Free Will

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Re: Free Will

#13901  Postby zoon » Apr 08, 2022 6:43 pm

Spearthrower wrote:
it’s the current consensus.


It's absolutely not, and even if it was in some benighted past, it certainly hasn't been the case since at least Skinner's radical behaviorism.

Behaviourism went out of date more than 50 years ago. Link here:

In the second half of the 20th century, behaviorism was largely eclipsed as a result of the cognitive revolution.[71][72] This shift was due to radical behaviorism being highly criticized for not examining mental processes, and this led to the development of the cognitive therapy movement. In the mid-20th century, three main influences arose that would inspire and shape cognitive psychology as a formal school of thought:

Noam Chomsky's 1959 critique of behaviorism, and empiricism more generally, initiated what would come to be known as the "cognitive revolution".[73]
Developments in computer science would lead to parallels being drawn between human thought and the computational functionality of computers, opening entirely new areas of psychological thought. Allen Newell and Herbert Simon spent years developing the concept of artificial intelligence (AI) and later worked with cognitive psychologists regarding the implications of AI. The effective result was more of a framework conceptualization of mental functions with their counterparts in computers (memory, storage, retrieval, etc.)
Formal recognition of the field involved the establishment of research institutions such as George Mandler's Center for Human Information Processing in 1964. Mandler described the origins of cognitive psychology in a 2002 article in the Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences[74]
In the early years of cognitive psychology, behaviorist critics held that the empiricism it pursued was incompatible with the concept of internal mental states. Cognitive neuroscience, however, continues to gather evidence of direct correlations between physiological brain activity and putative mental states, endorsing the basis for cognitive psychology.
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Re: Free Will

#13902  Postby Spearthrower » Apr 08, 2022 6:57 pm

zoon wrote:
Behaviourism went out of date more than 50 years ago.


:doh:
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Re: Free Will

#13903  Postby zoon » Apr 08, 2022 7:30 pm

Spearthrower wrote:
Spearthrower wrote:
Even then, it's on a one-to-one basis, whereas technology can predict the behaviors of a much larger number of people, and to a better degree of accuracy.


I should say that this isn't even close to summarizing what current computational science can do right now, let alone consider how quickly it's developing - month by month in some respects.

Data science, machine learning, algorithms - train an ape to press a few buttons while viewing something and programs have all they need to start calculating, amending their forecasting algorithms reactively, and retesting their own models iteratively. It's vastly more potent in so many respects.

It's not just a larger number of people that are reached (it's sort of not fair to compare a computer programs potential points of contact to just one person having encounters with real people in meat space, but human ToM doesn't network and thus is necessarily individual, unshared and independent - islands of mind theories) but the quality of prediction is also vastly more detailed.

If any given human can look at some other human and generally be right in mind-theorizing that person is upset, or determined, or fraught - it's not actually a predictor of what that other human is going to do next; there's no detailed behavioral prediction, more of an emotional state.

Meanwhile, a site like Facebook can - without human oversight in the slightest - correlate various data points drawn from your past behavior in tandem with your current use of a new Canon camera and make predictions on a suite of your future activities - namely purchases - that you are likely to make. That's a prediction that entails seeing much further into the future than any ToM, with far more complex behavior and emotions over a longer period of time accurately predicted.

And we've seen that this isn't just restricted to predicting purchasing behavior, but what this can mean when it comes to engineering opinion with, for example, Cambridge Analytica.

It's kind of quaint to believe that humans just know humans best; there's something earthy there. But I think the real differences between people just figure large to us rather than being particularly distinctive - zebras and their unique stripes. In reality, computers strip away a lot of the emotional baggage that can hamper our ToM predictions and just quietly store away data points until they become statistically meaningful, and at that point, it's no longer a contest.

