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Free will is highly overstated though: as the parent comment said, everything you think and believe and thus do is linked to a particular social context. That's

Free will is highly overstated though: as the parent comment said, everything you think and believe and thus do is linked to a particular social context. That's true for the stuff you buy, the stuff you believe in, the things you think are "wrong" or "right" or "normal" or "abnormal". When you start looking/living in other societies you realise that all of these is just cultural norms.

mnky9800n 8y ago
This is true but it's not cause and effect like OP suggests. If it were then marketing would be a solved problem.
atoav 8y ago
But it makes a difference whether you are part of creating a society within which a entities fortune is based on exploiting (and feeding into) the believes of gullible victims or whether you try to create a society in which you try to bring out the best from within the people. The latter is some sort of humanism, that ultimately resulted in all the things we collectively seem to value about western societies, while the former is more or less responsible for the biggest problems we have. So even if free will turns out a complete illusion, it would still matter how people treat each other based on that idea. Usually you can amend it to: “Free will is an illusion, at least for those poor idiots who have nobody but themselves to blame for it, which is why it is socially acceptable for me to exploit them” (This is not aimed at you, it is just a thought that crossed my mind, when I read your comment)
- JabavuAdams 8y ago
  When you have an exploitable information asymmetry, do you exploit others with it, or do you inoculate others to it? * or do you exploit others with it until you're financially comfortable and morally uncomfortable, at which point you pivot, mea culpa, and educate...
raxxorrax 8y ago
So if we wanted to disprove that, we need to find this one guy that is in the same social groups but believes something fundamentally different? I think this is overgeneralized and the effect that people agree on a set of believes/values/rules isn't a good indicator of the presence of free will. There might be other mechanisms involved.

mnky9800n 8y ago

This is true but it's not cause and effect like OP suggests. If it were then marketing would be a solved problem.

atoav 8y ago

But it makes a difference whether you are part of creating a society within which a entities fortune is based on exploiting (and feeding into) the believes of gullible victims or whether you try to create a society in which you try to bring out the best from within the people. The latter is some sort of humanism, that ultimately resulted in all the things we collectively seem to value about western societies, while the former is more or less responsible for the biggest problems we have. So even if free will turns out a complete illusion, it would still matter how people treat each other based on that idea. Usually you can amend it to: “Free will is an illusion, at least for those poor idiots who have nobody but themselves to blame for it, which is why it is socially acceptable for me to exploit them” (This is not aimed at you, it is just a thought that crossed my mind, when I read your comment)

JabavuAdams 8y ago
When you have an exploitable information asymmetry, do you exploit others with it, or do you inoculate others to it? * or do you exploit others with it until you're financially comfortable and morally uncomfortable, at which point you pivot, mea culpa, and educate...

raxxorrax 8y ago

So if we wanted to disprove that, we need to find this one guy that is in the same social groups but believes something fundamentally different? I think this is overgeneralized and the effect that people agree on a set of believes/values/rules isn't a good indicator of the presence of free will. There might be other mechanisms involved.