Free Willy is a great movie tho

If you're interested in this topic and you are open to seeing the other side I recommend watching this video:

around minute 54 they start talking about Free Will and what Garland says is something I agree with and wanted to share itt

I like the die idea. But this isn’t free will, is it? Whether or not you come up with the die idea in the first place is a matter of chance

The options you choose for the die rolls are also a matter of chance

And finally, the die itself is chance

You chose nothing

Forget about strict determinism. Free Will doesn’t even make sense. Free Will, defined as simply as I can imagine, is when you make a free decision

But every decision you make is dependent on a bunch of priors, like your personality, which is dependent on a bunch of other priors, like genetics and upbringing

How can you make a free choice when the very act of decision making is always a simple weighing of scales? Are you making a decision or are you just a very complex scale that always chooses the heaviest choice? And if you always choose the heaviest choice, that’s not you really choosing anything, is it? Your heaviest choice is a matter of how your scale is programmed to weigh things

life sucks either way

Everything is cause and effect. But this is actually a very freeing concept.

AINT NOTHIN TO IT

DETERMINISM MADE ME DO IT

explain intrusive thoughts then

I believe our life is that of a book that is already written, and each day is the same as reading a new page.

There is no free will at all. Our existence is 100% determined. Even if there’s multiple universes, each one of your yous are bound to the one they’re in. If it were possible to jump from one universe to another, that was also determined.

But if I’m wrong and free will does indeed exist, there is no way to prove it, just like the existence of God.

OP is a hard determinist (?) so I was bringing up a thought experiment that shows how quantum physics makes it untenable, even if the brain isn't performing quantum computations itself.

Anyways, you seem to be bringing up the "random-or-predetermined" argument as well. I agree that it's true for basic expressions of preference- red vs blue etc. It gets trickier when deliberation is involved.

To me, the response that makes the most sense is something like:
1. Let's say I choose to help a person instead of ignoring them.

2. Let's say a team of neuroscientists scan my brain, and find that there was absolutely nothing neurobiological that caused me to help the person.

3. You might say- "Wow coltrup, I guess that means it was random so you didn't do it of your own free will".

4. That answer seems to be confused- it was still ME, the metacognitive self, that chose to help the person, even if there was no neurobiological reason why I did.

So in short, I think it could be a neuroscientifically falsifiable question, which a lot of authors in the literature are coming around to.

Of course, the response is then "well something HAD to have caused your decision", but that logic is presuming the materialist reductionism that is being called into question. So it's a circular argument.

The answer could be something beyond our comprehension, yet its existence could still be falsifiable. Which is why the comment above me is probably wrong.

If Free Will is an illusion then why am I freely reporting this thread?

and Free Willy is a movie

Bro you a ktt user, you was going to regardless, you didn’t choice to

Don't know if that example was highly simplified or you want to use it just as it is but it's extremely easy to argue the fact that the "choice" helping that person was actually an effect of how you were raised and other conditions present and past

When we hear about a guy who raped a girl and killed her you say "how could anyone do that. If I were him I wouldn't do that"

Yeah... You think you wouldn't do that. But if you WERE HIM. Born in his body. Raised with all the trauma and conditions he was raised with. 10/10 times you would end up raping and killing that girl.

Maybe you tried to oversimplify with this example and that's why there are loop holes in it but now reading your previous post and this one I feel like you're doing exactly the thing I've mentioned before

You try to disprove this theory by acting like it doesn't exist

If I understood you correctly you say that an experiment where you "stop thinking about what you're thinking, roll a dice, and then think about the number that was rolled" or think about the number from the machine is proving we have free will (? sorry if I got this wrong)

Where you skip the part where something MADE you do that experiment. Something PUSHED you to say "I'm gonna stop thinking now!".

I agree with @Noah_Parker what you call free will (and it came out in this post I'm commenting on rn) is a big oversimplification and saying "I helped this person bc I chose to" when in reality in this exact situation you'd do that 10/10 times bc that's how you were molded to behave

Have you watched the video I've linked?

Bc I feel like you're trying to say that Free Will exists simply bc we can't comprehend other way

Alex Garland has a good response to that (it's just a 4 minute segment don't have to watch the whole thing)

Here's a fragment from his show Devs about this exact topic where two man talk about one betraing the other (Forest and Sergei)

"
The universe is deterministic.

