re: homeostasis

DwnWthVwls · 05-07-2015, 01:22 PM

I prefer this one..

Guybrush · 05-08-2015, 07:41 AM

The first page was a friggin' wall of text, but I did see a lot of sense being made of it.

What Oriphiel pointed out towards the end regardig motivations was true. We're not motivated for survival and reproduction specifically. Instead, we might get scared of a spider or horny when the possibility of sex arises.

Generally speaking, the feelings we have should promote our reproduction, but a big problem gets in the way of that. We're just not perfectly adapted to our environment. We're all different and some will be better at it than others. Some of us even act wrong and will / would probably get weeded out in the future under stronger selection pressure. Furthermore, our environment has changed into something our genes weren't adapted for and when they've changed a little in an effort to keep up, our environment has changed even more. To use a banal example, one might say that using a condom is basically a waste of energy and effort, but the genes that make you horny don't know what condoms are. Your horny feelings may not shut down in a condom rich environment because your genes haven't had much time to adapt to a world with prevention. Similarly, you may feel compassion for someone you see on the television or internet, acting as if that person is a part of your social group. But your genes don't know what a television or the internet is, so how should they know this person can't possibly reciprocate?

Oriphiel · 05-08-2015, 08:05 AM

^ That's a good point. Many of our wants and needs can be fulfilled by actions and factors that our brains weren't necessarily built by evolution to take into account. When you think about it like that, we're not so different from ancient humans, only now we have television and books instead of cave paintings and oral stories. I mean, literally as soon as a guy looked at a sheep's intestines and thought "Hey, I could probably fit that around my dick", we started using them as condoms to prevent fulfilling our biological imperative.

As soon as proto-humans started to develop more powerful brains, we started "cheating" everywhere we could, using whatever tools we could find to make our lives more comfortable, and our brains (which were developed to help us survive as a pack in a hostile world of deadly predators like lions, natural disasters that we couldn't yet predict or explain, and basically a thousand unknown factors that could utterly destroy us) just sort of had to go along with it. It's just kinda funny that the same fight-or-flight feeling you get when your teacher asks you to speak in front of the class, was developed to help your ancestors dodge tigers.

DwnWthVwls · 05-08-2015, 02:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tore

We're not motivated for survival and reproduction specifically. Instead, we might get scared of a spider or horny when the possibility of sex arises.

I don't think that's necessarily true. This reminds me of the discussion we had a while back about free will. I'm not an expert on the topic but I think even if we don't recognize it happening, we subconsciously do things for survival/preservation.

Oriphiel · 05-08-2015, 03:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DwnWthVwls

I don't think that's necessarily true. This reminds me of the discussion we had a while back about free will. I'm not an expert on the topic but I think even if we don't recognize it happening, we subconsciously do things for survival/preservation.

We discussed that on the first page. We are driven by our urges, which came into existence to help us to survive and make babies, but our urges can (and often do) overrule the "biological imperative". If you examine humans in a narrow sense, you'll see that we answer only to our urges, which don't always lead us towards surviving and procreating. However, if you examine humans in a broad sense, we exist purely to survive and replicate our genes, with our urges simply being a means to an end, and those urges are only discordant (occasionally leading to behavior that is very counterproductive to the goal of survival/reproduction, like abstinence, genital mutilation/removal, and suicide) because humans have high levels of intelligence and complicated psychologies which don't at all mesh well with urges and instincts that originally came about to help us survive in a drastically different environment than most modern humans currently live in.

Basically, it all depends on how closely you're examining humans.

Spoiler for Stuff:

Quote:

Originally Posted by John Wilkes Booth

i guess that depends on how you mean "we exist to..", imo

cause we literally exist to reproduce

but maybe you could come up with a more poetic alternative that makes sense figuratively

like if im really into eating a sandwhich atm, then i might feel like i exist just to eat this sandwhich right now

but speaking strictly objectively... that's not actually true

Quote:

Originally Posted by Oriphiel

That depends on your point of view. To the person taking the joyride, it's all about doing whatever they want and having fun. But if someone in a large tower was watching them as they drove along, not knowing that they were just mindlessly driving without a destination in mind, but could see a bunch of possible destinations in the distance that they were getting closer to, then they're likely to think that the driver was specifically trying to get to one of those destinations.

So which person is right? Technically, they both are. The driver is just doing whatever they want, but they also are heading towards a destination.

