Studies Show the Value of Not Overthinking

WSJdpatton writes "Fishing in the stream of consciousness, researchers now can detect our intentions and predict our choices before we are aware of them ourselves. The brain, they have found, appears to make up its mind 10 seconds before we become conscious of a decision — an eternity at the speed of thought. Their findings challenge conventional notions of choice, writes WSJ's Robert Lee Hotz."

Comments

10 seconds.

[YttriumOxide]

I'm not sure I can accept this... Primarily because I generally make a decision less than 10 seconds after receiving the final piece of information that I will use to make the decision - often, it's even less than 10 seconds after I knew I had a decision to make. So, how can I have made it before I knew I had to make it? I think the article needs to clarify their definition of "decision".

Re:10 seconds.

[oodaloop]

Well, give yourself a little more time and think it over, then maybe you'll accept it.

Re:10 seconds.

[John_Sauter]

The major experiment uses a flawed definition of "decision". If I were the subject it might take me several seconds of unconscious cogitation to formulate a plan: when the next letter flashes I will press the left button, for example. The real decision is made below the level of consciousness, so the letter recorded is the one shown when the action is started, not the one shown when the decision-making process is started.

This is similar to driving a car. When you are driving to a well-known destination, when do you "decide" to turn the steering wheel to enter the parking lot? At the conscious level you decide when you see the driveway, and that there is no traffic in your way. The real decision, however, is made as part of the plan to drive to your destination, which may have been decided minutes or hours earlier.

The experiment is really about the unconscious part of the decision-making process. That is interesting, but it has nothing to do with free will, since our unconscious is as much a part of us as our conscious.

Re:10 seconds.

[linzeal]

This is a study using the mechanical action of pressing buttons. If this was based on people and their wonderful wacky analytic thought processes I would be more impressed, yawn.

Re:10 seconds.

[phantomfive]

It is clarified. Apparently you didn't read the article? :)

It is not an experiment that backs up the claims of the summary at all. Challenging conventional notions of choice? Not at all.....how often do you make a choice based on logic anyway? What flavor of ice cream to eat? It's what you feel like eating. What to do next after you get home from work? Whatever you feel like doing. Some decisions don't require any work from the logic point of the brain.

For example, the 'choice' made by the subjects of this experiment was whether they should push a right button or a left button. When confronted with such a choice, I would first sit there for a second wondering, "how the heck am I going to decide which one is best?" and then after finding nothing, give up and push whichever button I randomly felt like pushing. There IS no rational choice that can be made in such a situation. It's not a rational question.

On the other hand, I'm not sure the actual study is useless (even if the WSJ's analysis is). Seems they are using brain scanners to figure out more how the brain works, which is a good thing.

Re:10 seconds.

[kripkenstein]

I'm not sure I can accept this...

You don't need to, because it isn't true. The research is (shock!) misrepresented.

In a particular type of task, they could predict with 70% accuracy which hand would be used 10 seconds ahead of time. That's the evidence for the summary.

What this shows is that, in this sort of task, some 'unconscious impulse' precedes the action. In this particular task the impulse predicted correctly 70% of the time (note that even that isn't amazingly high, since 50% you get by random choice). Now, this might be very different with other decisions. For example, the impulse might be right only 55% of the time in other areas, perhaps because the conscious brain overrides it ("I shouldn't eat that; I'll order a salad instead.").

That said, it's very nice research (when not misrepresented), and important. We're only starting to figure out how the brain works, we'll probably change our theories about it several times before we hit it right.

A final note: The article is a little populist in treating it as 'surprising' that the unconscious is so important. But this was well-known in academia for a long time. The basic finding is that we are conscious of the products of thought, not the processes. That is, when you play Doom, you don't directly see what makes you decide to use a particular weapon at a particular time. What you do directly sense is that this is a good thing to do, and you do it. Now, sometimes you can make explicit the underlying process - e.g., "I should go over there because it's safer, and a weapon should spawn nearby also" - but this elaboration was not fully present before. There are few cases in which thought processes are entirely explicit, logic and mathematics perhaps the best examples (and even they are not 'purely' conscious).

Re:10 seconds.

[dreamchaser]

I'm very sure I can't accept it. Having studied various martial arts for the past 30 years, I can tell you with certainty that I can engage in action the instant I decide what I am going to do when responding to a threat situation. It's not just a matter of reflex and ingrained response. Time slows down immediately and I can often sift through a large number of options and decision points. Is this really a threat? If so, what's the best response? Run? Strike? Duck?

The same goes for more routine and mundane decisions, the way you put it exactly. Unless I am some how looking into the future and getting data that isn't there ten seconds before it's available, it takes me a LOT less time than 10 seconds to make a decision after I have all the information needed for said decision.

Re:10 seconds.

[ThePromenader]

The brain is an amazing piece of machinery; it's doubt that makes us 'over-think' and override decisions it instantly makes.

Take throwing a basketball into a hoop for example; there's the 'instinctive' way of going about it, that is to say leaving your brain/body rely on its past experiences/judgement to generate the right angle/force to get it to its target. Then there's the 'white boy' way of going about it: "now, if I have a ball that weighs x kilograms, and the hoop is x height above a lateral distance of x metres"... white boy fucks up most every time.

Re:10 seconds.

[eugene ts wong]

Fascinating. I have the exact opposite experience. I generally make a decision 10 days after receiving the final piece of information that I will use to make the decision. For example, the boss says, "Hey, Eugene. Here's a project for you. Get it done by the end of today.", and then 10 days later, I think to myself, "Hmm, maybe I should get started on that project...".

Re:10 seconds.

[Anonymous Coward]

>The major experiment uses a flawed definition of "decision".
No, it's you.
>If I were the subject it might take me several seconds of unconscious cogitation to formulate a plan
this is not a decision and this is what you find unacceptable.
>when the next letter flashes I will press the left button, for example.
this is the decision.
>At the conscious level you decide when you see the driveway, and that there is no traffic in your way.
This is done at the unconscious level before you have this impression.
>The real decision, however, is made as part of the plan to drive to your destination, which may have been decided minutes or hours earlier.
There was another decision taken then, but they are not connected. If they were, and they can, then you could have a problem because your decision process could get short circuited by the other decision and lead to an accident.
It has been heavily researched and documented by airplane pilots and there is even live recording of pilots who are crashing their jets and talk during the whole 30s documenting about what they should do now and yet they don't do it. Their decision process was blocked by another decision. Most of the time it comes from personal problems, stress that is work or family related.

Mostly, people want to connect their conscious thoughts and free will and the decisions they take because they feel like it is so, bacause they don't take a lot of decisions very often mostly.
But people who have to live on the result of hundred of fast, instataneous, decisions, from piloting to sport or music, know that they are not connected on the instant. People who experience it by accident often describes the resulting action as if "they were watching themselves" doing it.
My understanding is that the whole conscious process is part of a bigger process where you evaluate the decisions taken, available or review or inject new possibilities in the decision pool. This is where what you call decision is done, but it's more an orientation inside a bigger scheme than just the decisions themselves.

Re:10 seconds.

[asCii88]

Parent is right.
Well, the article doesn't tell much about the program they've used, but based on what it says I think what they visualised on the resonance was the subject's brain preparing the muscles' coordination.
Take this example. Imagine you are playing that game where you sit in front of somebody else, the hands of each close to each other's, and one has to hit the other while the other one has to avoid being hit. The former can choose to use any of his hands. So he thinks: "should I use this one, or that one, this one, or that one" and finally makes a choice, but the muscles are prepared to move both hands in the exact moment the choice is made. The last thing is obvious, try it yourselves, you'll feel it in your arms. It's like they want to move but you are holding them still.
Now, this can be ported to that simulation they used in this study, and it explains everything.

What do you think?

Re:10 seconds.

[Feynman]

The basic finding is that we are conscious of the products of thought, not the processes.

I agree completely. I was thinking about it like a computer and monitor. A computer will function without a monitor. You use the monitor to see what it's doing--and there's a delay between a result being computed and it showing up on the monitor.

Re:10 seconds.

[Jay L]

I'm very sure I can't accept it. Having studied various martial arts for the past 30 years, I can tell you with certainty that I can engage in action the instant I decide

I, too, am manly and decisive, with lightning-fast reflexes.

Re:10 seconds.

[nomadic]

Having studied various martial arts for the past 30 years, I can tell you with certainty that I can engage in action the instant I decide what I am going to do when responding to a threat situation.

Have you actually been involved in a threat situation so you know how you'd react? Training isn't the same as real life.

Re:10 seconds.

[aproposofwhat]

But the study that you have put in (me too - both martial arts and sport) allows your conscious mind to delegate the action of blocking, punching, hitting the ball, whatever to a learned reflex - your mind spots a pattern of attack, or a backhand pass down the line - it matters not - it is all delegated to the learned behaviour, with only minor input from the senses.

I prefer to think of it thus: you are the sum of your experiences, and in a fight / tennis match, you draw on the sum of what you are, without needing the intervention of the conscious mind.

I never view a fight or a tennis match as a series of decisions - it's a state of mind that I find quite relaxing, and it's all down to practice.

Re:10 seconds.

[mysticgoat]

I don't agree with several aspects of parent post, but I do agree that TFA's introduction of "free will" into the discussion is a red herring.

The experiments show some very interesting things about the mind's mechanisms, in particular about the relationship of the self-aware, language-using part— call it "ego"— to the parts that do not have direct access to language and might not directly interact with the world. But author of TFA seems to be working with an outdated, simple model that places the ego at the top of the decision hierarchy. Which raises the question of free-will since with this model it appears that the top of the pyramid is being dictated to by mechanistic events happening in lower parts of the mind.

Bob Newhart had a show in the 1980s (Newhart) which introduced the comedic trio of Larry, and his brother Darryl, and his other brother Darryl. Larry was the only one who spoke or directly interacted with the other characters: Darryl and Darryl were always hanging back, witnessing the action but never participating (although the audience was able to see their reactions to events). But when a decision was called for, the three would go into a quick huddle and then Larry would state what the decision was. IIRC, at least once in the series he said something like "I like the idea, but my brother Daryl didn't like it so we won't do it."

There are good reasons to believe that our minds are organized the same way: that the part of the self we are conscious of is the spokesman for very close siblings who happen to share a single body, and our decisions are all group decisions. There is no restriction on the possibility of free will in this: whether the group is constrained in its choices cannot be determined (at least at this time). The spokesman is of course constrained by the group's decision, and that part may or may not understand all the factors that led to a given decision. But that doesn't negate the free will of the group.

This model supports the research findings, where instrumentation was able to deduce something about the non-verbal deciders seconds before the spokesman had finished polling his sibs. It also can explain the way someone astute in reading non-verbal cues can make very good guesses about what an individual will decide to do, sometimes before that person is himself aware of his decision.

Re:10 seconds.

[Devout_IPUite]

Well, if you actually read the article they are pretty much just picking up impulses to move. They're taping into the brains random number generator as it's running and not surprisingly it's working while your thinking about being random. Even better is that they have a 70% chance of getting the hand correct in their guess. 50% is blind guessing, 100% is actually reading it. That means that have about 40% of actually detecting and a 30% chance of guessing right. Tell me when you can measure my answer to a math problem before I hit the buzzer to say I know the answer.

Re:10 seconds.

[mikael]

Sounds like dual path execution for CPU's. The processor calculates both possible future states of the system, at the same time as the condition is being evaluated. Then the actual result selects the new state of the processor.

By the wording of the article you could say a CPU makes the decision before the result is known.

