The idea of nurture vs. nature comes out of mind-body dualism.
Maybe historically, but in this context? When seez said
(i.e. assuming current human biology is a constant)
seez did not mean that literally everything biological is completely fixed. If that were the case, we would be statues. The qualification meant that we are not considering here modifying humans directly at the biological level, going instead through communication channels. That these communication channels will produce biological effects is aside from the point.
The qualification meant that we are not considering here modifying humans directly at the biological level, going instead through communication channels.
On of the best interventions for increasing cognitive performance of nerds who do no sports at all is to get them to do sports.
You hear nerds say that they have a body instead of that they are their body. That reflects that people live their lives based on mind-body dualism.
I’m at the moment reading Feldenkrais who says that you have basically four areas that you can approach if you want to improve humans. Sensation, feelings, thoughts and movement. Feldenkrais makes arguments that movement is the area where you can get the most bang for your bucks through intervention.
If you try to solve all issues on the level of thoughts than you are massively constraining the tools that you can use. If you push someone in a ugh-field that person has a noticeable physical response. Sometimes it makes sense to simply engage on the physical level.
A hug can be a physical intervention that solves an emotional issue of another person.
I sometimes do engage in nitpicking but in this instance I’m just arguing a position that’s very foreign for you.
I do have two choices. I list a bunch of obviously true claims to make my point. Than you say I’m nitpicking because I say things that are trivially true. I could also make bigger claims and then you would argue that I don’t have evidence for them that you find convincing.
Stereotypical nerds don’t do sport because they think as their body as something that isn’t them but that’s a tool. That’s inherently a meme that comes from mind-body dualism. Unfortunately simply making a logical argument doesn’t help people do identify with their body. It’s a difficult belief to change on a cognitive level if you limit your toolbox. If you on the other hand let a person do Feldenkrais or another somatic framework for long enough they usually do that switch and start to identify with their body and stop speaking as if their body is something they possess. Of course you can get somebody to say that they changed the belief more easily but the underlying alief might still the same even if someone pretends to have changed his mind.
Problem modelling matters a great deal. Being willing to change core assumptions is central for making progress on issues such as raising the sanity line.
No, I agree strongly with everything that you have said in this entire thread except that any of it had anything to do with the post you were responding to.
No, I agree strongly with everything that you have said in this entire thread except that any of it had anything to do with the post you were responding to.
A while ago I had a LW discussion about listen to one’s heart. It took me quite a while to get people to consider that some people actually mean the phrase very literally. For them it was just a metaphor that’s in their mind and the phrase had little to do with the actual biological heart.
Let’s take dual-n-back as intervention for improving intelligence. As far as I understand Gwern did run the meta analysis and it doesn’t work for that purpose. Purely mental interventions don’t get you very far. I do advocate that you need to think more about addressing somatic issues if you actually want to build training that improves intelligence.
David Burns who did a lot to popularize Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) with his book “The Feeling Good Handbook” doesn’t call what he does these days Cognitive Behavior Therapy anymore. Just focusing on the mind and the cognition is 20-30 year old thought. Burns nowadays considers it important that patients feel a warm connection with their therapist.
A lot psychology academia is still in that old mental frame. Academia isn’t really where innovation happens.
I do think we have to consider putting people in floating tanks or on treadmills while they do dual-n-back or similar tasks if we want to get strong intelligence improvement to work.
Okay. The thing is, all of that stuff would be allowed under the restriction you were objecting to. Everything you are proposing is working within the system of human biology, optimizing it. You’re not replacing it with something else altogether like computer chips or genetically re-engineering one’s myelin or whatever.
As a reminder, the exchange began:
How much can we raise the sanity waterline without transhumanism (i.e. assuming current human biology is a constant)?
The question presupposes mind body dualism. Biology get’s changed through mental interventions and it’s not at all clear how many interventions are possible.
The thing is, all of that stuff would be allowed under the restriction you were objecting to.
I don’t care that much about what’s allowed but about what people actually do. Even if a nerd intellectually understands that mind-body dualism is wrong, then he can still ignore his body and avoid exercising because he doesn’t get the idea at a deep level.
Why do you consider something that changes hormone levels keeping biology constant but something that changes genes not keeping biology constant?
More importantly, once you understand that there a lot of unexplored space the question of how far we could improve becomes a question that obviously nobody is going to be able to answer.
Couldn’t you have said the interesting parts of that without the aggressive ‘You’re being a mind-body dualist!’ part?
Why would I? One of the core points of the argument is fighting mind-body dualism. It’s the connection to the original sentence I’m challenging. A connection that otherwise didn’t seem obvious to you.
As far as the word “aggressive” goes, challenging ideas at a deep level can raise emotions. I don’t think that’s a reason to avoid deep intellectual debate and only debate superficial issues that don’t raise emotions.
How much can we raise the sanity waterline without transhumanism (i.e. assuming current human biology is a constant)?
The only way I can see this as mind-body dualistic is by taking a very strong, restrictive sense of the phrase ‘human biology’ - one which does not already include those things that humans are biologically capable of without high-technological transhumanist aid. You assumed that the definition in use was one you would strongly disagree with, despite contextual clues that this was not the case: if the poster thinks that transhumanistic modifications CAN impact the sanity waterline, this person is clearly not a mind-body dualist!
Basically, you picked a fight with someone who agreed with you over something you agreed with them about and insisted that they disagreed with you. It’s obnoxious.
I don’t think that’s a reason to avoid deep intellectual debate and only debate superficial issues that don’t raise emotions.
When you’re dealing with emotionally charged issues, you need to be very careful. It’s not the time to run in throwing words into peoples’ mouths.
If you on the other hand let a person do Feldenkrais or another somatic framework for long enough they usually do that switch and start to identify with their body and stop speaking as if their body is something they possess.
