Speaking philosophically, can you have free will if prophecies work? Or does a sort of "reality inertia" not violate free will?
>>44577607
Prophecy's don't usually have a guarantee of success anyways so their existence does no mean free will does not exist. Even then who cares. If your divinely ordained to behave or act a certain way it'll still mostly feel like your in charge so whats the difference?
>>44577607
You can still have free will. Fate just knows everything you'll "will" to do, though.
You could even call fate a product of collective wills, and that the power to see your fate would change nothing, as working to try and undo it more often than not ends in an M Night Shyamalan style "trying to stop it is what caused it to happen" ending.
Fate's a bitch, but it also makes for good tragic stories of people desperately fighting to work against it.
>>44577704
That gets me thinking. If King Laius didn't try to kill Oedipus and raise him as normal, would he have grown up normally and the prophesy would be bust? Or would Oedie and his mum have developed a forbidden love and Laius would be fucked anyway?
>>44577607
As long as there is a modicum of ambiguity to the prophecies, definitely.
Even if the prophecies are 100% unambiguous, as long as it's not a continuous and comprehensive prophecy of everything, you can change the way to the prophesied results.
>>44577811
The prophesy would probably be bust.
Self fulfilling prophecies and vague prophecies are the best.
Anakin sure did bring some balance to the force alright. Balanced it right out.
>>44577704
>You could even call fate a product of collective wills, and that the power to see your fate would change nothing, as working to try and undo it more often than not ends in an M Night Shyamalan style "trying to stop it is what caused it to happen" ending.
Yeah, that's some free will alright. No matter what you do, it will still happen. Because that's what free will means, right?
>>44580480
Your will is still free, in the sense that you could have conceived of and taken different courses of action, which however all lead to the same result. You might say that that's not truly freedom, but the idea that you are somehow standing beyond the chains of causality that bind the world, and are able pick either A or B completely free of any determination, is fallacious.
>>44580480
You are gonna die. I can tell you that with 100% precision. Doesn't mean you don't have free will, if we consider such a thing exists.
>>44580480
Just because a certain even will happen with 100% certainty doesn't mean you don't have free will. It's like death, or gravity. You're going to die some day, and if you jump off a cliff without some kind of device to prevent it you're going to fall whether you like it or not, that doesn't mean death and gravity are hindering your free will.
It's mostly pointless to argue this and get a correct answer. All you'll get are regular answers, nothing definitive.
>>44580480
It's still your will and your choices that lead you to your fate.
>>44577704
>>44577607
You could view Prophecy as a sort of curse. By foretelling a future you create that future and lock reality into that future. That said, Prophecy can be given the "Rule of the Letter" rather than "Spirit of the letter" treatment.
For instance, some one foretells that their son will kill them. Raise the boy normally. and when he's old enough to understand a sense of responsibility, ask him to put you out of your misery when/if you become old/sick/and infirm. repeat process with subsequent male children. no assassination plots hatched by your progeny.
Boom prophecy is bent to your will of your own volition. I.E. free will exists.
Prophecies are retarded.
>you are the one who will slay the evil guy
Well fine then, guess I'm fucking off and not caring about that. Because I'm going to kill him anyway, so what's the point of having stupid adventures and training for it. Hell, aren't I technically unkillable until I kill the evil guy?
>>44577607
I prefer it to be sort of open. The possible futures are limited by the past, and so it's possible to read the most likely paths of the future based on the ripples of time. The more experienced or gifted a prophet is, the further and wider they can see. Truly skilled sages can see the possible ramifications of future actions. So if an old man or woman comes up to you and says "go solve this problem, or else bad things will happen" people (the churches, mainly) listen.
>>44580480
what is free will if not that you can choose different paths?
>>44580480
If predestination precluded free will, prophecy would be the least of your worries--because all people die.
>>44577607
Yes.
Just because the destination is fixed doesn't mean you can't choose the road.
>>44580778
Yeah, pretty much all stories about defying fate invariably lead to that fate coming to pass.
