I'VE GOT SOME G00D PASSAGES FROM THE MOST DANGEROUS ANIMAL https://www.amazon.com/Most-Dangerous-Animal-Nature-Origins/dp/0312537441/ THAT I'LL BE POSTING HERE. THEY DEAL WITH OUR INSTINCTIVE, UNCONSCIOUS, AUTOMATIC BEHAVIOR (THE THINGS WE DO WITHOUT REALIZING WE'RE DOING THEM OR WHY WE'RE DOING THEM) AS WELL AS WHY WE HUMANS ARE SELF-DECEIVED WHEN IT COMES TO OUR ANIMAL NATURE (WHY WE DENY THE REALITY OF OUR EVOLUTION AND OUR ANIMAL INSTINCTS). I'LL THEN RELATE THEM TO WHAT I'VE WRITTEN BELOW!
To understand war we must understand ourselves. Now, honest self-inquiry is not a feel-good activity. It asks unnerving questions and tries to answer them in the unforgiving light of truth rather than the soft glow of wishful thinking. There are some truths that no one likes to hear, but it is precisely these that we need to pursue if we are to understand where war lives in human nature.
...
So, why should an interest in the evolutionary origins of war be treated any differently? Why is it that we applaud the study of deadly infectious diseases but are indifferent, dismissive, or even hostile toward efforts to understand the lethal side of human nature? This sharp dichotomy flows from an insidious and remarkably persistent illusion about what it is to be a human being. In spite of all that we have learned about the mind over the last century or so, there is still a stubborn tendency to treat it as something that transcends nature. Thanks to careful scientific research, we now know a good deal about the neurochemistry that makes brains run, the relationship between psychological processes and specific areas in the brain, and the mechanisms underpinning learning, memory, and perception. As a result, human beings are now at a crossroads in the way that they understand themselves. Faced with an impressive and rapidly developing scientific image of the human animal, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that our mental states - the thoughts that we think, the passions that move us, and the decisions that mould our lives - are consequences of physiological processes occurring in our brains. But it is hard for many people to abandon the concept that human beings are angels imprisoned in earthly shells. According to this ancient, emotionally compelling vision, the core of a person is their nonphysical soul - a thing that is distinct from all that is flesh and blood, and immune from the causal laws that govern the behavior of merely physical things. It follows from this that human behavior is radically different from the behavior of nonhuman life forms because we, and we alone, possess free will. Lesser beings blindly, rigidly, and mechanically act out their biological programming, whereas we humans choose how to live. This supposedly makes us the authors of our destiny, and this opens up a chasm between the human world and the realm of nature. Free will makes us morally responsible for our actions, but explaining human behavior biologically robs us of responsibility and reduces us to the stature of mere animals. (YOU'RE GONNA LOVE THE REST OF THIS. I'LL TRY TO FINISH IT TOMORROW. NO, I FINISHED THE BOOK LONG AGO. I'M JUST LAZY WHEN IT COMES TO WRITING OUT PASSAGES!)
(The Most Dangerous Animal)
Be great today! Don’t forget that you control your mindset and dreams, but you also control your actions. Circumstances don’t define you, but your thoughts and actions do. Be conscious of that, and let go of excuses. Take your gifts and change the world today!
Life is what you make of it!! Stop making excuses and blaming other people!! Look in the mirror and hold yourself accountable and elevate your standards as an individual!! 
