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Neuroscientists Have Isolated The Part Of The Brain That Controls Free Will (extremetech.com) 285

Posted by BeauHD from the viewer-discretion-is-advised dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from ExtremeTech: Free will might have been the province of philosophers until now, but we've cracked the problem with an fMRI. Neuroscientists from Johns Hopkins report in the journal Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics that they were able to see both what happens in a human brain the moment a free choice is made, and what happens during the lead-up to that decision -- how activity in the brain changes during the deliberation over whether to act. The team devised a novel way to track a participant's focus without using cues or commands, avoiding a Schrodinger's-like dilemma of altering the process of choice by calling attention to it. Participants took positions in MRI scanners, and then were left alone to watch a split screen as rapid streams of colorful numbers and letters scrolled past on both sides. They were asked just to pay attention to one side for a while, then to the other side. When to switch sides, and for how long to look, was entirely up to them. Over the duration of the experiment, the participants glanced back and forth, switching sides dozens of times. In terms of connectivity in the brain, the actual process of switching attention from one side to the other was tightly linked with activity in the parietal lobe, which is sort of the top back quadrant of the brain. Activity during the period of deliberation before a choice took place in the frontal cortex, which engages in reasoning and plans movement. Deliberation also lit up the basal ganglia, important parts of the deep brain that handle motor control, including the initiation of motion. Participants' frontal-lobe activity began earlier than it would have if participants had been cued to shift attention, which demonstrates that the brain was planning a voluntary action rather than merely following an order. A report from Fast Company details how technology is making doctors feel like glorified data-entry clerks.
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Neuroscientists Have Isolated The Part Of The Brain That Controls Free Will More

Neuroscientists Have Isolated The Part Of The Brain That Controls Free Will

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  • First Post (Score:3)

    by Big Hairy Ian ( 1155547 ) on Wednesday July 20, 2016 @08:01AM (#52546729)
    Can we use it on people who do First Post?

  • Read that as "Free Wifi" (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    doh!

    • That would actually be nice, if I could generate free Wifi with my brain. :)

      • Why? So the NSA and Facebook can directly spy on your thoughts, and your ISP can directly beam targeted ads into your brain while you sleep, to make you want to buy, buy, buy MORE things you don't need? So Chinese, Russian, and North Korean hackers can upload wetware trojans and make your brain part of their botnets?

  • Somebody didn't get the memo... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 20, 2016 @08:09AM (#52546751)

    Somebody didn't get the memo about fMRI studies; fMRI right now is only about half a step away from being pseudo-science. What with sofware bugs [newscientist.com] rendering thousands of studies meaningless, and widespread methodological errors leading to voodoo correlations [scientificamerican.com], any claim of a discovery based on fMRI right now should be taken with a bucket-sized pinch of salt.

    • Re:Somebody didn't get the memo... (Score:4, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 20, 2016 @08:20AM (#52546805)

      The researchers actually uncovered the free will of the statistical packages SPM, FSL and AFNI! They shall now proceed in renaming the packages as SkyNet.

    • Re:Somebody didn't get the memo... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by wcrowe ( 94389 ) on Wednesday July 20, 2016 @09:06AM (#52547031)

      Indeed. I don't know where I was reading it this week (it may have been here on /.) there was an interesting article about how science is basically "broken". The gist is that there is a lot of BS floating around as science that is really nothing of the sort. Just as truth has devolved into "truthiness", science has devolved into "scienciness". That is not to say that there are not good scientists out there doing good work, but a lot of them have to come up with plausible, "sciencey" bullshit in order to justify their existence and get funding.

      No, I don't know how to fix it.

      • Re:Somebody didn't get the memo... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by UnknownSoldier ( 67820 ) on Wednesday July 20, 2016 @10:16AM (#52547455)

        > No, I don't know how to fix it.

        You can never remove dogma and politics from Science.

