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are you a determinist or is EVERYTHING RANDOM

^you're synonimising determinism with given truth, and religion with delusion, i think that's where your logic fails.
I don't think I'm doing that, I'm making no knowledge claims. The analogy was between free will and religion; both are things that my reasoning have led me to believe to be false. However, given that I am (apparently) willing to ignore that consideration, and act as if free will existed, why should I not also believe in the Abrahamic God? I mean, if I'm going to just choose my beliefs willy-nilly, disregarding my reasoning, isn't it epistemic open season?
 
one could spin that and say that by only listening to reason you have been ignoring other things, and that this choice to forget about reason is actually opening up to more truth. there may not be a willy nilly after all. :)
 
See, I did start thinking like that, but it seems like it's a pretty dangerous avenue to go down. Why not deny evolution? Reason tells me I shouldn't, but if it's ok to disregard that, then I can "listen to my heart". And the same goes for global warming, women's rights, drug prohibition... what I'm getting at here is that a lot of really terrible things are done by those who disregard reason, and I certainly wouldn't want to be like that. On the other hand, the prospect of truly overcoming the cognitive dissonance the other way, and fully accepting that there really is no such thing as morality, almost seems to lead me the same way- if there's no morality, why should we act reasonably? Not because it's the right thing to do, obviously. Why shouldn't we execute drug users and keep slaves?

What a quagmire I've gotten myself into...
 
orly?
midnight_q_quagmire.jpg

get yourself checked, it might be the reasonable thing to do
 
Free Will is a much deeper subject to discuss than one would originally think.

Just as an example, we feel we have free will to do whatever we want, even though we know there could be consequences. Now, the consequences aren't the limiting factor of our free will, but it's not as absolute as we would like to believe it to be.

What does limit it, is our environment, circumstance, and the people around us.

Think for a moment that you are homeless, cashless, and without any prospects. You may want to help out other people in your life, but you simply don't have the free will to do that in a monetary sense.

Just some food for though, most of us should consider ourselves very fortunate.
 
lol, sounds like the start of a mandatory writing assignment :p
 
"freedom isn't free, it costs a hefty fuckin fee"
from team america
 
Superdeterminism on bluelight, this forum just keeps getting better and better. anyways greenberry, or anybody.. correct me if im wrong here, if the universe is predetermined, doesn't this imply one universe wave function starting at the beginning of the univserse
 
8oThere is no free will, its a soft wired illusion.
Look up the doc from NOVA called Secrets of the Mind
Scientists can accurately predict what you do 7 seconds before you do it.

Sorry if this was mentioned in the thread already.
 
does it take seven seconds to hand someone a book?
 
Superdeterminism on bluelight, this forum just keeps getting better and better. anyways greenberry, or anybody.. correct me if im wrong here, if the universe is predetermined, doesn't this imply one universe wave function starting at the beginning of the univserse
let's say we exist in a spacetime structure (a brane) which exists in the bulk. our bodies/brains are patterns of particles, and those particles are part of that spacetime structure

when looking at different branes (which can have different fundamental particles and natural laws), we have to take into account dimensions. we perceive three, but there are many more

so... let's say you're a 16 dimensional alien. you exist in another brane, and you are able to probe/measure/analyze our brane/spacetime structure (us and our solar system and galaxies). let's say this 16 dimensional alien perceives space and time differently... you could say that this alien could see our spacetime structure all at once, with each frame of time being seen at once; time may not be linear for this alien, at least, the dimension of time we are flowing in may be perceivable in its entirety "from the outside"

time is a dimension like space, and there's no reason (that i can see) why one shouldn't be able to see our universe "all at once", the entire "equation"... such an entity would be like a god...

i may edit this post for clarity later, since i'm really high and these ideas are hard to convey...%)
 
^^^
This reminds me of something similar. It turns out that two universes of different dimensionality can be exactly equivalent. That is, one can be transformed into the other and vice versa. This is known as the ADS/CFT correspondence, and is similar to the holographic principle, which conjectures that all the information in a region of space can be encoded on it's boundary.

In short, all the physics of a string theoryesque universe can be represented as a standardesque quantum theory on an n-1 brane, or a universe of one less dimension. This is considered by many to be the crowning achievement of string theory and, it is conjectured that this property holds in our universe as well.

If true, this means that our universe can be viewed in another way, as a universe of only two spacial dimensions in which the objects we know of are completely unrecognizable. For example, black holes are transformed into thermal radiation, and are spread out rather than point-like. I've always wondered whether this 2d version of our universe, if it exists, could support life. Perhaps there could even be some kind of communication between us and the 2d aliens.

I also wonder whether the universe could be viewed in more than two ways. My favorite pet theory is that the simplest way to view our universe is as purely 2d. In other words, with one spacial and one time dimension. Of course there is no evidence of this, that I know of.

Anyway, I'm really sober right no, gdi, so the above may make no sense whatsoever. I may edit it for clarity next time I do drugs.
 
if i don't have free will now, one day i will. i'm determined to achieve that goal. :p


nb we really should reopen that philosophy joke thread
 
I believe greenberryhaze has provided some of the right basic explanations about the nature of quantum mechanics, etc. With that in mind, my basic view is that the everything is random is the ultimate answer as far as we humans are concerned. Chaos (mathematically speaking) is deterministic. Nondeterminism doesn't mean unpredictable (in fact the probabilities of many quantum events can be predicted quite rigourously). However when the two intersect (which is not always), then you have a real break down of what is accomplishable by humans at least AFAWK.

The thing is that ultimately we could be a container of something that is deterministic which we're never exposed to. For example, we could all be simulations like in the Matrix (I firmly believe one day our species or its successors will create a Matrix-like environment). In that situation, the computer could be using real random numbers from some source but the simulation would be deterministic.
 
I'm a firm believer in free will, but there are times I wonder...

Like the OP, I've had moments of deja vu that were powerful and unsettling. I'm well aware of the neurological theories that explain it, but there are times when it feels like I'm re-experiencing something I "foresaw" years ago, often long before I knew anyone involved.
 
Sometimes I find a deep sadness welling up in me when I think about the lack of individualism I have in regards to free will. Putting aside 'why' this universe was created (which is a very hard thing for me to do :)) and mulling over 'what' this universe is, I usually come to the same sense of material oneness. It's cliche, the realisation that every substance in this cosmos came from the same place and is a different reflection of the same thing. There is not a 'being' that I can ever meet that will be able to store all the information about the chemical reactions that take place when these substances interact with each other, but if one DID have the information, then it seems to me that every chemical reaction could be predicted.

So from the moment something with form was manifested, every consequential manifestation could be known, including the neurological manifestations that control the thoughts and feelings and decisions I like to think are my own.

I used to think of the soul as the tiniest part of my existence that laid outside this causal web of determinism, but now I think of it as the part of myself that can actually be aware that this causality is all there is. It's the part of myself that can feel that everything is determined by everything else, that nothing is separate.

The strange part for me is understanding that reality is one big, hugely complex deterministic sphere, while also realising that acting as though I don't have free will is not an option.
 
I'm a firm believer in free will, but there are times I wonder...

Like the OP, I've had moments of deja vu that were powerful and unsettling. I'm well aware of the neurological theories that explain it, but there are times when it feels like I'm re-experiencing something I "foresaw" years ago, often long before I knew anyone involved.
the mind makes our entire universe for us. it can make it seem magical (even make us feel as if we have something called "free will"), and it can record sensory data to memory while at the same time recalling that data (leading to "deja vu")
 
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