Sup phags

So I want to know about Sup Forums general thoughts about free will vs determinism. Go

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The concept of free will is an inherently religious idea. Without the idea of a creator, free will is a meaningless concept.

Care to substantiate your claim that it's inherently a religious idea? Because I'm an atheist and that assertion doesn't seem self evident to me in the slightest.

Free will exists only as a concept if there also exists a being with the power of taking away that will. Without a godlike entity, there exists nothing that could suppress your will. Therefore, without a god, the concept of free will doesn't even make any sense.

>this kills the thiest who believes in an omnipotent god, or jesus who atoned for 'all' sins
literally l m a o ing

Free will is an illusion.
Any action (output) that appears to change the future is caused by the most reinforced neural pathway.

instinct

Like many things, e.g. with quantum mechanics, its a question of perspective:

From the outside, it looks like people are in all kinds of parallel universes / timeline at the same time.

From the subjective perspective, free will determines which timeline we "really" are in.

>Still believing the free will meme

Every one of your decisions is a direct result of your past experiences, events you have no control over, and chemicals.

For example, if you read what i just wrote and changed your mind on free will as a concept, that was through no will of your own. Your own past experiences and biology made you susceptible to the argument and your mind changed against your will. You can't "decide" what you believe in. It just happens.

everything you've ever done in you life led up to you posting this. you didn't have a choice because you didn't have the capacity to not post it.

If there is no god then everything boils down to physics. At the end of the day a powerful enough computer could calculate every single "choice" you are going to ever make.

Your mind is nothing but matter and electrical impulses. A complex switchboard.

Free will requires a god.

I was not predetermined to answer your stupid question.

Yay we're all just empty meatsacks.

Time to go on a murderspree because life obviously has no inherent value beyond survival woohoo!!

evidence derive from the field of Quantum Physics suggests that determinism is not correct

however, this does not suggest that free will exists, only that it would be impossible to predict the future

Choose NAO!

There is no evidence whatsoever to support this.

You make all these assertions without providing any evidence.

What sort of fucked up definition of "free will" are you using? As far as I know, the notion of "free will" pertains to the capacity of a conscious entity to act in certain way, or change it's behavior, based on a storehouse of predictive inferential information obtained through sensory experience. Do you dispute this definition?

Seems self evident.

Where does free will come into play if there is no god? What is there beyond physics?

Nobody can offer any proof of either claim. This is unprovable. There is no way to test the theories.

Free will comes into play because you presuppose the possibility of alternative states when you attempt to convince me that free will is an incorrect concept. You can't use language in a meaningful way without presupposing some sort of capacity of an agent's ability to choose.

Not at all, I'm merely asserting it is a religious concept. Whenever you discuss free will it is almost always in the context of religion. Does God control my actions? Does he know everything I am going to do before I do it?

Imagine a world without religion. No one would ever ask these questions. No one would ever question whether free will exists because it is so self-evident that anyone asking the question without the context of religion would be looked at as a lunatic.

And yet here we are, two atheists discussing a bullshit religious concept. A concept that is utterly irrelevant to our lives.

>The concept of free will is an inherently religious idea. Without the idea of a creator, free will is a meaningless concept.

Nonsense.
You're right that free will is a "religious" claim in that it's not scientific. ... But it has nothing to do with a deity. If an omnipotent god exists, free will doesn't.

If the universe is just a simulation than free will doesn't exist

And if an omnipotent god does not exist, the concept of free will is meaningless, for there exists nothing that could possibly prevent you from exerting your will.

...

What the fuck are you talking about? You're the one who brought religion into this. I could easily imagine a conversation about free will that has nothing to do with religion. It's not my fault you chose to derail the question at had with question begging, non sequiturs, and strawmen. Maybe in YOUR world every discussion is always in the context of religion because you CHOOSE to bring up religion. LOL

Is this Luther or Calvin speaking?
Thanks for the destruction of Western philosophy and Christendom.
Without you, we wouldn't have the SJW or the commie.
Thanks again.

And this is the core of determinism. This is an unavoidable conclusion of a purely "natural" world and is intrinsic to atheism. Atheists that argue for free will have to do mental gymnastics and otherwise lead themselves into contradictions to try and oppose the idea of determinism, and yet they kind of have to, as it is literally impossible to rationally argue for determinism.

The very act of argumentation is predicated on you ascribing free will on the part of the person you're trying to convince. After all arguing with someone with no free will is as mentally ill as screaming at a cloud for raining "incorrectly" or moving "wrongfully" in the sky. Any perceived change you get with the cloud as a result of your argumentation is no less illusory than whatever you achieve with doing the same by arguing with a fleshy meat robot. Everyone gets this on an intuitive level, and everyone operates their life based on humans having free will. Our legal system is predicated on this, our social lives are predicated on this, and even our own internal thoughts are based on our assumption that there exists a "ghost in the machine" that allows us to choose our future.

