untermensche
Contributor
Who's point?
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Humans really don't know what they're doing?
- Thread starter Speakpigeon
- Start date
Who's point?
ruby sparks
Contributor
Yours.
untermensche
Contributor
I am the one who says what my points are.
And my point was about the difference between experimentally forced, in other words movement a person is expecting to make soon, and spontaneous movement.
Do you have anything to say about that?
ruby sparks
Contributor
And you said it here:
Also, the decision of which finger to use was not part of the instruction, so how would the experimenters be able to beat 50% prediction on that? Bear in mind the experiments have been replicated.
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untermensche
Contributor
You clearly have no opinion on this subject.
You are just pestering. Like a tiny insect.
The point was about the difference between an experimentally forced and therefore planned for movement and a spontaneous movement. And the study contained a forced movement. You can force a subject to plan for a movement in an experiment but you are looking at a pre-planned movement. So preparatory activity is expected.
They are not close to the same thing. No study has ever looked at spontaneous movement.
ruby sparks
Contributor
Nope. That wasn't the point you made. Unfortunately, you pressed the 'post' tab when you made your point, at the start of your post (though you also repeated it later in the same post):
Perhaps you didn't understand the experimental set up.
Anyways, how might the experimenters be able to repeatedly beat 50% prediction of the which finger thing? Because that was their 'free' choice and you got it wrong too:
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DBT
Contributor
It doesn't matter. You miss the point. The point being that the subject's selection is predicted based on the brain activity patterns displayed on the screen before the subject makes any movement.
ruby sparks
Contributor
Furthermore, untermensche, imagine doing the experiment on yourself. That way, you can recreate what you are calling the 'non-spontanaeity'.
Here's how it would go. You decide/intend ahead of time, that you are going to move your arm, but you allow yourself to wait to do it when the urge appears, iow until you want to.
What you are saying with your amended claim is that in that case, you would expect to see a build up of non-conscious activity just before the action (because of the prior intent). First of all, why would the activity still precede the actual arm movement by a countable number of ms, regardless of how long you waited until you felt the urge and second, if the prior intent (self-instructed or otherwise) is what caused the non-conscious actions in that scenario, then you are saying that you are ok with the idea that the non-conscious activity did precede your decision to move your arm in that 'primed but open-ended' scenario.
In fact, actually run through the experiment on yourself. Even without your brain activity being recorded in the interim period, when you do move, it will feel the same, that you did consciously initiate the move. But you say that the prior intent in the experiments explained the brain activity before that move. So your second claim, after the mistaken one, works against your theory in any case.
There are valid objections to the experiments. Just not the ones you've come up with.
Here's how it would go. You decide/intend ahead of time, that you are going to move your arm, but you allow yourself to wait to do it when the urge appears, iow until you want to.
What you are saying with your amended claim is that in that case, you would expect to see a build up of non-conscious activity just before the action (because of the prior intent). First of all, why would the activity still precede the actual arm movement by a countable number of ms, regardless of how long you waited until you felt the urge and second, if the prior intent (self-instructed or otherwise) is what caused the non-conscious actions in that scenario, then you are saying that you are ok with the idea that the non-conscious activity did precede your decision to move your arm in that 'primed but open-ended' scenario.
In fact, actually run through the experiment on yourself. Even without your brain activity being recorded in the interim period, when you do move, it will feel the same, that you did consciously initiate the move. But you say that the prior intent in the experiments explained the brain activity before that move. So your second claim, after the mistaken one, works against your theory in any case.
There are valid objections to the experiments. Just not the ones you've come up with.
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ruby sparks
Contributor
Yes. The waiting period is open-ended. Subjects wait until they want to or feel the urge to move. The question, as you say, is why the activity peaks prior to the movement and not during the wait.
And even if we accepted the objection (which there is no good reason to imo, since the wait time is open-ended) it would then mean, as I said above, that in such 'primed but open-ended' scenarios, we would be accepting prior non-conscious activity as an apparent cause for the move when it does occur in those scenarios.
