Neither blank slate nor genetic determinism are true of people’s *minds*. Following @DavidDeutschOxf and the concept of computational universality, there’s a third *scientific* way:https://youtu.be/5x0hXALTKbY
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Replying to @ToKTeacher @DavidDeutschOxf and
"Genetic determinism" is a strawman. I have never heard a researcher claim that human traits are entirely independent of environmental influences.
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Replying to @Plinz @DavidDeutschOxf and
Me either. They say it's some combination - and I'd agree. The phenotype is precisely that: an expression of the genotype in some environment. That works well for all sorts of traits. But not the mind. It's different, as it cannot be explained by either of those alone.
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Replying to @ToKTeacher @DavidDeutschOxf and
The mind of an individual is an expression of innate reward functions driving learning specific to an environment, using innate priming, and (in a mathematical sense) universal function approximation.
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Replying to @Plinz @ToKTeacher and
Human minds are universal in the sense that 94% can learn basic arithmetic, but not in the sense that they would develop similar ideas and behavioral traits when confronted with the same environment. Most people will also not debug their basic epistemology in their lifetime.
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Replying to @Plinz @DavidDeutschOxf and
You're saying 94% of human minds are universal? Universal, in the relevant sense here, means 100% of people can learn 100% of things they choose to take an interest in. People won't all have the same ideas. That too is a consequence of universality (coupled with creativity).
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Replying to @ToKTeacher @DavidDeutschOxf and
That is not true. For instance, like ~20% of all people, I have aphantasia, which limits my development as an artist. And if you continue to prefer nice beliefs over true beliefs, it will limit your development as a scientist or philosopher.
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Replying to @Plinz @godsven3loquist
I don't have beliefs on this matter but know there exist three possibilities because of what a mind is (it's software running on brain hardware). If it's a hardware problem the issue is one of speed or memory. If not: it's software and so it's a matter of not knowing how.
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Replying to @ToKTeacher @godsven3loquist
The software is expressed in hardware (you can put me into a coma and I'll come back online), and in most minds it has not bootstrapped itself into domain unspecific universality, and won't get there. Btw. agnosticism requires justification of your degree of uncertainty.
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Replying to @Plinz @godsven3loquist
The human mind is universal (provably so) because you can do exactly what a Universal Turing Machine can do. Now beyond that you are also actually creative - so you can also *comprehend* things. You might like to read BoI/FoR/Popper for sections on "justificationism".
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If 6% of all people cannot learn basic arithmetic, then the human mind is not a universal function approximator. (Turing universality itself is not a very useful criterion, because in the narrow sense it is also fulfilled if you connect twenty mousetraps with a bit of yarn.)
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Replying to @Plinz @godsven3loquist
It's false & dehumanizing to claim 6% of people *cannot*. Sure - one may test people on arithmetic & perhaps some won't properly demonstrate adding integers. But to assume it must be the case they cannot rather than *are not interested* in your test is a bad interpretation.
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