Daniel Dennett: The Normal Well-Tempered Mind

http://edge.org/conversation/normal-well-tempered-mind

by X4 • 13 years ago

147 115 13 years ago

aheilbut3• 13 years ago

Minsky talked about the 'society of mind' involving competition between many autonomous modules a very long time ago; funny that he isn't even mentioned.

The brain-as-computer analogy needs more qualification than it is usually given. When one says that, people tend to think of a computer very abstractly; as some Turing-machine like substrate on which one can run any computation. The brain isn't like that at all; it's built out of all kinds of ASICs that have evolved for very specific functions. The reality is probably much closer to 19th century phrenology than 50s cybernetics.

Daniel_Newby2• 13 years ago

The brain isn't like that at all; it's built out of all kinds of ASICs that have evolved for very specific functions.

That turns out not to be the case. There are some specialized modules, but stroke studies have shown that massive damage to specific functions can often be recovered by retraining. It seems that particular parts of the brain are especially good at learning particular jobs, and that when they learn a job they somehow suppress redundant learning by other regions. Much of the apparent specialization of the brain is very possibly an optimization process, akin to a computer cluster that automatically assigns I/O jobs to nodes near the mass storage.

scotty793• 13 years ago

I believe that optimizations observed are almost purely function of brain activity. Any boosts genes provide to specific regions are quantitative not qualitative in nature.

Figs• 13 years ago

Maybe it'd be more interesting to think of it like an FPGA that can run a Verilog JIT compiler and reprogram itself when damage occurs or new information changes priorities?

scotty793• 13 years ago

Then how do you explain that:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemispherectomy

One case, demonstrated by Smith & Sugar, 1975; A. Smith 1987, demonstrated that one patient with this procedure had completed college, attended graduate school and scored above average on intelligence tests. Studies have found no significant long-term effects on memory, personality, or humor after the procedure, and minimal changes in cognitive function overall.

aheilbut3• 13 years ago

The brain has bilateral symmetry. Don't try that trick cutting along a different axis.

Also, they don't talk much about motor function and vision.

X44• 13 years ago

More meat for the AI warriors is found on Minsky's homepage: http://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/

cdcarter• 13 years ago

If you'd like to read more of Dennett's (newer) understandings in a more cohesive form, check out The Intuition Pump. He talks less about his mistakes but more about how his new ideas really mesh with science and real ethics.

Afforess• 13 years ago

You begin to think about the normal well-tempered mind, in effect, the well-organized mind, as an achievement, not as the base state

As an aside,

Almost no one ever really analyzes sanity. Somehow, despite not understanding why exactly we exist, what our purpose is, and that at any given moment we could die and cease to exist, we don't go insane. Do you have any idea how crazy that is? Even "insane" people are just experiencing delusions ontop of reality - the constructs from their mind are mundane in a sense because while they aren't real, they are sane. Real insanity would be realizing how large the universe is, that philosophers cant even prove anything besides solipsism exists, or how meaningless life is. I've come to the conclusion that I must be insane, since sane people don't notice any of this - clearly all the completely sane people don't give it a second thought.

And of course I'm sure plenty of you will say sure life has purpose, or solipsism is too narrow because it isn't useful to use as a worldview. Because you're all sane. ;)

cgore5• 13 years ago

Somehow, despite not understanding why exactly we exist, what our purpose is, and that at any given moment we could die and cease to exist, we don't go insane. Do you have any idea how crazy that is?

If you have ever run into a Christian who just assumed you were lying when you told them that you were an atheist, this is why they thought that. You don't seem insane, so they are left with the assumption that you must be a liar. When in truth, you just choose to think about something else instead: politics, your job, some video game, whatever.

loup-vaillant3• 13 years ago

If you have ever run into a Christian who just assumed you were lying when you told them that you were an atheist, this is why they thought that.

By the way, Dennett talked about the reverse: how the Church itself lies: more specifically, priests won't try and correct the beliefs of their parishioners (like, such and such depiction of a miracle was actually just a symbol), lest they destroy their faith altogether.

vidarh2• 13 years ago

When in truth, you just choose to think about something else instead: politics, your job, some video game, whatever.

But that is just not true for a lot of us: A lot of atheists spend a disproportionate amount of time considering these types of questions.

