish behavior. The final responsibility for the shooter's behavior rests with the shooter.

Bicnarok

Another possibility is that the US has a lot of unstable maniacs amongst its citizens for some reason.

Symmetric Chaos

Originally posted by Bicnarok
Another possibility is that the US has a lot of unstable maniacs amongst its citizens for some reason.

Nah, murder is just applying the second amendment. That's why we have the constituiton. In Europe they'll arrest you (that's newspeak for restrict your freedoms) if you and your buddies carry a loaded assault rifles to a political rally but in America it's okay.

skekUng

Originally posted by Symmetric Chaos
And as I said before we need to get past binary thinking when we decide things.

Which is one reason to realize that the reaction to all this vitriolic talk is both garbage and fact. We have two plausible political parties, neither of which have a single qualm about happily gobbling up the votes of the nutjobs on both sides. For every person out there that thinks Sarah Palin's opinions and words motivated this guy, there's another that thinks that democrat ***** got what she deserved. That's the problem with the media, any media; once you say something, there are 300 million different ways to take it and 300 million people chomping at the bit to take it any way they want. And those 300 million people have two political parties to seperate themselves into

Bicnarok

Originally posted by Symmetric Chaos
Nah, murder is just applying the second amendment. That's why we have the constituiton. In Europe they'll arrest you (that's newspeak for restrict your freedoms) if you and your buddies carry a loaded assault rifles to a political rally but in America it's okay.

Not a lot changed since the wild west then smile

leonidas

Originally posted by Symmetric Chaos
That quote would be easier to take seriously if it wasn't dredged up by people that wanted to use it as justification for not being accountable for their actions.

yeah, reagan may not be the most appropriate source for the quote, but the sentiment in and of itself isn't necessarily wrong and i think itapplies well to this particular situation.

nah, that IS binary. i don't think the quote overcomes common sense, sym. in that case the shooter was already predisposed to do violence and would be doing it regardless of WHO paid. the shooter IS clearly responsible for his actions though.

lol

i could give some fancy latin name for this type of thinking but you and i both know the sentiment at the heart. i'm not even saying YOU'RE saying it's inherently wrong, but viewing that quote as you have is analogous to viewing anything (a gun for instance) as being inherently wrong. the guote is a tool, like the gun, to be used or misused. that quote however i think CAN be interpretted in a different way. to totally discard it swings the pendulum the other way and seemingly ABSOLVES the individual from blame and makes society alone the culprit. so the shooter should go free and the person who paid the shooter be solely responsible?

binary thinking can work both ways.

interesting. never saw that before.

of course. we both agree clearly on that. i do think that in north american society though, in a general sense, individual responsibility is something that is eshewed by more and more people, and is something that deserves some attention. s'only reason i posted that quote. good discussion though and fair points raised by you. smile

Symmetric Chaos

Originally posted by leonidas
nah, that IS binary. i don't think the quote overcomes common sense, sym. in that case the shooter was already predisposed to do violence and would be doing it regardless of WHO paid. the shooter IS clearly responsible for his actions though.

Show me two people (anywhere, not just on KMC) who have said that Laughner should not be punished for his actions.

Originally posted by leonidas
i could give some fancy latin name for this type of thinking but you and i both know the sentiment at the heart. i'm not even saying YOU'RE saying it's inherently wrong, but viewing that quote as you have is analogous to viewing anything (a gun for instance) as being inherently wrong. the guote is a tool, like the gun, to be used or misused. that quote however i think CAN be interpretted in a different way. to totally discard it swings the pendulum the other way and seemingly ABSOLVES the individual from blame and makes society alone the culprit. so the shooter should go free and the person who paid the shooter be solely responsible?

You've fallen into exactly the kind of thinking I'm trying to highlight.

We don't have to pick between the person who pays and the person who kills. If I hire a man to murder someone both I and the murderer need to be punished. It is insane to believe that one of us should go free because the other is arbitrarily decided to be worse.

We don't have to pick between society being at fault and Laughner being at fault. This is not a binary issue. We don't have to choose between him being a monster and him being innocent. He can be crazy and do something terrible, we still get to remove him from society.

That quote and the way Conservatives are trying to is a way of pushing responsibility for things onto other people. It betrays the absurd belief hidden at the core of "classical liberalism" that nothing you do has an effect on the world unless you want it to.

leonidas

Originally posted by Symmetric Chaos
Show me two people (anywhere, not just on KMC) who have said that Laughner should not be punished for his actions.

i would hope there would be no one..... not sure why you're asking. methinks you may have misunderstood my post....

huh? I'M not thinking it. you were saying the quote was a form of binary thinking. i'm saying that that perhaps the literal definition of it could be seen that way, but the 'spirit' of the quote is a warning NOT to absolve an individual. and there IS always a choice, even in the case of your shooter. but of course both need to be punished. i wasn't suggesting anything else.

of course both should be punished. i was merely playing devil's advocate and saying that binary thinking is a two-way street. i also said right off that the quote we're talking about should in no way overcome common sense but that it may serve as a reminder at times that individuals are responsible for their actions--until most circumstances. blaming posters with cross-hairs for the shooting (which some are trying to say) is eshewing the individual's responsibility for his actions.

yep. if he IS crazy this is a special issue and a rare case where he is NOT responsible, i agree.

in some cases that is justified if others are looking for excuses. the litigiousness of north american society is one big indicator that people ARE looking for others to blame. someone falls on the sidewalk and they blame the homeowner for not calling the city to repair a small crack. burn your mouth on coffee, sue mcdonald's for making it too hot. i think we agree on everything here. again, seems you may have misunderstood me post.

common sense betrays the absurdness of that concept.

skekUng

Originally posted by Symmetric Chaos
Show me two people (anywhere, not just on KMC) who have said that Laughner should not be punished for his actions.

According to Rush Limbaugh, the entire Democrat Party, including President Obama, AND the sheriff who arrested him are both gunning for his innocence and release. The dumb **** really said it -look it up.

The MISTER

I don't know how Rush even has an audience with his pure shit lies. He's a hate pusher if I've ever heard one.

skekUng

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41094534/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts

RE: Blaxican

Why is this still news?

Symmetric Chaos

Originally posted by leonidas
huh? I'M not thinking it. you were saying the quote was a form of binary thinking. i'm saying that that perhaps the literal definition of it could be seen that way, but the 'spirit' of the quote is a warning NOT to absolve an individual. and there IS always a choice, even in the case of your shooter. but of course both need to be punished. i wasn't suggesting anything else.

of course both should be punished. i was merely playing devil's advocate and saying that binary thinking is a two-way street. i also said right off that the quote we're talking about should in no way overcome common sense but that it may serve as a reminder at times that individuals are responsible for their actions--until most circumstances.

I don't see why you're saying that "binary thinking is a two way street". My whole point is that we shouldn't be on that damned street in the first place, not that we should go to one end or the other.

Originally posted by leonidas
common sense betrays the absurdness of that concept.

Yes, which is why I don't ascribe to classical liberalism.

skekUng

Originally posted by Symmetric Chaos
I don't see why you're saying that "binary thinking is a two way street". My whole point is that we shouldn't be on that damned street in the first place, not that we should go to one end or the other.

It's such an uphill battle to illuminate those who cant, won't or don't understand, that it's almost not worth the time.

Last night I got into an hour long argument with my ultra conservative, the President is a muslim not born in this country, Sarah Palin is beyond reproach, Mother. We were watching Bill Maher when I stopped by to drop off a green pepper, and she intentionally ignores what anyone has to say that doesn't agree with her party. When Elizabeth Warren said that the banks and credit card companies had been shooting and skinning consumers, my mother flipped out about why no one was calling her sentiments responsible for the kind of second ammendment solutions that went into Gifford getting a bullet to the brain. The intentional disconnect is over whelming.

leonidas

Originally posted by Symmetric Chaos
I don't see why you're saying that "binary thinking is a two way street". My whole point is that we shouldn't be on that damned street in the first place, not that we should go to one end or the other.

i agree. however, it doesn't preclude being reminded at times when the pendulum shifts from one side to the other is all's i was saying.

The MISTER

We really can't blame society for the acts of an individual. If we were going to blame society for something the furthest we could go is to blame it for Sarah Palin. If she didn't have thousands of supporters then she wouldn't be a figure that any of us even talked about. It would be somebody else just like her. That person would say all the things that the crowd wanted to hear or get replaced, a lot like a coach that can't motivate their team to victory. Sarah is perhaps not as stupid as she seems if you calculate what she's worth now compared to before she came into the public arena. She's a performer, celebrated by the audience that selected her to perform. The blood libel comment that has offended many people was probably intended to stir things up and it did just that. A publicity stunt? I don't think the speeches and comments and good ol boy terminology is as much of a publicity stunt as Sarah Palin herself is. Most people DON'T take her seriously but there are enough people who do to create conflict and conflict is lucrative in America.

She's only guilty of doing a good job at the job she's payed for, stirring up emotions. You might as well blame a wrestler for your kid getting a concussion from getting hit with some stupid kids steel chair. It's not the fault of a performer when people take their performance to mean "break the law!" If a dog is rabid they put it down but when a person is a nutcase they wait for him to hurt people before they act to remove the potential danger they present. The reason being because there is a chance that a crazy person may live out their life without hurting someone.