        However, a first step would be to mandate that all published whitepapers must provide:

        * ALL the data
        * ALL the Software
        * Schematics for the Hardware, and
        * non-paywalled Whitepapers (so that money is no longer a barrier for access)

        so that others can independently verify the results.

        Obviously this won't work for some projects but it would be an important first step.

        • Re:Somebody didn't get the memo... (Score:5, Interesting)

          by serviscope_minor ( 664417 ) on Wednesday July 20, 2016 @11:45AM (#52547905) Journal

          However, a first step would be to mandate that all published whitepapers must provide:

          (we just call them papers)

          Your aims and ideas are worthy, but they won't be as much use or as practical as you think.

          * ALL the data

          Provide to whom? In an extreme case like CERN, all the data simply isn't available as it's stripped out in hardware. The resulting data is still vast, roughly 30 petabytes per year. There's no practical way to deliver it to anyone.

          Even in less extreme cases, the archiving costs will be large, and in many cases few people are interested. Sifting through other people's data is hard work. Almost all scientists would rather sift through their own. You have to deal with storage, transmission, badly organised data taken haphazardly by a first year PhD student, file formats, documentation etc etc.

          There's also a tradeoff: data for the original experiemnts for widely established facts (e.g. magnesium diboride superconductivity) is perhaps of historical interest, but not much beyond that. For boring, uncited papers (most of them), no one will ever care.

          Now, it will be useful in some cases, but those are less common than people expect. About the only time is during an active period (actually this is an argument in favour since long term archiving has less point) when something is contentious. But even so, many times people would prefer to take their own data since then you can trust the whole chain of acquisition.

          * ALL the Software

          As someone who's tried to use published-with-paper software... nope. I mean ostensibly yes, and the goal is laudable, but unless people are dedicated to it (like I am), merely publishing the software won't work. Most people in research have no idea about making solid, portable, engineered software. And by "portable" I mean "ports to someone else's computer with the same OS installed".

          This is not a criticism: a researcher's job is to do research. The software has to do what it's supposed to, be usable enough that the author can do the processing needed for the paper, and the software can keel over and die once the results are published. These people aren't software engineers. A lot of the software is written by inexperienced PhD students on a ferociously tight time budget.

          Yes there are tools that can help like docker or VM images, but that's stuff to make life easier for software engineers, and the problem is these people aren't software engineers.

          I've actually released some software and the reception has been mixed. One was a pretty simple algorithm which got wide uptake, because it was widely applicable and it was portable C. Another was a complicated algorithm integrated into a system to make it usable, which got moderate uptake. Another was an equally complex system and despite a lot of effort got as far as I can tell zero uptake, making my software release a complete waste of time. Not to say it hasn't been cited, and people haven't used some of the ideas, but no one seems to have used the software. At least I've had no support questions and IME you always get support questions.

          So even ignoring the problem that most researchers can't produce release-quality software, much of it isn't useful. Algorithms that can be used as plug-in replacements for others benefit from releases. Systems which can be widely used as a tool, likewise. Everything else won't be used.

          * Schematics for the Hardware, and

          That's like software but 10x as bad. Oftentimes the schematics won't even exist.

          * non-paywalled Whitepapers (so that money is no longer a barrier for access)

          That's fine. Funding agencies are beginning to enforce this and many many researchers are on board with that. All of my papers are (and always have been) freely available online.

          So yes, those are nice goals. However, absent an awful lot of money (e.g. employing engineers in addition) it'll be impossible to achieve them in a meaningful manner. If it was done, it would certainly help, but the question is whether or not the improvement would be worth the money.

          • > Provide to whom?

            The general public.

            > (e.g. magnesium diboride superconductivity) is perhaps of historical interest, but not much beyond that.

            That' s an assumption. We don't know if someone will have new insight into using.

            > For boring, uncited papers (most of them), no one will ever care.

            I'm sure people doing interest _in that field_ might find them interesting. Just because it has no value to you doesn't imply others don't find it interesting. i.e. I have zero interesting in the mating habit

      • I think it might have been this one [vox.com]. Not that Science is broken as a tool, but science as an institution has problems.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ranton ( 36917 )

        The gist is that there is a lot of BS floating around as science that is really nothing of the sort.

