And, I thought this was funny. Take that, world!
Maybe because I think it's pathetic how we've mostly let NASA die on the vine. An alien visiting would have to be disgusted by our militarized tribes pointing weapons at each other.
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Ya know even if you don't accept the simulation theory, there's always Sam Harris' Free Will Is An Illusion stuff. And if that doesn't work for ya, there's the multiverse to consider, that all possibilities are played out in an infinite quantity of universes, which of course means that there's a Ned out there that voted for Hillary.
If true, that would be the worst one. You cannot do good. You cannot stop evil. No act matters.
The simulation theory doesn't bother me as it changes nothing. "Simulation" is just a different word to describe reality.
The no free will stuff is interesting for me. Even when I was an atheist, I still thought that the no free will theories were unhelpful. They release anyone for responsibility for their actions...which is correct if there is no free will. Do you teach your son that he has no free will? If we teach everyone that they have no free will, and society declines due to an increase in bad behavior, do you think that would be evidence that we have free will?
I attempt to teach them to be intentional in what they say and what they do. To think before you speak and think before you act. I am mostly a free range parent because I believe that you have to make mistakes in order to grow but what's most important is that you own it. If my children grow up to be people that are "present" and "authentic" then I'll feel like I did my job. And I do believe that they'll be "good people" if they follow this path.
That's my view. That is, we can never really know if we have free will or not, so we must behave as if we do, if we want to be the best person we can be, and contribute to the best society we can possibly develop.
And they can decide what to believe on their own.
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But you don't get to know your mission.
I think we all agree on this.
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If the being known as Ned on this forum is made up of atoms that amount to what we consider a "good person" then that person will make good decisions and behave as a good person would regardless of whether they have a real choice in the matter.
I maintain agnosticism as my belief system, but a book called Many Lives, Many Masters was helpful to me. The concept that we are here to gain wisdom and that this life is about learning is comforting and strangely makes a lot of sense. And the concept works in a simulated multiverse with people under the illusion that they have free will.
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We are just very complex pinball machines.
And yet...it seems like we are more than that, does it not???
But, I can see that it would be more likely, statistically, and here is why.
The test was to "teach that there is no free will." If the result was a statistically noticeable change in behavior, doesn't that imply that there is free will? I suggested that people would do whatever they selfishly want if they believe they have no accountability (and I offer an example of that below, but that is not to say that every person will act that way, only that there will a statistically notiecable change...or at least that is the hypothesis).
To me, free will is self evident reality. Or, I am programmed to perceive it as such. Either way, it seems like an unimportant issue to me, and I choose to believe in it regardless, for the following reasons:
(1) If there is no free will, then nothing really matters, as I have no choice, and my desires or training will change nothing.
(2) (a) If there is free will, then it is best to believe that there is free will because it is true, and because altruistic behavior is more likely to be encouraged. But,
(2) (b) If there is free will, and people believe there is no free will, then non-altruistic, statistically noticeable purely selfish behavior may be more likely because those people will incorrectly believe they have no personal accountability because they have no choice.
It may turn out that evolution developed altruistic societal rules (e.g., civilized behavior) as a great way to encourage successful passing down of genes...but if one convinces oneself that they don't have to pay attention to those societal rules (because, after all, they have no choice in the matter), then they may act on a selfish individualistic basis, and society will suffer as a result.
You said, "If the being known as Ned on this forum is made up of atoms that amount to what we consider a "good person" then that person will make good decisions and behave as a good person would regardless of whether they have a real choice in the matter." I'm inclined to agree. But, I have a good friend who confided over drinks one night that if he believed there was no God, then there would nothing to stop him from killing someone if he felt like it. His belief in God was the only thing that kept him from contemplating evil acts. I was actually quite shocked by this at the time, thinking what a precarious thing (mere faith) kept him from feeling remorse for stealing from me. If you told someone like that that they had no free will, and therefore there was no Christian God monitoring his will's performance, and if you consider that there might be people like that all around the world, then certainly bad things could happen if you removed accountability.