The best thing you can do is just ignore any prophecies, and try to be the best person you can be with the time you have left. Because all you can hope for is that the prophecy will come true in the best possible way.
>>44580834
Unless the prophecy is very specific about the details of you killing him, there is nothing stopping him from showing up on your doorstep tomorrow for a fight to the death that leaves him dead and you crippled, in constant agony, and incontinent until your death several decades later.
Totally.
On the eve of Xerxes' invasion of Greece, the Athenians asked the Oracle at Delphi for a prophecy regarding their chances. They were told:
>Now your statues are standing and pouring sweat. They shiver with dread. The black blood drips from the highest rooftops. They have seen the necessity of evil. Get out, get out of my sanctum and drown your spirits in woe.
Which is Oracalese for,
>You're fucked.
Being plucky folks, the Athenians sent more votive offerings and the Oracle coughed up:
>Await not in quiet the coming of the horses, the marching feet, the armed host upon the land. Slip away. Turn your back. You will meet in battle anyway. O holy Salamis, you will be the death of many a woman's son between the seedtime and the harvest of the grain.
Which is Oracalese for:
>You're pretty much fucked, but at least play to your strengths
Those who know what happens next will know that at Salamisthe Athenians lead their Greek allies to one of the most decisive victories of military history and break the back of the Persian invasion.But that's sort-of beside the point. The very fact that the Athenians were prepared to haggle with the Oracle demonstrates that they believed prophecy isn't set in stone. You could interpret that as the view that prophecy is an indication from the gods of "which way the winds are blowing", and mortals can will otherwise.
>>44580924
Or nothing to stop him from destroying everything you know, love and care about while you're fucking off doing nothing.
Remember, he's unkillable as well until you kill him.
>>44580834
Might be able to reanimate you after death and force you to deal with the problem. The villain could also destroy a large chunk of the world and you with it, temporarily in your case. Your corpse might even get eaten by the big ass monster and give it a unique disease/poison that wouldn't occur outside of yourself, of course in these cases the training is still pointless, unless being able to slay the villain in your normal lifetime was a known possibility.
>>44577680
Wouldn't that make it less of a prophesy and more of wishful thinking?
>>44580924
>>44580939
>>44580964
Fine. Instead of fucking off, you immediately somehow get to him and slit his throat. He can fuck you up, but he can't kill you.
>>44580993
You are going to be a character that the party has to rescue to slay the villain. Then you'll cock it up again.
We all have a destiny, and we all have the ability to fail to live up to that.
I think it makes the world a worse place when we turn our back on what we were meant to do.
>>44581365
Just from having a destiny doesn't follow that that destiny is to make the world a better place, anon.
>>44577607
This is a vacuous question because free will is a poorly defined concept. If your actions proceed deterministically from the situations and mental states that you find yourself in, then of course the future is set and there's no free will.
If your actions do not proceed deterministically - that is to say, that they don't depend fully on your current situation and mental state - then that's another word for randomness, and randomness isn't free will either.
Prophecies present a bit of a problem because knowledge of the future can be paradox-y. For example, if there's a red stone and a blue stone, you can ask the oracle 'which stone will I take' and then choose to take the other. If you can do that, it's impossible for the oracle to speak a true prediction. True predictions are therefore limited to situations where the oracle sees that the events of a prediction will happen partially as a result of - or at least despite - making it in the first place.
>>44581489
"You're going to pick the stone that you think proves your point."
>>44580976
Not if it comes true.
>>44581539
Forgive me, I was imprecise. I should have said a true prediction that unambiguously predicts the choice of stone. If you want to be difficult, consider instead the case where the oracle makes its prediction by switching a lever to either 'blue' or 'red'.
>>44580480
I sincerely believe this question only exists because people are too dumb to understand that exercising your free will is not mutually exclusive with someone seeing in the future what this use of your free will shall lead to. In the end, all the decisions are yours.
>>44577607
Prophecies work when they are inscrutable at first but, when they happened, you go back and say "So that's what that meant!"
