Deterministic Mechanism, Quantum Mechanics, and Free Will

[Mr. Ketogenic]

As much as I hate to say it, I am on the verge of becoming a deterministic mechanist.

If someone had enough time and computing power at his disposal, and knew the initial conditions (an infinite # of variables), he or she could, using the laws of physics, calculate the exact state of the universe at any point in time henceforth.

Now all of our science and technology assumes the universe is deterministic. After observing things accelerate towards earth at 9.8 m/s^2 over and over again, we declare that to be a law of the universe, and use that to predict future events.

When u turn on your car or light bulb, you always assume it will go on, b/c the universe is deterministic. Like it has millions of times b4, electricity flows to the bulb. And if the bulb doesn't light up, its not that gee, the laws of electricity don't really hold true. No, the light burned out.

Every time you fly and airplane we expect to land safely because we assume the universe is deterministic.

If you subscribe to this then you must inevitably arrive at the conclusion that your life is predetermined - the idea that we have control over our lives is just an illusion.

I found this extremely depressing, but then I used some more logic:

We can either assume

1) we have no control
2) we have control

now if we assume (1), and it somehow turns out that (1) is not true, we're fucked, FUCKED!!

if we assume (2), and it turns out to be false, it doesn't matter b/c our assumption was predetermined anyway

thus, ironically, one has to assume he/she has control over his/her life.

plus, I can bust any quantum mechanical arguments u try to throw at me

unfortunately I have become a nihilist. fuck.

[cjs55]

If you subscribe to this then you must inevitably arrive at the conclusion that your life is predetermined - the idea that we have control over our lives is just an illusion.


I don't quite buy that this is a necessary conclusion. Now if someone made a humanistic science that could predict every single human action to the smallest bit, I'd agree with you. But I'm guessing we'll never know enough about the universe to be able to make your conclusion of total determinism a certainty.




We can either assume

1) we have no control
2) we have control

now if we assume (1), and it somehow turns out that (1) is not true, we're fucked, FUCKED!!

if we assume (2), and it turns out to be false, it doesn't matter b/c our assumption was predetermined anyway

thus, ironically, one has to assume he/she has control over his/her life.

Yep. I figured this one out too =).

And nihilism is not a state (preferably at least), but rather a process.

[Imen de Naars]

As much as I hate to say it, I am on the verge of becoming a deterministic mechanist.

If someone had enough time and computing power at his disposal, and knew the initial conditions (an infinite # of variables), he or she could, using the laws of physics, calculate the exact state of the universe at any point in time henceforth.



No, he couldn't. The act of calculating would influence the state of things itself, thus making the result wrong. It's the observer problem that stems from quantum mechanics.

[illusivemind]

The laws of physics are pretty bad at predicting animal behaviour, which obviously has a large effect on the state of the universe at any given time.

[Dunearhp]

Ypu can never know the initial conditions to perfect accuracy.

[PlayerOfGames]

The problem with free will doesn't need to be put in physics terms at all, quantum or not. To my mind, it's much simpler - you can do whatever you want to do, but what you want to do is a function of what happened before.
Everything you do is based on either the environment around you, or the conditions inside you (thoughts, feelings etc.
The environment you find yourself in is either in your control or not. If it isn't, it's outside the question of your will. If it is, you chose it, which loops around to your choices above.
Your thoughts and feelings are based on what you experience because of what you do, all the way back to whatever innate compulsion you were born with - and that compulsion was out of your control.

The only option other than your choices being based on environment and internal state, is them being random, which is still not "free will."

So, without bringing physics or anything nebulous into it, everything will still play out as it will, and you cannot have any conrtol over what you decide to do.

But, you will feel like you do - if you were destined to feel that way :unsure:

[Imen de Naars]

The problem with free will doesn't need to be put in physics terms at all, quantum or not. To my mind, it's much simpler - you can do whatever you want to do, but what you want to do is a function of what happened before.
Everything you do is based on either the environment around you, or the conditions inside you (thoughts, feelings etc.
The environment you find yourself in is either in your control or not. If it isn't, it's outside the question of your will. If it is, you chose it, which loops around to your choices above.
Your thoughts and feelings are based on what you experience because of what you do, all the way back to whatever innate compulsion you were born with - and that compulsion was out of your control.

The only option other than your choices being based on environment and internal state, is them being random, which is still not "free will."

So, without bringing physics or anything nebulous into it, everything will still play out as it will, and you cannot have any conrtol over what you decide to do.

But, you will feel like you do - if you were destined to feel that way :unsure:


Define "you" - maybe, better, define "I". Since this "I" is neither mind/feelings+environment, nor mind+feeligs alone, from what you say.

Anyway, I thought that the original post was intendend in the broad sense of the old question deterministic vs indeterministic universe

[ApeTheDog]

I agree with notevenjoking.

