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Free Will

Started by Mistre, March 29, 2012, 02:02:12 AM

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Doktor Howl

Quote from: navkat on May 01, 2012, 02:10:16 PM
I had a feeling you and I suffered from the same brand of non-brandedness from the start but the shit that clinched it for me was the Reality Tunnels. I do that shit. I don't even know who I am anymore...probably an amalgamation of all of Them.

I am none of them and all of them, depending on my mood and on the subject at hand.

I am a human.  4 characters aren't enough to describe me, unless those characters are "PWNT" or "DUMB".
Molon Lube

navkat

Which leads me to the NEXT supposition/ponderance: how much of these things is an attempt to measure/classify/label and how much is a method for making people obediently classify/label themselves? I mean, the questions and their meanings are profoundly transparent...even on those "color" tests, it's clear there's a theme of "this series of answers makes me a good but stressed leader (likely to rack up speeding tickets and die of a coke overdose) and THAT series makes me a a real team player (better suited for bottom-feeding and bootlicking but liable to accumulate $6000 worth of office supplies at home). If I had to FORCE myself, I guess then YES! I'M A LEADER!"

How much of this happens instantaneously?
How much of our own responses are an act of rebellion that further typecasts ourselves in our own minds?

Would you like me to pass this ol' Harp through the bars?

Doktor Howl

Quote from: navkat on May 01, 2012, 03:05:12 PM
and how much is a method for making people obediently classify/label themselves?

All of it.
Molon Lube

Placid Dingo

Quote from: Doktor Howl on April 30, 2012, 08:50:39 PM
Quote from: Placid Dingo on April 25, 2012, 03:17:54 AM
I'm reading through the whole thread you linked me and it does a good job of rejecting the idea that we are just a collectiOn of memes. If you think we are more than just memes, I would liketo know what about us is more than a competing collection of ideas. I don't have any stake in the answer, it's just that I've hear you saying 'we are more than this...' enough to wonder "why?"

I'm me.  I am not a collection of viral ideas, of absorbed commercials and opinions. 

Why?  Because I am the sexiest Goddamn primate for miles in any direction.  I can wreck a car, fix that car, fuck up a county fair, and give women a fake orgasm from across the room.  I am the unverified alternative, the equally valid theory, the piss in your wheaties.

I don't have to explain why I'm not just a meat robot, because anyone who needs that explained is spending time pretending to be a meat robot.  A soul?  The only soul I'm sure of walks around in the form of George Clinton.  Like I said, I have no answers, but I am not a meat robot by the very act of not wanting to be one.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Dingo.  It's not like you have any choice.

That's an awesome answer. In ways, I guess I come back to the same kind of answer personally, but in my own terms. I wasn't actually asking as a 'fuck you' but just because I was curious to understand where you were coming from.


As a general point.
The Myer-Briggs test is there to help you understand some of the things that explain the way you operate. It's not there to define you completely.

If people are using it in a dicked up way, well, that sounds unpleasant. Personally, I took it myself because I wanted to, and it gave me an idea of a few thnigs I wasn't aware of my brain doing, and found it useful.

Everyone can be reduced to four letters; everyone can be reduced to M or F as well. Saying I'm Male doesn't make me less than human. It's just a way to represent one aspect of the self.

But again, I found it useful, but if it's a shit model for you, yeah, avoid the fuck out of it I guess.

Quote from: Cain on April 30, 2012, 11:12:30 PM
Using Khaneman's schema, I have a very basic idea of free will:

System 1 thinking is not free will.  System 1 thinking is all automatic.  Reading a simple sentence, turning your head to locate a sound, doing a very simple sum...all of these are System 1 activities.  System 1 runs constantly, whenever you are awake.

System 2 is free will.  System 2 involves use of memory, focus and complex tasks generally.  System 2 runs at a low level, in the background, and can be overtaxed by sufficiently difficult tasks.