Personally, I think altruism is its own reward, at least in part. When I became an atheist, and then reverted to Catholicism, no one could see a difference in my behavior, because my inter-human morality remained the same the entire time, and only my human-to-God morality changed. But, apparently others don't think like I do, and need a God to keep them acting in a good way.
You said, "I maintain agnosticism as my belief system, but a book called Many Lives, Many Masters was helpful to me. The concept that we are here to gain wisdom and that this life is about learning is comforting and strangely makes a lot of sense. And the concept works in a simulated multiverse with people under the illusion that they have free will." Do you think it makes sense to you because you didn't have any other choice but for it to make sense, and your success in following that guideline (to gain wisdom) is predetermined, so you can't take any pride or comfort in it, other than the pride and comfort you were fore-ordained to take in it?
A lot to process there and I will continue to think about it, but my first blush answer is this:
We already lack accountability as a society and in my experience it's sometimes the most religious among us that are the biggest dicks to their fellow man. If you think that in general people hold themselves accountable, go into a public restroom or look at the trash "we" leave in almost every public place.
And I am not arguing that we should teach that free will is an illusion necessarily, I think it's an interesting concept to explore philosophically and with a proper understanding, it leads to empathy and altruism. Whether we have free will or not we definitely have emotions and on some level we have a choice how to feel about people and events. The key to happiness, IMO, is to allow yourself to experience life without judgement. This is what I mean when I talk of being present or being authentic. Oinker, below, is upset about a whole bunch of things that he has no control over. I accept that I cannot change those things, I cannot change other people and in fact I believe that it's possible that they can't change themselves. This realization is a part of my path and your disagreement is a part of yours.
I think that if people could choose anything, they would choose to be good because being good feels good. There may be some temporary satisfaction in lying, cheating, stealing or killing, but you can't lie to yourself. If you steal from me you will pay for it and the punishment will come from within. This is the religious concept of conscience.
So then that leads us to consider, why do bad things happen to good people. Who designs a predetermined situation where people experience intense pain and what is the purpose. Well, one explanation is from the book I mentioned, your soul must experience life, both the good and the bad to gain wisdom and gaining wisdom makes you more godlike or more master-like. When you've learned all lessons you will be relieved of your burden to keep coming back to this place with all of these god-forsaken people. My main argument is to enjoy the ride, because even if your sitting in the driver's seat, you're not driving. And if I am right, you'll eventually come to this realization on your own, but not because I told you. Telling you is all about me.
When you say choice, what do you mean? If there is no free will, can you have a choice about how to feel about people and events?
I'm not arguing a point. Genuine question. I just want to make sure we aren't defining free will differently without realizing it.
We have no more conscious control over our emotions than we do our thoughts. When my grandmother died, I wasn't really that sad. She was 96 and her quality of life had deteriorated to the point that it was painful to watch. When my dog died, I was devastated for weeks. He was 14 which is old for a Brittany and his quality of life had also deteriorated to the point that it was painful to watch. Why was I so sad about my dog and not for my grandmother? It's not logical if you think that a dog is an animal lacking a soul unlike my grandmother as a person. And it wasn't until I sat down and wrote out all of the reasons that I loved my dog and why I missed him so much that I was able to move past it.
Just because we don't create our thoughts and emotions doesn't mean that we can't or shouldn't own them. Learning and wisdom gaining are real and are the result of thought about people and events that occur. A 4 year old is more likely to blame others for their mistakes than a 40 year old but it depends on the individual. Being present is about noticing that we don't create thoughts and emotions and realizing that they bubble up from below. Allowing yourself to experience life as it comes, accept it and learn from it. The expectation that good things or bad things will happen is a result of attitude. People can find reasons for happiness or misery.
