Ten oz

Trump gave Nunes fake information to mislead the House Intelligence Committee and public, Trump has openly attacked​ (via Twitter and his press secretary) witnesses in route to testify, now Trump has fired the FBI during his investigation into possible connection between administration officials and Russia. This is obstruction of justice. This isn't​ complicated to see. Our checks and balances simply don't work. Trump has broken the law and it is plain to see. It is illegal to intentionally interfere with a official investigation. Trump has provided false info, intimidated witnesses, and now fire investigators.

@DrmDoc, I am not implying it is "unknowable". I am saying the that thought isn't being consciously generated. Unconscious or conscious it is still me, still my brain doing it.

Beyond continuing to problem solve while while ones conscious focus is elsewhere there is also the example of "being in the zone". When one is in "the zone" solutions arise instantaneously without any perceived conscious thought. In my opinion our unconscious is much more than just instinct. It thinks with all the intellectual capacity and nuance as our conscious mind does. Perhaps more so. We merely perceive conscious thought more intimately so we have a bias towards it. So both our consciousness​ and unconsciousness​ are conscious (aware and able to think). Then there are parts of our brains which are not conscious, are not able to do anything but filter inputs and outputs like widgets. They detect odors, signal our heart to beat, etc. Those are the primitive parts. They aren't fully interactive and don't help with logic or reason.

I work in electrical engineering. It is fairly common for me to have several corrective maintenance projects go at a time. Not always, but often enough, I find that complete solutions to problems will come to me all at once. I will spend hours on a monday troubleshooting a project unsuccessfully and am forced by my schedule tomove on. Then later in the week I will be drinking coffee thinking about what I need from the grocery store and BOOM, the answer to solution will come to me. I know many engineers who as a troubleshooting technique with stop thinking about the problem they are working on and intentionally focus on something unrelated in hopes the answer will emerge on its own. Back to the OP, that is the mechanism this thread is about, the emergence of thought which is not consciously controlled. As for evolution I simply don't view it as an all or nothing thing. Every gene, every mutation, is not and did not have to be useful. There are many inherited cancers, brain diseases, and disorders which do not become pronounced or realized until old age.. Up until a few hundred years ago humans weren't living long enough for many to impact populations in anyway. If I carry the autosomal dominant pattern for Alzheimer but die at 24yrs after being trampled by a mammoth than the disease I was carrying never impacted anything. It is a disease humans could have passed down for hundreds of thousands of years and not one person ever lived long enough to be impacted. We all have mutated genes. Some provide a survival advantage. Some don't add in survival yet don't inhibit survival enough to be weeded out either. My guess is male pattern baldness was around for millennia before anyone lived long enough to notice. We are conscious that others have feelings and are conscious that others are aware of us but it is not 100% correct. We are just guessing. For example many people are needlessly suspicious of each other. Husbands distrust their wives, children distrust their parents, and etc. Often totally unjustified. We imagine how others feel but it is far from an exact science. Many people assume they are funnier, more respected, and etc than they are just as others assume are not as appreciated or well received as they are. It is purely relative to ones own mind moment to moment. It is not a tangible thing. All snowflakes look like snowflakes and yet all snowflakes are unique. All humans can behave like humans and still be unique based on culture, upbringing, and etc.

Yes and no. In most cases I agree but there are cases where it is wrong. If I want to throw my nephew a elaborate birthday party and rental him a bounce house that costs $2,000 but don't actually want to pay for it so I make a 2k donation to my church, then ask them to throw a church pinic on my nephews birthday with the bounce house, then I get the 2k back at the end of the year thanks to my "donation"......that would be wrong. That is an extreme example but it is some that happens. Some people are just purely gaming the system. Provided the charitable giving winds up benefiting someone other than the person making the charitable donation I am fine with it. Motivates don't need to purely be generous.

