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Eh, I don't know if you want to take it quite that far. Your genes might predispose you towards one path or another, but there is still free will involved. Comp

by gh02t 9y ago

Eh, I don't know if you want to take it quite that far. Your genes might predispose you towards one path or another, but there is still free will involved. Complex sociological events like someone committing a criminal act can't just be reduced to "their genes made them do it." There are other factors involved and they are far more complex than what can be reduced to simple genetics. I think sexual orientation is probably an inherent trait in most people, but to say something like educational success is just a result of genetics and not other factors like teachers, parents etc is simplistic. Not to mention that the universe is hardly deterministic. Chaos theory and quantum physics show quite clearly that randomness and unpredictability are fundamental.

brucephillips 9y ago
> Your genes might predispose you towards one path or another, but there is still free will involved. Genetic determinism is not the same as free will. Our genes don't determine everything, but together with our environment, they do.
- gh02t 9y ago
  They don't determine everything is my point. Environment paired with genetics has a strong (sometimes overwhelming) influence on the decisions you make for sure, and they make many decisions harder or easier, but you still maintain the ability to choose. Free will isn't the ability to make any choice without external influences, it's just that you have a choice at all.
  - brucephillips 9y ago
    What are you calling a choice? Are you simply saying that people act? Then yes, that's of course tautologically true.
    - md224 9y ago
      I think we just have an unbridgeable gap of beliefs here: one of you believes that they are the ultimate author of their own words and actions, that their experience of making decisions should be taken as strong evidence that they are in fact making decisions, and that any theory that denied this fact would be in need of revision. The other believes that the scientific enterprise has conclusively disproven the possibility of actual free will, and therefore agency is merely an illusion. Lately I’ve been siding with the first stance, but I can understand both. It comes down to the strength of your faith that Science understands (for the most part) all of the essential features of reality, and also your trust in your immediate experience. It’s a tough question.
      - gh02t 9y ago
        Not quite, at least in my case. Like I said I do think that people mostly are the sum of their parts. It's just that for me, the possibility that anyone can escape their circumstances makes it irrational (as well as immoral) to totally exclude a class of people based on characteristics like genetics. The ultimate debate is on sociological reflexivity, and I don't believe that someone's behavior can ever be totally deterministically predicted, analogous to how certain physical phenomena like radioactive decay are truly random. Which is not what the other comment was saying I don't think, but the parent comment was. Edit to add: and even if human behavior was actually a deterministic function of their history it'd surely be a chaotic system. I can't say I really see much difference in that case.
        deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
    - gh02t 9y ago
      It's more that I'm saying humans have agency (in the philosophical meaning of the word). You can't know with 100% certainty what a person will do, even with perfect knowledge of everything about them. You can predict with very high confidence, but never certainty, because people can (and occasionally do) act randomly. That said, I do believe that people are more or less the sum of their parts and I accept that genetics are especially important. However, there are always people who defy expectations. I just don't except that it is a totally deterministic connection.
  - peteretep 9y ago
    > They don't determine everything is my point What else affects agency? I think you have to look to religion, rather than science, to come to any conclusion other than human actions being essentially deterministic.
- exclusiv 9y ago
  I believe in free will but I think it's possible it doesn't exist at a 100% level in practice as you allude to with genes, environment, history, brain chemistry, etc. If you imagined free will as Madden football awareness ratings, some will be close to 100 but many others will be a lot lower. So sane people aren't incapable of making the right choice but they are incapable of doing as reliably as others across multiple scenarios over time because there are a lot of other factors at play than being human and having free will.
moosinho 9y ago
It is a common misconception that Chaos theory and Quantum Mechanics show that universe is random. Chaos theory is a perfectly deterministic theory that basically means fragility to initial conditions. Quantum Mechanics, at least in Copenhagen interpretation does imply that the universe is random. But there at least 2 more, perfectly deterministic interpretations that make exactly the same predictions as the non-deterministic one. These are Many Worlds Interpretation and Bohmian Mechanics.
- gh02t 9y ago
  Chaos theory doesn't imply randomness, it implies unpredictability. Hyper sensitivity to initial conditions means you can't reliably predict the exact outcome, because it's impossible to observe all the relevant initial conditions accurately enough. I can't, for example, predict the trajectory of a actual double-rod pendulum except at fairly short time intervals even though the governing equations are known, because practically I cannot measure the initial conditions precisely enough. I would argue that even if you could write a master equation to predict human behavior perfectly it'd likely either be so sensitive to initial conditions it'd be useless or have so many initial conditions that you wouldn't be able to determine them all. I guess I'm not super expert on QM or some of its different interpretations, but from our point of view there's not a whole lot of difference between multiple universes and actual randomness is there?