>>44581489
>the oracle gives you a folded paper
>"Open it only once you take the orb."
>you take the red orb, and on the sheet of paper is written 'You took the red orb'
Easy.
>>44577607
>Eternity is relentless, Raziel. When I first stole into this chamber, centuries ago, I did not fathom the true power of knowledge. To know the future, Raziel. To see it's paths and streams tracing out into the infinite. As a man, I could never have contained such forbidden truths, but each of us is so much more than we once were. Do you not feel with all your soul how we have become like gods? As such, are we not indivisible? As long as a single one of us stands, we are legion. Our futures are predestined. Mobius foretold mine eons ago, we each play out the parts fate has written for us. Free will is an illusion.
>>44577680
>Prophecy's don't usually have a guarantee of success
Then it's not a prophecy. The only reason the reliability of prophecies is questioned in tales where they show up is because people misintrepret them.
>>44577704
>Fate just knows everything you'll "will" to do
Then your will, by definition, isn't free.
>>44581607
Exactly. It's like trying to argue that since you remember what actions you have taken, those actions were not taken from your free will. Prophecy is like remembering forwards.
>>44577607
I think that the game >>44581713 is referring to is a good example of prophecy and whether free will has any sway to it. I highly recommend it as it's a good story and a fun game.
But as for prophecy and whether free will has any part in it... Imagine that there's a prophecy saying that you'll come to a fork in the road one day. Go down one road and you'll become a vampiric demi-god and usher in a dark age of humanity. You'll have power, immortality, and an entire empire to rule over. Forever.
But go down the other road and you'll be killed, with the very likely possibility of it being in a horrible and extremely painful manner. However, because of your death, humanity will experience a golden age and will flourish for centuries. At least, until they screw up and allow the armies of hell to run amok and destroy everything.
Still, the choice is yours. While humanity is damned either way, you still have a choice in how it's damned.
>>44577607
For prophecies to strip us of free will, you'd need two things: linear time and magic that followed causality. Neither of these is necessarily true, so the answer is no, prophecies do not negate the concept of free will.
If you wanna refine your question, go for it.
>>44581924
There's a big difference between remembering actions already taken and knowing about actions that will be taken in the future.
>>44581607
Having foreknowledge about which choice will be made by another person does indeed imply that he has no free will in the matter.
>>44581977
Or you can do the same as Kain did, which amounted to him saying "Fuck you, fuck your prophecy, fuck time, and fuck your organization. I'm gonna go and engineer my own choice into your prophecy, and it'll have blackjack, and hookers."
essentially pic related, but with vampires.
>>44582146
>>44581713
>Unearth your destiny, Raziel. It's all laid out for you here.
>You said it yourself, Kain... there are only two sides to your coin.
>Apparently so, but suppose you throw a coin enough times... suppose one day, it lands on its edge.
>>44577607
What is Cassandra's Paradox
>>44577607
There's no free will regardless of whether prophesies work or not.
>>44577607
Depends.
Sometimes by trying to do the opposite of what you are doing in order to avoid a prophecy or trying to deny it happening may result in either speeding it up or happening either way.
Look at Oedipus and the stuff his father did to secure his future and how it ended in the end.
>>44577607
Everything is determined anyways. Think of the real world as one prophecy that's constantly awaiting fulfillment: the calculated end state of the universe.
That doesn't mean free will doesn't exist. Free will is an emergent property that comes from thinking of sacs of chemical reactions as more than that, as thinking of them as people.
In a world of prophecy, there is usually some sort of creator deity. If the creator deity, which depending on its purpose, would either think of us as sacs of chemical reactions, or people.
>>44577607
Prophecy:
>The child born on the blood moon will take up the sword and lead his people to freedom
Me:
>I was born on a blood moon.
>Nah, I don't want really want to do that.
Chance:
>Still a chance that some other child born on the blood moon will pick up the sword, free his people, and fulfill the prophecy.