        This is mostly a problem because of press coverage which thinks every published paper means something has been proven. The practice of science has a pretty good filter for junk science. Research results which don't hold up as future researchers build on the findings end up being rejected or simply forgotten (same thing really).

        No research findings are the end of scientific inquiry on the topic. Replicating exact experiments may be rare, but building on past research is quite common. This is where inaccuraci

    • One thing about the studies on software inconsistencies, I admit I didn't DEEP DIVE into it, but it seems like they were focused on the inconsistency of result between different software systems analyzing the same data set?

      That's a valid point, absolutely. Personally, I'm not sure fMRI are all they're cracked up to be myself. But certainly it's possible that the results of the 000's of "now questioned" studies might still be useful IF they used a single fMRI system consistently and the results were relati

    • Not all fMRI studies were affected. Although this is a pretty good reason as to why we might not want mysterious closed source algorithms involved in our science.

      • Well said, I would actually be more concerned if radiologists never found any systematic errors in their models. From the summary it sounds like a very interesting experiment, I think the "free will" angle is just click bait. What they appear to have done is use a clever mental trick to help them understand how the brain responds to and controls the two big optical sensors hanging off the front of it
    • @Anonymous Coward

      I know this is Slashdot, where actually reading background articles can get you disqualified.

      However, it so happens that even a cursory glance at the articles you linked to show that, although there is reason for concern, your claim is heavy on hyperbole and light on justification.

      If researchers use patched versions of their statistical packages, and don't fall prey to the error described in the Scientific American article you linked to, their results should be Ok.

      Researcher can usu

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      The bigger issue here has nothing to do with fMRI. Let's give the researchers the benefit of the doubt and assume they are using software with the bugs fixed or which lacked the bugs to begin with. The massive issue with this is their hypothesis that you can test for free will in the manner they did. At most they've found a part of the brain which people use to set up arbitrary oscillators for use in handling arbitrary tasks (switching their eyes back and fourth between two sides of a screen.)

      The hypothe

  • Consciousness is not the same thing as free will (Score:5, Insightful)

    by guises ( 2423402 ) on Wednesday July 20, 2016 @08:10AM (#52546755)
    The reason why free will is the province of philosophers (and theologians) is because it has nothing to do with neuroscience. What they're talking about in the summary is conscious thought, not free will. Free will is the ability to influence your environment by your own volition, independent from the inexorable march of time or destiny or god's plan. Consciousness is your ability to think about how you're influencing your environment as you do it.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      They really didn't show anything particularly new in the article. No important new information on brain function was gleaned. The interesting part was the involvement of the basal ganglia, which often get ignored when talking about higher brain functions. And you're right, it does not seem to have much of anything to do with free will. Just deciding to look at the left or right screen isn't free will, it is small-d decision making. Deciding to cut class and go fishing... that's free will.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by fredrated ( 639554 )

      Since everything we do is driven by our brain, free will, if it exists, must have something to do with neuroscience.

      • Since everything we do is driven by our brain, free will, if it exists, must have something to do with neuroscience.

        The Conway/Kochen Free Will Theorem [wikiwand.com] says that if free will exists, it derives from the free will possessed by elementary particles. It needn't arise from neuroscience if it's a more fundamental characteristic of the universe.

        Note that I'm not claiming that either humans or quarks do or do not have free will, just pointing out that if we do have it, neuroscience isn't the only possible origin. Perhaps what we perceive as our free will is actually the collective free will of the subatomic particles that mak

        • That's only an incompatibilist conception of free will, which is completely trivial. If you'd say an electron "has free will" because it's position and momentum are not causally determined, then something is defective with your conception of free will. That's like saying an electron "is conscious" because it it able to "observe" things in the quantum mechanical sense that means nothing more than "interact with".

