Gravity Jim wrote:
... We are merely great apes with enormous brains. We look like them, we act like them, and our limbic system is no more complicated or developed than a chimpanzee (to test this theory, get ripping drunk and then watch what you do), and that 90% of your brain that you're "not using?" It's working constantly to drive the bus....
[SNIP]... I'd suggest:
Chimpanzee Politics by Frans de Waal
The User Illusion by Tor Norretranders
That was an awesome post, Jim.
Thank you too for the reading recommendations. They are now in ever-growing my reading list.
I think I'll need 3 life times to read and understand everything I want
daniel.sneed wrote:Well, FMiguelez, you can call me paranoiac if you want, that's ok for me too. But what is this sentence about, if not music marketing?
"what happens in our brain when we decide to purchase a piece of music when we hear it for the first time?"
So now I called you "paranoiac"?
Please quote me doing so, because I do not remember ever calling you that...
I have to agree with Stubbsonic... It's almost as if, for some strange reason, the very mention of the word
"purchase" prevents you from understanding the article and ITS CONCEPT, and what is was discovered, and its results, and its meaning, and the fact that they could make reliable predictions based on their hypothesis... If there is something this article was NOT about, it was marketing. The "purchasing" part was just the indicator that their hypothesis was correct> They purchased certain music only when certain patterns and brain activity was seen in certain areas. That's all.
That doesn't sound like marketing to me. Those actions are pretty much what science does on a daily basis, my friend.
Gravity Jim wrote:stubbsonic, thank you and my appreciation to you as well. I don't meet a lot of people who have done the hard work required to accept what you and I know about free will. But you're right... it is liberating, and makes one far more compassionate toward others.
Oh, yes.
It IS liberating.
But like you say, some hard work needs to be done to understand these concepts. And it's totally worth the effort, not only because they are fascinating, but because that is the only way to understand how nature works and the road to intellectual FREEDOM and knowledge.
HCMarkus wrote:Gravity Jim wrote:Folk wisdom isn't true until some kind of science demonstrates what's really going on.
I have to disagree to an extent here Jim. Without scientific confirmation, folk wisdom can still be accurate; absent understanding of causation, observation may reveal truth.
It can be roughly accurate, but the ONLY way to be reasonably sure about the validity of the claim, folk or otherwise, is by TESTING the claim to its destruction or confirmation, as I think you 'd agree, and that's pretty much on science's court side.
I also think that most "folk" wisdom is incorrect, or incomplete, in the best of cases. Nature, as it turns out, is NOT intuitive at all.
Not only it is counter-intuitive, it can defy our capability to actually understand it, even at both extremes "of the scale", i.e, quantum physics and Relativity.
Lots of people claim things and come up with folk explanations. But if we really want to KNOW about it, we must test it, and that means using the scientific method.
HCMarkus wrote:
The fact that science allows us to understand the why behind that truth is reassuring because, of course, not all folk wisdom is true. (He says, throwing salt over his shoulder).
Not to nit pick, but science tells us more about "how" things work. "Why" is more like philosophy, since it has other implications.
HCMarkus wrote:I didn't intend to dis the referenced article; I found it interesting in the sense that we can now point to dopaminergic reward based on how the auditory cortex was shaped by each listener's experience as the foundation for preference in music. But, at least at this early stage of our understanding, it appears the value of this research lies primarily in confirming humans' well-known bias toward the familiar... folk wisdom that was and remains true whether or not the scientific understanding exists.
PS: It's not marketing... yet.
I'll see if I can find an older study where scientists could predict more complicated things about their test subjects just by measuring their brain.
I remember this study was one of the first used to demonstrate how we only have "free will" by illusion, since they could predict the results before the individual was even aware of what his "decision" would be.
All this science is in its infancy, but the preliminar results are mind blowing. In the future, laws and rules will change, and mental illness will be treated for what it really is, given that we really are no more than sacks of meet governed by the whims of our brain chemistry. I like to say it's the ultimate puppeteer