Free will is an illusion. Why would animal behavior not be deterministic? There is a reason for every single thing I do - but I'm only aware of it when I attempt to find out what that reason is, in some cases. In most cases, why I do things remains unknown to me. But I have no doubt that there is always a reason beyond the veil of my self-consciousness. I do not believe anything I do is my own decision - rather it is the consequence of who I am (and this is a consequence of how the world has made me, and how my thoughts have made sense of this).

It's recursive.

You're born. The world around you is in a certain state - you adapt to it. You're alive. You are in a certain way. The world around you is in a certain way - you choose the best solution/adapt to it. You die.

[PlayerOfGames]

Imen de Naars - Can I just use "one"? ;) I don't think I made that claim though - defining what is meant by "I" is a pretty big question - for my purposes, the intuitively understood definition of "a person" or "a mind" or even an animal works fine.

The original post was about determinism in a broad sense, focussing more specifically also on free will, as I see it.

[meshou]

No, he couldn't. The act of calculating would influence the state of things itself, thus making the result wrong. It's the observer problem that stems from quantum mechanics.Yes. But notice people argue nurture verses nature as what produces a person, when neither are variables under our control.

Sure, someone can choose to move. But that's because his prejudices and his genetic inclinations made him both want to move, and be in a financial situation and age to be able to do so, all of which arose from factors like his age, his intilligence, how well he was fed as a child, how rich or poor his parents were etc. All his choices came from either inherent situations or abilities our of his control, or are part of a chain of decisions starting with factors out of his control.

Just because we aren't nessicarily predictable by ourselves or by a computer does not mean this moment, with me typing here, was not entirely inevitable.

I don't believe in free will. I do believe in choice (which is not the same thing-- your ability to choose something does not mean you had an ability or possibility to choose anything different).

I also don't think this means we're fucked. All the good things in the world were inevitable too. We don't have to be in control of ourselves or our destiny to be happy.

We may have to act like we are, though. It's the same observer thing. If you immeadiately quit and say "why bother, I'll get there no matter what I do," then it may have been inevitable you'd be a bum who never gets anywhere.

You won't get there no matter what you do. You'll just end up doing what you're going to do because that's how events percipitated.

[meshou]

Define "you" - maybe, better, define "I". Since this "I" is neither mind/feelings+environment, nor mind+feeligs alone, from what you say.YOU define you. I doubt it would be accurate.

I've said I don't believe in an "I." This is because any sense of self I'd have would be mostly false.

The way people form senses of self is they tell themselves stories about who they are and who people in their lives are. "I was born here, went to school here, had this traumatic experience, recovered or didn't, have this job, like these things, have this sort of temperment, and that's me!"

No, it's not. When telling stories, you inevitably leave bits out. What you leave out is as important as what you leave in. If you ignore one part of the story (usually people leave out weaknesses, inexcusable evils, embarassments, foibles etc), that is as important to you as what you left in.

So, the real me is a set of feelings, behaviors, actions (and possibly their concequences), processes, chemical reactions, 125 pounds of slowly rotting meat, a few trillion atoms, the person people percieve when they read these forums, that giant foot ants look up at before being squished, and most of these things I am not entirely aware of.

[Imen de Naars]

Yes. But notice people argue nurture verses nature as what produces a person, when neither are variables under our control.

Sure, someone can choose to move. But that's because his prejudices and his genetic inclinations made him both want to move, and be in a financial situation and age to be able to do so, all of which arose from factors like his age, his intilligence, how well he was fed as a child, how rich or poor his parents were etc. All his choices came from either inherent situations or abilities our of his control, or are part of a chain of decisions starting with factors out of his control.

Just because we aren't nessicarily predictable by ourselves or by a computer does not mean this moment, with me typing here, was not entirely inevitable.

I don't believe in free will. I do believe in choice (which is not the same thing-- your ability to choose something does not mean you had an ability or possibility to choose anything different).

I also don't think this means we're fucked. All the good things in the world were inevitable too. We don't have to be in control of ourselves or our destiny to be happy.

We may have to act like we are, though. It's the same observer thing. If you immeadiately quit and say "why bother, I'll get there no matter what I do," then it may have been inevitable you'd be a bum who never gets anywhere.

You won't get there no matter what you do. You'll just end up doing what you're going to do because that's how events percipitated.

Yeah, I agree - with the post above, too. I don't belive neither in an objective nor subjective self - reduced to bits, it's just a kind of "fluid" thing with the environment, no real distinction - yeh, I'm somewhat Buddhist.

[floid]

I've said I don't believe in an "I." This is because any sense of self I'd have would be mostly false.

The way people form senses of self is they tell themselves stories about who they are and who people in their lives are. "I was born here, went to school here, had this traumatic experience, recovered or didn't, have this job, like these things, have this sort of temperment, and that's me!" May you enjoy the eternal presence of your own absence.