Though for many the answers to the above is: Why should there be a purpose? I'd rather choose one for myself. Why does matter if we can die and cease to exist at any moment? If there is no after life, we'd never know. Do you fear going to bed at night, worrying you might not wake up in the morning? Why would we worry about that - if we don't wake up, so what?

Incidentally I've never met a christian who assumed I was lying when I told them I was an atheist. A lot of them have wondered how I could be, and had questions about it, and I'm sure some thought I was crazy (the feeling is mutual), but none have ever implied I wasn't telling the truth.

chao-• 13 years ago

I had the good fortune of once being the first atheist that one women had EVER spoken to (or at least who had admitted that to her face). The conversation started with a lot of back-and-forth that was very enlightening. By the end, things weren't so amicable, but the interim was fantastic.

I don't wish/intend to open up a can of worms, but feel it is worth relating the major point of departure in the conversation: We differed on the importance of what I guess you might call "purity of intent". That your inner thoughts/motivations for an action matter as much or more than the tangible effects of that action, even if those effects are completely indistinguishable, into perpetuity.

aheilbut3• 13 years ago

We're evolved not to think about all that too much.

gregsq• 13 years ago

Yes, that line of thinking can lead to a distinct adaptive deficit, which will simply be selected against.

guelo2• 13 years ago

I would say that this line of thinking is what necessitates the creation of religion in just about every society in human history.

hsitz2• 13 years ago

This is the human condition. I'm not sure "normal" or "crazy" are appropriate concepts to try to characterize it. It is what it is.

Many people who aren't religious know what their purpose is. What they may also be aware of, however, is that their purpose is not something given to them, it's something they have the responsibility to choose for themselves, and this is part of what it means to be human. You can't just accept what someone else tells you your purpose is, you have to choose it for yourself. This is one of the core elements of existentialist philosophy. (And there are Christian existentialists, but that's for another time. . . .)

bloodofheroes2• 13 years ago

I think he meant the purpose of humans, not the purpose of each individual human. Why would each human have a different purpose?

angersock• 13 years ago

This question has been on my mind a bit this month.

The basic issue with solipsism is that it doesn't do anything for you--you can't really use it to explain everyday occurrences or guide your actions in a meaningful way.

lutusp5• 13 years ago

The basic issue with solipsism is that it doesn't do anything for you ...

That's in the nature of philosophical ideas -- they aren't meant to be practical or productive. Now if only all those students who sign up for philosophy courses and majors understood this, they might instead choose something useful and remunerative.

dhruval• 13 years ago

Well you can use it to get over fears and anxieties. Also to reduce stress. By seeing that is that the things causing these fears don't actually exist.

It would be better if we used philosophies as a tools rather than cling to them as a absolute truths.

As and aside, solipsism is dependent on qualia, so not True in an absolute sense.

(Not my idea. Similar things have been argued by Rorty or Wittingstein. Also by some Buddhist philosophies - eg. Madhyamaka ).

lutusp5• 13 years ago

Almost no one ever really analyzes sanity.

That's true, but it's easy to see why -- a "sane" person doesn't need either therapy or psychoactive drugs, so psychologists quickly lose interest in them, as either a client or a research subject. A sane person is boring.

That's why, as the years go by, more and more everyday behaviors are turned into evidence of mental illness. Are you aware that, in the most recent mental illness diagnostic guide (the DSM), scratching your arm has become the basis for a mental illness diagnosis? I wish I were making this up.

Read and weep: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dermatillomania

It only gets worse from here. This is why the director of the NIMH has decided to abandon the DSM as a guide to scientific research -- and not a moment too soon:

"Two NIMH Directors Debunk DSM & Deplore Psychiatry's Unscientific Modus Operandi" : http://www.ahrp.org/cms/content/view/920/94/

gjm112• 13 years ago

scratching your arm has become the basis for a mental illness diagnosis?

In the same way as sleeping is the basis for a diagnosis of illness (narcolepsy), washing your hands is the basis for a diagnosis of mental illness (OCD), etc. No one is going to diagnose you as mentally ill because you scratch your arm, but if you repeatedly scratch your arm enough to cause tissue damage and seek psychiatric help with stopping, there's a label they can put on it. Just as sleeping is normal but falling asleep uncontrollably in the middle of the day might be narcolepsy, hand-washing is normal but washing your hands 100 times in a row might be OCD, being tired is normal but being tired all the time might be CFS, having your cells grow and multiply is normal but if they do it out of control it might be cancer, etc., etc., etc.

