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Comment by creer | Hacker News Reader

Yes, this "want" of pop science is annoying. I don't see anything lacking with simply using something like "enables", "allows". An environment with sticks allows evolutionary paths that can use sticks. A world with pools of high energy makes it easier for energy-using systems to develop there as opposed to outside of them. A world with light - go figure - makes it possible for light-using systems to subsist.

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>Yes, this "want" of pop science is annoying. I don't see anything lacking with simply using something like "enables", "allows".

This misses the fact that the laws that guide the evolution of the universe are such that its evolution is "aimed towards" increasing entropy. This aim then entails what states are more likely over time, i.e. such states that increase the capacity for increasing entropy. It's not just an incidental fact that entropy increases, but that this trajectory is baked into the laws of nature. But the conceptual dual of an aim is a goal or a "want". So while not literally true, I think using intention terminology is more correct and insightful than leaving out any talk of goal-oriented behavior.

So are the atomic accretions known as humans who have 'wants' part of 'pop science'? Free will? If not, our justice system needs massive reconsideration, an idea with which many people concur but (I would have thought) is unlikely to prevail.

The justice system doesn't really depend on free will. If the threat of punishment deterministicly alters the behavior of society in a productive way, then this justifies it.

Maybe you’ve read this already (I still have it in my stack to read so can’t give any personal review) but ‘Determined’ by Robert Sapolsky sets the argument that we don’t have free will and that the justice system is flawed because of that.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2398369-why-free-will-d...

I read the article and I have to say, it's disturbingly compelling. Although I think that while we are unable to demonstrate intricate puppeting of real, conscious humans or something like that, there's some "truth" or "weight" in our thoughts and feelings that are genuine and outside of the typical sphere that free will governs (or, lacking that, fails to govern). Like, even if it could've been predicted with 73% accuracy at birth and 98% by age 25, the fact that someone deeply loves someone else doesn't seem like something to be written off as "this was in your genes and environment". It might still hold true in some sense if full-on mind control is invented, but then you wouldn't know if the feelings are real or fake, meaningful though they feel.

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