by gh02t 9y ago

brucephillips 9y ago

> Your genes might predispose you towards one path or another, but there is still free will involved. Genetic determinism is not the same as free will. Our genes don't determine everything, but together with our environment, they do.

gh02t 9y ago
They don't determine everything is my point. Environment paired with genetics has a strong (sometimes overwhelming) influence on the decisions you make for sure, and they make many decisions harder or easier, but you still maintain the ability to choose. Free will isn't the ability to make any choice without external influences, it's just that you have a choice at all.
- brucephillips 9y ago
  What are you calling a choice? Are you simply saying that people act? Then yes, that's of course tautologically true.
  - md224 9y ago
    I think we just have an unbridgeable gap of beliefs here: one of you believes that they are the ultimate author of their own words and actions, that their experience of making decisions should be taken as strong evidence that they are in fact making decisions, and that any theory that denied this fact would be in need of revision. The other believes that the scientific enterprise has conclusively disproven the possibility of actual free will, and therefore agency is merely an illusion. Lately I’ve been siding with the first stance, but I can understand both. It comes down to the strength of your faith that Science understands (for the most part) all of the essential features of reality, and also your trust in your immediate experience. It’s a tough question.
    - gh02t 9y ago
      Not quite, at least in my case. Like I said I do think that people mostly are the sum of their parts. It's just that for me, the possibility that anyone can escape their circumstances makes it irrational (as well as immoral) to totally exclude a class of people based on characteristics like genetics. The ultimate debate is on sociological reflexivity, and I don't believe that someone's behavior can ever be totally deterministically predicted, analogous to how certain physical phenomena like radioactive decay are truly random. Which is not what the other comment was saying I don't think, but the parent comment was. Edit to add: and even if human behavior was actually a deterministic function of their history it'd surely be a chaotic system. I can't say I really see much difference in that case.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
  - gh02t 9y ago
    It's more that I'm saying humans have agency (in the philosophical meaning of the word). You can't know with 100% certainty what a person will do, even with perfect knowledge of everything about them. You can predict with very high confidence, but never certainty, because people can (and occasionally do) act randomly. That said, I do believe that people are more or less the sum of their parts and I accept that genetics are especially important. However, there are always people who defy expectations. I just don't except that it is a totally deterministic connection.
- peteretep 9y ago
  > They don't determine everything is my point What else affects agency? I think you have to look to religion, rather than science, to come to any conclusion other than human actions being essentially deterministic.
exclusiv 9y ago
I believe in free will but I think it's possible it doesn't exist at a 100% level in practice as you allude to with genes, environment, history, brain chemistry, etc. If you imagined free will as Madden football awareness ratings, some will be close to 100 but many others will be a lot lower. So sane people aren't incapable of making the right choice but they are incapable of doing as reliably as others across multiple scenarios over time because there are a lot of other factors at play than being human and having free will.

moosinho 9y ago

It is a common misconception that Chaos theory and Quantum Mechanics show that universe is random. Chaos theory is a perfectly deterministic theory that basically means fragility to initial conditions. Quantum Mechanics, at least in Copenhagen interpretation does imply that the universe is random. But there at least 2 more, perfectly deterministic interpretations that make exactly the same predictions as the non-deterministic one. These are Many Worlds Interpretation and Bohmian Mechanics.

gh02t 9y ago
Chaos theory doesn't imply randomness, it implies unpredictability. Hyper sensitivity to initial conditions means you can't reliably predict the exact outcome, because it's impossible to observe all the relevant initial conditions accurately enough. I can't, for example, predict the trajectory of a actual double-rod pendulum except at fairly short time intervals even though the governing equations are known, because practically I cannot measure the initial conditions precisely enough. I would argue that even if you could write a master equation to predict human behavior perfectly it'd likely either be so sensitive to initial conditions it'd be useless or have so many initial conditions that you wouldn't be able to determine them all. I guess I'm not super expert on QM or some of its different interpretations, but from our point of view there's not a whole lot of difference between multiple universes and actual randomness is there?