WHAT DO THESE COMMENTS HAVE IN COMMON? THE FACT THAT THEY'RE BASED ON FOLK PSYCHOLOGY OR INTUITIVE REASONING. THEY'RE NOT GROUNDED IN SCIENCE. THEY DON'T TAKE NEUROSCIENCE OR BEHAVIOR GENETICS INTO ACCOUNT, WHICH MAKES SENSE SINCE BOTH MALES ARE UNEDUCATED BECAUSE IF THEY WERE EDUCATED THEY'D REALIZE THAT OUR THOUGHTS AND BEHAVIOR ARE DETERMINED BY OUR GENETIC CONSTITUTION AND THE ENVIRONMENTAL INPUT WE RECEIVE BEGINNING AT CONCEPTION AND CONTINUING THROUGHOUT OUR LIVES. SO WHAT WE THINK AND HOW WE BEHAVE IS LARGELY OUT OF OUR CONTROL, BUT OUR CONSCIOUS MIND CREATES THE ILLUSION THAT WE ARE IN CONTROL (THAT OUR THOUGHTS AND BEHAVIOR WERE CONSCIOUSLY DETERMINED). MOST PEOPLE DON'T WANT TO THINK ABOUT THIS LET ALONE BELIEVE THIS BECAUSE DOING SO IS TOO SCARY TO CONTEMPLATE AND ACCEPT (IT'S IMPLICATIONS ARE TOO TROUBLING FOR OUR STONE AGE MINDS TO HANDLE). NOW READ BELOW!
It happens hundreds of times a day: We press snooze on the alarm clock, we pick a shirt out of the closet, we reach for a beer in the fridge. In each case, we conceive of ourselves as free agents, consciously guiding our bodies in purposeful ways. But what does science have to say about the true source of this experience?
In a classic paper published almost 20 years ago, the psychologists Dan Wegner and Thalia Wheatley made a revolutionary proposal: The experience of intentionally willing an action, they suggested, is often nothing more than a post hoc causal inference that our thoughts caused some behavior. The feeling itself, however, plays no causal role in producing that behavior. This could sometimes lead us to think we made a choice when we actually didn’t or think we made a different choice than we actually did.
Free will is an illusion
Your Decision Has Been Made Before You Consciously Make Your Decision! (You're Making That Same Choice Whether You're Aware Of It Or Not!)
I’m you just made some better choices in life
RICKY DOESN'T REALIZE THAT HIS CHOICES WEREN'T OF HIS OWN VOLITION! HIS CHOICES WERE A PRODUCT OF A NUMBER OF FACTORS THAT WERE BEYOND HIS CONTROL (THAT HE HAD NO CONTROL OVER e.g., THE GENES HE INHERITED, THE ENVIRONMENT HE WAS EXPOSED TO, RANDOM OCCURRENCES, ETC.) WHICH ULTIMATELY INFLUENCED HIS UNCONSCIOUS MIND (WHICH HE HAS NO INSIGHT INTO) TO MAKE THOSE CHOICES. SO, HE'S NOT LIKE ME OR YOU BECAUSE HE ACQUIRED GENES AND HAD LIFE EXPERIENCES UNIQUE TO HIM LEADING HIM TO UNCONSCIOUSLY MAKE THE CHOICES HE'S MADE AND LIVE THE LIFE HE'S CURRENTLY LIVING, WHICH IS DIFFERENT FROM OURS!
READ THIS! IT MAKES PERFECT SENSE!
Free will is an illusion. You think you're consciously choosing for yourself but actually sub conscious processes determine your choices
We are all subject to the laws of nature. No one is free to choose otherwise
- In order for there to be Freewill, there has to be some part of us that is not completely immersed in the physical, biological reality as our bodies... therefore; Freewill implies a soul.
We don’t choose our desires. They simply happen to us. In this sense, what we do is partially determined by our desires which we do not control. If we choose not to act on a desire which is, well, undesirable, then we are exercising our self control which we also don’t choose.
@michaelshermer Free won't = 2nd thought in a row you think you have freely made, but decision already made by unconscious brain program.
Free will is an illusion. Science has already demonstrated this.
Life is what you make it, but it’s up to YOU and YOU only 
Another Low IQ, Uneducated SamoNigga! How You Make Your Life (What You Do With It) Depends On A Number Of Factors Out Of Your Control (The Genes You Inherited At Conception, The Fetal Environment You Experienced, The Neighborhood You Were Raised Which You Had No Choice In, Etc.). So, If The Genes You Inherited And Environment You Were Exposed To Didn't Create A Physically, Psychologically, And Behaviorally Beneficial You (A You That Can Successfully Navigate Life) The Life You Create Won't Be Very Satisfactory No Matter How Hard You Try! In Other Words, You Have No Control Over Your Life And Who You Become. The Dumb, Ugly SamoNigga, From His Retired NFL Position, Can Repeat This Oft Used And Scientifically Unsubstantiated Expression Because He Has No Background In The Social Or Biological Sciences And Foolishly Believes His Success Is Solely A Result Of His Own Making (Not His Parents Making, Not His Peers Making, Not His Professions Making, Etc.), But He's Wrong!