Most psychology tests for "free will", I've noticed, involve some especially simple tasks, for various reasons.  However, simple tasks are likey to cause our System 1 responses to take over - and since that is virtually automatic, of course we make a decision before we are consciously aware of it.

This also implies free will is not something that applies all the time, and is something that takes work to cultivate.

I really like this. I have an attraction to models of Free Will that offer the idea of free will as a spectrum.
Haven't paid rent since 2014 with ONE WEIRD TRICK.

Doktor Howl

Quote from: Placid Dingo on May 01, 2012, 03:11:01 PM

That's an awesome answer. In ways, I guess I come back to the same kind of answer personally, but in my own terms. I wasn't actually asking as a 'fuck you' but just because I was curious to understand where you were coming from.

I kinda figured.  You don't seem to be a member of the "I'm just a collection of head meat" crowd.

Quote from: Placid Dingo on May 01, 2012, 03:11:01 PM
As a general point.
The Myer-Briggs test is there to help you understand some of the things that explain the way you operate. It's not there to define you completely.

Maybe as intended.  In daily life, though, it's used as an end-all be-all for hiring purposes.


Quote from: Placid Dingo on May 01, 2012, 03:11:01 PM
If people are using it in a dicked up way, well, that sounds unpleasant. Personally, I took it myself because I wanted to, and it gave me an idea of a few thnigs I wasn't aware of my brain doing, and found it useful.

Hell, there's a whole emo board out there somewhere, dedicated to the fact that they're introverts, because the test told them so.  ENTJ?  Can't remember.

Quote from: Placid Dingo on May 01, 2012, 03:11:01 PM
Everyone can be reduced to four letters; everyone can be reduced to M or F as well.

Maybe the people you know.  Nobody in Tucson is really even sure about the M and F bit.
Molon Lube

Cainad (dec.)

If not taken too seriously, the MBTI is at least a potentially useful tool for examining one's own biases. I had a little fascination with it for a brief while, then the honeymoon (read: Forer Effect) wore off and I dismissed it. Reducing human personality into 16 archetypes can only be a crude sketch at best, and a misguiding pseudoreligion at worst.

"I tested as an INTJ, and I know that INTJs are supposed to react with X to scenario Y, so I'ma do that!"



edit: or, what Dingo said.


QuoteHell, there's a whole emo board out there somewhere, dedicated to the fact that they're introverts, because the test told them so.  ENTJ?  Can't remember.

The INTJ freaks (sadly enough, the category I usually fall into with this test). Precisely one of their number was cool enough to join us on our Safari at the time.

navkat

Right, so you're not really assessing anything and neither are they. Oh, they may think they are on the lower levels but really, what's happening is that the lady comes in, takes your answers, codes you and has the little leadership talk with you.

What really happens is this: you get a piece of paper that says "sack up, Johnny. Are you a DO bee or a DON'T bee? Pick your path NOW." So you face a few questions that make you go: "A or B....hrmm...I don't like either of those choices. I guess I'll have to say A." Then, when faced with the next question, you've already defined your feelings so you stick with the A-theme.

You get scored and you get an entertaining speech from a cute woman, raving about your "red-green" qualities. Your boss gets a copy of your scores and the whole hive goes about validating and reinforcing your inclusion in the "worker bee" or "nurse bee" or "guard bee" or "drone" category.

Welcome to zombo.com. You can do anything, go anywhere, as long as you stay here...on zombo.com!

navkat

Quote from: Doktor Howl on May 01, 2012, 03:14:07 PM


Hell, there's a whole emo board out there somewhere, dedicated to the fact that they're introverts, because the test told them so.  ENTJ?  Can't remember.


hxxp://intjforum.com/
"Masterminds, innovators, villains, virgins."

Placid Dingo

Quote from: Doktor Howl on May 01, 2012, 03:14:07 PM

Quote from: Placid Dingo on May 01, 2012, 03:11:01 PM
If people are using it in a dicked up way, well, that sounds unpleasant. Personally, I took it myself because I wanted to, and it gave me an idea of a few thnigs I wasn't aware of my brain doing, and found it useful.

