hegemonicon comments on Striving to Accept - Less Wrong

33 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 09 March 2009 11:29PM

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Comment author: hegemonicon 10 March 2009 01:42:59PM 3 points [-]

The hurdle here (and it seems like a common hurdle of rationality in general) is that our rational, conscious brain doesn't control our behavior, but seems to act as more of a 'guide' for the other, deeper structures of our brain, and makes sure they're running smoothly. It can take over in a pinch and temporarily override the output of another structure, but it can't run things constantly; the costs are just too high.

The best it can do is try to 'push' behavior down into the lower structures. But this is hard to do; you can't tell yourself 'don't be afraid of ghosts' anymore than you can tell yourself 'send more dopamine to my pleasure center'. We don't control these parts of our brain, we can only offer 'suggestions' to them.