          • The free will theorem is much more interesting than that. I won't attempt to explain it, though, because I'd undoubtedly screw it up. If you're interested in such things, I highly recommend you read the original paper.

      • But there are many events that happened beforehand that go into the formation of a particular brain, none of which (obviously) the brain had any say in. So is free will a simple quantifiable quality you can isolate within the brain?

        Sciences like neuroscience are great at answering many mysteries we come up with. The question of free will is not one of these.

    • You are talking about Incompatibilism and the notion of Free Will as constrained by Hard Determinism (aka Physics/Destiny/God's Plan). They are using the term more on the Compatiblism side, where the key part of Free Will has more to do with the Choices made by an individual based on their own internal motivations (absent external hindrances from individuals and/or institutions). It's one of the more sticky aspects of the philosophic debate of Free Will, because folks often arent operating on the same def

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mark-t ( 151149 )

        If hard determinism were true for all of the cosmos, then it is must be at least theoretically possible to infallibly predict a future state from a current state. If, however, knowledge of any alleged future state is ever used as factors in how to manipulate the current state, then the so-called foreknowledge of the future state is actually meaningless. For example, one can trivially create a hard-deterministic mechanism that responds as output with the opposite of its input (an inverter logic gate, for

        • Even if the universe were deterministic, it still wouldn't be possible in practice to completely computer a future state, because of mathematical chaos and limits on the theoretical speed of computation: by the time you finished computing, that future will have already passed, so the best you can do to "predict" the future is wait to see what happens.

    • Re:Consciousness is not the same thing as free wil (Score:5, Insightful)

      by PopeRatzo ( 965947 ) on Wednesday July 20, 2016 @08:57AM (#52546981) Journal

      The idea that a part of the brain "controls free will" just because there is activity there when certain decisions are made is pretty dumb when you think about it.

      Just because there is activity in my pants when I see pictures of naked women does not mean my pants control my sex drive.

      • Just because there is activity in my pants when I see pictures of naked women does not mean my pants control my sex drive.

        Well, at least now I know what I've been doing wrong all these years.

      • Re:Consciousness is not the same thing as free wil (Score:5, Interesting)

        by AthanasiusKircher ( 1333179 ) on Wednesday July 20, 2016 @10:54AM (#52547653)

        The idea that a part of the brain "controls free will" just because there is activity there when certain decisions are made is pretty dumb when you think about it.

        Agreed. I'm convinced that many people who discuss "free will" -- and particularly those who strongly object to the idea of determinism on the microscopic level (ignoring random quantum mechanical fluctuations) as destroying "free will" -- haven't always thought about what they really mean by terms.

        From my perspective (and some philosophers would agree with this, particularly so-called "compatibilists"), trying to apply a concept like "free will" to microscopic behavior is an exercise in futility. It's like trying to define macroscopic "beauty" or a concept like "truth" or even a concept like a "chair" only in terms of atoms. You couldn't do it. Our human macroscopic concepts simply don't exist with that sort of granularity -- even if you tried to define what constitutes a "chair" compared with "not a chair" on the level of arrangements of individual molecules, you'd never get two humans to agree to that sort of level of precision.

        It's a similar problem when we come to an idea of a "free choice." What do we really mean when we say, "I freely chose X instead of Y"? Usually in discussions of free will, we're talking about deliberate choices, not just random choices made with no reason. And that means we have reasons for choosing X over Y. We might enumerate them -- I had 5 reasons in favor of X but 3 in favor of Y, so I chose X. When we say, "But I could have freely chosen Y instead," we generally mean something about our reasoning would change -- maybe some of those reasons in favor of X would be undermined by something we read recently or something a friend said discounting those reasons. Or it could be something more subtle, like changes in our body chemistry -- maybe we had an extra cup of coffee which changed the mood and made Y seem more desirable, or maybe we had a headache and that shifted our priorities... or whatever.

