Research shows your brain knows quite well the computations it needs to validate how hard it's willing to work to get any particular thing. (Science Daily: How the brain decides between effort and reward)
Read the article for more details of it but you know intuitively this mechanism is one of the most screwed-up aspects of our mental processing. According to the research, multiple neural circuits are needed in the brain to determine whether something is 'worth doing' so presumably that means a failure in any of them means you will make a bad decision.
The neural circuits are maybe the 'software' as opposed to proteins doing biochemical magic based on DNA. There must be some process for creating the neural circuits based on the DNA defining the individual but the actual processing of the circuits is after that fact or theory as you will.
One of the most glaring bad examples of effort / reward analysis is in terms of opiate narcotics. The subject makes a review of circumstance, life, or whatever variables may exist and determines, yes, it's worth it to try this heroin. One or more of those evaluation circuits failed and obviously so when it came up with such a wrong answer.
It doesn't seem it should be necessary to add circuits for depression or the like since likely they would be part of the decision matrix anyway for whether something is worth doing. Too much risk of getting too Doctor Phil with this but you can dance around with it all you like.
There's a great deal of research toward interfering with the nature of addictive chemicals, to thwart them or whatever. Perhaps that's effective but anyone with even a small experience with psychoactive drugs knows the chemical aspect is relatively minor and most of it is in your head. Therefore, it seems the psychological understanding sought in the current research goes most directly toward that.
It may seem depersonalizing to some extent when scientists portray the brain / mind as a skeleton with all these component parts but this one is headed for the cheesiest of segues since what we are is in the space between things and here's Silas to tell it.
The reason for the compositing is I'm Silas and I'm also Silas so making it twisted in this way lets me show two worlds of weird at the same time in one of the more demented ways I've tried. Extreme light effects may be disturbing.
Actually returning to the topic, music is primo for the subject of evaluation of effort and reward since the chances are high it doesn't matter how how hard you work because you ain' gonna make it, Bluesman. We convince ourselves, well, it's cool just to be able to play, isn't it. That's true, it is, but the most diggin' it thing is when someone else gets off on the jams. It probably (sob) ain't goin' happen so the effort / reward decision matrix in this particular matter in humans is right up the chute.
(Ed: what chute?)
Come to think of it, I have no idea what chute.
Read the article for more details of it but you know intuitively this mechanism is one of the most screwed-up aspects of our mental processing. According to the research, multiple neural circuits are needed in the brain to determine whether something is 'worth doing' so presumably that means a failure in any of them means you will make a bad decision.
The neural circuits are maybe the 'software' as opposed to proteins doing biochemical magic based on DNA. There must be some process for creating the neural circuits based on the DNA defining the individual but the actual processing of the circuits is after that fact or theory as you will.
One of the most glaring bad examples of effort / reward analysis is in terms of opiate narcotics. The subject makes a review of circumstance, life, or whatever variables may exist and determines, yes, it's worth it to try this heroin. One or more of those evaluation circuits failed and obviously so when it came up with such a wrong answer.
It doesn't seem it should be necessary to add circuits for depression or the like since likely they would be part of the decision matrix anyway for whether something is worth doing. Too much risk of getting too Doctor Phil with this but you can dance around with it all you like.
There's a great deal of research toward interfering with the nature of addictive chemicals, to thwart them or whatever. Perhaps that's effective but anyone with even a small experience with psychoactive drugs knows the chemical aspect is relatively minor and most of it is in your head. Therefore, it seems the psychological understanding sought in the current research goes most directly toward that.
It may seem depersonalizing to some extent when scientists portray the brain / mind as a skeleton with all these component parts but this one is headed for the cheesiest of segues since what we are is in the space between things and here's Silas to tell it.
The reason for the compositing is I'm Silas and I'm also Silas so making it twisted in this way lets me show two worlds of weird at the same time in one of the more demented ways I've tried. Extreme light effects may be disturbing.
Actually returning to the topic, music is primo for the subject of evaluation of effort and reward since the chances are high it doesn't matter how how hard you work because you ain' gonna make it, Bluesman. We convince ourselves, well, it's cool just to be able to play, isn't it. That's true, it is, but the most diggin' it thing is when someone else gets off on the jams. It probably (sob) ain't goin' happen so the effort / reward decision matrix in this particular matter in humans is right up the chute.
(Ed: what chute?)
Come to think of it, I have no idea what chute.
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