I have this friend who is incredibly intelligent but is also highly susceptible to impulses. He has the ability to make literally anyone feel like they're 4 inches tall when he takes them to task over something that he is usually right about. There was a teachable moment that occurred when he had a huge fight with his wife and we met for a drink. I told him that the average response time in any conversation is about 200 ms. I told him that his average response time is generally around 50-100 ms because he thinks so quickly. I gave him the advice to be more intentional in the way that he communicates. Rather than immediately saying what pops into your head, take an extra 100 ms to ensure that it is something that you should say. I explained to him that outcomes are way more important than being right and that by being intentional in the words you choose you're more likely to get the outcomes you desire. This advice has changed his life.
So, even if the decisions are made by the subconscious or some other unconscious process we still get to think about them. The conscious mind is not only the witness but also the biographer. Though you don't create your thoughts you can choose your words.
Not sure how well this answers your question, but that's all I have at the moment.
Two possibilities I understand:
1) We have free will, and therefore we make choices. We are responsible for those choices, even though they are influenced by outside factors.
2) We have no free will and therefore no choices. We can think about the "choices" we are predictably and necessarily making (which means they are not choices). We can record them. But, we are not responsible for them, because we were destined to make them from the beginning of time. We are merely characters in a book written billions of years ago, or perhaps more accurately written in eternity, which is to say written "outside" of spacetime. We may learn things, but we were destined to learn them if we learn them, and we were destined not to learn them if we don't. We don't have the power to choose whether to learn anything on our own. Therefore, if we own what we learn, it is only in the sense that it is now recorded in our brains. We cannot own it in the sense that we chose to learn it and improve our lives thereby. Such learning was actually given to us (or not given to us) from the beginning. We only operated according to our programming.
My view (stated earlier) is that regardless of which of the above is true, it makes the most sense to believe 1...which is kind of what it seems like you are doing when you choose to give advice to your kids and your friend.
What I don't understand, which seems to be what you are saying:
3) We don't have free will, but we make choices. Although we have no free will, we can "choose our words" as you say. How can you "allow yourself to experience life" when you don't have free will, and therefore have no ability to "allow" yourself to do anything? You either do it, or you don't, but there is no choice, no allowing, if you don't have free will. If your kids don't have free will, then your choice to teach them is not actually a choice, and your decision that they should learn how to allow themselves to be present is not a decision, and they are incapable of allowing themselves to do or not do anything. Did your friend have a genuine choice to lengthen his response time? Did he have a choice to decide whether or not to follow your advice? Or, did he instead have no free will, and you can really claim no credit for "choosing" to offer him that advice?
I don't know about the idea that the story is already written. It's possible I suppose, if you believe in a creator. I believe there's a degree of randomness to the world but that if your brain was perfectly simulated in an advanced model predictive control algorithm, it would make the same choices you do if given the same inputs. Many of the inputs that go into decisions aren't available to the conscious mind, but the conscious mind is tricked into believing it is making choices. This is why free will is considered to be an illusion by Sam and others.
Processes of learning and communicating are conscious processes, IMO. But they're based on unconscious processes such as ideas and emotions which bubble up from below.
Here's a thought experiment for you: if you put your hand on a hot stove or if some object is flying at your eye, do you decide how to react or is that decision made before you even realize what is happening?
I was just trying to say that if there is no free will, then our thoughts are purely causal, such that the story of our lives was written (locked; set in stone) at the beginning, going all the way back to the moment the Universe sprang into existence...regardless of whether God did that or not. Cause begets cause begets cause...decision! God is irrelevant to our discussion, I think. The existence of God is orthogonal to the existence of free will. That is, you can believe in a god but not free will, you can believe in a god and free will, you can disbelieve in gods and believe in free will, and you can disbelieve in both gods and freewill. I say this so that you know I'm not trying to argue from a position of theological belief. My arguments here are purely philosophical, and non-theological.
I see two main paradigms:
1) Our brains are causal, so (or because) we have no free will. We may perceive that we make decisions, but in reality our brain just processes inputs and produces outputs that we call decisions, but these decisions are really just foregone conclusions of a complex biological processor.
If you had a computer complex enough, and you could model the same inputs, then you could not just predict the "decisions" of a sentient being 100% of the time, you could actually duplicate the decisions of sentient beings. You would have 100% certainty of what they would do, because there is no unaccounted for variable called "free will."