        But when we say "I could have freely chosen Y over X" in the context of a discussion about "free will," we generally do NOT mean, "If EVERYTHING in the universe had been exactly the same, including all of my subjective ratings and beliefs of the reasons for and against X and Y, along with all of my body chemistry and feelings... and every single atom EXACTLY in the same position, I COULD HAVE made a different choice."

        We don't generally mean that, because that would be making a different choice for no reason, and "free will" is not about random choices, it's about having an ability to make a deliberate choice based on reasons. If all the reasons are the exact same (and every atom in the same place), why would it support "free will" to believe that a different choice would make sense? That's not conscious "free will" -- that's randomness or anarchy.

        "Free will" is a macroscopic human concept -- an emergent phenomenon -- which has little to do with how deterministic (or not) the microscopic universe is. And whenever this topic comes up on Slashdot, there are always these fervent believers that "free will" has to exist in some way that the universe is not deterministic -- but where exactly does that "free will" happen? Quantum mechanics effects "bubbling up" to microscopic consequences can't be a reason, because that's based on randomness -- and proponents of "free will" usually insist that the alterations in decisions must be deliberative not based on random chance.

        So, if everything in the universe down to the atom is precisely the same, and you still want to be able to make a "free choice" that's different, how precisely is that supposed to happen? Does some atom suddenly take a different turn for no apparent reason? It makes little sense in a scientific context, unless you're willing to postulate the existence of a separate "soul" or "consciousness" or whatever that doesn't obey the laws of science as we currently understand th

        • I think the illusion of free will is simply a misunderstanding of how complex the feedback loops and source information really are.
          We like to simplify a choice that involves billions of neuronal inputs over the spatial and time domains as "I chose X over Y, freely."
          It's simple-mindedness, and an insult to the complexity of the neural network running our consciousness.

    • Just over a year ago I made a decision to stop consuming alcohol. I had been consuming some alcohol daily for over 25 years. I wonder if the same parts of the brain that these researchers looked at are the same as the ones I used to make that decision to stop drinking.

      I also wonder if those parts of the brain these researchers are calling the "free will" center of the brain are what I use when I consider the decision I made and, so far, keep making the decision to not drink.

      I would consider what I

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by guises ( 2423402 )
        You made a conscious decision, as opposed to an unconscious one, to stop drinking. Whether that was an exercise in free will comes down to whether or not you ever had the option to choose otherwise. If the future is predetermined and actions just march us toward inevitability, then free will does not exist and you chose to stop drinking because you were destined to do so. If the future is not predetermined then we have some influence over how the future takes shape, that's called free will.

        At least by on

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Bongo ( 13261 )

      Hence the contradictory title:

      Neuroscientists Have Isolated The Part Of The Brain That Controls Free Will

    • That is only the incompatibilist conception of free will you're talking about, which has been an enormous philosophical waste of time. An electron doesn't magically have free will about its location just because its exact position isn't causally determined.

      There are many other different conceptions of what free will is, and pretty much all of the others don't give a flying fuck whether or not God or Nature has predetermined all events.

      Look up people like Harry Frankfurt or Susan Wolf for much better ideas a

  • Not free will (Score:5, Funny)

    by sbrown7792 ( 2027476 ) on Wednesday July 20, 2016 @08:10AM (#52546759)
    Nah, they've just found the part of the brain that the aliens use to control our every waking decision!

  • Unrelated Crap (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 20, 2016 @08:20AM (#52546803)

    A report from Fast Company details how technology is making doctors feel like glorified data-entry clerks.

    To Slashdot editors: can we please stop with the unrelated crap?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tsqr ( 808554 )

      To Slashdot editors: can we please stop with the unrelated crap?

      Try to think of it as, "In other news...." Except, it's not news.

      • No. It's irrelevant and doesn't belong. I didn't really notice this until today, but now that I have, I find it quite bothersome. I don't know if it's just being clever or a form of interstitial advertising. I don't know where the /. summaries are re-posted on the net, but I could see these unrelated references being an attempt to draw people to /. by other means if they aren't interested in the topic presented by the main body of the summary.

