Normies simply confuse will for being free will because they don't think about things in terms of cause and effect. However it has already been determined when and if everyone stops believing in it.

>>28703192
The illusion of free will is just as good as the real thing.
Try me, fag.

>>28703192
>Why are normies so stupid as to think free will is anything but a meme?

It's not stupidity, it's cynical calculation. Belief in free will enables them to blame people whom otherwise they would have no excuse to not help: 'just apply your free will to pull yourself out of this shit bro kthxbye'.

/thread (yes, /thread)

>>28703192
Determinism is a meme that should have died with the discovery of quantum mechanics.

>>28703361
>bringing up the quantumeme

But it's your decision how you respond to your genes and environmental influences.

>>28703391
9/10 bait, at least three posters should fall for it on a good day.

>>28703402
It's not bait. Do you mean to tell me you are not accountable for your own decisions?

>>28703391
I agree with this. Every environmental influence and nigger gene in his body should have made it so that Ben Carson was a crack dealer in Detroit, yet he's a brain surgeon.

>>28703192
This is bait
Nice try, shekelstein

>>28703380
>Bringing up the "Calling everything you don't like a meme" meme

>>28703341
Yet as you say yourself; normies can't help thinking that way, they don't have the free will to do so.

>>28703494
Which is why I harbour no pointless blame towards them.

>>28703192
Lets say your genes and environmental factors turn you into a murderous child rapist. You are therefore, a bad person. No free will required. Whether or not free will exists it certainly doesn't do any moral work.

>>28703192
Why are you making this stupid thread if you have no will of your own? Go join a religion/cult they'll make every decision for you.
>muh dank memes
It's your life, bozo

>Bro your parents aren't to blame for your failures lmao!
Okay. Let's just forget the fact that they've shaped me into the mentally-ill person I am today. Let's forget the fact that your childhood sticks with you for life and influences your personality and interaction with the world. Let's just conveniently forget all of that.

>>28703511
>>28703494
...And also take full responsibility for educating them on the matter should I choose to want to. Rejection of free will means that I can't expect anyone else to do my shit.

>>28703511
Well it's a question of if being a normie is a bad thing. If someone's influences made them into a bad person you should think of them as a bad person.

>>28703192
Why do you punish criminals then if they have no control of their actions?

How can you blame or be mad at the person that breaks into your house and steals your computer and rapes your mother? You can't.

>>28703545
But I absolutely might. There is no contradiction. Someone can -- well actually not really, but this is a different subject -- be a bad person, and yet not deserve any punishment. And no, this doesn't mean that 'we can't imprison people' or anything like that.

>>28703562
Yeah you can, they're a shit person.

>>28703527
Let's just conveniently forget that you learned to make excuses for yourself and refuse to learn any positive skills. You literally love being miserable

>>28703511
Oh. I interpreted your post as rather bitter. Guess not, sorry.

>>28703562
whether free will exists or not, wont it be good to remove criminals from society..?

>>28703570
That's entirely fair. I guess I should rephrase it as this: If being a normie is deserving of resentment, you should resent them regardless of whether or not they had free will to become a normie. That's just who they are now. Of course, it's probably not the case that you should resent all normies, so your position is sound. I just wanted to say something about the reasons for why.

>>28703192
you have the freedom to act within your world, not the power to live outside of it.

>>28703585
If you make excuses for yourself and refuse to learn positive skills, you're a shit person, regardless of how your childhood was. It's not exactly fair if someone has a poor childhood, but how they end up is still somewhere on a scale of "good person" to "bad person" (with more complexity than that obviously, but you get the idea) and if they ended up in a spot where they make poor choices like you said, they're a worse person for it.

>>28703562
>How can you blame or be mad at the person that breaks into your house and steals your computer and rapes your mother? You can't.

Indeed I can't.

>Why do you punish criminals then if they have no control of their actions?

This poster: >>28703610 is confused, ignore him.