Is this post your evidence that science outperforms Theory of Mind, or should I wait for another?
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Re: Free Will

#13904  Postby Spearthrower » Apr 08, 2022 7:31 pm

zoon wrote:
Spearthrower wrote:
Spearthrower wrote:
Even then, it's on a one-to-one basis, whereas technology can predict the behaviors of a much larger number of people, and to a better degree of accuracy.


I should say that this isn't even close to summarizing what current computational science can do right now, let alone consider how quickly it's developing - month by month in some respects.

Data science, machine learning, algorithms - train an ape to press a few buttons while viewing something and programs have all they need to start calculating, amending their forecasting algorithms reactively, and retesting their own models iteratively. It's vastly more potent in so many respects.

It's not just a larger number of people that are reached (it's sort of not fair to compare a computer programs potential points of contact to just one person having encounters with real people in meat space, but human ToM doesn't network and thus is necessarily individual, unshared and independent - islands of mind theories) but the quality of prediction is also vastly more detailed.

If any given human can look at some other human and generally be right in mind-theorizing that person is upset, or determined, or fraught - it's not actually a predictor of what that other human is going to do next; there's no detailed behavioral prediction, more of an emotional state.

Meanwhile, a site like Facebook can - without human oversight in the slightest - correlate various data points drawn from your past behavior in tandem with your current use of a new Canon camera and make predictions on a suite of your future activities - namely purchases - that you are likely to make. That's a prediction that entails seeing much further into the future than any ToM, with far more complex behavior and emotions over a longer period of time accurately predicted.

And we've seen that this isn't just restricted to predicting purchasing behavior, but what this can mean when it comes to engineering opinion with, for example, Cambridge Analytica.

It's kind of quaint to believe that humans just know humans best; there's something earthy there. But I think the real differences between people just figure large to us rather than being particularly distinctive - zebras and their unique stripes. In reality, computers strip away a lot of the emotional baggage that can hamper our ToM predictions and just quietly store away data points until they become statistically meaningful, and at that point, it's no longer a contest.

Is this post your evidence that science outperforms Theory of Mind, or should I wait for another?



I don't know - maybe, given your obvious reticence to support your frequently repeated claim despite me challenging it for 5 or so pages, I should wait for you to get round to that first? You know - burden of proof right?
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Re: Free Will

#13905  Postby Spearthrower » Apr 08, 2022 7:43 pm

Here's the beginning of the chain in this thread:

http://www.rationalskepticism.org/post2 ... .#p2781914

zoon wrote:
So far, Theory of Mind predicts people more effectively than science, but neuroscience is advancing rapidly.


Posted Mar 01, 2022

I've challenged this claim.... what? A dozen times?

You not only won't address it, but every time you mime a reply to it, you start telling me what ToM is instead of, you know, actually providing substantiation of your claim that ToM predicts people more effectively than 'science'.

Where did you come by that comparative notion if not from a study specifically considering this?

If there is no study, and you just intuited it, then why are you being so coy/conniving and refusing to acknowledge that you cannot support this claim?
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Re: Free Will

#13906  Postby scott1328 » Apr 08, 2022 7:45 pm

zoon wrote:
scott1328 wrote:I think the discussion of "Theory of Mind" should be put into its own thread. I see a lot of misunderstandings happening. And a few of those misunderstandings seem to be willful.

I’ve been wondering about following this suggestion and starting a new thread on Theory of Mind, but I think that our use of Theory of Mind is central to our attribution of free will to ourselves and others, so it’s not off-topic.

Quoting again from the abstract of the Nature article “Foundations of theory of mind and its development in early childhood” here):
Theory of mind is the human conceptual capacity to understand other people as agents who have subjective mental states such as beliefs, desires, and intentions. It is the basis of distinctively human forms of social understanding and interaction that are essential for communication, cooperation, and culture.


Theory of Mind is the basis of our attributing mental states such as beliefs, desires and intentions; I don’t think we are likely to attribute free will to anything that doesn’t have desires or intentions.


I think Theory of Mind is a fine topic and worthy of discussion.