https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2017/08/17/robert-sapolsky-talks-with-sam-harris/
https://skeptiko.com/161-outspoken-atheist-jerry-coyne/
From my very first job, which I guess is 30 years ago this past December, I was required to teach Introductory Evolution and when you do that and you do a lot of reading about it you don’t even really have to teach about evolution to become aware that there’s huge resistance to accepting the scientific conception of evolution by the American public. Only about 40% of Americans accept evolution and only about 12% accept it in the way that we scientists do as a sort of purposeless unguided materialistic universe.
You become aware of that pretty quickly. You find that some of your students are resistant to evolution because it contravenes from their notions about human specialness or about morality or about religion or whatever.
UNACCEPTABLE!
LISTEN FROM 5:18 ON AND SPECIFICALLY 7:07 ON!
https://skeptiko.com/161-outspoken-atheist-jerry-coyne/
From my very first job, which I guess is 30 years ago this past December, I was required to teach Introductory Evolution and when you do that and you do a lot of reading about it you don’t even really have to teach about evolution to become aware that there’s huge resistance to accepting the scientific conception of evolution by the American public. Only about 40% of Americans accept evolution and only about 12% accept it in the way that we scientists do as a sort of purposeless unguided materialistic universe.
You become aware of that pretty quickly. You find that some of your students are resistant to evolution because it contravenes from their notions about human specialness or about morality or about religion or whatever.
UNACCEPTABLE!
2:02
YOUR
UNCONSCIOUS MIND DICTATES YOUR THOUGHTS AND BEHAVIOR AND YOUR
UNCONSCIOUS MIND IS COMPOSED OF MANY, MANY MENTAL MODULES THAT ARE IN
CONFLICT WITH ONE ANOTHER. ULTIMATELY, THE WAY YOU THINK AND BEHAVE IN A
GIVEN SITUATION IS A RESULT OF ONE OF THESE MENTAL MODULES
OUT-COMPETING OTHER MENTAL MODULES LEADING YOU TO THINK AND BEHAVE THE
WAY THE WINNING MENTAL MODULE WANTS YOU TO THINK AND BEHAVE. AND THIS
WHOLE PROCESS PLAYS OUT BELOW THE LEVEL OF CONSCIOUSNESS!
MENTAL
Consider the present moment from the point of view of my conscious mind: I have decided to write this blog post, and I am now writing it. I almost didn’t write it, however. In fact, I went back and forth about it: I feel that I’ve said more or less everything I have to say on the topic of free will and now worry about repeating myself. I started the post, and then set it aside. But after several more emails came in, I realized that I might be able to clarify a few points. Did I choose to be affected in this way? No. Some readers were urging me to comment on depressing developments in “the Arab Spring.” Others wanted me to write about the practice of meditation. At first I ignored all these voices and went back to working on my next book. Eventually, however, I returned to this blog post. Was that a choice? Well, in a conventional sense, yes. But my experience of making the choice did not include an awareness of its actual causes. Subjectively speaking, it is an absolute mystery to me why I am writing this.
My workflow may sound a little unconventional, but my experience of writing this article fully illustrates my view of free will. Thoughts and intentions arise; other thoughts and intentions arise in opposition. I want to sit down to write, but then I want something else—to exercise, perhaps. Which impulse will win? For the moment, I’m still writing, and there is no way for me to know why—because at other times I’ll think, “This is useless. I’m going to the gym,” and that thought will prove decisive. What finally causes the balance to swing? I cannot know subjectively—but I can be sure that electrochemical events in my brain decide the matter. I know that given the requisite stimulus (whether internal or external), I will leap up from my desk and suddenly find myself doing something else. As a matter of experience, therefore, I can take no credit for the fact that I got to the end of this paragraph.
