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Comment by mannykannot | Hacker News Reader

> Either the universe is fully deterministic and free will and agency do not exist, and we should be much kinder to people who e.g. commit crimes (they were forced to do it by their brain state, after all)...

I don't think that's consistent, as the same reasoning applies to the people (i.e. the 'we' in your statement) who will, in some way or perhaps not at all, censure the perpetrator of said crime.

In other words, if full determinism removes agency from the perpetrator, then it also removes it from everyone else.

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Additionally, the possibility of consequences (including those created and enforced by human beings, formal or otherwise) are also factors in the "deterministic" action of an individual, so for the benefit of society (assuming there are outcomes that society can improve via expectations and consequences) then it makes perfect sense for there to be consequences.

Bottom line though, whether the system is deterministic or not doesn't affect our experience of it.

> In other words, if full determinism removes agency from the perpetrator, then it also removes it from everyone else.

This is irrelevant to their claim. Normative statements don't require anyone actually have agency. After all, it's possible that everyone should do something that nobody can do.

If you want to say that fine then their claim is irrelevant too, then sure, but it's in no way inconsistent. I think it is relevant though. We can do things differently than we do them, like after reading this comment section; we just can't do them differently than we will do.

Worse still. Your guilty of the same thing you're accusing the poster of.

Are you sure about that? I don't think I'm taking issue with a normative claim here, I think I'm discussing the rationale offered for adopting it, which is where agency came into the discussion.

I agree that I am doing the same thing as the person I am replying to, just applying it to all participants (which, by the way, is not in any way an accusation.)

Perhaps we’re on our way to the inevitable outcome of being much nicer to criminals by pure coincidence of determinism :)

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