/sci/ - Science & Math

No, we don't have free will, just accepted that already.

>>11359950
>No, we don't have free will, just accepted that already.
I do

>>11359947
>Free Will
>x/ or /lit/ please. We talk about real problems here. Like how women won't have sex with us cause we are intolerable, know-it-all autistic faggots.

>>11359947
>Do we have free will
we have the kind of free will that matters
>is everything determined
not relevant to the free will that matters, but no

>>11359947
>Do we have free will
Yes

>>11359947
Both.

>>11359947
Viva la Paristan! Mashallah France est un pays islamique

Allah always bless muslim our ultimate mission is jihad inshallah that is why Allah make muslim suffer in most poverty, war and terrorism country on earth and why we are not exposed too dumb western education mashallah Allah is truly grrat and knows best and tries to get us into jihad by us living in bad countries i am cry thanks Allah

>>11360054
>we have the kind of free will that matters

No we don't. We have an illusion of free will that prevents us from reaching a higher plane of morality, where mistakes are understood and corrected rather than punished.

Dennett is the most dangerous man alive. His pseudo-intellectual babble will confuse generations of people that free will exists, keeping us locked in a punishment based legal system.

>>11360106
>higher plane of morality
Weaselwords

>>11360106
pessimistic npc?

>>11359947
please stop asking this fag question people.
Are you from pl*bbit? Read something on chaos, this is a false dilemma.
Yes, all actions are predetermined by.. the big bang one might say? But does it mean we don't have free will? No, the dice are rolled in a way that you effectively have no way of telling your free will isn't absolutely free.

It's the same thing with people saying love (or emotions in general) isn't real because it's 'just a mix of chemicals'. It's a mix of chemicals AND it's real.
That's also why I respect religious people.. although their faith is not scientifically correct, it's efficient enough to positively affect one's live if believed in.
Are you a bunch of Rick and Morty super smart (but lazy) fan idiots? Seriously, I can't distinguish between this place and rdt these days.

>>11359947
>Do we have free will or is everything determined?
The scientific consensus is that free will exists.

>>11360158
> over-categorizing
is that a sign of stupidity or what?

There is no evidence that libertarian free will exists, and it is physically impossible as physics are currently understood

>>11359947

> About Fate & Free Will
https://share.dmca.gripe/fZnZjZ01XXfwXhpZ.webm

>>11360182
>and it is physically impossible as physics are currently understood
How so? What part of physics makes free will impossible and how does it do that?

>>11360192
> How so?

Read about basic Newtonian physics. All physical processes are deterministic except in some interpretations of quantum mechanics, where there is a degree of randomness. Randomness is not free will. It’s randomness.

>>11360196
You have neglected to take the Heisenberg uncertainty principle into account.
It is true that if we knew the position and momentum of every particle in the universe we could predict the future, but it is physically impossible to know both a particles exact position AND it's momentum at the same time, thus it is physically impossible to predict the future in this fashion.
Building on this inherent uncertainty, we know that until it is observed a given particle (or wave, as it could be either or both in this state) exists in a state of quantum superposition, that is to say it occupies all possible postions/momentum within a given probability field simultaneously. This is important, because it means that we are not merely unable to define it's exact position/momentum, but that such discrete information about the particle does not actually exist (in other words, it doesn't actually have a position/momentum until we observe it, merely a probability field describing where it might be and what it could be doing there).

The key takeaway from all this is that it is not physically possible for the universe's future to be predetermined, and if it is not physically possible for the universe's future to be predetermined then it is not physically possible for someone (who isn't a vegetable) to have no free will, as they will inevitably be required to make more or less perfectly arbitrary decisions at some point by the probabilistic nature of the universe.

>>11360221
> You have neglected to take the Heisenberg uncertainty principle into account

It’s completely irrelevant.