From the article:

Tuning in on the electrical dialogue between working neurons, they pinpointed the cells of what they called a "free choice" brain circuit that in milliseconds synchronized scattered synapses to settle on a course of action.

Re:10 seconds.

[TaoPhoenix]

I agree their simple result is not completely applicable. However, one way to look at things is that your mind has worked with the previous information to *partially* prepare the context and decision point, anticipating the last piece of information.

Re:10 seconds.

[tgibbs]

I'm very sure I can't accept it. Having studied various martial arts for the past 30 years, I can tell you with certainty that I can engage in action the instant I decide what I am going to do when responding to a threat situation. It's not just a matter of reflex and ingrained response. Time slows down immediately and I can often sift through a large number of options and decision points. Is this really a threat? If so, what's the best response? Run? Strike? Duck?

I've done martial arts for over 30 years also, but my experience is different from what you describe. I don't "decide" much of anything. Most of the time I don't know what I'm going to do until after I've done it. I think that the reason time seems to "slow down" is that the slow conscious mind realizes that it doesn't have the processing speed to make decisions at this rate, and it gets out of the way, allowing much faster low-level decision-making processes to take control. I think the role of the conscious mind is more along the lines of programming low-level systems in advance, as opposed to making the actual decisions. And even there, the relationship between conscious thought and decision is tenuous. I can remember numerous occasions when I went into a match determined to try some particular technique, and it just didn't happen. The only conscious decisions I make during a fight are broad strategy like engage or retreat--and even then, my body doesn't always listen.

Re:10 seconds.

[wytcld]

"This doesn't rule out free will, but it does make it implausible."

Big implausible supposition there: that decisions made without immediate reflective consciousness cannot possibly be free. The assumption is made that arguments and observations supporting the premise that we do have free will depend for their validity on all the aspects of agency being within the halo of consciousness - where consciousness is further defined as the capacity to report such self-awareness to an experimenter.

We can assume that our researcher here once took an intro to philosophy class where he was rewarded if he embraced the notion that Newtonian determinism leaves no place in the physical universe for freedom. His professor, being uneducated in physics, was untroubled by the immense degrees of freedom - perhaps even an essential role for consciousness - required by quantum physics.

If quantum physics points in the right direction, it might be freedom all the way down. There are even suggestions by serious and respect theorists that in some sense it is consciousness all the way down (although consciousness need not imply immediate reportability in all instances). So freedom need not be framed as some exception to the overwhelming Newtonian determinism of the material universe, provided only by rare miracles of consciousness (or spirit or whatever). Once it's framed in that way, of course we modern scientists don't believe in miracles. But if we believe quantum physics to be a much better theory than Newtonian, that's simply not the frame.

If that's not the frame, experiments showing practical limits on reportability of the experience of free agency indicate nothing at all about free will's plausibility.

Re:10 seconds.

[fugue]

Uh... from the article:

While inside the brain scanner, the students watched random letters stream across a screen. Whenever they felt the urge, they pressed a button with their right hand or a button with their left hand. Then they marked down the letter that had been on the screen in the instant they had decided to press the button.

What's unclear? Obviously it depends on the decision. I've seen monkey experiments in which the subjects' neurons fired unambiguously a second or so before action was taken, and I've seen people decide subconsciously what car to buy weeks before they stop gathering information that is, in the end, only used to trick their conscious minds into thinking that they've researched the question thoroughly...

Re:10 seconds.

[fugue]

After reading about Louisiana, I suppose that further proof is all the religious people out there. You can give them all the evidence and reason you want, and they consciously process it, but they are quite powerless against their subconscious decision made years ago.

Re:10 seconds.

[magisterx]

This is a brilliant point. Most of our thought is done well ahead of time, and much of learning (especially in physical activities, but it applies to other things as well) is training ourselves to push things that initially required conscious thought into automatic activities. When I was first learning to drive, I had to think about every time I turned on the turn signal, how often I looked in the rearview mirror, even how much to turn the wheel and I often over corrected. I also didn't think of much of anything else while driving that was directly relevant to driving.

Later, learning to drive a stick shift was the same way. I initially had to pay careful conscious attention to the motor's RPM's, my current speed, my desired speed and such things. After a few weeks, it became automatic and I never gave it any thought at all.

I am in no way an expert on how the mind works, but the way it subjectively seems to be for me is that I no longer have to think about those types of decisions (when to shift gears, when to look in the rearview) because I have trained myself through practice to do them automatically. In a sense, it subjectively feels like I no longer even make those decision at all. But the reason I do not make them is not that I do not have free will and am not capable of making them, rather it is that I have already made them. I decided long ago and trained myself to go along with the decision, that when I am present with a certain set of stimuli I react a certain way. In those cases I no longer have to make the decision.

Re:10 seconds.

[DriedClexler]

The major experiment uses a flawed definition of "decision". If I were the subject it might take me several seconds of unconscious cogitation to formulate a plan: when the next letter flashes I will press the left button, for example. The real decision is made below the level of consciousness, so the letter recorded is the one shown when the action is started, not the one shown when the decision-making process is started.

Hm, I'm having a bit of trouble making out what your argument is here...

This is similar to driving a car. ...

Ah, okay, that's better!

Re:10 seconds.

[Xyrus]

Yeah, you're girlfriend told me. The manly and decisive part is ok, but the lightning fast part, not so much.

~X~

Re:10 seconds.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hypothetical thinking gets rid of your 'last bit of information' limitation.

In any case, EVERYBODY is 10 or so seconds behind their decision-maker. (And unless something that triggers your reflex system happens, your senses are about 4 seconds behind). So you wouldn't notice the lag. You got that bit of information, and you didn't even know it.

Re:10 seconds.

[cobaltnova]

Furthering your view, I would argue that there are enough degrees of freedom in just Newtonian physics.

Consider chaotic systems: they are determined but impossible to simulate (since any error, even of the smallest magnitude, rapidly causes gigantic divergences in behavior). Just because a motion is deterministic does not mean that it can be computed.

I would expect the kind of massively sensitive, discontinuous, and feedback-sensitive behaviors characteristic of chaotic systems in a human brain.

I don't even think the complexities of the quantum world need to be involved in any argument about free will. Deterministic theories should be enough, considering chaotic behavior.

Re:10 seconds.

[spun]

Easy, you actually made the decision before you received the last piece of data. And remember, your decision to make a decision was also ten seconds behind you being conscious of it. Your consciousness might not have been aware you had a decision to make, but your brain was.

Re:10 seconds.

[YttriumOxide]

Hold on... my senses are 4 seconds behind reality? WHAT?! Can you explain what you mean by this? When I see something, it certainly isn't 4 seconds after it actually happened (unless it's just a smidge under 4 light seconds away). The processing time for senses is WELL under 4 seconds.

Re:10 seconds.

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. As a brain scientist at UC Davis, I can tell you that this article is Bullshit.

Re:10 seconds.

[YttriumOxide]

That makes sense for some limited circumstances but not all - and if does not apply to all, then it can not be a valid theory as stated (it could be valid with rewording of course though).

Example: I come home, and find a note stuck to my front door telling me to call my landlord. In less than 10 seconds, I will have made a decision whether to call him or not based on the available information. There's no way I could have "pre-made" that decision in my brain because the decision couldn't have existed before I saw the note.

You could argue that I've just "pre-made" that decision now, but in that case, have I pre-made a decision for every possible occurrence in my life that I can decide in less than 10 seconds? I really don't think so!

Re:10 seconds.

[Prune]

There are even suggestions by serious and respect theorists that in some sense it is consciousness all the way down

Yes, by physicists thinking they're qualified in metaphysics and psychology.

The more sensible view: consciousness has nothing to do with basic physics (other than reducing to it through the usual theoretical reductionism psychology->neurology->biology->chemistry->physics). http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0412182

Re:10 seconds.

[Antique Geekmeister]

And I, too, make decisions without conscious evaluation. Which hand do I block that incoming punch with? After 30 years of martial arts, I hope you're reacting _long_ before you decide.

Re:10 seconds.

[luwain]

I think that this decision time could vary widely between different individuals and different "groups". After years of "blitz" chess, I find that my decision-making must be mostly based on pattern-recognition and specialized memory, because the choices of plans and moves when I play "3 seconds/move" on ICC (Internet Chess Club) or "72 Hours/move" on ItsYourTurn.com, do not differ much at all. In a way, this may validate their findings as much as dispute them...(I can't decide :)

Re:10 seconds.

[clone53421]

I think that the reason time seems to "slow down" is that the slow conscious mind realizes that it doesn't have the processing speed to make decisions at this rate, and it gets out of the way, allowing much faster low-level decision-making processes to take control.

Exactly. I agree with the person above who said that learning and training are really just conditioning the subconscious to react in the way we want it to. You think you're consciously reacting to what's happening, but you're not... you've trained your subconscious and it's taken over for the moment. Consciously deciding on each action would take far too long.

Re:10 seconds.

[Anonymous Coward]

See, I've got split second reflexes (I've been 'studying' things like Virtua Fighter for the past ~10 years and I'd estimate I can react to an opponent within ~0.2s generally speaking, and also I'm fucking amazing at Stepmania) but time doesn't slow down and I don't spend every millisecond considering all my options. Maybe you're a cyborg? Enjoy your illusion of consciousness.

Re:10 seconds.

[Anonymous Coward]

I can often sift through a large number of options and decision points.

Wow. Way to shit on centuries (millenia?) of martial arts philosophy. And common sense. Bravo.

Re:10 seconds.

[dreamchaser]

It depends. Fortunately I've only had to actually defend myself a few times in my life. Most of the time a block is reflexive but for me counter attacks usually involve a conscious decision. I'd rather not kill anyone if I don't have to.

Re:10 seconds.

[excelblue]

Maybe it's because you've already made the decision before you've encountered the situation. I'm pretty sure you'd know what to do in different kinds of situations after practicing martial arts for such a long time.

So, at all times, you'd have made the decision: if one combination of things is present, do this; if another combination of things is present, do something else. When information is actually available, you can simply follow through your "complex" decision.

Re:10 seconds.

[noidentity]

Obviously your brain knew the information before you heard it!

But seriously, this is just another stupid study. Obviously over-thinking is worse, the same way as thinking too much; it's all in the definition of those words.

Re:10 seconds.

[Theolojin]

I'm not sure I can accept this...

You know, you skeptics are starting to anger me. Why, I am about ten seconds away from...oh, wait. No, I'm not.

Re:10 seconds.

[Anonymous Coward]

It is clarified. Apparently you didn't read the article? :)

Counter-argument:

You do realize you're at /. right now, where reading TFA is internet blasphemy and punishable only by e-ego crushing aka modding down.

Re:10 seconds.

[Anonymous Coward]

Your senses, as experienced by the conscious mind, always lag by about four seconds (though that number is idiosyncratic).

Processing and consciousness are very different things. For example, your conscious mind is NOT aware of everything in your visual field. You "see" everything, in a very important sense. But most of it isn't important enough to get priority over what your conscious mind is "currently" "seeing", or even register consciously. This is what is called a "frame" or what is normally called "attention". As this and other studies have shown, consciousness is an epiphenomenon, meaning it has no causal relation to your actions. It is the consequence of processing, not the processing.

To demonstrate this, consider a "natural" conversation. I will assume you have experienced conversations where you are witty, insightful, funny, etc, with NO conscious effort. You simply "hear" a sentence, and "automatically" know what to say. Well, that's not automatic, though it seems that way to your conscious mind. You have already decided what to say before your conscious mind has "heard" it.

Re:10 seconds.