It's kind of like a painting; if you stand very close to it, all you can see are blurry smudges. If you back up too far away from it, you can't make out the details. In both scenarios, even though the painting remains the same, it has changed exponentially purely because of how close or far the observer is. If you back away from life, it seems like it exists purely to replicate itself. If you get right up to it, it seems like life is all about following desires, and fulfilling wants and needs. But if you stand at a reasonable distance, the two come together, and in that balance you can see the whole picture, while also catching it's details. You and I are both critiquing the same painting based on our points of view; I am right up close, examining it's details, while you're far back, examining the big picture. If we both just adjusted ourselves, we'd see that we're both looking at and describing the same thing, just from different distances, and that neither of us is right or wrong.

Quote:

Originally Posted by John Wilkes Booth

yea thats all good ori i agree that it all depends on your pov, and my original post about people literally existing to reproduce was from an objective, scientific pov

DwnWthVwls · 05-08-2015, 03:40 PM

I don't like your analysis. Pick a side. Either our brains have evolved enough that we have the ability to override the "biological imperative" or the things we do are still driven by the biological imperative subconsciously. Wild animals have survival hiccups also, and they aren't consciously making decisions to go against their instincts. Large herd animals make no effort to protect one another from predators, there is a pecking order for food which can leave some animals for dead, males animals often kill or severely harm each other during mating season.

Oriphiel · 05-08-2015, 04:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DwnWthVwls

I don't like your analysis. Pick a side. Either our brains have evolved enough that we have the ability to override the "biological imperative" or the things we do are still driven by the biological imperative subconsciously.

How can I pick a side? We exist to reproduce, and it is what out species has developed around. It's very easy to argue that all life exists to replicate. However, most humans aren't thinking about the imperative when they do the things they do, they just follow their urges, and our complex psyches have overridden many of those primal urges while leaving other outdated urges completely intact. And yet we do have the ability to think about the imperative while we go through our days, examining the world around us and finding that we're able to change our patterns of behavior, and our social needs can actually come before our own lives. Why should I pick just one of these to support, ignoring the others, when they're all true?

Apart of us is still driven towards the imperative subconsciously, and yet certain factors also drive us away from it. We're in a transitional stage, where part of us is still simple and instinctual, while the other is intellectual and complex.

Think about it like this; there's a car nut who owns a vintage hot-rod, and every year they upgrade it in some way. After a few years, half of the parts are fresh and new, while the other half are still old and well-worn, and there are even a few parts that the car still has but no longer needs. Humans are the same way; we have developed and evolved to a point where many of our old instincts are no longer needed in the modern environment, yet they remain. There are also a bunch of new parts that look fancy, but we have no clue what they do, and we can't make use of them yet (like a turbo charger that has been partially installed, but not completely hooked up). We're a jumble. You're asking me to decide whether the hot-rod is either an old car (always subconsciously moving towards the imperative) or a new car (free from being driven towards the imperative), when the truth is that it's both. Other animals are similar to humans in that almost every species never stops evolving and each has weird transitional hiccups and traits, but our very high levels of intelligence and our ability to actively change our behavioral patterns complicate the matter in a way that other species have yet to have to deal with.

DwnWthVwls · 05-08-2015, 04:16 PM

No species is perfect, if it was it would stop evolving until new environmental factors were introduced to cause evolution to begin again. Given enough time all the urges you are talking about will be weeded out of human beings because they are not useful to the biological imperative OR you can take the side that our brains have evolved in a way that allows us to override the path evolution would take us on.

I can't tell you which side is right, but they can't coexist.

Oriphiel · 05-08-2015, 04:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DwnWthVwls

No species is perfect, if it was it would stop evolving until new environmental factors were introduced to cause evolution to begin again. Given enough time all the urges you are talking about will be weeded out of human beings because they are not useful to the biological imperative OR you can take the side that our brains have evolved in a way that allows us to override the path evolution would take us on.

Everything you just said is at harmony with what I just said. We're in a transitional phase, like all species, and we are beginning to be able to use our intelligence to override the biological imperative. We still have inherent urges, though we can control them if we want to. But why would we want to control them? Isn't going against the imperative a drive in and of itself? What compels us to do it? When you look at Maslow's Hierarchy, after all basic wants and needs are fulfilled, we start to look for social gratification, and lastly we seek belonging in a grander and more universal sense. Spitting in the face of evolution is our way of conquering the unknown, which we are afraid of, and claiming ourselves the same way that we claimed the earth (by spreading over it, dividing it, naming the different parts, learning how they work, and using them to fulfill our desires).

