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People don't have any real control with what happens in their life. Sure they do. Saying that people don't have control over anything is like saying "the light
by NickM 7y ago
People don't have any real control with what happens in their life.
Sure they do. Saying that people don't have control over anything is like saying "the light switches in my house don't control the lights because the switches can't do anything without a person flipping them". Just because there's no spontaneous self-generated action that a switch can perform by itself doesn't mean that the switch isn't controlling something.
Looking at this from a different angle, do you believe that a digital simulation of your brain would produce the same kind of subjective experience of consciousness within the computer that you yourself perceive? Is subjective experience simply a side effect of certain types of computation? That may be true, but if you believe that, you start to get into some profoundly bizarre implications about the nature of reality. Check out the novel "Permutation City" by Greg Egan for a great exploration of this topic.
- sysbin 7y ago> Sure they do. Saying that people don't have control over anything is like saying "the light switches in my house don't control the lights because the switches can't do anything without a person flipping them". Just because there's no spontaneous self-generated action that a switch can perform by itself doesn't mean that the switch isn't controlling something. I disagree with your interpretation of control. The word is human expression and shared between one another. So you can have a different understanding of the word than mine and neither of us can truly hold power over the word. As for me control doesn't exist in reality because the light bulb doesn't actually control the outcome of the light turning on or off. The beginning of all events is really what controlled the forces to make the force of the light switch going on or off. > Looking at this from a different angle, do you believe that a digital simulation of your brain would produce the same kind of subjective experience of consciousness within the computer that you yourself perceive? Yes, I'll take a look at the novel you recommended.