Determinism.....

[Violet]

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries...d_decision

How interesting, from Wired:

Also, the predictions were not completely accurate. Maybe free will enters at the last moment, allowing a person to override an unpalatable subconscious decision.

Strange that I said the same thing about the balls above. Anyway, an interesting thing:

"It's not like you're a machine. Your brain activity is the physiological substance in which your personality and wishes and desires operate," he said.

Have I said anything different? Not at all. That a subroutine (subconscious) decides on the decision before we are made aware of it makes the decision (conscious) less complicated. That the subconscious part of the brain comes up with such an arbitrary decision as to which hand by which to push a button: the process of conscious decision is almost completely unnecessary.

I have a question to ask of this... (which the article makes provision for with

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"Real-life decisions -- am I going to buy this house or that one, take this job or that -- aren't decisions that we can implement very well in our brain scanners," said Haynes.

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) and my question is this: Why would we not automate this process? It requires nothing more than moving one's arms, and pushing a button... something we often do without bothering to think about it. There is no thought to take place in the process, so how is this evidence against free thought? It is an automatic process... the subconscious is an automatic process... why justify the arbitrary decision?

This seems to suggest even further (to me at least), that the subconscious is a simple system. Just a simply On/Off system. Why should a subconscious be anything more?

Btw, I could not access http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketscience...isions.php because it is blocked (web pages/personal... i despise school block). I'll look over the rest of your post soon, but I've many questions for the evidence you cited.