And yet if you just break it down logically based on that which we observe about physics, we get this very weird contradiction between what we obviously fucking see, act upon, and experience, and what we suppose we have figured out as a result of logic. Ayn Rand, Stefan Molyneux, and others have tried to square this circle but (IMO) they have all failed and it usually just results in Compatibilism being obfuscated behind word changes and subtle shifts in definitions without proving anything.

This inquiry, amongst other reasons, led me to study Christianity as the Bible actually answers these metaphysical questions spectacularly.

Genesis 2:7
>And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

Assertion with no evidence or logic to back it up. YAWN

>I could easily imagine a conversation about free will that has nothing to do with religion.

Go on then, let's hear it.

>for there exists nothing that could possibly prevent you from exerting your will

What the fuck does this nonsense even mean?

Determinism is a lie anyone can disprove with simple experiments. Determinism is pseudoscience no self-respecting mind believes.

What are you talking about? I'm asserting that there isn't anything to prevent us from doing our will. This isn't a statement that can be proven since it's not possible to prove a negative. You're welcome to go ahead and prove something exists that can stop me from exerting my will; unless you can do that you're just talking about fantasy shit.

It means exactly what it says. Prove there exists anything that can stop me from exerting my will. Without that proof, it is only logical to assume that my will is my own.

Everything is deterministic
We live in an electric universe with infinite layered subtleties
What we are having the experience of is a human life which has the inescapable feeling of being be the masters of our own sails,

But we aren't free to choose, let me just ask you this
Where in life have you ever seen something that didn't have a cause for existing
Sure maybe you see things you can nderstand or explain but did they matter of factly asrise from nothing?
No, to believe in the inescapable delusion is merely an act of fear caused by the subconscious (unaware mind) ability to reason out the various negative implications that would come to pass on you for accepting and/or preaching this
Because if things have a cause Everyone you know is really a monster, and that's the truth

I've already provided my definition of free will as the capacity of a conscious entity to act in certain way, or change it's behavior, based on a storehouse of predictive inferential information obtained through sensory experience. You are free to address this definition, and we can go from there, or you can keep talking about "muh religious concept" in which case I will refrain from wasting anymore of my time.

>And if an omnipotent god does not exist, the concept of free will is meaningless.
Well there's no need for you to find meaning in the same things as me.

>for there exists nothing that could possibly prevent you from exerting your will.
How about somebody else exerting their will?
How about a tornado?
I don't get what you mean.

What's the difference if you believe in God?

If you do, God is omniscient. He would know which choice you would make and the result in both scenarios, and religious folk admit everything is part of God's plan and thus deterministic despite "free will" (all apparent choices or paths lead to the same conclusion).

This question of free will vs determinism only matters to those who reject a creator, or at least the traditional idea of a god.

>it's not possible to prove a negative
>Without that proof, it is only logical to assume that my will is my own
How can anyone contest this solid logic.

Seriously, it's time to stop posting, fren.

You're using some sort of fucked up caricatured definition of absolute, magical, free will that I refuse to argue against. I define free will as the capacity of a conscious entity to act in certain way, or change it's behavior, based on a storehouse of predictive inferential information obtained through sensory experience. If you want to dispute this sort of free will, go ahead, otherwise I'm not going to waste my time on you.

I already addressed that. I agree with your definition completely and have no objections. My initial point, which you refuse to address, is that the very concept of free will is one that stems from religion and makes no sense outside of that context. Because, as I've previously said, unless you can prove there exists some entity that prevents me from exerting my will then there is no way for my will to be anything but my own.

I strongly believe that determinism is a mental illness

Not all Christians are Calvinists m8. Not sure where the fuck you get that from. In fact the majority of Christians do not think God is the author of sin. Even most Catholics get this right.

Events like tornadoes and shit are merely events that we react to. Our reactions out entirely our own. A tornado doesn't strip you of your will.

Funny, neither you or he can come up with some sort of free will discussion that doesn't involved religion.

I refuse to address your initial point is because it a is nonsense assumption which for one reason or another you seem to convinced is absolutely true based on your own circular logic, yet you've provided ZERO sound argumentation for it. Do you need me to spell it out any further?

Ok it wouldn't strip you of your will, but it would prevent you from exerting your will.

But in any case, why exactly does that make it meaningless to say you have free will?

idk, but Free Will Looks like determinism if you're looking back

but if god is omniscient, then that means he knows everything about what has happened, is happening and will happen from the beginning to the end of time. This means that he knows all the possible choices every individual can make and their consequences. He also knows what choices each individual will make and exactly what effects they will have. If all of this is already known by god, then how can you say we have free will? surely the existence of a creator negates the concept of free will.

