100% correct. If you accept the fact that there is no free will, then both PRAISE and BLAME make zero sense. You can break down Hitler in the same way you can break down hurricanes. He was just another biological puppet. As was Mother Theresa. Now this is an EXTREMELY difficult concept to accept but with some further studying, you’ll get there. There is no “evil gene” or “good gene.” It was never anything you controlled when you break things down on an atomical level.

I was wrestling state champ my junior year of high school and I deserve zero praise or congratulations for that. Because my genetics plus the environment I was placed in where I would run through a brick wall for my wrestling coach is what lead me to that point. I followed my biologically determined path that told me this goal was most desirable. My brain was wired to respond positively to negative reinforcement. He would beat the sh!t out of me in practice and I was fortunate enough to have a brain that responded well to that. So I can’t take any pride in achieving that goal whatsoever.

It sucks to realize that. But I accept it for what it is.

The question is, would you rather believe in free will tho? Go back to the mindset that 99.99% people have? Or would you rather stay with your current understanding of the universe ?


It’s a bit of a depressing path, depending on your emotional intelligence and how you are able to act accordingly once you have those beliefs

I dont think its depressing at all. Ive thought about it constantly. Ive come to the conclusion that we're just spectators of this being or vessel (yourself) and that we're locked in for the ride (your life) - everything that happens was destined to happen. Its kind of liberating

I'm all about basing my beliefs on cold, hard facts. The cold, hard facts is that I was given choices my whole life and I see those choices and what they turned into. Maybe other people weren't given choices, well that's something for me to take in and empathize with. But humans are capable of choices, and once you've been given a choice a few times, you're capable of seeing choices everywhere. You get overwhelmed by the amount of possibilities and this induces anxiety which I mentioned experiencing with this responsibility earlier. Yes, you could just as easily be Hitler as Mother Theresa. It's terrifying.

Mother Theresa and Hitler both had choices.
I love how physics brah and science brahs almost always seem to agree with the views I developed through philosophizing. srs

My methods are less scientific but my end results usually are quite accurate scientifically. I agree that people like Sam Harris conflate the part with the whole in terms of a neural event representing the will.

I don't use all the scientific terms in my thinking, but I play with these concepts in my head a lot. More so than those who disagree with me, who are usually regurgitants of some famous talking head, i.e. Sam Harris.
I can't imagine not taking credit for one's own accomplishments. Was it all you, no, of course there were other contributing factors, a perfect storm if you will. But at the end of the day, you had to show up to practice and do what you had to do in order to get there.

This argument will continue circling because you'll say, "what caused me to go there" but I'll just end with a quote.

"I don't wanna be a product of my environment, I want my environment to be a product of me."

Do, say, be whatever you want boyo. You have that choice whether you realize it or not. Everyone does.

I’d probably be better off believing in free will but I still would rather accept an ugly truth than to live a happy lie.

Honestly though, the realization that there is no free will is compartmentalized even for the most anti-free will advocate out there. And I would go crazy if I constantly lived my life completely free of ego. If some girl tells me “Hey, you have nice blue eyes!” I’m not gonna be an autist and spew out the biological fact that it’s because I possess the recessive gene/allele for blue eyes and that she shouldn’t compliment me for soemthing I had no control over. Even though that’s all true, I’m just gonna say “Thank you” like any normal person would do. You have to block out all these facts for the most part, unless you wanna be “that guy” and be all weird about it.

That’s your problem right there. You have to imagine that because it’s just a fact. You don’t even wanna go down that road because right off the bat, it’s too upsetting for you to even think about. My brain followed every law of biological and causal determinism. Nothing more, nothing less.

I’ll admit that yes I still do “allow” my brain to access the ego inside that tells me “Yea man, you earned that sh!t.” It feels good for me to think that and indulge in my illusory identity. I just realize when and why I’m thinking with the ego and when I’m thinking objectively and truthfully about how and why I actually achieved that goal.

When I’m going down on some sloot and making her cum so many times she nearly squishes my head like a watermelon with her legs...yea I’m gonna be 100% engaged in my ego. Like I’m something special or some sh!t, lol. When in reality my brain just adapted through trial and error what gets them off. Nothing worth bragging about whatsoever.

Think of your life like a DVD. Every time you rewind a DVD, it always plays out the same way. That’s your life. You were always going to make that same choice you made no matter how many times you run it back. You can think “Oh I should’ve done X, Y, or Z” when in reality all those choices were predetermined by an endless sequence of causes.

Like I said, of course people helped you get to your goal and of course you happened to be in the right place at the right time to reach it.

But did you not want it, fight for it, and do what you had to do to earn it?