@Zetherin The illusion of free will and the illusion of the self (i.e. that there is a thinker of thoughts) are the same illusion.
The D.C. native's IQ of 133 was in the top 2-percent of inmates. Morris grew up in foster care and was arrested for the first time at age 13, accruing a rap sheet that ranged from narcotics possession to armed robbery by the time he'd been transferred to Alcatraz in 1960.
Let's Take A Look At This Inmate. He's A Perfect Example. In Spite Of His High IQ And G00D Looks He Was Bound To Run Into Some Trouble In Our Current Cultural Environment. Why? because Of His Genetic Composition And The Environmental Stimuli He Was Exposed To From Conception On (His Parents' Genetic Makeup, His Mother's Health And Diet Prior To And During Pregnancy, His Household Environment, His Neighborhood Environment, His School Environment, His Peers, His Status, Etc.). Both Factors Predetermined Him To Engage In Behavior That Landed Him In Prison (At The Time He Was Born In Our Current* Environment He Was Almost Predestined To Go To Prison).
*At That Time In American History Society Treated Children, Teenagers, And Adults With Psychological Or Behavioral Problems Much More Callously And There Were Few Social Interventions That Could Help Channel Troubled Youth Into The Right Direction.
By any biological criterion you might want to consider, all human beings on the Earth today belong to the same species. But although any one of us is capable as an infant of learning any language, or of absorbing the customs and values of a society, by the time we're five years old, we have already learned a set of values and beliefs - and prejudices - that we will struggle to free ourselves from later in life. Ironically, much of this learning takes place during the period of "childhood amnesia" from which we will later find it hard to recall any memories. As a result we will never be consciously aware of how we acquired many of the attitudes and assumptions that will subsequently govern our interactions with the world. In the most extreme cases, by the time they have both reached adulthood a member of one culture will see the world entirely differently from a contemporary brought up in another; and in a highly specific and limited sense, the two might as well belong to a different species, divided by language, assumptions, priorities, and even by different ideas of right and wrong. Those differences might not matter too much if the individuals involved were confined to opposite sides of the planet; but in a rapidly globalizing world the inherent potential for conflict is obvious. You could not say anything even remotely similar about members of any other species on Earth; and, once again, the difference resolves down to our individualized ways of reformulating the world in our heads... (The Accidental Human)
https://ocweekly.com/truc-ngoc-tran-is-the-latest-to-get-life-with-no-parole-for-fellow-gang-members-1995-murder-6446440/
TAM NGYUEN WAS MY CELLMATE AT THEO LACY CORRECTIONAL FACILITY IN THE CITY OF ORANGE!
https://www.ocregister.com/2010/05/05/3-arrested-in-connection-with-atm-thefts/
https://www.ocregister.com/2012/01/25/4-men-plead-guilty-to-atm-thefts/
RICK COFFEY WAS MY CELLMATE AT THEO LACY CORRECTIONAL FACILITY IN THE CITY OF ORANGE!
https://ocweekly.com/charles-michael-reynolds-gets-life-for-murder-of-freedom-writers-co-star-armand-jones-6454618/
2 BUCC CHUCC REYNOLDS ELEMENTARY WAS MY CELLMATE AT THEO LACY CORRECTIONAL FACILITY IN THE CITY OF ORANGE!
I HAD BLACC CELLIES AND A FILIPINO CELLIE (IN FOR GROUP MURDER WITH THE REST OF HIS GANG FROM ATWATER) IN LA COUNTY WHOSE NAMES I CAN'T REMEMBER!
https://www.amazon.com/Unfair-New-Science-Criminal-Injustice/dp/0770437788
https://x.com/robkhenderson/status/1661042391510405122
Rob Henderson
Criminals don't have free will, but the people condemning and punishing them do (and they should stop).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiNHhyLZRck
0:22 "WHY DID I DO IT? UH, I DON'T HAVE UH, UH EXPLANATION AS TO WHY!...I CAN'T TELL YOU WHY!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-D0YFcN0mQ
1:18 "DO YOU REGRET THAT?...'CHAIN OF EVENTS THAT I HAD NO CONTROL OVER!'..."