>At the end of the day a powerful enough computer could calculate every single "choice" you are going to ever make.

not actually true

a computer that could run a perfect simulation would need a perfect model of the universe. that much data cannot be simulated in a space less than the universe, you can't simulate an atom on less space than an atom

even though determinism may be correct, it can never be knowable, which might as well make it free will

Free will and determinism are not mutually exclusive.

You may freely choose so long as you perceive yourself as having a free choice. Doesn't matter whether you could have made another choice than you did, because you freely chose.

A deterministic universe retains free will unless you are capable of perfectly predicting the future.

>why exactly does that make it meaningless to say you have free will?
Because it's a pointless statement. You wouldn't have threads like "let's discuss whether the sun will come up tomorrow" or "1+1 = 2, prove me wrong faggots" because those things are obvious to the most casual observer. In a reality in which religion doesn't exist, no one would ever ask "do we have free will?" because that would be another incredibly obvious thing that would just be silly to even discuss. Hence my initial point that free will is a religious concept; only in the context of religion is this question even asked. Without religion it makes no god damn sense to ask it in the first place.

assumptions aren't logical, the deductive reasoning at best
It is possible to prove a negative, in the specific context where proving it's opposite true would prove the negative false

Free will is bullshit. Everything is determined by either determinism or randomness. Google readiness potential. Free will is a poorly defined concept anyway.

The truth is somewhere in between, and with a lot more complexity added to it.

In human matters, free will is less about rationalization of how you see the world and the logical decisions you can make, but more about how the cultural and memetic forces infiltrate into your mind and how you make those beliefs and habits more rigid and automatic by the constant expositions to those ideas.

>Be in Sup Forums 24h/7/365
>Become redpilled
>Act in x way
>Get y result


>Be in liberal college
>Become deep bluepilled
>Act in z way
>Get w result


Something like this
Free will is more like being farmed ideas on a neural level and acting upon those beliefs than being a deep thinker, rationalizing all possibilities you can get, as a player in a general game(existing on a deterministic scheme of life/society/natural world)

Assumption that your will to do something is your will alone?
That doesn't take assumption. Otherwise you'll end up a complete postmodern nutjob like Descartes who took his Jesuit schooling and flipped it upside down to say "I think therefore I am" instead of the patently obvious "I am therefore I think."

I'm not convinced it is absolutely true, I'm merely proposing it as an idea. It would be impossible to prove my claim that it doesn't make any sense to ask the question without religion because I cant compare our universe to one in which religion never happened. I just don't think it makes any sense for non-religious people to be asking it. That's just my opinion, man.

You're the one who made the thread about free will so I figured I bring up my thoughts on the subject, but you seem utterly unwilling to consider it.

No, I don't think so.

For example, marxist types like to talk as if people don't have free will. That everyone's actions are determined by their environments, and so racist environments should be blamed for blacks' moral failure... Things like that.

Not everyone accepts the value associated with free will.

Well thank you for restating the Turing-Church halting problem. Computers can't simulate calculating their own output any faster than they could actually calculate their output. By your flawed logic, you could say that no computer is deterministic.

it exists as much as we can conceive of it. perhaps science will unlock the secrets, but for practical life it is a pointless thing to spend time on unless you enjoy philosophy as a hobby, which is a reasonable activity.

>For example, marxist types like to talk as if people don't have free will. That everyone's actions are determined by their environments, and so racist environments should be blamed for blacks' moral failure... Things like that.

Those people are welcome to prove such claims if they are able.

There's three main types of neurons that make up the nervous system: sensory neurons, interneurons, motor neurons.

Signals pass from the sensory neurons through to the interneurons (your brain), which is basically just circuitry that then determines the most appropriate response to send out to the motor neurons to control adaptive behaviour.

To believe in free will is to believe that firstly a "you" exists at all that doesn't somehow correspond to a collection of these interneurons, and that this "you" then somehow controls the activity of the rest of your neural circuitry without being influenced or impeded by anything else; this as opposed to the activity just being down to plain old physics of electrochemical circuits just naturally firing in deterministic patterns.

From a scientific perspective, free will is nonsensical, and if there's no evidence to show that it exists then the only alternative is the default position of not believing that it does. In short: free will is bs.

With sufficient knowledge of of astronomy you can accurately predict solar eclipses. Was the fact that you predicted the solar eclipse make you causal in it happening?

God is so infinitely familiar with his creations that he is essentially perfect at predicting what we're going to do. That does not make him causal in what we do. Furthermore, God may not experience time like we do. He knows the beginning from the end, but his relation to all the events in between might be comparable to someone watching a DVR'd football game that they've already heard what happened and so as they """predict""" what is going to happen without actually being causal in what they're witnessing.