> Building on this inherent uncertainty, we know that until it is observed a given particle (or wave, as it could be either or both in this state) exists in a state of quantum superposition

Only in some interpretations. You should refrain from imposing mathematical abstractions onto reality, and assuming some quantum interpretations to be true axiomatically when quantum interpretations all make zero testable predictions and constitute make-believe.

> The key takeaway from all this is that it is not physically possible for the universe's future to be predetermined

Wrong.

> and if it is not physically possible for the universe's future to be predetermined then it is not physically possible for someone (who isn't a vegetable) to have no free will

That’s randomness, not free will.

>>11359947
It's all determined but in such a complex way that it's basically free will

>>11360251
There is nothing irrelevant about the uncertainty principle, its a very basic concept that affects every measurement you will ever take.
Likewise, your claims that:
>quantum interpretations all make zero testable predictions and constitute make-believe.
Are completely false, there are plenty of experiments that demonstrate quantum uncertainty, at least one of which I have personally witnessed. If the uncertainty principle and quantum mechanics are taken into account, it becomes impossible for the universe to be predetermined.

But your last assertion is the important one here.
>That’s randomness, not free will.
So what happens when a random coin toss comes up the wrong way and the universe diverges from the routine in your human automatons head?
Do they spend the rest of thier lives walking into doors and windows or do they adapt?
If they do adapt, how are they doing this without some degree of free will?

>>11360309
>m-muh quantum randomness means that free will bullshit is real

Randomness isn’t free will. It’s randomness. Probabilistic interactions between molecules over which we have no control don’t constitute free will. You’re dishonest and retarded.

>>11360309
>Do they spend the rest of thier lives walking into doors and windows or do they adapt?

You could make the same argument for a fucking roomba.

>>11359947
Let's say you asked A or B.
possible answers:
A
B
both A and B at the same time
not A and not B
A and B are not related at all
etc.

>>11359947
Let's talk about the extreme cases.

idkwirow

What would a thing without a free will do? Nothing, because there's no a "thing" to do anything, there's just an arrangement of stuff and we erroneously attach a social entity to it.

What would a totally free will do? I don't know how to answer that. What do you think, anon?

>>11360338
>Randomness isn’t free will
True, but it is indicative of the existence of free will:
If a persons every action is NOT predetermined, then they must posses some degree of free will.
The universe is inherently random, right down to the subatomic level
It is therefore impossible for someones every action to be predetermined, and thus it is impossible for them not to have some degree of free will.

>>11360343
That's precisely my point, humans are not roomba's, when you place a human in a situation completely outside what it knows to do, it adapts, which is a symptom of free will.

>>11360371
> True, but it is indicative of the existence of free will:

Non sequitur.

> If a persons every action is NOT predetermined, then they must posses some degree of free will.

Non sequitur.

> The universe is inherently random, right down to the subatomic level

Randomness is just as incompatible with free will as determinism.

> It is therefore impossible for someones every action to be predetermined , and thus it is impossible for them not to have some degree of free will.

Non sequitur.

>That's precisely my point, humans are not roomba's, when you place a human in a situation completely outside what it knows to do, it adapts, which is a symptom of free will.

That’s the OPPOSITE of what he means, you dumbass.
ROOMBAS LEARN. THEY LEARN THE LAYOUT OF YOUR HOUSE

>>11360393
>Randomness is just as incompatible with free will as determinism.
how so? it would seem to me that randomness is a prerequisite for free will, since you cant have free will in a deterministic universe.
also:
>Non sequitur.
have you never read a logical argument before? the first and second line are the premises, and the third line is the only valid conclusion that can be drawn, assuming the first two lines are also valid.
By their very nature none of them are non sequiturs as the first two are the premise and the third one is a conclusion drawn directly from that premise
also also:
>That’s the OPPOSITE of what he means, you dumbass.
if you place a roomba in the middle of the bush its fucked, the same is not at all true for humans (or at least, non retarded humans) because they can adapt using free will, whereas a roomba has only a non sentient computer algorithm to guide it.

