3 ms·

Your mention of Minority Report evoked an image in my mind. A sort of thought experiment. Imagine you run the government along with law enforcement. Say that o

Your mention of Minority Report evoked an image in my mind. A sort of thought experiment. Imagine you run the government along with law enforcement. Say that one day someone on Hacker News announced that they figured out how to predict a person’s future behavior with a resolution of about one day, simply by running some terminal command along with that person’s social media profiles. As the authority, it becomes imperative for you to use this information. The choice becomes: are people still at fault for their future crimes even if they never commit them? If they are morally bad, then you are justified in executing some people for future crimes, if you believe that they are not responsible for crimes uncommitted, then you might take a more humane approach. A person, P, will commit crime X at place Y at time Z. So you pour resources into changing Y and Z for future crimes, because you realize that outcomes are a product of P, X, Y and Z. In this equation, it makes no sense to speak of “punishing” the environment, of a time on the clock being “bad”. In exactly the same way, it no longer makes sense that a person is “bad”. What makes sense is: change, influence, separate, nudge the variables to get the outcome you want. This is an exaggerated version of what happens to an individual once they accept hard determinism. They realize that people can’t be morally at fault because they are simply a small part of the equation, an equation that includes all moments that preceded it. Personally, to me, this information is liberating. I feel I have more control now because each event is comprised of an equation. Humans are not black boxes, and neither is my mind. There is some semblance of logic to the system, no matter how obscure or opaque it may be, which means there is some possibility for me to influence the world to move toward a more desirable state. I hope this thought makes some sense to you considering your deeper dives into determinism. I would love to read your writing!

adjkant 6y ago
> This is an exaggerated version of what happens to an individual once they accept hard determinism. They realize that people can’t be morally at fault because they are simply a small part of the equation, an equation that includes all moments that preceded it. Well said, and this is exactly the underpinning of how I approach the world frankly. Here's something to think on. Say you accept all this. Now consider anger. Is it ever justified to be angry at someone given all this, ever? I think when you stop and begin to understand and at least imagine all the things that happened to them to lead them to this moment to do the thing that is frustrating you, it becomes clear you can only be frustrated, but never angry. The next question becomes then how do you approach any sort of conflict that would arise from that anger. People don't believe me when I say this without knowing me in person for a good deal of time, but I can't remember being angry since I started down this path of ideas around my junior year of high school. Anger more or less becomes existential frustration followed by a desire to figure out the causes and solutions to the situation. > Personally, to me, this information is liberating. I feel I have more control now because each event is comprised of an equation. Humans are not black boxes, and neither is my mind. There is some semblance of logic to the system, no matter how obscure or opaque it may be, which means there is some possibility for me to influence the world to move toward a more desirable state. +1 here too. As I said in some other threads, a configuration optimization problem. > I would love to read your writing! Wow, thank you! I have some academic stuff and have been formulating it into some more article/short book style stuff privately but had no intention of publishing. You're not the first person to say this now though, so I might just reconsider how/when I publish!

adjkant 6y ago

> This is an exaggerated version of what happens to an individual once they accept hard determinism. They realize that people can’t be morally at fault because they are simply a small part of the equation, an equation that includes all moments that preceded it. Well said, and this is exactly the underpinning of how I approach the world frankly. Here's something to think on. Say you accept all this. Now consider anger. Is it ever justified to be angry at someone given all this, ever? I think when you stop and begin to understand and at least imagine all the things that happened to them to lead them to this moment to do the thing that is frustrating you, it becomes clear you can only be frustrated, but never angry. The next question becomes then how do you approach any sort of conflict that would arise from that anger. People don't believe me when I say this without knowing me in person for a good deal of time, but I can't remember being angry since I started down this path of ideas around my junior year of high school. Anger more or less becomes existential frustration followed by a desire to figure out the causes and solutions to the situation. > Personally, to me, this information is liberating. I feel I have more control now because each event is comprised of an equation. Humans are not black boxes, and neither is my mind. There is some semblance of logic to the system, no matter how obscure or opaque it may be, which means there is some possibility for me to influence the world to move toward a more desirable state. +1 here too. As I said in some other threads, a configuration optimization problem. > I would love to read your writing! Wow, thank you! I have some academic stuff and have been formulating it into some more article/short book style stuff privately but had no intention of publishing. You're not the first person to say this now though, so I might just reconsider how/when I publish!