        If I had to articulate why it's bothersome, it's because it v

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gnunick ( 701343 )

      Damn, some of you people are really fucking uptight! I mean really, how many decimal places to you need to quantify the percentage of your day that was wasted by reading that one "in other vaguely-related news..." sentence? Most of the time, the related-news tie in seems pretty relevant (like today, one Amazon story mentions another Amazon story). Other times, like this, not so much. So what? Are you going to ask for a refund?

      Next time try complaining about something that actually matters. Or better yet, do

  • Great info for our corporate overlords (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Ramze ( 640788 ) on Wednesday July 20, 2016 @08:31AM (#52546847)

    Awesome... now we know the exact areas of the brain to manipulate so that our corporate overlords can control us better.

    I'm betting the next gen VR headsets will have electrodes to stimulate those areas properly for future mind control -- especially during election seasons. lol.

    I'm kidding.... at least... I think I'm kidding. Oh, dear god, they might actually go there with this tech.

    • Re:Great info for our corporate overlords (Score:5, Funny)

      by smooth wombat ( 796938 ) on Wednesday July 20, 2016 @08:45AM (#52546925) Journal
      so that our corporate overlords can control us better.

      You're missing the obvious:

      Leela: "Didn't you have ads in the 21st century?"

      Fry: "Well sure, but not in our dreams. Only on TV and radio, and in magazines, and movies, and at ball games... and on buses and milk cartons and t-shirts, and bananas and written on the sky. But not in dreams, no siree."

      • "Mom", "Love", and "Screen Door" are trademarks of MomCorp.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Ramze ( 640788 )

        oh, how I miss Futurama. It came back from the dead a few times, but each time, it was a little less than it was before -- as if some fire god had something to do with its resurrection.

  • This is awesome. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by fredrated ( 639554 ) on Wednesday July 20, 2016 @08:31AM (#52546853) Journal

    Now, if we could only prove that free will actually exists, we would have something.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by halivar ( 535827 )

      Now, if we could only prove that free will actually exists, we would have something.

      I'm a Calvanist, you insensitive clod.

    • Now, if we could only prove that free will actually exists, we would have something.

      Did you have to say that?

      • Did you have to say that?

        I didn't have to roll out of bed this morning, but I did. It doesn't mean I exercised free will, unless you believe "free will" means the same thing as the ability to stumble about blindly and do random things for no good reason.

        • I didn't have to roll out of bed this morning

          The free-will-is-an-illusion crowd would point out that you had no choice about rolling out of bed. That you would do so was determined by the big bang billions of years ago. You're just a meat robot.

    • Now, if we could only prove that free will actually exists, we would have something.

      Before you prove it exists (or not) you eed to actually have a concrete definition.

  • Have they checked it on control group of dead salmons?
    http://www.wired.com/2009/09/f... [wired.com]

  • Salmon (Score:3)

    by 110010001000 ( 697113 ) on Wednesday July 20, 2016 @08:50AM (#52546955) Homepage Journal
    Apparently the study was performed on a dead salmon to confirm the results. fMRI is pseudoscience.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Neuro-"science" has become fully corrupted by the power of bogus explanations to provide them with grant-money. Admittedly, they are so far removed from understanding anything that funding would be drying right up if they admitted where they really are in the scientific process ("fumbling in the dark" would be an accurate assessment) and they would have to be back to surviving on whatever fundamental research gets these days. Instead, they hint to every little closet-fascist on the planet that this may prov

  • It was the biting of an apple that gave man free will, and it is all the fault of a woman and a talking snake. It was all planned by the lizard people who run the illuminati and put Obama in office.

    Also, the earth is flat, and even if global warming is real, jeebus is gonna come riding in on a winged unicorn to save us from a sky dragon!

    Trump 2016!!!

    (I'm kidding. Obviously. As evidenced by the "Trump 2016" - no sane person would vote Trump)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gtall ( 79522 )

      G-d visits Adam in the Garden of Eden:

      G-d: Adam, where’s my (&*%^^%# apple?

