lol@ free will and people who think they have free will

[bertstare101]

Think about how you pick up a pen. There's some electrical activity in your brain. Your neurons fire. They send a signal down into your nervous system. It passes along down into your muscle fibers. They twitch. You might, say, reach out your arm. It looks like it's a free action on your part, but every one of those - every part of that process is actually governed by physical law, chemical laws, electrical laws, and so on.

So now it just looks like the big bang set up the initial conditions, and the whole rest of human history, and even before, is really just the playing out of subatomic particles according to these basic fundamental physical laws. We think we're special. We think we have some kind of special dignity, but that now comes under threat

[WhitePeril]

A very profound post right there and plenty of food for thought for these cold nights

[Spetznaaz]

Think about how you pick up a pen. There's some electrical activity in your brain. Your neurons fire. They send a signal down into your nervous system. It passes along down into your muscle fibers. They twitch. You might, say, reach out your arm. It looks like it's a free action on your part, but every one of those - every part of that process is actually governed by physical law, chemical laws, electrical laws, and so on.

So now it just looks like the big bang set up the initial conditions, and the whole rest of human history, and even before, is really just the playing out of subatomic particles according to these basic fundamental physical laws. We think we're special. We think we have some kind of special dignity, but that now comes under threat

Determinism right?

I've always felt like determinism is probably right, seeing as if the big bang was exactly reproduced, everything would turn out the same just as if an explosion was exactly reproduced. Pretty depressing when you think about it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Determinism

Also, if you think about it, only two things govern who you are as a person - Your genetics, and every single experience in your life. From day one, you have absolutely no control over either.

[WhitePeril]

Determinism right?

I've always felt like determinism is probably right, seeing as if the big bang was exactly reproduced, everything would turn out the same just as if an explosion was exactly reproduced. Pretty depressing when you think about it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Determinism

So the universe and our actions are follow some predetermined path?

[GrinDaddy]

your threads are chit

[LtGoose]

So I don't need to lift because my gains have been pre-determined?

[Musc1eBound]

We are just moving around in flesh vehicles, it's not really "us".

[Spetznaaz]

So the universe and our actions are follow some predetermined path?

Well this is how i interpret it, it would be wrong:

So imagine an explosion. Particles move outwards all over the place. Let's say you could recreate the explosion exactly down to every last parameter, in theory you could predict exactly where every particle involved is going to end up.

If you take the big bang, first of all there is "nothing", no time no space just an extremely dense mass of something, which at some point suddenly expands outwards creating the universe as we know it. Everything contained in the universe was in that original mass.

So everything following the big bang, was predetermined by the original conditions / everything contained in that dense mass - so if you had a computer powerful enough, and you knew all the original conditions, it would be just like recreating an explosion and predicting where every particle would end up.

I could be way off tbh, but this is what i got from it.

[bertstare101]

We are just moving around in flesh vehicles, it's not really "us".

or you're just playing a character in someone else's dream

food for thought

[PhysixBrah]

Think about how you pick up a pen. There's some electrical activity in your brain. Your neurons fire. They send a signal down into your nervous system. It passes along down into your muscle fibers. They twitch. You might, say, reach out your arm. It looks like it's a free action on your part, but every one of those - every part of that process is actually governed by physical law, chemical laws, electrical laws, and so on.

So now it just looks like the big bang set up the initial conditions, and the whole rest of human history, and even before, is really just the playing out of subatomic particles according to these basic fundamental physical laws. We think we're special. We think we have some kind of special dignity, but that now comes under threat

Sorry brah, but there is free will. You're theory only works if the laws of physics are absolute, but it doesn't work that way. At a quantum level, everything works by probabilities - nothing is "set in stone". Michio Kaku explains it well:

[nick187]

So there is no God ?

[RagingVeins]

Determinism based on genetics and the environment is what I've always believed in. Choice is just an illusion. You'd always make the exact same choices in that given moment based upon your cumulative environment/experiences up to that point in your life combined with your genetics. Technically, if you knew everything there ever was to know, including, for example, every movement of every grain of sand in the Sahara Desert, you'd be able to predict the future. It's complicated but I believe it to be true 100%.