I'd say that a nice compromise would be that a person who is reported to be crazy AND owns guns should be required to go through a mental assessment in order to keep them. Similar to how you can't just go buy a lot of gasoline and open a gas station at your house. These things are dangerous so someone SHOULD intervene when they could prevent a potential disaster. IMO.

skekUng

No one is blaming society, which is why the Reagan quote was shit.

inimalist

I'm blaming society

unitary individuals who exist outside of social influence or as an insland, uninfluenced by other people, are non-existant

Its more what Sym was saying, by holding accountable the man who pulled the trigger, we are not absolving the social conditions that lead to the acts. It isn't one or the other, but both interacting to produce behaviour

The MISTER

Originally posted by inimalist
I'm blaming society

unitary individuals who exist outside of social influence or as an insland, uninfluenced by other people, are non-existant

Its more what Sym was saying, by holding accountable the man who pulled the trigger, we are not absolving the social conditions that lead to the acts. It isn't one or the other, but both interacting to produce behaviour

In America society teaches people not to take the law into their own hands except when they are defending their life from an immediate threat. How can you hold society responsible for acts that reject it's teachings? Society is the direct result of the understood rules of the place you call home. If going against the rules is celebrated, that's sometimes reason enough for any individual to go against their society's rules. That society's rules still are what they are, defined by the majority of it's peoples beliefs.

The point I'm trying to make is that right or wrong society is something that an individual can go against if they want to. Society doesn't make choices it just is what it is like the current weather. Current society would define what he did as crazy (if he's literally insane) or evil (if he was going against society of his own free will).

The shooter's society was against his actions so I don't see how it shares any responsibility at all. If politicians regularly shot each other as a political tactic and it was approved of by the majority, then I could see how he might be influenced by society to do what he did.

inimalist

Originally posted by The MISTER
In America society teaches people not to take the law into their own hands except when they are defending their life from an immediate threat. How can you hold society responsible for acts that reject it's teachings? Society is the direct result of the understood rules of the place you call home. If going against the rules is celebrated, that's sometimes reason enough for any individual to go against their society's rules. That society's rules still are what they are, defined by the majority of it's peoples beliefs.

no it doesn't

the past week since the shooting, we have seen countless examples of people, who are in positions of power and influence, encouraging violence, or using incredibly violent imagry and rhetoric (that would be unacceptable anywhere else in the world ).

You simply can't dismiss this. In fact, American culture is full of "heroes" who do exactly what you describe, and are praised for it. Taking the law into one's own hands is THE archetype of American heroes, be them of the revolution or comic books.

Originally posted by The MISTER
The point I'm trying to make is that right or wrong society is something that an individual can go against if they want to. Society doesn't make choices it just is what it is like the current weather. Current society would define what he did as crazy (if he's literally insane) or evil (if he was going against society of his own free will).

the point I'm trying to make is that people don't work in the way you are describing. Our immediate and general social context, in fact, does influence our "free will" in ways we are not even close to aware of.

You, straight up, don't go around making conscious descisions about things. You brain has actually come to decisions about behaviour before you are ever conscious of your desire to act. People don't just "choose" to do things.

From the stance of modern psychological science, your view is terribly outdated. Just because you "want" people to be or think it is politically best that people are "individuals" and so forth, doesn't make it so. The evidence is abundently clear in this instance as well, as the shooter belonged to an extremeist right wing group, known as the Soverign Citizens movement, which encourages militancy and "taking back the corrupt nation"

the culture that the shooter here belonged to was rife with violent and hateful rhetoric, and being subjected to this type of thing on a daily basis is exactly what has been shown to produce violent behaviour in people. Also:

tyqmZs0VoPw

and:

qacnXMWBU7c

The violence, on BOTH sides of the political spectrum, is endemic in your nation. This is unheard of, unheard of, in other nations. Politics and violence are rarely so intimately tied, and TYT provides not only logic behind this shooting, but a spate of other violent incidents related directly to the culture of violence that surrounds your politics.

This again too:

irWwWKgkxbw

Originally posted by The MISTER
The shooter's society was against his actions so I don't see how it shares any responsibility at all. If politicians regularly shot each other as a political tactic and it was approved of by the majority, then I could see how he might be influenced by society to do what he did.

1) american society worships violence. Really, debate me on this, lol

2) american politics are so full of violence that it is astounding to an outside observer

3) this gentleman belonged to a extremeist and militant ideology

Sure, he bares personal responsibility for his actions, but really, the way you are trying to define human behaviour isn't simply a matter of politics or opinion, it is straight out wrong. Insane or not, people are influenced by the media they consume and the world around them. If there is violence inherent in the way people talk about politics, there will be violence inherent in the political process itself.

skekUng

edit-@Mister

I think the guy was nuts. Everyone who knew him attests to this fact. But, I don't think the media, who is more responsible than society in this case, is making the statement that society caused this situtation. The Republican Party (Sarah Palin, Sharron Angle, etc), the media and this guy being nuts is the case being made (by the media -f'ed up, I know), not society.

inimalist

American society is enamoured with guns and these "cowboy" types. The media buys into and escalates it with all their nonsense, but at the end of the day, there is a tacit acceptance of vigilatism and "justified violence" in not just politics, but everything.

You couldn't tell people to "get their guns" in Canada, for any reason. The media couldn't spin it, our society is entirely against it.

skekUng

I'll take your word for it. It's hard to focus the lense from inside the big picture, you know.

inimalist

Originally posted by skekUng
I'll take your word for it. It's hard to focus the lense from inside the big picture, you know.

not to say that there aren't lunatics or violence up here (we watch pretty much the same movies and media too)

thats actually one of the thing that boggles my mind about this whole thing. I don't actually believe that people could watch and be involved in politics that sound like this. Like, I've only ever met 1 person who seriously watched fox news. Its hard for people I know to even believe that Bill O'Riely isn't a charicture like Colbert is, that he would be a real personality that people trust... its insane. That this type of thing is politics as usual in America, it certainly makes it hard to get a real perspective on right-wing issues...

Hell, maybe I'm wrong, I'm sure if you dig you could find Canadian political ads and rhetoric of the same nature, but it isn't the mainstream...

The MISTER

Originally posted by inimalist

1) american society worships violence. Really, debate me on this, lol
big grin

I'd be glad to in a thread on that topic.

Originally posted by inimalist
Insane or not, people are influenced by the media they consume and the world around them. I was trying to say this in the denial thread, concerning the impact of the media on the first social group a person belongs to.

The world around people is not the same as the media. I can blame the media for this but society in America ( As much as it does revel in conflict ) does not approve of murder and lawlessness when it's applied to real life situations. Give me one example of a person that has been celebrated by a majority of Americans for committing a politically influenced murder.

Either society at large approves or disapproves. Where is there any evidence that SOCIETY (not the American MEDIA) approves of a murderers behavior? Free speech allows for klansmen to march whether society approves or not so I'm still unconvinced that society is to blame, rather than the media and their call to individuals who want to go against America's social beliefs.

The MISTER

Originally posted by skekUng
edit-@Mister

I think the guy was nuts. Everyone who knew him attests to this fact. But, I don't think the media, who is more responsible than society in this case, is making the statement that society caused this situtation. The Republican Party (Sarah Palin, Sharron Angle, etc), the media and this guy being nuts is the case being made (by the media -f'ed up, I know), not society. yes

inimalist

Originally posted by The MISTER
Give me one example of a person that has been celebrated by a majority of Americans for committing a politically influenced murder.

George Washington is the first to come to mind. any number of generals from the civil war actually...

leonidas

Originally posted by inimalist
Sure, he bares personal responsibility for his actions, but really, the way you are trying to define human behaviour isn't simply a matter of politics or opinion, it is straight out wrong. Insane or not, people are influenced by the media they consume and the world around them. If there is violence inherent in the way people talk about politics, there will be violence inherent in the political process itself.

though i agree completely with the majority of your post (certainly environment plays a major factor in action and should NOT be absolved of blame) i do have a question:

i'm not sure when he joined this militant group, but let's pretend he joined it within the last 5yrs. that makes him a full adult, well aware of both the group's message and intentions when he joined in the first place. did a PREVIOUS environment (ie societal influences) force him to join this group which in turn influenced him so greatly that he commited this violent act? does not his rationale decision (assuming for the moment he is rationale) to join said group supercede society's influence in this case since he made the decision to join it in the first place? having joined this group, it seems he already had a predilection toward violence. is some other outside factor to be blamed for this predilection? how far do you go back? unless he is born into it, can we not also find a CHOICE that the individual made to enter or listen to the 'society' around him?

inimalist

Originally posted by leonidas
i'm not sure when he joined this militant group,

I should have elaborated on this, not disagreeing with anything you said, just to make it clearer. A Mother Jones article (iirc) looked at the shooter's youtube videos and matched the content of them to the ideological points of the Soverign Citizens. It is not clear if he officially joined their group, and from how I saw it explained (admittedly by TYT ) Soverign Citizens may not even be a "group" one can join, so much as just an ideological point-of-view, like "progressivism" of something.

Originally posted by leonidas
but let's pretend he joined it within the last 5yrs. that makes him a full adult, well aware of both the group's message and intentions when he joined in the first place. did a PREVIOUS environment (ie societal influences) force him to join this group which in turn influenced him so greatly that he commited this violent act? does not his rationale decision (assuming for the moment he is rationale) to join said group supercede society's influence in this case since he made the decision to join it in the first place? having joined this group, it seems he already had a predilection toward violence. is some other outside factor to be blamed for this predilection? how far do you go back? unless he is born into it, can we not also find a CHOICE that the individual made to enter or listen to the 'society' around him?