>>11360408
>how so? it would seem to me that randomness is a prerequisite for free will, since you cant have free will in a deterministic universe.

You can’t have free will in a random one, either.
You can have randomness, which can result in people acting in unpredictable ways, but how they act is out of their control. They don’t actually WILL anything.

> and the third line is the only valid conclusion that can be drawn

No it isn’t. It’s a non sequitur, because randomness isn’t compatible with free will.

> if you place a roomba in the middle of the bush its fucked

Goalpost just got moved.

>the same is not at all true for humans (or at least, non retarded humans) because they can adapt using free will

Humans adapt by receiving sensory information in the form of neural impulses and then reacting to said information through more neural impulses. Either these chemical interactions are deterministic or have a degree of probability.
Neither option allows for free will.

>>11359947
if you want your definition of free will to be useful, then yes, we have it.
having a word for something only happens if it's useful in one way or another. otherwise there'd be no reason for it to exist.
people definitely feel free will. if you're hungry and can't get food, you feel your free will / agency to be restricted. if you're failing at your education, job, relationships, you will feel bad and restricted in your ability to navigate the world.

Saying that a person did something because of the laws of physics and the initial conditions of the Universe is only vacuously true. The laws of physics and the initial conditions of the Universe are nothing but the most compact description of everything that ever happens anywhere. Of course it will encompass our choices as well. Meanwhile to say that a person did something because of his conscious free choice actually has some content, because some times we clearly act out of other reasons than choice like involuntary reflexes for example. So if his free choice was the cause for his action, in the everyday common sense way (he wasn't actually coerced or drugged or something) then it is both true to say that he was determined to do that by laws of physics and that he chose to do so - but you could also say the latter is true in a stronger, more meaningful sense than the former.

>>11360106
incredibly low iq

>>11360106
dennett is also low iq though. he's not dangerous because only retards are incapable of seeing how self-contradicting his babble is

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joCOWaaTj4A

>>11359984
>Like how women won't have sex with us cause we are intolerable, know-it-all autistic faggots.
you got it backwards anon. we won't have sex with them because they are emotionally unstable and unreasonable.

>>11360418
>but how they act is out of their control. They don’t actually WILL anything.
On what reasoning do you base this assertion? What evidence do you have to back that reasoning up?
Why does human reasoning involving neural impulses preclude the existence of free will? You are making a lot of claims as if they were self evident yet none of this evidence is readily apparent to me, so please do me a favour and explain it.

>Goalpost just got moved.
Incorrect, a soon be in a house is not in a situation completely outside of what it knows to do, thus the room a in the bush scenario is closer to my original statement in post >>11360371, not further away, so no goalposts have moved.

>>11359950
>Implying you can accept that if you don't have free will

>>11359947
Depends where and when you do your analysis. Everything in the past is deterministic for us. The future is probabilistic because we can't see through heisenberg uncertainty. But I would argue that probabilistic systems represent something deterministic with a degree of uncertainty on observable. So really the universe as a whole is deterministic, but we can still have a free will in the present moment as the future is indeterminate.

>>11360182
>>11360196
>>11360251
>>11360338
>>11360393

only got this far in the conversation so far, but just have to point out that this poster is very high iq

>>11360628
>On what reasoning do you base this assertion?

Do you literally think some kind of vague “will” actively affects the probabilities of molecules in the brain? What is the mechanism for this?

> Why does human reasoning involving neural impulses preclude the existence of free will?

Explain exactly what you think “free will” actually is.

>>11360158
>efficient enough to positively affect one's live if believed in.
how? kill all infidels? haram? shariah? any other examples of positive influence?

Yes we have free will your spirit literally creates the universe and changes it so it bends to your will. I am not joking or being ironic call me schizo all you want.