      Adam: Jesus, keep yer voice down. Eve and that snake got into an argument over the apple. She thinks You and I put him up to it and she’s pissed. She bit the head off the snake and ate the apple.

      G-d: Ouch, that’s going to leave a mark. Well Adam, time’s a’wasting, gotta run.Lucifer, you’re up, Satan’s taken one in the neck.

    • ... Obviously. As evidenced by the "Trump 2016" - no sane person would vote Trump

      You assume that a sane person likes the status quo. Trump gets us closer to whatever the next chapter in the story of the US holds. Current trends aren't sustainable, something has got to give. Hillary just postpones the inevitable. I'm hoping for a splintered US, where it breaks up into a few pieces personally. I trust neither the right nor the left on enough issues to like the current game of lets impose on will on everyone via the Federal government.

  • biological drones or robots, soon the CIA or other spooky government agency will have an entire army of disposible manchurian candidates ready to do their dirty work
  • ...is the acknowledgement and acceptance of predestination.
  • Neuroscientists have used fMRI to pinpoint the part of the brain that is making doctors feel like glorified data-entry clerks.

  • They've zoomed in on the mechanism for decision making. That says nothing about free will.

    If they find a mechanism for decision making in bullfrogs, will they conclude that they have free will?

    If the relevant structures in a human are damaged, will they conclude that the person does *not* have free will? Not hold them accountable for crimes?

    And of course it's well known that alcohol, other chemicals, even magnetic fields affect our decision making. Are those also part of the mechanism of free will?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Indeed. As usual, the Neuro-"scientists" here make grand claims with basically no basis for that. They also claim things like decision being made before we become aware of it (modeling error, plain and simple, as they cannot measure when somebody becomes aware of a decision only when some activity patterns happen) and other bullshit.

      • Scientists can just ask people wen they became aware of something (or have them push a button when they become aware of it). Humans are not authorities on many of the things going on in their own brain, but they are maybe the only authority on when *they* become conscious of something. So if you can predict what someone will become conscious of before they become conscious of it, that seems pretty interesting.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by gweihir ( 88907 )

          Actually you measure the time-difference between the pattern and the button-press. That is something else entirely. But I guess if they had one decent engineer there that knows about doing measurements, they would not have produced tons of invalid research in the first place: https://science.slashdot.org/s... [slashdot.org]

          Consciousness is a cloudy thing that extends a few seconds into the past and the future. People cannot determine when exactly they become aware of something and they must always lag behind that moment.

          • Actually you measure the time-difference between the pattern and the button-press.

            I have no idea what part of what experiment you are referring to, but it is not what I am talking about.

            Consciousness is a cloudy thing that extends a few seconds into the past and the future. People cannot determine when exactly they become aware of something and they must always lag behind that moment.

            Consciousness as a concept is pretty nebulous. When you "become conscious" of something is different thing with the same name. People can detect when they become conscious of something by definition. In fact people can *only* detect things they are conscious of.

            That's not to say that precursor events of *something* can not be detected in the brain before people are conscious of them (i.e. when they are

      • Wait- you really think decisions don't start before you're consciously aware of them? You really think you've got a little soul hiding in that bucket of conductive soup in your cranium working the controls like the little alien in Men In Black?
        Fascinating. Neuro-"Scientists" indeed.

  • They have some activity-pattern. That is all. Only by using flawed and unproven theories (that are about on the sophistication-level of medieval medical theory) can they conclude they know what they claim to know. In a few years or decades, these idiots will finally admit that they basically understand nothing.

  • This isn't studying free will per se, this is just studying the neurology of will simpliciter; of decision-making in general. From the summary at least, this doesn't at all address the question of whether the decision the person made was the decision that the person wanted to make, or just the one that they happened to feel like making with no further deliberation or possibly even contrary to their wishes.

    You'd need to study something like a recovering alcoholic deciding not to drink, even though he wants t

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