Akrasia survey data analysis suggests that the most useful anti-akrasia technique (at least for LW audience) is exercise for increased energy.
Not sure if these things are connected, but if identifying with one’s body would lead one to exercise more… then we could have a possible way to overcome akrasia here. Changing your feelings could be strategically better than spending willpower.
Do you think this could work? (I am not sure if it even makes sense.)
If yes, could you write an introductory article about the somatic frameworks?
Maybe historically, but in this context? When seez said
seez did not mean that literally everything biological is completely fixed. If that were the case, we would be statues. The qualification meant that we are not considering here modifying humans directly at the biological level, going instead through communication channels. That these communication channels will produce biological effects is aside from the point.
On of the best interventions for increasing cognitive performance of nerds who do no sports at all is to get them to do sports.
You hear nerds say that they have a body instead of that they are their body. That reflects that people live their lives based on mind-body dualism.
I’m at the moment reading Feldenkrais who says that you have basically four areas that you can approach if you want to improve humans. Sensation, feelings, thoughts and movement. Feldenkrais makes arguments that movement is the area where you can get the most bang for your bucks through intervention.
If you try to solve all issues on the level of thoughts than you are massively constraining the tools that you can use. If you push someone in a ugh-field that person has a noticeable physical response. Sometimes it makes sense to simply engage on the physical level.
A hug can be a physical intervention that solves an emotional issue of another person.
Your skill at nitpicking is awe-inspiring.
I sometimes do engage in nitpicking but in this instance I’m just arguing a position that’s very foreign for you.
I do have two choices. I list a bunch of obviously true claims to make my point. Than you say I’m nitpicking because I say things that are trivially true. I could also make bigger claims and then you would argue that I don’t have evidence for them that you find convincing.
Stereotypical nerds don’t do sport because they think as their body as something that isn’t them but that’s a tool. That’s inherently a meme that comes from mind-body dualism. Unfortunately simply making a logical argument doesn’t help people do identify with their body. It’s a difficult belief to change on a cognitive level if you limit your toolbox. If you on the other hand let a person do Feldenkrais or another somatic framework for long enough they usually do that switch and start to identify with their body and stop speaking as if their body is something they possess. Of course you can get somebody to say that they changed the belief more easily but the underlying alief might still the same even if someone pretends to have changed his mind.
Problem modelling matters a great deal. Being willing to change core assumptions is central for making progress on issues such as raising the sanity line.
No, I agree strongly with everything that you have said in this entire thread except that any of it had anything to do with the post you were responding to.
A while ago I had a LW discussion about listen to one’s heart. It took me quite a while to get people to consider that some people actually mean the phrase very literally. For them it was just a metaphor that’s in their mind and the phrase had little to do with the actual biological heart.
Let’s take dual-n-back as intervention for improving intelligence. As far as I understand Gwern did run the meta analysis and it doesn’t work for that purpose. Purely mental interventions don’t get you very far. I do advocate that you need to think more about addressing somatic issues if you actually want to build training that improves intelligence.
David Burns who did a lot to popularize Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) with his book “The Feeling Good Handbook” doesn’t call what he does these days Cognitive Behavior Therapy anymore. Just focusing on the mind and the cognition is 20-30 year old thought. Burns nowadays considers it important that patients feel a warm connection with their therapist.
A lot psychology academia is still in that old mental frame. Academia isn’t really where innovation happens.
I do think we have to consider putting people in floating tanks or on treadmills while they do dual-n-back or similar tasks if we want to get strong intelligence improvement to work.
Okay. The thing is, all of that stuff would be allowed under the restriction you were objecting to. Everything you are proposing is working within the system of human biology, optimizing it. You’re not replacing it with something else altogether like computer chips or genetically re-engineering one’s myelin or whatever.
As a reminder, the exchange began:
I don’t care that much about what’s allowed but about what people actually do. Even if a nerd intellectually understands that mind-body dualism is wrong, then he can still ignore his body and avoid exercising because he doesn’t get the idea at a deep level.
Why do you consider something that changes hormone levels keeping biology constant but something that changes genes not keeping biology constant?
More importantly, once you understand that there a lot of unexplored space the question of how far we could improve becomes a question that obviously nobody is going to be able to answer.
Couldn’t you have said the interesting parts of that without the aggressive ‘You’re being a mind-body dualist!’ part?
Why would I? One of the core points of the argument is fighting mind-body dualism. It’s the connection to the original sentence I’m challenging. A connection that otherwise didn’t seem obvious to you.
As far as the word “aggressive” goes, challenging ideas at a deep level can raise emotions. I don’t think that’s a reason to avoid deep intellectual debate and only debate superficial issues that don’t raise emotions.
The only way I can see this as mind-body dualistic is by taking a very strong, restrictive sense of the phrase ‘human biology’ - one which does not already include those things that humans are biologically capable of without high-technological transhumanist aid. You assumed that the definition in use was one you would strongly disagree with, despite contextual clues that this was not the case: if the poster thinks that transhumanistic modifications CAN impact the sanity waterline, this person is clearly not a mind-body dualist!
Basically, you picked a fight with someone who agreed with you over something you agreed with them about and insisted that they disagreed with you. It’s obnoxious.
When you’re dealing with emotionally charged issues, you need to be very careful. It’s not the time to run in throwing words into peoples’ mouths.
Akrasia survey data analysis suggests that the most useful anti-akrasia technique (at least for LW audience) is exercise for increased energy.
Not sure if these things are connected, but if identifying with one’s body would lead one to exercise more… then we could have a possible way to overcome akrasia here. Changing your feelings could be strategically better than spending willpower.
Do you think this could work? (I am not sure if it even makes sense.)
If yes, could you write an introductory article about the somatic frameworks?