But I would not attribute "Free Will" to anything because it is a label much like the "God" label; without referent, without a coherent definition, and having no utility.
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Re: Free Will

#13907  Postby Spearthrower » Apr 08, 2022 8:00 pm

scott1328 wrote:
I think Theory of Mind is a fine topic and worthy of discussion.

But I would not attribute "Free Will" to anything because it is a label much like the "God" label; without referent, without a coherent definition, and having no utility.


I agree on both points, and would further add: ToM isn't coherently related to Free Will.

Whether Free Will is a real quantity or not, we could still engage in mind theorizing.

In fact, if Free Will is not a real quantity, one might expect our mind theorizing to be spectacularly accurate as all behaviors and choices a human made would be absent individuality but instead directly dependent on prior events and these could plausibly be known completely.

If Free Will is a real quantity, we could still theorize about minds based referentially on prior experiences, our familiarity with that person, and the linguistic landscape we occupy.

But I expect that's just a problem with the concept of 'Free Will'.
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Re: Free Will

#13908  Postby zoon » Apr 08, 2022 9:33 pm

newolder wrote:
zoon wrote:
Spearthrower wrote:
I’m not entirely sure how to answer, as the published researchers take for granted what all normal adult humans are aware of,...


Then that's not science, Zoon.

The statement I quoted at the beginning of a 2022 review article here appears to be good enough for the editors of Nature:

“Theory of mind is the human conceptual capacity to understand other people as agents who have subjective mental states such as beliefs, desires, and intentions. It is the basis of distinctively human forms of social understanding and interaction that are essential for communication, cooperation, and culture.”

On what basis are you saying that is not science?

Science: Observe, hypothesise, test, repeat.

That snippet of an abstract to a paywalled paper makes an observation that "Theory of mind" is the basis of some essential human activities. What is the hypothesis we should test? How were the tests made? What were the results of the tests and how would they help point us to what we should look at next?

The snippet is not science because it is a snippet.

An article published in PNAS 30th Sept 2019, "Great apes use self-experience to anticipate an agent’s action in a false-belief test", (link here), offers and tests an alternative hypothesis to Theory of Mind, namely, the possibility that the animals are using direct behavioural cues to predict others (not Theory of Mind), rather than using their own experience and the similarity between their own brain processes and those of the other individuals (Theory of Mind). Humans understand and use others’ false beliefs easily and routinely, non-human animals certainly don’t use them to the same extent, and this is generally taken to be a distinction between fully human Theory of Mind and the social cognition of non-human animals. However, there is still discussion as to whether great apes can sometimes recognise false beliefs, and this article gives evidence in favour. The claim of the article is that evidence has been provided that chimpanzees can use Theory of Mind, not merely behavioural clues as in behaviourism, to predict others by understanding false beliefs.

The opening paragraph of the linked article is:
Many unique features of human communication, cooperation, and culture depend on theory of mind, the ability to attribute mental states to oneself and others. But is theory of mind uniquely human? Nonhuman animals, such as humans’ closest ape relatives, have succeeded in some theory-of-mind tasks; however, it remains disputed whether they do so by reading others’ minds or their behavior. Here, we challenged this behavior-rule account using a version of the goggles test, incorporated into an established anticipatory-looking false-belief task with apes. We provide evidence that, in the absence of behavioral cues, apes consulted their own past experience of seeing or not seeing through a novel barrier to determine whether an agent could see through the same barrier.
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Re: Free Will

#13909  Postby hackenslash » Apr 08, 2022 9:52 pm

May I interest you in a hyperloop?
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Re: Free Will

#13910  Postby newolder » Apr 08, 2022 10:21 pm

zoon, Where are the hypotheses under test listed, how were the hypotheses tested and where and what are the results of the tests? I ask for data and you post more anecdotes. What is a "direct behavioural cue" and how was it measured? What predictions were made by the subjects, were the predictions repeatable or one time events, how did the outcomes compare to "null", and how was this determined?