by Scharnberg (1993), Esterson (1993), Wilcocks (1994), Dawes (1994), Webster (1995), and Erwin (1996) attest, independent studies have begun to converge toward a verdict that was once considered a sign of extremism or even of neurosis that there is literally nothing to be said, scientifically or therapeutically, to the advantage of the entire Freudian system or any of its component dogmas. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9280.1996.tb00331.x No neuroscientist today would say that the unconscious does not exist, nor would he or she say that we do not have implicit memories (memories outside of consciousness.) No one working in the field would argue against primal emotional drives in human beings either. The question is: Does new research suggest a psyche that resembles Freud’s model or not? Some say yes, and others say no. The debates are intense, often heated. Freud remains controversial. What is certain is that at least among some neurobiologists, Freud is no longer dismissed as quickly as he once was. A new field, neuropsychoanalysis, has been born to try and bring the two disciplines together and fulfill one of Freud’s dreams: to ground the psychological in the biological. In 1895, Freud started writing his Project for a Scientific Psychology, a theory of the mind that he rooted in neuronal activity. He never finished it because he realized that not enough was known about brain functions to make such a theory possible, but he hoped the day would come in the future. I will cite a single example of the renewed interest in Freud’s theories, an article published in Brain Research Reviews (2004) by a group of Italian neuroscientists, Diego Cantonze, Alberto Siracusano, Paolo Calabresi, and Giorgio Bernardi, which returns to ideas Freud outlined in his Project: “The Project for a Scientific Psychology (1895): a Fruedian Anticipation of LTP-memory connection theory.” LTP stands for “long term potentiation” of synaptic transmissions in the brain related to learning and memory. In the Project Freud maintained that memory was represented in the brain at a cellular, synaptic level as “a permanent alteration following an event,” an early prediction of the properties of LTP. But aside from the abandoned Project, throughout his work, Freud believed that memories were not fixed but reconstructed in the present, something widely believed to be true among memory researchers today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/reading-minds-method-or-muddle/201003/who-s-afraid-sigmund-freud There are things I think Frued got right. Obviously his contribution to psychology cannot be denied. I specifically think he views regarding memories being realtime reconstructions was brillant. That said I am not a fan of his model for the id, ego, and super ego. I think Frued didn't separate the cause for behaviour from the mechanisms of the brain well. I see social norms and morals as a chicken or the egg conversation. There are many behaviors and functions of the mind which developed hundreds of thousands of years ago. Some of those determine our social norms. They aren't continiously learned, taught to us by our parents, but rather behaviors associated with being human. Not all things but many things. Just as a puppy raise by humans from birth still grows up to behave like a dog I think humans all grow up and behave like humans. The differences between culture and parenting being considerably more nuanced than we care to admit. While we consider thou shall not kill to be a cultural virtue humans kill humans for all the same sorts of reasons other mamals kill members of their own species. Primary due to competition for resources. Attributing the notion of morality or ethics to our behavior(s) isn't useful in my opinion as those are merely human concepts and not real things. Unless you believe the human mind evolved to service human concepts and not vice versa? We are completely talking past each other regarding evolution. I don't disagree with anything you posted here and don't see it as a counter response to what I posted. It doesn't matter. I don't think I agree that the unconscious mind is "primitive". If you merely mean primitive as relating to it being a functions on thebrain which predates our conscious mind than sure, yes. However you described it as instinctual and without thought, I disagree. It may think. It may have opinions. Everything may not be purely instinctual. Just because we aren't consciously aware of its thought process doesn't mean it doesn't have one. I have had many complicated ideas and solutions to techincal problems suddenly appear in my mind fully formed. I think we all have. Fully flushed out ideas come from somewhere. They aren't instinct. I have also be surprised by my emotional response to things. I have been far more impacted and far less impacted by things that I thought I would be implying various unconscious feelings beyond my conscious radar. I think our unconscious minds are sophisticated but because we realize ourselves through our conscious there's a bias towards assuming our conscious is the source of our mental intangibles.

I think attempting to rate choices as wrong or right only muddles this conversation down. With regard to how the brain works and what the relationship between our consciousn and unconscious right vs wrong doesn't matter. What is right and what is wrong is all relative. Happiness and sorrow is all relative. There are depressed successful people and happy unsuccessful people. Regretful wealthy people and content poor people. Murderers who feel justified and victims who feel guilty. What consitutes a right choices for ones conscious and/or subconscious (rhetorical question)?