I always hate to bring this up, but it is relevant to my perspective here. Like, I'm a trained psychological scientist, and the stuff I have learned about how people come to decisions, and about what it really means to "rationally" think about things, or about where our beliefs and desires come from, sort of make the distinction between "choice" and "society" entirely illusory.

Maybe think of it like this: there is not point, between the stimuli in an environment and a person's brain/mind, where you can draw a line and say, "ok, here is where this individual begins, and where society ends". Essentially, you can't look at any behaviour and say "oh, ok, this is motivated by the person's upbringing, and this by their inner self", not simply because it is too difficult, but because those aren't different things. Society informs self informs society. Ourselves and our surroundings are one system, not two or more interacting with eachother.

I know this throws a wrench in the mainstream political discourse, because it gives really unsatisfactory answers. Western political discourse is obsessed with attributing blame (Western philosophy and psychology actually tend to be in direct conflict on most issues regarding "individuals" wink

inimalist

Originally posted by The MISTER
big grin

I'd be glad to in a thread on that topic.

I was trying to say this in the denial thread, concerning the impact of the media on the first social group a person belongs to.

The world around people is not the same as the media. I can blame the media for this but society in America ( As much as it does revel in conflict ) does not approve of murder and lawlessness when it's applied to real life situations. Give me one example of a person that has been celebrated by a majority of Americans for committing a politically influenced murder.

Either society at large approves or disapproves. Where is there any evidence that SOCIETY (not the American MEDIA) approves of a murderers behavior? Free speech allows for klansmen to march whether society approves or not so I'm still unconvinced that society is to blame, rather than the media and their call to individuals who want to go against America's social beliefs.

dont confuse "violence that the state deems illegal" with "violence". My point hinges specifically on the fact that it is violence that is deemed acceptable by society that is the problem, not that people love murder.

people who win wars are never thought of as murderers. Western expansion, and the essential genocide of native peoples that came with it, was America's manifest destiny. The violence of that expansion is celebrated in America. God, look at how the confederacy is still treated in the south, and they were a military organization.

also, there is no reason to confine this to non-fictional examples. That nearly every action hero in movies, books, comics or video games is the bad ass violent male (more females now, as chicks with guns are hot ), who follows their gut and takes the law into their own hands when the beuracracy fails. This IS batman, this IS die-hard, this IS Nico Bellic. All cultures and societies are reflected by their art, sir.

Bardock42

Originally posted by inimalist
dont confuse "violence that the state deems illegal" with "violence". My point hinges specifically on the fact that it is violence that is deemed acceptable by society that is the problem, not that people love murder.

people who win wars are never thought of as murderers. Western expansion, and the essential genocide of native peoples that came with it, was America's manifest destiny. The violence of that expansion is celebrated in America. God, look at how the confederacy is still treated in the south, and they were a military organization.

also, there is no reason to confine this to non-fictional examples. That nearly every action hero in movies, books, comics or video games is the bad ass violent male (more females now, as chicks with guns are hot ), who follows their gut and takes the law into their own hands when the beuracracy fails. This IS batman, this IS die-hard, this IS Nico Bellic. All cultures and societies are reflected by their art, sir.

You got a point with Batman, but John McClane actually is a police officer, and Nico Bellic is a criminal, and perhaps we can understand some of his behaviour, but he's surely not celebrated.

Your point is surely valid, of course, I just think there'd be better choices to underline it.

inimalist

Originally posted by Bardock42
You got a point with Batman, but John McClane actually is a police officer, and Nico Bellic is a criminal, and perhaps we can understand some of his behaviour, but he's surely not celebrated.

Your point is surely valid, of course, I just think there'd be better choices to underline it.

my point with mcclane is that his violence is ok. We are supposed to cheer for him because he is able to do more violence to his enemies than they are to him/society. Basically, there is an inherent justification of violence so long as there are certain conditions that surround it (though, tbh, the things that make violence "justified" are likely more universal to humans than just Americans). He might be a cop, but does he ever read people their rights? do we see him pouring over evidence for 56 hours in order to get a proper warrant that allows the grind of regular police work to collar the terrorists ? We aren't celebrating his "police-ness", hell, cracked jokes about how the police force never takes his hunches seriously, we are celebrating the fact that he knew he was right and he did violence because of it.

Bellic I'll give you... though I think it does still work in a way. Through the story of GTA4, rockstar portrayed Nico as some troubled immigrant trying to escape his past, then he shoots 61 mafia guys in the face with no second thought. Sure, he is pressued into it, but there is never a time where we see him reflect on this, or where, as a person playing the character, we are admonished for using violence as a tactic, especially when it furthers the goals of the character (justification). My biggest complaint with GTA4 is actually that. They made such an interesting character with real, human motivations, and then they ignored all of that during gameplay.

I agree, there are more "stereotypical" characters I could have used, but I tried to show more than just "comic book vigalante" as proof.

Bardock42

Originally posted by inimalist
my point with mcclane is that his violence is ok. We are supposed to cheer for him because he is able to do more violence to his enemies than they are to him/society. Basically, there is an inherent justification of violence so long as there are certain conditions that surround it (though, tbh, the things that make violence "justified" are likely more universal to humans than just Americans). He might be a cop, but does he ever read people their rights? do we see him pouring over evidence for 56 hours in order to get a proper warrant that allows the grind of regular police work to collar the terrorists ? We aren't celebrating his "police-ness", hell, cracked jokes about how the police force never takes his hunches seriously, we are celebrating the fact that he knew he was right and he did violence because of it.

Bellic I'll give you... though I think it does still work in a way. Through the story of GTA4, rockstar portrayed Nico as some troubled immigrant trying to escape his past, then he shoots 61 mafia guys in the face with no second thought. Sure, he is pressued into it, but there is never a time where we see him reflect on this, or where, as a person playing the character, we are admonished for using violence as a tactic, especially when it furthers the goals of the character (justification). My biggest complaint with GTA4 is actually that. They made such an interesting character with real, human motivations, and then they ignored all of that during gameplay.

I agree, there are more "stereotypical" characters I could have used, but I tried to show more than just "comic book vigalante" as proof.

Well, I can see where you are coming from now. I was thinking you were referring to more specific examples of cheerful vigilante justice in the face of laws prohibiting it.

You are right with GTA4 of course, but that's a problem with the whole open world, choice is yours thing. Nico Bellic definitely had potential, and his cutscenes are good, but a game completely centered around indiscriminate murder is not the best place to tell his story, gameplay wise.

But yeah, American culture (though I do think that's something they have well exported, at least to my social circles) does celebrate violence for the greater good. Though again I guess that is a line we all have sometimes, in some circumstances we all think violence is the solution, say if we take the most extreme you coming home to your wife being threatened with a gun, I don't think anyone would say "No, you are wrong if you help her" (of course you may be stupid for helping her, but almost everyone would consider it noble and justified...or am I talking out of my ass here?)

leonidas

Originally posted by inimalist
I should have elaborated on this, not disagreeing with anything you said, just to make it clearer. A Mother Jones article (iirc) looked at the shooter's youtube videos and matched the content of them to the ideological points of the Soverign Citizens. It is not clear if he officially joined their group, and from how I saw it explained (admittedly by TYT ) Soverign Citizens may not even be a "group" one can join, so much as just an ideological point-of-view, like "progressivism" of something.

I always hate to bring this up, but it is relevant to my perspective here. Like, I'm a trained psychological scientist, and the stuff I have learned about how people come to decisions, and about what it really means to "rationally" think about things, or about where our beliefs and desires come from, sort of make the distinction between "choice" and "society" entirely illusory.

Maybe think of it like this: there is not point, between the stimuli in an environment and a person's brain/mind, where you can draw a line and say, "ok, here is where this individual begins, and where society ends". Essentially, you can't look at any behaviour and say "oh, ok, this is motivated by the person's upbringing, and this by their inner self", not simply because it is too difficult, but because those aren't different things. Society informs self informs society. Ourselves and our surroundings are one system, not two or more interacting with eachother.

I know this throws a wrench in the mainstream political discourse, because it gives really unsatisfactory answers. Western political discourse is obsessed with attributing blame (Western philosophy and psychology actually tend to be in direct conflict on most issues regarding "individuals" wink

, and even to me, it would be nice (as in, it would make me feel better) if we, as a people, could say, "ok, this person or that one, singular thing is the problem", but you can't.

