Silk Road forums
Discussion => Philosophy, Economics and Justice => Topic started by: Rastaman Vibration on June 21, 2013, 06:13 am
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Is there such a thing? Or are we predestined/biologically programmed to make the choices we make? Somewhere in between?
Tell me what you think, my philosophical brothers and sisters
Peace
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It think we have a mixture of both Free Will and lack there of. Structure and Chaos waning back and forth.
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Is there such a thing? Or are we predestined/biologically programmed to make the choices we make? Somewhere in between?
There have been lots of studies as to what traits, actions, and reactions are biological/genetic and which are learned. They tend to find that most of our decision making as well as many of our actions are not biological/genetic but are actually learned.
The most memorable one I read about was a collection of identical twins that were put up for adoption and separated at birth. They had 15 or 20 sets that they identified and tested them for reaction to stimuli as well as decision making. They found that most was learned and not genetic. The reason it sticks out in my mind was because of the tea cup test. In all sets they were handed a hot cup of tea and asked to drink it. It was found in all cases that the way they held the tea cup was the same between the twins. They concluded that some physical movements and how the body positions it self for those movements was genetic.
Now, The question I always enjoy is Free Will vs Manifest destiny. It opens up so many questions and can even be applied to the way we perceive time.
Personally, I believe that both free will and manifest destiny are not mutually exclusive and can both exist with out a contradiction. Though that extends from my spatial view of time.
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It think we have a mixture of both Free Will and lack there of. Structure and Chaos waning back and forth.
I'm close to this feeling myself. I feel as if the future is already written, a sort of destiny, but we still have free will to determine how we get to that future! We can choose the easy natural way, the hard way, or something in the middle.
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Suicide is the only free choice we have. Everything is the animal being inside, driving us to oblivion over the wasted measure of life we call time. None of us are free, as we leave our choice up to nature and luck, biding our time as "conscious" beings.
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Everything you think exists is all in your head, nothing is real, one day youll 'wake up' and be born again...
..what we know as life is so fucked
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Everything you think exists is all in your head, nothing is real, one day youll 'wake up' and be born again...
..what we know as life is so fucked
Like a recycled life?
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Whatever Free Will is, it is not (yet) available to empirical scrutiny, that's for sure. Either that, or we've been asking the wrong questions. It's conceivable to me that, although determinism reigns in every example of freedom we try to debunk, free will operates on a level we can't grasp with the mental faculties we're given. This as a lone argument does not hold because it's asking for proof that something doesn't exist, but I still think it's an important consideration. Another thing to consider is that free will/determinism is a dichotomy generated by our language, and does not necessarily have ontological value. It's the same thing I like to think about 'nothing' - a word we use and a very deeply embedded concept for us, but not necessarily a reality 'out there'.
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Thanks for this interesting post! My theory is that there is a combination of fate and free will in life. You are able to shape your future 10 years from now with your free will. But the closer the time is to your position now, the less free will you have. What is going to happen to you the next second is almost unavoidable (fate).
Like a cancer, when you treat it early, you can change your life. You find your cancer late, you have very little chance of changing your life.
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We have free will but varying levels of awareness of this fact giving rise to the illusion of non-free will.
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Free will my ass!
I had plans to hit the road today, but my car's transmission had other plans.
lol
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Ok, so the more existential thinking I do, the more I'm convinced that very little of what happens to us is within our control.
It seems like the divine force or whatever you want to call it has carved out a little path just for you. Its the path that leads you to realizing your full potential, if you can actually follow it. But the divine entity wants to test you to see if you are worthy to follow that path.
And passing the test is not easy. Passing the test involves actually excersizing your free will. However, acting freely completely conflicts with your biological programming a lot of the time. So we end up giving in to our animal instincts most of the time.
I can only speak from personal experience here, but I find that whenever I'm able to let go and just accept my "destiny", I end up making the right choice. And I get signs of reinforcement everywhere I look, that, yes, I did indeed make the right choice. But whenever I try to fight it, or when I give in to greed or fear, I make the wrong choice. The reinforcement signs are different when I make the wrong choice. Somehow things just become more difficult and complicated.
But its that letting go and accepting it that is just so hard. And it seems totally counterintuitive too. The "free" choice is the one that accepts, the animalistic choice is to try to control.
