Sure, we might find preferences, but those preferences must themselves be the result of these same brain processes over which the preferences operate,
Why must they? Surely it’s possible there are parts of the mind that are influenced by other processes outside of the predictive processing components?
It’s pretty clear to me for instance that people act differently when on psychedelics not because somehow they’re making a prediction about what will happen when they’re on psychedelics, but because it’s actually changing the way in which the brain accesses and makes those predictions. So it’s not hard to imagine other chemicals in people’s brains operating at different biological set points fundamentally altering the way their brains would like to update. Not to mention biological brain differences, etc.
It could be starting dispositions as well, that can then be changed, but I don’t see a principled reason that that should be the case.
But then if so much flexibility is possible, what is even producing this distinction between enlightenment and heaven approaches?
I guess I should be clear I’m generally unhappy living with concepts that are descriptive and don’t have gears. So while you might see a pattern that looks like this split, I’m not really satisfied by it so long as we don’t understand the mechanism by which this pattern appears, and I’m generally not willing to stake much on patterns that don’t have causal explanations, hence why I’m poking at this.
Why must they? Surely it’s possible there are parts of the mind that are influenced by other processes outside of the predictive processing components?
It’s pretty clear to me for instance that people act differently when on psychedelics not because somehow they’re making a prediction about what will happen when they’re on psychedelics, but because it’s actually changing the way in which the brain accesses and makes those predictions. So it’s not hard to imagine other chemicals in people’s brains operating at different biological set points fundamentally altering the way their brains would like to update. Not to mention biological brain differences, etc.
It could be starting dispositions as well, that can then be changed, but I don’t see a principled reason that that should be the case.
But then if so much flexibility is possible, what is even producing this distinction between enlightenment and heaven approaches?
I guess I should be clear I’m generally unhappy living with concepts that are descriptive and don’t have gears. So while you might see a pattern that looks like this split, I’m not really satisfied by it so long as we don’t understand the mechanism by which this pattern appears, and I’m generally not willing to stake much on patterns that don’t have causal explanations, hence why I’m poking at this.
My guess is that there are attractors in this broad space, similar to other personality differences.