[John_Sauter]

The major experiment uses a flawed definition of "decision". If I were the subject it might take me several seconds of unconscious cogitation to formulate a plan: when the next letter flashes I will press the left button, for example. The real decision is made below the level of consciousness, so the letter recorded is the one shown when the action is started, not the one shown when the decision-making process is started.

Hm, I'm having a bit of trouble making out what your argument is here...

This is similar to driving a car. ...

Ah, okay, that's better!

A car analogy is always appropriate on Slashdot.

Re:10 seconds.

[poopdeville]

Here's a better example: you see a nice car drive by on the street, and you decide to watch it. Well, that decision happened four seconds ago. And you moved your head four seconds ago. And you're consciously seeing it NOW.

Re:10 seconds.

[The_Wilschon]

False. Stochastic theories do not exactly predict the outcome of every experiment, they only predict probabilities (a tautology). So, one is free to posit another mechanism (call it souls, or free wills, or whatever you like), which does determine the outcome of some experiments. It is entirely plausible that this mechanism does so in a way that does not affect the distribution of experimental results, and is thus empirically indistinguishable from the same stochastic theory without such a supposition. Deterministic theories leave no such room. Once the state is determined at any time t, it is determined for all other times, come hell, high water, or free wills external to the universe.

For an analogy that I think is pretty decent, consider encrypted content. With many encryption schemes, the result is indistinguishable from line noise, yet it does carry information.

You are right in saying that positing free will is unscientific, but wrong in claiming that stochastic theories exclude it (or else that deterministic theories do not).

It is worth noting that my "mechanism" would constitute a hidden variable theory, sort of. The sort of is because "hidden variable theory" is usually understood to mean a way to make quantum mechanics deterministic or complete, that is, it introduces realism. There are of course sharp theoretical limits on such theories. But one which does not quite make quantum mechanics complete, especially if it is also nonlocal, is not so limited.

Re:10 seconds.

[Anonymous Coward]

Brings up questions of whether the non-verbal, non-world-interacting aspects can be said to be self-aware, and if not, whether such a component can be said to possess will. Again, a lot of commas.

Re:10 seconds.

[spun]

Ah, but how do you know you've made that decision? And how do you know when? How do you know that the feeling that you'd made the decision instantaneously wasn't edited in later? Because your hand started to move towards the door handle, or your phone? How long did it take you to understand the note, versus reading the whole thing?

Re:10 seconds.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not what I heard, he should work on stamina...

Re:10 seconds.

[Daetrin]

That is, when you play Doom, you don't directly see what makes you decide to use a particular weapon at a particular time. What you do directly sense is that this is a good thing to do, and you do it. Now, sometimes you can make explicit the underlying process - e.g., "I should go over there because it's safer, and a weapon should spawn nearby also" - but this elaboration was not fully present before.

Clearly you've played a _lot_ more Doom than i have if you think making those kinds of decisions normally happens automatically =P

Re:10 seconds.

[Ed Avis]

Of course you can make the decision before you receive the final piece of information that you will use to make the decision. You decide in advance what you want to do, and then once you have the information you rationalize it however you like to support the decision you already reached.

Re:10 seconds.

[Prune]

Fist, metaphysics is not a science. Second, since around the times after Newton, the sciences have become simply too large to be well understood in general by a single person. There's no such a thing as a psychologist, for example: there is a cognitive psychologist, a pathological psychologist, an experimental psychologist, etc. Fields like biology are even more extremely specialized, to the point where even sub-fields are fragmented: someone trained in one area of microbiology would have essentially zero comprehension when reading a paper from another area of microbiology. To imply that a physicist is somehow qualified to understand and have significant insight in another science in which s/he has no formal training, is either flippant or arrogant. Equally so to imply that non-physicists do use their brains. Mathematics very much plays a part in many sub-fields of psychology. (I'm neither a physicist nor a psychologist, if it matters.)

Re:10 seconds.

[Prune]

"non-physicists do" should say "non-physicists don't"

Re:10 seconds.

[Anonymous Coward]

It makes sense to me - It is part of nature - we are aware of things which we don't consciously realize. Our lost natural instincts.

Re:10 seconds.

[dword]

Hey, Eugene. Here's a project for you. Get it done ten days ago.

Re:10 seconds.

[Plutonite]

Well said. It is very important for people to think very carefully and without emotion about this topic in order to realize that this "free will" business is, by definition, illusory.

Re:10 seconds.

[YttriumOxide]

10 seconds is a VERY long time. If it takes me 2 seconds to read and comprehend the note, 2 seconds to get my phone, 2 seconds to dial the number, then it's been 6 seconds since I picked up the note, and I've DEFINITELY made the decision sometime during this to call - I'm certainly NOT doing all this on "autopilot"!

If all actual decisions took 10 seconds to make, I'm quite sure we would not be capable of basic modern life (actually, I'm not sure we'd even be capable of basic survival)

Re:10 seconds.

[YttriumOxide]

Becoming somewhat of a catchphrase around here... but... Citation please?

I simply can not accept this as true, as it implies I can not make a conscious decision about anything in less than 4 seconds (if I am not consciously aware of something, all actions taken regarding it (that is, before these "4 seconds") would have to be "pre-decided" or "gut instinct" or similar)

There are so many things that I do in life, and other posters have also commented on, that demonstrate a conscious decision in far less than 4 seconds, where the decision could not have been made so long ago as the information needed to know that decision must be made was not available that long ago.

An experiment to prove this could be simple: Hide a coloured slide behind a black panel, hide a word "truth" or "lie" behind another, and hide two buttons behind a third - one button is labelled with the name of the colour, and the other is labelled with another colour. All at once, all three black panels are removed, and the person sitting there must look at the colour and the word, then press a button. If the word is "truth", they must press the button that matches the colour, and if it is "lie" they must press the button that does not.
The "truth"/"lie" word exists to force a conscious decision, instead of allowing the person to "autopilot" between their colour sense and language ability (the name of the colour written on the button)
To make it even more "decision" based rather than automatic, use less common colour names such as "turquoise" and "ochre" that are less likely to have an automatic response (however you do need to ensure somehow that the people at least know these names).
I am CERTAIN that almost anyone can react and press the appropriate button in WELL under 4 seconds, demonstrating that a decision has been made.
Because the person did not know which buttons would be available, which colour would be shown, or whether they would have to tell the truth or lie, there is no way they could pre-decide anything.

Re:10 seconds.

[DamnStupidElf]

False. Stochastic theories do not exactly predict the outcome of every experiment, they only predict probabilities (a tautology). So, one is free to posit another mechanism (call it souls, or free wills, or whatever you like), which does determine the outcome of some experiments. It is entirely plausible that this mechanism does so in a way that does not affect the distribution of experimental results, and is thus empirically indistinguishable from the same stochastic theory without such a supposition. Deterministic theories leave no such room. Once the state is determined at any time t, it is determined for all other times, come hell, high water, or free wills external to the universe.

The question then is whether the mechanism for free will in this universe has free will in the larger universe containing it, reductio ad absurdum. Essentially, either free will must be able to exist entirely within a universe or not at all.

A definition of free will that could exist in our universe without question is this: Free will is the lack of perfect foresight. By divorcing the models and decisions that we make from the actual laws of the universe, our choices are freed from perfect isomorphism with the nature of their outcomes. In other words, our imperfect nature grants us free will in the form of not knowing with certainty what the outcome of our actions will be. Our actions may be deterministic and we may retain free will by the observation that our concept of self is not mathematically isomorphic to the bits of the universe that compose our body and brain. Essentially, our model of ourself can possess free will because it is an imperfect model. We clearly don't mean that the atoms composing our bodies have their own free will that determines our choices, we mean that the abstract concept of a person (which we believe ourselves to be) has an abstract property called free will. Even as our mental models of ourselves are influenced by advancing physics, we will never be able to formulate a perfect model of ourselves, and therefore never quite able to be rid of our free will, no matter how hard we try.

If that seems like a cop-out, consider that humans can only experience the universe subjectively (through an imperfect model) to begin with, so defining properties of our imperfect model is simply the best that we can do. If we were perfectly objective we would have to possess a perfect model of the universe, and it would render free will nonexistent. We would simply know the universe in full all at once, including ourselves and all our intentions, future choices and actions, and their ultimate outcomes.

It is worth noting that my "mechanism" would constitute a hidden variable theory, sort of. The sort of is because "hidden variable theory" is usually understood to mean a way to make quantum mechanics deterministic or complete, that is, it introduces realism. There are of course sharp theoretical limits on such theories. But one which does not quite make quantum mechanics complete, especially if it is also nonlocal, is not so limited.

Bhom's interpretation of quantum mechanics (guiding waves for deterministic particles) works as a deterministic model, but it doesn't add any explanations or make new predictions. Nevertheless, it allows a fully deterministic universe and avoids the many worlds interpretation, essentially making that issue orthogonal to physics for all practical purposes (I don't think quantum immortality is practical until it's actually tested by dying in the current universe. It's certainly not a repeatably testable hypothesis within a single universe or an entire branch of universes). Free will also appears to be orthogonal to physics as we know it for the same reason, which implies that it's truly a philosophical problem based on the model of ourselves that we want to use. We could define a model of ourselves where we do not have free will, but I posit that such a model could explain nothing that a model with free will could not also explain. My definition of free wi

Re:10 seconds.

[Antique Geekmeister]

You don't spar in training? I should think sparring counts.

Blocking incoming punches, and even a lot of stance and foot movement, are tactical decisions. They occur very quickly with proper training, and leave your mind free to work on strategic decisions.

My oint is that a lot of decisions are actually very quickly made.

Re:10 seconds.

[Burnhard]

True enough, but Ive always thought of Conscious Experience as being your last chance to modify a behaviour or sequence of actions that might be detrimental to your survival, otherwise evolution would never have endowed us with this ability and wéd all be walking around like Zombies (ordinary philosophical arguments about the nature of consciousness aside!).

Re:10 seconds.

[ignavus]

So ... when you said "That's down the hall, in Religion & Politics", that wasn't an authoritative answer.

So I cannot be certain that I *will* get an authoritative piece down the hall. I cannot be certain that there are no authorities here.

Want an authoritative piece? That might be down the hall in Religion & Politics. This might be Science: there might be no authorities here.

There: fixed it for you.

Re:10 seconds.

[tsjaikdus]

>> I'm not sure I can accept this
.
I have a brain, I know what it does, I'm an expert too!

Re:10 seconds.

[spun]

In case you hadn't read the relevant bits in the article, here they are:

While inside the brain scanner, the students watched random letters stream across a screen. Whenever they felt the urge, they pressed a button with their right hand or a button with their left hand. Then they marked down the letter that had been on the screen in the instant they had decided to press the button.

Studying the brain behavior leading up to the moment of conscious decision, the researchers identified signals that let them know when the students had decided to move 10 seconds or so before the students knew it themselves. About 70% of the time, the researchers could also predict which button the students would push.

So this experiment doesn't seem to cover situations such as finding a note and making a quick decision. For instance, when you could get up to go get a snack while watching a TV show, you've actually decided ten seconds or so in advance.

Re:10 seconds.

[YttriumOxide]

I don't see how that's necessarily the case.

Just because the experiment doesn't cover one "kind" of decision, it doesn't mean that the decision to "get up to go get a snack while watch TV" is necessarily of the other kind that this experiment does cover (it probably is, but "probably" is not a useful word in this case!). Moreover, it doesn't give any clear way to distinguish between kinds of decisions, so even if the experiment performed does tell us anything at all, it's more than useless in that it doesn't tell us what circumstances it covers!