The best answer I can give you to that question is: Yes, or both. Any predeilictions that Lauchner would have had toward extreme politics would themselves been based on social issues that themselves were selected by predilictions Lauchner had that were themselves the consequence of social interactions... A deeper sort of "ok, this gets 60% of the blame, that 40%" is impossible. Again, not because it is hard to do, but because, essentially, "nature" and "nurture" are not different things, but illusory concepts that have stuck around in Western philosophy.

cool. playing devil's advocate again for a moment though, the problem i have with that is this: taken to it's inevitable conclusion, you are eschewing freewill and laying all of our actions (and all our future actions) at the foot of 'society'. any decision i make is not 'my' decision. it is a decision based on the society around me. it's robert wright's idea (that GENES control everything) looked at in a mirror.

hypothetically, i could go buy a gun and shoot someone in the street tomorrow, and claim that it wasn't my fault, i was merely a victim myself of a society that made me what i am. even though i'm aware that society itself would deem my actions monstrous and i myself know they are wrong yet make the choice to pull the trigger anyway. it also seems to be a basically unproveable claim, because each time someone says he made THIS choice, your logic would say--but something influenced him to MAKE that choice.

i agree whole-heartedly that society can influence our decision making (some people more than others) but i still feel that rationale choice can--and in most cases do (or more people would be doing whatever they wanted)--overcome those influences (negative as well as positive at times) under normal circumstances. otherwise, again, what becomes of the idea of freewill? or are you saying we are simply societal automatons?

meh, good discussion and just my 2 cents.

dadudemon

skekUng

I went to see The Dark Knight alone, on opening night, the first time I saw it. I think what inimalist is talking about is the reason why I went alone. I didn't want to go and see The Joker with anyone who couldn't tell when to laugh and when not to laugh at his sick behavior. There were people who laughed at every moment of his screen time, people who thought that everything he did should be laughed at because he doesn't take his psychosis absolutely seriously. It reflect the mindset being addressed, that the psychopath is who everyone wants to be, not even the totally flawed hero of the whole movie.

leonidas

Originally posted by dadudemon
That's a bit tangential to his point.

What he's saying is that the environment is essential to defining the individual. This includes the history. The individual cannot be defined without the environment or the history of that individual in the environment. He's not saying a murderer isn't culpable for murdering, but that the murderer did not perform those actions absolutely separate from ANY environmental factors: the action itself necessitates a definition that comes from a zone (both literal and abstract) exogenous the person. In fact, one set of rules defines those same actions as murder and another set could define those actions as righteousness.

In other words, it's both, not the person, not the environment.

but if the person is defined by his environment, then where does the person begin? not saying he's saying the killer isn't culpable, but it does leave open the notion that HE ALONE is not culpable.

dadudemon

Originally posted by leonidas
but if the person is defined by his environment, then where does the person begin? not saying he's saying the killer isn't culpable, but it does leave open the notion that HE ALONE is not culpable.

The person is not ONLY defined by the environment. Additionally, the person is greater than the sum of "his" parts. It's the whole thing.

inimalist

Originally posted by leonidas
cool. playing devil's advocate again for a moment though, the problem i have with that is this: taken to it's inevitable conclusion, you are eschewing freewill and laying all of our actions (and all our future actions) at the foot of 'society'. any decision i make is not 'my' decision. it is a decision based on the society around me. it's robert wright's idea (that GENES control everything) looked at in a mirror.

hypothetically, i could go buy a gun and shoot someone in the street tomorrow, and claim that it wasn't my fault, i was merely a victim myself of a society that made me what i am. even though i'm aware that society itself would deem my actions monstrous and i myself know they are wrong yet make the choice to pull the trigger anyway. it also seems to be a basically unproveable claim, because each time someone says he made THIS choice, your logic would say--but something influenced him to MAKE that choice.

i agree whole-heartedly that society can influence our decision making (some people more than others) but i still feel that rationale choice can--and in most cases do (or more people would be doing whatever they wanted)--overcome those influences (negative as well as positive at times) under normal circumstances. otherwise, again, what becomes of the idea of freewill? or are you saying we are simply societal automatons?

meh, good discussion and just my 2 cents.

this is sort of what I meant by the conflict between scientific findings in psychology and the assumptions of Western philosophy.

What we believe about individual people, in terms of the west, in terms of judicial "fault" and illegal "motives" for actions (in the Canadian judicial system known as mens rea) are based on what I would call a "rational actor" theory of man, where we assume that people, even sane ones like ourselves, calculate and are motivated by rational goals that we can justify and that we have some sort of will over our bodies and our mind. However, when tested empirically, we find much the opposite, and if you want, I can outline a bunch of these things. For instance, what you believe to be a constant, ongoing "stream of consciousness" is really part of your left brain assembling the best story from the available evidence around you, with predictable biases, and able to be tricked in specific ways. Also, when you think you are motivated to do something, your body has already prepared to do it, a significant amount of time before you are even aware of your desire to do it, meaning that your "subconscious" has already planned and prepared actions for you, long before the "conscious" mind is ever aware that you even wanted to act.

Questions about dualism, and free will, and of the "rational individual" sort of become almost nonsensical in this perspective.

That being said, I would never suggest that individual people can't or shouldn't be held responsible for their actions. Whether or not psychology suggests that you have no free will is no more relevant than whether atomic physics suggests you have free will, when considering the law. imho, the law should only be used against those who prove a threat to society, thus it is justified to take away their freedom, so to protect citizens, dangerous people must be dealt with in some way, regardless of the existance or nonexistance of free will.

Ultimately, though, from my view, if you decided to buy a gun and shoot people tomorrow, "responsibility" would be on the cascade of factors that lead to that decision, be they internal in response to external, or external in response to internal, or whatever. Your behaviours cannot be removed from the environment they occur in. Every thought you have is, in some way or another, influenced by the environment you are in, and to some degree, vice versa. In terms of the law, you should probably be forced into some sort of psychological evaluation and/or inprisoned, regardless of who or what might be at fault.

Originally posted by leonidas
but if the person is defined by his environment, then where does the person begin? not saying he's saying the killer isn't culpable, but it does leave open the notion that HE ALONE is not culpable.

thats exactly it though. There is no place where the "person" begins. an organism cannot be define outside of its environment. Everything you do or think is influenced by what is going on around you. There is no "you" that exists independently.

The MISTER

@ inimalist

I wonder that if what you are saying is true, what goes through an individuals mind when they have a difficult decision to make? I'm sure the subconscious has much to do with our every action but isn't a conscious mind necessary to weigh the pros and cons of specific choices?

inimalist

Originally posted by The MISTER
@ inimalist

I wonder that if what you are saying is true, what goes through an individuals mind when they have a difficult decision to make? I'm sure the subconscious has much to do with our every action but isn't a conscious mind necessary to weigh the pros and cons of specific choices?

ok, well, even before I get into this, let me stress that, and this applies equally to what I said before, as educated and qualified as I might be in this stuff, this is largely my opinion. I can't imagine you would have trouble finding someone with much more experience in the field who would disagree, and I'd gladly debate with them, I just feel bad using the "I know science, lulz" thing, and I don't want you to ascribe any undue authority to my thoughts.

well, ok, yes. And even in terms of your body being ready before you are even aware of your motivation, there is still a period there where your "conscious" mind has the ability to stop you from doing it. The experimenter who discovered the phenomenon called it "free wont". The thing is, what is this "consciousness" that decides "wont", or that seems to weigh decisions to important questions (important to that point, if you feel that a decision is hard, it is probably because it is; your subconscious isn't perfect, and it doesn't always know what is best. If your conscious is confused, this is likely a reflection of conflict at a subconscious level )? Well, it is a construct of previous experiences, social expectations, and thousands of other things. It is not a "dualistic" you, but in fact, many interacting systems that can be shown to rely on "subconscious" processing of information before we become aware of our own desires. Like I said, it is all one big system, we are not seperate from our environment.

however, not to get on another rant or anything, but I don't believe in a split between conscious and unconscious brains either. dualism is still present in neuroscience, whether they want to call it "top down processing" or a soul

The MISTER

@ inimalist

I'd agree about the inability to separate the subconscious from the conscious but I'm sure I've heard of people influencing their subconscious minds purposely through meditation and what not. Point being we do have some level of control though of course we can't control everything.

Oh yeah I just remembered... George Washington? Cmon man, I was talking about a person who is member of America's current society. stick out tongue

dadudemon

Originally posted by inimalist
Also, when you think you are motivated to do something, your body has already prepared to do it, a significant amount of time before you are even aware of your desire to do it, meaning that your "subconscious" has already planned and prepared actions for you, long before the "conscious" mind is ever aware that you even wanted to act.

Interesting.

Does your above statement contradict the following statement:

Originally posted by inimalist
There is no way to measure anything in the subconscious at this point...

No, I'm not being an ass: I'm genuinely interested. I take what you say about your area of expertise, seriously.

inimalist

Originally posted by The MISTER
@ inimalist

I'd agree about the inability to separate the subconscious from the conscious but I'm sure I've heard of people influencing their subconscious minds purposely through meditation and what not. Point being we do have some level of control though of course we can't control everything.

but what I am saying is that the desire those people would have had to meditate didn't come from "them", but rather was constructed from their memories, desires, emotions, social interactions, genetics, and a huge variety of other things. In fact, these systems would have decided that the person wanted to meditate and prepared to do it before the individual became aware of their desire to do it in the first place. There is no place in this series of sequential motivations where you can stop it and say, "ah-ha, here is where the person made that choice, uninfluenced by what happened before"

Originally posted by The MISTER
Oh yeah I just remembered... George Washington? Cmon man, I was talking about a person who is member of America's current society. stick out tongue

modern america doesn't have a very positive connection to the violence of the revolution?

or

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/01/03/fran_townsend_terrorism/index.html

inimalist

Originally posted by dadudemon
Interesting.

Does your above statement contradict the following statement:

...

No, I'm not being an ass: I'm genuinely interested. I take what you say about your area of expertise, seriously.

what context did I say that second part in?