These are the questions you should be asking about these studies or, at least, have access to the data such that comparisons between studies can be gauged. If you want to claim it as science then show the science.
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Re: Free Will

#13911  Postby Destroyer » Apr 09, 2022 12:32 am

Spearthrower wrote:

And this, dear Destroyer, is precisely why I will continue to challenge Zoon's claims about how all science supports their assertions: it's not only readily shown false, but also exposes a critically false understanding of how science operates and why it works.


You simply don't seem to be aware that there are two separate arguments that are been conflated here, 1. Theory of Mind is currently more reliable at predicting human behaviour than science - this is zoon's pet theory, which I do not disagree with; because all mental states are subjective and therefore not currently open to any means of empirical analysis and verification, 2. There is no reason why science, in its study of the brain, i.e., neuroscience, will not advance sufficiently to make reliable predictions about mental states and concepts - this is precisely due to zoon's conviction that there is a one-to-one correspondence between the brain and mind, hence studying the brain will tell us about the mind. That is the aspect of zoon's argument that I have latched unto, and not her preoccupation with "Theory of Mind".
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Re: Free Will

#13912  Postby Spearthrower » Apr 09, 2022 4:36 am

Destroyer wrote:
Spearthrower wrote:

And this, dear Destroyer, is precisely why I will continue to challenge Zoon's claims about how all science supports their assertions: it's not only readily shown false, but also exposes a critically false understanding of how science operates and why it works.


You simply don't seem to be aware that there are two separate arguments that are been conflated here, 1. Theory of Mind is currently more reliable at predicting human behaviour than science - this is zoon's pet theory,..


And what you don't appear in the slightest bit interested in following is that this is expressly what I've challenged a dozen times.



Destroyer wrote:... which I do not disagree with;


So you 'agree' with a claim about science for which you have been presented no evidence?

Then don't seek to lecture me as this is irrational and directly contrary to how science operates.



Destroyer wrote:... because all mental states are subjective and therefore not currently open to any means of empirical analysis and verification,


And you then contradict yourself because you now state 2 positions: i) ToM more reliably predicts human behavior than 'science' and ii) theorizing about mind is impossible. :roll:




Destroyer wrote: 2. There is no reason why science, in its study of the brain, i.e., neuroscience, will not advance sufficiently to make reliable predictions about mental states and concepts -


You're just repeating the exact same errors Zoon has made, so why even bother?



Destroyer wrote:this is precisely due to zoon's conviction that there is a one-to-one correspondence between the brain and mind, hence studying the brain will tell us about the mind. That is the aspect of zoon's argument that I have latched unto, and not her preoccupation with "Theory of Mind".


You've both latched onto a position you can't provide any evidence for and insist should be taken as granted despite the lack of evidence.

Why exactly do either of you expect that non-scientific opinions about science are convincing, I have no idea - but you can't just keep repeating yourself as if the strength of your convictions is meant to be convincing?
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Re: Free Will

#13913  Postby Spearthrower » Apr 09, 2022 4:39 am

zoon wrote:
newolder wrote:
zoon wrote:
Spearthrower wrote:

Then that's not science, Zoon.

The statement I quoted at the beginning of a 2022 review article here appears to be good enough for the editors of Nature:

“Theory of mind is the human conceptual capacity to understand other people as agents who have subjective mental states such as beliefs, desires, and intentions. It is the basis of distinctively human forms of social understanding and interaction that are essential for communication, cooperation, and culture.”

On what basis are you saying that is not science?

Science: Observe, hypothesise, test, repeat.

That snippet of an abstract to a paywalled paper makes an observation that "Theory of mind" is the basis of some essential human activities. What is the hypothesis we should test? How were the tests made? What were the results of the tests and how would they help point us to what we should look at next?

The snippet is not science because it is a snippet.

