in response to a friend's fb post on "what was a day your life changed"?
I'm fascinated by how his *experience of the persuasiveness of an argument* was changed after modifying his brain. Our thoughts aren't ours, they belong to that fleshy mass in our skull.
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Yeah, but that seems like a pretty straightforward case, in that his anxiety baseline was so high that even if the argument reduced it, it didn't reduce it enough for him to longer be scared.
That's what "being persuaded" would have meant in this case.
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reminds a little of the ‘simple childhood metasurgery’ to remove the ‘Abebaios block’ in a fun, quick 1965 scifi short story:
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Replying to @aaronzlewis and @ChanaMessinger
a fun SF short story (2600 words) from 1965 that posits a "simple childhood metasurgery" to remove such psychological speed limits:
"Slow Tuesday Night", by R. A. Lafferty
baen.com/Chapters/97816
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He didn’t remove the fear thoughts. He still has the thoughts but the part of his brain that would respond to the thoughts and release chemicals is gone. The thought just kinda washes over him so he can think of what to do with it. I bet we could do the same no surgery.
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Well, technically that would still make them our thoughts as that fleshy mass is what we (as a person) are.
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