I saw this on a guy's t-shirt once, and its really fitting here:
"Relax, God is in control"
Thanks for reading this, my philosophical brothers and sisters.
Jah bless
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In the book ‘Free Will’, by Sam Harris, the author talks about how neuro-scientists using brain scanners can predict what a persons action will be, seconds before they have even made the decision to take that action.
This is a real head fuck, and it’s hard to see where free will fits in to this.
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Truth is Lie.
Contradictions inherent.
Language is broken- Absolute definition of what I want to express is only exactly = to itself thus by putting what I want to express into a different contex ie. your mind the definition is changed because Contrast forms defintion: what something is is (my favorite string 'is is' ) defined by everything that its not. anarchy and chaose do not abide by a duality which seems that under a mode of thinking all things are of the 'positive/negative' '1/0' duality. anarchy says 'no rules' which of course is a rule and thus it cannot be said to be anything and anything it is said to be , by anarchy, cannot be proven not to be anarchy. this goes into my political veiw that anarchy is inherent. even law is anarchy. and even anarchy is law. it might be to the naturalist philospher at this point reflexive and if not then (not 'than') interesting , perhaps even fascinating, to consider light , the rainbow and black and white. duality is the black and white of it. the black and white of it is expressed through the many spectrem colors. of of course color is only a certain wave leangth of light. to the mathmatic philosopher though you've likely already or will at some point encountered math disproving itself. take the graph for example. just contemplate what exists between the lines and the undefinability of nothing - and yet ,as the lingual philosopher at this point will 'know' (lol) to use the word nothing it must have definition. IE "is there any ketchup on the table?" (<- assume he's blind) "there is none " and the blind man then if he has faith in the words uses the meaning of 'none' , an empty undefinable word, to determine his next step. let us not get too far into the phrasing of that last sentance as I think (and theres a point to be made by the principal employed in this sentance) you will lose the greater ,broader and more foundational principal by getting caught in the particulars of phrasing such as you might (lol, might? might, huh...?:) ) with 'he decides/he uses' as opposed to 'the universe uses' or 'as nature provides' or 'as fate may have it' ( I think perhaps 'as will be' is the best possible solution (though making statements about what might be is entirely mastabatory ( it IS though you may disagree and that is the nature of making statements (in meaning , not necesarrily though will statements of meaning and statements of expression be identical or equal or similar )))))))) (digressing, digresssing, ever digressing. as I attempt to define one point I follow a bracket up up and up or down down and down as you might have it in an infinite attempt at clarification before what exactly I meant by the initial statement 'is clear' , though its all very foolish because you will input your own definitions and meaning to this expression( and certainly a meaning is an expression of a deeper meaning and that deeper meaning is by no means the ceiling/floor as there is none and it goes on ad infinitum) my mind feels a little overwhelmed in an attempt to backtrack now and perhaps time is illusery and the only time is now and yet id like to say that i could simply not make a note of it and you may then have the impression i expressed exactly as I meant to : of course you may conclude the same BECAUSE I say so but perhaps for a completely different reason, or perhaps its a matter of two sides to one coin. what I mean may evolve as I say it making following behavioral cause and effect anarchaic. anarctic? anarctica! :D . hell, no one there to say what to do and plenty of penguin minions with which to ruuule the woooorld!!! MWHhahahaha. hell...frozen over? drama/comedy. (shit, some one shoot me)
lifes a caucus race. Lewis carroll style.
