I was talking to a friend about controlling our own S1 and how difficult it is.
It struck me that controlling our S1 would be like applying brakes on our entire personality and not just in curbing expression of some negative trait of ours, which is what we are interested in and which drove our discussion.
Our talk, with my friend's questions and my answers, brought out other ideas. I figured that the only time we are in complete control of our S1 is when we are asleep or in a coma or dead. This, of course, is a trivial solution.
I said to my friend that when the sage Vishwamitra was in a trance and the danseuse Menaka tried to disturb him and failed it was because the sage's S1 was completely dead or in hybernation. The question I asked was: which part of the Rishi was awake when he was doing Tapas? My answer is: none. That's how the rishis could avoid getting disturbed and their S1 was safely tucked away and Menaka's SASC (Shake ass and Show Cleavage) routine couldn't be effective.
And we have read that when the Rishis were disturbed from their trance, they woke up and in a burst of anger they cursed whoever disturbed them - caused by a complete loss of control over their S1, which also is now awake.
Can we really control our S1? And thus control ourselves?
I am stil waiting for an answer.
In this context one repartee that another friend frequently comes up with is that experience teaches us a lot of things and our behavior changes because of this. All our behavior, she would say, hence isn't coded in our genes. Don't we control our S1 when we force ourselves to control our outbursts? Don't we consciously use our S2 in place of the usual S1? Is this not an example of controlling our behavior, she would ask. Essentially this is one example of a case when there is a feedback loop - when an incident, say our own outburst, causes us to rethink our behavior and hence we take pain to avoid it. We will come back to this later.
Yes, nurture or experience definitely affects our future behavior - but my question is: do we control and, if yes, how do we control our memory and experience of such events which in turn affect our S1?
What are we outside of our S1? If we isolate our S1, what remains of us? If someone could observe (just observe and do nothing else) us and see our S1 and S2 in action - what would they see? Would they see some X factor inside us but excluding our S1, S2 affecting our behavior? Maybe that X has freewill.
It is my belief that our S2 is invoked by our S1 and hence control of S2 is not available outside of our S1.
Coming to the feedback loop, my question to my friend is the same. What person or identity exists outside of S1? If invoking of S2 an example of freewill? Who invoked S2? S1 or something else? If it is S1, do we control it?
As i think about the feedback loop, a question arises in my mind. Assume we are hooked up to various equipments electrical, mechanical or chemical which are in turn hooked up to a computer. Now, let's say, we ourselves or someone else can choose how we want to behave and enter our desired behavior in a computer. The computer which knows us will gives us the necessary electrical, chemical or mechanical inputs so that we behave in the way that was requested. Now, in this case who controlled our behavior? Was it the computer or the person who entered the request in the computer? The answer, that it is the computer, is trivial. Let us focus on the other option - that it was the person who entered the request in the computer. How did the person think up the request? Which part of the person thought of requesting such a behavior from me? Was it that person's conscious decision to expect a certain behavior from me? Or was he just made aware of this decision which was made by his S1?
Our own goal setting including New Year resolutions are of the same type. The question is: how did we set the goal? Was it from S1 or S2 or something else? S2, I believe, is invoked by S1.
Ever since I had an argument of sorts with a couple of friends I have been thinking about this issue, specifically how to prove or disprove existence of freewill. I think most people understand and accept that our behavior depends on nature (genes) and nature (our experiences and observations). We understand that we were born with our genes and unless we get to tinker with our genes, as explained earlier, our genes remain invariant except for the mutations which are anyway outside our control. The focus then comes to nurture. How much are we in control of HOW we accept what we experience. I am reminded of the Thirukkural
Epporul yaaryaarvaai ketpinum apporul
Meiporul kaaba tharivu.
Meaning, no what what we hear it makes sense to only absorb the truth in it.
Wow, so beautiful.
Now this relates directly to how we should accept what we hear, observe or experience. Written few thousand years back it was assumed that we could control how we abaorb or relate to our experience.
Now let us assume that thereis an "I", the essence of what I am which holds my Freewill. This "I" should hence take inputs from whatever our genes tell us, also from what our experience gives us and THEN process both and then decide for ourselves what we should do which in turn causes my brain to release certain chemicals which finally causes some thought, emotion or reaction from me.
The question is then whether this "I" exists. How do we prove it.
Take two objects or beings with the same DNA and subject both to the same experience from conception / birth. If they show diverge in their phenotype (I hope I am using the term correctly) - that is in any trait or behavior, then we conclude "I" exists.
Ok?
Additional Reading:
- http://vbala99.blogspot.com/2017/10/s1-and-s2-daniel-kahnemann-my-examples.html
- https://www.quora.com/Is-impatience-a-genetic-trait-or-learned-behavior
- http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/neuroskeptic/2013/10/08/bad-kids-cant-blame-their-genes/#.WwfLhh6FTIU: Quote from the link: "Yet geneticists finally struck gold – or seemed to – with a new technique called genome-wide complex trait analysis (GCTA). Instead of looking at each variant individually, GCTA quantifies how genetically similar any two people are as a whole. GCTA has shown that the more genetically similar people are, the more similar they tend to be in terms of complex traits. Hooray – the missing heritability is… well, it’s still missing, but at least we know it’s out there, in small pieces scattered across the genome."
- https://www.fs.blog/2016/07/our-genes-and-our-behavior/
- https://www.fs.blog/2016/06/no-two-people-alike-part-1/: Quote: "If you look at the books and the training that teachers get, genetics doesn't get a look-in. Yet if you ask teachers, as I've done, about why they think children are so different in their ability to learn to read, and they know that genetics is important. When it comes to governments and educational policymakers, the knee-jerk reaction is that if kids aren't doing well, you blame the teachers and the schools; if that doesn't work, you blame the parents; if that doesn't work, you blame the kids because they're just not trying hard enough. An important message for genetics is that you've got to recognize that children are different in their ability to learn. We need to respect those differences because they're genetic. Not that we can’t do anything about it."
- http://www.nealelab.is/blog/2017/9/13/heritability-101-what-is-heritability: Quote: "Heritability is a property of the population not the individual. When the heritability of a trait is described, it reflects how much variability in the population is a consequence of genetic factors. It does not “explain” why an individual has a disease."..."Heritability is not immutable. Since heritability reflects the balance between the effects of genetic and environmental factors, if you change the environment you can change the trait’s heritability."..."High heritability does not mean group differences are genetic. There is a troubling history of attributing observed group differences, such as reported racial disparities in IQ scores, to genetics. As noted above, heritability is specific to the choice of measurement, population, and environment, and the heritability of a trait is not immutable. As a result, it’s not valid to use a trait’s estimated heritability as evidence for “inherent” differences between populations."
- https://psmag.com/environment/genes-affect-behavior-environment-85139