And even with all of the above, I still don't accept the "10 seconds" idea just on the face of it. To use your TV example again, perhaps the piece of information that made me decide I want a snack was a TV advertisement that appeared. Would you really argue that I actually already had decided (or "was going to decide" depending on viewpoint) that I wanted a snack, and then simply used the TV ad to reinforce the decision and "retcon" it in to the decision in my head?

Or how about when I get to the kitchen to get my snack, have I decided 10 seconds before I get there what I want? (that's before I even walked in and saw what's in my fridge/cupboard/shelf (which, no, I do not generally know in advance))

There are simply too many cases where I don't see how this could possibly work. I'm sure the experiment is showing something, but it's not showing what they claim.

Re:10 seconds.

[Nivag064]

In actual fact, people's brains often process multiple trains of thought concurrently.

However, when the brain 'decides' we need to be concious of these concurrent thoughts, we experience them sequentially.

This is the reason that time seems to slow down when we have to consciously process a lot of things in a short span of time. What is happening is that for example: 5 thought processes that might each take about 10 seconds are perceived in about 10 seconds elapsed - so we experience 50 seconds in 10 - hence time appears to slow down. Another reason time appears to slow down in in a fight, is that the brain speeds up.

Note that the actual ratio of consciously perceived time to actual time elapsed is actually far more complicated...

The amount of processing for each concurrent thought, has a non-linear relationship to the perceived time that one is concious of them. In a lot of cases, you are not concious of them at all - for example driving along a motorway in traffic, unless something changes, one is normally only generally aware of the cars around you.

I am a software developer. When I am make changes to a program I know well using techniques I have mastered - I am certainly not concious of all the thought processes behind the code I'm typing in. However, if I'm in an unfamiliar program in a language I am learning then I am very concious of what I am doing, and I take a lot longer to complete the task than someone more experienced in that area.

-Nivag

Re:10 seconds.

[guruevi]

Actually, you might want to look at the population of subjects they used. Especially for brain scanner studies, those populations tend to be small because time in a scanner is expensive and the scans itself relatively slow. They also have to be made up of an equal number of left-handed or ambidextrous and right handed people and things like strokes, head injury and epilepsy can mess up a lot of stuff in the brain, those selections, again, take up time and money (also reimbursements grow for more specific subgroups of human subjects).

It is not very uncommon to hear in presentations about brain studies that certain findings from other studies cannot be used because the number of subjects was small or not very well put together and the conclusions based on statistical data were thus skewed. Even simple things like tasks are not put together well or parts are easily forgotten which could change the results since a lot goes on in that gray mass. For example if you present somebody with a certain audiovisual stimulus like a kitten and a dog bark, all kinds of parts of the brain might or might not light up depending on memories and experiences while other researchers claim that instead you should use something totally weird like a random color-pattern and noise.

I didn't read this study, but I am pretty sure the population was 10 which is not very representative for all humankind and their 70% claim might be off.

I believe it.

[zippthorne]

A common trick I like to do to figure out what I'm thinking:

If I'm having trouble deciding something, I flip a coin. Then, I go with the side I was hoping would come up.

Re:I believe it.

[InvisblePinkUnicorn]

And if your decision requires more than a yes/no answer? Do you use a 64-sided die and assign a choice to each side, and then memorize those assignments?

Re:I believe it.

[ThorGod]

Dude, my best friend does this! Is your first name...Matt?

Re:I believe it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure. Don't you? :)

Re:I believe it.

[trolltalk.com]

I used to do the same thing.

This study doesn't bring anything new to the table - we've known for a LOOOONG time that what we perceive as "consciousness" is really more akin to a "ghost in the machine."

What is important, however, is that, despite all this, we can actually, with enough thought, make decisions based on logic, as opposed to "feelings" or "what we think is reasonable."

Most of what we do, we do on "autopilot", and our consciousness re-orders the stream of events so that we believe we "decided" to do what we did. Classic example - think of any time when you jammed on the brakes because of someone who rushed in front of the car ... and think back, and you'll realize that you already had braked before you even were aware of the person, because even the half-second lag between perception and stepping on the brake pedal would have been too long.

Re:I believe it.

[rnswebx]

What is important, however, is that, despite all this, we can actually, with enough thought, make decisions based on logic, as opposed to "feelings" or "what we think is reasonable."

That's a lot of commas.

Re:I believe it.

[lastchance_000]

I tend to agree with your observation, but I have to give you -1 for "gratuitous" use of "quotation marks."

Re:I believe it.

[$0.02]

Why would anyone use 64-sided die when 6 coins can do the trick?

Re:I believe it.

[Maxime]

I see the funny side of your comment, but 6 coins aren't equivalent to a 64 dice: they are indistinguishable so HHHTTT == TTTHHH.

Re:I believe it.

[Da Cheez]

One of my old English teachers used to call that a "Comma-kazi."

Re:I believe it.

[Gewalt]

000000-111111 in binary is 64 possible choices.

Re:I believe it.

[somersault]

You could use the same coin six times and note the results, or have six coins in a little enclosure with 6 separate compartments, then always read from the same side of the enclosure..

Re:I believe it.

[The_mad_linguist]

Flip them sequentially. Make a decision tree.

Re:I believe it.

[DirePickle]

I've done precisely the same thing, even (especially) on some really big decisions. Haven't regretted it yet!

Re:I believe it.

[DirePickle]

Penny, dime, nickel, quarter, half dollar, dollar.

Re:I believe it.

[Maxime]

yes, i got that.
But bits are ordered, so they are distinct. Coins are not, so you have an amount of equivalent combinations in your toss, HHHTTT == TTTHHH for instance.
You can't make a difference between those, so the real case is 3 heads, 3 tails, in any order. That means that you don't have 64 cases in the end.

Re:I believe it.

[Paradise Pete]

6 coins aren't equivalent to a 64 dice: they are indistinguishable so HHHTTT == TTTHHH.

order Only matter if the doesn't.

Re:I believe it.

[Stradivarius]

why can't you order the coins like you ordered the bits?

Re:I believe it.

[hvm2hvm]

I actually made a program that chose randomly from a list of options. I ran it until I was happy with the result :D

Re:I believe it.

[Maxime]

Well, let's re-read the GP:

Why would anyone use 64-sided die when 6 coins can do the trick?

If you use 6 coins, my guess would be that you're going to toss them at the same time, so no order.
To answer the other objections, yes there are ways to go around that, my point wasn't that you can't construct an equivalent based on coins, just that simply tossing 6 coins isn't equivalent to throwing a 64-sided dice.
Speaking of overthinking... ;-)

Re:I believe it.

[CastrTroy]

For Canadians, it's penny, nickel, dime, quarter, dollar coin, 2 dollar coin. All these coins are in common use.

Re:I believe it.

[Maxime]

I only have Euros, you insensitive clod :P

Re:I believe it.

[dodobh]

Just toss the coin 'n' times, where 'n' is a positive integer such that 2^n >= k > 2^(n-1) where k is the number of possible choices.

Re:I believe it.

[Anonymous Coward]

â2 â1 â0.5 â0.20 â0.10 â0.05

Good enough for you?

Re:I believe it.

[Your.Master]

Hmmm...you're still wrong, because even with identical coins at the same time, you can still assign order based on where the coins fall spatially, since no two coins can occupy the exact same space.

The only way they aren't equivalent is if you explicitly disallow all of these methods, which is about as sensible as saying the 64-sided-die has 32 sides that say 1 and 32 sides that say 0.

Re:I believe it.

[Dun Malg]

Most of what we do, we do on "autopilot", and our consciousness re-orders the stream of events so that we believe we "decided" to do what we did.

Well, we did decide. We just didn't decide right then. We decided to brake for obstacles back when we learned to drive, then consciously reinforced that reaction. The conscious mind is the "after action analyst". The fact that the conscious mind feels like it and its programmed, autonomous slave sub-minds are one and the same is where the "illusion" comes from. Really, the problem is that people keep trying to separate the "conscious" from the "unconscious". It's all wired together.

Re:I believe it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not flip one coin 6 times? Then the order is natural!

Re:I believe it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually is penny, nickel, dime, quarter, loonie and toonie! :P

Re:I believe it.

[Anonymous Coward]

you already had braked before you even were aware of the person

now, it depends on how you define "aware." (I'm not Bill). Obviously, I won't be putting my foot on the brake if I wasn't aware of the person just moved in front of me. I'm not actively thinking about the person just moved in front of me or how he got there or what's his reason of being there, but that's not what I would called "aware."

Re:I believe it.

[Anonymous Coward]

When I parse that, internally it sounds like Al Sharpton.

Re:I believe it.

[Prune]

He can encode the choice to binary and use multiple coin flips.

Re:I believe it.

[trolltalk.com]

Your foot is on the brake well before you're aware that the person is there. Otherwise, they'd be road pizza.

It's possible to completely bypass any "consciousness".

One of the earliest reports was about a guy whose skull was cleaved open with an ice axe. They shoved his brains back in, and he "recovered." He would get up, wash, get dressed, go to work, etc. --- but there was "nobody home". All identity had disappeared. He was just an automaton.

Conscious decision-making, or even awareness, isn't necessary for most activities once they're learned.

Re:I believe it.

[konohitowa]

Apparently because that would be admitting they really didn't understand the solution given.

Re:I believe it.

[riceboy50]

Yeah, I feel that way some days too.

Re:I believe it.

[JJJK]

Just flip 6 coins... or 1 coin 6 times... and if you know you have 64 choices and what they are, you can probably enumerate them

Re:I believe it.

[Anonymous Coward]

But you had already decided to make that post by the time you'd read the first word of his post, and knew how many commas there were.

Fascinating, isn't it?

Re:I believe it.

[mkosmul]

And if your decision requires more than a yes/no answer? Do you use a 64-sided die and assign a choice to each side, and then memorize those assignments?

That wolud be an overcomplication. I simply toss 6 times to generate the 6 random bits neccessary for my 64=2^6 choices.

Re:I believe it.

[Anonymous Coward]

64 sided die?! That's just ridiculous.
I assign each choice a number 0 through nchoices - 1 then I just flip a coin ceil(log2(n_choices)) times.

Heads are one and tails are zero.

Unassigned numbers are given a null value and
require re-flipping.

Simple...

Re:I believe it.

[richie2000]

You're moderated Funny, but this is actually a great idea when you're overthinking. I take it a small step further; when I'm thinking "best out of three" I know I've already made up my mind.

Re:I believe it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Now your friend Matt might know your /. id -- but you may never be sure if you do/don't know his.

Re:I believe it.

[FiloEleven]

There are some who call me...Tim.

Re:I believe it.

[rs11]

To quote Ron Shelton who wrote Bull Durham: "Don't think. it can only hurt the ball club"

Re:I believe it.

[BrainInAJar]

I cast magic missile...

Re:I believe it.

[MarkRose]

It wasn't that bad. Commawn, man!

Re:I believe it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Flip the coin 32 times, and treat the result as a float.

Re:I believe it.

[Anonymous Coward]

64-sided die can only represent 2^6 states. You might want to have a fuzzy die for those special occasions of human relationships. Or at least a few 64-sided dies cast together.

Re:I believe it.

[Eddi3]

I wish there was a "-1, FAIL" mod.

Re:I believe it.

[Anonymous Coward]

No doubt. That was Shatner.

Re:I believe it.

[DarkKnightRadick]

and you can keep your damn pennies to yourselves. I keep seeing those maple leaf emblazoned coins all the way down here in Tennessee. Don't know why, but I do. Damn Canadian coins. Next thing you know your nickel and dimes will try immigrating here too and causing all kinds of confusion. :p

Re:I believe it.