An article published in PNAS 30th Sept 2019, "Great apes use self-experience to anticipate an agent’s action in a false-belief test", (link here), offers and tests an alternative hypothesis to Theory of Mind, namely, the possibility that the animals are using direct behavioural cues to predict others (not Theory of Mind), rather than using their own experience and the similarity between their own brain processes and those of the other individuals (Theory of Mind). Humans understand and use others’ false beliefs easily and routinely, non-human animals certainly don’t use them to the same extent, and this is generally taken to be a distinction between fully human Theory of Mind and the social cognition of non-human animals. However, there is still discussion as to whether great apes can sometimes recognise false beliefs, and this article gives evidence in favour. The claim of the article is that evidence has been provided that chimpanzees can use Theory of Mind, not merely behavioural clues as in behaviourism, to predict others by understanding false beliefs.

The opening paragraph of the linked article is:
Many unique features of human communication, cooperation, and culture depend on theory of mind, the ability to attribute mental states to oneself and others. But is theory of mind uniquely human? Nonhuman animals, such as humans’ closest ape relatives, have succeeded in some theory-of-mind tasks; however, it remains disputed whether they do so by reading others’ minds or their behavior. Here, we challenged this behavior-rule account using a version of the goggles test, incorporated into an established anticipatory-looking false-belief task with apes. We provide evidence that, in the absence of behavioral cues, apes consulted their own past experience of seeing or not seeing through a novel barrier to determine whether an agent could see through the same barrier.



Yet again, an obvious bait and switch.

You claim that ToM is more effective than science at predicting people.
(("Theory of Mind predicts people more effectively than science"))

This is challenged.

You then proceed to give some explanation of what ToM is.

No one's asking you what ToM is.

Clearly, as has now been said a dozen times at least and specified overtly to the point you can't pretend not to have noticed: the claim being challenged is that ToM is more effective at predicting people than 'science'.

Why are you unable to support that? Why do you keep avoiding doing so, even avoiding acknowledging that this is what has been challenged?

http://www.rationalskepticism.org/philo ... l#p2785406
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Re: Free Will

#13914  Postby Destroyer » Apr 09, 2022 1:48 pm

Spearthrower wrote:
Destroyer wrote:
Spearthrower wrote:

And this, dear Destroyer, is precisely why I will continue to challenge Zoon's claims about how all science supports their assertions: it's not only readily shown false, but also exposes a critically false understanding of how science operates and why it works.


You simply don't seem to be aware that there are two separate arguments that are been conflated here, 1. Theory of Mind is currently more reliable at predicting human behaviour than science - this is zoon's pet theory,..


And what you don't appear in the slightest bit interested in following is that this is expressly what I've challenged a dozen times.



Destroyer wrote:... which I do not disagree with;


So you 'agree' with a claim about science for which you have been presented no evidence?

Then don't seek to lecture me as this is irrational and directly contrary to how science operates.



Destroyer wrote:... because all mental states are subjective and therefore not currently open to any means of empirical analysis and verification,


And you then contradict yourself because you now state 2 positions: i) ToM more reliably predicts human behavior than 'science' and ii) theorizing about mind is impossible. :roll:




Destroyer wrote: 2. There is no reason why science, in its study of the brain, i.e., neuroscience, will not advance sufficiently to make reliable predictions about mental states and concepts -


You're just repeating the exact same errors Zoon has made, so why even bother?



Destroyer wrote:this is precisely due to zoon's conviction that there is a one-to-one correspondence between the brain and mind, hence studying the brain will tell us about the mind. That is the aspect of zoon's argument that I have latched unto, and not her preoccupation with "Theory of Mind".


You've both latched onto a position you can't provide any evidence for and insist should be taken as granted despite the lack of evidence.

Why exactly do either of you expect that non-scientific opinions about science are convincing, I have no idea - but you can't just keep repeating yourself as if the strength of your convictions is meant to be convincing?