[bertstare101]

Sorry brah, but there is free will. You're theory only works if the laws of physics are absolute, but it doesn't work that way. At a quantum level, everything works by probabilities - nothing is "set in stone". Michio Kaku explains it well:

I know enough contemporary physical theory to know it's not really like that. It's really a probabilistic theory. There's room. It's loose. It's not deterministic." And that's going to enable us to understand free will. But if you look at the details, it's not really going to help because what happens is you have some very small quantum particles, and their behavior is apparently a bit random. They swerve. Their behavior is absurd in the sense that its unpredictable and we can't understand it based on anything that came before. It just does something out of the blue, according to a probabilistic framework. But is that going to help with freedom? I mean, should our freedom be just a matter of probabilities, just some random swerving in a chaotic system? That starts to seem like it's worse. I'd rather be a gear in a big deterministic physical machine than just some random swerving.

So we can't just ignore the problem. We have to find room in our contemporary world view for persons with all that that entails; not just bodies, but persons. And that means trying to solve the problem of freedom, finding room for choice and responsibility, and trying to understand individuality.

[tom11]

your threads are chit

This. Half of your threads are like they are created by someone using HEAVY drugs and the other half look like too obvious trolling attempts. Just to contribute to the thread, we are not 100% sure if the world is deterministic or not. Go read some quantum theory, it hints that there is a possibility that the universe is not deterministic, in simple terms: if you knew the initial conditions of big bang you could not predict the outcome because "luck" comes into play.

[Spetznaaz]

I once heard that electrons pop in and out of existence all the time and we don't know where they go.. anyone know if this is true?

[Come at me bro]

Our entire universe is probably just a single cell in another universe lol

[WhitePeril]

Free will isn't truly free as there are constraints on the actions that people can take in a particular situation. For example I want to buy a soda but do not have enough money for it. The constraint in this case is not having enough money for the soda. If I did I'd have bought it.

[tom11]

I once heard that electrons pop in and out of existence all the time and we don't know where they go.. anyone know if this is true?

Yes, this is possible. Also lol at the video posted above, at 1:30 he basically says "How mirrors are real if our eyes aren't real" lmao.

[SteadyWayfarer]

OP is the next Ghandi.

[HarissnBergeron]

I've thought of this too, and I've always wondered (not accounting for quantum randomness) if the 'big crunch' will occur eventually, resulting in another big bang, and everything that has ever happened will occur exactly as it did before, ad infinitum. Also, check this out:

Your brain makes up its mind up to ten seconds before you realize it, according to researchers. By looking at brain activity while making a decision, the researchers could predict what choice people would make before they themselves were even aware of having made a decision.

http://www.nature.com/news/2008/0804....2008.751.html

I tend to think that many things about us probably are predetermined, that there is little to no free will and that we (in the context of our egos) are, to put it in a hippie-ass Bill Hicks way, the imaginations of ourselves.

[10thPlanet]

Sorry brah, but there is free will. You're theory only works if the laws of physics are absolute, but it doesn't work that way. At a quantum level, everything works by probabilities - nothing is "set in stone". Michio Kaku explains it well:

How is this dude famous?

Just because hard determinism is false doesn't mean free will is true.

[shroomed]

You are right. I have no free will and will be forced to neg you on rc, just can't help it.

[Shiboopi]

Free will within a governed universe is still free will. I choose to pick up the pen, or not. I choose to do anything, or nothing.

[heyyouwhome]

the universe is withing us all, that means it is also inside my peepee

[WhitePeril]

You are right. I have no free will and will be forced to neg you on rc, just can't help it.

Hey don't hate on the OP, he's just enlightening us poor souls

[ars92]

Free will within a governed universe is still free will. I choose to pick up the pen, or not. I choose to do anything, or nothing.

the point he is making is that is already decided before you are consciously aware you decided it.

[Metalhead44]

You ran straight into the cartesian "mind-matter" debate with a physicalist argument .Try again OP,your statement doesn't disprove free will.Free will refers the ability for humans to control the variables that are available,laws are constant not variable.In all situations under the same circumstances physical/chemical/biological laws will prevail.

[WhitePeril]

the point he is making is that is already decided before you are consciously aware you decided it.

yeah now I feel that I already decided something long before I've had to make a decision.

[shroomed]

Hey don't hate on the OP, he's just enlightening us poor souls

I don't hate op at all, I just have no free will.

[BallerOfPeace]

OP better be red by they end of this thread. I made this same thread and got negged hard.