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On the contrary dude, I don't think you've gone deep enough. To dismiss the parent comment on some vague existential bemusement seems near insidious in intent.

On the contrary dude, I don't think you've gone deep enough. To dismiss the parent comment on some vague existential bemusement seems near insidious in intent. At the risk of derailing this conversation into semi-unrelated philosophical conversations: Why is it you would prefer 2 to 3?

SCHiM 9y ago
> vague existential bemusement We'll that is why I asked people to talk me out of it ;) Most people that I meet either assume 2 from the get go, reasonable because that's how everything appears to us at first glance. 3 Basically means we don't even exist, in the sense that you can't have agency/identity/whatever you want to pinpoint as 'you' if everything is predetermined. The closes analogy to 'real' (this is always a problem when discussing such things) people in our world is the experience a film character 'has' when it's played (none, it's not an agent). Basically from 3 follows that, however counter-intuitive it seems to 3-type-people, you have no agency, no thoughts, no freedom, no choice I'd argue that you don't even exist or alternitively that you have always existed. Can you even say that causality exists if every location of every particle/wave/force/field/w\e has already been predetermined? AFAIK science does not really know if this is the case, and the only science I understand is the layman's tl/dr. But the general consensus, again AFIAK, seems to be: do more experiments, we're unsure as of yet. I only know that we live in the macro world, and in the macro world the case for predeterminism is pretty darn strong. I'd prefer 2 over 3, because 2 is the only place where a possibility exists for ethics and/or freedom. I can't be ethical if I can't 'do' anything. I can't 'do' anything if 'I' don't even exist (which I'd argue is the case in 3).
- bufbupa 9y ago
  See other replies to your parent comment for other ways of phrasing that free will as it relates to ethics is generally deemed a moot consideration. That is, we can't predict the future from our perspective of reality (computationally prohibitive, non-deterministic, etc), so what the future will be can’t be taken into consideration for decisions of the present. To me, your concern seems more related to the meaning of life rather than the presence of free will though? Unfortunately, I fear that’s may be too broad a subject to fruitfully assess on a medium such as this forum.. At the least, I’d argue ‘you’ existing is the only thing you can really be sure of. “I think, therefore I am”. It’s harder to tell if others exist, and there are several branches of philosophy that outright conject that nobody else other than yourself does exist. EG: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solipsism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solipsism

SCHiM 9y ago

> vague existential bemusement We'll that is why I asked people to talk me out of it ;) Most people that I meet either assume 2 from the get go, reasonable because that's how everything appears to us at first glance. 3 Basically means we don't even exist, in the sense that you can't have agency/identity/whatever you want to pinpoint as 'you' if everything is predetermined. The closes analogy to 'real' (this is always a problem when discussing such things) people in our world is the experience a film character 'has' when it's played (none, it's not an agent). Basically from 3 follows that, however counter-intuitive it seems to 3-type-people, you have no agency, no thoughts, no freedom, no choice I'd argue that you don't even exist or alternitively that you have always existed. Can you even say that causality exists if every location of every particle/wave/force/field/w\e has already been predetermined? AFAIK science does not really know if this is the case, and the only science I understand is the layman's tl/dr. But the general consensus, again AFIAK, seems to be: do more experiments, we're unsure as of yet. I only know that we live in the macro world, and in the macro world the case for predeterminism is pretty darn strong. I'd prefer 2 over 3, because 2 is the only place where a possibility exists for ethics and/or freedom. I can't be ethical if I can't 'do' anything. I can't 'do' anything if 'I' don't even exist (which I'd argue is the case in 3).

bufbupa 9y ago
See other replies to your parent comment for other ways of phrasing that free will as it relates to ethics is generally deemed a moot consideration. That is, we can't predict the future from our perspective of reality (computationally prohibitive, non-deterministic, etc), so what the future will be can’t be taken into consideration for decisions of the present. To me, your concern seems more related to the meaning of life rather than the presence of free will though? Unfortunately, I fear that’s may be too broad a subject to fruitfully assess on a medium such as this forum.. At the least, I’d argue ‘you’ existing is the only thing you can really be sure of. “I think, therefore I am”. It’s harder to tell if others exist, and there are several branches of philosophy that outright conject that nobody else other than yourself does exist. EG: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solipsism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solipsism