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Free will is an illusion and simply it doesn't exist. You cannot make either a choice or decision that's truly your own. Simply, you cannot without being effec

by sysbin 7y ago

Free will is an illusion and simply it doesn't exist. You cannot make either a choice or decision that's truly your own. Simply, you cannot without being effected by the system you're in. People don't choose the life they're born into and why does anything that comes after birth be assumed differently. The answer cultural conditioning and from religious ideology that has rooted deeply into society. The belief that god gave humanity free will. No part of your actions are truly the responsibility of you as a person but the fate of cause & effect and everything outside one's control. The system of society with genetics & environment being imperfect makes bad people. Otherwise we would just have 'people' in a system of perfect equality.

ohaideredevs 7y ago
I agree with you 100%, but I think it's better to 'choose' to believe you can do better, despite knowing, factually, that you are just a product of your environment. In other words, "I can improve myself" is a pragmatic outlook. Of course, you can respond with "but you can't even choose that outlook", which I don't disagree with.
- sysbin 7y ago
  > but I think it's better to 'choose' to believe you can do better I disagree, I theorize it's the same as when the majority of humanity wanted to believe the world is flat and or there is a God that judges us all. Society is the outcome of the majority consensus. So basically I assume many lives are being punished because the majority consensus doesn't understand cause & effect.
turk73 7y ago
Oh whatever. I can walk the fuck out of my job and quit today if I so choose. Is that not free will? I didn't say there would not be consequences, only that it is 100% possible as I've done that very thing in the past. One of my relatives majored in Philosophy and has his head up his own ass in all this stuff. I find him quite amusing. He reads too many books and has suffered 0.0 actual hardships in his life and yet he is somehow an expert and gleefully gives other people lots of shitty advice. And I did choose my own life--given my early circumstances and what I was "born into" I eventually rejected 99% of it, moved away, and created my own more positive life. It's hard to break the mold, but certainly not impossible. Cultural conditioning and religion are bullshit traps, same as collectivism, which is another huge, unbelievable lie. I'm not saying it isn't difficult, but you can break free. As far as being a "difficult person" I own that!
AnthonyMouse 7y ago
Let's suppose you're right and non-determinism doesn't exist. (Quantum physics apparently disagrees, but never mind that.) It doesn't matter. Treating people as though they have agency is still necessary, because how we treat them would affect their deterministic state function. If someone commits murder and we say it was only a product of their environment and they have no agency, therefore we shouldn't punish them, well, that's the sort of "choice" that, on a systemic level, causes more people to commit murder. Even if they have no "choice" in the matter -- especially then -- creating an environment in which murder has personal benefits outweighing the personal costs is societally maladaptive. And so it is with everything else. If we want people to give to charity and go to college and not steal from others then we have to act as if they chose whether or not to do those things and reward or punish them accordingly.
- bena 7y ago
  Also, the paradox is that it doesn't matter one bit whether free will exists or not. Because either it does and we are making conscious choices and everything that normally follows with that. Or it doesn't and everything we say, do, and think is predetermined. However, if that's the case, then you are predetermined to be someone to be swayed by certain arguments. You are predetermined to either believe or not in free will. And you cannot change that. Because even if this convinces you one way or the other, I had no choice in typing it, and you had no choice in reading it. This was going to happen based on whatever determines things. So free will not existing wouldn't change anything. Because some people are predetermined to believe that regardless of the reason, murderers should be punished.
  - sysbin 7y ago
    Well, I'm proclaiming free will doesn't exist. Neuroscience exhibits supporting evidence that we don't have free will. There hasn't been anything exhibiting that we have free will. Your rhetoric that nothing matters could have been used when people assumed the world was flat and others were challenging that popular assumption. Nonetheless, the world gets better overtime and when people have a realistic understanding of reality. So change does happen but yes it's going to happen whether we like it to or not. That's a thrilling thing to observe and to be aware of that nature of reality is a good thing. > murderers should be punished. No, they should be rehabilitated and educated of the cause & effect for their actions. Otherwise humanity is failing the unfortunate that didn't have any real control.
SkyBelow 7y ago
>Free will is an illusion and simply it doesn't exist. I'll ante with Pascal's wager and say it does exist. If I'm right, then I'm right. If I'm wrong, then the whole notion of right and wrong aren't applicable to reality, no different than CH4 + 2O2 => CO2 + 2H2O just being and not having a right or wrong to it. Unless there is an alternative to the options free will exists and free will does not exist, then this wager does not suffer the same flaw that the original does.
- sysbin 7y ago
  Pascal's wager (the original) has a flaw in it. One doesn't know and or can prove if God is evil. So I don't really know how else to respond to what you wrote.
  - SkyBelow 7y ago
    Free will as a concept is much simpler than God as a concept, and thus the flaws in the original wager don't apply (as far as I can tell, if you can find one that does apply let me know).
    - sysbinn 7y ago
      > Free will as a concept is much simpler than God as a concept How so? I assume the opposite when it comes to what's simpler. A person sees creation by God as cause & effect. The free will concept doesn't even make sense if thought about. Your actions are cause & effect from the summation of all events experienced.
      - SkyBelow 7y ago
        For starters, generally the view is that free will either exists or doesn't exist with free will being the concept that we have some control over our actions. Compare this to God, where you have plenty of religions, many with their own distinction God, some with many, some with concepts that may or may not quite count as God. Even with just Christianity, you have God, but then you have the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit which makes up God. With some belief systems you have spirits which are kinda like a god but kinda not and with other systems you have demigods which are part human. So with free will, you options are: Option | Free Will 1 | N 2 | Y With gods, you options are Option | God | Trinity | Allah | Shiva | Zeus | Thor | ... 1 | N | N | N | N... 2 | Y | N | N | N... 3 | N | Y | N | N... ... And that isn't even counting the difference within a given religion. It is like comparing the cardinality of boolean options with the cardinality of the reals.