Ok. Your emphasis is clearly upon the claim that ToM provides a better method for analysing human behaviour than science, whereas my emphasis is upon brain and mind operating as a single function. Nevertheless you are still clearly not seeing things from zoon's perspective, which is that ToM is presently just a placeholder due to the fact that neuroscience is still in its infancy. The conviction is that mind and brain are fundamentally the same property, so by scientifically studying the brain, slowly but surely, more and more reliable information about the mind is being gleaned. But due to the fact that there happens to be so many corresponding interactions taking place between brain functions and awareness, there is still an abundance for science to learn. It is for this reason that humans can currently only make suppositions about the inner workings/personal expressions of others, without having any actual method for determining if those suppositions are factual - hence it been only a theory. Zoon clearly has strong convictions that these suppositions do give a better understanding of human behaviour than the current state of neuroscience to predict what is happening. But, with the advancements in neuroscience, zoon sees no reason why more and more accuracy with these predictions will not be forthcoming - again, precisely because of the conviction that brain and mind are fundamentally of the same stuff; so the more that scientists learn about the brain, the more advanced they will become with their predictions. This ought to then inevitably - well into the future - lead to science being more reliable at predicting human behaviour than ToM. However, the current state of affairs with still so much to learn about the brain, means that the very best that humans can achieve is guess work when studying the awareness of their fellow humans... Zoon may, on occasion, overstate the case to make it seem as though ToM can give accurate scientific predictions, apparently because of her emotional ties to this theory, but ultimately she is not denying that it is just a theory - hence its name.

I reallyy cannot explain it any simpler than this. So this will be my final contribution on this topic.
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Re: Free Will

#13915  Postby Cito di Pense » Apr 09, 2022 1:59 pm

Destroyer wrote:The conviction is that mind and brain are fundamentally the same property


More of the standard idiocy we've come to expect from you, Patrick. The word "brain" has a clear referent (that is, in the sense that "kidney" does). On the other hand, "mind" does not have a referent, and people, especially folks like you, make up whatever they like about it. So, "Theory of Mind" has a word with no referent in its name. It's a discussion of something, so it's going to be up to you to make up some brand new shit about it.

Destroyer wrote:2. There is no reason why science, in its study of the brain, i.e., neuroscience, will not advance sufficiently to make reliable predictions about mental states and concepts


Yes, there are good reasons, which you know nothing about, apparently. You shall get the same advice I give zoon about looking into computational complexity. Someone who pretends that making "reliable predictions about mental states" using the findings of neuroscience needs to read more than the crap that science popularizers churn out about neuroscience and its hot topics.

As with the rest of discussion relating to what zoon has said about theory of mind, neuroscience and prediction, it's going to be another round of hedging about what the word "reliable" denotes. Heuristics by themselves are not predictions. Expectations are regularly not met, and that says bundles about "reliability".
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Re: Free Will

#13916  Postby Spearthrower » Apr 09, 2022 2:28 pm

Destroyer wrote:
Ok. Your emphasis is clearly upon the claim that ToM provides a better method for analysing human behaviour than science, whereas my emphasis is upon brain and mind operating as a single function.


I don't care where your emphasis is - I've been asking Zoon to support their claim since before you posted on this thread.



Destroyer wrote: Nevertheless you are still clearly not seeing things from zoon's perspective...


This is not a requirement of discussion. I don't see it from Zoon's perspective because, as far as I am concerned, Zoon's position is wrong.


Destroyer wrote:...which is that ToM is presently just a placeholder due to the fact that neuroscience is still in its infancy.


Not what Zoon has said, and also lacking in meaning. ToM is our ability to posit emotions onto other people - it's not scientific. Neuroscience is not remotely the only science that makes predictions about behavior as I've already made clear in this thread, so it wouldn't really matter even if that were the case, but I still don't accept that even methodologies in the neurosciences are less effective at making predictions about behavior than ToM, not least because no supporting evidence has been shown to establish this contention as true.



Destroyer wrote: The conviction is that mind and brain are fundamentally the same property, so by scientifically studying the brain, slowly but surely, more and more reliable information about the mind is being gleaned.


