Hmm, what makes u suspect changing our internal rewards will be that easy? (Not that I am confident it won’t be.)
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Replying to @Moshe_Hoffman
It is not trivial; evolution has put access protections in place. But many of the meditation experts of the eastern wireheading schools have figured it out, and either died equanimously under Bodhi trees or became serene monks.
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Replying to @Plinz
Seems plausible. But another possibility: mediation is just a good way to clarify our thoughts, so that we can better achieve happiness along the same lines, and constraints, evolution set out? See what I mean?
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Replying to @Moshe_Hoffman
Yes, I see, but both from the well documented reports of practitioners and some personal experience, it allows significant reorganization of cortical structure and interpretation of rewards. These monks burning themselves alive in protest were mostly fine with that pain.
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Replying to @Plinz
Hmm, and i sure it’s not just pursuing one evolved reward (legacy?) instead of another (pain avoidance?)?
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Replying to @Moshe_Hoffman
Yes, you can totally learn to go down into the room where your brain stores the cookies and go nuts. Or learn not to. Our response to reward is malleable once we find the key.
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Replying to @Plinz
Hmm, But y would evolution. Have left the key laying around? Seems odd. Seems more plausible, at least a priori, that evolution would leave you with several rooms, each with their own rewards, and let you select the one you think you will be most successful in. No?
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Replying to @Moshe_Hoffman
Evolution certainly did implement locks, but the locks were not designed to deter people that figure out that it could pay off to sit down in a quiet room for a couple decades and try nothing but to pick them, and then became charismatic and powerful and built schools around this
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Replying to @Plinz
Hmm, But why would the picks to the locks lie in deep thought? Why would the keys be hidden in our minds only requiring attentiveness and mindfulness to find? That’s a strange place for a pick to be, no?
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Replying to @Moshe_Hoffman
I suspect that primary rewards are generated in the midbrain, but associated in the hippocampus and striatum with representations of situations and actions generated in the neocortex. We can learn to change both the associations and the cortical representations.
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For instance, we can learn to become entirely indifferent to rewards from sex and no longer anticipate such rewards, or we dissociate the self and the decision making from such signals, or we can learn to hallucinate more amazing sex than there could be in reality, etc.
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