Wrestling is a 1v1 sport. You took accountability every time you lost a match, right? At the end of the day you have to take extreme accountability in a sport like wrestling, because you don't have anyone else to blame. If you had gone out drinking before tournaments or had a below acceptable GPA, you wouldn't have won regardless of your environment, genetics, coach. You had a series of choices.

Luck is when preparation meets opportunity.
We are what we repeatedly do, excellence is therefore a habit, not an act.
Etc.Wrong. You could always zig when you should've zagged. You can't go back so you just have to try to make the most sound decisions possible at every moment you have the opportunity to. You can't go back and change your choices, but you can start making different choices IMMEDIATELY.

Again, the reasons why I wanted it, fought for it, and did what I had to do to earn it are still easily explained by biology and neuroscience + environment.

Every single noble or wicked act you engaged in can be broken down by science to the point where it leaves you emotionally flatlined like “Oh, that’s all that was taking place there.”

I achieved winning a wrestling state title the same way an ant helped build an ant hill. I was just a biological puppet.

If you study these topics long and hard enough, you reach the point where everything can be explained. Self-discipline, extreme accountability, etc all sound like noble things but at the end of the day, it’s just neurons and brain synapses firing away.

Wow you're right man. I should just be a bum for the rest of my life because I have no control over anything I do. Thanks bruh.

Or somehow the wheel of fortune will take me to my destiny anyway. It was all a genetic lottery to begin with.

NOT SRS

You say NOT SRS but you are kinda serious, lol. You’re still not getting it. I’m tapped out.

Everything has a cause and effect, I agree.

I believe in the reap-sow, ask-receive, seek-find, and knock-and the door will be opened to you aspects of cause and effect.

Therefore today's thoughts become tomorrows things.

I suffer therefore i am.

We exist but we don't matter. It feels like the results are predetermined.

I choose to post this in this thread

I could have chosen not to

/argument

Don't need to write out a dissertation on common sense

Pointless debate to have on the misc that ultimately ends nowhere, and depends what level of emergence you're discussing, but fuk it.
Also, your arrogant attitude simply because you listened to a discussion (that i believe i linked you) doesn't really help matters, nor does it welcome open debate.
Even Sean Carroll, who is on 'your side' of the sam harris debate doesn't believe in true, fundamental free will and would never claim to lol, they pretty much come to that agreement right at the start of the debate.

Now note; i'm not claiming to have all the answers or be 100% right here, but I have a background in physics so I'm approaching this from our 'best understanding of physics' angle:

Fundamentally there is no free will (in the sense of, libertarian free will), there are quantum fields evolving according to the laws of physics, from which everything (including consciousness) most likely arises. In fact, fundamentally 'free will' isn't even a concept that makes sense to discuss, nor is it a concept that's really compatible with a scientific framework by which systems evolve according to rules (i.e physics). For 'true' 'free will' to exist, your thoughts need to either arise with no causality, or you need to will the causality, but then your will needs to have no causality. In a universe where the system evolves according to some well defined rules (i.e 'laws of physics') regardless of what they are, 'free will' isn't even a concept that makes sense to talk about because the entire system is fully described by the rules of evolution... unless you're suggesting reductionism doesn't hold (i mean it might not, but i don't see how it couldn't, and physics essentially assumes reductionism is solid). Until we truly understand how consciousness arises and the correlates of consciousness, we're not going to know the answer for sure, but all evidence based on our current best understanding of the universe, indicates 'libertarian free will' cannot exist, nor is it something that even makes sense to talk about. How do you have 'free will' at a fundamental level when the evolution of everything is described by the rules of the system (i.e the laws of physics)?

At a human level there is free will, we are not Laplace's Daemon nor is such an entity possible, so we will always be operating with some ignorance. But the laws of physics ultimately dictate the fact that you're here, and your decisions are ultimately a causality chain going back to the initial condition of the universe, which you have no agency over. Even though the laws of physics dictate, at the fundamental level what you think and your actions, 'you' would always make these decisions and actions and wouldn't make a different decision or you wouldn't be 'you', so while it doesn't save fundamental free will, we're not just mindless drones either and it gives us some semblance of agency. I wouldn't call it an illusion, as such, rather an emergent phenomena.

Problem with these debates is that the English language isn't really equipped to talk about this very effectively, and people talk across each other because they have different personal definitions of words like 'free will' and 'illusion'... these words are not well defined and vary depending on what you're discussing. I mean for example you could argue everything but fermions and bosons is an 'illusion' since they are the only things that exist fundamentally, yet we would never talk like that, or call reality an illusion... rather we describe the world as 'emergent' and we describe complex systems of particles at a macro level with thermodynamic properties. For example when describing a gas, we describe it as a fluid, we use terms like density, pressure etc, we don't describe the position and momentum of every particle in the gas, we use emergent properties to describe the gas as a whole. Does this mean the thermodynamic properties of the gas are an illusion? You could make that argument but then literally everything becomes an 'illusion', but a better way is 'emergent'.
Heat is another example, one particle doesn't have a temperature only kinetic energy, but when you have an ensemble a temperature property emerges..

