The Free Will Thread
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Guest, did you like the last podcast notification?? Well here's the second one, and for the third podcast! Yep. This Thursday 8-8-24 at 7pm Central
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Agraza
Registered Hutt
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I think you're not getting just how basic the distinction is here. You don't have a choice if they're right. There is no infinite. You didn't choose. You think you did. You think you have the option. You thinking that also isn't an option. It's beyond your grasp. You're just a witness, a tool, to the actions of an organ that is pursuing its own goal which you're only tangentially aware of. IF we have no free will.
If we do have free will, you're right.
Tuco
I got Tuco'd!
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Agraza
Registered Hutt
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Negative. And you're conflating two issues. 1) You say the results should be the same regardless, so intent isn't relevant. 2) He's saying choice exists even if an object beyond our control them entirely on its own and we only think they're our choices. That's a complete contradiction, and can't be correct. He's arguing that free will exists while saying that even if it didn't, it does. Like...what?
Sentagur
Low and to the left
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Doesn't not having a free will make the current justice system even more important. The fact that we are able to speculate the outcome of our actions and comprehend the negative impact they have on others makes the fact that we lock people up for performing undesirable action part of the system that informs the decisions our subconscious comes up with.
Tuco
I got Tuco'd!
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Is this thread about our brains operating on physical mechanisms instead of magical metaphysical brain power housed just above our realm of being?
I don't think the physical simplicity from which consciousness is ultimately derived from undermines free will. If you put every particle in my body in the same place in the same environment I'll perform the same, if you change the environment I won't. That's free will enough for me.
Trying to prove either way is probably a sure fire way to end up crazy as fuck though.
I don't think the physical simplicity from which consciousness is ultimately derived from undermines free will. If you put every particle in my body in the same place in the same environment I'll perform the same, if you change the environment I won't. That's free will enough for me.
Trying to prove either way is probably a sure fire way to end up crazy as fuck though.
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Amazon.com: Books
I was skeptical but ended up being convinced. We do not have a will that is free. Even if you think about who to marry for several years, the moment the decision is made is still subject to at least some determinism at a physical level. We can build a mental framework for ourselves and steer our consciousness over time and with effort, slowly like a large ship, but the ship is going forward whether we like it or not, and the default setting is that of it steering itself.
I walked away from this book thinking of the free will of consciousness sort of like evolution or natural selection. By understanding how it works, we can make an effort to take the reins a bit and try to steer or guide its direction. But if we make no such effort, nature will guide the process for us.
I was skeptical but ended up being convinced. We do not have a will that is free. Even if you think about who to marry for several years, the moment the decision is made is still subject to at least some determinism at a physical level. We can build a mental framework for ourselves and steer our consciousness over time and with effort, slowly like a large ship, but the ship is going forward whether we like it or not, and the default setting is that of it steering itself.
I walked away from this book thinking of the free will of consciousness sort of like evolution or natural selection. By understanding how it works, we can make an effort to take the reins a bit and try to steer or guide its direction. But if we make no such effort, nature will guide the process for us.
Alexzander
Golden Knight of the Realm
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Firstly, I'm 'C' on the poll. I'm still undecided. I don't think science is really firm on either side yet.
The justice system can still function fine if free will isn't real. We would just need to shift away from punitive and towards preventative. Which is to say, the purpose of locking someone up would be to protect the population from them rather than to give them a spanking for what they did.
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Now how would that work? Aside some system like a few premonition psychics floating in some pool warning us of the things people would do? Since most criminal acts are spontaneous.
Alexzander
Golden Knight of the Realm
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They're still locked up afterwards. It would make it clear--or rather ought to-- that the priorities of the criminal justice system should shift from punishment to rehabilitation.
Kaines
Potato Supreme
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Rehabilitation is worthless if the person doesn't have the free will to change their behavior.
Malakriss
Golden Baronet of the Realm
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They would move the goal posts to the only "subjective" area left once free will is out of the game: learned behavior. You would see arguments that their genes and instincts aren't bad, they simply had awful experiences in their childhood which caused them to develop this way. But the flaws of rehabilition works both ways because if we're devoid of free will (which is not bound by genetic or learned behaviors) then you're trying to convince a system that it is corrupted and force it to regress from that corrupted state without will.
The much more likely result would be harsher punishments until medical science catches up and then we would see something similar to Babylon 5 sci-fi with "death of personality" sentences. If it gets beyond the glorified brainwashing stages and we can actually destroy all of the memory/experiences/personality of a person and implant a new one then there goes any arguments against artificial minds being inserted into grown/cloned bodies. Hell, we can justify body hopping and living forever then too.
The much more likely result would be harsher punishments until medical science catches up and then we would see something similar to Babylon 5 sci-fi with "death of personality" sentences. If it gets beyond the glorified brainwashing stages and we can actually destroy all of the memory/experiences/personality of a person and implant a new one then there goes any arguments against artificial minds being inserted into grown/cloned bodies. Hell, we can justify body hopping and living forever then too.
Hoss
Make America's Team Great Again
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I think you're confused. What you're describing is free will. People are saying if free will does NOT exist, the justice system is undermined.
Also, this poll is dildoes. No tomatoe option.
chaos
Buzzfeed Editor
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I don't think I am confused, I think I get it, I just don't have really good language to speak about this stuff. If I take an action caused by some combination of chemistry in my body, past input to the brain, environment, etc then that isn't free will. I "make a choice". And I could have "made another choice". But there's no little man in my head weighing things this way and that, making decisions. There's no choice, there's only action. Multiple actions COULD happen, with "you" as the initiator of said action, but there's really no "you". What you perceive to be "you" is your brain tricking you. There's no you, there's no self, there's no choice, there's no god, we're all alone and then we die. And yet, the justice system is still not undermined. intent still exists. Water still tastes delicious, the sun still shines. The universe is indifferent to our crisis of self.
chaos
Buzzfeed Editor
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I don't think "I" have an option. I think there are multiple options. Again, I'm really bad at explaining this stuff. But when I first heard it, it fucked me up. Because a guy like Harris, he's a very smart neuroscientist and the instinct is to think he gets something that I don't. Similar to how I get something he just doesn't in the privacy debate. He doesn't see the forest, I do. In this case I couldn't see the forest, only my own dread at what that meant if he was right and I had no free will. But really, what he's saying is just really obvious. Or it seems so to me. And I've heard other people say similar things.
Saying "you" make a choice is to say that there is a "you" independent of your body. Which, there just isn't. When you reconcile that, then "your brain" makes a choice. But your brain is just chemical soup storing conditioning and environmental variables and processing input. Every "choice" is the focal point of a million different factors coming into play all at once. It's a bunch of XOR gates, processing output. The action is the output.
Cad
scientia potentia est
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Doesn't this all depend on how you define "you" making the choice? If you want to say "your brain" made the choice as a result of some chemical alchemy, isn't your brain you? Didn't you still make that choice, even if it was by chemical process rather than whatever you thought it was prior? To act like we aren't chemical/electrical beings and so chemical processes aren't "us" sounds pretty hokey.