Dasdasdf . odd lewis is unacceptable but Lewis is not , however dasdasdf and Dasdasdf are both unacceptable. laugh out loud and LOL and I laughed at that ( and consider to just the meanind of laughter without the expression /communication of it) (well look at meanind- your mind says 'he meant 'meaning' therefore there must ultimately be rules because I'd admit you were right. however the fact is your not necessarily right because of what language is I may have meant meanind. it might be a word of my own devising and it might translate to 'kitchen kettle' or it might not be possible to translate and might be not possible for a variety of different reasons)
I think that in the defining/questioning duality paradigm ' 'experiencing' 'new' ' points?experiences? hell pick a meaning, your going to anyways. but when new comparisons enter the , to use a turn of phrase, 'picture' you change dynamically (yes , but I meant also:) the thing your defining/comparing to. kinda like a random response generator on a computer. you change its paramaters and you enter into it what it could not have said in a frame of time referenced to as 'before event x which introduced new factor to current equation in question (although it would not BE the same equation since what were saying in the first place is its not the same ie. are you the same entity as seven years ago? and what do you mean by 'I was at a bar about 10 years ago'?( I think that all this is why socrates was more fond of questions then statement. it lets you do all the work and he might have been the most dim motha'fucka' on the planet but the things you saw during a conversation with him may have been profound in your perspective while he sat there contentedly clueless to what was going on in your head :) ) notice here the ':)' I've used it in two different ways, or intended it as such and I've not established any clear way to determine which definition applies at which time. one is a colon and paranthesis, the other is a smiley face. (notice here that , I beleive , I've just referenced the meaning of meaning , glanced it if you will without refering to it directly - like skimming a rock but the rock (our attention/comprehension) does not sink INTO the ocean [ " first man explored the expanse of land untill all had been traversed. then man explored all of the ocean until all had been traversed. then the sky and then the cosmo. however man will and can never explore the entirety of himself" (and why does he need to , does understanding or exploring enrich or change the being-existing?) ] [a philosopher and his blonde girl friend (not that being a philosopher makes him male lol ;) he just happens to be ;) ;) ) are having a row (no not in a boat down a gentle stream) and he says , he says to her, this is what he says, he says " darling, I think we need to split up cause your just so incredibly shallow" , to which she responds to him "Well I don't understand whats so much more great about your precious mystics >:( - I read cosmo all the time!") ( consider the duck /rabbit sillouette. perhaps your experience is different but its never been a duck and rabbit at the same time , though I can switch between which I choose to see through a process illusive for me to explain and though Im not entirely sure it is an instantaneous change of state as in an 1/0 statement and im not sure there is no evolution so very breif I don't denote it (mostly likely because I'm looking for the 1/0 and not looking for the process) ) so are you lost yet? :) (gentle smile) (isn't it enough that I intended it to be a specifically gentle one? must I denote it make it clear? and if I must is it really relavent? or is it really truth at all and if it isn't perhaps it is a lie and if that is so perhaps the lie contains truth contains lie ect ad infinitum) you must be lost to be found. its worth noting too that you will never be outside yourself. theres an interesting correlation between the universe expanding faster then light and human perception always catching up to human development. that one was for all you cosmo-style philosophers. I am the universe. and. I am the universe? . and . I AM THE UNIVERSE!!! .
the more I explain the less clear things become.
maybe your answer lies some where in the text above. now let me proceed to give you my answer without extremely watering it down with explaination because at the end of the day you are you and what ever justification needed, if any, has already been met or it would not be so.
everything is destiny to the perfect mind of creation/creator complex entity. free will does not have to preclude destiny. I see , not too clearly but in some amount of depth, that our free will is a part of destiny and though it is us (if there is indeed an us and not just an I , if anything exists outside of self- though I think that is unkowable) that makes the decision and we do wear the fancy sticker on our shirsts 'responsible for our decisions' its all part of the bigger equation . I see us as part of the equation and I know some of you transendentalists will argue that we are the equation but it doesn't really matter, thats just what I see. even if you take that position you can give meaning to my expression and if you define it and make it an object and call it 'wrong' (or undesirable and repulsive is what I think your doing lol) its still an object and I still got to 'share' to whatever depth that its true that I inspired or communicated an idea. hell, to just have had any presence through out the process is pretty neat. so I don't care that I'm wrong. I still found positivity to derive from the experience. :))))) .
ultimately though in summation of all forms of philosophy I refer to 'Bickford Shmecklers Big Ideas' right after he got his first piece of pussy and it is significant it was with a girl who he had fell in love with . after the age old tradition of calling your father/mother depending on if your a boy/girl and if its an option- this tradition no one needs to tell you about, you just do it like instinct- he declared his realization that (and this really is a quote dear to me) "dad, I just had sex! (laughs in a very particular way- watch that scene and preferably the whole film to 'get it' , 'it' being in what way it is particular; this punctuation has everything to do with how you define the quote) and i realised something too- Philosophy is Bullshit! it's all just bullshit , dad! " this made his dad smile the proud father smile. bickford had went through a trauma that launched him 'down the rabbit hole' of philosophy and existential dread and need to understand everything - something i've pointed out here that just cant be done. the universe expands faster then light can reach it. and even if you saw the whole objective world the subjective is applied by self and objectifying the subjective just brings into focus the inherent subjective to that now objectified subject. come to think of it I think the small tentative laughter was one of realization and healing and laughing at his own foolishness because he learned to let the trauma go and found his wholesome warm glow purpose- gods plan for him may well be exactly what christians would call it and regaurdless of your position on theism its just fucking details , let that shit GO and just aknowlege what they are talking about because its a very real thing and its so wonderful and your missing out on the what because of the why when the very purpose of the why is to enjoy the what, isn't it? (oh socrates, how I do adore thee :') (see also the youtube vids on 'the sahd guru')) idk man but it touched my heart and was so memerable.