Lots of things are normal in small quantities and pathological in large quantities.

ssivark• 13 years ago

You might enjoy this :-) http://hitchhikers.wikia.com/wiki/Total_Perspective_Vortex

Don't pay too much attetion to the "science" but the philosophical implications are interesting to ponder.

kazagistar3• 13 years ago

Not sure why the "philosophical implications" of things that are not so in reality would be interesting to ponder.

Skalman• 13 years ago

I don't get why people need a reason to exist. To me it's clear that there isn't a reason and we don't have any predefined purpose, yet most people create their reason. Maybe they live for their loved ones, maybe they enjoy life. And regarding death: it's scary and doesn't happen very often, so it makes sense not to think about it too much.

Vivtek2• 13 years ago

I've always had the same problem. I don't need a purpose - I am alive. Here I am! Why does life need a meaning beyond just being life?

It's to the point that I wonder whether I'm normal, really. Everybody else seems so caught up in their own meaning.

robmclarty• 13 years ago

Death is definitely what others here are referring to as an "out of bounds error". It is simply the ultimate definition of incomprehensible.

It's like a physical computer not only losing power, not only being gone, not only nothing, but never having existed at all. In my mind (haha) death is the end of both space and time. Oblivion.

And that's pretty crazy to shove into a finite brain.

enraged_camel• 13 years ago

>Real insanity would be realizing how large the universe is

I remember going camping when I was 15. After everyone else fell asleep, I laid on my back under the clear open night sky and let my mind wander.

I first thought about planets in our solar system, then the interstellar medium, then other star systems with their own stars, planets and asteroid belts. I then "zoomed out" and thought about the Milky Way, then about other galaxies, spiral ones and starburst ones and irregular galaxies, and the void between them. I thought about nebulae and black holes. As time passed, I started to view Earth as just a planet, and our sun not as the Sun but as a star. Just one out of countless. I started to put myself in the shoes of an alien who lives on another planet - or maybe within interstellar clouds! - and tried to...

Then I stopped.

The reason I stopped was because I had the distinct feeling that my mind was about to break. As if I was about to run a buggy function, and if I pressed Enter to run it, it would throw an index out of bounds error and crash permanently. So I did the sane thing by pulling my sleeping bag over my head and falling asleep.

hoffcoder4• 13 years ago

Reminded me of the movie 'Pi' by Darren Aronofsky.

BasDirks• 13 years ago

"As if I was about to run a buggy function, and if I pressed Enter to run it, it would throw an index out of bounds error and crash permanently."

This is such a great description. The Abyss is an out of bounds error.

vidarh2• 13 years ago

Have you read Olaf Stapledons "Star Maker"?

It starts with the protagonist looking at the stars in a similar way, and somehow finding himself leaving his body and flying out amongst the stars.

From there on the scale keeps increasing, both time and space, covering billions of years, and pretty much the scale of the universe.

He wrote an earlier book - Last and First Men - that covered 2 billion years of future developments of humanity -, and Star Maker makes Last and First Men seem limited in scope.

Freeman Dyson apparently says he got the inspiration for a Dyson Sphere from Star Maker.

jacquesm• 13 years ago

They made a movie in 1977 about just that:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fKBhvDjuy0

jbattle• 13 years ago

Not directly related, but from HP Lovecraft....

"The most merciful thing in the world... is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents."

eli_gottlieb3• 13 years ago

I've learned how to program my mind with the correct reaction to that kind of scale: acknowledge it with a hearty, Who the HELL do you think I am!?

And this is why I have a hard time understanding sane people.

mugwumpjissom2• 13 years ago

I think that feeling is a major barrier we as a species need to get past, which is more of a spiritual/therapeutic issue than an intellectual one as far as I can tell. This foundation provides free 10-day silent meditation retreats where they push you to have that experience but instead of opening your eyes and "pulling the sleeping bag over your head", you embrace it and explore beyond. It changed my life. I've been to two of these things, one in CA and one in TX and if you ever have time it's worth it in every way. I'm not affiliated with them in any way, I just think it's relevant.

saraid2162• 13 years ago

Almost no one ever really analyzes sanity.