2) Our brains are not causal, in that we have free will. That is, humans have something (some call it a soul, but we can call it a freedom agent or something else that "emerges" from complexity in the form of consciousness) that allows them to escape the causality that we see everywhere in the universe. We have true, genuine choices.
Computers can estimate the likelihood of what we will do to great accuracy, but that is still just a good prediction of a truly free decision, not a duplication of a decision.
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Randomness: That also seems to me to be an orthongonal variable. That is, I think you could have option 1 above with and without randomness, and option 2 with or without randomness.
Randomness may be an attempt to explain how people come to different conclusions on the same data, but more likely people come to different conclusions because their processors (their brains) are very different, so the inputs go through a different processing function. (And, their inputs will be different, because their input detectors (eyes, ears, nose, etc.) collect data differently...and the data is stored differently...but mostly it is processed by many different unique brains in the case of humans, so you will get different results. But, all of that could be the case with or without free will, so the concept of randomness seems to me to be only tangentially related to free will at best. Randomness can explain differences in decisions, but not whether those decisions were the result of free will or not. Randomness is a non-will based explanation. Things cannot be the result of will (cannot be purposeful) if they are due to randomness alone, and the presence of randomness does not undo free will.
You said: "Here's a thought experiment for you: if you put your hand on a hot stove or if some object is flying at your eye, do you decide how to react or is that decision made before you even realize what is happening?"
My understanding is that those actions are reflexes; they are not conscious decisions. Specifically, in the case of the hot stove, the pull back reflex is initiated at the spinal cord, before the brain has receive the pain message, well before the brain figures out what is happening. That pullback reflex is not part of conscious will. I don't think it relates to free will at all. It is just a pure cause and effect reaction, without thought or free will intervening.
Technically a reflex is different, but that doesn't change the point, IMO. I previously described how our realities are created for our conscious minds. This is what I am getting at.
If you lose a loved one, you feel bad as a response, but you have a choice (no matter how difficult) regarding how it affects the rest of your life. You experience sadness; you choose your response to sadness.
I am reminded of the popular sayings about bravery: Bravery doesn't mean you aren't afraid. It means you use your will to overcome your fear and act in spite of that fear. Fear is the response to stimuli; brave acts (or not) are free choices.
Fight or flight is still a decision made by unconscious processes, IMO.
His argument appears to be that since we cannot see how we make decisions, we are just witnesses to our decisions, and therefore we do not make the decisions ourselves.
I get it, but I don't agree.
The ability to inspect the decision making process is inherently absent from neural networks. That is the nature of the beast.
A neural network is not like a programmed, serial processing machine (a "computer"), which in the old days you could instruct "TRON" ("Trace On"), and the machine would show each step of the decision, identifying each line of code that led to each part of the decision...and you could track each memory access to a specific location of memory storing specific data. It had steps in the decision which were traceable. The structure had specialized components very different from one another, which facilitated tracking of functions ("decision making").
But, a neural network is not serial; it is massively parallel. Our brains perform massively complex operations in parallel, and produce an answer/decision almost immediately. There are no steps to trace. All data is put in at once, and decisions are just arrived at. The decision is your free will in action (assuming for a second). Or it is not. But the ability to monitor the process and dissect it seems irrelevant to me as far as the issue of free will is concerned.
Decisions come from the structure of our brains, and we can change that structure solely with thought. We can decide to reinforce certain pathways by making internal decisions to think certain ways. We make our brains as we think. Choices we make today do effect choices we make tomorrow (because the structure of our brain is changed with every choice), but that is an example of our will (free or not). I don't think the structural nature of our decisions is evidence against free will.