Which is kinda weird, because it implies (if we accept the objection and run with the idea of RPs as representing ascending non-conscious preparation to move) that we could not plan to move our arm consciously in a minute from now without that prior intent supposedly disabling the apparent conscious intention when we do later move it!
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untermensche
Contributor
It is just a stupid trick.
It tells you absolutely nothing about intention except that when you intend to move your right hand you create different activity than when you intend to move your left.
If we want to predict intention we allow subjects to randomly refuse to participate and see if that can be predicted.
ruby sparks
Contributor
What would be the predictor? It would be like me testing if the ignition of the explosive charge in a gun chamber caused the bullet to be expelled by asking someone to fire the gun, in a time of their choosing, but also allowing them to not fire it. If I wait until they fire it, I can then check for the prior ignition. Otherwise I've nothing to check. In any case, the lack of ignition before they pull the trigger is itself evidence, as is the lack of RPs during the waiting time in those experiments.
Look, UM, the issues with these experiments are (a) the accuracy of the timing of events, most notably the timing of the conscious urge part (since this has to be reported in some way and the estimated lag time taken into account) and (b) the issue of whether RPs really do represent decision processes. Both of those issues are up for grabs and are potential flaws with the experiments. Yours aren't.
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ruby sparks
Contributor
But how does that get us around the (non-conscious) 'left or right hand' activity apparently preceding the intent, and thus being capable of being predicted in advance by a third party statistically above 50%?
Or 80%, within 700 ms of action, as claimed by Ithzak Fried in different experiments in 1991.
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untermensche
Contributor
The subject knows at all times a decision is imminent.
Nothing precedes knowledge of future action.
It shows that just knowing you are going to move soon has activity. As it should.
And that humans move in stereotypical ways.
The phenomena of being right or left handed is pretty well established.
ruby sparks
Contributor
But as I said before, so do you, if you plan to move your arm a minute before you do, or if you're sitting with a friend and you tell him that the next time you feel the urge to move one of your arms, you're going to move either a right arm or a left arm, as a demonstration of your conscious control over your arms. 'Watch me', you say to him, as you set your arms on the table between the two of you. And he watches. And at some point you move one arm. Does that mean that when you do eventually move it, you didn't do it of your own conscious and free volition at that time, bearing in mind that you yourself had not decided before the urge which arm you would move? I doubt you'll say yes, so why keep repeating a point that would undermine your own position?
It's also the case that in the 2016 Haynes at al experiments, the subjects were allowed to not complete an intended action, ie they did not have to press the button. Which makes your point even more irrelevant than it already was.
So, just to go back to the start of the recent points you haven't addressed....
That was a goof, right?
Please don't try the 'I was talking about other experiments where the subjects were commanded when to move' thing again. That was embarrassing.
Then do this:
You didn't know that the predictions achieved above chance, right?
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untermensche
Contributor
I am not planning what moves I am going to make a minute from now.
I don't know what moves I am going to make a minute from now.
And any move I plan to make I can shut down or change at the last instant.
Something these studies avoid like the plague.
ruby sparks
Contributor
As I said above, the 2016 Haynes et al experiments allowed for that. Which makes your point even more irrelevant than it already was.
ruby sparks
Contributor
Again, for the umpteenth time, that is not the point. The point is that in a scenario where you were planning to do a move of some sort, in a time of your choosing, as and when you felt the urge, you'd still say that it was initiated consciously at the time you did it. So how could anyone predict when it would happen beforehand, especially which arm (when that choice was not part of the prior planning)?
untermensche
Contributor
Did they predict it?
ruby sparks
Contributor
You must live in a constant state of surprise about what you do next.
Basically, I find that hard to believe. Even if it were just a case of sitting on the couch in front of the TV and thinking that in a little while you are going to get up and make yourself a cup of coffee.
untermensche
Contributor
Not true.
The results were not 100%.
There is a possibility they will guess wrong.
What does that mean?