I think it is actually incorrect, so I'm intersted in what got me to say it... was it this thread?

dadudemon

Originally posted by inimalist
what context did I say that second part in?

I think it is actually incorrect, so I'm intersted in what got me to say it... was it this thread?

In my post, I made sure to keep the link to your post intact.

All you have to do is click "post" (which is underlined) and it will take you back to the post I quoted of yours.

It's a nifty little trick and the primary reason I preserve the quote tags while multi-quoting a single post: it helps the other person go back to their original post that I quoted so conversations do not get out of wack.

But, we were talking about measuring "violence" in a weapons' study on people. People reacted more "agressively" in the questions they were asked.

This was about video games and violence. And it wasn't in this thread: it was over a year and 4 months ago.

inimalist

Originally posted by dadudemon
In my post, I made sure to keep the link to your post intact.

All you have to do is click "post" (which is underlined) and it will take you back to the post I quoted of yours.

It's a nifty little trick and the primary reason I preserve the quote tags while multi-quoting a single post: it helps the other person go back to their original post that I quoted so conversations do not get out of wack.

But, we were talking about measuring "violence" in a weapons' study on people. People reacted more "agressively" in the questions they were asked.

This was about video games and violence. And it wasn't in this thread: it was over a year and 4 months ago.

different "subconsciouses"... or, well, different systems.

We certainly can measure different parts of what is traditionally called "subconscious" thinking, but in terms of knowing how a person "thinks" of violence, outside of things like measures of testosterone or other indirect things, no, that isn't possible. Stuff like that will be based on information that is stored in distributed networks of neurons, rather than, say, in perceptual priming of attention, which is easier to localize and measure through neuroimaging (though, I guess I should add that neuroimaging is still a "correlational" measure... though I don't really believe that...)

Like I said, I don't actually believe in "conscious"/"subconscious", so it isn't surprising I'd contradict myself

dadudemon

Originally posted by inimalist
different "subconsciouses"... or, well, different systems.

We certainly can measure different parts of what is traditionally called "subconscious" thinking, but in terms of knowing how a person "thinks" of violence, outside of things like measures of testosterone or other indirect things, no, that isn't possible. Stuff like that will be based on information that is stored in distributed networks of neurons, rather than, say, in perceptual priming of attention, which is easier to localize and measure through neuroimaging (though, I guess I should add that neuroimaging is still a "correlational" measure... though I don't really believe that...)

Like I said, I don't actually believe in "conscious"/"subconscious", so it isn't surprising I'd contradict myself

No, you're right: neuroimaging is strictly correlational as we cannot measure the exact data firing on every individual neuron and then accurately piece that back together and paint a proper picture of the region that activated. We can make very strong conclusions based off of those correlations, however.

Anyway, I think your suggestion of different subconscious systems makes what you said, make sense. One study measured near primal reactions in an indirect way. What you spoke about in the other post was subconscious motivations for certain actions. While not entirely mutually exclusive, it makes sense that they would be different systems. I would like to refer to these as "background processes" that propagate out, via triggers, into the conscious. The system that prompts some, subconsciously, to wake up and take a piss is not the same system that heightens a person's awareness to violence and makes them have more aggressive thoughts. Different "subconscious" systems, for sure.

So, really, it's a symphony of subconscious systems operating as "background processes" until specific triggers or conditions are met to process those systems in conscious thought.

inimalist

Originally posted by dadudemon
No, you're right: neuroimaging is strictly correlational as we cannot measure the exact data firing on every individual neuron and then accurately piece that back together and paint a proper picture of the region that activated. We can make very strong conclusions based off of those correlations, however.

not exactly... the reason fMRI is "correlational" is because it measures BOLD response (blood oxygen level) rather than direct neuronal firing, not simply because it doesn't take into account every possible piece of the puzzle. I think this might be better defined as "indirect" or "inferrential", because it is really only correlational in the way that you letting go of a ball is correlated to it falling.

Something like EEG isn't correlational at all, as you are measuring the actual summation of neuronal activity, rather than the system that feeds that activity (blood oxygen), however, it is notoriously unable to determine location or these "specific parts" as you are saying. That is an issue with what is called "spatial resolution" though.

Basically, even if you had the ability to image individual neurons and their connections in fMRI, it would still be "correlational ", because you are measuring the blood/oxygen that is supplying that neuron, not the neuron directly.

Again, I think "indirect" is a better description

Originally posted by dadudemon
Anyway, I think your suggestion of different subconscious systems makes what you said, make sense. One study measured near primal reactions in an indirect way. What you spoke about in the other post was subconscious motivations for certain actions. While not entirely mutually exclusive, it makes sense that they would be different systems. I would like to refer to these as "background processes" that propagate out, via triggers, into the conscious. The system that prompts some, subconsciously, to wake up and take a piss is not the same system that heightens a person's awareness to violence and makes them have more aggressive thoughts. Different "subconscious" systems, for sure.

motivations are difficult too. Notice, I haven't said we could throw louchner in a fmri and determine why he did this (unless there is some unprobable thing like a tumor). Those things would be only really amenible to the indirect measures I was talking about in the other thread.

Like, the Libet studies, that show rediness to action before motivation, never actually measure this sort of "abstract motivational whatever", but rather measure parts of the mind unrelated to consciousness, to see whether they precede or follow conscious awareness of an item.

I think I'm even going to change my answer there... its not exactly that they are different "subconsciousnesses", but that we define so much as "subconscious" that it can't help but include things like abstract meaning and basic motor readiness. Yet another reason why the term is useless...

Originally posted by dadudemon
So, really, it's a symphony of subconscious systems operating as "background processes" until specific triggers or conditions are met to process those systems in conscious thought.

no...

it is a single system where only a very small percentage of activity is made available for explicit awareness. There are some ideas and interesting results, but there is still no way to identify what is "conscious" and what is "subconscious" processing, in fact, as I said above, that is likely an irrelevant distinction.

argh, and here is where stuff gets all confusing, and why I hate these labels anyways, but think of it like this, what is "subconscious" and what is "autonomic"? is your heart rate part of "subconscious processing"? normally not, but if your heart rate is elevated, and you don't have an immediatly available response, the simple fact can lead you to become anxious or whatever. Basically, your brain says "oh, the heart is racing, there must be a reason, I can't think of one, but there must be, I must be anxious!" (ok, not exactly, but a lot of this is nearly impossible to describe in jargon, let alone layman...). In this instance, the heartrate caused the anxiety, so is the heart part of your subconscious mind?

Alright, at the risk of just rambling now, let me try and use an example I like:

In a vaccum, a rock and a feather will fall at the same speed (gravity is a constant, no drag). I know this as a fact, explicity. However, if I ever were to see someone perform this experiment, it would be very counter-intuitive to my implicit mind. It goes against everything that this "subconscious" mind knows. Now, I know for a fact that they will fall at the same speed, but I can't actually use that information to change the way my mind reacts to the actual event. Similarily, knowing that the rotating snakes in that illusion are actually stationary makes me no more able to surpress the perceptual experience.

It tends to be called "bottom up" in the stuff I do, whereas the explicit is "top down", and if you want, I can get into why I don't like those terms either. Long story short, almost all connections and pathways in the brain are two-way: information flows top down, top-up, down up, down down, laterally, laterally down than up two steps then down then laterally again to come down so it is lateral to where it began... etc

dadudemon

Originally posted by inimalist
no...

it is a single system where only a very small percentage of activity is made available for explicit awareness.

That's pretty much what I said. Except, I took it a slight step further and indicated that certain triggers can causes processes to start operating in that small percentage of explicit awareness.

Unless, of course, you disagree and are saying that there are no triggers but just random occurrences? Because I was under the impression that "conscious" execution required triggers to move from "subconscious" to "conscious."

Originally posted by inimalist
There are some ideas and interesting results, but there is still no way to identify what is "conscious" and what is "subconscious" processing, in fact, as I said above, that is likely an irrelevant distinction.

argh, and here is where stuff gets all confusing, and why I hate these labels anyways, but think of it like this, what is "subconscious" and what is "autonomic"? is your heart rate part of "subconscious processing"? normally not, but if your heart rate is elevated, and you don't have an immediatly available response, the simple fact can lead you to become anxious or whatever. Basically, your brain says "oh, the heart is racing, there must be a reason, I can't think of one, but there must be, I must be anxious!" (ok, not exactly, but a lot of this is nearly impossible to describe in jargon, let alone layman...). In this instance, the heartrate caused the anxiety, so is the heart part of your subconscious mind?

Alright, at the risk of just rambling now, let me try and use an example I like:

In a vaccum, a rock and a feather will fall at the same speed (gravity is a constant, no drag). I know this as a fact, explicity. However, if I ever were to see someone perform this experiment, it would be very counter-intuitive to my implicit mind. It goes against everything that this "subconscious" mind knows. Now, I know for a fact that they will fall at the same speed, but I can't actually use that information to change the way my mind reacts to the actual event. Similarily, knowing that the rotating snakes in that illusion are actually stationary makes me no more able to surpress the perceptual experience.

