Can someone redpill me on the concept of Free Will? I mean, I can decide where to move my limbs and what to do with them, doesn't that mean that there free will exists to some extent? Is it possible when you say that there is no free will, it just means that life is very linear with little to no choice at all?
>pic unrelated, it just made me kek
the no free will meme is just a shitty excuse for the people on this board to not try improving themselves
do not fall for it
Most of your decisions are unconscious, and you really do have very little say in what direction your life is headed. We know this through science. However, it's still not possible for us to prove that free will doesn't exist yet, but likely we will soon
>>29072463
>Most of your decisions are unconscious
Please explain.
>>29072426
I think free will does exist but I've heard two arguments against it
1. If God is all-knowing and knows the future already, then our paths were pre-determined and destined to happen before we were born. Thus free will is an illusion because there is only one path that we will take.
2. Humans are just biochemical machines like other animals and simply react to stimuli. Given the exact same conditions, we would live the same life every time
Both terrible arguments, especially the firsf. I'm sure there are better ones though
>>29072461
Also, I heard of the "I won't improve myself because Chad gets it easy, it is humiliating." meme, I'm a failed normie myself and I don't get it, you should genuinely stop giving a crap about who gets it easier and should only care about the rewards you receive, that doesn't sound humiliating at all.
>inb4 cuck
>>29072426
>Is it possible when you say that there is no free will, it just means that life is very linear with little to no choice at all?
This is typically referred to as soft determinism. It's a separate position from hard determinism, which argues that we have no free will.
You could think of it this way; yes, you get to choose to move your limbs, but where do these choices come from? They come from your mind, necessarily, which is formed by both your genetics and the environment in which you were raised. Did you have any choice in either of these things? No, of course not. Thus, any choice you make is completely arbitrary, and predestined by your genetics and formative experiences.
Schopenhauer summarised it well when he said "Man can do as he wills, but he cannot will what he wills"
also you may find this interesting
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/fatalism/
>>29072463
Science will never disprove that free will exists with 100 percent blatant certainty. It is one of those things that is not supposed to be known. Like whether or not we have souls, whether there is a creator, etc. Not knowing the deep questions keeps things in balance.
Imagine what could happen in society if such a thing was proven. Chaos would ensue
>>29072632
>Chaos would ensue
no, things would be going exactly according to plan.
>>29072517
What do you think of this argument?
1.Imagine that on the 10th of June, 2016, you get a gf.
2.This means that it is true that on the 10th of June, 2016, you get a gf.
3.Thus, 1000 years ago, it was true that on the 10th of June, 2016, you get a gf.
4.Thus, it is inevitable that you get a gf on the 10th of June, 2016.
>>29072655
Ah I see what you did there..
>>29072625
I think this means that our minds are prone to making certain decisions, but still capable of free will.
>>29072665
except there was no certain way to determine if this event would happen 1000 years ago
you wouldn't have even had the ability to guess that this robot would come to exist 1000 years ago, let alone that he would have a girlfriend at an exact date
is this a shitty joke or something
>>29072665
Number 3 I dont think I agree with. Have to think about it for a minute
Google "Bell's Theorem." It's over complicated in terms of scope, but you will understand where we are on the topic of determinism better than what anyone here would most likely tell you.
>>29072691
like what? free will is a meme, but there is nothing you could do about that, not because you have no will but because you are limited.
you could consider free will certain things, but those certain things are a result of other things and it is a never ending chain of events that make other events.
much like rolling a dice, if you know all the variables that make the result of the dice you can determinate the number.
>>29072426
There are unknown variables that control every aspect of choice. The outside world controls you and you are made of the outside world. Choice is obviously just a human perspective and an illusion because we don't see much.
>>29072691
So what would that free will actually consist of?
>>29072713
I disagree with the argument myself, but it's a moderately popular argument known as fatalism.
It relies on holding a non-liner conception of time. While we experience time in a linear fashion, many hold that time itself doesn't exist in this fashion. Furthermore, it's not about prediction, it doesn't have to be a known fact that such and such will happen in the future; just that it is true at that point that it will happen.
But again, I agree with you, it's bullshit. Just curious what people think.
>>29072734
Same, I completely disagree with point 3. Without any existent referents in the world, a statement cannot be true or false.
>>29072426
free will is a meme, because if you do something, you were always going to do it, because you just did it. It's a meme.
>>29072625
Can't you change your environment though? A 5 year old could make the decision to run away from home and be raised by a family that he likes. Technically you could choose to change your genetics to if you wanted/had the ability, it's not logically impossible
Life is the most complex program in the observable universe. The manner in which it has adapted and prevailed despite the vacuum of space gridmarks it as a computer with unfathomable power and capability.
Humanity is a product of that computer, an extension of that program.
All that humanity does, just as every other living thing, is a conscious attempt by said computer to conquer the vacuum of space.
So, given that, ask the question again.
Do you still think you're making your choices from day to day?
Or is the computer?
>>29072819
Hidden variables have been disproven. The idea was never fully accepted to begin with since it implies the only thing missing is what we cannot perceive. Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen only siggested hidden variables because either logic as we know it is wrong (ie Godels Incompleteness Theorems) or nonlocality is a thing. At that point I get depressed.
