iNow

His numbers have always been a bit soft, and they’ve been softening much more since his vocal support of Israel has alienated voters who don’t like seeing 10,000 deaths in Gaza… especially in swing state Michigan which has a sizable Palestinian population.

Yes. This is correct. It’s not, though.

No. It’s a direct statement that I won’t be answering your question about the existence of time symmetry in a thread about free will. It is not. I am not suggesting it’s all “simply one large physical system, there isn't any "we" at all.” This is what’s known in the biz as a strawman.

Even if every criticism they level above is valid, it’s still a 50/50 race across polls, regions, and sampling periods.

Strange comment to make, and not remotely true.

In a thread about free will? Nah. Won’t be commenting on that. Well, sure. It could be that if that’s the chosen frame of reference, but again… in a thread about free will it’s probably safe to say that particular framing isn’t the most useful and doesn’t lead to an improved understanding.

I reckon that depends on how you define consciousness and also how you define causal. As I've already mentioned, the actions we take of course have causal impact on the world around us. That doesn't change merely because the decision event appears to occur prior to us becoming consciously aware of it.

I'm saying the decision is made prior to conscious awareness of it, so you continue misrepresenting me. And my challenge has consistently been calling that "free" since it appears to be decided chemically prior to awareness, consciousness, or areas of the mind most often considered "self." Thanks for sharing, but I've not aligned myself with any specific camp on this... libertarian, compatiblist, whatever... I'm just laying out the conclusions which follow naturally from the repeated findings of neuroscience. The issue, of course, is that's the concept used by the masses and hence the context of most discussions. I understand your definition is more precise and likely even more accurate, but it's not what basically anyone except you is talking about during these exchanges.

This was too dismissive, but backward causation is a fringe idea lacking evidence, even if we acknowledge the possibility of a biochemical feedback mechanism perhaps amplifying certain decisions after conscious awareness of the thought occurs.

Is a fact when he agrees, and bullshit when he doesn’t. (Too the group) Is entirely possible that Bibi wanted an excuse to invade, ignored responding to earlier intel and threats to make that more likely, and figured the Israeli people would ultimately rally around him and get distracted from his other attempts to seize power and protect his own ass. It’s an entirely valid speculation and reasonable, too. We just need to quite steer clear away from treating that as fact or bullshit since we’ll never know either way and it will forever remain merely an opinion.

Yes, that or leprechauns, of course. If you’re suggesting that physical and biochemical events are NOT the sole cause of thought and mentation, then I’d be extremely curious to hear what OTHER thing you assert is involved. Maybe you believe we must include unicorn farts, or perhaps tooth fairy dust?

Right. Ok. Never mind

Fine. Pick one statement you’d like me to address head on.

Look up companies like Tableau, MS Power BI, Fusion Charts, Domo, Google Cloud Analytics, SAP Analytics Cloud, and the 15 new ones that pop up every 3 days.

I’m not necessarily opposed to that. This seems like a data availability problem that could be solved by having access to more of it (more data >> better forecasts) than an actual hard limit imposed by the cosmos (aka: not impossible). Why is that a problem? Ah. So it’s an opinion wearing a tux and a polka dotted bow tie then? Which conditions are those?

What is the gap in the current market that you believe this helps fill?

You’re not disagreeing with me, though. You’re disagreeing with and rejecting all of the evidence collected across decades using precise measurements of neural activity. This remains an incoherent and internally inconsistent position. Which times in your estimation does our “volition” magically ignore physics and chemistry? Yes

Said another way: Simple isn’t all that’s necessary. It must also be correct and account for observations.

Hint: It's not the experiments that are wrong

In a move that makes matters badly worse, apparently Russia’s Wagner Group intends to send air defense systems to Lebanon’s Hezbollah. I'm tired of all these wars because one group thinks their imaginary friend is better than the imaginary friend of other groups.

That to me seems to be a separate question, and it's strange to fault me for not bothering to address it. This seems unrelated to my stance, so again I'll politely ignore it. Nothing in our normal day-to-day experience changes just bc I'm highlighting that the decision events appear to occur prior to us realizing any conscious awareness of them. That's fine. There have been a multitude of others in the decades since, and all point in the same direction. As I'm sure you can see, this is a bit of a strawman. Nobody is claiming they pop out of nothing, only that the chemistry occurs prior to conscious awareness.

Our behaviors of course are themselves a variable that in influences other things in a causal manner, but these too are selected prior to our conscious awareness of them. Better? I understand, but the addition of the word “conscious” in no way changes where and when in the mind the behavior was initiated… that was before / prior to conscious awareness of it.

Why do you continually refuse to answer direct questions? I have not attacked you, yet you act as if you’ve been wronged or offended.

So, IINM, you’re entire argument here boils down to, “Just trust me, bruh!” Please elaborate then. What are you suggesting?

This is what I’ve been referring to as a post-dictive narrative, a story you make up after the decision event already occurred. See link in previous post Has anyone demonstrated these actual exist? The literature I’ve been reading the last few decades implies occurrence before consciousness Are you suggesting they’re somehow different, somehow disconnected from the way the rest of our nervous system functions? Because it’s not even just your opinion. It’s not even wrong, and it’s definitely not evidence.