It tends to be called "bottom up" in the stuff I do, whereas the explicit is "top down", and if you want, I can get into why I don't like those terms either. Long story short, almost all connections and pathways in the brain are two-way: information flows top down, top-up, down up, down down, laterally, laterally down than up two steps then down then laterally again to come down so it is lateral to where it began... etc

I think the way I described it is great. lol

What I was describing is not a single system, but a set of smaller systems comprising the "super-system (the brain machine)." The activities in the olfactory cortex are a different "sub-system" of brain than the activities in somatosensory homonculus. Each have triggers that bring processes to "conscious thought" but most of the time, stimulus is ignored and left as a "background process." For example, you are not aware for the most part, of all the sensory taking place all over your body where you clothes are making contact with your flesh. However, a trigger, as I'm calling it, would be a strong itch. It jumps from the background into conscious thought and you scratch it, satiating the itch.

Also, about items controlled outside of the conscious/subconscious labels: those would primarily executed in the brain stem: the primitive portion of our brains. Now, the processes "working" in the main portions of our brain (ie frontal, occipital, parietal, and temporal lobes and so forth) can certainly affect the processes run primarily by the medulla oblongata such as the "conscious" perception of danger. So, your heart is not a subconscious or conscious action: it is external of those constructs and is, instead, an automated process. However, the conscious can affect those lower brain functions, but almost always not in a detrimental way. There's "fail safes" to protect against the conscious, or as you put it: explicit awareness.

And, yes, my example of itches were bottom-up. And, from what I understand about cognitive neuroscience, you're heavily steeped in that type of study because you do research into visual cortex and psychology.

Mindship

Originally posted by inimalist
... what is "subconscious" and what is "autonomic"? is your heart rate part of "subconscious processing"? normally not, but if your heart rate is elevated, and you don't have an immediatly available response, the simple fact can lead you to become anxious or whatever. Basically, your brain says "oh, the heart is racing, there must be a reason, I can't think of one, but there must be, I must be anxious!" ... In this instance, the heartrate caused the anxiety, so is the heart part of your subconscious mind?
The 'subconscious' is not an undifferentiated domain. Autonomic functioning can be said to comprise the body-unconscious, or the embedded unconscious.

inimalist

Originally posted by Mindship
The 'subconscious' is not an undifferentiated domain. Autonomic functioning can be said to comprise the body-unconscious, or the embedded unconscious.

but I don't see how those terms are any less problematic

my point is that this "line" between different "types" of processes doesn't really exist, and in fact, what we experience as our "conscious" self, is much more a construct from things as seemingly unrelated as autonomic function, than it is a unitary "thing".

There is no difference in our sensory cortex between data that becomes conscious and that which does not. You can't look at a brain and know what it is that a person is paying attention to... and I'm not certain this is just a matter of our tools being insensitive to it at this point, and even then, "attention" (which, I should probably say, in a very well controled study, you might be able to infer from fMRI if a person is attending to, say, one of 2 possible objects) is not a good measure of "consciousness", as things which we never become aware of can have a huge impact on how we think.

ugh, before I get rambling, the simple message is this: Body, mind, environment, society, genes, all of these things, and infinitely more, do not comprise seperate "things" that interact with eachother, but rather, compose a singular system through which each acts upon the other. I'm not trying to say, "oh, look, your heart is part of your subconscious mind", but rather, that any distinction you try to make between these "autonomic" and "cognitive" systems will, in the end, be entirely arbitrary and anthropic. I do want to address ddm more too, but sort of related is, yet another reason I don't like "top down" and "bottom up", as it implies there are two different "types" of "thinking" going on, that which originates at the "top" and that from the bottom, when in reality, neither of these comprises a closed system of information processing distinct from the next.

Mindship

Originally posted by inimalist
Body, mind, environment, society, genes, all of these things, and infinitely more, do not comprise seperate "things" that interact with eachother, but rather, compose a singular system through which each acts upon the other. How Tao of you.

The MISTER

Then the distinction between individuals must be how well they self-program. I agree with you on everyone and everything being forced to respond to the circumstances at hand. Obviously people have shown enough ability to control their impulses that it is expected in most civilizations. When individuals fail to be able to control impulses that society deems extremely dangerous they should be presented as either responsible or not responsible enough to be held solely accountable. I have to admit though that there's no denying the connection in the "Tiller the baby killer" murder. Also the connotations concerning the term " Take them out " are unmistakable. That's f***ed up.

leonidas

Originally posted by inimalist
this is sort of what I meant by the conflict between scientific findings in psychology and the assumptions of Western philosophy.

What we believe about individual people, in terms of the west, in terms of judicial "fault" and illegal "motives" for actions (in the Canadian judicial system known as mens rea) are based on what I would call a "rational actor" theory of man, where we assume that people, even sane ones like ourselves, calculate and are motivated by rational goals that we can justify and that we have some sort of will over our bodies and our mind. However, when tested empirically, we find much the opposite, and if you want, I can outline a bunch of these things. For instance, what you believe to be a constant, ongoing "stream of consciousness" is really part of your left brain assembling the best story from the available evidence around you, with predictable biases, and able to be tricked in specific ways. Also, when you think you are motivated to do something, your body has already prepared to do it, a significant amount of time before you are even aware of your desire to do it, meaning that your "subconscious" has already planned and prepared actions for you, long before the "conscious" mind is ever aware that you even wanted to act.

Questions about dualism, and free will, and of the "rational individual" sort of become almost nonsensical in this perspective.

That being said, I would never suggest that individual people can't or shouldn't be held responsible for their actions. Whether or not psychology suggests that you have no free will is no more relevant than whether atomic physics suggests you have free will, when considering the law. imho, the law should only be used against those who prove a threat to society, thus it is justified to take away their freedom, so to protect citizens, dangerous people must be dealt with in some way, regardless of the existance or nonexistance of free will.

Ultimately, though, from my view, if you decided to buy a gun and shoot people tomorrow, "responsibility" would be on the cascade of factors that lead to that decision, be they internal in response to external, or external in response to internal, or whatever. Your behaviours cannot be removed from the environment they occur in. Every thought you have is, in some way or another, influenced by the environment you are in, and to some degree, vice versa. In terms of the law, you should probably be forced into some sort of psychological evaluation and/or inprisoned, regardless of who or what might be at fault.

thats exactly it though. There is no place where the "person" begins. an organism cannot be define outside of its environment. Everything you do or think is influenced by what is going on around you. There is no "you" that exists independently.

hrm. so you really are claiming we are simple automatons, unable to actually claim any control over any action. you keep saying the 'person' is a part of this grand unification, yet in the same breath you say the person's every thought and action is dictated by the environment and that we have no say or can't even realize that we, as 'individuals' don't exist. i may impact the environment around me, but any impact i have is BASED on what the surrounding environment dictates i do. it doesn't sound like the 'person' is a 'part' of this system at all, but is rather an unwitting victim who, even if he is aware of it, can't do anything about it anyway. we're discussing this issue, but everything i say is simply a product of what's around me. i'm only a tool in a much larger system. it eschews responsibility for any individual act. to accept it as true would also set the catholic faith to go into cardiac arrest. beyond all that though, i find that few, frankly, depressing. sad

The MISTER

Originally posted by leonidas
hrm. so you really are claiming we are simple automatons, unable to actually claim any control over any action. you keep saying the 'person' is a part of this grand unification, yet in the same breath you say the person's every thought and action is dictated by the environment and that we have no say or can't even realize that we, as 'individuals' don't exist. i may impact the environment around me, but any impact i have is BASED on what the surrounding environment dictates i do. it doesn't sound like the 'person' is a 'part' of this system at all, but is rather an unwitting victim who, even if he is aware of it, can't do anything about it anyway. we're discussing this issue, but everything i say is simply a product of what's around me. i'm only a tool in a much larger system. it eschews responsibility for any individual act. to accept it as true would also set the catholic faith to go into cardiac arrest. beyond all that though, i find that few, frankly, depressing. sad

Don't get too down, we aren't as predictable as that! The evidence lies right here in this forum. Humans create and share new ideas all the time. Our ideas are influenced by our environment but we can take individual credit for our personal views. We constantly strive to create a new idea, one that is unique and very much our own. The words in this post could not have been created by another Mister, nobody could predict my post exactly. This ability to create new things breaks us out of being automatic creatures. I just created something new and new things have unpredictable effects on the ideas they may cause to be created.

inimalist

Originally posted by Mindship
How Tao of you.

Warhammer 40k has nothing to do with it

Originally posted by The MISTER
Then the distinction between individuals must be how well they self-program. I agree with you on everyone and everything being forced to respond to the circumstances at hand. Obviously people have shown enough ability to control their impulses that it is expected in most civilizations. When individuals fail to be able to control impulses that society deems extremely dangerous they should be presented as either responsible or not responsible enough to be held solely accountable. I have to admit though that there's no denying the connection in the "Tiller the baby killer" murder. Also the connotations concerning the term " Take them out " are unmistakable. That's f***ed up.

the thing is, there is no "self-programmer". What you experience as your "self" is really just constructed from many other sensory/memory/cognitive systems.

"controlling" your "impulses" relies much less on "rational thought" than it does on preconscious simulations of sensory consequences weighed against previous expectations and desires.

In fact, the reason most people "choose" not to be violent almost certainly comes from our genetics and our normal interactions in society, not some idea that we are "good" people who want to do "good" things. It is these genetic biases and experiences that lead us to believe that "good" is peaceful coexistance, not the other way around.