You should really refer to my >>29072747
>>29072900
The choice to run away would be caused by a poor environment and their genetics giving them a mind brave enough to run away though. Someone could (hypothetically) choose to change their genetics, but their desire to change their genetics would be a choice already rooted in the deterministic nature of their existence.
>>29072944
>Not knowing the meaning of the word hidden
>>29072933
>computer
>program
Sorry I was swapping between the two.
Whether it is a computer or a computer program, either way, it's a sophisticated system is attempting to prevail over space and death. The head of the food chain is its champion-- a product that carries its flag into the abyss, trying to overcome.
Once we're born, the strings are cut. The job is done. If you died, you're a casualty, yes. But if you don't, and you do manage to pass along your genes, you've allowed for another step forward of power.
Human life spans are only expanding. Our technologies only advancing. Life is winning.
For now.
>>29072976
What if you put a newborn baby in a dark room and if he crawls to the right, the family on the right will take it and if it crawls left, the family on the left will
Its environment is now shaped by a random choice it made using free will
>>29072426
Basically Free Will is the idea that there's a part of us which isn't simply "reacting" to the world and is able to decide something without submitting to external inputs.
One could argue that every "decision/action" is just a "reaction" to something which came before, so there's no real "free will".
But then, where does the first "reaction" comes from? If there's no free will, then the universe is eternal or there must be at least one original action without cause, which is God.
> Have no choice but to tip Fedora
> You can't blame me, I'm not atheist on my own free will
>>29073012
Hidden as in what cannot be readily observed? What in the scenario of both daily life or measuring of a particle's spin cannot be readily observed beyond the evanescent particles that make the scenario possible?
>>29072933
You're right, you convinced me, there is no free will. Whenever I feel like I'm control of my life, it just means that the cosmic dice is rolled in my favor. My limb movements are decided by my brain, when shrunk down to the tiniest level, is just a bunch of random quantum fluctations. I may be embarrasing myself with my lack of knowledge about quantum physics, but i have one more question: Is life and universe unpredictable?
>>29072426
When you throw a ball that ball has a specific trajectory that it will follow
You can build a mechanism in which to measure the trajectory to almost 100% certainty and know exactly where that ball will go.
This is the same reason that everything from the start of time is already determined. Everything will go planned out exactly as it should have from the beginning unless some new, crazy physics can interject and say otherwise.
This does not mean the illusion of free will does not exist.
>>29073042
An arbitrary choice, not made freely by the baby because of it's lack of understanding of the situation. Say I put you in a similar dark room, without telling you anything, where going to the right gets you sent to Guantamano and going to the left gets you sent home, only telling you after what those choices meant. How could you defend calling that a free choice? It's the exact same for the baby.
>>29073055
Are you saying you bitch at the atoms in your body to make them do what you wish? The world makes you wish anon. The real question is where does a soul come from. A rock could have one.
What's the point of this discussion when it was all predetermined anyway?
>>29073042
Actually, it's "decision" is caused by the mind, which is shaped by uncontrolable genetics which make the newborn more prone to certain "decisions". I've learned it here, free will is a meme.
>>29073134
Oh, I thought we were having a logical discussion on QFT. Never mind.
Vipassana bro here. Personal experience with meditation has led me to believe what I've written below. I'm not sure if this is the case for you or anyone else, but it does subjectively seem to be how things are in my own personal experience. Incoming overuse of scarequotes:
The idea of "free will" is just another sensation, kind of like the sensation you get when you need to take a shit. When your stomach gurgles and you feel a pressure in your bowel area, your mind takes those sensations, processes them, and then they're given to consciousness. One of the biggest things that happens during this processing phase is that various attributes and associations (all just more sensations) are "bolted on" to the sensations of gurgling and pressure. You've felt those sensations enough in the past to know there's a pattern of your body needed to take a shit after feeling those. No free will so far, right?
Now what about when "you" "decide" to go take that dump? When does that "decision" happen, and who is making that decision? As it turns out, both of those things are damn near impossible to pin down. The end result is a dump taken, with various dump-taking sensations having the concept of "free will" bolted onto them. The same can also be said for sensations corresponding to the idea of "selfhood" or "control".
So yeah, free will does appear to be a meme. If a body-mind system tries to steer itself towards more conscious decisions and better conditioning it can begin to have "free-er will", but that steering is still a result of cause and effect. There is no atomized prime-mover behind any of this that the free will idea would seem to dictate. This play of cause and effect that we're subject to is a part of why people talk about all that "interconnectedness" and "we're all one" jazz.
Anyway, that's just a poor explanation of one dude's subjective experience. If none of this resonates with you then defer to one of the solid scientific explanations given above.
>>29072426
it's very simple
you have will, however small or large
when you exercise your will, you're doing so freely
when you don't, you have no free-will
so while some people are habitual and unconscious in their life patterns, others live more willfully.
Will is a muscle, a sort of power that you refine over time. Frontal lobe shit. It separates great men from untermensch. You'll know if you have a strong will or not.
tl;dr how free willed you are is determined by how strong your spirit is