in the end , take this as literal or methaphorical, gods plan is our purpose, fulfilling that plan is feeling purposeful. human compassion (see the film pie and how the protaganist gradually withdrawls) and love is what makes us feel good and in a way that difficult to explain its not only that we feel good, pot makes us feel good, but in a way that seems fulfilling, where as pot is a venom that we know to cause harm to our systems (loss of short term memories, lung damage, other shit - you can think of something if you stop trying to defend it and pose the hypothetical to yourself 'how can I attack it?' and there will be things you start to see) it is an acid we fill the hole with and as it disolves (which true fulfilment does not disolve because it is the intended PH balence) it makes the hole deeper so we need fill it with more acid and then it gets deeper , more and more and more (think of it as multidimensional though and in the dimension of true purpose once you put yourself in that dimension , once its realized and you know how to get there and are there, that hole in that dimension never got deeper and in that dimension you can only put in the 'golden elixer' -gods purpose for you- and if you find your putting something else in then your not in that dimension. that dimension is always there, indestructalbe, finding it is the same process christians go through in 'finding jesus'. maybe at this point ive inspired faith and hope and spiritual fulfillment. I hope so. and that is what I should say. a simple positive. its never left at just that often enough any more. my mind flickered and debated in giving a conditional 'if not' and by mentioning it I just put negativity to it. I'd like to make more simple short positives and start not even having the negative conditionals occur to me. :) hope faith and love are some good things god gave us and the greatest is love . theres a reason in the movie 'last man on earth' the woman choses the cowboy and not the intelecutal. that 'dumb' cowboy is more in touch with god, not so panicked and controlling and psychotic and sexually dysfunctional and out of touch with love and humanity as the intelecutal. watching this films conclusion made me so highly uncomfortable and angry like a child crying 'its not fair' to something that must be. you cannot get wet without a liquid, and though your mind can conceive of it it doesn't fit into actuality. I know theres so much in me and any one who feels the need to read this that is rotton and distant from god. goodworks should be enough for me, instead I pontificate which to god is like watching a todler taking a shit (when they might be actually trying or not) . on their training toilet.
pretty much in your questioning the meaning of meaning theres a pathway to what is in tuned with your purpose built into you . feel it. accept instead of protest. electric; follow the path of least resistance of the spirit- through hard labors and goodworks will , his will, will lead to the settling of your worldly troublesome feelings , some which you admit you have some which you are still lying about even to yourself. you have read my words and put meaning to them. this is proof of rules. what you do with this , if you go towards or away from god is up to you. but I think (therefore I am (this quote doesnt mean you are only thought -it is trying to make a practical point of 'as you think so you become' because it is one part of a method that may start getting you back in contact with the gold circuit instead of the green silicon; when you don't know where to start and your spirit is sick and weak , at least you still have thought to work with. keep going with faith and goodworks and you shall arrive, and be ever arriving) but I think that things are as they must be, that what must be is what should be and of course should nods back to the subjective and maybe that quick progression there illistrated better what I mean by free will is just a part of greater cause , like a single photon is just a part of the sun beam. :) . that you are a spark and the spark is simply one iteration and peice of the jolt- its exactly the same , but smaller and definitively contained within the jolt ( a little nod to you electro-philosophers and to those who aknowledge that all is energy and light). and though I could continue ad infinitum and dispite it not being too proper a conclusionary sentance I would very much like to leave those of you who did not receive my spiritual message with this intelectual ponderence. contemplate the analogy between you and a photon. you are a photon.
