Comment by coldtea | Hacker News Reader

Comment by coldtea | Hacker News Reader

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>“That’s free will: were you to rewind the tape of world history, to the instant just before you made your decision, with everything in the universe exactly the same, you’d have been able to make a different one.”

Huh? Why?

Shouldn't it be the opposite?

As much as I have a personal will, I will continue to will the same thing if we replay the situation -- all other things being exactly the same.

I don't chose something at random. I express who I am, based on my life story in space time.

To make a light example, if I'm a person who prefers Big Macs over Chinese, I will pick a Bic Mac if I'm asked to make such a decision, no matter how many times we rewind and replay the universe state.

Free will is not about me suddenly picking some random alternative. How would that ever express who I am (and thus, my, _my_ personal will?).

What's "free" about this free will since its inexorably tied to my space-time history? Well, it's exactly the fact that it's my space-time history, and can't be altered based on some external factor.

It's not "free" as in arbitrarily changeable, but free as in "expressing me and only me" (that is: my space-time history who made me what I am).

This is not an argument for the existence free will. I think it’s an argument that free will’s absence is no loss, since the deterministic choices of humans are expressions of unique paths of their consciousness in space time. Uniqueness as a salve on the painful claim that one is deterministically driven to always order the Big Mac.

This has always seemed to me to be the inherent contradiction in free will but I struggle to elaborate it. If it’s my choice then doesn’t that mean it’s determined in some way? In which case it’s not free. But if it’s random then that’s not “will” either. What then is the thing that could be both free and willed?

There is no resolution to that contradiction. The concept of a “free will” is absurd, and arose because of the psychological illusion of choice. It is a rationalization of how we feel as we exist in the world.

This realization can be difficult to process. The illusion of free will is intensely persistent, even after we’ve accepted that fact. Personally, I try to focus on the higher-order positives that come with this understanding: increased humility, greater compassion for others and oneself and equanimity via acceptance.

I had once strived to grok Zen Buddhism. I think shedding my belief in free will brought me much closer than drugs, meditation or reading religious texts ever did.

>If it’s my choice then doesn’t that mean it’s determined in some way? In which case it’s not free.

It is free in the sense that it's determined by the essense of you (your journey in space-time) - as opposed to some external factor (e.g. someone making a machine that makes you take a certain choice without it having anything to do with your experiences).

It's not some "action at a distance" that has nothing to do with you, your past, your experiences, etc. If that was the case, it wouldn't be _your_ will (whether free or not).

It's free as in not determined by external factors. Factors pertinent to who you are (like where you grew up, your friends, your parents, your experiences and so on - that is, your space-time history) _are_ pertinent to who you are. You can't separate from them, and I wouldn't call separating from them "free".

So it's not free as in "random" or as in "independent of your history deliberation by something external to your body (e.g. a soul) that's unaffected by your past".

I once wrote an article about that specific idea. For me, it's a question of scale and definition. If someone doesn't agree on the existence of a "self" they won't agree on free will either.

https://venam.nixers.net/blog/psychology/2018/02/15/scale.ht...

Some people will argue that you are not so exceptional, which is the whole thing about the snowflake argument.

You share most of your specificities with other homo sapiens.

Individualism is a thought system that is centered on liberalism. Watch "the century of the self".

>You share most of your specificities with other homo sapiens.

Sure, but that's neither here, nor there - and totally orthogonal to the discussion.

Free will is about expressing the self, not about the self being unique.

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