To me, it all comes down to this: Are we purely causal beings, or not. Are the ions in our brain just billiard balls on the universal billiards table, responding to the break that was initiated by the universal cue ball which caused the Big Bang? Or do we have freedom from the causality we see around us?...the causality that is the very foundation of science? Personally, I think the answer is potentially unknowable to us. There is perhaps a better argument for no free will, because free will requires belief in something non-physical/non-causal. And yet, we believe in self-awareness and consciousness because we perceive them. They are tied to the physical brain, but we perceive them at a higher (non-neuronal) level. We also perceive free will, rightly or wrongly (and it is admittedly tied to a healthy brain). We feel like we are deciding. Maybe that is good enough.
One comment on your serial (single threaded) vs parallel (multi-threaded) computing. Algorithms can be multi-threaded and look out for quantum computing in the relative future.
Yes, a physical part of you makes the decisions, but it doesn't happen consciously. Training and learning make a difference which is why the belief that free will is an illusion doesn't mean that we shouldn't try. Instead it should make us less arrogant and more compassionate because we didn't choose our atoms and neither did anyone else. I like Sam's concept of "living an examined life", it fits perfectly with my mindfulness concept of being present.
You said: "[A] physical part of you makes the decisions, but it doesn't happen consciously." Right. We agree on this. We seem to disagree on the implications. In my view, you choose the inputs, you choose to decide, and you decide. The fact that you can't see how you get from inputs to decision is because you are using a neural network to get the answer, not because you don't have free will. You may or may not have free will, and the process would be the same.
You said, "Training and learning make a difference which is why the belief that free will is an illusion doesn't mean that we shouldn't try. Instead it should make us less arrogant and more compassionate because we didn't choose our atoms and neither did anyone else." The underlined words imply that we have choices...to learn...to try to improve ourselves...to be less arrogant and more compassionate. This is where we are not communicating. You keep saying we have no free will, but you say things that imply we should choose to improve ourselves, which is an act of will. If I were destined to improve myself, you would not need to convince me. And if I were destined not to improve myself, your attempts to convince me would be fruitless, so why try?
If I remember correctly from the first video you embedded (which I watched late last night, but found to include almost nothing about free will), the Rabbi indicates that Harris's very attempt to try to convince the Rabbi implies that free will exists. Harris just dismissed the argument without substantive response, and went on an anti-religious diatribe. And yet, the point remains. Harris wants to convince people they have no free will because it will change their lives for the better...but what does "want" mean in the absence of free will?...and how will their lives be "changed" if there is no free will? It certainly seems like Harris wants to give people a chance to make decisions that they would not otherwise make if they were not convinced of his arguments. But that implies that those people have free will to change, does it not? What am I missing?
So, if you decided to learn a martial art you would be making a self-improvement and as your level of skill improved you would be improving your ability to defend yourself. Now, before you attack the idea that you "decided" thus having free will, the reason you decided is because of inputs that you did not control. The idea popped into your head because of only god knows what (an unconscious, uncontrollable process). Some days when you go to practice your martial art, you will be locked in, focused, ready to learn. Other days you will be distracted by other things going on in your head. What Sam is arguing for is that you strive for the good days, the "present" (my words) days and notice the factors that distract you on bad days and let them fade away. This mindfulness practice (the agnosticist's equivalent of the religionist's prayer) of meditation, yoga, martial arts, etc will help you to increase the likelihood of having good days and your being will grow/learn/improve over time. And as you continue to practice, your ability to draw your focus to the present will also improve, which, IMO, will make you happier.
So now imagine that in some moment you are physically attacked, your instincts and training will take over and you will be better off for having learned the martial art even though you ultimately didn't decide to do it in the first place, at least not consciously. You won't be consciously fighting off your attacker either though it may feel like it. When he hits you, you may not consciously feel the pain because some unconscious process decided that feeling pain won't be helpful in that moment. If you emerge victorious, you will likely feel pride and appreciation that you trained for that moment. But, you didn't control all of the stars that must have aligned that put you in that moment because obviously you would have consciously decided not to get attacked. Indeed the attacker didn't choose either. When you decided to learn a martial art, you felt like you chose because your subconscious tricked you into thinking that you are making decisions, but indeed the reasons to do it were presented to you as the reason you should make this decision and the reasons not to were diminished or perhaps not presented at all. Even if you mull it over, there is only one choice that you could possibly make, the one that is made for you, by you.