-From teddy with love
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I'd really like you to see the films I mentioned. I'd like you to see also all of carlins stand up. the documentary 'the unexamined life' (I think thats the title, its close). igby goes down. waking life. richard linclators 'slacker'. What the Bleep Do We Know: Down the Rabbit Hole. also every possible itteration of 'alice in wonderland'. read: zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance . also I think magic has a bit to do with spirituality like how wizards in potters world after a certain level dont need speak incantation, after a certain level we dont need speak prayers. and youth is full of magic , youth when were most in his bosom. well, in that effect I really suggest 'master of the five magics' its gold, trust me.
lol , also interesting is 'ancient astronaut theory' the history chanel documentary ( or was it discovery channel, I dont know)
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Yeah man, I've seen What the Bleep and Waking Life and some of those other movies and read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Good shit!
Love the Ancient Astronauts too, though the guy with the kooky hair is such a nut, it doesn't help make the alien theories sound legitimate. ;D
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dear rasta man- you like adventures? your cordially invited to my living space to smoke down on some skunk and watch waking life and go for a long walk afterwards with a recorder and discuss it . what say you?
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Thanks @tedrux.
When Babylon falls and I no longer have to hide myself from all of you, I'd love to hang with you guys and smoke down and talk philosophy :)
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Thanks @tedrux.
When Babylon falls and I no longer have to hide myself from all of you, I'd love to hang with you guys and smoke down and talk philosophy :)
shit we just did but count me in
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Just saw this thread, and was "prompted" to reply by the casaba melon sitting atop my shoulders.
I am free to resist the urge to respond, but it is an active choice to (think)/send the messages to my fingers to gently caress my keyboard in a spasm of typing joy.
I am not free to resist the biological processes and demands of the flesh. At some point, I will excrete. If I hold my breathe by choice, I will pass out eventually, at which point my autonomic nervous system will send the electrical signals to the appropriate receptors, and respiration begins anew.
The physical cage of flesh my consciousness inhabits requires maintenance, or it will cease to function as a well tuned biological machine, and I will die. Guess what, I am still going to die whether my body is a temple or a brothel. Now lets define dying...put on your thinking caps, this is a bumpy ride.
There are many ways to die, but if the first law of thermodynamics is a Universal Constant, and energy can neither be created nor destroyed, but only transmuted, then we are all eternal, and this is the Multiverse masturbating into a giant black hole, only to be reborn in an eternal cycle of expansion and contraction.
What does all that above have to do with free will? Sentience. We are gifted with sentience. We are self aware, and it is our hugest blessing, and most dire of curses. Sentience means that we have this inner awareness in our thoughts, when we look in a mirror, and the image mimics us, we know that is our reflection, and not just another random personage.
Every day we have limited choices to either cause harm, be a do gooding, tree hugging, dirt worshiping, dirty hippie, or do nothing and embrace entropy. However, we did not get to choose the circumstances of our birth, or our gender at birth, or any number of other genetic/biographical/socioeconomic factors that contribute to the life we lead in the here and now.
The life choices of a child soldier in the Sudan are very different than the choices a Caucasian child has to make that comes from a middle/lower class working class American family.
Neither one of these hypothetical children had any choice in the circumstances of their birth. What they do get to choose, each and every day they are sentient, is whether they choose to cause harm deliberately, at the expense of others, or do they develop an inner code of ethics capable of embracing the apparently ambiguous choices that they are faced with on the daily?
There are consequences for the choices we make. Negative and positive consequences as a child are the primal shapers of our inner dialogs with ourselves. Those inner dialogs establish the persona we permit the rest of the world to see, and who we really know ourselves to be, when given those moments of most honest introspection.
How much free will do we have? It is a Mobius strip of sentience vs biological realities and circumstances beyond our control.
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Just thinking outloud...
How does the quantum mechnic observer effect which states that the act of observing changes the outcome of the experiment play into free will?
Our understanding of time is still in its infancy. I've read a few different hypothesis about time. One of them claims that time isn't a fourth dimension, that in fact it doesn't exist and we're in a constant state of prepetual creation...i.e... objects in space/time are prepetually being recreated at this precise moment, rather than the notion that it's the same object, and as time passes, and the object changes with it. How does that play into free will?
