Friday, October 8, 2010

Mind Control and free will

I've been thinking about Mind Control today.

First, you should understand how (and even IF) you control your own mind.



In a study published Sunday in Nature Neuroscience, researchers using brain scanners could predict people's decisions seven seconds before the test subjects were even aware of making them. ...

In the seven seconds before Haynes' test subjects chose to push a button, activity shifted in their frontopolar cortex, a brain region associated with high-level planning. Soon afterwards, activity moved to the parietal cortex, a region of sensory integration. Haynes' team monitored these shifting neural patterns using a functional MRI machine.

Taken together, the patterns consistently predicted whether test subjects eventually pushed a button with their left or right hand -- a choice that, to them, felt like the outcome of conscious deliberation. ...

Caveats remain, holding open the door for free will. For instance, the experiment may not reflect the mental dynamics of other, more complicated decisions.

"Real-life decisions -- am I going to buy this house or that one, take this job or that -- aren't decisions that we can implement very well in our brain scanners," said Haynes.

Also, the predictions were not completely accurate. Maybe free will enters at the last moment, allowing a person to override an unpalatable subconscious decision.

"We can't rule out that there's a free will that kicks in at this late point," said Haynes, who intends to study this phenomenon next. "But I don't think it's plausible."

Read More wired.com



This entire article by Lisa Zyga on physorg is worth reading:
... Cashmore, Professor of Biology at the University of Pennsylvania, says that many biologists today still cling to the idea of free will, and reject the idea that we are simply conscious machines, completely controlled by a combination of our chemistry and external environmental forces.

Free will  is an illusion, biologist saysIn a recent study, Cashmore has argued that a belief in free will is akin to , since neither complies with the laws of the physical world. One of the basic premises of biology and biochemistry is that biological systems are nothing more than a bag of chemicals that obey chemical and physical laws. Generally, we have no problem with the “bag of chemicals” notion when it comes to , plants, and similar entities. So why is it so difficult to say the same about humans or other “higher level” species, when we’re all governed by the same laws?

No causal mechanism

As Cashmore explains, the human acts at both the conscious level as well as the unconscious. It’s our consciousness that makes us aware of our actions, giving us the sense that we control them, as well. But even without this awareness, our brains can still induce our bodies to act, and studies have indicated that consciousness is something that follows unconscious neural activity.

Cashmore’s argument is that free will is an illusion derived from consciousness, but has an evolutionary advantage of conferring the illusion of responsibility. ... -physorg

Further evidence that free will is an illusion is the fact that...
"neurostimulation could affect which hands people move, even though the experience of free will was intact. ... Scientists were able to change which hand subjects normally chose to move without subjects noticing the influence ... subjects continued to report that they believed their choice of hand had been made freely." - wiki/Neuroscience_of_free_will

I know this about neurobiology:  a brain is a bunch of feedback loops.

Therefore, the way we are wired, our thoughts feed into our subconscious minds. We do have free will... in the long run.

In the here and now, we decide subconsciously, but the choice we make is usually based on what we previously consciously thought.  Our belief that we made a choice feeds our memories about our preferences and thus determines our future choices.

In other words, free will exists, but on a different time scale than our experience tells us.

The case where we are asked to pick one from several possible choices at random will trigger whatever subconscious "random choice"  heuristic we've created in the past, with input from recent memories and the current environment.

There are many other ways our brains trick us... ignoring our visual blind spot, evening out the jerky motion caused by our walking, etc. ... free will is just one more.

If you want to control a mind, then, yours or any other, just learn how to program the subconscious. Once you do, you can get a human puppet to do pretty much anything. (Cue the anger self-defense mechanisms, "I am not a puppet, no one can program ME!") Oh yeah?

Stay tuned for Part II:  Subconscous Programming, What Works.

I'll prove it works by getting you to donate a dollar to me, and you'll thank me for doing it, for showing you the door to your own motivations. ;-)

15 comments:

Patrick said...

Xeno, have you ever written about what area of science you work in, or your own expertise? It just occurred to me that I remember you writing something about working for the state but I was just wondering, if you're willing to share, about your field.

Xeno said...

What makes you ask, Patrick?

Cheng said...