So, the real me is a set of feelings, behaviors, actions (and possibly their consequences), processes, chemical reactions, 125 pounds of slowly rotting meat, a few trillion atoms, the person people percieve when they read these forums, that giant foot ants look up at before being squished, and most of these things I am not entirely aware of. The most central truth of self is the absolute nothingness that is it's true center. Everything but this is relative, fragmented, and forever incomplete.
When the nothingness at center expands to consume the entire boundary that divides the universe into subject and object there is no self.

When there is no self there is no problem.http://forums.intpcentral.com/images/smilies/smile.gif

[Blue]

I can't see a single senario that allows for freewill. Either the universe is deterministic (Old newtonian physics) or probablistic (Quantum Mechanics). Either you have an ordered system or a chaotic one. Either there is a reason or there is not. I see no alternate states.

When you have a system governed by certain rules it will produce predictable outcomes: the foundation of science. It does not allow for "choice" if all we see is one big billiards shot with all vectors and reactions predetermined from the getgo. Eight ball, corner pocket.

Though we know that the universe is not deterministic but probablistic; on scope of our perception this effect is so impercivable that we can effectivly use a determinsist view to govern our lives. This is because if a particle has a 51% chance of behaving a certain way and your looking at billions upon billions of them as a whole, the law of large numbers in statistics ensures that you will never see that 49% chance as the outcome on the macro scale. A random behavior is no more choice then something that was predetermined.

To say we do not have freewill is not to say that we don't always do exactly what we want.

+Blue

[Hexchild]

Define free will.

[Blue]

Defining some universal that probably does not exist is beside the point here.
Some say that freewill is "That the agent could have done otherwise." Although in probablities this is true, the random outcome might have been different. Is randomness freewill? The roll of the dice? I'm having trouble pinning exactly how one might logicaly define freewill. It seems a ridiculous concept when you objectivly think about it.

+Blue

[Loco_Mullus_Surmuletus]

Is randomness freewill? The roll of the dice?



As we all know, Einstein said:"God does not roll dices" , and Hocking said: "Yeah, he does, even throws them to the places we cannot see "...

So, considering this, I think there is something called *free will*, as randomness inside one freaking huge controlled system moving from position A toward pos. B, where is determined that effects of *free will* won't significally effect system's trajectory... Yep, human kind is just a phase... Si (chemical element) is in da house, baby! less C for humans, more and mode Si for.... unhumans!

Let it roll, baby, ROLL!!! :moo:

And I need to get up at 6o'clock tomorrow. In 5 hrs.Fuck.

[Zero Angel]

As much as I hate to say it, I am on the verge of becoming a deterministic mechanist.

If someone had enough time and computing power at his disposal, and knew the initial conditions (an infinite # of variables), he or she could, using the laws of physics, calculate the exact state of the universe at any point in time henceforth.

Now all of our science and technology assumes the universe is deterministic. After observing things accelerate towards earth at 9.8 m/s^2 over and over again, we declare that to be a law of the universe, and use that to predict future events.

When u turn on your car or light bulb, you always assume it will go on, b/c the universe is deterministic. Like it has millions of times b4, electricity flows to the bulb. And if the bulb doesn't light up, its not that gee, the laws of electricity don't really hold true. No, the light burned out.

Every time you fly and airplane we expect to land safely because we assume the universe is deterministic.

If you subscribe to this then you must inevitably arrive at the conclusion that your life is predetermined - the idea that we have control over our lives is just an illusion.

I found this extremely depressing, but then I used some more logic:

We can either assume

1) we have no control
2) we have control

now if we assume (1), and it somehow turns out that (1) is not true, we're fucked, FUCKED!!

if we assume (2), and it turns out to be false, it doesn't matter b/c our assumption was predetermined anyway

thus, ironically, one has to assume he/she has control over his/her life.

plus, I can bust any quantum mechanical arguments u try to throw at me

unfortunately I have become a nihilist. fuck.
Actually, more important than the mechanics of determinism are the effects of validating determinism.

For example, if people were to believe in determinism, would the result be positive in that believing that they have no control of their life and that worrying about it is useless? Or negative in that it would make people lazy and give them excuses because they have no control?

(Curious about the practical implications)

[Lee]

I was pondering this question the other day. These were my thoughts if anyone is interested.

I am no physicist, but from what I have read it appears that the universe was once thought to be deterministic (Newtonian Physics). But Quantum Mechanics came along , and now the universe appears to be probabilistic.

As far as free will is concerned it really does not matter if the world is deterministic or probabilistic. If the universe is totally deterministic, then free will cannot exist, because the universe becomes a closed system of cause and effect, where 'free will' cannot exist, because the universe works on strict rules. If you knew all the initial conditions you could predict everything that will happen and figure out everything that has happened.

But the universe would appear to be probabilistic (according to quantum mechanics anyway), but even so, free will would require that we could somehow influence these probabilities, because having no influence over those probabilities is as good to the concept of free will as having a purely deterministic universe... either way, free will does not get a say in what occurs.

