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ChristianKl comments on Brainstorming for post topics - Less Wrong
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The question presupposes mind body dualism. Biology get's changed through mental interventions and it's not at all clear how many interventions are possible.
No, it doesn't. It asks how much of sanity is dependent on nurture vs nature.
The idea of nurture vs. nature comes out of mind-body dualism.
When biologists debate the influence in genes they look at the amount of variation inside a given population that's due to genes. They don't look at extremes and they especially can't look at extremes produced by yet undiscovered methods.
That said, the idea that you can't change biology through nurture doesn't hold up. A lot more Americans are today overweight than 200 years ago. Being overweight is a biological difference from being underweight.
Maybe historically, but in this context? When seez said
seez did not mean that literally everything biological is completely fixed. If that were the case, we would be statues. The qualification meant that we are not considering here modifying humans directly at the biological level, going instead through communication channels. That these communication channels will produce biological effects is aside from the point.
On of the best interventions for increasing cognitive performance of nerds who do no sports at all is to get them to do sports.
You hear nerds say that they have a body instead of that they are their body. That reflects that people live their lives based on mind-body dualism.
I'm at the moment reading Feldenkrais who says that you have basically four areas that you can approach if you want to improve humans. Sensation, feelings, thoughts and movement. Feldenkrais makes arguments that movement is the area where you can get the most bang for your bucks through intervention.
If you try to solve all issues on the level of thoughts than you are massively constraining the tools that you can use. If you push someone in a ugh-field that person has a noticeable physical response. Sometimes it makes sense to simply engage on the physical level.
A hug can be a physical intervention that solves an emotional issue of another person.
Your skill at nitpicking is awe-inspiring.
I sometimes do engage in nitpicking but in this instance I'm just arguing a position that's very foreign for you.
I do have two choices. I list a bunch of obviously true claims to make my point. Than you say I'm nitpicking because I say things that are trivially true. I could also make bigger claims and then you would argue that I don't have evidence for them that you find convincing.
Stereotypical nerds don't do sport because they think as their body as something that isn't them but that's a tool. That's inherently a meme that comes from mind-body dualism. Unfortunately simply making a logical argument doesn't help people do identify with their body. It's a difficult belief to change on a cognitive level if you limit your toolbox. If you on the other hand let a person do Feldenkrais or another somatic framework for long enough they usually do that switch and start to identify with their body and stop speaking as if their body is something they possess. Of course you can get somebody to say that they changed the belief more easily but the underlying alief might still the same even if someone pretends to have changed his mind.
Problem modelling matters a great deal. Being willing to change core assumptions is central for making progress on issues such as raising the sanity line.
No, I agree strongly with everything that you have said in this entire thread except that any of it had anything to do with the post you were responding to.
A while ago I had a LW discussion about listen to one's heart. It took me quite a while to get people to consider that some people actually mean the phrase very literally. For them it was just a metaphor that's in their mind and the phrase had little to do with the actual biological heart.
Let's take dual-n-back as intervention for improving intelligence. As far as I understand Gwern did run the meta analysis and it doesn't work for that purpose. Purely mental interventions don't get you very far. I do advocate that you need to think more about addressing somatic issues if you actually want to build training that improves intelligence.
David Burns who did a lot to popularize Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) with his book "The Feeling Good Handbook" doesn't call what he does these days Cognitive Behavior Therapy anymore. Just focusing on the mind and the cognition is 20-30 year old thought. Burns nowadays considers it important that patients feel a warm connection with their therapist.
A lot psychology academia is still in that old mental frame. Academia isn't really where innovation happens.
I do think we have to consider putting people in floating tanks or on treadmills while they do dual-n-back or similar tasks if we want to get strong intelligence improvement to work.
Okay. The thing is, all of that stuff would be allowed under the restriction you were objecting to. Everything you are proposing is working within the system of human biology, optimizing it. You're not replacing it with something else altogether like computer chips or genetically re-engineering one's myelin or whatever.
As a reminder, the exchange began:
Akrasia survey data analysis suggests that the most useful anti-akrasia technique (at least for LW audience) is exercise for increased energy.
Not sure if these things are connected, but if identifying with one's body would lead one to exercise more... then we could have a possible way to overcome akrasia here. Changing your feelings could be strategically better than spending willpower.
Do you think this could work? (I am not sure if it even makes sense.)
If yes, could you write an introductory article about the somatic frameworks?
I don't think raising the sanity waterline requires mind-body dualism. For a small example, it's only in recent years that I've heard people saying "Why not me?" instead of "Why me?". [Source: I'm an NPR (public radio) junkie.
A large example would be that it's no longer normal for people to think it's alright to own slaves.
That's values, not rationality.