Isn't this the purpose of positive psychology? I have a rather high quality tome, http://www.amazon.com/Character-Strengths-Virtues-Handbook-C... that does its best to discuss the positive aspects of a person, trying to be a kind of mirrored version of the DSM.

meriksson• 13 years ago

It is true that almost no one analyzes sanity. Your comment reminds me a lot of a particular book on the topic, The Human Evasion by Celia Green. If you are not familiar with it already, you might be interested in checking it out:

http://deoxy.org/evasion/1.htm

Bockit• 13 years ago

When you say things like "realizing how large the universe is", "how meaningless life is", do you really mean that your mental state is impacted by the answers to these questions/implications of these realisations? How does it affect you?

I ask because while the ideas are interesting to me, they have always seemed fairly irrelevant. Sure, the universe is huge, but I don't think knowing that is going to change me. The way I see it, it has no impact on the way I live my life and I can't see anything I do having an impact on that.

I mean the questions genuinely, I realise that not everyone sees things the same way.

JonnieCache2• 13 years ago

Almost no one ever really analyzes sanity.

Assuming you mean the general public, then yes, I suppose so. But the measures taken by the mind to protect itself from reality have been a central area of study for psychologists for over a hundred years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defence_mechanism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self_schema

JackFr2• 13 years ago

Consider mental illness -- apart from physical deformities of the brain (the organ) and bacterial and viral infection -- the rest is pure cultural bias as to what constitutes normal behavior. That is to say, the only reason you believe your mental constructs are more real than a schizophrenic's, is that there's a cultural consensus that disembodied voices aren't "real".

JonnieCache2• 13 years ago

Consider mental illness -- apart from physical deformities of the brain (the organ) and bacterial and viral infection -- the rest is pure cultural bias as to what constitutes normal behavior.

This is simply not true. A mental health diagnosis cannot be made without considering the wellbeing of the patient. In short, you can act as weirdly as you like but if you still claim to be happy and are not a danger to yourself or others, you are not insane. At least, this is how it works in europe.

If US doctors can forcibly treat someone who is happy and non-dangerous just because they fit a checklist, then yeah maybe it's time to take action.

eli_gottlieb3• 13 years ago

Who says some of us aren't just mostly effective insane maniacs?

gnaritas10• 13 years ago

Somehow, despite not understanding why exactly we exist

There is no why, there's just how.

what our purpose is

Nature doesn't have purpose, you're anthropomorphizing nature.

and that at any given moment we could die and cease to exist

Yup.

we don't go insane. Do you have any idea how crazy that is?

I see nothing crazy about it at all. Why would we go insane for not knowing the answers to invalid questions? Asking why we exist or what our purpose is, is equivalent to asking how tall green is; while a syntactically valid sentence, it's still a non-sense question based on unfounded presumptions about the nature of the universe. Just because a question can be asked doesn't mean the question is valid or deserves an answer.

writtles6• 13 years ago

Scientific materialism is merely an objectivity bias within the subject-object problem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subject%E2%80%93object_problem)

Because, you see, if we can only objectively measure things scientifically with instruments then there can be no subjectivity because we can't see it on any instrument! Therefore anybody who continues to insist that it does exist falls into the category of "woo woo," "magical thinking", or "superstitious". And those anti-scientific stances can only lead down the slippery slope into any of those pitfalls--or worse yet--fundamentalism (because there is just as much evidence for a mythical god as there is subjectivity... or unicorns for that matter... or spaghetti monsters...etc)! So its easy to lump all that is non-objective into the same category as unicorns since we cannot measure any of it.

/caricature

This is a fallacy of absolutistic thinking and it is rampant.

GrinningFool• 13 years ago

've come to the conclusion that I must be insane, since sane people don't notice any of this - clearly all the completely sane people don't give it a second thought.

We notice it. We just move on, since we can't do much about it.

Alternatively, our acceptance of it indicates that on some level, you also are sane.

awaxman11• 13 years ago

2nd time in one week that Dennett has popped up on HN (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6374470)

Philosophy of mind is a very interesting topic as computers become more and more 'human' like. Dug up an essay I wrote freshman year on one of his books called Consciousness Explained - funny to look back at old writings:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/g3t7ntwy782m005/Dennett%20Paper%20...