Again, this is irrelevant and not at all what I am discussing, nor what Zoon has claimed which provoked challenges.


Destroyer wrote: But due to the fact that there happens to be so many corresponding interactions taking place between brain functions and awareness, there is still an abundance for science to learn.


An empty statement: obviously if there was nothing else to learn, then science wouldn't be necessary.


Destroyer wrote:It is for this reason that humans can currently only make suppositions about the inner workings/personal expressions of others,...


This is a false statement apparently unaware of the last 60 odd years of behaviorial science, let alone the numerous examples of machine learning which routinely make complex predictions about human behavior. I note that neither you nor Zoon ever acknowledge these factors, just keep on asserting an alleged absence when it really just means you're either ignoring or ignorant of decades of research and evidence contradicting you.


Destroyer wrote:without having any actual method for determining if those suppositions are factual - hence it been only a theory.


'Only a theory'? :scratch:

That's a Creationist argument.


Destroyer wrote: Zoon clearly has strong convictions that these suppositions do give a better understanding of human behaviour than the current state of neuroscience to predict what is happening.


Strong convictions absent evidence: that's not something you should be applauding.



Destroyer wrote: But, with the advancements in neuroscience, zoon sees no reason why more and more accuracy with these predictions will not be forthcoming - again, precisely because of the conviction that brain and mind are fundamentally of the same stuff; so the more that scientists learn about the brain, the more advanced they will become with their predictions.


I am getting really fucking tired of you telling me what Zoon believes when I can fucking read what Zoon believes in their own words. At no point have I indicated I don't understand what Zoon has said - rather, I have quite explicitly stated that what Zoon said is false and challenged them to substantiate their position.

Repeatedly telling me how convinced Zoon is of X helps no one at all, and does nothing of value.


Destroyer wrote: This ought to then inevitably - well into the future - lead to science being more reliable at predicting human behaviour than ToM.


If you are prepared to believe in claims about science that are completely absent any evidence at all, then you need to shut up and stop lecturing at people because that is antithetical to how science works and why it's successful.

'Science' is already dramatically superior at predicting people than ToM, and science has been dramatically superior in this regard for decades. In recent years, the gap has grown to an absurd degree - perhaps the speed of this progress has left both you and Zoon behind in a space ignorant of these developments?


Destroyer wrote:However, the current state of affairs with still so much to learn about the brain, means that the very best that humans can achieve is guess work when studying the awareness of their fellow humans...


Objectively false.


Destroyer wrote:Zoon may, on occasion, overstate the case to make it seem as though ToM can give accurate scientific predictions, apparently because of her emotional ties to this theory, but ultimately she is not denying that it is just a theory - hence its name.


Wut?

It's not 'just a theory', the concept of 'just a theory' is a mantra employed by scientifically illiterate people flailing at scientific findings they don't like, and the word 'theory' in ToM has nothing whatsoever to do with a scientific theory - rather, it is about ascribing emotions and mental states to other people.


Destroyer wrote:I reallyy cannot explain it any simpler than this. So this will be my final contribution on this topic.


As with Zoon, you're 'explaining' something that no one has asked you to explain, no requirement to have this explained exists, and you don't even have the excuse of being Zoon.

I don't need your help to read what Zoon's written. I already understand it, and that understanding entails me noting where Zoon's claims are false, and challenging Zoon to support them - assuming these claims are something more than make-believe confidently asserted as fact.

What I will say though is that at least you've managed to accurately acknowledge my challenge - something Zoon has not managed to achieve after 5 pages and a dozen posts - but you simply waved it away assuming that Zoon's claims are right, despite Zoon offering no evidence, apparently you are convinced by Zoon's conviction?