The marble rolls because it was
pushed; the man eats because he is
hungry; an effect is the result of
a cause. The life we lead, with
all its apparent chaos, is actually
a life on a tram line. Prescribed.
Undeviating. Deterministic.

I know it doesn’t feel that way,
Sergei. We fall into an illusion
of Free Will, because the tram
lines are invisible, and we feel so
certain about our subjective state.
Our feelings, opinions, judgements,
decisions.

You joined my company. Gained our
trust. Gained my trust. Then
stole my code, on your James Bond
wristwatch.

That would appear to be the result
of some decisions, wouldn’t it?
About where you placed your
allegiance. About who you would
betray.
But if we live in a deterministic
universe, then those decisions can
only have been the result of
something prior. Where you were
born; how you were brought up; the
physical construction of your
particular brain.

It’s the nature/nurture matrix.
Exactly the same as the nematode
worm in your simulation. More
complex, more nuanced, but still,
at the end of the day: cause and
effect.

I hope you understand what I’m
saying, Sergei. This is
forgiveness. This is absolution.
You made no decision to betray me.
You literally could only have done
what you did."

But again... I could've completely misunderstood what you were trying to say

I'm saying this:
1. Modern physics tells us that the universe is probably not deterministic.

2. The typical response is "well if it's not deterministic it must be random, which still denies free will".

3. My point in the above post was that it is possible for something to be neither pre-determined nor random. That is not to say that ALL thoughts fall into this category, just that some could.

EDIT:

I'm not providing conclusive evidence FOR free will, I'm simply showing that there is no real evidence AGAINST free will.

As long as that is the case, I will continue to follow my strong intuition that it exists. As will most people.

Yes & no.

Everything is pre-determined, HOWEVER, when you manifest your desires with God in prayer - you have the chance of changing your fate.

Okay

That's a very interesting topic and as long as both sides want to have a... let's say "scientific" look into this instead of being like "Free will exists bc I can punch you rn!" I'm more then open to hearing the other side

If I may ask where does your knowledge on this topic come from? I'd 4 sure be interesting in exploring some of the sources you bring bc as I said I'm open to seeing the other side

ngl my sources are probably laughable ones bc it's "Free Will" by Sam Harris that brought this topic to my attention and then the show Devs and various discussions either with Alex Garland or other people who are close with this but aren't really scientist so I acknowledge the fact my view is severely lacking

Mark Balaugher has a good book rebutting most of the arguments (both scientific and philosophical) against free will. He writes a little too casually for me, but I think some people enjoy that style

You can also look into "compatibilism"- it argues that, even if determinism is true, it can (sort of) co-exist with free will.

There's lots of other neat angles on the topic too

I remember reading a book by Lorentz where he said something like "I believe in free will. Why? Because either I freely willed that belief, or it was pre-determined so I have no choice but to believe it"

@htrap

Okay... I think I get what you meant now

medium.com/the-infinite-universe/quantum-physics-may-imply-the-existence-of-free-will-c05ccac55191

Take a look at this when you find some time and tell me if it reflects what you were trying to say

Bc If it does than we reach a conclusion that we're arguing on this topic while having completely different definitions of Free Will

I've never went that deep into this discussion so lesson learned here that you simply have to start by defining "free will"

If I understand correctly and If what you say is described in the link I posted it means that your definition of free will is having the "power" to have different futures

It disproves what I was saying earlier that if one is born at time A he will always end up in time B with the same past present and future.

And now I can completely agree with that. From what I see it's proven that we have "random quantum fluctuations" in our mind that can cause different effects hence if I have to make a decision there is a possibility that in one "world" I chose A and in the other I chose B

And I think the highlighted statement sums it up well:
"you have to see free will as having the power to have different outcomes for your life despite your past. Whether you can affect those outcomes by changing your actions or desires is a meaningless statement."

So... again.. If It's what you meant... I 100% agree. But you were arguing the first part of that quote. While I was focusing on the second part (that about whether having or rather not having affect on the outcomes is considered free will which under this definition is meaningless)

i went through this same existential crisis this time last year
free will is real and pre determinism doesn’t exist
it doesn’t even matter anyway

it's like 5 am and I read the title as "free wifi is an illusion"

very thought provoking article.

so what its suggesting is that this "power" representing free will is the "power to do otherwise".

and one interpretation of modern physics implies multiple possible futures for a given present. we make a different choice in each possible future, suggesting that we DO have the "power to do otherwise".