"KEKE DO U LUV ME?" - DRA KEO
"While we all think that we first plan our actions and that they are then willfully carried out, in some cases a part of our frontal lobe may actually "decide" first, unconsciously, that we will perform an act, and after we carry out the act we fool ourselves into thinking we planned it. In other words, we are fooling ourselves into thinking we planned it." - JAMES FALLON (PSYCHOPATH)
Sure, but ultimately the argument was silly. Whether or not we can “see” the brain activity involved in making a decision doesn’t change the fact that that decision is the result of said activity, which is not under our “control”
And Don't Let NOBODY Tell You No Different!
1:20 When We Act We Do What We Do Because Of The Way We Are, All Things Considered: Premise 1. Premise 2: So, To Be Truly Responsible For What We Do When We Act We Need To Be Truly Responsible For How We Are...Step 3: Well, But We Cannot Ultimately Be Responsible For The Way We Are. Conclusion: So We Can't Be Free...6:29 In The End What You Do Follows From The Way You Are...You've Somehow Got To Get To Be Responsible For Being The Way You Are, BUT YOU CAN'T! You Can't Get Back Behind Yourself In Such A Way As To Be Responsible For The Kind Of Person You Are Therefore You Can't Be Responsible!
NO RESPONSE!
https://www.theguardian.com/law/2012/may/29/will-neuroscience-change-criminal-justice
Any scientific developments that threatened our notion of free will would seem to put the ethics of punishing people for their bad behaviour in question. In Free Will Harris debates these ideas and asks whether or not, given what brain science is telling us, criminal justice, in focusing on retribution, rests on an entirely false basis. An example he gives is a murderer who kills because of a brain tumour. This person is a victim, not a criminal. The tumour is the cause of his crimes. People imagine that the normal brain is a different story. But in fact the study of any criminal brain, says Harris, is the equivalent of finding a tumour in it – the wrong genes being transcribed, the brain being dictated by events over which he has no control. Human choice, says Harris,
0:22 "WHY DID I DO IT? UH, I DON'T HAVE UH, UH EXPLANATION AS TO WHY!...I CAN'T TELL YOU WHY!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-D0YFcN0mQ
1:18 "DO YOU REGRET THAT?...'CHAIN OF EVENTS THAT I HAD NO CONTROL OVER!'..."
"KEKE DO U LUV ME?" - DRA KEO
"not only is the feeling that we are 'consciously' in control of our behavior an illusion...it is a purposeful illusion, designed by natural selection to lend conviction to our claims..." - Robert Wright (The Moral Animal)
Sure, but ultimately the argument was silly. Whether or not we can “see” the brain activity involved in making a decision doesn’t change the fact that that decision is the result of said activity, which is not under our “control”
NO RESPONSE!
https://www.theguardian.com/law/2012/may/29/will-neuroscience-change-criminal-justice
Any scientific developments that threatened our notion of free will would seem to put the ethics of punishing people for their bad behaviour in question. In Free Will Harris debates these ideas and asks whether or not, given what brain science is telling us, criminal justice, in focusing on retribution, rests on an entirely false basis. An example he gives is a murderer who kills because of a brain tumour. This person is a victim, not a criminal. The tumour is the cause of his crimes. People imagine that the normal brain is a different story. But in fact the study of any criminal brain, says Harris, is the equivalent of finding a tumour in it – the wrong genes being transcribed, the brain being dictated by events over which he has no control. Human choice, says Harris,
is as important as fanciers of free will believe. But the next choice you make will come out of the darkness of prior causes that you, the conscious witness of your experience, did not bring into being.
Clearly we need to lock up dangerous people. But there is no sense to the idea that they somehow deserve it. Retributive justice is like requiring us to hate, as well as shoot, a wild animal who escapes from the zoo. His short book opens with an account of an horrific crime that mesmerised America with its cruelty - the home invasion in Connecticut by two men in 2007. Two career criminals first brutally bludgeoned the father (the only survivor), then raped and murdered the mother, and finally killed the two young daughters when they set the house on fire. As one reviewer says,
Harris gives voice to most everyone's worry when he writes that, without (contra-causal) free will, monsters like these men are "nothing more than poorly calibrated clockwork," and therefore they aren't really responsible for their actions. They're just damaged goods.