Originally posted by The MISTER
Don't get too down, we aren't as predictable as that! The evidence lies right here in this forum. Humans create and share new ideas all the time. Our ideas are influenced by our environment but we can take individual credit for our personal views. We constantly strive to create a new idea, one that is unique and very much our own. The words in this post could not have been created by another Mister, nobody could predict my post exactly. This ability to create new things breaks us out of being automatic creatures. I just created something new and new things have unpredictable effects on the ideas they may cause to be created.

I hate to say it, but we ARE as predictable as that. When we can reduce the amount of variability in a system, human behaviour is very predictable.

Think of it like this. Imagine you had a machine. Instead of being made of 200 000 parts, like a giant tractor or something, imagine it is built of billions of parts, and can constantly change how these parts are assembled in order to deal with incomming stimuli.

Now, compare this machine to a computer, which only has a keyboard and maybe a webcam as "input" devices. You and I have millions of sensors that input information in our skin, nose, ears, eyes and tongue.

The reason I can't predict what you are about to do is a matter of numbers, not a matter of you being unpredictable. I suppose it would be a waste of time to ever try and calculate such a thing (who cares if we could say "THE MISTER will say "X" in reply to this", its really not an important question).

I know this depresses Leo, but the fact is, we are sort of automatons. Though, maybe we should be happy our brain makes us feel we are not...

inimalist

I think the problem is that you are trying to base your moral and political feelings off of neuroscience

who is responsible for what? well, like, if you asked me, "inimalist, did you write a post on the KMC boards?" my answer isn't going to be "no, as there is no indivisible inimalist who chooses to do things, it was simply the consequence of my life experience up until that point that necessitated the actions my motor, linguistic and memory systems to post that message".

science, in any of its forms, does not provide those types of answers, and it is really irrelevant to appeal to them when trying to assess something like guilt.

In the end, sure, you might be right. I think you are still just jumping from one extreme to the next (for instance, you seem to think that the person is simply a victim of their conditions, which is not the case, your genes and personal history inform how your environmental context affects your bahaviour. The "you" is just as important, even if it is itself a construct of past experiences and genetics).

Ultimately, yes, the idea of a "ghost in the shell", or "thinking rational actor" wont hold up. I tend to see it as nearly mystical, the way our brains construct our experiences and the world around us, not depressing at all. Save the universe itself, the human brain is the most complex thing in the universe.

The MISTER

Originally posted by inimalist
Warhammer 40k has nothing to do with it

the thing is, there is no "self-programmer". What you experience as your "self" is really just constructed from many other sensory/memory/cognitive systems.

"controlling" your "impulses" relies much less on "rational thought" than it does on preconscious simulations of sensory consequences weighed against previous expectations and desires.

In fact, the reason most people "choose" not to be violent almost certainly comes from our genetics and our normal interactions in society, not some idea that we are "good" people who want to do "good" things. It is these genetic biases and experiences that lead us to believe that "good" is peaceful coexistance, not the other way around.

I hate to say it, but we ARE as predictable as that. When we can reduce the amount of variability in a system, human behaviour is very predictable.

Think of it like this. Imagine you had a machine. Instead of being made of 200 000 parts, like a giant tractor or something, imagine it is built of billions of parts, and can constantly change how these parts are assembled in order to deal with incomming stimuli.

Now, compare this machine to a computer, which only has a keyboard and maybe a webcam as "input" devices. You and I have millions of sensors that input information in our skin, nose, ears, eyes and tongue.

The reason I can't predict what you are about to do is a matter of numbers, not a matter of you being unpredictable. I suppose it would be a waste of time to ever try and calculate such a thing (who cares if we could say "THE MISTER will say "X" in reply to this", its really not an important question).

I know this depresses Leo, but the fact is, we are sort of automatons. Though, maybe we should be happy our brain makes us feel we are not... You can break us down to "parts" but that doesn't make us automatons. The reason people can't predict others is because of the numbers....and therefore is a matter of them being unpredictable. You could force predictability to a point (put someone in a cage), but even then it can't be assured when dealing with humans. I've said it before, that a simple ink blot test would prove the unpredictability of human ideas. You're right it would be an exercise in futility trying to calculate exactly what someone else is going to say about something. That is the definition of unpredictable. And I'd agree that we're "sort of" automatons...just not automatons in totality. There's a lot involved in that "sort of"...It's like saying someones sort of dead. I guess they're not dead then.

leonidas

Originally posted by inimalist
I think the problem is that you are trying to base your moral and political feelings off of neuroscience

lol

nah. i was mostly playing devil's advocate. while i understand what you're saying in regards to the system, my own sense of 'selfness' is still quite in tact. smile

whew.

i agree with this. the practical impact of what you have been saying is difficult to gauge, and pretty much useless when dealing with things like guilt and the necessity or lack thereof of being faced to remove someone from society for society's own good.

yes! big grin

i was just sort of trying to paraphrase what you were saying. may not have done a great job of it. but to continue with what you were claiming, my personal history only affects things around me because it in turn was shaped by the environment! it's completely chicken and egg. genes came first--it just seems to me that they play a larger role in HOW we--as individuals--react to the environment in which we grow. you said there is no antecedant, but i think genes and genetics are the origin. environment can and obviously does impact us enormously, but that initial sense of self that our genes compose, is what determines it's impact on us. i guess i see an underlying sense of self in this system of yours that you don't. could be completely wrong, but alas, that notion is comfortable for me. smile

leonidas

Bardock42

You are confusing unpredictable to you (or me, or every human) with absolutely unpredictable. It's in the same way unpredictable as a computer generating a random number is. To you and me it's unpredictable, but it is completely based on what happens, and in the same circumstances it would always be the same number.

Though, if I may butcher a scientific theory, cause I don't actually understand it, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, to be exact, perhaps a certain unpredictability is actually a trait of our universe, at least of its smallest components.

inimalist

Originally posted by The MISTER
You can break us down to "parts" but that doesn't make us automatons. The reason people can't predict others is because of the numbers....and therefore is a matter of them being unpredictable. You could force predictability to a point (put someone in a cage), but even then it can't be assured when dealing with humans. I've said it before, that a simple ink blot test would prove the unpredictability of human ideas. You're right it would be an exercise in futility trying to calculate exactly what someone else is going to say about something. That is the definition of unpredictable. And I'd agree that we're "sort of" automatons...just not automatons in totality. There's a lot involved in that "sort of"...It's like saying someones sort of dead. I guess they're not dead then.

I don't mean it would be an excersize in futility, but it would be entirely uninformative. its like, there are 2 types of questions one could ask, a question of numbers or a question of theory. In theory, if we could view the activity in each of your neurons, we could make very detailed predictions about how you would behave, but what relevance is this to any question of theory? It isn't telling us how the systems work, we aren't learning anything else about cognition, we are just watching, essentially, dominos fall into place.

your example of the ink blot is actually perfect. The numbers question is "what will the person see if we show them this blot", and, if we had the technology, we could watch the light hit your photoreceptors, we could follow the activation that caused in your optic nerve, all the way back to your visual cortex. We could follow the "what" and "how" processing streams (what: located in the temporal cortex, contains information pertaining to the identity of objects, how: parietal cortex, processes stimuli for attentional relevance and how you might interact with it), through the thalamo-cortical tracts (emotional/affective processing prior to conscious awareness) , into your pre-motor areas, which prepare you to make the action of giving your answer. There would be some linguistic and memory stuff too, but those are more distributed networks that would be included in these other systems...

and in the end, we should be able to give a good estimation of what you are going to say in response to the ink blot. In fact, fMRI studies have shown that researchers can look at scans in very controlled scenarios and determine, before a subject would be aware, how they will answer a yes/no question.

And while this is totally interesting, as the ink blot prediction would be, it offers scant in terms of understanding these systems themselves. There is no experimental manipulation, there is no test. You are just looking at it. A much more interesting question about ink blots would be "why do you see X instead of Y, and what can we do to bias X or Y, and what does it mean on a neuronal level to see X or Y", because these include a manipulation that would inform the way we theorize about how the brain works.

Its like people who say "oh, we could calculate the atomic spins of all the atoms in a bird and we would know when it is going to fly off", well sure, but how usefull is that information?

Bardock42

Originally posted by inimalist
Its like people who say "oh, we could calculate the atomic spins of all the atoms in a bird and we would know when it is going to fly off", well sure, but how usefull is that information?
See, I think that's where the uncertainty comes in. We couldn't, no one could, it's impossible.

inimalist

Originally posted by leonidas
lol

nah. i was mostly playing devil's advocate. while i understand what you're saying in regards to the system, my own sense of 'selfness' is still quite in tact. smile

this actually becomes one of the biggest questions in neuroscience. If we are really just comprised of these systems, the same way animals are, why is it we seem to have this awareness of self that, by and large, most animals don't seem to have.

Why is it that we need to have this sense of "self", why do we feel like we are sitting behind our eyes, looking out at the rest of the world, when in fact, everything we "see" out there, is really a simulation within our visual processing areas.

Like, what use does feeling dualistic have to a non-dualist organism, or is that experience simply a by-product of the other things we have evolved, like intimate social empathy and language?

Originally posted by leonidas
i agree with this. the practical impact of what you have been saying is difficult to gauge, and pretty much useless when dealing with things like guilt and the necessity or lack thereof of being faced to remove someone from society for society's own good.

to me, the practical importance comes when dealing with rhetoric, rather than situations. "Guilt" really shouldn't matter in absolute terms, because we remove people from society because they are a threat to others. I don't believe in punitive justice anyways, so I don't think "non-crazy" criminals deserve poor treatment, and obviously I would extend this to people with medical conditions.