There are even some scientific questions as to the feasibility of free will, because all our actions are ultimately biological, so for free will to exist there must be some point in which it influences a biological process to bring about the action to accompany a free decision. But any action which alters those biochemical processes off the course they would have taken normally would require the creation of energy.

So free will would require the spontaneous creation of energy... we should all be walking power generators.

Actually even when I take all this crap into account, I am still left puzzled as to the very concept of free will itself.

How do I make "free" decisions? shouldn't I be able to choose to not have "free will"? when did I ever make the choice to have "free will"? if I presume free will exists, it would appear that I had no free choice in the matter.

But how does a property such as free will even make a decision? A property such as free will cannot be bound by any process by which it reaches a decision, since that would not be free, it would be a cause and effect computation. Yet if you strip away the idea of a process by which a decision is made, if you strip away an innate faculty that directs decisions you end up with randomness. Randomness is anything but free will.

So it is either an organised system, or random, or a mixture of the two, in either case... free will does not fit in anywhere.

If none of this makes sense, it wasn't my fault... I couldn't help it, the rules of nature made me do it.

Note: People often assume that ideas of morality fall apart if we accept that free will does not exist, this seems to be blatent nonsense to me. By placing the existence of free will as necassary to hold people responsible, you are simply placing an unreasonable standard, by a simple change of standard that problem is solved... and rather amusingly we simply shift the standard to the same standards that have always been used i.e. that we hold people responsible for the things that they actually do.

Because the entire concept of free will was unprovable to begin with, nobody actually ever used it practically as a standard anyway.

[Mr. Ketogenic]

We know that the universe is not deterministic but probablistic


+Blue

Well, hold on. Just because electrons have a probabilistic distribution doesn't mean they are governed by probabilistic laws.

For example, there could be someone or something out there that has a rule that determines where the electrons fall, and it just looks random to us.

For example, the kinetic theory of gases is a set of statistical observations. Now you can't just go and say, then, that the behavior of gases is a random phenomena. On the contrary, we later discovered that the behavior of gases is completely determined by the actions of atoms and molecules.

With this line of reasoning you can see that at least deterministic mechanism cannot be disproven.

[Jacque]

'God does not play dice.' :ph34r:

[rufio]

Science doesn't say that these things will happen, it says that they will probably happen. If you start treating probability as reality, you get some really silly stuff - if a magician puts two blue balls and a red ball under cups and mixes them around, than each cup has a higher probability of a blue ball, and thus they all probably have a blue ball - as compared to the reality where two cups do have blue balls and one does not. Probability is useful for science; not so much for philosophy.

This is especially true with people - even if you think of the universe as consisting of causes and effects that can be predicted, there's always a cause that goes on inside a person's head that no one can predict, sometimes not even the person acting. If you think that, philosophically, the fact that everything is logical instead of random means that we have no free will though, then I'm perfectly fine with having no free will. The alternative is madness.

[Mr. Ketogenic]

The "cause that goes on inside a persons head" is a bunch of electric signals and intermolecular forces with the rest of the universe, no?

[Jacque]

Hmmm...if the computer crashes then you have a many-worlds interpretation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many-worlds_interpretation). In which case...you can be certain that your computer wouldn't have crashed if it had chosen a more favorable universe.

I was told once that the universe is long dead. That we're in slow motion replay; in a simultaneous state of beginning and end, a well thumbed book that needed no introduction. That free will was transcribed into fate aeons ago.

[PlayerOfGames]

I think it was Daniel Dennett who said that the way he resolved this dualism (at least at one point) was to say that every object (a stone, a person) can be viewed as behaving perfectly deterministicly, or as an entity with will acting to fullfill it's desires - because in the case of people, this model is very usefull, and yields accurate results. So while neither may be true, both can be true...

What I also find interesting about this is the whole issue of morals - especially the way people tend to interpret free will in day to day life.
In my experience, what they do is draw an arbitary line - for example, if someone has had a hard life, grown up without much guidance, etc. and then steals something, people will tend to say "Well, what do you expect" i.e. they absolve him of responsibility for the action, since his past & environment made it inevitable.
But, if someone with much less *apparent* cause takes the same action, then it's his fault - the real reason the two events are seen in a different light, is simply that the person making the judgement has less information - the causes of the action are less visible, but no less deterministic.
So "free will" in the common view, happens after an arbitary point - which on closer examination, doesn't really exist.

[Master O]

As much as I hate to say it, I am on the verge of becoming a deterministic mechanist.

If someone had enough time and computing power at his disposal, and knew the initial conditions (an infinite # of variables), he or she could, using the laws of physics, calculate the exact state of the universe at any point in time henceforth.

Now all of our science and technology assumes the universe is deterministic. After observing things accelerate towards earth at 9.8 m/s^2 over and over again, we declare that to be a law of the universe, and use that to predict future events.

