brainwashing

[William Flynn Wallace]

Are some people zombies, who have been conditioned against their will to believe something/someone?

Here is a Quora answer of mine:

The 20th century saw lots of theories of learning and conditioning. Unfortunately that and the Korean imprisonment of our soldiers and being subjected to brainwashing, has given people the idea that they can be turned into zombies who just believe whatever they are taught.

This is certainly not the case. Brainwashing was a misnomer for sure. Those who came back showed no evidence of loss of control over their opinions and beliefs. I seem to recall that one guy had become a communist.

Thus, no one is really totally locked in to their opinions, except maybe for flat earthers and a few others who cling to ideas despite tons of evidence against them.

Free will is a powerful thing. We are not easily conditioned.   bill w

[John Clark]

On Thu, Aug 17, 2023 at 11:49 AM William Flynn Wallace <fooz...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Free will is a powerful thing.

Tell me what "free will" means and I'll tell you if I agree with you or not.  

John K Clark

[William Flynn Wallace]

Who?  Me?  Define free will?  Why not? I'll point my magic wand at myself and Zap! I'm a philosopher. I don't think that anyone can show that one definition is any better than another.  But here goes:

Except in the case of reflexes, over which we have little control (we can keep our eyes open while sneezing, but it's kind of hard), we have a choice of responses to stimuli.  It is not necessarily the strongest (most probable) response that gets put into action.  We can inhibit that one in favor of a lesser response or no response. Another way of saying that is that we have a choice.  Another way is that we have self-control.

That is not, of course, a formal definition  (only have one cup of coffee going to my brain), but OK, have it John!   bill w

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[John Clark]

On Sat, Aug 19, 2023 at 8:55 AM William Flynn Wallace <fooz...@gmail.com> wrote:

> we have a choice of responses to stimuli.  It is not necessarily the strongest (most probable) response that gets put into action.  We can inhibit that one in favor of a lesser response or no response. Another way of saying that is that we have a choice. 

OK fine, you had a choice between X and Y but you chose X. But why did you prefer X rather than Y? There are only 2 possibilities:  

#1)  You DID have a reason for your preference, so your decision was rational, and it was also completely deterministic.

#2)  You DID NOT have a reason for your preference, so your decision was irrational, and it was also random because the very definition of randomness is an event without a cause. 

So you're either a slot machine or a roulette wheel, and that's why I say "free will "is an idea so bad it's not even wrong.

 John K Clark 

[William Flynn Wallace]

John, how would you characterize this scenario:  A student misuses or mispronounces a word.  I start to correct her but stop myself because I realize that it might humiliate her, so I tell her after class.  That's an example of the Angel sitting on one shoulder and whispering my ear.  I could listen to the Demon on the other one, and sometimes have.  I very rarely have tried to embarrass people, so the Angel usually wins.  When the Demon wins I often feel guilty afterwards.  Both choices are rational depending on my motivation at the time.

Freud said that all mental problems come down to intrapsychic conflict:  battling ourselves for what to think or do.  billw

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[John Clark]

On Sat, Aug 19, 2023 at 1:28 PM William Flynn Wallace <fooz...@gmail.com> wrote:

> John, how would you characterize this scenario:  A student misuses or mispronounces a word.  I start to correct her but stop myself because I realize that it might humiliate her, so I tell her after class.  That's an example of the Angel sitting on one shoulder and whispering my ear.  I could listen to the Demon on the other one, and sometimes have.  I very rarely have tried to embarrass people, so the Angel usually wins. 

But there was either a reason you preferred to listen to the angel, in which case you were being rational and you were behaving deterministically, or there was NOT a reason that you preferred to listen to the angel, in which case you were being irrational and you were behaving randomly. So where does this thing called "free will" come into the picture?

John K Clark

[William Flynn Wallace]

I am certainly not saying that I don't believe in determinism.  I just think that sometimes we don't do as predicted, like when the economists found out that people don't always make the rational choice.  If my Angel is motivated by avoidance of humiliating someone and the Demon wants to do that, the choice of one of the other is a function of which motive is stronger at the moment (here could follow a big discussion of regret at the choices made, when the motivations are different from what they were at the time of action.

What if you have numerous choices, all good?  What if you have numerous choices, all bad?  In the latter case doing anything might be called irrational.

But - we remain trapped by the circularity:  "His motive must have been to do it, because he did it."  And vice versa.    bill w

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[John Clark]

On Sat, Aug 19, 2023 at 5:07 PM William Flynn Wallace <fooz...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I am certainly not saying that I don't believe in determinism.  I just think that sometimes we don't do as predicted,

I agree, being deterministic is NOT the same thing as being predictable.  Alan Turing proved that sometimes the only way to know what even a 100% deterministic machine will do is to watch it and see, there is no shortcut. So sometimes even you don't know what you're going to do until you actually do it.

John K Clark

qqq

[William Flynn Wallace]

So sometimes even you don't know what you're going to do until you actually do it.  John K Clark

There is one instance in which I said something that was a total lie.  I said that Larry didn't read, to a friend who believed it - actually Larry reads like I do:  a shark eating.  I am still stunned that that came out of my mouth.  If I were given 100 chances to predict what I would say in that circumstance I would never hit upon what I did say.  Still amazes me.   bill w

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