From: Natasha Vita-More (natasha@natasha.cc)
Date: Tue May 29 2001 - 14:28:19 MDT
At 02:38 PM 5/29/01 -0400, Eli wrote:
>Ben Goertzel wrote:
>> We humans have *very severe mental limitations*, and we often demonstrate
>> *counterproductive, self-defeating behaviors* as a consequence of these
>> limitations. Many of these limitations don't have to do with our
>> intelligence per se, but more with our limited ability to control
ourselves,
>> due to our powerful biological drives.
>
>It is more than mental limitations. And it is more than a limbic system
>in conflict with the cerebral cortex. It is rationalization. It is a
>limbic system that can interface with the cerebral cortex and twist our
>thoughts, and not just our emotions, to adapted purposes. And that isn't
>really an exclusively limbic thing, either; it's built into our cognitive
>architecture. From the perspective of a normative reasoning system,
>humans, who "want" something to be true - not true in the future, but true
>in the present - and who make up reasons to believe something they "want
>to believe" - well, they're pretty much insane.
Yes. However, it is the emotion of fear in its nakedness that twists
thoughts. This fear is the physiological output of underdeveloped early
architecture (fight/flight). Rationalization is a coping factor that the
mind developed to self-satisfy incorrect behavior.
>To the extent that any human being is sane or saner - perhaps due to
>studying evolutionary psychology - it is a sane personality built from
>insane components.
We probably needed to be a bit insane early on just to survive early on.
Just think about it. :-)
I think Ben could have been right in correcting me on the mental illness
phrase, and probably mental deficiency would have been a gentler way to say
it. But, I honestly think that we will look back on ourselves as having an
very impaired learning ability, social and vocational inadequacies --
mental deficient (which is an illness).
Natasha
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