X44• 13 years ago

Thanks for sharing.

themodelplumber• 13 years ago

"You [use a highlighter and] break the whole article down into two or three or four or thirty-two sub articles that are basically ideas...and this looks like a regress, but it's only a finite regress, because you this gigantic article and you break it down into a group of simpler, more obvious points, and you keep going until you arrive at the end, and that's a great way of reading about cognitive science without wanting to stab yourself."

javajosh2• 13 years ago

The strange thing to me is that our minds aren't really that great at studying and describing themselves. You'd think that a mind interested in how minds worked would happily examine itself in whatever level of detail it wanted. One could hope that someone like Dennett could just close his eyes, sit back, and directly observe the answer to all of his most pressing questions. Why doesn't that seem to be possible?

lnanek2• 13 years ago

Why would it be? Evolution is mostly driven by getting enough calories and mates. If your brain needed to be twice as big and needed twice the calories to perform self introspection, for example, it would probably be selected against by evolution since the gain wouldn't be worth the cost.

It would be like running a debugger in production. Kills the performance.

javajosh2• 13 years ago

I'm not saying that we should be introspective in lieu of reproducing. It's not an all or nothing thing. BTW that same line of argument could be made against philosophy or even large portions of science, but clearly people can (and do) think about things that don't have an evolutionary advantage. But for some reason, direct knowledge (and manipulation) of our own minds is curiously out-of-reach.

jrlocke• 13 years ago

That's a good point. Further, you are unlikely to pose a serious threat hiding food (or making political moves, scheming to find the best mate or whatever) from yourself. Others do pose that threat. You can see the effects of the greater stakes by way of evolution. We can intricately reason with folk-psychology, "he believes she thought he put the food under the rock but he thinks she knows he knows she thinks he's going to hide it there, so he thinks he may get away with placing it there" but we are introspectively blind.

danabramov• 13 years ago

The debugger analogy is spot on.

bloodofheroes2• 13 years ago

I think you're getting into the mind-body problem there. The mind is not machinery, the brain is. You'll never be able to cut open someone's brain and find the content of their thoughts or experience.

We (mind/soul) are only semi-transcendent, not transcendent, so the objectivity required to do what you're describing is not directly possible.

SapphireSun2• 13 years ago

I really like this conception of brains working as internally competing and cooperating ferral units. I'll have to give it some more thought in the morning. I do have an entreaty for you though:

In this era of high throughput computing, elegant biotechnology, and the coming of the BRAIN initiative from the national level, I believe the best way to attack the problems of mind/brain right now is hard work and the scientific method. We need more data and we need to analyze it.

We're hiring developers for eyewire.org - a game to map the brain by crowd sourcing/gamifying the analysis of electron micrographs of stained retinal slices from mice. We're developing the tools to map the connectome. For real. The PI for my lab, Dr. Sebastian Seung, is mentioned in this article, and I love working with him. There are other absolutely incredible people working here too that will blow your mind.

Send an email to support at eyewire dot org if you want in or email me personally (see link in my profile) if you want more details. (I won't be able to get back to you instantly - I'm totally swamped, but if you're hired, based on my experiences so far, it'll be worth the wait).

Here are two fun explanatory videos from TED/TEDx: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HA7GwKXfJB0 - Sebastian Seung talking connectomes http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gKt8iT08Zc - Amy Robinson talking EyeWire

Thanks for reading. I hope this post isn't too far out of our community norms - I don't see too many (large) job postings in the comments, but I felt like this article is the perfect place to find someone willing and able to provide much needed help (I'm the only web developer / aspiring neuroscientist there right now). :) If I'm taking up too much space, let me know and I'll condense it.

jnbiche• 13 years ago

Looks like an amazing project. I think crowdsourcing is vastly underutilized for tasks like this.

May I make a suggestion re: the web site? In the home/registration page, it would be very helpful to link to some kind of description of the project, even if it's just one paragraph. Better yet, include that short description on the page itself.

As things stand now, I go to the sign-up page, but if I want to have any idea what the project involves before I sign up, I have to leave your site and go google the project (fortunately, there's an excellent Wikipedia article about the project).

Best of luck with your project and finding some good job candidates. If I were in a position to relocate, I'd apply for the job.