>>44583506
>"Cassandra Complex"
>The Cassandra metaphor (variously labelled the Cassandra 'syndrome', 'complex', 'phenomenon', 'predicament', 'dilemma', or 'curse')
I know of the above. I have no idea what Cassandra's Paradox is.
>>44577607
Think of how prophecies usually work - half the time, it happens in a way that you don't expect.
Therefore, I assume that everyone has free will, but somehow the prophecy, being vague as it is, will be completed somehow, even if in the most vague sense. An evil king is convinced that he is the rising star of the east in a prophecy? Guess who gets chucked out of a catapult after being lit on fire?
>>44577607
No, you can't. Prophecies should only be played for horror.
The entire exercise is too ludicrous to have any sort of meaning.
There are most likely absolutely certain, unchangeable forces in the universe. Things that always were and will be that make up the groundwork of our existence. That does not mean we will ever have any direct contact with such forces, or if we do, that our mediums of interaction will be precise enough to rule out all uncertainty.
Thinking things are built on layers and layers of shifting principles. Many interlocking mechanisms are needed for us to work, it gives us a lot of power -from our perspective at least- but leads to so many variables and conditions that we can't purely interact with a world of certainty.
Of course we have plenty of laws, ideals, perspective or whatever to give ourselves relative grounding but even those need to be constantly updated.
We have the wonderful aspect of consciousness that lets us feels as though we are outside of the functions of the universe, existing as separate things. It's probably an illusion but it's a useful one. We have free-will that helps us navigate all our uncertain surroundings, this is probably an illusion also, but just like consciousness it serves a valuable purpose.
If it turns out choice is an illusion nothing changes. Unless the physical structure of the mind is changed you will still have to suffer the sensation of decision.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that the way we exist is too chaotic for an absolute prophecy to work outside of fiction. We're too thick into the functions of existence to get anything more than really good predictions.
For the kind of prophecy discussed here one would need to see the future through the medium of that primal realm of perfection, a place that would probably be too simple to translate the turmoil of our sense into any intelligible.
Prophecy is a function of perception and communication. A perfect prophecy is an oxymoron
>>44577833
You're right but also wrong.
Lucas confirmed that "balancing" does not mean "numerically equal number of Jedi and Sith", but removing the emphasis of the Dark Side, which is what happens when negative will and negative emotions imposes itself on the Force. He likened the Dark Side to something like a cancer caused by sentient beings when they abuse it.
The part where you're right is where Vader DID eventually destroy the Sith; he just killed all the Jedi too in-between those two things and became a member of the Sith himself, so he was among the number of people he was destroying.
Some serious fine print there.
>not having a prophecy attractor where every vague unfulfilled prophecy comes to pass because an exploding star threw its light backwards in time instead of forwards
lol do you even scry
>>44580605
>>44577704
>>44580579
>>44580605
>>44580660
>>44580713
>>44580778
>>44580893
>>44580913
>>44580938
>>44580976
>>44581607
>>44581977
>>44582017
>>44585088
Bit of disingenuous thinking going on in this thread. Prophecy doesn't have anything to do with free will unless the message of prophecy itself literally goes into the action of people. Being told by God that the sun will rise tomorrow (and watching it happen) means it's technically a prophecy and doesn't illuminate either which way free will is at the time.
A prophecy depicting that a man will deliberately kick a rabbit either means three things:
1) the prophecy isn't a prophecy, and the man never kicks the rabbit.
2) the prohpecy isn't a prophecy, it only concludes probabilities, and the man may or may not kick the rabbit with varying likeliness at the time
3) the prophecy is a true prophecy and the man kicks the rabbit regardless of his choices beforehand. This excludes free will because no matter what he thinks he can do, he will inevitably kick the rabbit. If he decides to kill himself to ultimately maintain his free will, then the prophecy was never a true prophecy to begin with, his death only revealed that fact.
Number three is most pertinent, since OP specifically asked the question on the premise 'if prophecies work', implying true prophecy. Ergo, with working prophecies, no, you cannot have free will. Anything beyond the prophecy is simply not revealed yet, regardless of how you feel about it.
