Layke1123

Well, why did the US actively try to harm the USSR? If it was such a bad way of doing things, why did the US actively go out of it's way to sabotage it rather than just ignore it and let it die?

Rhetoric doesn't stop a car from running over you no matter how the warning is phrased if you choose to not understand said rhetoric. This is not a rhetorical argument.

No it doesn't, and I'm not advocating for a violent person to not be stopped. You are. You say the most important thing is to defend a person's right to "choose" their behavior. In that case, you are a hypocrite because then you turn around and say I am OK with subverting the will of a person as long as it affects me negatively. If it affects someone else, well, do you really care? From your answers, you seem not to care in the slightest.

What would you rather me be doing to fight it? Be on TV everyday as single handedly bringing in the bad guys who are making their "choices" to traffick children? Are you ok with their "choices" to hurt children? Why aren't you on TV everyday bringing the bad guys into jail?

Not it wouldn't and our society is largely a result of your way of thinking. We have yet to see how a society that advocates determinism would turn out.

But the has nothing to do with the idea that one has free will, only that I exhibit behavior that allows you to pursue your own desires, I.E I'm not actively harming you or putting you into prison. Redefine what free will means all you want, it doesn't make your arguments any more true.

External events are the only meaningful thing you can experience. Your whole internal world is built entirely around what you experience externally. It's why you don't wall around talking about dead people waking amongst us without having psychologists commit you to intuitions.

Ahh to have been born into a society that is free of misinformation and the willing propagation of it indeed would be something else.

I'm sorry you have cancer. =/ I wish we would have figured this one out by now but it seems we are more interested in how to sell batteries instantly over the internet more than we care about solving the medical problems of others. We are still a very self centered form of life for the moment. I wish you the best of luck and if I can donate at all to your fight against cancer, I hope my small contribution would make a difference none the less.

You can't claim it that "only reacting" doesn't help explain the process because at the end of they day, you, nor I, can exactly explain how consciousness works. The only evidence we have to likely explain it is that it likely is a cause and effect system like EVERYTHING we can observe externally so far.

And again, just because you claim my world view would be tyrannical DOES NOT make it true. My definition of free will is the common understanding of free will that you are trying to redefine to fit your world view.

Forcing consequences on a person is absolutely imposing your values and beliefs onto said person. All it a consequence a you want, at the end of they day you are removing their ability to choose murder.

As for your One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest comment, next I expect you to tell me Whote Walkers are headed my way because narrative episodes are so indicative of what happens in the real world. /s

But you don't actually believe that! You would put someone in prison if they attacked you physically for no reason. You would willingly force that person into confinement until they no longer tried to inflict violence on you. You can't have ti both ways.

Well, I am debating against someone who claims free will is what will stop child trafficking. If I can convince you to move your position to mine, I can't influence others to also move to my position, and if all people end up viewing it similarly to me, I believe we will solve child trafficking.

How can you claim things that happen inside the human brain have causal influences on things outside the brain and yet at the same time ignore the causal influences the outside world has on the internal brain processes? Information flow is a two way street if it can happen in one direction as far as I am aware. What you seem to not grasp is the idea that external events can influence your behavior.

Then why is my outcome not worse for believing I don't have free will?

I didn't declare it by fiat. You claimed no system should dictate how you behave, and yet you dictate how a person should behave. Your own argument defeats itself.

"New mental paradigm" means you don't think like you used to. I.E., if you were ever religious, that was one mental paradigm. If you ever lose your religious beliefs, now you have a new mental paradigm to understand the world and operate in it.

As for fixing the prison problem, it absolutely does. It means what we have decided as acceptable public behavior is to be cultivated, and if we can remove the part of your brain that wants to violently subject others your will, we excise it and then you suddenly become a productive member of civilized society again. It's not even your whole being, just a small part of your collection of particles that we annihilate.

Those causal processes still have effects outside those brains does not remove the idea that your brain only exists because of external causal events, and your brain is only reacting to those external causal events. At no point is there a spontaneous reaction that is unpredictable according to the known laws of physics, therefore, you don't have free will.

No, I meant that the above response calling the other user wrong is wrong itself. The USSR, had it not had to fight a cold war against the US, could very well have been a much better system not just for space flight, but for a way to structure and run society in general.