But this discussion is starting to get stale, especially since this is pretty much the same debate I just had with JWB. So here are some new questions:

If humans develop to the point when we no longer have inherent urges, won't we simply lay down and die? At that point, why would someone with no fear see life and death as different things? What would drive us to continue to live? Having such intellect, wouldn't we see ourselves for the bundles of matter that we are? Would we reproduce? Would we have emotions? How much of our personalities are created by our urges, desires, and the need to belong (due to our roots as highly social pack animals that survive best in factions)? Basically, what the hell will happen to use if we reach the highest level of intelligence?

Guybrush · 05-08-2015, 06:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DwnWthVwls

I don't think that's necessarily true. This reminds me of the discussion we had a while back about free will. I'm not an expert on the topic but I think even if we don't recognize it happening, we subconsciously do things for survival/preservation.

We often say that we do, but to be nitpicky, we probably don't except possibly under some very specific circumstances (health phobia perhaps). Rather than subconsciously do things for survival and fitness, we sometimes are subconsciously motivated to do things which, as a consequence, promote survival and fitness.

Take my spider example again. Let's say humans have evolved to avoid spiders because spiders are dangerous. When you see a spider that scares you, you will feel fear. The sensory input of the spider causes you actual physical distress - a release of adrenaline, a sinking feeling in your stomach, heart starts racing, you get fearful - you feel an urge to distance yourself from the spider. You can try to override this with conscious thought if you want, but a phobic would find it very hard. Fears are deep rooted in the subconscious.

What we have adapted to in this example is not specifically survival or higher fitness. That's just a consequence, which is why that particular trait was selected for. What we have evolved specifically is behaviour/feelings which make us avoid spiders. So, all your subconscious cares about is getting you away from spiders. Or, to bring up other examples - getting sexual gratification. Or experiencing the taste of sugar. Back in the day, sugary stuff represented a valuable resource that would increase survival / fitness. Today it doesn't, but even if you consciously think it's bad for your survival, your subconscious probably digs it.

05-08-2015, 07:41 AM	#22 (permalink)
Guybrush Juicious Maximus III Join Date: Nov 2008 Location: Scabb Island Posts: 6,525	The first page was a friggin' wall of text, but I did see a lot of sense being made of it. What Oriphiel pointed out towards the end regardig motivations was true. We're not motivated for survival and reproduction specifically. Instead, we might get scared of a spider or horny when the possibility of sex arises. Generally speaking, the feelings we have should promote our reproduction, but a big problem gets in the way of that. We're just not perfectly adapted to our environment. We're all different and some will be better at it than others. Some of us even act wrong and will / would probably get weeded out in the future under stronger selection pressure. Furthermore, our environment has changed into something our genes weren't adapted for and when they've changed a little in an effort to keep up, our environment has changed even more. To use a banal example, one might say that using a condom is basically a waste of energy and effort, but the genes that make you horny don't know what condoms are. Your horny feelings may not shut down in a condom rich environment because your genes haven't had much time to adapt to a world with prevention. Similarly, you may feel compassion for someone you see on the television or internet, acting as if that person is a part of your social group. But your genes don't know what a television or the internet is, so how should they know this person can't possibly reciprocate? __________________ Something Completely Different

05-08-2015, 08:05 AM	#23 (permalink)
Oriphiel Ask me how! Join Date: Oct 2014 Location: The States Posts: 5,357	^ That's a good point. Many of our wants and needs can be fulfilled by actions and factors that our brains weren't necessarily built by evolution to take into account. When you think about it like that, we're not so different from ancient humans, only now we have television and books instead of cave paintings and oral stories. I mean, literally as soon as a guy looked at a sheep's intestines and thought "Hey, I could probably fit that around my dick", we started using them as condoms to prevent fulfilling our biological imperative. As soon as proto-humans started to develop more powerful brains, we started "cheating" everywhere we could, using whatever tools we could find to make our lives more comfortable, and our brains (which were developed to help us survive as a pack in a hostile world of deadly predators like lions, natural disasters that we couldn't yet predict or explain, and basically a thousand unknown factors that could utterly destroy us) just sort of had to go along with it. It's just kinda funny that the same fight-or-flight feeling you get when your teacher asks you to speak in front of the class, was developed to help your ancestors dodge tigers.