[FRIAM] intgegration

[glen]

I doubt I've parsed this well. The metaphor doesn't help me understand. But I can focus in on the last part:

"collectively, those correlations are mostly found (in humans, a lot of mammals, and birds) in the left-brain. This is true even in 'right-handed' individuals."

You put a LOT of rhetorical weight on "mostly". I feel like this is analogous to the conversations about biological sex being (or not) a spectrum. Yes, *most* people seem to have *some* similarity in the way their brains are organized. That's fine as far as it goes. But it's not even wrong to then make a strong assertion about any 1 person ... or even set a likelihood for any 1 person. I.e. just because most people are organized in some (ill-stated) way doesn't mean you, or I, or any one particular person is organized that way.

Although low powered, https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2002981117 gives some evidence of the composition fallacy being committed, here. The numbers in there aren't insignificant. 32%, 35%, 44%, 50%. But even if they were as low as the intersex numbers (0.02%-2%), you'd still be talking about a huge number of people (0.02%*9e9=1.64e6). Add to that the idea that most of such studies are so low-powered and conducted on WEIRD people, we have almost 0 credible hypotheses about where "most" people land in these categories ... or even if the categories are coherent. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1357650X.2023.2263199 is a systematic review whose numbers might be a little more trustworthy (sample sizes of the 17 studies that met their inclusion criteria are in [15,76], pretty damned small for us to make sweeping claims over 8.2 billion people).

Pick a concrete hypothesis in where some function is "mostly found" and run the numbers. That's what we'd do if we actually cared about what we're saying.

Anyway, a little epistemic humility is warranted.

On 3/25/25 11:39 AM, Prof David West wrote:
> glen noted: /"I've also accused Dave of the composition fallacy in arguing for high order psychological phenomena as an effect of low order brain lateralization."/
> 
> My perception of the "accusation," such as it was, was nothing more than gentle chiding for stating my position poorly.
> 
> Please indulge a second attempt; beginning with a metaphor. Imagine an orchestra playing. Some instruments produce low toned sounds, others of higher pitch. Normally this variety of sounds meshes well and produces an harmonious output.
> 
> Enter our sound engineer who, for as yet unknown reasons, decides to select and amplify the bass notes over the treble. This changes the output significantly; eventually to the point where the treble, while still there, is indiscernible.
> 
> Now imagine that the sound engineer's motives are nothing more than the fact bass can be used to affect the world around the orchestra: introducing paranoia in the audience, shaking the foundations of the orchestra hall, etc.
> 
> The musicians in the orchestra are, independently, paying attention to different parts of the score.
> 
> Substitute "reality" for the score, the "mind/brain" for the orchestra, and 'cultural [I.e., not biological] evolution' for the sound engineer.  The 'bass' part of the orchestra 'pays-attention-to' reality using 'instruments" like logic, math, and algorithms, the "treble" using instruments like empathy, connection, and whole-ness.
> 
> The 'bass' part increases in "volume" for the simple fact that its means for attending to the world provide such culturally valuable outputs; such as nuclear weapons and ChatGPT. The 'treble' remains, but is simply overwhelmed.
> 
> Then, of course, too many assert the claim that the "treble" is irrelevant, blind to the fact that it is still there and is still contributing to the whole. the most vocal advocates of AI are exemplars.
> 
> Given the preceding, it might be interesting, or perhaps just foolish, to ask if we can 'map' our perceptions, our modes of thinking, our means of attending to the world, to the physiological substrate—the body. We can make some gross correlations: if I am blind, my attending to visual stimuli is altered.
> 
> In the case of the brain itself we can find some, perhaps interesting, correlations as well. There is a particular locus that does not become 'active', i.e., show brainwave activity, until several months after birth and that correlates with the first time an infant appears to recognize it is separate from its mother (and the rest of the world). Perhaps coincidentally, Zen meditation suppresses activity in that same location and the monk feels "as One with the Universe."
> 
> Brain lateralization is nothing more than a collection of such correlations. And it is just a 'coincidence' that, collectively, those correlations are mostly found (in humans, a lot of mammals, and birds) in the left-brain. This is true even in 'right-handed' individuals. Octopi (most cephalopods) exhibit the two modes of 'attending to the world' as humans and birds, but they lack lateralizaion—most neurons are in the body, only a small amount in the central brain. an interesting network of specialized "lobes."
> 
> davew
> 
-- 
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