free will and gibbersih

The black anticipation of green is not the most recent unicorn to land on the roof of the White House---at least since the birth Abraham Lincoln's death was predicted by 12 out of 9 liberal conservatives in Dick Cheney's glove compartment.

Now, if free will is a myth then it was inevitable that I express the above, right? Just as whatever you express by way of responding is also merely the next dominos to fall.

So much for determinism, eh?

Randall Patrick

 

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Free will IS a myth. Something made u say the statement above and that statement made me reply to it. Yes it is mainly a domino effect and u have no real free will or choice in what ur gonna do because its all physics at the end of the day

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There is no free will, we are slaves to our thoughts, they are the forces that control us. Or can you control them? Can you shut the m down, just stop thinking? Not very likely.
You wrote this text because you thought you should write it. Now who initiated it, you or your thoughts?

 

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Aren't your thoughts mostly what make you you?

 

Do you have any limits to your free will?

The only limits I can come up with are options. As long as there are options you have free will.

But as long as one option is better than all the other options you will choose that option. But you could still choose not to choose it...and you could choose it and while performing it you could choose another option instead.

If there are reasons beyond our understanding then it still is free will. Cause you did what you wanted to do, even though there were reasons not seen. The reasons aren't making the choice for you, you get a feeling that it's good to do a certain thing and then you do that if you trust your feelings.

So sure there are reasons beyond us, but it's still our choice.

You can have more free will or less free will though, depending on how clever you are. Those that doesn't have any options, can go find options using their free will, or they could do something random and see what options turn up.

 

You can think any way you want, but your actions are held accountable for.

 

Another thing that I came to relalize is that we will allways have as much free will as we would consider free.

We can't grasp when free will doesn't become free, we will allways feel as if we have free will.

THOUGH we won't allways have the ability to carry the will out. For example I could have a will to end all wars, but I don't have the action to carry it out.

 

One can only choose from the choices available to them, but they are free choices. So, free will is niether completely free, nor completely limited (or deterministic). You don't get to determine your environment (at first) or genes, but you do get to determine how you react to it. There's a subtle balance between freedom and limitation that's always there.

 

Yes, your thoughts are making you you. So you depend on your thoughts, not your thoughts on you. Therefore, you have no free will since you aren´t really in control of yourself. Those thoughts that you perceive to be belonging to you might belong to someone else entirely.

 

Oooh, I see, clever. But couldn't you say that everything else but your thoughts are just a consequence of them, so like, your essense or the main part of you is your thoughts? (edit - rather than you thinking them)

 

You are a construct of "your" thoughts, that means that we all might be a construct of someone else. You could say that the "me" is just an outlet for thoughts (I will not attach a person to them since I cannot), hence I was formed by something. Another question, are the thoughts that formed me unique? In a way, the "me" is unique but only to some extend, there are people that resemble me. So perhaps the "constructed me" is just a chain of enviromental influences and therefor it differs from some other people´s "me" that was constructed or initiated by the same thoughts. As a consequence, humans may be a construct of other beings, or even host those beings in form of thought...

I think I am drifting off, back to your question.

As I said, I think that we are a construct of our thoughts. We do what we do and feel what we feel because our thoughts give the impulse to make us react in that form. We are built on thoughts, but there is no guarantee that these thoughts are ours, rather they are a preexisting instance on which our being is build.

 

RP:

So, what is all the fuss about Hitler and the Houlocaust? Why do people hold him in such contempt when he could no more have not ordered the genocide of Jews than those who fought against him to stop it? Or is our reaction to that merely another manifestation of physics?

And if physics is the explanation, how come there is not a physicist on the entire planet who can encompass objectively what human consciousness is?

And if everything that happens now is merely an inherent manifestation of all previous causal determinants what set this all in motion in the first place? If you suggest it is an infinite regress than how do you go about proving it? And if you don't have proof for that why should we assume you have proof that free will itself is just an illusion?

Randall Patrick

 

Dreamwalker - I agree that I was formed by something, but I think my thoughts make me unique, and they are me (though others oculd have similar thoughts/processes due to various reasons). So in that way, I am guaranteed that my thoughts are mine (though arguably could have been "put there"). Does that make sense?

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:m:

 

I did not exclude the possibility that your thoughts are yours, so you may be correct.
Alas, you are not only your thoughts, you are also your memories, your prejudices, your morals and ethics, the list goes on. These are things that overlay the true thoughts, for lack of a better expression you could say that those concepts taint your thoughts...

But to get back to the topic, I said that there is no free will, at least as long as we cannot control our thoughts. And you cannot control them when all the things are built around them, they hinder us and block us from our true thoughts.
As you may see, the thoughts are there and they may be your true self, but since all your concepts are built on them, you cannot touch your thoughts, hence you cannot control them. As a result, all your thoughts and the constructs on them are controlling you and not vice versa.

 

You can't control your thoughts?

"True thoughts"? WTF? Our thoughts and memories are what make us who we are.

That makes no sense. "All your concepts are built on them"? Your concepts are thoughts, and they're built mainly on memories. "You cannot touch your thoughts"? WTF? You are your thoughts, some would say. You're trying to make a false distinction.

 

Yes, you are partly your thoughts, but for a great part, you are constructed on the thoughts of others, on tohughts people had ages ago. Things that you learned and assimilated from your enviroment. Not all that is your mind, your personality is you.
The "you" is a construct of others as much as a construct of your thoughts.

 

Oh, and control your thoughts? Can you? Can you for example just shut them off? I don´t mean ignore them, just stop thinking?

And I said "as long" that obviously means that it is possible...

 

Just because I can't "shut my thoughts off" doesn't mean I can't control them. I didn't claim absolute control. Freedom to do something only means being able to choose from the options available to you.

The environment is only part of how we become who we are. It is our choice how to react internally to the environment, and how to respond externally.

 

I can agree that free will is something “the matrix” lets you think. While interesting the proposed theory is, answer me this my willpowerly challenged friend.


If your self control is non existent and if you don’t have your will, and you control nothing and nothing is yours and all the choices you pick are the result of butterfly/domino effect, where do YOU exist at all? At what point in your robotic, helpless, nonexistent state did you figure out that you are in fact there, helplessly bound to be the observer of “your” actions.

If this was anything else the conclusion would be simple. “Two times nothing is still nothing, the worm was never there.”

And in my closing statement “entire world is driven by a will, blind and ruthless. In order to transcend the limitations of that world you need to stop willing, stop desiring, stop hating.”

“If you figure out how to do this, tell me how.”

And further more:

Consider this: 1 =(equals) 0.9999...(where 9 repeats indefinitely)

x = 0.9999...
10x = 9.9999...
10x - x = 9.9999... - 0.9999...
9x = 9
x = 1.

If you know the answer to the math thing above you know how I feel about the will thing.

Happy?

P.S. Do NOT assume it works for other numbers too. It will take you a minute - try.

 

Heh, it's funny, I've used that before. Here even. What is this "answer" you speak of, there's no question. And how is it supposed to be relevant to free will?