The reasons for charitable giving varies greatly and can be ambiguous. If I am about to toss out some old clothes in the garbage I can instead donate them to a shelter and write the donation off on my taxes at the end of the year. The donation would go down as charitable giving but in truth I may have been only been motivated by the tax credit. Remove the tax credit and perhaps I would have just put the clothes in the trash. The charity in this example is moderately selfish. I think a lot of charitable giving in the U.S. comes with some form of quid pro qou. Parishioners donate money to their church but a lot of the money is used for entertainment, transportation, and food that the parishioners who donated benefits from directly. Additionally they can deduct it from their taxes. Much of the international aid the U.S. provides around the world is actually in the form of products the federal govt purchases from govt contractors. Some people view this has a way for various politicians to get federal money into their districts more so than actually helping foriegn nations. Some business donate money to charity to gain access to specific politicians and or favorable media coverage. Plus the donation are deductable and as such come without any real cost. What constitues charity in the context of the OP?

This is the way I viewed it for a long time. However as time has passed I have come to believe both have their own motivations or at least the illusion of motivations. The relationship isn't as linear or immediately useful as computing memory. People are often torn between choices in life. Torn between allegiances. Even simply choices that do not impact anyone else. Choices like what tie to wear, what to eat for lunch, or etc. Meanwhile what we want is almost always immediately known to us.

In that scenario the kids still aren't determining the outcome the parents are. In the analogy the parents are the subconscious and the kids are the conscious. Additionally I think most would agree that any parent who would purchase the trip, take time off work, just to then cancel out of anger towards their kids is a little nuts. In that example you are asking what if ones subconscious has a mental disorder and all decisions are tenuous.

I am not see the survival benefit as important. It might be. I just am not seeing it. Sometimes the difference between a species going extinct vs continuing is random luck. A species can be perfectly adapted for survival in their enviroment and then a meteor can come along and ....BOOM......that species is no longer perfectly adapted. Good and bad fortune plays a role just as the survival benefit of an adaptation does. I do think everything a species does can be traced back to a survival benefit. Many thinks can but not all things. I think if we understood the relationship between the the 2 (conscious and unconscious/subconscious) I think it might be easy to determine a survival benefit. Right now, for me, I am still pondering which is in the drivers seats or if they take turns. I think there is a sense or feeling that if our conscious isn't making decisions that somehow it means we aren't in control. I don't see it that way. Whether the decision is made by my sunconscious or conscious it is still made by me. My subconscious is still me. It is still my brain in my body.

@ tar, right vs wrong choices has nothingto do with what I am saying. I am strictly considering whether the choice is made consciously or unconsciously. That is it. Do we consciously make all the decisions we believe we do our to some extent large or small is it just an illusion of choice. I used the way you voted not because I agree or disagree with it. I used it because the choice was contradictory to what you had said you'd do.Whether the choice was ultimately wrong or right is completely irrelevant. How is the mechanism working? Are using our reasoning skills to determine a courses of actions or has the decision already been made. The analogy I used earlier: "A parent plans out a family vacation to Disney. They schedule time off work and purchase a family package. The trip is 100% set. Then they tell their children that if they keep their rooms clean for a month they will reward them with a trip to Disney. In reality the trip to Disney is already a done deal. The offer to the kids is just a manipulation. The parents are presenting the kids a choice yet in truth no choice really exists. Yet it accomplishes a few different things:it gets the kids to buy into cleaning their rooms, makes the kids think they can earn things through good behavior, the satifaction of believing they earned the trip probably makes the trip more enjoyable, and etc, etc, etc.:" In that analogy there is a lot of room for people feeling like they are making independent choices. The children may go bacck and forth in their heads about whether or not they will actually clean their rooms. Each kid may have a different standard in mind for what a clean room looks like. Perhaps the most stubburn child may even give the parent loads of attitude about it. Ultimately the outcome is basically set in stone barring something unforseen. The family going to Disney will be the outcome regardless of the all the mental masterbation. The bar for what a clean room is will adjust as needed. In that analogy the children believe they can influence an outcome with their choices. They are told as much by their parents. It isn't true though. The parents have already purchased the Disney trip. Decisions have already been made. The children just aren't aware of that. The children cannot control the outcome. They just think they can.

