And again you're twisting my words. I never said that "decision-making is an illusion", all I said is that the decision-making being a conscious process is an illusion. Decision-making is definitely happening, no doubt about it, but it's just not a conscious process, at least in this case.


No, just the brain itself. Something doesn't need to be conscious in order to be deceived.

I get the feeling there's a difference in how you two are defining "Consciousness."

I think of it as in a hierarchy, and not a total separation of conscious-unconscious. A conscious "free will" decision is the last check your brain / you gets on a tricky subject, one where your senses and more basic behind the scenes reasoning cannot come to census or a direct course of action. Its also why the results are not entirely surprising, from what I said earlier, because what more is there to equate in deciding a or b.

[this is all theory, not study]

Yep. You can't make a simple experiment like this and generalize and say consciousness doesn't take part on any decision. This experience is very simplistic, so this could easily not happen with other type of decisions.

Also, does this happen to everyone and everytime they tested it?

What is a conscious decision? Let's say it's a decision that was taken due to conscious thoughts AND it wasn't taken because of our subconscious' "hidden thought process".

Now imagine this decision: you have to decide if you're going to bed at midnight or 1 am. You previously decide that the time you'll go to bed depends on which of the 2 options has more advantages. You think of the advantages of each one, and then decide. The decision is only made when you think of every advantage for each one. So, isn't that decision conscious?

One could argue that the only decisions you make are: deciding to do this, and decide to go to bed at midnight or 1 am depending on which has the most advantages, and those can be made subconsciously. But after you see which option has the most advantages, isn't actually going to bed a decision too? You must think of going to bed to do it, and think of getting up from the sofa and walk to do it, so I guess that's a decision too. And that decision came from conscious thoughts AND it wasn't taken because of our subconscious' "hidden thought processes", because we thought of the advantages for each option. Therefore, the last decision of going to bed is a conscious decision.

How could thinking of the advantages be subconscious? Which makes the decision of thinking, subconscious?

Conclusion: This is all very ambiguous. Perhaps the most inteligent thing to do is to say that conscious and subconscious are together, and a decision you do is based on that conscious-subconscious mind, rather than only 1. Anyway, this is a very complex subject that can't be taken lightly.

Broken people
and illusions.
Synaptic firings
much confusion.
All this mental crafterbating
has me loler-contemplating
how the [censored] Ben Folds improvises so.

Oh I edited I made a conscious descion six seconds before I saw I misspelled synaptic.
Yay Me!!


Also, the study only gives two options of choice, either push the left button or the right. Real life has far more complex choices. :shrug:

Dubito ergo cogito ergo sum.

As silly as that might sound, it makes a good deal of sense.

Our "self" does not necessarily need to be something readily apparent to us. It could conceivably include our sub-conscious, in which case, we could still be dictating the action prior to realizing that we are dictating it.

It sort of skirts the issue of whether or not a "self" is purely the mind/thoughts, or something more. Although given the injunctions at the beginning of this thread, such a topic is best discussed elsewhere.
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Additionally, although I have yet to watch the video in full, I have some slight issues with the nature of the test. When one places two buttons in front of an individual, it is entirely likely that one may already have a bias towards one button prior to this measurable thought process. It is similar to looking at a menu and already having a desire to eat a hamburger, prior to actually evaluating the menu as a whole.

Given that the individuals only have two options to choose from (and the fact that some people tend to flock towards one side out of habit) it is not entirely unlikely that the person could have been thinking about pushing the left or right button all along, rather than simply acting on pure instinct. This creates a bit of a problem in that the experiment is not entirely pure and implies a result without taking such a variable into account.

Although if such an issue were addressed in the video, then I would gladly concede that this theory does not apply.

Just want to clarify with people as something might be misleading in the title. Human decisions are only predictable when the person is consciously thinking about it. If we tried to predict the neurons that are firing six seconds in advance I doubt we would have all that much luck. Give it a decade and we might know more by then. That is all.

In the words of a Zen Koan:

Do you believe that you knew what you thought?

The only thing I know for sure is that I know nothing.