But yet, if I say this, I will be immediately downvoted because if I suggest that anything other than the established order in the US is the best system, the powers that be as well as the indoctrinated individuals that frequent this place would rather just shut that conversation up than to engage it meaningfully.

Actually, yes, we should all stop what we are doing and fight child trafficking immediately. To argue anything else is a morally indefensible position.

Now, you might say you fight child trafficking currently because you vote for people who make the laws that say it's illegal and "dust your hands", but yet it's not enough because child trafficking still happens. At the end of the day, you are ok with child trafficking happening because, "Well, at least I choose not to traffick children, so that's enough."

You can disagree. You can assert that believing people can't make choices in a true sense of free will causes other to suffer. You can also be dismissed for said assertion without providing any evidence.

For instance, if your assertion is true, why do I, as someone who does not believe I make my own choices, do no harm to others? Shouldn't I be on a killing spree according to your logic? Shouldn't I be repressing and hurting people left and right? All I have to do is prove it's possible to not believe you make your own choices and not do harm. That single data point is enough to prove your claims wrong.

Your reasoning defeats itself. No system should tell people they need "rehabilitation", and yet you still support prisons that try to "rehabilitate" prisoners.

People do not have choices. They are particles reacting to their environment, and what you describe as a "choice" is actually a carefully choreographed cascade of chain reactions. You can attribute a sense of "making choices" to that all you want, it doesn't change the fact that if I interject into that process and stop any one piece of that chain reaction, your behavior is altered.

You only have the illusion of free will, because you don't understand exactly how the system works. You brain has hallucinated not just the outside world, but your internal world as well. It is inescapable, and rather than fight it, you should embrace it like some us do and learn to operate in this new mental paradigm, not out right reject it because you fail to be able to operate in that space.

The fact that I exist is the only evidence you need to show that "not believing in free will" doesn't lead to your prediction of "worse outcome".

Free will does not exist, so telling people they have a form of free will called "making choices" is a misdirection. You aren't actively making choices even if you feel like you are. You are only reacting to the stimulus you receive from the environment. Change the stimulus, and the behavior changes.

Your definition of free will is useless because it doesn't accurately reflect the reality. I make what "feels" like a choice, but it isn't really a choice.

This kind of reasoning actually does lead to better consequences, not worse.

Because believing in free will as commonly referred to means it's ok to choose not to do something about bad behavior happening in the world. It's not ok to stand by and let child trafficking happen.

OK, continue to downvote rather than articulate any kind of intelligent response.

Downvoting again? Rather than articulate a response?

This was a very eye opening response that even made me think about things in a new light. Thank you for sharing your story.

Claiming a different definition of free will does not make you right about free will existing.

At the fundamental levels of reality, free will does not exist. It isn't even meaningful to talk about. Particles react to their environment. That's it.

You are just a giant collection of particles reacting to it's environment. You will never be able to be anything other than a giant collection of particles reacting to it's environment.

Moving this collection of particles from one area that is unpleasant, say a really cold environment, to one that is warm is not an exercise in free will. It is largely a predictable process based on a sequence of events occurring within the collection of particles.

Defining free will as "making choices", such as building a fire to warm your house because you are cold is not proving free will exists. It intentionally lies about the fundamental nature of reality that you don't have to. Yes we make choices as far as we can tell from our experience of reality. But that doesn't disconnect you from the underlying reality that it is not up to you what your particles do.

Ignore human child trafficking and starvation.

I fully believe my decisions and actions are largely determined long before I am fully aware of what is taking place.

This doesn't make me despair or not care to do anything, but makes me extremely resilient and adaptable to changing situations. I can acknowledge that no matter what I want to do, I cannot stop my leg from twitching when someone hits the nerve underneath my kneecap.

I also accept that if I make bad decisions because of an addiction or deficient reasoning process, I willingly would accept a mechanism to correct said process or improve my deficiency.

It's not that free will is necessary to understand reality. It's that free will is necessary for YOUR reality. Some of us get along just peachy without it.

I have watched PMs actively contribute nothing to a project by entering false metrics. It really is either you can build something, or you can't and contribute nothing to the project.

Instead of downvoting, can anyone explain why they downvoted?