Intellectual Property Law

Blog break

By Susan Crawford

Going offline briefly. Here’s something from The User Illusion for you, at p.220:

Our actions begin unconsciously! Even when we think we make a conscious decision to act, our brain starts half a second before we do so! Our consciousness is not the initiator — unconscious processes are! . . . [T]his result obviously runs deeply counter to our everyday image of what being a human being involves. Our consciousness dupes us!

It tells us that we can decide on what we do. Yet it is apparently a mere ripple on the surface, a little tin god pretending to be in charge of things beyond its control.

Full post as published by Susan Crawford Blog on May 12, 2008 (boomark / email).