by sysbin 7y ago

ohaideredevs 7y ago

I agree with you 100%, but I think it's better to 'choose' to believe you can do better, despite knowing, factually, that you are just a product of your environment. In other words, "I can improve myself" is a pragmatic outlook. Of course, you can respond with "but you can't even choose that outlook", which I don't disagree with.

sysbin 7y ago
> but I think it's better to 'choose' to believe you can do better I disagree, I theorize it's the same as when the majority of humanity wanted to believe the world is flat and or there is a God that judges us all. Society is the outcome of the majority consensus. So basically I assume many lives are being punished because the majority consensus doesn't understand cause & effect.

turk73 7y ago

Oh whatever. I can walk the fuck out of my job and quit today if I so choose. Is that not free will? I didn't say there would not be consequences, only that it is 100% possible as I've done that very thing in the past. One of my relatives majored in Philosophy and has his head up his own ass in all this stuff. I find him quite amusing. He reads too many books and has suffered 0.0 actual hardships in his life and yet he is somehow an expert and gleefully gives other people lots of shitty advice. And I did choose my own life--given my early circumstances and what I was "born into" I eventually rejected 99% of it, moved away, and created my own more positive life. It's hard to break the mold, but certainly not impossible. Cultural conditioning and religion are bullshit traps, same as collectivism, which is another huge, unbelievable lie. I'm not saying it isn't difficult, but you can break free. As far as being a "difficult person" I own that!

AnthonyMouse 7y ago

Let's suppose you're right and non-determinism doesn't exist. (Quantum physics apparently disagrees, but never mind that.) It doesn't matter. Treating people as though they have agency is still necessary, because how we treat them would affect their deterministic state function. If someone commits murder and we say it was only a product of their environment and they have no agency, therefore we shouldn't punish them, well, that's the sort of "choice" that, on a systemic level, causes more people to commit murder. Even if they have no "choice" in the matter -- especially then -- creating an environment in which murder has personal benefits outweighing the personal costs is societally maladaptive. And so it is with everything else. If we want people to give to charity and go to college and not steal from others then we have to act as if they chose whether or not to do those things and reward or punish them accordingly.

bena 7y ago
Also, the paradox is that it doesn't matter one bit whether free will exists or not. Because either it does and we are making conscious choices and everything that normally follows with that. Or it doesn't and everything we say, do, and think is predetermined. However, if that's the case, then you are predetermined to be someone to be swayed by certain arguments. You are predetermined to either believe or not in free will. And you cannot change that. Because even if this convinces you one way or the other, I had no choice in typing it, and you had no choice in reading it. This was going to happen based on whatever determines things. So free will not existing wouldn't change anything. Because some people are predetermined to believe that regardless of the reason, murderers should be punished.
- sysbin 7y ago
  Well, I'm proclaiming free will doesn't exist. Neuroscience exhibits supporting evidence that we don't have free will. There hasn't been anything exhibiting that we have free will. Your rhetoric that nothing matters could have been used when people assumed the world was flat and others were challenging that popular assumption. Nonetheless, the world gets better overtime and when people have a realistic understanding of reality. So change does happen but yes it's going to happen whether we like it to or not. That's a thrilling thing to observe and to be aware of that nature of reality is a good thing. > murderers should be punished. No, they should be rehabilitated and educated of the cause & effect for their actions. Otherwise humanity is failing the unfortunate that didn't have any real control.

SkyBelow 7y ago

>Free will is an illusion and simply it doesn't exist. I'll ante with Pascal's wager and say it does exist. If I'm right, then I'm right. If I'm wrong, then the whole notion of right and wrong aren't applicable to reality, no different than CH4 + 2O2 => CO2 + 2H2O just being and not having a right or wrong to it. Unless there is an alternative to the options free will exists and free will does not exist, then this wager does not suffer the same flaw that the original does.

sysbin 7y ago
Pascal's wager (the original) has a flaw in it. One doesn't know and or can prove if God is evil. So I don't really know how else to respond to what you wrote.
- SkyBelow 7y ago
  Free will as a concept is much simpler than God as a concept, and thus the flaws in the original wager don't apply (as far as I can tell, if you can find one that does apply let me know).
  - sysbinn 7y ago
    > Free will as a concept is much simpler than God as a concept How so? I assume the opposite when it comes to what's simpler. A person sees creation by God as cause & effect. The free will concept doesn't even make sense if thought about. Your actions are cause & effect from the summation of all events experienced.
    - SkyBelow 7y ago
      For starters, generally the view is that free will either exists or doesn't exist with free will being the concept that we have some control over our actions. Compare this to God, where you have plenty of religions, many with their own distinction God, some with many, some with concepts that may or may not quite count as God. Even with just Christianity, you have God, but then you have the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit which makes up God. With some belief systems you have spirits which are kinda like a god but kinda not and with other systems you have demigods which are part human. So with free will, you options are: Option | Free Will 1 | N 2 | Y With gods, you options are Option | God | Trinity | Allah | Shiva | Zeus | Thor | ... 1 | N | N | N | N... 2 | Y | N | N | N... 3 | N | Y | N | N... ... And that isn't even counting the difference within a given religion. It is like comparing the cardinality of boolean options with the cardinality of the reals.