Ok thanks for clarifying. Maybe this thread is quiescable? I’ll respond, but not in a way that adds much, more like just trying to summarize. (I mean feel free to respond; just to say, I’ve gotten my local question answered re/ your beliefs.) In summary, we have a disagreement about what is possible; whether it’s possible to not be a predictive processor. My experience is that I can increase (by detailed effort in various contexts) my general (generalizable to contexts I haven’t specifically made the effort for) tendency to not dismiss incoming information, not require delusion in order to have goals and plans, not behave in a way governed by stories.
if narratives are something that your brain just does by default
Predictive processing may or may not be a good description of low-level brain function, but that doesn’t imply what’s a good idea for us to be and doesn’t imply what we have to be, where what we are is the high-level functioning, the mind / consciousness / agency. Low-level predictive processors are presumably Turing complete and so can be used as substrate for (genuine, updateful, non-action-forcing) models and (genuine, non-delusion-requiring) plans/goals. To the extent we are or can look like that, I do not want to describe us as being relevantly made of predictive processors, like how you can appropriately understand computers as being “at a higher level” than transistors, and how it would be unhelpful to say “computers are fundamentally just transistors”. Like, yes, your computer has a bunch of transistors in it and you have to think about transistors to do some computing tasks and to make modern computers, but, that’s not necessary, and more importantly thinking about transistors is so far from sufficient to understand computation that it’s nearly irrelevant.
one could argue that it’s very valuable to learn to see all the ways in which you really do view your life through narratives, so that you could better question them. And one could say that it’s a mistake not to invest effort in that. I’d be inclined to agree with that form of the claim.
For predictive processors, questioning something is tantamount to somewhat deciding against behaving some way. So it’s not just a question of questioning narratives within the predictive processing architecture (in the sense of comparing/modifying/refactoring/deleting/adopting narratives), it’s also a question of decoupling questioning predictions from changing plans.
Ok thanks for clarifying. Maybe this thread is quiescable? I’ll respond, but not in a way that adds much, more like just trying to summarize. (I mean feel free to respond; just to say, I’ve gotten my local question answered re/ your beliefs.) In summary, we have a disagreement about what is possible; whether it’s possible to not be a predictive processor. My experience is that I can increase (by detailed effort in various contexts) my general (generalizable to contexts I haven’t specifically made the effort for) tendency to not dismiss incoming information, not require delusion in order to have goals and plans, not behave in a way governed by stories.
Predictive processing may or may not be a good description of low-level brain function, but that doesn’t imply what’s a good idea for us to be and doesn’t imply what we have to be, where what we are is the high-level functioning, the mind / consciousness / agency. Low-level predictive processors are presumably Turing complete and so can be used as substrate for (genuine, updateful, non-action-forcing) models and (genuine, non-delusion-requiring) plans/goals. To the extent we are or can look like that, I do not want to describe us as being relevantly made of predictive processors, like how you can appropriately understand computers as being “at a higher level” than transistors, and how it would be unhelpful to say “computers are fundamentally just transistors”. Like, yes, your computer has a bunch of transistors in it and you have to think about transistors to do some computing tasks and to make modern computers, but, that’s not necessary, and more importantly thinking about transistors is so far from sufficient to understand computation that it’s nearly irrelevant.
For predictive processors, questioning something is tantamount to somewhat deciding against behaving some way. So it’s not just a question of questioning narratives within the predictive processing architecture (in the sense of comparing/modifying/refactoring/deleting/adopting narratives), it’s also a question of decoupling questioning predictions from changing plans.