When u turn on your car or light bulb, you always assume it will go on, b/c the universe is deterministic. Like it has millions of times b4, electricity flows to the bulb. And if the bulb doesn't light up, its not that gee, the laws of electricity don't really hold true. No, the light burned out.

Every time you fly and airplane we expect to land safely because we assume the universe is deterministic.

If you subscribe to this then you must inevitably arrive at the conclusion that your life is predetermined - the idea that we have control over our lives is just an illusion.

I found this extremely depressing, but then I used some more logic:

We can either assume

1) we have no control
2) we have control

now if we assume (1), and it somehow turns out that (1) is not true, we're fucked, FUCKED!!

if we assume (2), and it turns out to be false, it doesn't matter b/c our assumption was predetermined anyway

thus, ironically, one has to assume he/she has control over his/her life.

plus, I can bust any quantum mechanical arguments u try to throw at me

unfortunately I have become a nihilist. fuck. you're a pessimist.

i have control over my life in that i have control over my actions. i do not have control over the universe, the earth, or the environment or those that i come into contact with.

so maybe one could argue that actually i do not have control over my life. even so, i have had a good life and see no reason why this won't continue or even improve.

having no control does not imply a poor outcome.

control is not necessarily a good thing. life can be more rich at times when you just let go and stop thinking so much and just be.

like most things involving perception, life will usually be as bad as you make it or as good.

nothing has value except that which we give it - poor or great...

[Master O]

also, just because certain events are predictable like a light bulb turning on, means nothing in the big picture. you leave out the relationship between all things predictable and not. what isn't predictable is the timing of coincidence and quantities involved and duration of interaction.

the results will always vary. don't think so much.

and even if your life is predetermined, you'll never know for sure, so why worry about it. there is no trouble until there is.

[Master O]

I can't see a single senario that allows for freewill. Either the universe is deterministic (Old newtonian physics) or probablistic (Quantum Mechanics). Either you have an ordered system or a chaotic one. Either there is a reason or there is not. I see no alternate states.

When you have a system governed by certain rules it will produce predictable outcomes: the foundation of science. It does not allow for "choice" if all we see is one big billiards shot with all vectors and reactions predetermined from the getgo. Eight ball, corner pocket.

Though we know that the universe is not deterministic but probablistic; on scope of our perception this effect is so impercivable that we can effectivly use a determinsist view to govern our lives. This is because if a particle has a 51% chance of behaving a certain way and your looking at billions upon billions of them as a whole, the law of large numbers in statistics ensures that you will never see that 49% chance as the outcome on the macro scale. A random behavior is no more choice then something that was predetermined.

To say we do not have freewill is not to say that we don't always do exactly what we want.

+Blue but there is nothing in either system that disproves freewill. we just have to admit that we don't know, have no idea, and can't prove anything towards that notion. all i know is i feel like i have freewill and that's good enough for me - if it's an illusion, i welcome it. my life is way too short to spend it circumventing my pleasure in search of a truth that may not even matter.

and just because a system has rules doesn't mean that every single occurence has it's own special rule.

[booyalab]

but there is nothing in either system that disproves freewill. we just have to admit that we don't know, have no idea, and can't prove anything towards that notion. all i know is i feel like i have freewill and that's good enough for me - if it's an illusion, i welcome it. my life is way too short to spend it circumventing my pleasure in search of a truth that may not even matter.

and just because a system has rules doesn't mean that every single occurence has it's own special rule.

You make a good point.

It's only inevitable if you know it's going to happen.

The way I see it, (assuming probability and free will are mutually exclusive, which I see as a very closed minded assumption..but everyone else is doing it, so I'm humoring you all) we have 3 ways of looking at our decisions: inevitable, free will, and probable. I'm not even going to go into why it would be stupid and insane to live by a philosophy that my decisions are based on quantifiable probabilities, so we're left with inevitability and free will being the only viable ways of interpreting your choices.

I choose free will because I dont know which one of my possible decisions will be the one I choose or what outcome will befall me before I make a given choice. If I was NOT ME and had the advantage of living in the year 3000, I could look at my life like a story book and say "then she gets a glass of water, then she trips over the dog.....wow, I guess determinism IS the way things work" Since I dont know that I'm going to trip over the dog before I turn around, then I might as well act like I dont know that I'm going to trip over the dog before I turn around. That way I can blame myself for tripping over the dog and try to not be such a klutz next time, rather than accepting my inevitable fate (that I dont know) of tripping over the dog every day for the rest of it's life.

[joft]

I hate using the same word or phrase over and over... but here it is anyway

"Path of least resistance"

and that's all I'm saying right now.

(My mind is fucking shattering, I'm getting closer and closer to all thoughts/beliefs/philosophies/ideas melting into one incomprehensible featureless thing)

[meshou]

but there is nothing in either system that disproves freewill.You've earned an eye roll, mister.

You can't disprove free will, you can't disprove the existance of God, and you can't disprove I am currently a small floating purple hat made of yogurt.

