There's no such a thing as a self made person

[derpyderpins]

@derpyderpins I don't see why your motivations for living hinge on free will. I can't help but feel we're misunderstanding each other. What I'm saying is—maybe someone reads your recovery post, takes the advice to heart, and chooses to act on it. That choice was fated. But how does that detract from its power? It still results in change, doesn't it? As with your motivations to live. The bearded guy (iirc) put that one something like this: We do what we choose (!). We just don't *choose* what we choose (in that if we were omnipotent we could track the causal factors that led to your choice to live.) Framing it that way I don't see cause for dismay.

TLDR, We still make choices. Even choosing to lay in bed all day because determinism depresses you is a choice. Determinism just says that your choice wasn't random, it came out of somewhere. It had a chain of causes. And that's essentially what the clip and my paragraph argued for—that everything has a cause, and those causes had their own causes, all the way back to the inception of the universe.

Well this is where I've been specifying 100% determinism. I don't think the decision comes from nowhere. I agree that there are a lot of influences. The disagreement between me and beardsley is very small in nature but massive in implication.

I started this out talking about the "I." What am I? Who am I? Why does it matter? What am I doing here? There are thoughts, emotions, etc. that we experience, so we can't say we are those things. The "I" is something else that is witnessing the thought.

So for both me and beardsley, we agree that your human decision making process involves determinist factors like your genetics and experiences and biases and preferences and tendencies that all influence what you will choose. What I've been calling the code, program, etc.

In my view of free will heavily influenced by determinism, the issue requiring a decision is fed into the code, it is analyzed based on my code with all of that genetics and bias and whatnot, then the findings and recommendations of the code come to the "I", through that filter, and the "I" chooses, resulting in the thoughts and actions the "I" experiences. The thoughts come from the "I".

In beardsley's full determinist view, the issue is fed into the code, and rather than the findings and recommendations being sent to the "I", the "I" is merely present to witness the automatic decision. It's a passthrough. The thoughts do not come from the "I", they just pass it on their merry way. So, who am I? What am I? I'm a mental camera that sees a being (separate from me, though we are stuck together) actually do things. That is the totality of who and what I am. I do not make choices. This body I'm attached to makes choices.

More metaphorical: I am CEO of a company. I make the big decisions. From the beginning, when we had no infrustructure or anything, I've made the decisions by having an ai analyze all available data to present me with the pros and cons of each path. As the company grew, the ai's process of analyzing things changed, accounting for more details, learning from past mistakes, etc. Now the company is huge, it does good things, it's something to be proud of . . . but by whom? If every choice the AI suggested was automatically enacted without my input, and I just sat in the office watching it do everything, is that company really the result of me at all? No. Now, if I was making the final call, I own the successes, the failures, and everything in between. It may be imperfect but it is something I did.

I want to live because the life is mine, the one thing in this world I truly own. I'm not watching something be built, I'm building something, deciding what goes where and what should be emphasized. I'm writing this song. If you take free will away, I'm just watching while an ai software writes a song. I have no identity. Sure, the DNA of my vessel is technically unique. He has characteristics. He says and does things in a slightly different way than other vessels, and his actions change things around him. He writes annoyingly long answers to everybody. But if I'm not making the choices, he's not me. Yes, over time he grows and changes and works towards goals almost like a real boy, but I had nothing to do with that growth. I just watched as it happened. You take free will away and make me live that life, just watching, I'd rather not. If I've been living like that this whole time with the false belief that I had any say, it actually makes me want to burn everything down, but I'd settle for ending my own life.

If we can't choose what we choose, it isn't choice. A roomba chooses to turn around when it hits a wall. That choice results in change, a different part of the floor is cleaned. Does that roomba have human purpose? Is it a life worth living? What about if we programmed in that it will have an emotional reaction upon such a choice being made?

On my posts, yes they may still influence people. But I wouldn't believe them anymore. They'd be lies. I'd be preaching about an existence that is impossible.

 

[Aergia]

"I" chooses

But what makes the "I" choose A over B? Is it something external to the "I" that causes it to choose A? Or is it that nothing makes the "I" choose A, it just does it—in which case the choice is random? There can't be a third option as I see it. Introducing the "I" just pushes the problem back, because either the "I" is making random decisions or it's being influenced by something. Of course I would say the "I" has been influenced by all its formative experiences and current relationships and everything else in the emotional or spiritual domain.

I'm building something, deciding what goes where and what should be emphasized. I'm writing this song. If you take free will away, I'm just watching while an ai software writes a song.

The difference between "doing" and "watching" isn't having control over the experience imo, it's just whether you can feel the experience or not. We don't know enough about the nature of consciousness to program consciousness, as in actual qualitative experience, into the roomba but if we could then sure, I'd say that roomba would be capable of feeling purpose. Yes, you were predetermined to write the song but again I don't see how that makes the experience any less powerful, because again, experience is at the core of this. But I feel like now we're just repeating ourselves back at each other, and it's a question of values again, so if you like we could just stick to the truth-value debate.