1 Timothy 3:16
>And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness

Yes?

perfect simulation isn't possible in any degree. useful simulation with a astronomical margin of error is, but it isn't deterministic.

Free will is what dumb people think about to feel smart, your choices are predetermined, yes, but your brain still makes the decision even if it was meant to be, without that logical following you get randomness, that is real randomness and not just randomness that arises from a lack of knowledge.

>franzkiekeben.com/relativistic.html
free will fags BTFO

Turing proposed a solution called the O-Machine. Basically, Machine T consults Machine O for the answer where Machine O is running the exact same program as T, only faster. In this context, the O-Machine is an oracle.

You already made assumptions in that you assume you know what you are at all, or what thinking is for that matter.
You assume the id or ego as real because it "feels" real, however that is not the only view on the manner.
Truer on Descartes would be
"Thought is experienced, this illicits an experience of authorship in the creations of the thoughts, authorship is is conjoined linguistically and historically to an authors existence, Therefore the presumption of being a person is had(generally by those uneducated in Eastern philosophies)"

More interestingly why do you need to have free will, isn't the inescapable of it illusion enough?

illusion of it* enough?

I am with Sam Harris on this one.

There is also no evidence whatsoever that contradicts this.

Wow, the wonders of British intellectualism.

What experiments are those?

Well the ancient manuscripts are pretty clear that the pronouncements of Enlil and Enki cannot be altered but there is a colophon where Ninurta hits the Anzu with his spear and it drops the Tablet of Destiny so I suppose it is unclear whether the Tablet is in full effect.
LARPing Iron Age plebs, refugees from Roman justice and Medieval savages fuck off.

What are neurotransmitters,
I'd love to see you're dumbass try and fail to be happy with a Vitamin D deficiency for a year
This is why brainwashing works at all, and has been used through out history, humans are programmable, although not generally amazingly by people as they're knowledge is generally flawed at best

Compatibalism

the pure determinism/free will false dichotomy is for brainlets

That's nice, but it runs into the same issue. the oracle for that scale of simulation can't be constructed unless its on another layer of reality with a larger design space, so you enter the realm of gods or extraplanar aliens or some shit.

which experiments?
look up delayed choice quantum eraser, it implies that even on the quantum level where things should be random are determined beforehand, or you have an explanation how things in the future can affect outcomes in the past

I think humans try to make the best choices for them. As organisms we are always seeking pleasure and trying to survive. But due to our lack of infinite knowledge we may not make the best objective choices. So in a sense, practically, there's determinism, in that we always try to seek these pleasures and well-being. But theoretically, we could choose anything, even if detrimental to our well-being.

So yea, it's a blend of determinism and free will. We're only deterministic because we choose the path we think is best for us, and in choosing we exercise our free will by choosing one option out of infinite options.

Yeah, all "simulated universe" hypotheses either explicitly or implicitly state that there is a larger universe outside this material one.

>centristwithflamingshirt.jpg

determinism is just some sad fuck's excuse for failing in life.

I believe 100% in Determinism.

Because of that, I am going to sit right here and see what I do. I'm sure I'll do something, since I can't act on my own.

I had the thought of using pic related
and video related with a Phi base
youtube.com/watch?v=y3fwWcV7t0I
To try and make a universal mapper
I have to discover a calculation to make it work but should be doable

This guy is correct, free will is an illusion. We are nothing more than biological machines programmed (evolved) to believe there is something more to us. Any aspect of our selves can be manipulated by adjusting our neurochemical make up (think new robocop film) or physically altering our brain structure via lobotomies etc. Also think about the thesius' ship paradox remembering that with cellular turnover, every cell in your body has been replaced since you were a small child.

Sup Forums are unconsciously using objective reason to justify their subjective human experience. When people find themselves in this confused state where nothing have any meaning anymore, they will then return to subjectivity and abandon rationality for good. That is how the most degenerate anti-intellectual place in our society (Sup Forums) became western civilizations driving force back towards harmony. Harmony is achieved when our external reality correspond to our subjective human experience.

It doesn't matter if free will is an illusion as long as we experience it. Without freedom we will perceive ourselves as prisoners, and suffer from it.

You might want to check out Dr. David Hestenes books on mechanics that teach classical statics and dynamics through an algebra of his own design based on quaternions and Clifford algebras that more or less abstracts away solving differential equations of tensors into algebraic manipulation. Hestenes calls it "Geometric Algebra." It's quite elegant.

I think people don't understand what free will is.
Free will is choice, which you demonstrably have.
If you say "well, that's just your brain doing it", that doesn't actually contradict anything.

People think free will is the infinite capacity for boundless self definition, which you don't have naturally.

Thank you, that's the most useful thing I've ever been told on Sup Forums

>Geometric Algebra
Others just call it Algebra.