Ever make a decision based on how you felt from reading a book? Not that weak-willed, you say? Well you probably are! Think about it, like that time you read Harry Potter and rode a broom around? Or when you read Lord of the Rings and were a giant nerd. You’re such a nerd, nerd.
Are morals a choice, or is our brain wired to cause grief? Perhaps both? I think we can probably rewire our brains, if we want to, but people are made up of chemicals a little more than we care to admit. Still, self-awareness is some crazy batch of special chemical.
If looks could kill. The pen is mightier than the sword. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to call this the most destructive weapon of all time.
Amazing, all of my commentary disappeared. There are some new theories about how to play the Prisoner’s Dilemma. There’s something so creepy but interesting about these simple mind-games. It’s like practical application of philosophy on behavioural psychology; villain school type stuff.
The troubling aspect of this game, the reason it is infamous, is that it seems clear that each player’s best strategy is always to defect. Whichever pawn is in my hand, you will do better by defecting: if I have cooperated, then defecting will make you £20 richer than you would be by cooperating, and if I have defected then your defecting will spare you a loss of £10. Yet we collectively are punished for our cold rationality, for if we both defect then we are both worse off than if we had both cooperated.
We can’t move while we sleep due to two chemicals, GABA and glycine, flooding our brains. When someone has sleep paralysis (which I have experienced, it’s terrifying) or sleep walks, it’s due to the chemical balance being off. Soon there will be pills for everything.
