On 1/27/2010 11:51 PM, Darren New wrote:
> So yeah, I'd say the gut feeling is known, but not the details of why
> you are having that gut feeling. Clearly there is processing that
> happens in the nervous system that isn't reflected directly in the part
> of the brain modeling itself.
>
Some studies seem to imply that even the stuff we "think" we know the 
cause of are post hoc, of course. That, in effect, we don't know the 
details of *any* choice, just our justifications for making them, after 
the fact. Those justification may be completely rational, in that they 
reflect what can be testably shown to reflect actual events in the 
world, or they can be completely irrational, in cases like mental 
illness. For the person experiencing them, hitting someone with a bat, 
because they *see* them attacking them for real is **identical** to the 
mentally unstable person hitting a vending machine with one, because 
they **imagine** that its about to attack them. The mechanism generating 
the excuse is operating fine, more or less, its the underlying processes 
that are **supposed** to identify threats, correctly determine what is 
going on, and filter out pure nonsense, which fail.

Or, to put it another way, we might, in a bit of day dreaming, think, 
"What if vending machines could attack people?" We know this is absurd, 
we know it doesn't happen, and we know its not happening to us 
specifically, but, if all the layers that *know* those things don't 
manage to place proper markers on the thought process, or filter it into 
the, "I am just thinking about this, not experiencing it", category... 
But, we are only aware of *how* a thought arises *because* these filters 
work in the first place, since our awareness is built from the data 
provided by them. If the data is wrong, the experience is wrong.

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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