Its more important when people try to blame one thing or another, in order to further a political agenda. We have seen people claim that Lauchner is proof that we need more gun control, or less gun control, or that Palin/tea party is the responsible actor in the situation. I would apply neuroscience here to say, simply, we can't identify what specifically the issue was, but rather, we can point to things that may have caused it, and we can decide if it is reasonable for politicians to tell people to take others "out", but we really can't say for sure that it was that rhetoric that caused the event in the first place.

Originally posted by leonidas
i was just sort of trying to paraphrase what you were saying. may not have done a great job of it. but to continue with what you were claiming, my personal history only affects things around me because it in turn was shaped by the environment! it's completely chicken and egg. genes came first--it just seems to me that they play a larger role in HOW we--as individuals--react to the environment in which we grow. you said there is no antecedant, but i think genes and genetics are the origin. environment can and obviously does impact us enormously, but that initial sense of self that our genes compose, is what determines it's impact on us. i guess i see an underlying sense of self in this system of yours that you don't. could be completely wrong, but alas, that notion is comfortable for me. smile

ok, so the first concept is that of "neuroplasticity". Basically, when you are born, you have roughly 3 times as many neurons as you will have when you finish development. This is because, your brain only assembles in response to stimuli signals. So, light hits your eyes, which releases horomones that cause neurons to connect in ways that create your visual cortex, etc. However, all of this is dependant upon your genetics. The horomoes are only released because your optic receptors have the genetics to produce them, and only assemble your visual pathways because the neurons that becomes those pathways have the genetics to produce them. In all things with the brain, it takes the environment acting upon neurons that causes them to express various genetic functions that allow for our neurons to assemble in genetically specified ways. The exemplary study here was done on kittens. They were raised in an environment devoid of horizontal lines (good luck getting ethics to do this anymore...), and therefore never developed the ability to see them. Further studies with rats have shown that introducing animals into a stimuli rich environment causes the brain to reorganize in accordance with that stimuli.

I know it is a weird concept, especially given how important the "nature vs nurture" debate has been in our society, but the science is pretty much clear at this point. Nature vs nurture is Nature and nurture. you are right, it is entirely a chicken and egg thing, and this type of plastic deveopment begins even in the womb, so your genes are expressing themselves based on what you experience long before you ever really are in a "social environment".

Further, there are these things called epigenetics. I'm not a biologist, so someone could probably do this better than I, but essentially, ALL of your genes express themselves differently when exposed to various environmental conditions, and these expression can hold accross generations. So, the way your brain organizes is almost certainly related to how the genes in your parents' and grandparents' brains expressed themselves and organized. Genes aren't the "opposite" or "mirror" of the environment, but an integrated part of it.

inimalist

Originally posted by Bardock42
See, I think that's where the uncertainty comes in. We couldn't, no one could, it's impossible.

I really can't argue with that... Other than to say the processes of the brain, rather than the processes of sub atomic particles, seems to rely on a level of predictability. If our ion channels were "uncertain", communication from one neuron to the next would be essentially random.

Originally posted by Bardock42
You are right with GTA4 of course, but that's a problem with the whole open world, choice is yours thing. Nico Bellic definitely had potential, and his cutscenes are good, but a game completely centered around indiscriminate murder is not the best place to tell his story, gameplay wise.

I was thinking about this again. I think they did a way better job in Red Dead, but ultimately, I think its because they created a world where murder was somewhat acceptable. I certainly didn't kill as many civilians in Red Dead as I did GTA, but killing people didn't seem as much of a stretch for the character, I suppose, because he implicitly accepted that bad people should die, and there wasn't really any other system of "law enforcement"

Mindship

Originally posted by Bardock42
Though, if I may butcher a scientific theory, cause I don't actually understand it, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, to be exact, perhaps a certain unpredictability is actually a trait of our universe, at least of its smallest components. I perceive little/no butchery in your grasp of the principle.

inimalist

Originally posted by dadudemon
That's pretty much what I said. Except, I took it a slight step further and indicated that certain triggers can causes processes to start operating in that small percentage of explicit awareness.

Unless, of course, you disagree and are saying that there are no triggers but just random occurrences? Because I was under the impression that "conscious" execution required triggers to move from "subconscious" to "conscious."

well, first, I didn't say "explicit awareness" as a stand-in for "consciousness", the two terms mean very different things, and while there are problems with "awareness", it isn't nearly as problematic as "consciousness"

secondly, sure, I suppose you might call them triggers, but it isn't as simple as that. a "trigger" would be based on a huge array of attentional evaluations in a scene, themselves based on local and past context, and even then, there are things which we are not explicitly aware of that we can react to and behave in the presense of.

Originally posted by dadudemon
I think the way I described it is great. lol

What I was describing is not a single system, but a set of smaller systems comprising the "super-system (the brain machine)." The activities in the olfactory cortex are a different "sub-system" of brain than the activities in somatosensory homonculus. Each have triggers that bring processes to "conscious thought" but most of the time, stimulus is ignored and left as a "background process." For example, you are not aware for the most part, of all the sensory taking place all over your body where you clothes are making contact with your flesh. However, a trigger, as I'm calling it, would be a strong itch. It jumps from the background into conscious thought and you scratch it, satiating the itch.

Also, about items controlled outside of the conscious/subconscious labels: those would primarily executed in the brain stem: the primitive portion of our brains. Now, the processes "working" in the main portions of our brain (ie frontal, occipital, parietal, and temporal lobes and so forth) can certainly affect the processes run primarily by the medulla oblongata such as the "conscious" perception of danger. So, your heart is not a subconscious or conscious action: it is external of those constructs and is, instead, an automated process. However, the conscious can affect those lower brain functions, but almost always not in a detrimental way. There's "fail safes" to protect against the conscious, or as you put it: explicit awareness.

Look, I'm not saying you are... wrong. The language you use here is similar (errr...) to what is used in journals, and even to what I'm using to explain other concepts in the thread.

If you want to define things as autonomic, put arbitrary lines in the brainstem (btw, saw a talk last month about emotional processing in the spinal cord itself), sure, I can't say that is factually incorrect.

What I can say, though, is that is a view of neuroscience that is quickly being overturned. Its like when we were talking about the computer model, sure, you can use those terms to get a decent understanding of what is going on in the brain, but when you reduce it to systems neuroscience, it doesn't hold up. Do people still use it? sure, how else do we talk about or communicate this to even other specialists? Like I said, most complicated thing in the universe, save the universe itself. We need something. The same way "evolution" made biology make some sense, and the way some "unified field theory" will make physics make sense, we need something like that in neuroscience, even if we know that we are starting from a point that is fundamentally in error.

Originally posted by dadudemon
And, yes, my example of itches were bottom-up. And, from what I understand about cognitive neuroscience, you're heavily steeped in that type of study because you do research into visual cortex and psychology.

actually, I'm doing my master's now, and I've moved to the integration of visual attention/eye gaze with action, how we combine visual information with how we move/behave, eye-hand coordination stuff.

Mindship

Have you guys heard of 'holons'? Your discussion reminds me of Koestler's term/observation.

One of my favorite words/concepts.

leonidas

Originally posted by Mindship
Have you guys heard of 'holons'? Your discussion reminds me of Koestler's term/observation.

One of my favorite words/concepts.

nice. had heard the word once upon a time, but never would have remembered and had to look it up. very apt indeed. gives me a headache to think about, but.... apt.

Mindship

Originally posted by leonidas
nice. had heard the word once upon a time, but never would have remembered and had to look it up. very apt indeed. gives me a headache to think about, but.... apt. I should think it entertaining to ask Sarah Palin about holons.

inimalist

Originally posted by Mindship
Have you guys heard of 'holons'? Your discussion reminds me of Koestler's term/observation.

One of my favorite words/concepts.

from the wiki, he seems to not apply the concept to individuals themselves, but to society.

I'm in general agreement that there are no non-arbitrary divisions between things, but one also has to deconstruct what these arbitrary sub components are themselves comprised of. It seems to me that the term attempts to place the self as part of the whole, whereas I would argue that the self is a "holon", and in fact, the brain would be comprised of billions of "holons" (for instance, our visual system could easily be described as millions of visual systems working together).

I'm also not entirely fond of phrases that could be "anything" (why memes just don't work as a tool of causal explanation), but it seems like an interesting idea. Any suggested reading outside of Wiki?

Mindship

Originally posted by inimalist
I'm in general agreement that there are no non-arbitrary divisions between things, but one also has to deconstruct what these arbitrary sub components are themselves comprised of. It seems to me that the term attempts to place the self as part of the whole, whereas I would argue that the self is a "holon", and in fact, the brain would be comprised of billions of "holons" (for instance, our visual system could easily be described as millions of visual systems working together).

I'm also not entirely fond of phrases that could be "anything" (why memes just don't work as a tool of causal explanation), but it seems like an interesting idea. Any suggested reading outside of Wiki? I'm not fond of Wiki myself, but I figured, good for the basics. Try Ken Wilber. I haven't kept up with his works, so I'm not sure what's available online. His philosophy is teleological, but the holon concept is not dependent on this. He basically expounds on it. Systems within systems, wheels within wheels. Reality could be one big holon fractal.