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Old Oct 03, 2020, 06:14 PM
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bpcyclist bpcyclist is offline
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Member Since: Sep 2019
Location: Portland
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Wondrous responses from experienced, empathetic, loving humans. I would only add as the resident neurodweeb here, that the neurochemical architecture and machinery that produces this phenemenon we all experience as judging is absolutely essential to our survival. Why? Because all this elegant, expensive technology God gave us is intimately hardwired into and central to our threat assessment systems. I cannot identify the tiger as a threat unless and until I visually identify and process it, associate it with prior data and experience, ensure that it is other and not self, and then permit the initiation of subcortical, fight or flight (legs must propel me quickly thataway), and cortical (which direction? What are my chances?), and metacortical, summing, all-systems stuff (does God not love me? Will I see my grandma and my daughter in heaven) to operate on our behalf. In anxiety and mixed states and mania and psychosis, specific pieces of this astounding, living system fail us, creating danger and harm to us and others. The human may become unsafe for a bit. Sometimes, tragically so. Broken system.

So, we are stuck with it if we are to survive the tiger. Or life. But, humans also have other data sets called beliefs and even more complex biases. These large reservoirs of neural information can be connected to other parts of the brain, emphasizing data promoting the belief and deemphasizing data contravening the belief. This may be where free will appears. Anyway, judging unkindly was not in my view the express intent of any of these components or the system. We, humans, coopted helpful machinery designed to help us survive and excel , in my view, in using it this way. Our choice. Our will.
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