[Anonymous Coward]

... then memorize those assignments?

Here, I'll help you: just *pretend* the side that comes up is the one you wanted.

I'll be sending you the bill.

Re:I believe it.

[trick-knee]

ties up less money, too.

Re:I believe it.

[DamienNightbane]

I use a d% and a choice table.

Re:I believe it.

[kitgerrits]

One of my old English teachers used to call that a "Comma-kazi."

Hey, I'm a fan of the [,] key on my keyboard, you insensitive clod!

His problem, and mine, it trying to insert extra information into the sentence.
The 'lite' version of the previous sentence::

What is important is that we can actually make decisions based on logic.

If you want to fit the rest in 'the official way, you get:

What is important is that we can actually make decisions based on logic.
We can do this despite the forementioned, without regard for feelings or our vision of reason.

(His flaw is that 'with enough thought' actually means 'what we think is reasonable')

What he meant:

If we make an effort to take our own feelings out of the equation and weigh all the deciding factors, we can make decisions based on logic.

Re:I believe it.

[kitgerrits]

Bash taught me to quote my [-]es and my [,]s!

Re:I believe it.

[DeanFox]

What is important, however, is that, despite all this, we can actually, with enough thought, make decisions based on logic, as opposed to "feelings" or "what we think is reasonable."

So, what you feel is better and more reasonable is to make decisions based upon logic? That's a great way to avoid making decisions based upon feelings and what one may think reasonable.

-[d]-

Re:I believe it.

[argStyopa]

Well, just about ANY decision can be boiled down to binaries. Just as any seemingly-binary decision can be dissected to its component parts.

But that's the beauty of the coinflip. It forces the brain to channel and isolate questions into simpler packets which is almost ALWAYS a better way to deal with complex questions.

I still do that myself, when the answer doesn't readily present itself - flip a coin, and then go with whatever, when the coin dropped, I really hoped to see as a result.

Multi choice to binary: Which toothpaste do I buy? = Do I buy product A? Do I buy product B...etc.

Binary to multiple:

Do I marry this girl?
=
Do *I* marry this girl?
+
Do I *marry* this girl?
+
Do I marry *this* girl?
+
Do I marry this *girl*?

Re:I believe it.

[orasio]

You have been pwned. Get over it.

Re:I believe it.

[kittenwar]

.....and that man's name was Daniel Dennett.

(also, [[citation needed]]).

Re:I believe it.

[A_Lost_Frenchman]

Or maybe you could flip the coin 6 times. It's more time consuming but it saves some precious space in your pockets.

Re:I believe it.

[trolltalk.com]

No, it's a question of understanding that people DO in fact make irrational decisions based of feelings rather than hard data, and avoiding that practice when the decision isn't trivial. For example, the decisiond to drop religion and revert to atheism was mad despite my feelings that I would prefer, and was used to, being able to trust in $diety, but since there is zero evidence of that $diety, or any $diety, itellectual honesty demanded that, no matter how I *felt* about it, I had to do what was logical; most people refuse to because they are so psychologically invested in a particular world-view, and fear making the necessary changes.

Re:I believe it.

[sswope]

If you have a 64-sided die, you can use it as a shortcut to the I Ching hexagrams. Much more tidy than tossing yarrow stalks.

Not a threat to sentience...

[Fustican]

The test the article discusses seems rather arbitrary -- letters streaming across a screen, and you decide when to press a button. Perhaps what they detected was the buildup of boredom? Analyzing complex inputs and reasoning to a decision is a far more complex thing. In any case, I'm not convinced that all my decisions are predetermined by fate or particle physics.

Re:Not a threat to sentience...

[langelgjm]

The test the article discusses seems rather arbitrary -- letters streaming across a screen, and you decide when to press a button. Perhaps what they detected was the buildup of boredom?

Well, the article also states that they could predict with some accuracy which button the subjects would press:

Studying the brain behavior leading up to the moment of conscious decision, the researchers identified signals that let them know when the students had decided to move 10 seconds or so before the students knew it themselves. About 70% of the time, the researchers could also predict which button the students would push.

Re:Not a threat to sentience...

[Robert1]

From personal experience this is a very likely to be the case. In college when I participated in random psych experiments, as required by the class, I would notice gaping errors in testing that completely tainted the results.

Example: I signed up for 1/2 hour experiment, I get there and the tell me it's an hour long and I will be analyzing erotic art with a female student. They emphasized that, which I thought was pretty unnecessary and odd, and there was no girl in the waiting room with me before the experiment. Anyway I put all this together and figured it was just a fake-out and that I wasn't going to be doing any actual analysis. Sure enough the researcher comes in and says "ok she will be coming in soon, rearrange the tables and chairs how you like." Uhuh, yeah this isn't contrived. Anyway I intentionally put the chairs right next to each other just to be contrary, because at this point it was beyond ridiculous to keep playing along. Anyway then they came in, took pictures of the chairs, and told me it was all a trick to see how I would position them - WHO WOULD HAVE GUESSED?!

Anyway, almost all the experiments I did had some kind of fatal flaw in it. I had another one - similar to what you're talking about - in which I was told to look at various numerical matrices which were then taken away and I was asked to answer 5 timed-questions about it. If I finished the question block a new matrix showed up, but the questions were complicated enough that I often could not even finish them before the timer ran out. This went on for ONE HOUR. After 10 minutes I was mentally exhausted and just putting in whatever for answers to get through all my blocks as fast as possible - I had totally stopped caring. At this point I also assumed that this must be the actual experiment - to gauge exhaustion. But no, when the researcher came in he thanked me and that's it - if it had been another experiment he would have had to tell me.

So unless we see the entire experimental procedure written down, it's impossible to determine if their findings were legitimately obtained. Unlike other disciplines, psych/neuro results are particular susceptible to improper experimental procedure. Like you say, they could have just detected boredom.

Choice?

[dfn5]

Their findings challenge conventional notions of choice

There is no choice/free will. Everything is deterministic. At least that's what I told the judge.

Re:Choice?

[MyLongNickName]

I was the judge: I told him that I don't have free will either, and was predetermined to sentence him to 5-10. Underage donkey porn is just sick.

Re:Choice?

[lilomar]

Thank you for thinking of the underage donkeys.

Re:Choice?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no choice/free will. Everything is deterministic. At least that's what I told the judge.

Colliding billiard balls influence each other even though they don't have free will. A society that imposes a system of punishments for certain behaviors will influence the behavior of its members even if they don't have free will.

To use another analogy, a computer can navigate a car around obstacles by making predictions about the possible future positions of the car but the computer doesn't have what most people would consider to be free will (the computer does make choices, though). Think of the human brain as the computer and laws as obstacles to be navigated around. The laws influence behavior but not because of free will.

Re:Choice?

[tygt]

The devil made me do it, oh, oh, oh,oh It was the act of a man possessed, now The devil made me do it, oh, oh ,oh, oh Your honor, I am innocent!

Re:Choice?

[Dogtanian]

Thank you for thinking of the underage donkeys.

It's terrible, I know, but you can't blame him- a deterministic universe forced him to.... ah, sod it, this is the one that's going to take the joke too far and get modded redundant ;)

Re:Choice?

[ya really]

There is no choice/free will. Everything is deterministic. At least that's what I told the judge.

Did the judge say he agreed with you, but it wasn't his choice to find you guilty and send you to prison?

Re:Choice?

[Anonymous Coward]

Please! Won't someone please think of the kids!

A book along the same lines

[khing]

There is book by Malcolm Gladwell called "Blink" that explores something along the same lines, what the author called "the power of thinking without thinking". A quick skim of its wikipedia page should give a good summary. It is a good read.

I need some time to think about this

[Galactic Dominator]

I chose not to RTFA.

I am the decider.

Not all decisions...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not all decisions. There are *some* decisions that are made even 10s before you are even aware of them.

Possible examples would be *deciding* to wake up...

All women do this

[BenEnglishAtHome]

I've never met a sane woman who took more than 10 seconds to decide she'd NEVER sleep with me.

This is news?

Re:All women do this

[dgatwood]

Yeah, but according to the study, this probably means that she decided it long before she told you.... This is why dating sucks. The guy is always the last one to know that the girl he likes is just screwing with his head, has no interest in him whatsoever, and is just using him to piss off her parents, get free home repairs, make her ex jealous, etc.

I'm assuming, of course, that you're a guy. If you're a girl, she probably decided whether she would or would not sleep with you way back in college.... :-D

Re:All women do this

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank god for crazy girls.

Re:All women do this

[ScrewMaster]

Most of that ten seconds is spent evaluating the probable size of ... your wallet.

Re:All women do this

[ElectricRook]

...this probably means that she decided it long before she told you.... This is why dating sucks. The guy is always the last one to know that the girl he likes is just...

Perhaps the guy needs to learn to play the dating/socialization game. Mario does not get to work on the plumbing without sufficient chick points. Those points are easily won/lost by various action/inaction that are not clearly understood by a logically thinking Wandering Software Salesman.
To play the game well, one must watch the Pros. The body condition and face score you rolled are not really the great advantage a player would think they are Young Grasshopper. A pro does not lurk like a stalker, nor does he charge like a predator. To play well takes time and _much_ patience... You must always play this game, or never at all. Subscription services are newbie invitations to the playing fields, treat them as such. Activity clubs, or volunteer organizations can be much better. Electronics/Technology are usually point detriments in this game. That means throwing away the TV/computer games and play full time (except that watching/discussing a few Chick shows can be serious points). College is a great place to play, the work place is really poor on many levels. Always play as an observer, a predator never fits in with a herd. If you focus on your objective (sex), you will fail to achieve it. Move in and around the playing field and the players picking up points here and there. One the players will find you, and give you points. Any player who gives you too many points too soon can be dangerous (fatal attraction). Observe other players, and see if they sense the danger. Always collect points even from players outside your classification (age bracket or other classification), as low point tallies with multiple players can form a progressive points multiplier in addition to added experience.
Good luck, play safe, enjoy.

Re:All women do this

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never met a sane woman who took more than 10 seconds to decide she'd NEVER sleep with me.

This is news?

I've never met a sane women.

Re:All women do this

[inviolet]

Yeah, but according to the study, this probably means that she decided it long before she told you.... This is why dating sucks. The guy is always the last one to know that the girl he likes is just screwing with his head, has no interest in him whatsoever, and is just using him to piss off her parents, get free home repairs, make her ex jealous, etc.

You can make peace with the dating game once you seriously grok it from the woman's point of view.

Sperm is cheap, but womb space is expensive. Therefore, every woman must fight an information war against dozens of suitors, who have devoted a lifetime to masking their intentions.

Woman therefore resort to jamming: they must give off so many conflicting signals about their needs and desires, about what they admire in a man, that nobody can deceive them because nobody is exactly sure what the right answer is. After a time of keeping him confused, his confused reactions reveal the underlying pattern of *his* personality, which is the vital information that she needs to make the decision.

Re:All women do this

[dgatwood]

The problem is that the guys who are good and honest and don't mask their intentions at all are weeded out in the first round by that sort of behavior. People who are trustworthy assume that they can trust others as a general rule, so when a girl sends confusing signals, they assume the girl is honestly confused. Then, they either A. try to help the girl figure out her feelings by opening up more, thus causing the girl to totally freak out because a guy actually expresses his emotions, B. interpret her ambivalence as indicative of probable future rejection and give up immediately, or C. interpret her ambivalence as a sign of dishonesty and reject the girl outright. As a result, the girl's deception ends up driving off the most loyal and honest possible mates---precisely the guys she should be trying to attract.