SapphireSun2• 13 years ago

Haha, this is something hotly debated in the lab as we speak. We just started A/B testing descriptions on Friday. :) Thanks for the kind words!

stiff2• 13 years ago

Nothing new in the philosophy departments: thousands of words and nothing to say at all that would be connected to reality. I heard he cites some experimental works sometimes, but his own work seems still to be in this good old tradition of medieval scholasticism of thinking very hard what "ought to be", he even personifies neurons and throws in some "emergence". Missing is only some chaos theory and Goedels theorem, but Plato is there, so maybe this makes up for it. Worst is that he will inspire hundreds of cranks to do similar attempts at "explaining how brain works" and people doing real research will receive still more letters with "revolutionary" ideas of no use.

On the topic of the brain, I will take a paragraph from a biologist over a treatise by a philosopher.

RyanMcGreal• 13 years ago

I will take a paragraph from a biologist over a treatise by a philosopher.

The way you get data is by asking questions, and the way you get questions to ask is by following hunches. Don't be so quick to throw away the playful turning-over of ideas that necessarily precedes rigorous analysis.

betageek• 13 years ago

I assume this is just a troll, anyone who doesn't know who Daniel Dennett is should peruse his CV sometime http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/incbios/dennettd/dennettdcv.htm

stiff2• 13 years ago

I know "who he is". Do I have to agree with him because he is a professor? Every piece of his writing I saw used the most complicated language possible and the largest amount of digressions to in the end convey nothing concrete whatsoever and this is all the more true of this article. Moreover I think one can not make any serious contribution to cognitive science using the methodology he uses and that what he is doing is akin to people trying to explain "what gravity is" before Galileo came, abandoned the question, and used equations to predict effects of gravity instead. If I am wrong, I seriously would love an explanation of why do you think so.

As others have said Marvin Minsky, who I by the way respect way more than Dennett because in his prime he actually did do real research, had this idea of a "community of agents" thirty years ago or more, in fact he several time claimed that if only he would receive the money to hire programmers he would produce revolutionary AI programs in a matter of months. How this is looked upon by more mainstream scientists one can guess. To me the whole theory is as vague as saying that the brain is made up of cooperating parts. Does any of this lead to testable scientific predictions?

fernly• 13 years ago

Amen. To me that article should be littered with [citation required] -- it is just full of wild assertions with no hint of reference to research. As in "Maybe a lot of the neurons in our brains are not just capable but ... motivated to be more adventurous, more exploratory or risky in the way they comport themselves... They're struggling amongst themselves with each other for influence... there's competition going on between individual neurons." Such anthropomorphizing of individual damn cells is completely unjustified without some kind of support.

hoffcoder4• 13 years ago

"...and I suspect that a more free-wheeling, anarchic organization is the secret of our greater capacities of creativity, imagination, thinking outside the box and all that, and the price we pay for it is our susceptibility to obsessions, mental illnesses, delusions and smaller problems."

Great observation! Isn't it true that the geniuses of this world have very often been afflicted with mental abnormalities? Take the most brilliant mathematicians, engineers, scientists; so many of them faced such problems. There indeed seems to be some connection between the mind's capacity to innovate and create and its capacity to suffer delusions and obsessions. Take examples of Gödel, Turing, Tesla, Hemingway, etc. http://dsc.discovery.com/tv-shows/curiosity/topics/mad-geniu...

diydsp2• 13 years ago

geniuses of this world have very often been afflicted

Maybe so, but don't forget, there is no "normal" human being. We create the criteria of genius, normal and mental illness all in order to fulfill our social needs. It's possible we categorize certain individuals as genius and afflicted just so we can deny them the fruits of their labor. It's possible we create the concept of normalcy just so we can leverage techniques of mass manufacturing and social control.

It's possible that innovation without being identified as a genius is a smart way to escape the disadvantages of being labelled afflicted. It's possible Dennett's newest change-of-mind is just an update to the fairy tale that tells those in charge how to handle workers for the maximum effect and least disruption.

