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> Our human capital is the hours of life that we are given here on this earth. Free will is what we choose to do with those hours. The more I see in life, the
by dctoedt 12y ago
> Our human capital is the hours of life that we are given here on this earth. Free will is what we choose to do with those hours.
The more I see in life, the more I question how valid a concept "free will" really is, and to what extent we really "choose what to do with those hours." I'm not prepared to say there's no such thing as free will, but just the way people's behavior changes under the influence of chemicals, or in response to brain damage, suggests that we don't have a satisfying theory of why people make the choices they do.
I keep meaning to re-read John Rawls's A Theory of Justice. What he said about making social policy from behind "the veil of ignorance" makes so much more sense to me now than it did when I read it in law school. (Back then I was much more conservative, and a fan of Robert Nozick's response, Anarchy, State, and Utopia.)
- rayiner 12y agoI wrestle with having an increasingly narrow view of the extent to which people exercise free will, and having an increasingly cynical view of the social structures we have in place to help the poor. I agree with 'bane: the marshmallow impulse control experiment says a lot. So what gets to me is the sanctimony. If I were born as one of those kids who couldn't resist the marshmallow for 10 seconds: 1) how much if my outcome is the result of my own choices? 2) how is spending more money on education going to help?
- judk 12y agoYou are in luck: followup research shows that kids with impulse control (er, patience) came from stable families with safe predictable behavior, and less patient kids came from families with unstable environments and adults who weren't reliable. In fact, the kids were roughly equally rational with respect to the environments they grew up in.
- bobwaycott 12y agoIf you still have a copy of A Theory of Justice, definitely pick it back up. If you'd like to work through his later-life work, then you'll want to grab Political Liberalism and Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, in which he revisits his original ideas, and brings together a full account of justice as fairness as he later understood it. Definitely recommend digging back into him.