All of this isn't just antiscientific, it's also irrational.
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Re: Free Will

#13917  Postby Spearthrower » Apr 09, 2022 2:39 pm

Here's an example of 'science', as in, formalized hypotheses being tested:

http://brain4cars.com/pdfs/iccv2015.pdf

Abstract
Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) have made driving safer over the last decade. They prepare vehicles
for unsafe road conditions and alert drivers if they perform a dangerous maneuver. However, many accidents are
unavoidable because by the time drivers are alerted, it is already too late. Anticipating maneuvers beforehand can
alert drivers before they perform the maneuver and also give ADAS more time to avoid or prepare for the danger.
In this work we anticipate driving maneuvers a few seconds before they occur. For this purpose we equip a car
with cameras and a computing device to capture the driving context from both inside and outside of the car. We propose
an Autoregressive Input-Output HMM to model the contextual information along with the maneuvers. We evaluate our
approach on a diverse data set with 1180 miles of natural freeway and city driving and show that we can anticipate
maneuvers 3.5 seconds before they occur with over 80% F1-score in real-time.


Here we have a stated methodology, complete with real world results, and an actual measurement of accuracy.

It doesn't even need to be very good science to show how lacking Zoon's repeated claim about ToM being more effective at predictions than 'science' is - even if the case here in this paper is overstated, even if the science here is motivated by commercial interests, even if there are numerous other areas in which humans can predict human behavior in other ways; this still amounts to a vastly superior way of discussing this topic than emoting at it with deep conviction. This is a non-human capable of predicting a complicated series of human actions multiple seconds in advance with a clearly measured accuracy rate. Where's the paper showing anything like this for ToM?
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Re: Free Will

#13918  Postby hackenslash » Apr 09, 2022 2:43 pm

Destroyer wrote:I reallyy cannot explain it any simpler than this. So this will be my final contribution on this topic.


Fucking weaselly shite. The notion that people are disagreeing with you because there's still something they don't understand when you've demonstrated incompetence in logic that even the words 'total and catastrophic' fall short of expressing just what a howling failure of thought your dreck here constitutes is breathtakingly dumb.

You aren't that fucking clever, son.
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Re: Free Will

#13919  Postby Destroyer » Apr 10, 2022 9:07 am

Spearthrower wrote:Here's an example of 'science', as in, formalized hypotheses being tested:

http://brain4cars.com/pdfs/iccv2015.pdf

Abstract
Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) have made driving safer over the last decade. They prepare vehicles
for unsafe road conditions and alert drivers if they perform a dangerous maneuver. However, many accidents are
unavoidable because by the time drivers are alerted, it is already too late. Anticipating maneuvers beforehand can
alert drivers before they perform the maneuver and also give ADAS more time to avoid or prepare for the danger.
In this work we anticipate driving maneuvers a few seconds before they occur. For this purpose we equip a car
with cameras and a computing device to capture the driving context from both inside and outside of the car. We propose
an Autoregressive Input-Output HMM to model the contextual information along with the maneuvers. We evaluate our
approach on a diverse data set with 1180 miles of natural freeway and city driving and show that we can anticipate
maneuvers 3.5 seconds before they occur with over 80% F1-score in real-time.


Here we have a stated methodology, complete with real world results, and an actual measurement of accuracy.

It doesn't even need to be very good science to show how lacking Zoon's repeated claim about ToM being more effective at predictions than 'science' is - even if the case here in this paper is overstated, even if the science here is motivated by commercial interests, even if there are numerous other areas in which humans can predict human behavior in other ways; this still amounts to a vastly superior way of discussing this topic than emoting at it with deep conviction. This is a non-human capable of predicting a complicated series of human actions multiple seconds in advance with a clearly measured accuracy rate. Where's the paper showing anything like this for ToM?


Theory of Mind is a theory that we can actually understand other people with what is essentially just guesswork in the absence of a more reliable method to know what is going on with them. There is no scientific method to analyse what anyone else is thinking!!

Correction, this will be final say on the topic.
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Re: Free Will

#13920  Postby Spearthrower » Apr 10, 2022 9:36 am

Once again, you're telling me what Theory of Mind is, and worse, you clearly don't actually know what you're talking about.
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