After all, who wants anarchic disruptions in the social order? We want reliable electrical networks and food delivery, not creative, experimental protests. So instead of heeding the words directly of those with insight, appeal to their ego, call them geniuses, strip their innovations to the bare minimum and label them as crazy or problematic to keep them separated safely from others. (cough) Torvalds (cough) RMS.

hoffcoder4• 13 years ago

Maybe so. Even though I am not aware of any studies of this kind of a link between insanity and genius, the kinds of afflictions I am talking about are not imaginary. They are real mental disorders like OCD, bipolar disorder etc.

lutusp5• 13 years ago

Isn't it true that the geniuses of this world have very often been afflicted with mental abnormalities?

In a manner of speaking. People who prefer conformity, who think everyone should be the same, can't resist labeling smart people as "afflicted". This is a practice with a long history. The most recent, wildly popular effort was called "Asperger Syndrome", one that's just now being abandoned because of the damage it caused.

To someone who thinks everyone should be the same, anything that sets one apart in a behavioral sense is a "mental abnormality". But evolution by natural selection requires diversity, so in a more basic biological sense, it's the people who want everyone to be the same that represent the abnormal state of mind.

Take the most brilliant mathematicians, engineers, scientists; so many of them faced such problems.

The problems faced by bright people are mostly caused by their dumb neighbors' belief that everyone should be like them.

hoffcoder4• 13 years ago

Again, the disorders I was talking about are not imaginary. They are diagnosed diseases like Bipolar disorder, OCD etc.

eli_gottlieb3• 13 years ago

If your mind can range over a wider variety of ideas, you're more likely to discover good ones that others haven't discovered yet. You're also more likely to discover ideas that are completely batshit insane, because you've got fewer filters to prevent yourself from taking them seriously.

dwaltrip3• 13 years ago

I was slightly confused the format of seemingly disconnected subsections, but I can't really complain because each section was quite interesting on its own.

While we are on the topic, if anyone has any great recommendations for entry level philosophy/ethics books, I would love to hear them.

pfortuny• 13 years ago

Not joking: Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics is a very interesting read, albeit in an (obviously) old way of writing.

But I think this is a must if you want to read about ethics. At least the Western notion.

dwaltrip3• 13 years ago

Just did some background reading about that work. It does seem to be quite important, at the very least because so much has been influenced by it. Although in some other readings regarding Aristotle's political theories, I had a hard time getting past his views on slaves.

gjm112• 13 years ago

recommendations for entry level philosophy/ethics books

Nice (but opinionated and now ~50y old) overview: Bertrand Russell's "History of Western Philosophy". Long but extremely readable. Not necessarily very reliable.

Ethics specifically: Peter Singer's "Practical ethics". Note that Singer thinks that we (in the affluent West) should all be giving a lot more than most of us do to help less well-off people, and that non-human animals' welfare is much more important than most people treat it as, and he's quite persuasive. So reading his work might be bad for your financial and/or gastronomic well-being (but if so, you will consider that that's for the best).

Not all that entry-level but full of clever things and exceptionally clear (in approximately the way that maths/physics/computing people value clear thinking extra-highly): Gary Drescher's "Good and Real". Subtitle is "demystifying paradoxes from physics to ethics".

Just for fun: Quine's "Quiddities: an intermittently philosophical dictionary". Not really a dictionary, but a collection of short essays and remarks in alphabetical order of (single-word) subject. Quine was an absolutely first-rank philosopher, though he's not in particularly serious mode here.

Not at all entry-level (in terms of how hard you need to think; I don't think much expert philosophical knowledge is needed) but extraordinarily good and highly relevant to questions of ethics, though it's more about questions of personal identity: Derek Parfit's "Reasons and persons". He's more recently written a large two-volume work on ethics, which I haven't read.

dwaltrip3• 13 years ago

Thanks! I will definitely check some of those out.

scotty793• 13 years ago

Whenever I hear about "free will" I wonder if that's just Judeochristian narrative or do other cultures also have same idea featured so prominently.

Millennium• 13 years ago

If "the normal well-tempered mind" is an achievement, rather than the base state, then can it really be called normal at all?

ideonexus• 13 years ago

One bit of additional info on this topic. To understand how and why neurons are independent, you need to understand how a baby's brain grows into its body by producing an overabundance of neurons and then "pruning" the ones that aren't used. So neurons are subject to natural selection as we grow:

http://mxplx.com/Meme/922/

mugwumpjissom2• 13 years ago

http://www.dhamma.org/

Daniel Dennett: The Normal Well-Tempered Mind

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