The most crucial thing a woman can learn is that it is better to trust and risk getting hurt than to deceive and evade, thus guaranteeing it. As for me, I reject the "game". I don't play games with other people, and I don't expect other people to play games with me. What you see is what you get, and if a girl doesn't like that and can't simply accept me without playing mind games, she isn't worth my time. Life's too short to waste time chasing after somebody who isn't honest, open, and caring.

Lag!!

[NovaHorizon]

Hah! I knew the gamers that complain about 500Ms lag were full of it!

They haven't even become aware of their decision to shoot within that space of time!

Re:Lag!!

[phantomfive]

Excellent counter-example.

Re:Lag!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know, a 16 year ping is a bit of a high latency and over that time you should have been able to reach a grand conclusion whether to press the mouse button or not.

Re:Lag!!

[Anonymous Coward]

500 Ms is a bit over 15 years. Did you have a "Slow Children" sign in front of your house?

Re:Lag!!

[StormReaver]

"Hah! I knew the gamers that complain about 500Ms lag were full of it!"

If I had 500 megasecond lag, I'd be complaining too.

Re:Lag!!

[ichigo 2.0]

Most likely you already made the decision before you started the game. After all, why would you need to decide if you'll shoot the enemy or not?

Re:Lag!!

[NovaHorizon]

I accept that counter, and have been waiting all day for someone to make it actually xD.

In which, my true counter example of the article is 2 simple words..

Speed Chess ;)

Also, so those that noticed my Ms vs ms typo.. A 15 year delay on a game is not lag.. as I don't think anyone would consider the game to have done any less than crash after a couple minutes tops ;)

I would have thought a better test would be:

[mykepredko]

Giving the subject a series of comparisions to make and determine the difference of when they make the decision and when they act on it.

Use the same apparatus, but ask the subjects to select which they would prefer at that moment in time:

Steak vs Salad
Blonde vs Brunette
Pepsi vs Coke
Car vs Bicycle
Mac vs PC
and so on...

You could go on and try to week out personal preferences with things that the subject has to evaluate:
Which would you like in your front hall: A Van Gough or a Gougain?
Which is funnier: A joke from Steve Martin or a joke from Robin Williams?
What smells better: Roses or Cinnamon?
With a given math problem, what is the better of two choices to solve it?

I would think this approach would be a better way to see how decisions are made within the human mind.

myke

Re:I would have thought a better test would be:

[eugene ts wong]

KDE vs GNOME
VIM vs Emacs
*BSD vs Linux

;^) Come on. Let's not turn this into a flame war. :^)

Seriously, I think that these types of questions might be useful, but I think that they could also get a complex sampling. I don't know how to describe what I'm thinking here. When I read, "A Van Gough or a Gougain", I paused, because I wanted to go with Van Gough, but is that because I don't know who Gougain is? Shouldn't I try to sample his work, before deciding? If we do an experiment according to your suggestions, then hopefully the interpretation will take this type of thinking into account. Maybe I misunderstand you.

I'm mostly disappointed that they didn't test more people. I'd also like to know if the random letters were in the same order for everybody. Yes, :^) I read the article. :^)

Re:I would have thought a better test would be:

[owlstead]

"A Van Gough or a Gougain?"

Come again?

Re:I would have thought a better test would be:

[Anonymous Coward]

He originally typed "Van Gogh" and "Gauguin", but that didn't look right.

Re:I would have thought a better test would be:

[urcreepyneighbor]

Steak vs Salad

Both.

Blonde vs Brunette

Both.

Pepsi vs Coke

Both.

Car vs Bicycle

Both.

Mac vs PC

Both.

and so on...

Let's summarize: I'm a greedy fuck.

Re:I would have thought a better test would be:

[kermit1221]

Until you get people who answer those questions thusly:

Steak vs Salad: Beer
Blonde vs Brunette: Redhead
Pepsi vs Coke: Rum
Car vs Bicycle: More people should skip to their destination
Mac vs PC: I'm a luddite, you insensitive clod!

Re:I would have thought a better test would be:

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with your options is that you're giving the subject too much to think about. I'm pretty sure they're trying to activate as FEW parts of the brain as possible, so that they can detirmine which parts ultimately make a decision, and how. If a subject is asked which comedian they prefer, they're going to need to activate their memory, think about jokes they've heard, possibly relating to specific circumstances (maybe the subject saw Robin Williams with an old flame, and starts thinking about them, rather than the original question, possibly becomes slightly sexually excited, etc.). At that point, you're lighting up the brain like a pinball machine, instead of triggering specific areas.

Disclaimer - take everything I say at 1/2 of face value, at the most. I'm an expert in nothing.

Re:I would have thought a better test would be:

[Nullav]

How would that help? Opinions don't typically need to be calculated in any sense, thus those pop up far faster. Or perhaps slower. (I suppose you could say it's an incredibly high-latency decision with a recurring result, if you want to be all fancy about it.)

In other words...

[jamesbarlow]

Don't use the 'Preview' button for replies on this topic.

Re:In other words...

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't use the 'Preview' button for replies on this topic.

Really?

Don't think before you post.

Re:In other words...

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anybody anyway?

Duh

[pilsner.urquell]

Go with your gut feeling?

Choices from the past

[HalAtWork]

We may subconsciously arrive at a decision 10 seconds before we become conscious of the decision but that's only because we have to view the solution in our conscious mind and think of things such as: all the steps we have to do, the final outcome, perhaps ponder repercussions (harming others, any inconveniences, wether it conflicts with our other goals), we have to step through it in our mind to see if it is rational and makes sense considering our priorities as well before we actually take action. That's the part that takes 10 seconds. We probably stop to think 10 seconds about any possible solution our mind comes up with.

isn't it more likely...

[Anonymous Coward]

That you have your "basic" decision in place in 10 seconds, but your conscious mind debates the merits of it for longer than that?

I think this can easily be shown by every day actions. When someone asks you if you want to go to lunch, your very first thought is:

  "yes. I am hungry", so according to this article, you already made your "decision" , but we all kow that right afte ryou have that thought there are always further thoughts that determine your final answer... do you have time? did you bring a lunch with you to work/school/etc. Are you spending too much money? Is it in your best interest to go to lunch with that person today? Do you have any meetings/classes/commitments you will have to deal with first or afterwards?

All of these factors contribute to your final answer. In the case of "lunch", you could probably still make that decision in 10 seconds pretty easily, but I think it is silly to claim that as aa blanket statement.

Just because your "cached" decision is easy to recall and put firth, doesn't mean you should always do it.

Of course, to play devils advocate to my own argument, is this not pretty much defining the "gut feeling"?

Deciding in advance?

[smolloy]

TFA says that they let the subjects see a stream of letters pass the screen, and let them decide when to push with their left or right hand. Maybe all they've detected is the moment the candidates decided, "The next time I see the letter 'R', I'm gonna push the left button"?

I could imagine that the average time to see the letter of your choice would be ~10 s, give or take.

Re:Deciding in advance?

[jbengt]

No.
RTFA again.

Easy to refute

[Anonymous Coward]

What about driving a car?

Re:Easy to refute

[brxndxn]

In Florida, for most of the drivers here, any evasive action requires a minimum of 10 seconds.

headline does not describe the conclusions

[petes_PoV]

The article states that the testers (only!) tested 14 people. The subjects pressed a button whenever they felt like it. The testers could see some tell-tales up to 10 seconds before the button was pressed.

All this really tells us that when we think we're making a random action, we really commit to it some time beforehand. It only tells when people make a random decision - not what the choice is

bad reporting.

Re:headline does not describe the conclusions

[langelgjm]

It only tells when people make a random decision - not what the choice is

Not quite. From the article:

Studying the brain behavior leading up to the moment of conscious decision, the researchers identified signals that let them know when the students had decided to move 10 seconds or so before the students knew it themselves. About 70% of the time, the researchers could also predict which button the students would push.

Re:headline does not describe the conclusions

[eugene ts wong]

In fact, it doesn't even tell us that. They were only able to predict the outcome 70%-80% of the time. There's a lot of misinterpretation here. Maybe a majority of us resort to some kind of random generator. Obviously, some people didn't go with their "first decision". That needs more study.

10 seconds is a long time. I wonder what happens during that time.

Re:headline does not describe the conclusions

[schmu_20mol]

While 14 people don't seem much, they actually are in comparison with the ususal minimum for these kind of studies. As a rule of thumb, you should have 6 or more participants in a study to get the paper accepted (as a technical issue to fulfill).
If there'd be more funds, maybe participants could actually be paid. As it stands now, you got to lure them in with the promise of free food.

Re:headline does not describe the conclusions

[ardle]

It ties in quite well with something else I heard about the decision-making process: justification/rationalisation is independent of decision-making.
I saw this on a BBC Horizon programme, "How To Make Better Decisions": test subjects were shown pairs of photographs and asked to select one. Once selected, both cards were turned face-down again for a moment. A sleight-of-hand trick then led to the subject being presented with the card they had rejected, whereupon the subject proceeded to explain why they selected a card they had actually rejected. Subjects do this without any realisation of the substitution.
This suggests to me that the brain makes what it thinks is the most likely selection. It's up to our minds to then catch up, if they need to or can be bothered.

Re:headline does not describe the conclusions

[snl2587]

the researchers identified signals that let them know when the students had decided to move 10 seconds or so before the students knew it themselves

All this shows is that the "gut feeling" people get actually occurs in the brain. Who would have guessed? The fact that the researchers were only correct 70% probably just means during the tests, the students went with their "gut feeling" 70% of the time. If the researchers are really using these results to question free will, I question their bias.

Re:headline does not describe the conclusions

[Anonymous Coward]

Not quite. There's a subtle assumption here that's just plain incorrect--that assumption is that if a trial has two outcomes, the chances of each outcome is 50%, and therefore, if you can come up with a theory that does better--70% in this case--that theory tends to be true.

From the general case, let's say S is the subject in an actual experiment, T is a theoretical prediction, and A and B are outcomes. Suppose that S selects A 75% of the time (and thus B 25%). Realizing this, we come up with a theory T that selects A 75% of the time, and B 25%. Now let's assume that T is "not even wrong" to the maximal degree (i.e., it's completely independent). Then T predicts the correct outcome 0.75*0.75+0.25*0.25=62.5% of the time. Now let's remove information while writing an article in a blog somewhere. We'll say that we had a subject, and two outcomes, and we came up with a theory, and it reported the correct outcome 62.5% of the time. Sounds great, doesn't it?

Now, this is more relevant than just some theoretical quip. It's well known that humans are terrible random number generators. See, for example, this article:
http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/2007/02/is_17_the_most_random_number.php

Given that we're poor random number generators, it's safe to assume that we have bias. The sort of bias we have when picking numbers at random is a pre-existing sort (probably because we link "random" to "obscure", and try to pick numbers that seem more random), but it's very reasonable to assume that in such scenarios we could opt towards a "default button" sort of on the fly. In this scenario, it may very well be that we select a default button to choose, since we have to repeat this a lot, and that we simply flip the default from time to time. That our entire brains line up in anticipation of this choice also isn't surprising--that's what brains do best (reach out and grab your mouse--notice how your hand warps in anticipation as you move closer to it?), and it wouldn't be surprising if the entire reason for the biasing were based on making anticipations to improve reaction speed--much like a wet version of predictive branch caching. So, given all of this, wouldn't it be likely that the experimenters did not, in fact, find the choice 10s prior to the event, but rather, found a pre-choice predicting bias?