It is impossible to disprove anything in a conclusive manner. Litterally. The burden is proving this either way, and if the only evidence which exists points towards fate, lack of disproof is no evidence whatsoever.

While some cling to quantam mechanics as pointing to free will, to does not. It merely proves free will is possible, but does not point to it being probable.

Living in a non-deterministic universe does not mean we have choice. If goes does play dice, he may not play them in a way that 1) effects us, if it is on a human scale or 2) makes us any less enslaved to cause and effect.

It does give some wiggle room. We COULD have choice. But I COULD still be that yogurt hat. Quantam mechanics says so.

[Wiki]

When u turn on your car or light bulb, you always assume it will go on, b/c the universe is deterministic.
Yeah, like I hate it when the power goes out and you go to flip a light switch and then go 'oh yeah.......thats ok Ill just watch TV and ride it out.....doah!'

[Blue]

meshou, my savior. Thank you.


but there is nothing in either system that disproves freewill. we just have to admit that we don't know, have no idea, and can't prove anything towards that notion.To absolutly disprove anything you must know absolutly everything.
There is a point where you must realize most beliefs exist not because there is evidence for them but because people want to believe, after all, you can't disprove it.

I'm just as human, I know because time and again I've caught myself giving preference to things that I would rather be true.



As we all know, Einstein said:"God does not roll dices" , and Hocking said: "Yeah, he does, even throws them to the places we cannot see "...

So, considering this, I think there is something called *free will*, as randomness inside one freaking huge controlled system moving from position A toward pos. B, where is determined that effects of *free will* won't significally effect system's trajectory... Yep, human kind is just a phase... Si (chemical element) is in da house, baby! less C for humans, more and mode Si for.... unhumans!

Let it roll, baby, ROLL!!!
Is there a reason for this belief beyond your need to believe in your own power of autonomy? I don't really see any justification for this belief.
While Einstein is historicaly one of my favorite persons I've heard his philosophy described as "childish" by a professor of philosophy. I'd tend to believe this analisys because I've not seen any strong philosophical backing short of some nice poetic quotes (Which I enjoyed).



Actually, more important than the mechanics of determinism are the effects of validating determinism.

For example, if people were to believe in determinism, would the result be positive in that believing that they have no control of their life and that worrying about it is useless? Or negative in that it would make people lazy and give them excuses because they have no control?

all i know is i feel like i have freewill and that's good enough for me - if it's an illusion, i welcome it. my life is way too short to spend it circumventing my pleasure in search of a truth that may not even matter.
Whether freewill exist and what would be best for people to believe in order to live are two different things. I'm tempted to say something about Thorau and truth here but I'll resist making grandiose quotes and try to reason by my own virtue.


But how does a property such as free will even make a decision? A property such as free will cannot be bound by any process by which it reaches a decision, since that would not be free, it would be a cause and effect computation. Yet if you strip away the idea of a process by which a decision is made, if you strip away an innate faculty that directs decisions you end up with randomness. Randomness is anything but free will.

So it is either an organised system, or random, or a mixture of the two, in either case... free will does not fit in anywhere.Exactly, very well said Lee.

There is a reason for everything you do.

I'm not sure whether we're of like mind or you read my post and took advantage of my poor language skills to repost it.



Well, hold on. Just because electrons have a probabilistic distribution doesn't mean they are governed by probabilistic laws.

For example, there could be someone or something out there that has a rule that determines where the electrons fall, and it just looks random to us.

For example, the kinetic theory of gases is a set of statistical observations. Now you can't just go and say, then, that the behavior of gases is a random phenomena. On the contrary, we later discovered that the behavior of gases is completely determined by the actions of atoms and molecules.

With this line of reasoning you can see that at least deterministic mechanism cannot be disproven.

It's called hidden variable theory and so far all hidden variable theories have failed. What you should ask is not whether it can be disproven or not but for which there is greater reason to believe.


It's only inevitable if you know it's going to happen. Ignorace does not affect the reality of the situation.

I write to offend no one. Simply to seek understanding.

+Blue

[rufio]

The "cause that goes on inside a persons head" is a bunch of electric signals and intermolecular forces with the rest of the universe, no?

Is it?

You do act based on your physical well-being and whatever emotions/etc you might be feeling, but primarily people are motivated by what they know. You react to people based on how they react to you, not based on whatever electrical signals are causing you to feel at the moment, and based on arbitrary laws of social interaction and language usage that were taught to you by others. These are also laws, but they aren't absolute - unlike the laws of physics they are easily and often broken.

[meshou]

You do act based on your physical well-being and whatever emotions/etc you might be feeling, but primarily people are motivated by what they know.I doubt it.

We are programmed a great deal to be biased in what we do know.

An INTP is not a social animal. It may be because he is not taught, and in some cases, this is undoubtedly so. But most of us are conditioned and taught to be polite, extroverted people who love being around people. And yet, we are not.