You are outlining how your feelings changed and then your logic followed. Back to the OP, I outlined how feelings are instanteous. How do you know that your logic in this isn't lagging behind your feelings. Your conscious behind your subconscious?

A copy is never exact. A copy of a copy is even worse. We can never truly replicate the past but we do try. All animals do. From a shark that hunt in specific waters at twilight because that is what has work for a million years to a humans in a bar wearing trendy clothes to attract a mate we all, everything, replicates behavior over and over and over. What has broken us (life) out of patterns throughout history has often been external. A storm washes the branch a lizard in on out to sea and the lizard survives the voyage to a new land where the environment dictates new behaviors.

As outlined in the OP I am of the impression that what we rationalize as correct doesn't actually have any impact on what we desire. In this example you clearly rationalized one candidate to be the more logical choice yet desired the other. The action you desired ultimately beat out what you had rationlized. That has nothing to do with the U.S. population being an entity of whatever. You are deflecting and avoiding the example for some reason. Perhaps your rationlized arguments against the action at the time were lies and you always intended to do what you ending up doing. I am posting on the assumption you were honest. If so it is a good example for this conversation. Your outlined rational reasons against an action and then committed to that action anyway. Just because one commits suicide doesn't mean they didn't reduce. What happens to an individual life after it already passed along its DNA for future generation isn't nearly important to evolution as the passing DNA along part is.

I am not saying all decisions are an illusion. I can speculationing that perhaps all our imagined choices are. That our unconscious makes the decisions and our conscious imagines the decision as a choice we have made. Whether a decision is made by our conscious or unconscious (subconscious) a decision is being made. I am not implying otherwise. Additionally I am just speculating. I don't believe I have the answers.

Support for the govt we have has nothing to do with what I posted. My point was that despite what you rationally knew to be true you acted in the oppisite manner. It is an example of the limits of our rational mind. That is no attack on you. We all do it in various forms. Some women find themselves in abussive relationships over and over. It is too simple to say the good and bad experiences are stored and then repeated. There are many bad experiences people repeat. Many mistakes and traps we find ourselves falling into over and over. I think it reflects that the choices we make are to atleast some extent beyond our conscious control. We think we are making the choice when we are actually be led to the choice unconciously.

Ironically there was a small window in our histry where these dangerous activities made one cool and attractive actually helped in finding a mate and increased their chances of reproducing. Amongst groups which do move towards most fit; that cantake many different forms. Humans came out of Africa in to Europe a couple different times. The first group became more physically fit to survive the colder environment. The developed shorter and stockier builds that could better withstand cold temps. They also developed more muscular frames which helped them hunt the available game. The second group came out of Africa with higher levels of social interaction and perhaps the imagination (intanginles). Both groups had the same size brain with relative capacities. The first group is dead and gone, extinct. The greater overall physical adaptations and relative similar intellegnce notwithstanding. Evolution has many twists and turns and certianly isn't linear. The choice to buy the next hit of a narcotic doesn't have survival value. Our currunt opioid crisis is an example of people making choices which make them feel good yet do not help them survive. I see no link between feeling good about a choice and that choice being useful to survival. The following example is not an attack. I am using it an example of you clearly acting against what you consciously knew to be true. You acknowledged more than a few times prior to the election that Trump had silly politicies, was a liar, was incompetent to do the job, was bad for the country, and Clinton (though you didn't like her) would be the better choice for POTUS. Then you voted Trump anyway against your own rational judgement. I would agrue that the choice you made, think you made, in supporting Trump wasn't a choice at all. Your conscious mind reasoned and understood Clinton to be the superior candidate but your subconscioius had its mind made up. The reasons you tell yourself for making the choice you made are illusions. There was really never a choice. When the time came you were always going to make the choice you made regardless of what you conscioiusly thought. You subconscious allowed you to go through the motions up making a choice but in truth the decision was always in stone. I think we all do this. We tell ours that if we get home from work early on tuesday we'll do X. Then tuesdays rolls around, we get home early, and immidiately find a reason to not do X. It is because we didn't actually believe we'd be home early on tuesday. Our subconscious was just allowing us to imagine. We do it all the time. We ponder about the things we would do if we were in this or that situation. However, despite the conclusions we imagine, people often don't know what they will do until they are actually in the situation. That might be because we aren't actually in the drivers seat consciously. Our fears, complusions, desires, and etc take over once a situation presents itself.