Sidenote: I like Sam's characterization of consciousness as a dream constrained by external inputs.
BTW, this has been one of my favorite debates on here, thanks for that. I believe in these concepts because I feel them and observe them. But it seems I lack the vocabulary to explain them. Also, I am not sure that if I could convince you that you don't have free will if that would be helpful to you or not. What I do know is that you won't convince me that I do, and if you were able to it wouldn't be helpful to me. What has been helpful is attempting to explain these things even though it is a bit frustrating as well.
It is definitely more helpful to me to think that I have free will. I also teach my kids that they have control...they can't control the world, but they can control how they react to what happens in the world. I would be very disappointed to think that I have no free will, and I'm not sure how it would go if I taught my kids their decisions are not really free choices. I like to think I am teaching them to learn how to change course, and take an unpredictable path, to get a good future regardless of what happened in the past...to not be solely a victim of past events.
I had a tragedy in my family. My wife and I were devastated. But there was a moment (and I remember it like it was yesterday) when I turned to her, and said, "We have to decide. Are we going to let this tragedy destroy us?...and maybe even our marriage? Or, are we going to make a conscious choice not to let this event destroy us and our marriage. We need to decide how we are going to handle this." And, it worked. The pain of the tragedy did not go away, but our decision was a turning point for us. We rallied, to a significant degree. It was like bravery in spite of fear, but it was moving forward in spite of tremendous pain. It would not be helpful to me to think that all is causal.
Happily, this is one thing that will never be proven one way or the other...so I think you and I can believe what we want without offending the other.
Great conversation.
If not the same.
What you teach your children sounds a lot like what I teach mine.
Though we haven't had a personal tragedy, it sounds like how I would attempt to cope with it, not letting one tragedy become 2 or more.
I appreciate the conversation, thanks.
The song which concluded the documentary which started this entire thread...seems somehow apropos to this discussion...re people trying to be kings of their own destiny...or maybe that is just the way they are....
I'm the king of my own land
Facing tempests of dust, I'll fight until the end
Creatures of my dreams raise up and dance with me!
Now and forever I am king
We should be careful of our terminology. It is common to speak of someone acting "instinctively" because they can make conscious choices very quickly and competently. But, that is like saying "literally" when we really mean "figuratively." We are exaggerating (sort of misrepresenting) to make a point.
I think most fight or flight decisions are conscious choices made quickly, not reflexive decisions. It is known that when the brain is pressured or fatigued, it puts its effort into decision making, and sets aside recordation of the events. Ever drive 10 miles when you were tired and not recall doing it? Your brain made decisions, and just didn't record them in memory. Just because we may not accurately recall a series of decisions does not mean that decisions were not made, and we were only acting by reflex.
Even if I grant that some fight or flight decisions are instinctive, and therefore not the exercise of free will, that does not nullify the fact that there are fight or flight decisions which are conscious exercises of perceived free will.
Some people have never thought about what to do in a difficult situation, and when faced with a sudden existential threat, they may act in a way that appears to be without conscious thought. But others give a lot of thought to such things. For example, our military personnel spend a lot of time thinking about what they will do in urgent, difficult moral circumstances. They decide in the classroom (years before hand: "What will I do?"); they train; and then when the situation develops, they act (more likely than not) according to those decisions and training. Their actions are fight or flight, but they are performed according to well reasoned decisions made before...and since the event is slowed for them due to their training, they see more, and they perform with decisive action. This is not instinctive. So, setting aside purely instinctive decisions, our discussion here is about decisive action...deliberate actions directed by conscious thought...is that free or not? I don't think bringing up actions which are not the result of conscious thought means there is no free will. There still may be actions that are the result of free will.
Whether or not I read your next post is a decision I have made. I will. Did I freely make that choice? Or, did I have no free will, and I am compelled to read your next post because I have no choice in the matter?
Where it should be. All good