But still, it doesn't really save true free will... what you'll notice about the thermodynamic properties of a gas, or heat emerging is that whilst we get some new emergent properties when we're talking about an ensemble which saves us information, the systems can still fully be described at the fundamental level by their particles, and you wouldn't need to have any knowledge of the thermodynamic emergent properties to have a full description of the system; reductionism still holds true.

It doesn't mean we should live like there's no libertarian free will even though our best understanding of physics tells us there probably isn't... from our perspective we can never have complete knowledge of every particle in the universe and their properties (which you would need due to entangled pairs, see Von Neumann entropy) and so from our perspective agency will always seem to exist. We also shouldn't ignore what the laws of physics appear to be telling us just because it makes us uncomfortable. Based on our understanding the facts seem to be; you get to make make choices, but you don't get to choose which choices you make lol.

Really it all comes down to your definition of 'free will', which is ultimately what Carroll and Harris are debating, because they both agree that in the purest, most fundamental sense, free will doesn't even make sense (which they describe as 'Libertarian free will' - Carroll literally states at the start we both agree this can't exist if we're even a little bit right about physics lol). The entire debate mostly argues about the idea of emergent free will, and once you're arguing about emergent free will it's largely simply a matter of perspective.

Also JFL @ those politicizing it in this thread, this has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with our best evidence. Throwing around statements like 'lol this is a liberal view' contributes nothing to the debate, and rather just looks like a weak deflection tactic to avoid actually debating the subject matter.

Every instant of time is based on the previous instant and cannot be in violation of the laws of physics.

That chain started before you existed.

Why bother debating with robots?

If you think there is no free will why try and convince anyone? It's not like you're even choosing to because according to the argument there is no free will

In fact since there's no free will, why doesn't Harris just end it all?

Want to rep, but on spread.

My personal "if then" philosophy from this:

- make the best decisions you can based on the information you have at any given time

- show up for life and do your best, but don't be too hard on yourself

- be slow to judge, kind, and humble

thats still free will bruh. free will isnt your pure soul, free of all cosmic influence, out here making decisions based on nothing.

of course your environment and such impacts your decision-making. thats called learning. emotions, dna, other people, ect all affects each decision you make but its your dnd, your emotions, and the people you put around you. its your decision, thus free will.

not having free will would be all of that being predetermined, which is not the argument you are making. you are simply breaking down free will into mechanics. otherwise you cant punish a serial killer because THEY didnt chose to make a lamp shade out of someones skin. it was simply their surroundings, chemicals that provide emotions, and the dna their parents passed onto them.

thats a very liberal and postmodern concept thats cringy af

thats called learning.

if im in a game of baseball, i cant just bring out a tennis racquet and start playing tennis. but because i dont doesnt mean im no longer playing baseball.

point is that theres limitation to your choices and your will but that doesnt mean they cant exist. they simply exist within the set of rules we live by

if free will doesnt exist than its idiotic to ever punish anyone for anyone, including someone who might murder sam harris’ wife and kids. he would have no grounds to be upset

IF that is true then I would argue that it is incredibly detrimental, as a society to come to that conclusion and to live by it. that would be a “truth” that is not worth realizing.

in fact, humanities path to learning all truths of the universe is probably reaching the point to where its becoming worse for us than it is beneficial

Whether free will exists depends on your definition/perception of it.

The universe is deterministic. Consciousness is an emergent phenomena from the biochemical feedback loops and circuits in the nervous system and ultimately it is deterministic too. Everything thus has a predetermined odds of coming to pass. By this logic, there is no free will. Pure freedom to be what you want does not exist; only predetermined possibilities. Pure freedom of thought does not exist; it has a deterministic framework. Pure freedom of choice does not exist; we can be reasonably sure that the nervous system has many feedback loops generating choices or wants behind possible choice of actions.

However our brain has evolved to provide a reasonably sufficient grasp of reality which will (mostly) not be grappling with the above deterministic constraints and has formed a theory of mind and individual self that is capable of perceiving to have free will. Our odds of choosing one option out of many 'appear' to us to be made out of our own volition. The sense of self is real indeed even if brought to life by a deterministic evolutionary design with a drop of illusion. The fact that we will have perceived to choose one path, even if from a limited predetermined pool of options, is good enough. The universe may limit our choices but who cares, the paths themselves might seem endless and that is good enough for us. No escaping the deterministic dice roll, but ignorance is bliss and the ignorant bliss of vast choices is our free will.