 

[derpyderpins]

But what makes the "I" choose A over B? Is it something external to the "I" that causes it to choose A? Or is it that nothing makes the "I" choose A, it just does it—in which case the choice is random? There can't be a third option as I see it. Introducing the "I" just pushes the problem back, because either the "I" is making random decisions or it's being influenced by something. Of course I would say the "I" has been influenced by all its formative experiences and current relationships and everything else in the emotional or spiritual domain.

It's either something external or random? How about internal? Internal influence.

Influence doesn't have to be definitive. You can influence chance, so I would say there is a distinctly different category which is part influence (external and/or internal) and random. And what happens when external influences are equally strong for multiple options? There is a tiebreaker that you could say is just random (still a distinct category as a combination) or the tie is broken by internal influences. Choice.

On Internal influence, even "random" isn't always perfectly random. I can have something random with weighted probabilities. External influences can cause me to change my internal influences and thus adjust my particular random weighting over time. And when presented with the option to either do something random or influenced, there is a decision step at that point which I would say is internal.

Of course I agree the "I" is influenced by something, but I don't see influence as total control, which is necessary for this simplified two-factor paradigm.

And we've now pivoted again to discussing whether determinism is right, not whether it's good :P

The difference between "doing" and "watching" isn't having control over the experience imo, it's just whether you can feel the experience or not.

That's just kinda ignoring what the words mean, though.

So if I could put a chip in your brain, or put you into a perfectly lucid dream, where you see and feel yourself have an experience as if it happened in the physical realm, when you wake up and realize it was a dream/fantasy, you would still say "I did that" with no differentiation from it occuring in reality?

We don't know enough about the nature of consciousness to program consciousness, as in actual qualitative experience, into the roomba but if we could then sure, I'd say that roomba would be capable of feeling purpose. Yes, you were predetermined to write the song but again I don't see how that makes the experience any less powerful, because again, experience is at the core of this.

The creation is the experience. It's making your own versus following a guide. Drawing freehand versus tracing. But it's applied to your whole life. The person following the guide might experience making whatever they're making, but it is not the same experience as the person who's unique personhood was able to result in that creation, the end result of a lifetime of success and failure poured into the art. Success and failures which can only exist if I have choice. If there's no choice, then you can't say something was a success or failure, it's just what happened. It could be a bad or good outcome, but you can't apply that designation to the self. Inward reflection would be idiotic. There's a big difference between "I messed up, I have to do better next time, because I take responsibility for that choice and don't like this feeling of guilt that came with making the wrong one" and "that outcome was sub-optimal I shall adjust parameters accordingly. There is no reason for me to feel guilt, as I had no agency." So, the resulting art could be objectively nice, but it means nothing.

 

[LaVieEnRose]

I get that we're not talking about fate. Of course the future isn't set.

Isn't that what it is, from what I understood? According to this idea the future is set (how could it not be) but we're not privy to how things will turn out.

But the level of determinism we're suggesting is that how I will act in any situation is 100% determined. I have no control. I'm a free-rider to my biology. An observer trapped in this body, forced to feel all the feelings with no ability to affect what those feelings will be.

Well, ultimately that's not empirical reality. Otherwise people wouldn't have been able to recover successfully from things like addiction and personality disorders. But that happens.

 

[derpyderpins]

Isn't that what it is, from what I understood? According to this idea the future is set (how could it not be) but we're not privy to how things will turn out.

There's still randomness. A meteorite could head straight for me or not. Determinism just says that How I will react if it does come towards me is predetermined, as well as how I will act if it does not come straight for me. I have no control, but different things could still happen.

Well, ultimately that's not empirical reality. Otherwise people wouldn't have been able to recover successfully from things like addiction and personality disorders. But that happens.

I'm with you. The counter would be that you aren't able to choose whether to recover or not. You're either someone who will recover or someone who won't from a combination of birth and your experiences, it's not up to you at all. I don't buy it, but that's the idea of no free will.

 

[nogods4me]

I'm not sure if the some choice idea is based on buddhism but I don't think that has been proven.

Someone who feels the events and feels a sense of controlling the events to come while dreaming can still be under the predetermined control that already exists from the moment they were born and no one understands it. Maybe real understanding and enlightenment is devolving consciousness right out of experience and then whatever material mechanics are happening won't be relevant anyway.

If someone feels creation as experience they might just be lucky to have that as part of their predetermined set of experiences.

I think it is best if people can kill themselves since I don't think they will achieve enlightenment nor do I think they will be free of suffering either by thinking their way out or finding some other way of negating their consciousness, however consciousness is defined.

 

[LaVieEnRose]

There's still randomness. A meteorite could head straight for me or not. Determinism just says that How I will react if it does come towards me is predetermined, as well as how I will act if it does not come straight for me. I have no control, but different things could still happen.


I'm with you. The counter would be that you aren't able to choose whether to recover or not. You're either someone who will recover or someone who won't from a combination of birth and your experiences, it's not up to you at all. I don't buy it, but that's the idea of no free will.

"Determinism is the philosophical view that all events in the universe, including human decisions and actions, are causally inevitable. "

It sounds like your being in the path of the meteor wouldn't be strictly random either.

But there generally aren't any concrete answers when it comes to this level of mental masturbation :p (on all our parts).

 

[Pluto]