Which was point before. I don't disagree with any you are saying. I think we are just negotiating term a bit here.

Obviously, in the context of my post I was referencing survival in terms of life or death and a trait allowing one to survive (hunt and gather better). Not all traits help with survival. Take for example the research which indicates all blue eyed people are related. Blue eyes come from a lack of pigment. It is not believe there was any survival (ability to find food, shleter, water, make fire, etc) advantage related to having blue eyes. Rather the population of humans at the time simply thought blue eyes looked good and bred it into the population. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080130170343.htm

I think they might be an illusion. Consider the following analogy. A parent plans out a family vacation to Disney. They schedule time off work and purchase a family package. The trip is 100% set. Then they tell their children that if they keep their rooms clean for a month they will reward them with a trip to Disney. In reality the trip to Disney is already a done deal. The offer to the kids is just a manipulation. The parents are presenting the kids a choice yet in truth no choice really exists. Yet it accomplishes a few different things:it gets the kids to buy into cleaning their rooms, makes the kids think they can earn things through good behavior, the satifaction of believing they earned the trip probably makes the trip more enjoyable, andetc, etc, etc. Our descision process may work similarly. We present ourselves options and choice when in reality there are none. Then when we make the choice, which was actually dictated to us, we feel a sense ownership and accomplishment. I don't disagree. I would like to add though that survival isn't what drives evolution. Reproduction is. Obviously one must survive to reproduce but amongst all those who survive there can still be individual things that are preferred for a variety of reasons not associated with survival. Like birds with more colorful feathers. In many cases the more colorful feathers have no advantage other than to help attract a mate. It is pure window dressing. Perhaps having a consciousness separated from our unconscious made of more able to lie and cheat because we could hide our true intentions and feelings. That might have given us some advantage in scoring a mate while actually having few advantages for obtaining the basic needs for survival like foods, water, shelter, etc.

Are we actually able to make the choice or are they provided to us in such a way that a specific one will be what we choose. Sort of the way parents manipulate children with quid pro qou set ups which the adults know children with 100% fall for, The children believe they have made a choice but really they were led to make it.

But are the choices real or just a carrot?

We carry genes of our ancestors down through time and there is definitely a repetitive nature to societal behavior. Many battles are fought over and over against. Currently we are experiencing a rise in a type of nationalist driven facism throughout western culture. Could just be an organic movement reacting to the times or part of a larger repetitive cycle. Maybe we cannot see the forest through the trees. Maybe some part of our inherited cognitive traits attempt to resolve past experiences which leaves some segment of the population in a loop. We know that the thoughts and fears of women while pregnant impacts the fetus. Maybe those who reproduced in the mist of all the chaos of WW2 put a different ghost into the machine than those who reproduced in during the resolutions which followed its end. *Just spitballing I have no desire to pull anyones pants down. And as we have discussed desire is someone presented to us unconsciously and not a choice. What I do in the real world cannot be taken back and has domino effects that connot be predicted or known. That doesn't mean that my unconscious isn't influencing what I will choose by controlling the strength of my desire.

Or could it be defaults? Ones unconscious mind just completely takes over as needed when needed. It is constantly running on the background providing choice and jumps in when it doesn't have time to set up choices to provide us. I have so many questions about it and no answers unfortunately.