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Comment by vbit | Hacker News Reader

I think I'm in camp #2, and I lost you at 'but if you were a different you, and made a different decision..'. If your thoughts and actions are fated, how can you be a different you? Or try harder? Isn't all that fated? First you tell me that I don't have real choice, but then you tell me to exercise that choice.

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The "if" in "if you were a different you" is meant as a hypothetical counterfactual. My point is that the outcome is a function of (you, stuff that isn't you) - not, as in classical determinism, (stuff that isn't you). There is certainly a sense in which you "couldn't have been" a different you. But that doesn't change the fact that - insofar as there is a you - your actions and the results thereof follow from that you. That the you that is follows from other things is immaterial in regard to 2 (it is material in regard to 1).

It boils down to this - what is a choice? I would contend that you do have a real choice and that the choice is made by you - again, insofar as there is a "you". It just happens to be the case (assuming determinism) that one could know what that choice was going to be, if they possessed more knowledge than anyone actually has.

> That the you that is follows from other things is immaterial in regard to 2 (it is material in regard to 1).

I don't see it that way. The you that is follows from the (you, stuff that isn't you) at the previous moment. Your actions and the results are both a consequence of the previous (you, stuff that isn't you).

In other words, I'm having trouble differentiating you from the stuff that isn't you. I just imagine the world is a giant mechanical machine, churning along according to some physical laws, where the you is just a conscious entity that identifies itself with small subset of atoms in the machine and believes it can affect the movement of those atoms.

You're arguing that there isn't a "you". Sure, you're not a first order entity in the universe. When you do draw some line and say "this is me" - which is completely appropriate (if partly arbitrary) - and around particular events that you call actions, the actions taken by you depend on you, which is the important thing in 2.

Well I'm arguing that determinism implies there may be a conscious you, but there can't be a you that has choice. Anyway, I think I see what you are getting at and can accept that as a philosophical position even though I don't hold it. It has to do with the partly arbitrary line defining you. It also seems you are suggesting we look at the world from two different angles - one that is purely deterministic and one that has the concept of you and your choices, their results etc.

Close. My point is that the system is only deterministic if you include all the information, including who you are. From the outside, that is determined, but you can't pretend to a perspective you don't have. From the inside, you make your choices however you make them and they have the impacts they have.

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