This question betrays confusion of looking through the residual lens of deserving while the proper perspective is speaking of what IS. Any specific punishment, any slice of law that dictates some reaction, is just an arbitrary sense of 'he should be treated this way for doing it'. There is no objective 'should', there is just one ever-interacting game tug-of-war where people act according to their own senses of justice, punishing, preventing recomissions, ensuring each other's pain and comfort, trying to bend *other people's* senses of appropriateness of reactions to their own. This is all determined. We can't *not* play this game; we can't *not* react and have our individual, personal shoulds. What we can do, though, is realize the arbitrariness of it all. For instance, you can ask me why I think that a certain crime should (not) be punished this (or that) way, and I, while fully aware of its arbitrariness, will give you the relevant factors in my past that had led me to this subjective position.

>>28703588
No problem. It happens; even in my daily life I find myself adding extra artificial cheer to my voice because I just know my neutral one would sound as pretension or complaint to unaccustomed ears.

>>28703580
Being a shit person is relative. I'd say the shit person is the one posting on /r9k/ while the person stealing things to feed is family is not the shit person.

>>28703585
>you learned to make excuses for yourself
Wrong.
>refuse to learn any positive skills.
Wrong.
>You literally love being miserable
True. It's all I know, what choice do I have other than to try and warm up to it? Every time I've tried to fix my life I've only made things worse. I'm tired of failing.

>>28703707
Well yeah it's relative, I assumed you were using that as an example of "obviously bad behavior" for the purposes of discussion. Imagine in the place of "steals your computer and rapes your mom" whatever does it for you, the point is they are a bad person.

What I mean is that you can say they're a shit person regardless of free will. If those actions reflect upon them that they are a bad person, they're a bad person for it, regardless of childhood or genes or whatnot.

>>28703707
>>28703780
There isn't really such a thing as a bad person. Everyone is eventually egoistic, and there's nothing wrong with egoism, because it's eventually pursuit of happiness.

>>28703192

>hard determinism
>2016

Kek

Someone else is not going to fix your life. You are in the unfortunate position of being the only one who can help yourself, so your options really are warp up to being miserable or fix your shit. But hey, if you don't make excuses for yourself and learn positive skills you're probably on a decent track.

>>28703380

>Determemeist

>>28703836
>Someone else is not going to fix your life.

Demonstrable bullshit.

Please remember how you were thanked this week for that thing you did. My reminding you of it made you feel better, and, by virtue of how brains work, a slightly better person. Therefore, I fixed your life a bit. Therefore, not all change comes from without (in fact, no change can come from within). QED. >inb4 arbitrary standards of that hasn't been TRUE fixing of your life yet.

>>28703811
Last week I stole a doughnut at work despite knowing, or at least thinking, that I shouldn't have. Someone went without a dougnut because of me. Would you say that doesn't reflect badly on me at all, because I was pursuing my own happiness? I feel as though I should still be at fault.

>he does not have free will
Enjoy being literal slave

>>28703192
Kek, I haven't seen this picture in a while. Really brings me back to my hamsteak days

>>28703562
Right, but you can imprison them so they can't commit more crimes, and try to fix them while imprisoned so you can release them safely. If we stopped focusing on punishment and instead focused on doing whatever was most effective, we'd have less crime due to less recidivism. This is why it's important to realize free will doesn't exist. You have to build policy on truth, otherwise it won't work in the way you expect it to. Designing a legal system assuming free will exists is like building a house assuming gravity goes sideways.

>>28703915
>Last week I stole a doughnut at work despite knowing, or at least thinking, that I shouldn't have.

This is circular reasoning, 'immorality exists because I feel it'.

Egoism-altruism, how many casualties so to say there are, is a real distinction; but good and evil isn't.

>>28703585
>Let's just conveniently forget that you learned to make excuses for yourself and refuse to learn any positive skills. You literally love being miserable
Did he choose to love being miserable? Did you choose to like vanilla over chocolate? Your taste in music? Your favorite color?

>>28703937
This, more or less. I personally contrast embrace/rejection of free will with retrospective (retributive) vs prospective (only having in mind maximization (according to my own necessarily subjective priorities) of future happiness) punishment. We should only have happines in mind as we punish -- including the one of the innocent perpetrator.

>>28703890
Alright, I generalized, I'll admit. Fixing your shit is going to be some combination of action from yourself and support from others. And sometimes you're just in a bad spot. But would think it's best not to rely on the altruism of others too heavily, and work towards a better future yourself.

