Not really a lot of work, 15 minutes tops. There are changes other than the logo and user interface labels, but they are enough to warrant me doing it IMHO. Muscle memory, I suppose you could say.
The first thing I notice is that both the first and last authors of this paper are industry-affiliated. Not to say there's anything inherently problematic with that, but at least raises an eyebrow about the motivation behind this study.
I wonder how this study can be used as evidence against determinism, ie., that humans really do possess free will. If the coin toss relevantly affects the person's decision, then it seems like random chance plays a key role in affecting our experience, right?
My reasoning: to the extent I have free will, I can consciously choose to delegate it to an unrelated source of entropy, such as a coin toss. That happens all the time, in fact, without any conscious input from me at all. We're immersed in randomness. ("Wow, if I'd left 3 seconds earlier or driven 1 MPH faster or slower, I wouldn't have been T-boned at that intersection." How can free will coexist with a statement like that?)
This sort of thing happens frequently enough to dispel both (soft) determinism and free will as viable concepts, IMHO. We all live in a Gaussian game, where everything that occurs is the sum of an unknowable and indeed unimaginable number of factors. The sum of a vast number of of random numbers may still be deterministic, in the sense that it could be rederived from a perfect copy of the system's original state, but I'd argue that this insight cannot possibly be useful since there's no way to store or represent such a copy in any environment where the original "me" is able to manipulate it.
To the extent that a human is otherwise deterministic, a coin toss is too.
You have plenty of noise in the inputs that determine your actions by way of brain, even without coins, but it's still the state of your brain + those inputs that determine the next state of your brain and therefore your actions.
I have strong view that there is no such thing as free will.In close scrutiny any definition of free will falls apart.
Wittgenstien's view that most philosophical problems of dissolve by understanding that the question involved is nonsensical or not defined properly.
I think events
1. follow Cause -> Effect (Casual)
2. Or they Random (If we don't find evidence for a deterministic interpretation of quantum mechanics)
There is no 3rd option. Some people try to derive free will from randomness, which means they are essentially saying that their "free will" is equivalent to blind selection without any regard for causes, which contradicts the normal common sense(nonsense?) use of the word.
I've made this argument to myself and I can't find fault with it, but it does really bother me. Can it be true that I have no control over my life? I find that hard to swallow at a gut level but can't explain how it might be otherwise.
Also the insights of Alan Watts in the book 'The Way of Zen' and others on Free will and Determinism is eye opening.
I think one has to examine whether the feeling of a separate "I" who has to surf through tides of fate is real.
I think in meditation, or in moments of spontainety brought about anything that gets one in the "Flow" helps to fade the distinction of a observer and the observed ?
One can also say that "you" cannot be separated from the "external" system?
Alan Watts -
“It's like you took a bottle of ink and you threw it at a wall. Smash! And all that ink spread. And in the middle, it's dense, isn't it? And as it gets out on the edge, the little droplets get finer and finer and make more complicated patterns, see? So in the same way, there was a big bang at the beginning of things and it spread. And you and I, sitting here in this room, as complicated human beings, are way, way out on the fringe of that bang. We are the complicated little patterns on the end of it. Very interesting. But so we define ourselves as being only that. If you think that you are only inside your skin, you define yourself as one very complicated little curlique, way out on the edge of that explosion. Way out in space, and way out in time. Billions of years ago, you were a big bang, but now you're a complicated human being. And then we cut ourselves off, and don't feel that we're still the big bang. But you are. Depends how you define yourself. You are actually--if this is the way things started, if there was a big bang in the beginning-- you're not something that's a result of the big bang. You're not something that is a sort of puppet on the end of the process. You are still the process. You are the big bang, the original force of the universe, coming on as whoever you are. When I meet you, I see not just what you define yourself as--Mr so-and- so, Ms so-and-so, Mrs so-and-so--I see every one of you as the primordial energy of the universe coming on at me in this particular way. I know I'm that, too. But we've learned to define ourselves as separate from it. ”
Fog Creek is an interesting example partly because it's written up and also because it's kind of a hybrid where they've remained self funded but spun off VC funded ventures in Trello and in some ways Stack Exchange http://www.foundersatwork.com/joel-spolksy.html
Hate to rain on this person's parade, but his findings are mostly meaningless. You cannot simply infer neurological activity from a single electrode. Besides the need for a proper ground/reference, you also need electrodes placed in the correct anatomical locations to derive any meaningful insights into attention networks.
Yes I do understand it like measuring temperature at one point on mac and trying to predict what application its running. However thats not what I wanted (though I dont know what I wanted), I was curious how activity changes and If am not wrong these activity comes at cost both energy and capacity to think / focus. Who knows if you can wear fitbit for mind tomorrow :)
I imagine that after 30 minutes of being inclined while using the keyboard/mouse, the reduced blood circulation in your hands and arms from gravitational resistance will cause them to be incredibly tired/ fatigued.
Agreed. If anything, the arms should be allowed to stay horizontal, elbows leaning on the armrests and keyboard/mouse placed almost on my lap. With the eyes looking at the screen, it would be suitable for the touch-typing folks.