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I have thought about this alot having read the Sam Harris book mentioned. I have a couple of thoughts (some mirroring things already said):
1. The dichotomy of determinism vs free will is a false one imposed by a poorly-posed question (basically, it's a semantic issue). To elaborate, first let me put down these two definitions
de·ter·min·ism (d-tûrm-nzm)
n.
The philosophical doctrine that every state of affairs, including every human event, act, and decision is the inevitable consequence of antecedent states of affairs.
free will
Noun
The power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate; the ability to act at one's own discretion.
So, fist note that 'determinism' is actually only concerned with the past leading up to the present and is not the same as predeterminsm/per-destiny (which AFAIK science does not show due to random/chaotic events), but merely states that every event now was preceded by a cause, including all human events and all causes. But we have no 'free will' into the past as the past is fixed, 'free will' rather deals with the present into the future; that we can, in the present moment, consider and weigh up possible actions and choose the action we feel will best serve our 'will'.
But this causes a problem; once a decision has been made and an action taken, upon reflection you can look into the past and see that the decision was 'determined' by other past events, thus we were never truly 'free' to make a decision. Yet 'free will' is not really about past events, but about choices in the present moving forward. 'Determinism' IS inevitable since it has already happened in the past, but predeterminism does not automatically flow from it, and it is predeterminism that would prevent 'free will'. So, decisions made in the past ARE inevitable similarly, but not decisions made in the present or future, which are the only ones that 'free will' is concerned with.
2. I think it is far more appropriate (as some people have also mentioned) to talk about degrees of 'free will'; I am free to get up and walk out of more work right now (granted there would be consequences) but I am not free to fly out. I am free to hold my breath and stop breathing for a short time, but my freedom to do so reduces the longer I do so, and I am not in any way free to simply prevent my heart from beating. So 'free will' is not about total unbounded freedom, but freedom with certain bounds.
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you say I'm worthless with nothing to give , then why not drop the ax?
you say I'll drown in my self pity , I say 'go grab some sacks!'
because the more that I upset and the more that I annoy
I give you reason a plenty for you to employ
when I find myself in times of trouble , mother mary comes to me, speaking words of wisdom, let it be
oh digital strangers, type louder for I cannot HEAR what you are SAYING.
let it be.
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as i sat and read this thread i pissed my shorts...i could have gotten up but chose not to. Free will is doing what ever it is that comes to mind and not having mans opinion to distort it. Happy and wet.
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Hello dear people.
This in deed an interesting subject.
I would like to give the Islamic point of view on this issue (please do not start flaming me I just like to participate in one peaceful and with all due respect to those that do not share my point of view)
The Islamic perspective is as fallows. And the subject of fate/destiny is one of the most difficult concepts in Islam and is in fact the believe in destiny is a big part of the Islamic creed.
Oke I will try to explain.
One of the first things Allah created was a pen. Then He order the pen to write and the pen wrote every thing for that point on till the day of judgement.
We human are blessed with free will and free will is a test and a blessing. But Muslims alsp believe in fate/destiny.
That every thing that happens was already written.
But because we do not know the future or the unseen we do not know what will happen tomorrow. So we have the free will to chose our actions. But the action were all ready written and know by Allah before we made them.
So everything that happens was meant to be. Yet we have free will to chose our actions. Yet those action were already know by Allah before we made them.
I hope I was able to explain it well enough. If there are questions done be shay and ask away.
Greeting wish you all the best,
We as humans have freewill. Yet the destine
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We are all the same. Our minds affect nature just as extinction affects the food chain. Does my dog choose to bite me when i take his ball or is he reacting to how I conditioned him? defeat the condition, .....
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I dont think you can compare a dog with a human.
Dogs lack the ability for complex reasoning. And the cannot ignore or go against the instincts
Human have the gift for complex reasoning and analyses. Human can override the instincts by using reason.
Does this make sense?
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We have Free Will to do almost any noble or horrible thing. We are constrained by society, norms, and law, which will make you an outcast or put you in prison if you do what they say you must not.
One think that all animals have, being we are animals, is instinct. We have evolved to immediately follow it.
Unlike other animals, we have a conscience, if you will, a brain that can check those instinctual compulsions.
That is free will. You can do whatever you want, as long as you are physically capable, have the resources, and will not be stopped by others or by your own sense of right and wrong.
That is my free will.