Speaking on an WNYC interview, Harris explains that the brain precedes a motor plan before our consciousness of our planning of it, even while we think we're still free to decide which way to go.
You can't really take credit for your unconscious predelict. This reaches back into everything we think and do and decide. There is no place in which we can say, the buck stops here. The buck just never stops. Your wants themselves emerge out of a wilderness of causes which you yourself cannot inspect. The only tools at your disposal are those which you inherit from your past. There are certain things about morality and about the legal system which do shift when you take on board that there is no free will.
The evolutionary biologist Stephen Pinker reminds us that our sense of justice tells us that where someone commits a crime, the perpetrator's culpability depends not just on the harm done but on their mental state, what any first year law student knows is the mens rea, the subjective state of intentionality prerequisite to establishing criminal liability. In his recent study of the decline of violence in human history, he gives the following example:
Suppose a woman kills her husband by putting rat poison in his tea. Our decision as to whether to send her to the electric chair very much depends on whether the container she spooned it out of was mislabelled DOMINO SUGAR or correctly labelled D-CON: KILLS RATS – that is, whether she knew she was poisoning him and wanted him dead, or it was all a tragic accident. A brute emotional reflex to the actus reus, the bad act ("She killed her husband! Shame!") could trigger an urge for retribution regardless of her intention. (The Better Angels of our Nature: Ch8, Inner Demons, p 547)
"BLAMING OTHER PEOPLE". I'M SURE COACH BROWN AND DARRIN HAVE BLAMED A NUMBER OF PEOPLE FOR THEIR ACTIONS THROUGHOUT THEIR LIVES. I'M SURE THEY'VE BLAMED THEIR PARENTS, THEIR SIBLINGS, THEIR GIRLFRIENDS, THEIR WIVES, THEIR CHILDREN, ETC. FOR SOME OF THE THINGS THEY'VE DONE. SO TO SAY WE HAVE NO ONE TO BLAME BUT OURSELVES IS THE HEIGHT OF HYPOCRISY.
More Nonsense That Has No Basis In Scientific Fact, But Appeals To Our Intuition And Self-Deluded Belief That We Have Control Over Our Lives!
A Lot Of What He Says Here About The Subconscious Is Nonsense. Your Subconscious (Your Unconscious Mind) Dictates Your Conscious Mind. So Listen From The 0:53 - 1:15 -1:30 Mark. "It Turns Out This Is Very Negative" How Can Allowing Your Subconscious To Control You Be Negative When Your Subconscious Mind Is Dictating Your Thoughts And Behavior Throughout The Day Even When You're Conscious Mind Is "In Control"? In Other Words, Even When You Think You've Made A Conscious Decision Or That Your Behavior Was Done Consciously It Was All Driven By Your Subconscious. So, Your Subconscious Is Determining Everything You Do While Your Conscious Mind Just Makes You Cognizant Of What You're Doing And Gives You A Reason For Your Doing It (What Your Subconscious Mind Has Already Determined You Do). So, How Can This Be Negative? If This Is Negative Then Everything Our Mind Dictates That We Do Is Negative Because Everything We Do Is Dictated And Determined By Our Subconscious.
(0:54 - 2:45 ABSOLUTE NONSENSE, But Like The Nigger In The Link Above It Makes Us Feel As Though We Have Control Over Our Thoughts And Behavior And Thus Gives People Hope!)
1:26 IF YOUR MIND IS WANDERING YOU'RE BEING RUN BY THE SUBCONSCIOUS...IT TURNS OUT THIS IS VERY NEGATIVE...
The Subconscious Mind Determines Your Thoughts And Behaviors. Your Subconscious Mind Is Always Running, So If This Is Negative Then Everything We Think And Do Is Negative. All The Conscious Mind Does Is Make You Aware Of What Your Subconscious Mind Has Impelled You To Do Then Gives You A Reason (Concocts A Reason) For You Doing It. I'm Just Gonna Keep Repeating This Until All Of You Get It!