His own free will allows him to ask.......or does it?

Patrick said...

Just wondering if you get to feed your scientific curiosity in your day job.

Sepp said...

To me, this research does not prove anything about free will - neither its existence nor its non-existence. If anything, it shows that decision making is a more complicated process (and takes more time) than we consciously know.

From the description of the experiments, it appears to me that there are both subconscious and conscious elements that flow into the decision making process. At times one can override the other. But both the subconscious and the conscious part of our minds belong to us, so I would argue that if the research shows us anything at all, it is that there is a period of "negotiation" between the two parts of our mind that precedes the making of any decision.

One thing the research doesn't show is that we are "nothing more than a bag of chemicals that obey chemical and physical laws".

Xeno said...

I agree about the experience of negotiating, it seems that way, doesn't it? but our perception of making a choice is false according to this data. At the time you think you made a decision, your brain has already decided for you subconsciously. We are 100% unable to experience the processing that goes on. It took me years to even believe in the subconscious.

Cheng said...

It seems to me this is just a safety feature of the brain brought about by evolution and natural selection.
Using our brain (and free will) is not not too disimilar to using a computer. Most of us don't know or care how a computer makes its millions of calculations to do what it does. As long as it does it in the background without bothering us, we're happy.
The brain takes care of lots of things we aren't aware of. The process of free will, if we conciously had to make all the "calculations", would be very distracting. So distracting, that the organisms that had to, have probably all died out.
I think this does prove we are just a bag of chemicals obeying chemical and physical laws.

Xeno said...

Self organizing dynamic systems are built from small components which obey physical laws, but selection pressures give higher orders of organization which are more than the sum of the parts. That's the magic.

Feedback loops tied to sensory input and memory storage gives us self awareness and the experience of consciousness.

The order in our brains which selection favored over billions of years allows us to do these amazing things like speculating that we are bags of chemicals obeying physical laws.

Cheng said...

Xeno, you must be more careful with your words. The way in which self organising dynamic systems faced with choices work, is certainly amazing and truly wonderful, but not magic.
The reason they appear to be greater than the sum of their parts is because the true majesty of their arithmetic has not yet been realised.
I await the next chapter of understanding with relish.

Xeno said...

I see the word "magic" as a good choice because magic tricks are illusions with hidden but not supernatural causes.

You may be able to remember your last birthday, but how do you do that trick?

The illusion is that you willfully look inside your memory and recall the details stored there as feelings, images, little video clips of what people said, and so on.

We have no direct experience of the cascade or order of vesicles releasing neurotransmitters, depolarization of axons, etc.

How could consciousness, then, be anything other than epiphenominal?

We don't command our nerve cells to fire. Rather, we are the result of what they do. That's what I think the evidence shows.

Ann said...

At the moment, I'd rather just relish the relish, if you don't mind 'cause we're rapidly losing grasp of the book where the next chapter might be found.

Cheng said...

I think I'm following you Xeno and that we broadly agree. But in laymans terms, do you think we are a bag of chemicals or that there is something beyond our contemplation that is really in control?

Cheng said...

Isn't that the nature of science though, to be exquisitely frustrating? Just as you thought you’d reached the bottom most layer of complexity, you lift a final manhole to reveal a whole new universe waiting to be explored. In the meantime, I’m off for another bowl of the tangy stuff, put my feet up and look on.

Xeno said...

Our universe is vibrations of nothing, self organized into higher and higher structures. At each level of organization, there is influence from the next higher level and constraints from the level below. So, the answer to your question is, yes, both. And more. The question is, in the context of which level are you asking "what am I?"

One definition of consciousness says we can not be conscious unless another person is consciously aware our consciousness, for example. There is, thus, a level at which a consciousness requires more than one brain. Our influences on each other is "the next level up".

Cheng said...

Hmm! In science the concept of "nothing" doesn't exist. But, if my universe consisted of nothing but me, I believe I would still be concious of my existence. I wouldn't require another concious entity to verify that.
The level of the question is the level we all exist at. I don't think adding philosophical depth to the question alters it's scientific level. I still think we are only that bag of chemicals doing what bags of chemicals must do to exist.
Ain't life sweet?