You react to people based on how they react to you, not based on whatever electrical signals are causing you to feel at the moment, and based on arbitrary laws of social interaction and language usage that were taught to you by others. As someone who was on large and widely varying levels of psych medicine for a decade against my will, I think I have a little insight into how much electrical impulses effect social behavior and the nature of the human spirit.

I don't know how to explain this. I was abused as a child, and did not like it, and being vocal and violent about not liking it after I was big enough to punch back harder was not acceptable. I was very angry. This was a fundamental bit of my personality, beat into me, as it were.

I've been on over a dozen pills, although not more than three at once, and a few were very powerful. A couple anti-psychotics, things that mess with seratonin, stimulants, and depressants. Basically, anything in the arsenal that would effect any chemical we know of that effects how you feel, think, or even move.

Imagine your heart feels different in your chest. Imagine the way food tastes is different. That everything is muddy and less intense, that ideas come slower. Imagine your sense of humor changing over the course of a week, and changing back if you don't take a pill. What you litterally SEE is different, both in what you notice, litteral ways some things look. Colors more intense, light bothers you more or less, and long lasting after images. Some cocktails manage to accurately reproduce emotion-- and what you do has little effect on how you're feeling. You can feel inexplicably terified, and all because you took a stimulant on an empty stomach and went for a brisk walk.

Your likes and dislikes change. How smart you are changes. Anything bit of you you'd argue is fundamental, there is a chemical which causes it, and a chemical can change it.

Before I started having the seizures that got me taken off of them, I asked what bit of me was me, since all of it was variable, and why I should like any of it if I could not choose it. They argued that there was a lot to like about me. But, I argued, these were not things I worked for or things I was born with, and they would change soon anyway, so how could they argue there was a me to like to begin with? They mistook this for malingering or depression, and changed my pills up.

The idea there is something about me that can't be touched and are not dictated by chemicals has lead to events in my life that conclusively proved to me there is no such thing. There is no consistancy of self, and what went on with me happens on longer timescales, and in increments we can lie to ourselves over. "I'm just tired" or "I got older" allow us to bridge gaps between those chemical states and still believe there's an inherent sameness there.

I do think this is nessicary to most people though. After the seizures, I was basically catatonic for months until I got back some sense of coherence. Very difficult to interact with the world without a person there to do so.


These are also laws, but they aren't absolute - unlike the laws of physics they are easily and often broken.

Social rules are guidelines. They don't suspend physical laws. Physical laws trump. If you are at a social event, that does not mean you can levitate your dinner.

That people think that the ability to say "bless you" when someone sneezes means we are the only things in the universe where physics does not apply is slightly appauling.

[Jacque]

"Though there be no such thing as Chance in the world; our ignorance of the real cause of any event has the same influence on the understanding, and begets a like species of belief or opinion." - David Hume, An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding

[Master O]

You've earned an eye roll, mister.

You can't disprove free will, you can't disprove the existance of God, and you can't disprove I am currently a small floating purple hat made of yogurt.

It is impossible to disprove anything in a conclusive manner. Litterally. The burden is proving this either way, and if the only evidence which exists points towards fate, lack of disproof is no evidence whatsoever.

While some cling to quantam mechanics as pointing to free will, to does not. It merely proves free will is possible, but does not point to it being probable.

Living in a non-deterministic universe does not mean we have choice. If goes does play dice, he may not play them in a way that 1) effects us, if it is on a human scale or 2) makes us any less enslaved to cause and effect.

It does give some wiggle room. We COULD have choice. But I COULD still be that yogurt hat. Quantam mechanics says so.
You're missing my point. Many were carrying on as if freewill wasn't even a possibility. All I was pointing out is that while one can't prove that freewill does exist, it also can't be proven that it doesn't. There is no way of knowing. So forget about it. It doesn't really matter. The best possible outcome is being able to describe accurately what the case is. Even then nothing changes and life goes on the same way. It's pointless.

[Master O]

I don't have a need to believe in my own autonomy. It just feels like I have it. I like it that way. It makes life more interesting.

Besides it seems silly that life is predetermined. This conversation would then be. The thoughts I'm having aren't my own. I'm reading from a script I didn't even know existed. We're just actors playing a part. To what end? What do we learn?

It makes me want to believe in God. At least in the Bible, it says that He gave us free will.

[meshou]

I don't have a need to believe in my own autonomy. It just feels like I have it. I like it that way. It makes life more interesting.

Besides it seems silly that life is predetermined. This conversation would then be. The thoughts I'm having aren't my own. I'm reading from a script I didn't even know existed. We're just actors playing a part. To what end? What do we learn?Who says this has to have a purpass besides the one you believe? Who says lack of free will negates purpass?

Inevitablility does not take away you, it just makes you less important.

Your thoughts are still your own if they were always going to happen, as are your choices. Why is it the possibility of choosing otherwise makes you less you, unless looking back and saying "I could have been this" or "I could hav e been that" are essential to who you are.