So you're correct to correct the parent, but the 70% thing is a red herring, and the direction you're correcting seems to be the wrong one (quoting that implies you're suggesting it does tell what the choice is). Rather, it doesn't necessarily tell when, not just what, the choice is.

Quick!

[SEWilco]

I typed this response in 8 seconds. Too bad Slashdot made me wait to send it, as I now know I decided not to do it.

Re:Particles in space

[linzeal]

I prefer the 3 world theory of Popper. Materialism has been pretty much thoroughly discredited outside of some stubborn old timers who still are preaching it from their decade long tenures in Academia.

Another view

[Anonymous Coward]

To everything we come in contact with we make an initial judgment. Being sentient, the first thing evaluated is good or bad. It's a reaction like touching a hot coal. We can always go back and revisit, elaborate and change our initial reaction, usually something that separates us from animals.

Snip FTA...

[Anonymous Coward]

They monitored the swift neural currents coursing through the brains of student volunteers as they decided, at their own pace and at random, whether to push a button with their left or right hands.

But it's so simple. All I have to do is divine from what I know of the researcher: are you the sort of man who would press the button on the left or on the right? Now, a clever man would press the button on the left, because he would know that only a great fool would press the button on the right. I am a great fool, so I can clearly not press the button on the right. But you must have known I was not a great fool, you would have counted on it, so I can clearly not press the button on the right.

Researcher: You've made your decision then?

Not remotely! Because these buttons come from Australia, as everyone knows, and Australia is entirely peopled with criminals, and criminals are used to having people not trust them, as you are not trusted by me, so I can clearly not press the button on the left.

Researcher: Truly, you have a dizzying intellect.

WAIT TILL I GET GOING! Where was I?

Researcher: Australia.

Yes, Australia. And you must have suspected I would have known the buttons' origin, so I can clearly not press the button on the right.

Researcher: You're just stalling now.

You'd like to think that, wouldn't you?

Sure..

[rickb928]

This explains hitting a 90mph fastball.

I know, the instantaneous response (Wait 10 seconds here please) is that you decided to play, go to the park, get suited up, report to the manager, select your bat, go to the batter's box, choose your stance, raise your bat to position, and then chose to swing it the pitch were where you expected or would accept it, etc etc etc.

Apparently this 10 second thing is for some decisions, those that require thought. Like whether to believe any of this 10 seond hooey.

Systems analysis. If you look far enough up the chain, it becomes one thing. Look too far down, and it gets all complicated and difficult, and can't be so easily understood. Makes you sleepy.

Re:Sure..

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe, let's say one of the grand champions of fastball hitting is instructed to hit a 90mph fastball... what happens in his brain 10 secs before he is about to hit it?

Investigate that... and compare it to a beginner fastball hitter who is instructed by the expert. I bet that in the student brain, the 10 secs of pre-decision is changing and evolving - since it is learning to prepare for fastball hitting.
But the expert has his brain wired after years of training - and will likely have the similar uncouncious pre-ball-hit mental process each time he is about to hit the ball.

Another example of pseudo science

[Anonymous Coward]

Again, an example of pseudo science and dito reporting. Toys for the boys: MRI brain scanners do not scan thoughts in brains, just some sort of activity. Then they "analyzed the results with an experimental pattern-recognition computer program.". So the computer black box proves.. Yes, What?

Training and Repetition

[yeagermiester]

This conclusion would be obvious to anyone that has been through Military training. Actions such as putting on a gas mask, finding cover, etc. are repeated so many times they become instinct. You don't have to think about these actions when the time comes to use them.

So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mu gut tells me that the researchers have proved kind of nothing... Likely the 10 seconds that proceeds the decision is a "startup time" - when the brain unconsciously prepares you for making a decision, it scans our memory, brings up useful background information that can be of benefit for the forthcoming decision making.

The test participants doesn't need to adjust/learn anything new from button-test to button-test - it's the same decision over and over... So probably, the similar background information (Brain scan patterns) tend to pop up over and over - the final decision is made using this information and is therefore predicable. It's just what we call "routine behavior".

My theory :)

Colbert was right!

[yeagermiester]

I guess Steven Colbert was right all along.

"The findings lend credence to researchers who argue that many important decisions may be best made by going with our gut -- not by thinking about them too much."

SG-1 Strikes Again

[oztiks]

... euroscientist Richard Anderson and his colleagues explored how the effort to plan a movement forces cells throughout the brain to work together, organizing a choice below the threshold of awareness ...

Another amazing discovery made by General O'Neill and his team.

The question on everyones mind is does this help us against the Ori?

Re:SG-1 Strikes Again

[Belial6]

The Ori are all dead.

Malcom Gladwell

[Nudo]

Did no one read his book - Blink - Author of a best-selling book, The Tipping Point? They're both great books to read, it talks about some decisions are best made quickly, and how our consciousness sometimes decides for us, before we even start to narrow down our decisions.

"blink" and "think"

[e**(i pi)-1]

The point for "blink of an eye" decisions is made by Malcom Gladwells book "Blink": "The Power of Thinking without Thinking". A worthy rebuttal is Michale LeGaults book "Th!ink", "why crucial decisions can't be made in the blink of an eye". I found both worth reading and both have a point. It depends on the decision to be made.

Edie Brickell and the new Bohemians ?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Drown me in the shallow waters before I get too deep..."

Ok, ok, I'll turn my computer off now.

The difference between an "urge" and a decision.

[evolutionarymovement]

"Whenever they felt the urge, they pressed a button with their right hand or a button with their left hand"
This research has nothing to do with your ability to choose. For this study, participants are told to suspend their choice, and just follow their urge.
This study merely indicates that you can predict what urges a person may experience, but I don't doubt that any individual could decide to go against their urge. And isn't that what makes us fundamentally human?
While I find this study flawed for being so quick to try and deconstruct support for free will, I find that it actually helps identify the characteristics of free will, and more significantly, that elusive human element.
/opinion. .Sean

Scientific arrogance and lack of real data

[oztiks]

"But these data show that consciousness is just the tip of the iceberg. This doesn't rule out free will, but it does make it implausible."

Why do some scientists simply insist that because they can prove one particular aspect that everything else surrounding the issue must domino into the same conclusion?

Saying "free will" doesn't exist based upon their studies is a kin to saying the earth is flat simply because we stand on it upright, lets not take into account any other factors which could remain simply because its presently out of our current ability to grasp and therefore couldn't possibly exist.

The word "implausible" is badly construed here maybe "cannot be determined" is more appropriate?

IMHO This has and always will be sciences one and only real undoing at answering life's real questions. Whats wrong with leaving the door open sometimes?

Cowboy the Overthinker

[oldhack]

Yeah, don't overthink and do stuff like this "study". On the other hand, the summary tells nothing about "overthinking". Some kinda subliminal hint not to think at all. Is my guess. Or am I overthinking?

New Scientist link

[peterpi]

I was about to cry "Dupe!" but it turns out I read it in New Scientist, not slashdot.

Here's the link: http://www.newscientist.com/channel/being-human/dn13658-brain-scanner-predicts-your-future-moves.html

Story is a dupe

[Anonymous Coward]

See original slashdot article and wired writeup of the publication. http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/13/2052206 http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/04/mind_decision

Re:Story is a dupe

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't just mod me down, take a look at the actual articles on wired and the summary's link. Both are based on the findings of the same paper in Nature Neuroscience. Dupe, I repeat!

Conventional notion of choice...

[mario_grgic]

how does this challenge the notion of choice? It's not like your brain is not you.

All this is saying is that we are not conscious of our thought processes, which we also knew and felt for a long time. The thought "computes" in the lower levels and synthesized idea bubbles up to the higher levels where we can verbalize it.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Not this again

[Dun Malg]

Their findings challenge conventional notions of choice

I am seriously sick and tired of this notion coming up every time some study or other points out that your "conscious brain" fires up some amount of time after some other part of the brain has already started taking the action. THis shows a complete and utter failure to understand how our brains work. The conscious mind is in control, it's just not consciously "working the levers" every freakin' second. How would you find time to think about anything of consequence if you had to constantly coordinate everything your body does? "OK, now I'm breathing, now I'm moving my eyes to follow the sentence I'm reading, now I'm moving my hand to adjust the lighting on the book...."--- you'd never have the clock cycles to comprehend the material. No, the brain uses a sort of distributed computing. Your conscious mind instructs the autonomous slave sub-parts how to react to certain stimuli, and expects them to do the dirty work while it thinks of more important things (usually sex). That one study that externally manipulated people's brains to make them choose a certain card, then asked them why they chose it, and people always came up with some justification? It's not a lack of free will there, it's just that the conscious mind is accustomed to its "slaves" only doing things it has previously trained them to do. Of course your conscious analytical mind is going to justify the action somehow.
An example: If you decide that the next time you see Joe, you're going to punch him, a scientist monitoring your brain the next time you see Joe will find that your "punching brain" acted before your "conscious brain" did. Does that indicate a lack of free will? You'd have to be an idiot to think so. All it indicates is that your "conscious brain" has a number of programmable sub-units at its disposal.

Re:Not this again

[tgibbs]

Of course your conscious analytical mind is going to justify the action somehow.
An example: If you decide that the next time you see Joe, you're going to punch him, a scientist monitoring your brain the next time you see Joe will find that your "punching brain" acted before your "conscious brain" did. Does that indicate a lack of free will? You'd have to be an idiot to think so. All it indicates is that your "conscious brain" has a number of programmable sub-units at its disposal.

I also think that our conscious mind has limited access to the internal operations of those low-level decision-making processes, so what we perceive as our motivation for a decision is more along the lines of an educated guess: "Well, Joe said something nasty about my sister yesterday, and I've been stewing about it ever since. Yeah! That's it, I decided to hit him because I'm still mad about what he said yesterday!"

Re:Not this again

[Anonymous Coward]

Can the programmable sub-units send feedback and possibly even programs to affect the state of the "conscious brain". Not simply stimuli, but commands arrived at via their own processing? Not eliminating free will at all, but introduces yet even more complexity to the process.

Why is this surprising?

[tgibbs]

It seems reasonable to me that conscious awareness is not a trivial phenomenon, and that it involves a significant amount of computing, with a large number of synaptic delays. If it was not possible to detect neural indicators of a decision well prior to conscious awareness of the decision, it would argue that there really isn't much to consciousness after all.

I always have to think explicitly

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't really have any subconscious ability beyond, I think, motor skills and speaking English. I always have to meticulously plan through what I'm going to do, and must be explicit to myself on how I store and process information. This might have something to do with a nasty head injury, fwiw.

I can't really act on impulse, I can't act on instinct, I don't find anything obvious. I never have flashes of inspiration. I know exactly why I'm about to make every decision. I can't do things like drive because it would require way too many subconscious thoughts.

All around me I find people do things without thinking, because they were driven to that action somehow, and it makes the world alien to me. I reflect on all my acts, and the events leading up to everything I learn about - natural or human. If I didn't, I'd be a void, as I can't retain information unless I've formed a strategy that makes explicit associations.

I went from being an up-and-coming mathematician to a failed mathematician. I can still do routine work - following an imaginary trail to apply any of thousands of clearly linked rules, whether they're in my head or (increasingly, alas) on paper - but I have am too retarded by my need to be explicit to come up with anything new in a reasonable time.

This doesn't mean I don't understand things, either. It's just that my brain does nothing interesting with the information I take in unless I force it to. I'm not Poincare going on a little excursion, steeping off a bus, and finding from nowhere that Fuschian functions match up with the transformations of non-Euclidean geometry.

