/lit/ - Literature

The child in question could always commit suicide, for instance. Think creatively.

>>5071716
It's directed towards lazy faggots and teenagers who justify their inability to study/get a job/get a haircut or whatever because of some external reason when they haven't even tried and, not towards the examples you listed.

Evereyone without autism understands this.

>>5071742
That's not so much thinking creatively, tripdude, but with the bastard mentality that so many share. Profound answer, though, I must say.

>>5071716
This has nothing to do with lit and there's a ton of ppl who made it big without any school education.

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

>>5071748
I am actually blown away by that answer.

>>5071716
In all interactions between two people, there are by definition at least two actions which may be manipulated to change the outcome. From the perspective of any individual person, who is unable to influence any element of the equation other than his own behavior (and arguably not even that), the best option for that individual will always be to change his own behavior in such a way as to maximize his own utility in the interaction.

Moreover, when discussing a moral maxim, the best possible formulation of that maxim is that which, when heard by any given individual, will maximize the good for that individual.

Hence, while a person cannot wholly control his own condition in life, it is always to his advantage to believe that he can, and thus such maxims, while not necessarily reflective of the reality of the situation, are from a pragmatic and ethical perspective, still those which should be followed by any given individual.

1. You didn't disprove the picture. It says we are both a product of our environment AND our reactions (Note that the choices are a result of external factors).

2. It's a stupid picture targeted at NEETS and suburban kids who don't do shit rather than the options you mentioned.

>>5071742
>parents both have latent genetic disease
>you get genetic disease
yeah if you don't like it then leave life
LYF > DEF

>>5071746
That doesn't make it not true, and you totally get ignorant rich people with that attitude. I know a rich girl from the best part of London who honestly thinks whether you're successful in life is honestly down to "how much you want it". She's not a bad person but man that attitude is just not true and so detrimental to society when you get kids going to piece of shit schools with uncaring parents destined for a lifetime in council housing even though they should be better than that and rich people like her not even getting it, probably thinking everyone on benefits is just a lazy asshole who dedicates their life to popping out kids so they can live off the government and watch Jeremy Kyle.

I'm not the OP btw, and sure, you get plenty of privileged middle and upper class kids doing shit all and blaming their lack of success on whatever outside factor rather than just getting motivated, but the tragedy is that an unmotivated middle to upper class kid from a nice family and a nice background has a decent chance of doing better than a motivated kid from a rough area and a poor family, at a shit school. At the very least they will have FAR more slack every time they make a bad decision and even have the option to make far less bad decisions because they're living more sheltered lives.

>>5071746
This, you can stop posting now autists.

>>5071716
>So based on this logic, that means that segregation and discrimination toward black people during the 20th century was actually black peoples problem, because they were choosing to live in America.

No, this is a misapplication of the logic in the picture. The logic in the picture does not address where you start from, but rather what you do *from* the starting position.

It's like existentialism re-imagined by American conservatives. The idea that you have are responsible for your choices in life is solid, but of course the economy, your parents, etc. are going to affect how you interact with the world and the kind of choices you can make.

>>5071776
Nobody said that the choices you have must be pleasant.

>>5071775
Because the urban criminal "youths" are doing so much better right?

>>5071799
At least their lives have some sort of meaning to them and they're ethically consistent and stand by their words.

>>5071805
Lol

>>5071799
Becoming a criminal is making a choice about your life and your circumstances. The logic in the picture stand.

>>5071783
> The logic in the picture does not address where you start from, but rather what you do *from* the starting position.

That's exactly what I acknowledged. I pointed out that they had the choice to leave America, and that they didn't.

>>5071716
What does this have to do with lit, OP? Stop being a faggot.

>>5071787

Forcing limited options upon someone I suppose is choice. Seems more like word semantics to me.

>>5071820
Choosing to stay is a valid choice. Choosing to be oppressed is a valid choice. Why are you ridiculing them for taking charge of their life?

You can hide your mom's post on facebook, you know this, correct?

>>5071716
Yes they are all at fault, less so than the aggressors, but they still play a part in their own fate. There is no such thing as innocence, only ignorance.

>>5071782
See, the thing about autists is: they never stop posting.

