3 ms·

Are they? I don't think so. The behavior of both is determined entirely by their genes and their cumulative interaction with their environment.

bryanrasmussen 5y ago
well if you assume that humans have many more possible genes and cumulative interactions, and many more possible interactions to take at any point in time, then yes I guess I would say they were more independent.
medstrom 5y ago
For any organism to hold together and be viable, it's critical for all its cells to obey their programming perfectly. If individual cells went off and did their own thing, it would not be viable. Our bodies line up such rebel cells and shoot them by the hundreds every second, the rare ones that somehow convince us they're on our side are called "cancer tissue" and don't contribute to our fitness. You certainly could make some analogies here, and it's an interesting topic. The mass of humankind as a substrate on which memes are selected for fitness, where more viral memes outcompete the less viral ones, now there's a fun one. But a single superorganism... I find it hard to see. Yes ultimately we obey our genes ("programming") in a way determined by our environment... but so does cancer tissue. Plus there's such a great variability in how humans might respond to the same stimuli that we're not like well-behaved cells at all, plus much of the environment surrounding each human is not determined by other humans, which throws a lot of indeterminacy into the mix.
- guerrilla 5y ago
  > Our bodies line up such rebel cells and shoot them by the hundreds every second Like how we imprison criminals and fight ISIS, etc.
mensetmanusman 5y ago
Some people believe humans have an amount of free will (which by definition is supernatural as you allude to). Others believe humans have as much free will as a rock rolling down the side of a mountain. It’s either an act of faith as to which you believe (if humans have free will) or a random event (if humans don’t and the laws of the universe are set up to appear to contemplate this in some clouds of atoms). Since these are axioms, it’s impossible to prove one way or the other.
- guerrilla 5y ago
  I think the latter is a pretty silly way of looking at it. We have no evidence of free will, we have evidence against free will [1]. The axioms are in the epistemology. 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpU_e3jh_FY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpU_e3jh_FY
  - mensetmanusman 5y ago
    You used the word think assuming you have free will.
    - guerrilla 5y ago
      I don't understand what you're saying. Do you mean because I used the word "think" that I meant "assume"?
      - mensetmanusman 5y ago
        No, sorry. I was just pointing out how it is funny that these discussions use linguistic forms that assume free will i.e., verbs like ‘think’ and ‘do’. A proper discussion by someone who does not believe in free will would have to be entirely passive voice, i.e. describing what a flame does when it is exposed to gusts of wind or describing what a cloud of human atoms does when it is exposed to its environment.
        guerrilla 5y ago
        You can't derive metaphysics from language use. Nobody who says the wind is blowing thinks the wind is an agent. You'll also have a real big problem when you get to "It's raining," for example. In addition to this flawed methodology, active voice only indicates the source of an action. It doesn't convey anything about whether the agent had the ability to do other than they did, so you can't even find the information you were looking for in the language anyone here used even if it was meaningful to derive metaphysics from language use.

bryanrasmussen 5y ago

well if you assume that humans have many more possible genes and cumulative interactions, and many more possible interactions to take at any point in time, then yes I guess I would say they were more independent.

medstrom 5y ago

For any organism to hold together and be viable, it's critical for all its cells to obey their programming perfectly. If individual cells went off and did their own thing, it would not be viable. Our bodies line up such rebel cells and shoot them by the hundreds every second, the rare ones that somehow convince us they're on our side are called "cancer tissue" and don't contribute to our fitness. You certainly could make some analogies here, and it's an interesting topic. The mass of humankind as a substrate on which memes are selected for fitness, where more viral memes outcompete the less viral ones, now there's a fun one. But a single superorganism... I find it hard to see. Yes ultimately we obey our genes ("programming") in a way determined by our environment... but so does cancer tissue. Plus there's such a great variability in how humans might respond to the same stimuli that we're not like well-behaved cells at all, plus much of the environment surrounding each human is not determined by other humans, which throws a lot of indeterminacy into the mix.

guerrilla 5y ago
> Our bodies line up such rebel cells and shoot them by the hundreds every second Like how we imprison criminals and fight ISIS, etc.

mensetmanusman 5y ago

Some people believe humans have an amount of free will (which by definition is supernatural as you allude to). Others believe humans have as much free will as a rock rolling down the side of a mountain. It’s either an act of faith as to which you believe (if humans have free will) or a random event (if humans don’t and the laws of the universe are set up to appear to contemplate this in some clouds of atoms). Since these are axioms, it’s impossible to prove one way or the other.

guerrilla 5y ago
I think the latter is a pretty silly way of looking at it. We have no evidence of free will, we have evidence against free will [1]. The axioms are in the epistemology. 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpU_e3jh_FY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpU_e3jh_FY
- mensetmanusman 5y ago
  You used the word think assuming you have free will.
  - guerrilla 5y ago
    I don't understand what you're saying. Do you mean because I used the word "think" that I meant "assume"?
    - mensetmanusman 5y ago
      No, sorry. I was just pointing out how it is funny that these discussions use linguistic forms that assume free will i.e., verbs like ‘think’ and ‘do’. A proper discussion by someone who does not believe in free will would have to be entirely passive voice, i.e. describing what a flame does when it is exposed to gusts of wind or describing what a cloud of human atoms does when it is exposed to its environment.
      - guerrilla 5y ago
        You can't derive metaphysics from language use. Nobody who says the wind is blowing thinks the wind is an agent. You'll also have a real big problem when you get to "It's raining," for example. In addition to this flawed methodology, active voice only indicates the source of an action. It doesn't convey anything about whether the agent had the ability to do other than they did, so you can't even find the information you were looking for in the language anyone here used even if it was meaningful to derive metaphysics from language use.