The most important and humbling lesson I learnt from all of this, as someone who's been far above average and now below average, is that people are not created equal. There are those whose brain always appears to act like mine does now - or only has a *magic subconscious* for very routine affairs. In this light, a meritocracy is no more moral than an aristocracy: one's about the trust fund you're handed from your parents, the other about the genes and the very early learning from your parents. Both are out of your control.

In better days I amassed enough wealth that I'll always be ok, but some people never experience one of those days. So love the good genius and love the good idiot.

Sorry that veered OT. The research appears completely inconclusive anyhow: 14 students, with 50% correct prediction rate being as good as a toss of a coin, could e.g. mean that 2 of these 14 students are making a decision early. I've been involved in medical trials for my condition, and we've discussed the danger of ignoring intersubject differences by giving a summary stats that lump all subjects together.

OK have a nice weekend everyone.

Bull

[dosboot]

With all do respect, the people claiming this undermines the notion of choice are stupid. It is still your brain making rational decisions. At best this undermines the assumed notion that consciousness is the source of rational choice and is not an echoing chamber of the subconscious.

However, I would not even concede that much at this point. The fact that these findings are always so closely tied to undermining rational choice makes me suspect of the research in the first place.

Study shows ...

[$0.02]

that researchers have overthought the results of the experiment.

I hit back and erased a very smart comment

[Anonymous Coward]

Oops... I hit back accidently with alt+left and lost a very good comment.

Isn't mozilla a 10 years project somethin~? how come I still lose data in forms because of the damn alt-left shortcut?

I just wanted to remark that I can't wait until scientists discover more about the brain like that is has threads, design patterns, different generations of garbage collection and so on....!

startxxx

So, in other words ...

[ScrewMaster]

Studies Show the Value of Not Overthinking

Just go with the flow.

Speaking of high and low level languages

[rootpassbird]

'Real men' program in assembly....

Must... post....

[Maxo-Texas]

I must post this, my mind was made up before I read the article 7 seconds ago.

We can make snap decisions that are not purely in muscle memory.

Our brain builds subroutines that handle those situations (I'm in doom and i notice the weapon I was running to is gone and instantly turn to head to the next weapon).

Dale Carnegie says that most people make their decisions 90% based on emotions. If you successfully appeal to their emotions, they will FIT the logic and facts to their decision. This drives me crazy since I see it at work when I'm trying to get a logical decision- but at least now I know so I can use it to work with people instead of pissing them off giving them facts they don't like and reject.

What does free will have to do with consciousness?

[argent]

"But these data show that consciousness is just the tip of the iceberg. This doesn't rule out free will, but it does make it implausible."

Consciousness is not thought, or reasoning, it's the narrative that you tell yourself about yourself. It's not even the tip of the iceberg, it's a flashlight that turns itself on to reassure itself that the iceberg is still there, it's a model of the iceberg made of fog and seaspray and drifting snow. All this is doing is confirming what's been increasingly obvious for decades: you are not your conscious self, any more than a computer is its display, or a corporation its lobby, or a nation its flag and national bird.

So this says nothing about free will, because your will is not what you're thinking about, it's why you're thinking about it.

The fellow who wrote those words needs to meet Mister Volition.

Martial arts are less to do with lighting reflexes

[Colin Smith]

Than putting standard reflexes to work putting you in an advantageous position.

e.g. The standard reflex might be to simply duck and cover your head. Someone trained in a realistic martial art (rather than playing tag) will certainly also duck and cover their head in exactly the same way in an identical situation, but may then follow that by trapping an opponent's arm and smacking them in the face with an elbow. For example the first movements of heian nidan/pinan shodan.

It may look like lightning reflexes, but the reflexive part of it is identical to that of anyone else. What follows is trained to automatic. The point the grandparent post makes, well, yeah, time does slow down when the adrenalin hits, but if you have to think, you are seriously going to get your arse handed to you, don't rely on thinking faster than the other guy.

 

Slashdot got paid???

[Futurepower(R)]

Look who submitted this story, it was apparently someone at the Wall Street Journal: "WSJdpatton". I copied the link from the Slashdot story. I wish Slashdot would post a notice that a story is either influenced/paid, or a real reader-written story.

I agree, it's flawed, and the results are vastly exaggerated: ' "The idea that conscious deliberation before making a decision is always good is simply one of those illusions consciousness creates for us," Dr. Dijksterhuis said.'

subconscious decisions

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm, so by the time my conscious mind decides to do something my subconscious had already decided what I was going to do?

That reminds me of my wife...

Not really

[dreamchaser]

Seeing as I know some very feminine girls who would probably kick your ass, it has nothing to do with manliness. Decisive? Yes I am. I have to be in my job and in daily life. Manly? I suppose; I never really thought about it like that.

Re:Not really

[Jay L]

Decisive? Yes I am. I have to be in my job and in daily life.

I guess we're just different. I mean, I'm not indecisive, but... well, sorta. Maybe not indecisive, exactly, more like.. well, yes, indecisive. Usually. Not always.

Mostly, though.

Re:Not really

[dreamchaser]

Sometimes I can't decide whether to be decisive or not.

Re:Not really

[assassinator42]

I am quite decided that I am very much indecisive. Like as to if I should add more to this comment or not (I decided I should). I have also decided that I use very many parentheses.

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[account_deleted]

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Gray Walter proved this forty years ago

[Master of Transhuman]

Back in the 1960's, IIRC, neuroscientist Gray Walter hooked a guy up to an EEG that could control a TV set. The guy was ordered to turn the set on or off. The set turned on BEFORE the guy made the conscious decision to do so.

This is nothing new.

Your "conscious mind" is like your computer monitor. All it does is show you what your REAL "mind" decided to do, just like the monitor just shows you what your CPU is doing.

Branch Prediction

[Anonymous Coward]

Clearly, the brain was created using an optimizing compiler, and therefore, the researchers are simply seeing the effects of branch prediction.

Free will?

[PenguinX]

Although according to this theory, I am simply predisposed to say so, I for one am glad that Louisiana has passed the academic freedom law.

Theories such as this are both dangerous and absurd. I think it's obvious that my initial inclination about some subject matter may come from my emotions, past experience, or whatever we want to call it. However this theory would really suggest that I am ruled by my emotions, which simply isn't so.

Furthermore, the type of decisions that they studied aren't entirely critical or representative of a real world scenario. I can imagine pushing buttons while staring blankly into a screen and getting into a rut - ever worked in a network operations center? It is mind numbing, repetitive, and boring.

Limited models yield limited predictions

[Anonymous Coward]

we've known for a LOOOONG time that what we perceive as "consciousness" is really more akin to a "ghost in the machine."

What is important is not what is perceived as consciousness, but the fact that it is perceived at all.

We have made some good progress in modeling human behavior via neuroscience. We can make predictions like "when I poke this part of the brain, the subject will indicate a perception of bright lights." No educated member of the free-will camp will dispute these results or their significance.

I don't understand, however, the agenda of those who seem intent on proving that we are all just squishy robots, and nothing more. In any event, members of this camp are always inferring more from this type of evidence than is actually warranted by it.

The word "perception," in common usage, refers to more than the electrochemical activity of the brain in response to sense data. It refers to the subjective aspect of the process, of which we are all (or at least, most of us) directly aware, and for which there is no logical expression in a mechanical world view. The language with which we have chosen to do our modeling has no symbol, nor combination of symbols, that can directly express what people mean when they talk about perception. So, some people are inclined to pronounce the whole idea absurd and be done with it.

But we still perceive. And we still know what we mean when we say the word. And we still know that the models proposed, no matter how elaborate, still fail to explain it (or even express it). I don't mind if this forever restricts the concept to the realm of mysticism...I just mind the peculiar efforts on the part of some people to convince us that a very common, important, and staunchly persistent aspect of our world (that is to say, the act of experiencing) does not exist.

I love science. I study it a lot. I have seen no compelling evidence that I am just a soft machine.

It says nothing of free will

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

Because for starters, all the people had made a decision to submit to doing the test. I'm sure they are finding out very important things about how our brain works, but it is far from proving or disproving free will, if such a thing is even possible.

Motivation huh

[meowdin]

These bunch was trying to prove motivation formed the answer subconciously before we made decision... which is only true to some circumstances. Too bad, I can even say decision is made the moment you were born.

Executive function

[jandersen]

This is a good example of somebody speculating about things they haven't really got the tools for - in this case neurologists speculating about what things like thought, consciousness and self-awareness are. You might think they, if anybody, would know about these things, but this is actually a subject that philosophers have struggled with for centuries, figuring out just what these things are and how it can be that we seem to feel that the our essential being is something that sits somewhere inside and looks out through the eyes. You may scorn the notion that philosophers are at all useful in this context, but before we can make valid statements about a subject, we need to make up our minds about what concepts and what words are meaningful to use - and that is what good philosophy is about. And since we haven't really quite got a good, firm hold of what thoughts etc are, it is a bit bold for a team of neurologists to suddenly have sorted it all out in one go. At the very least you would expect them to define unambiguously what those terms and concepts are and what they mean.

But back to their results - apparently a person's brain reaches a conclusion about which button to press a while before that person feels that s/he has reached the conclusion. I don't think it says anything about freedom of will; but seen in light of evolution maybe this result isn't surprising. Animals have evolved from having no brain to increasingly complex setups over time, and they have had to react to their enviroment in all that time; IOW they have had to make decisions with whatever brain they had at the time. The human brain is not a radical redesign of the basic model, but rather just a strongly upgraded and extended version; we still share part of our brain's design with fish, amphibia and reptiles - as well as other mammals, of course, so it is reasonable to expect that the functionality that already worked well in those parts of the brain still happen there, mostly. Consciousness, whatever that is, is likely have come in relatively late in the design, so of course a lot of decisions are made without consciousness being required.

Compare this with a big company - the executive managers makes decisions about the whole of the company; they make guidelines about how they want their staff to act in different situations, but they are not involved in every decision that is made in the company. Instead they expect the lower echelons to make their own decisions in accordance with the guidelines. The top level managers often don't hear anything about those details, and when they do, it is normally much later. This is how I imagine our brain works - in our consciousness we make decisions about the principles we want to operate under, but we are not consciously involved in most of what goes on, it just happens, and in most cases decisions are made long before our consciousness hears about it. So do we have free will? I would say yes - in fact, we probably have many levels of free will happening all over the place.

Well, there you have it!

[Nullav]

The next time I get injured, I'm blaming lag. (Seriously, how does that challenge free-will in any way?)

Dead-nuts on

[RogueWarrior65]

This can and should be applied to affairs of the heart. Analyzing a social situation kills it.

Stop looking...

[Anonymous Coward]

The simple act of observing can skew the results. Every time.

What?!

[Snaller]

You mean you don't just run them over?!

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[account_deleted]

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Re:What does free will have to do with consciousne

[Anonymous Coward]

Seeing as 99% of our decisions are based on preferences, parameters far too complex to map (yet), and decisions that we would make anyway, Its pretty much given that the average person is following a predicted fate.

I doubt many people actually choose to go against their own nature and do things differently, free will? its more the fact that choice exists, yet we choose to follow our norms.

If we had the technology to path the brain, and decision making, we could probably show exactly how our lives will happen from start to finish. Put that together with the path knowledge of everyone else on the planet, and you could predict the direction of the human race for years to come.

The only problem, is that you'd also have to track everyone, incase someone uses that free thought to make a decision that changes the entire path structure.. (or worse yet, control the path by making decisions for others)