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Comment by penagwin | Hacker News Reader

At least when I did it in class we had lots of certain numbers, essentially none of certain numbers. A lot of them lined up with common "lucky" or "unlucky" numbers, even if everyone said they didn't pick it for that reason.

To me that shows us how outside forces influence our thoughts. Did I want to buy this garbage bag because it's a good value, has a good design, or because I've heard "DONT GET MAD, GET GLAD!!" 1000 times? Every thought we have is affected by our experiences, and many experiences can be controlled - they call these advertisements.

I find this topic fascinating. I suffer from depression, and my thoughts during a major depressive episode can be the stark opposite from when I feel well (Let's say it's about suicide). How can I truly have "free will" if my decisions are so dependent on external influences?

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How can I truly have "free will" if my decisions are so dependent on external influences?

You don't have actually free will, if by free you mean "uninfluenced by anything".

There's no evidence that such a thing exists, and anyone who claims such a thing invariably appeals to supernatural or hand-wavy explanations.

Note that many thinkers who claim free will exist actually are saying "what most people mean by 'free will' does exist", and usually that means "an agent capable of making choices without outside influence". This idea is compatible with determinism, so these people are called compatibilists.

How is being an agent capable of making choices without outside influence compatible with determinism? My understanding is nobody can ever be an agent capable of making choices without outside influence. A person is fundamentally influenced at birth by external forces and moulding the person by deterministic process without the person having any real control. Furthermore one could only say they had free will if before life one agreed to take role of birth as a specific person and with knowing how life will play out till the end. Compatibilists are people who don't understand determinism because free will doesn't work with determinism. /hard determinist.

I said "what most people mean by 'free will'"

For most people, "outside influence" means, "at this point in time, only the contents of my brain affect the choice I make" and "no force or agent outside myself is compelling me to make a different choice than the one I'd make otherwise".

It's a word game of course. Even if you try to be extremely precise with your definitions, to avoid this kind of thing, most people won't quite follow.

Compatibilists believe what you believe. They just agree to use the popular, vague definition of free will instead of the strict one you're using.

> How can I truly have "free will" if my decisions are so dependent on external influences?

because you can recognize this as a pattern, make a supposition that this is related to previous conditioning, and retrain yourself at picking numbers randomly to eliminate the previous bias that you yourself recognized as 'problematic' here.

That's fated to happen by the external forces making it happen.

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