Hell, there's a whole emo board out there somewhere, dedicated to the fact that they're introverts, because the test told them so.  ENTJ?  Can't remember.

Yeah, INTP and INTJ generally. I tend to test as INTP, and spent about ten minutes on the INTP forum before I realised those guys were a bunch of dicks. And exactly the problem that's been discussed - they would say, oh I wish I could do blahblah, but you know, I'm INTROVERTED. What I had (naively) hoped for was, 'I want to do this, I'm introverted, so how can I best approach the situation. There's no POINT in doing all the work to identify your weak points in ANY system unless you want to, you know, make them better.

And it's completely stupid to use MBPTI in most work situations afaik. Though I know ASIO (Aussie CIA) use it, and a bajillion others, and can understand why.
Haven't paid rent since 2014 with ONE WEIRD TRICK.

Placid Dingo

Quote from: navkat on May 01, 2012, 03:24:34 PM
Quote from: Doktor Howl on May 01, 2012, 03:14:07 PM


Hell, there's a whole emo board out there somewhere, dedicated to the fact that they're introverts, because the test told them so.  ENTJ?  Can't remember.


hxxp://intjforum.com/
"Masterminds, innovators, villains, virgins."

Nobody does super serious deadpan 'I'm actually a dark mysterious villain' hyperbole like these guys.
Haven't paid rent since 2014 with ONE WEIRD TRICK.

navkat


Mesozoic Mister Nigel

Quote from: Doktor Howl on May 01, 2012, 02:53:46 PM
Quote from: navkat on May 01, 2012, 02:10:16 PM
I had a feeling you and I suffered from the same brand of non-brandedness from the start but the shit that clinched it for me was the Reality Tunnels. I do that shit. I don't even know who I am anymore...probably an amalgamation of all of Them.

I am none of them and all of them, depending on my mood and on the subject at hand.

I am a human.  4 characters aren't enough to describe me, unless those characters are "PWNT" or "DUMB".

A lot of people view the test as some sort of authoritative measurement of something. Even the long-form version isn't necessarily going to tell you that much, and people can totally have "contradictory" answers, fall into gray areas where they don't land decisively in any particular personality "group", and, best of all, have different results if the test is administered on different days.

Most obnoxiously, the test questions appear not to have been revised in decades, so if you've taken the test once you now know how to game it, consciously or unconsciously.
"I'm guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk," Charles Wick said. "It was very complicated."


Mesozoic Mister Nigel

Also, it uses sociability to gauge introversion.

SOCIABILITY AND INTROVERSION ARE TWO DIFFERENT THINGS.
"I'm guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk," Charles Wick said. "It was very complicated."


Kai

Quote from: Doktor Howl on May 01, 2012, 03:14:07 PM
Quote from: Placid Dingo on May 01, 2012, 03:11:01 PM
Everyone can be reduced to four letters; everyone can be reduced to M or F as well.

Maybe the people you know.  Nobody in Tucson is really even sure about the M and F bit.

Thank goodness, too. This world would be a bit less interesting without all the queers.
If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water. --Loren Eisley, The Immense Journey

Her Royal Majesty's Chief of Insect Genitalia Dissection
Grand Visser of the Six Legged Class
Chanticleer of the Holometabola Clade Church, Diptera Parish

Kai

Quote from: Nigel on May 01, 2012, 04:37:04 PM
Also, it uses sociability to gauge introversion.

SOCIABILITY AND INTROVERSION ARE TWO DIFFERENT THINGS.

Definitely. I know a highly socialble introvert who absolutely requires solid alone time every day, but you wouldn't know it from the number of friends he has or the way he socializes.
If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water. --Loren Eisley, The Immense Journey

Her Royal Majesty's Chief of Insect Genitalia Dissection
Grand Visser of the Six Legged Class
Chanticleer of the Holometabola Clade Church, Diptera Parish