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First of all, everything we do, from moving your muscles when you're walking or remembering that hot girl/guy you slept with last week, it's all down to chemical reactions inside your body and physical laws affecting them. So, if we're all just walking chemical reactions governed by physical laws where does our freedom fit in?
Well for starters I just want to say that I believe we all have a free will, sure there are somethings which you have to fulfill in order to stay alive but besides that in the most philosophical terms I wouldn't say that not being able to stop your heart beating or your breathing with your own will hardly incapacitates our free will. We are living organisms and some bodily functions is just out of our control for evolutionary reasons. However, if you now want to end your life there are a multitude of ways to kill yourself, thus at least giving you the choice to end your life if you so desire not to be alive anymore.
But what I rather see as more important if however we got a free will or not is weather or not our actions are truly our own or governed by some physical laws. Now classical mechanical physics have laws governing everything we do and everything around us and if we had the sufficient data you should be able to calculate what's going to happen next. First there is the matter of fact that collection this amount of data and accounting for every possible variable is practically impossible since many of these variables change on such a small timetable and the sheer amount of time to collect the data overrides that.
But for the sake of argument say you would have all that data, now what? Now we must have a theory for which describes everything. Such a theory would need to combine the four base forces (Weak- and Strong nuclear force, Gravitational force & the Electromagnetic force), this theory, which don't exist yet nor is likely to ever be found*, is called a GUT (Grand Unified Theory). But let's say Hawkings gets a epiphany and comes up with it.
Now we proceed to the calculations part, for if I would be able to calculate your next move it's not really free will if I know beforehand what you will do is it?
And this is where quantum mechanics enter the stage, to be more exact, Heisenberg's principle of uncertainty. In short terms it states that when we measure a particles position with higher precision we're losing precision in it's momentum and the other way around (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle).
Now this principle don't affect us much in our daily life since it's effect is so utterly small we barely can notice it in objects which are in our daily life. But on a particle scale or even better quarks it really starts to cause some havoc for our calculations. So if you where to have this enormous amount of data on every single particle affecting us the uncertainty of our calculations would be equally enormous.
Which concludes the following, even if we had all the data and a working GUT we still wouldn't be able to make a prediction about the future, thus leaving it mysteriously unseen. So if nobody can't say what I'm going to do next with a 100 % certainty I do believe I'm of a free will.
*Most GUT theory's put the "life" of a Photon to 10^32 years, put that to comparison that the universe is "only" ~10^10 years old. Now, by life we don't mean that a photon last 10^32 years but rather it has a 1 in 10^32 chance of decaying every year. So if we where to watch a tank filled with 10^32 years we ought to see at least 1 decay, this isn't to hard since about a thousand ton of water contain that much photons thus we've already tested this (however, even a tank located down at Kamioka Mining and Smelter Companys mine being 3,281 feet deep down is not completely shielded from cosmic rays). Anyways, the scientists came to the conclusion (in 2009) that if protons decay at all it's at a greater pace then 1 in 10^34 which doesn't bode well for the GUT. Also other previous observational data don't agree with today's GUTs.
Would love to have some input in this.
P.S. Most of my data about GUT's comes from Stephen Hawking & Leonard Mlodinows book "The grand design" which was published 2010.
P.S.S. Right now I'm reading classical mechanics, have not got to the quantum course yet and in 3 years a lot has probably happened to our understanding about quarks and whatnot but unless Heisenbergs uncertainty principle is proven to be incorrect I do believe my arguments will still hold.
EDIT: Fixed some typos (which I missed during the preview -.-)
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over the generations we continue to learn and grow our minds. this is passed down in our genes. We are mimicking our past , there is no free will. What you may think is free will, is called survival. the need to Survive makes us create and to learn or we will die.
Some people and many races are slow to develop, and we know who they are. ??? ..Women have better survival genes because they can give birth.
Outside of that, don't think your special.
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Every aspect of life is confusing and after using psychedelics I can't really explain where I stand on what we are, why were are here, is there free will, is there a god, are we as humans and infection on earth eating away at it like a virus, is natural catastrophes earths white blood cells, are we computers, does everything go black when we die, do I get to still drop acid after I die?
Hhahah but anyways, I like to believe I have free will, but deep down I feel like I know I don't have completely free will.
PsychedelicSphere