>>28704019
>But would think it's best not to rely on the altruism of others too heavily, and work towards a better future yourself.

This is the stage most detractors of determinism don't move to...

Yes.

Which is I have over time personally compressed the issue of free will to the following: 'act as if you're the only person alive with it'. Which, yes, is just the old 'expect much from yourself and nothing from others', except people apparently aren't used to seeing it in terms of free will.

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theres is no you though
if there is no you how can you have free will?
ego babbies pls wake up, it's 2016

>>28704068
(Note that I'm not saying that I actually have it, as that's obviously false. The pretension it exists only extends to my actions, not to my thinking, such as digging into the causes of my behaviour.)

>>28703956
Look, I don't know what those terms mean. Strike the "despite knowing, or at least thinking, that I shouldn't have" if it makes you happy. Last week I stole a doughnut and someone went without one because of it. Does that not make be a worse person than if I had not stolen the doughnut? Because, and please correct me here if I am wrong, because I feel like I might be missing something here, but it seems to me like your statement would claim that that boils down to my own pursuit of happiness (egoism, as you put it) and so I can't be a bad person for it.

>>28704116
You really aren't. I can't be honestly mad at anyone who just wanted to have fun killing or raping me, much less stealing something from me. That doesn't mean that I won't keep you from stealing people's doughnuts if I see you doing it, because experience shows that this kind of dealing suffering is pedagogically preventable.

>>28704085
Why use free will then? "Be responsible for your yourself" does not require free will to work.

>>28703402
Looks like you're one of the aforementioned idiotic normies. Can't stand the fact that you have no actual control of your life?

>>28704185
Would you recognize that the action of stealing doughnuts is wrong? You would act to prevent it, right? So presumably you don't want people to steal doughnuts.

>>28704197
I'm >>28704185.

>>28704192
Well *I* am perfectly fine rejecting free will completely -- I've been fine with it for years. I just reckon that the motto I posted could be handy for people only getting there, a kind of a compromise.

>>28704252
It causes suffering, and perhaps even intentionally. But it's not really ultimately wrong.

And yes, I don't want there to be stealing, but whether I respect the thief's desire to steal more than the stolen-from's desire to possess (which I personally, arbitrarily wouldn't) is subjective. It aligns with the views of 99.999% of the population, but it's still subjective.

>>28704257
I replied to the wrong fucking comment. My bad, man. How embarrassing.

>>28704297
>>28704252
(Cf. the smooth extendability of this scenario into Robin Hood kind of stealing, stealing from corporations, stealing from an occupant, and such. There are no arbitrary thresholds or separators; 'greater good' *is* subjective.)

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>>28703920
No one does, b0ss.
Everyone's life is just a long, constant process of cause and effect. You don't notice because you don't spend enough time self-reflecting.

>>28704326
I can't harbour derision for you, anon.

>>28704297
Alright, I'm a little confused by your stance and I have to ask you to clarify something for me. You seem to be wanting to avoid saying an action is right or wrong, but you still want to prevent some of those actions from happening. Why? Where does that come from, if not some judgement of "good" or "bad"?

>>28704328
That's not something you can extend to everything though. Sure, some situations are ambiguous. Not all of them are. You're going to have to measure all the factors in a situation, but regardless of how the sum total ends up, we still analyze parts of them as "good" or "bad".

I stole money from a charity is bad, I feed my family is good. You consider the whole situation but you're still making sometimes complex judgements on aspects of the situation.

>>28703192
What bugs me is even if determinism isnt correct free will still doesn't seem to make sense.
If determinism is correct then free will is of course not real.
If however determinism is wrong, man could still just be a machine, only there is an element of unpredictability.
When we talk about free will we're not simply refering to someone's actions being in part unpredictable, free will is a stronger claim;
That we can somehow control how we act.
It seems to be that free will requires something between randomness and determinism, but what is this something?

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 play things
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 Lotusland

All preordained
A prisoner in chains
A victim of venomous fate
Kicked in the face
You can't pray for a place
In heaven's unearthly estate


Each of us
A cell of awareness
Imperfect and incomplete
Genetic blends
With uncertain ends
On a fortune hunt that's far too fleet

>>28703324
You're totally right, but once you've gone through the looking glass, it's a waste of time to go back anyways. I would argue that it's more productive

>>28704549
If it doesn't matter if free will is an illusion or not why does it matter how you think of it? And why does it matter at all, what purpose do you serve in considering free will?