I think free will is a nessicary belief. Using lack of free will as an excuse to be a sack of shit just means you were destined to be a sack of shit. There's still struggle to get where you want to be, it's not negated by the fact that you would have always chosen it.

Choice can exist without free will.

[Master O]

that's a paradox...

if it is predetermined, there is no struggle, only perhaps the perception of one. if my thoughts are predetermined, then they are not my thoughts (they existed before me therefore they cannot be mine). at best i'm borrowing them.

i just don't buy it. it seems silly. i believe in randomness. humans are the wildcard to everything else that is predictable.

[PiccoloNamek]

Choice can exist without free will.

Huh? That's a contradiction if I ever saw one. If there's no free will, then nothing you chose was really a choice at all. If everything is predetermined, you had no choice. Perhaps only the illusion of one.

[garak]

Scientific determinism seems likely to me, although obviously you can't observe everything, let alone go about calculating it. But if you somehow could...

But I think that you can still believe in choice and responsibility and be optimistic and happy. And when bad things happen, hey, that's the way the cookie crumbles.

I'm not sure how humans are a wildcard. That must mean there is something about us that is beyond physical, i.e. spiritual or magical or something. And I think that's silly. We're not that special.

[Master O]

Scientific determinism seems likely to me, although obviously you can't observe everything, let alone go about calculating it. But if you somehow could...

But I think that you can still believe in choice and responsibility and be optimistic and happy. And when bad things happen, hey, that's the way the cookie crumbles.

I'm not sure how humans are a wildcard. That must mean there is something about us that is beyond physical, i.e. spiritual or magical or something. And I think that's silly. We're not that special. it's not about being special. along with humans, perhaps all animals that are capable of calculation are exempt.

there is something about us beyond the physical. I believe in a lifeforce, an intangible energy. it is who we are and i believe that we exist after our body dies.

to me these arguements of scientific determinism and such are so similar to the arguement of creationism. to me it's just a futile attempt to understand everything beyond our scope in the hopes of ascertaining some reason for our existence. the motivation seems to be the same: some kind of need for security so that the world isn't such a scary place.

[rufio]

I doubt it.

We are programmed a great deal to be biased in what we do know.

That does not change the fact that what we know and how we react to it is a result of something social and not biological.


An INTP is not a social animal. It may be because he is not taught, and in some cases, this is undoubtedly so.

Feral children are automatically INTP? Or are yout just comparing INTPs in general to feral children?


But most of us are conditioned and taught to be polite, extroverted people who love being around people. And yet, we are not.

True. But that was taught to us after we were taught the basic modecoms of human interaction - using language effectively, for example, which many of us seem to be pretty good at. We learn what to expect other people to do, something else that we seem to be able to master even if we dislike using that knowledge to act as they do. We choose not to be social and interact much of the time, but that is a choice made within the context of knowing what it means.

<snip long personal anecdote which I have sympathy for, but which has nothing to do with the discussion>

I am not arguing for an immortal unique soul or a biological personality or anything like that - in fact I think that that would, if anything, support the deterministic argument and I've always been skeptical of people who make that claim. I am saying that the things we do in a social capacity are not based primarily on our physical state. Little children will cry when they are hungry or tired or lonely, but adults will choose to act more sensibly. Why? Because out actions are not predetermined by physical needs. We can choose to make lunch - or choose to buy lunch - or choose to skip lunch and eat a bigger dinner.


Social rules are guidelines. They don't suspend physical laws. Physical laws trump. If you are at a social event, that does not mean you can levitate your dinner.

I never said they did. We do not need to have every possible course of action at our fingertips in order to be able to choose one over another.


That people think that the ability to say "bless you" when someone sneezes means we are the only things in the universe where physics does not apply is slightly appauling.

That you think people actually think that is similarly appalling. I seriously doubt very many people know where that comes from, and I'm certain that no one thinks about it when saying it in context.

[meshou]

Huh? That's a contradiction if I ever saw one. If there's no free will, then nothing you chose was really a choice at all. If everything is predetermined, you had no choice. Perhaps only the illusion of one.Hume. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatibilism)

Again, I think acting like free will exists is absolutely nessicary. But I still don't think it exists.

[meshou]

that's a paradox...

if it is predetermined, there is no struggle, only perhaps the perception of one. if my thoughts are predetermined, then they are not my thoughts (they existed before me therefore they cannot be mine). at best i'm borrowing them.Lack of free will does not suspend time.


i just don't buy it. it seems silly. i believe in randomness. humans are the wildcard to everything else that is predictable.And I think believing that human beings are the center of the universe is dumb.

[Master O]

Lack of free will does not suspend time.

And I think believing that human beings are the center of the universe is dumb. how does asserting free will make humans the center of the universe. your arguement is irrational.

i don't believe that everything is predictable but humans. i believe many things are unpredictable and we're just one of them. that in no way makes us more or less important than anything else.