Studies done with patients who have disconnected hemispheres have revealed that there might be something to the interpreter. Since the right brain is linked to the left half of the body-including the left ear, hand and eye-and the left brain to the right half of the body, researchers are able to communicate directly with one half of the brain or the other in split-brain patients. In Gazzaniga’s study, a patient’s right brain was presented, through the left visual field, with commands like “Walk” or “Laugh.” When the left brain-completely oblivious to the order given the right-was asked why the patient had walked out of the room, it immediately fabricated a reply: “To get a Coke.” When asked why he was laughing, the left brain offered the reply, “You guys come up and test us every month. What a way to make a living!”
When I asked Corballis about the interpreter, he was skeptical. “The trouble with the interpreter,” he said, “is that it’s difficult to distinguish it from the fact that it’s the left hemisphere that has language. If the interpretation is expressed in language (as it almost always is), then it comes from the left hemisphere. The right hemisphere may have its interpretation too, but we may not be able to find out what it is.”
I mention language because it brings me back to my starting point, and the poets whose evocative words we so admire. Most of us seem to have great difficulty in expressing our emotions in language. Words literally fail us just at the moment when we really need them. How often do we use the phrase 'You know what I mean?' in exasperation at our own inability to turn feelings and vague thoughts into words? Yet some people have the gift of being able to say just what we wanted to say, to put into words what we instantly recognise as the very feelings with which we struggled so inarticulately.
It is a rare and exceptional skill, and we rightly do them homage. But it reinforces the fact that we are just not very good at explaining what's going on inside of us. We feel our emotions, but we do not always understand them. The problem of our present enquiry is that this makes it very difficult for us to dig beneath the surface and find out what is actually going on. It's a problem that has bedeviled all attempts to study romantic relationships - and, indeed, all other kinds of relationships - scientifically. Nonetheless, let's see what we can do.
...
The mind is still largely an opaque mystery to us, and although neuroimaging technology has allowed us to gain some extraordinary insights into the working mind in the last decade, the technology is still quite crude and it can be difficult to interpret precisely which bundles of neurons are actually firing. Our understanding of what is going on when we feel particular emotions or ponder the future remains largely unknown territory.
(The Science Of Love)
https://www.amazon.com/Strangers-Ourselves-Discovering-Adaptive-Unconscious/dp/0674013824
If we don't know ourselves―our potentials, feelings, or motives―it is most often, Wilson tells us, because we have developed a plausible story about ourselves that is out of touch with our adaptive unconscious. Citing evidence that too much introspection can actually do damage, Wilson makes the case for better ways of discovering our unconscious selves. If you want to know who you are or what you feel or what you're like, Wilson advises, pay attention to what you actually do and what other people think about you. Showing us an unconscious more powerful than Freud's, and even more pervasive in our daily life, Strangers to Ourselves marks a revolution in how we know ourselves.
If we don't know ourselves―our potentials, feelings, or motives―it is most often, Wilson tells us, because we have developed a plausible story about ourselves that is out of touch with our adaptive unconscious. Citing evidence that too much introspection can actually do damage, Wilson makes the case for better ways of discovering our unconscious selves. If you want to know who you are or what you feel or what you're like, Wilson advises, pay attention to what you actually do and what other people think about you. Showing us an unconscious more powerful than Freud's, and even more pervasive in our daily life, Strangers to Ourselves marks a revolution in how we know ourselves.
Why does the mind have a mechanism that works hard to keep certain things from consciousness? A GREAT QUESTION. Dick Alexander and Bob Trivers argued that the unconscious mainly makes people better at deceiving and manipulating others. What a cynical view!
Finally, on the lighter side, knowing that we don't have free will can perhaps temper our sense of regret or self-recrimination, since we never had real choices in our past. No, we couldn't have had that V8, and Robert Frost couldn't have taken the other road.
Although science strongly suggests that free will of the sort I defined doesn't exist, this view is unpopular because it contradicts our powerful feeling that we make real choices.
“Those who read arguments against free will were more likely to cheat on a test and to claim more money than they deserved. Free will may be an illusion, but it’s a useful one.”