>>5071870
>probabilistic ways

Probability implies indeterminism, stupid. Otherwise it'd be a certainty

>>5071870
How can something be red if it is round, meme-image kun?

>>5071831
>>5071865
So I can just walk through life treating people however I feel like, then justify it by saying the victim of my behavior is choosing it? Outstanding logic.

>>5071870
Composition fallacy.

>>5071889
>>5071885
Not that guy, but it's easily repaired. Our mind is comprised *exclusively* of atoms and particles.

>>5071888
He is not choosing *your* behaviour, he's choosing his. You are still responsible for your own, obviously.

>>5071892
You didn't understand my point, free will and the fact that our brains are made of probabilistically behaving particles have nothing to do with each other. See: compatibilsm
>Our mind is comprised *exclusively* of atoms and particles.
Surely your mean "our brain"

>>5071893

He stated that choosing to be oppressed from my original example is a valid choice. Therefore, he saying your responsible for behavior applied to you.

To further this logic, this means that all the people who've been shot from gun rampages the last 10-15 years, the victims are at fault then. Because owning a gun is a choice, having a CCW permit is a choice. Therefore if someone chooses to shoot at you, and you didn't make the choice to arm yourself, you therefore made the choice to be shot.

>>5071899
Same thing. The mind is the sum of particles in the brain and their physical interactions.

And I dislike compatiblism. The presence of a choice does not imply free will. Only the capacity to act other than one does implies free will.

>>5071912
>Same thing.
If you have some genuinely good arguments for mind and brain being identical, I'd really like to read them, because people who write books on philosophy of mind don't. Perhaps you should publish them too :3
>Only the capacity to act other than one does implies free wil
Electrons have free will then, don't they

Free will is only dissolved if we can fully predict every action or future state, quantum mechanics breaks this, at least for the moment free will still exists.

>>5071928
Only if you ascribe to string theory, which is sensationalist drivel.

And plenty of people have made good arguments for mind and brain being identical. Shall I link you to the wikipedia article on mind-body dualism, or would that be insulting?

Which is not to say people have not made compelling arguments for the reverse, but there are plenty of reasons to assume that the entire content of a human consciousness is expressible in terms of physical particles and the interactions between them, not the least of them the second law of thermodynamics.

>>5071937
>Only if you ascribe to string theory
Explain what does this have to do with it?
>And plenty of people have made good arguments for mind and brain being identical
Plenty of people have made good sounding arguments for mind and brain being identical
>Shall I link you to the wikipedia article on mind-body dualism, or would that be insulting?
For you
>there are plenty of reasons to assume that the entire content of a human consciousness is expressible in terms of physical particles and the interactions between them
This is a very different statement to "mind and brain are the same"

>>5071932
Oh fuck off. The stochasticity of quantum field fluctuations isn't proof that your ego controls you, it's proof that there is a random element to the brains function. It's an epistemological black box. This doesn't mean we have free will, it just means we can't disprove it

>>5071932
No, you're retarded.

Randomness does not in any way imply that we have free will. Most generously, it is a refutation of hard determinism More realistically, it is a hole in our current understanding of quantum mechanics.

>>5071716
>Like it or not, were all products of our environments.

Yes, but our environments are also products of us. You can't control it all but fatalism is unacceptable

>>5071888
You're choosing to be an asshole, he's simply choosing to take it. If he chooses that instead of punching you in the face to get you to stop, his choices, experiences, circumstances, etc have lead him to deciding getting shit on is a better life than becoming violent.

To put it another way, say somebody had your significant other isolated in a room, and that person has control over the switch that will pump gas into your SO's room killing her. The person tells you have to cut off own arm or she dies. If you do cut off your arm she will not die. Let's assume the bad guy is not lying, and that you have no way of taking control of the gas switch. You'd probably cut off your arm, would you not?

If somebody were to come in and see you cuttin off your arm, you'd look like a fucking crazy person. That person doesn't know anything about your life, how much you love your SO, the fact there's a bad guy threatening you, etc... This is how you are with most everyone else on the planet. You don't know anything about their life, and can't even begin to guess. Every person in the world has their own experiences, their own beliefs with which to interpret those experiences, and except of an arbitrarily small fraction of the population, you don't know what those circumstances are.