If 1 billion parallel universes were created at your birth, you would make this identical post in all 1 billion universes.

BTW, that may seem like an insanely pessimistic view of free will but it really isn't.

Everything feels real so it does not matter. It feels like we make choices so from our fame of reference, we do have free will. Given unlimited rewinds we would still make the same choices though, so its all an illusion.

Whilst what you're saying is largely true, the fact we'd 'make the same choices' a billion times is not necessarily true; that depends on what version of QM you subscribe to, and since currently they all make the same predictions it's hard to argue which one is definitely correct.

If you believe in the Copenhagen interpretation for example which i guess is the mainstream one thanks to Neils Bohr (although i don't like it), each iteration of the universe would look different due to the stochastic nature of the theory, although there's still no room for 'free will', just events seeded by stochastic events at the fundamental level (since each interaction is essentially a one-to-many event 'randomly' selected from the possible distribution)

Of course there's other interpretations that are fully deterministic like pilot wave theory, or the many worlds interpretation (although it's not clear what branch you'd end up on, so it would *seem* random even though it's fully deterministic)

The general sentiment of what you're saying is correct though

Of course this debate is far from settled but from our frame of reference, it feels real no matter what, we die no matter what and on the scale of all of existence, we barely exist for just a moment. Our reality (no matter what it is) is both a world where we feel like the masters of everything juxtaposed against a reality where we don't matter at all.If you want to see something interesting, google for this forum, my user name and Copenhagen. You might not have known it, but this is one of my favorite subjects.

Tangential to this subject is of course the very pressing question "Will humans leverage quantum computing to create universe simulators?". The answer to this leads to another pretty profound question that you have no doubt already thought about quite a bit. That 2nd question really throws a wrench into the whole 'free will' debate.

In the end I more or less have become content knowing that I likely wont ever know because that lack of an answer drives theoretical physics forward. We will discover all kinds of crazy chit trying to answer the big questions and that is better than simply having all the answers now.

There are those who think that life has nothing left to chance
A host of holy horrors to direct our aimless dance
A planet of playthings, we dance on the strings of powers we cannot perceive
The stars aren't aligned or the Gods are malign, blame is better to give than receive
You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice
You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill
I will choose a path that's clear, I will choose Freewill
There are those who think that they were dealt a losing hand
The cards were stacked against them they weren't born in Lotus Land
All preordained, a prisoner in chains, a victim of venomous fate
Kicked in the face, you can pray for a place, in heaven's unearthly estate
You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice
You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill
I will choose a path that's clear, I will choose Freewill
Each of us, a cell of awareness, imperfect and incomplete
Genetic blends with uncertain ends on a fortune hunt that's far too fleet
You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice
You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill
I will choose a path that's clear, I will choose Freewill

From a practical level, you have to act as if there is free will. We make decisions day to day about everything, but at the end of the day, you know that those decisions were predetermined. We just had to play them out.

Free will is very real

Is there any way to know? I agree that it sure feels real but if the universe is deterministic, every choice you make today was set in stone at the dawn of our universe.

I believe the debate you linked me with Peterson-harris was more focused on morality, dogmatism, religion, And utility of metaphoricaL truth vs objective truth than it was about free will. I don't recall them mentioning free will in that video. You sent me that video because I was arguing on behalf of nihilism, that morality was "fake", i.e. idealism rather than realism.

Re: free will, You can reduce everything down and say that y was caused by x and that a chain of events had to precede an event occurring and I don't fully disagree with that. We're certainly influenced by our environment to the point that some things may as well be predetermined.

I don't have time now to respond to the full post, maybe I'll come back later. But the gist of my response is sure we're infiuenced but we can break beyond our conditioning and adapt to any environment when forced. I don't believe future events are predetermined.

I.e. its not known by anybody what will happen exactly in 6 years from this moment. I don't believe "God" knows either. I believe we were made such that our decisions effect our outcomes, and we can create the cause which leads to an effect.

God may be the prima causi, the big bang, but man is somewhat created in God's image because we can determine what we do. I don't believe any person is constrained by their upbringing. That's 100% cope.

If you break past your conditioning (Hindus talk about this, Buddhists talk about letting go of attachments - both ideas stem from meditation), you realize that there are nearly infinite possibilities of what you can do/be. This is the redpill at its core in the Matrix.

Free will isn't an illusion. Rules/limits are.
Maybe as Blackjack said, not all people are meant to see this.

Having free will/ full responsibility for your choices is a heavy cross to bear, maybe too heavy for most.