What is the purpose of this debate. Either result when you boil it down means nothing. If free will doesn't exist, how can you expect to change someone's mind, when all of the causes that made them believe that it exist still remain. If you believe it exist, why debate it, they have the will to believe what ever they want.

>>28704364
>[...] you still want to prevent some of those actions from happening. Why? Where does that come from, if not some judgement of "good" or "bad"?

This is exactly the kind of evolution-rooted, but culture-refined sense of right and wrong that's subconsciously evoked and context-adjusted every time I see an action, with as many nuances as my intelligence allows. All 'weighs' and 'outweighs' are always relative to the situation and the person. The factors affecting my personal sense of justice before I necessarily come to a verdict are infinite. They're my life story, as are yours.

>>28704449
Complexity of situations only supports my point of judgements' subjectivity,

>>28704487
True. Quantum blah doesn't support the idea of agency.

>>28704600
If free will doesn't exist, you can change someone's mind by adding new causes to the causes that made them believe it existed (like them seeing a post on an internet forum). If free will exists, they have the will to belive whatever they want but they can still be influenced by other people, so discussion is not a lost cause.

>>28704591
>>28704600
Universal rejection of free will would improve the society tremendously. If there were any hope of implementing it, it should be advocaded before anything else. It should be a mandatory subject for young schoolkids.

>>28704648
I still don't follow why you would stop me from stealing a doughnut.

>>28704736
Please clarify how.

>>28704708
Sounds like arguing for arguing sake to me. Neither should care if the other is wrong, if they really believe what they believe.

>>28704748
What kind of question this is? Seriously?

...Because evolution has implanted pretty deeply the idea that outside retaliation, everyone who shares a humanoid body should not have items that my pattern recognition identifies and labels as 'theirs' should be taken, because this upsets the tribal cohesion blah blah, and my own culture is such that even retaliation should not be realized as food-stealing, which is because it looks petty, and people want to avoid that because it's associated with children, and childishness is again evolutionarily avoided because it signals weakness... blah blah blah, though my personal stance towards that particular guy might change if he'd stolen food from me before, and this is based again on the arbitrary sense of equivalence between two foodstuffs, which has to do with nutritional equivalence... THAT'S MY POINT, you could go on endlessly.

>>28704767
Again... again.

>less cruel retaliation
>more discussion of consequences of future actions rather than apish 'YOU SHOULD DO THIS BECAUSE IT'S SELF-OBVIOUS', which comes from clinging to the idea of deserving rather than polite exchange of 'if we subject him to x, that and that will happen, what say you to that gentlemen'
>more investigation into reasons of behaviour, better medicine, better rehabilitation of criminals as an anon said, better educational policies because children can't 'lol just try harder'
>higher quality advice in general, no more just be yourself, you need to come up with solid skill-, learning-, relationship-advice
>embrace of eugenics as nature and nurture isn't dismissed in favour of said 'trying harder', politics no longer standing in way of real change and increased happiness caused by increased IQ, which can only be done genetically
>no more 'it depends on you what you do with situation x' obscuration of consequences, when individual choice is dismissed, discussion takes form of identifying factors in individuals that can affect particular turns of events ('in case he's such, x will happen, else y... z...', rather than 'it depends on him, period')
>...
>tons more that I can't be bothered to remember for the dozenth time

>>28704987
And should have begun with ofc, less blame, self-blame, less rash actions because 'everyone concerned can just apply their free will in case something goes wrong', ...

>>28704987
>>28705032
To be honest I've become so removed from thinking in terms of deserving and 'should' and such that I have a hard time relating to it.

>>28704987
So everything that would improve society for you and your point of view. How does it benefit those on top.

>>28704329
Slave detected. Enjoy your life of having no self control. Literally autism. Mental midget lmaoing at your pathetic life. I bet you don't even understand why you're still living like a child.

>>28703983
Yes to all of those. Are you forfeiting your ability to develop preferences? I could change my taste in music or food any time I want and sometimes it becomes necessary.