You see somebody being oppressed, and you wonder why they don't leave, or rise up in retaliation, or give a speech that rouses the hearts of his fellow country men. Because you life has lead you to believe that something should be done. You can't know that's true for anybody else.

>>5071946
If you don't ascribe to string theory, which implies a certain arbitrary variance to the movement of elementary particles, then you must necessarily ascribe to a deterministic model of the universe.

It's also clear to me that I must be misunderstanding your definition of "mind" insofar as you seem to be arguing that it is something other than human consciousness.

>>5071884
Given that logic, waves on a beach have free will. Weather has free will. Trees have free will. Everything has free will. Stochasticity does not imply free will, it implies a random element

What is Reciprocal Determinism?

>>5071889
Composition fallacy does not apply to physics

>>5071964
>If you don't ascribe to string theory, which implies a certain arbitrary variance to the movement of elementary particles, then you must necessarily ascribe to a deterministic model of the universe.
All of my what. Are you thinking of quantum mechanics? You might want to refresh that Physics 101
>I must be misunderstanding your definition of "mind" insofar as you seem to be arguing that it is something other than human consciousness.
Are you saying that brain and human consciousness are identical?

>>5071909
You're assuming the only person who can affect the outside world is you. Every choice everybody makes has an outcome. Every outcome shapes the world, and in turn shapes the choices you make. The minute somebody decides to shoot you is the minute you chances of decided not to be shot get pretty fucking slim.

>>5071881
kek'd

>>5071974
YOU DON'T APPLY TO PHYSICS!

We are only products of our environment. We should internalize this knowledge so as to teach ourselves to properly find the right environments to learn more from.

>>5071909
>>5071981
>and in turn shapes the choices you make

Sorry I meant "shapes the choices you are able to make." You may not have all options available to you all the time.

>>5071986
We don't understand physics well enough to answer that question

>>5071987
Hi Harris

>>5071999
But, you just answered it definitively [>>5071974].

Did you guys even read it?

>Everything you do is based on the choices you make.

It's saying everything you actively decide to do is your choice. Being raped, molested, or having a genetic disease has nothing to do with this since you didn't MAKE this choice.

>It are fact cause I say. PERIOD.

>>5072012
Getting raped is not something to do, it's something that's done to you.

this picture is retarded, but come on now

>>5072017
>something YOU do
getting raped is, in fact, something to do, but not the best way to spend an afternoon

>>5072017
Exactly, that's not what this picture is talking about. No one decides to get raped

>>5072025
speak for yourself

>>5072003
I hate Sam Harris.

Well, I've never read him, but anyone I ever know who has quoted him insistently has been a hedonistic douchebag.

>>5072009
Composition fallacy not applying to physics has nothing to do with that statement. Physics is how we understand the world through physical interactions, anything described by that system is a cause and effect, there is no "greater" to derive from them, even from the brain. The problem is, physics isn't complete, so it fails to describe the stochastic elements through algorithms. So where physics doesn't apply, the composition fallacy does. But I still think it's a mistake to say, "some parts of the brain are determined stochastically, therefore your ego is the locus of control in your brain". It just doesn't work that way. So like, what memories occur to you may be determined semi randomly, but this has nothing to do with your "consciousness" deciding what to remember

When the physical construct called the brain is damaged, so is consciousness. When you work with highly disabled adults, you will laugh at the "miracle" of compatibalism

>>5072031
oh, yeah. misread your post

but the image is still being stupid. you make decisions, but you do not decide your options. you do not choose your circumstances.

>>5072038
Actually I'd probably just laugh at the retards.

>>5072045
Like I'm laughing at you?

>>5072050
Yeah, you got it.

Did this just get posted on your facebook OP :^)

>>5071716
Speaking to the quote, it's true in the sense that you should never surrender your ability to choose, because no matter how limited you are, you always have choice. It's about remembering to act instead of surrendering to the current. It's silly to interpret as a literal equation that describes human consciousness and action

>>5072038
>The problem is, physics isn't complete, so it fails to describe the stochastic elements through algorithms. So where physics doesn't apply, the composition fallacy does. But I still think it's a mistake to say, "some parts of the brain are determined stochastically, therefore your ego is the locus of control in your brain".

Fair enough. I retract my composition fallacy remark.

>>5071758
>implying he didn't have to know some influential people before becoming known