>>11360712
>Explain exactly what you think “free will” actually is.
Free will is (in my opinion) the means by which humans make decisions when not under external compulsion. To give examples, turning up to a court date is not excercising free will, because you were compelled by the state, but choosing not to turn up is, because that is an independently made decision.
The actual, physical mechanism by which free will operates is poorly understood, because the human brain is an enormously complex instrument, and for other reasons related to the hard problem of consciousness.
If you need any further clarifications, please ask.

>>11360750
>Free will is (in my opinion) the means by which humans make decisions when not under external compulsion

Our decisions are under the compulsion of the particles bouncing around in our brain.

>>11360761
Nope. The particles in our brain are changing from free will. You literally can't track every single particle.

>>11360770
> The particles in our brain are changing from free will

How? By what mechanism? How does “free will” affect the probabilities of particles? Why are you so fucking stupid?

>You literally can't track every single particle.

Yeah, so how does your “””free will””” have ANY control over your actions?

Unverifiable both. Set free will. Leibniz dispelled any incompatibility.

Holy shit I can’t believe even on the /sci/ board there are this many retards. This isnt even a hard concept to grasp, of course we don’t have free will. It certainly feels like we do, and it’s useful to live life as if you do, but we don’t. Your genes plus external stimulus determine what you do. If you re wound your life and started from the beginning you would do everything exactly the same.
>I have free will because it feels like I do
Man some of you are really really stupid. You really think that’s an argument too

>>11360948
>If you re wound your life and started from the beginning you would do everything exactly the same.
>muh LaPlaces Demon
lol
But even if you're still clinging to classical mechanics...
>Your genes plus external stimulus determine what you do.
You're just claiming "It's not me making the decisions, it's my genetic predispositions and the sum of my life experiences", right?
Bitch, you ARE your genetic predispositions and the sum of your life experiences.
So ultimately, it is YOU making the decisions, (regardless of whether the universe is deterministic or not).

>>11360761
>Our decisions are under the compulsion of the particles bouncing around in our brain.
How can a non sentient, essentially random particle interaction give us directed reasoning?
It can't, your grey matter is merely the physical mechanism behind free will, it is not the presence or absense of free will itself. Brains being made of brain stuff has nothing to do with free will existing or not.

>>11361001
> How can a non sentient, essentially random particle interaction give us directed reasoning?

Good question. Ask a neurologist.

> It can't, your grey matter is merely the physical mechanism behind free will

There’s no free will.

>>11361010
>There’s no free will.
You decided whether to type that line or not.
Even if the decision was deterministic [citation needed], YOU made that decision.
You're doing the same thing Heinlein did with altruism and legal rights.
You've created a definition that can't possibly be satisfied, then declared the definition unsatisfiable.
That's semantics,not /sci/ence.

>>11360221
>The key takeaway from all this is that it is not physically possible for the universe's future to be predetermined
Quantum mechanical time evolution is unitary.

>>11360722
not murdering (white) babies

>>11361117
>Quantum mechanical time evolution is unitary.
I dont know what that means but I also pnly have a basic understanding of QM in general so I'd love to find out

You are nothing but a meat robot, deluding yourself into thinking that you have any real control over your actions and reactions.
You made your choice before you ever knew it consciously.

The people who argue against free will never provide arguments for why we dont have free will, but rather why the concept of free will in their minds is self contradictory. If you make a choice, you always were going to make the same choice, hence you didnt actually make a choice? Thats a nonsensical argument. Its possible to make a choice even though you were going to make the choice all along, in any sensible definition of the word choice.

Determinism is wildly misunderstood. You are going to do something tomorrow, and that which you will do you were going to do all along. That is still your choice. If you believe there is that the word choice has ANY meaning whatsoever, you already refute all the arguments I know against free will. Do you feel your actions are predetermined? Perhaps because youre an NPC. Thats a psychological problem, not a philosophical one. Try thinking more deeply about things, then youll realize you have free will.
Also you should realize that arguments against free will rely on absolutely nothing new that we discovered about the world. The same reasoning could have been applied millennia ago. They are boring arguments, as well as misleading, in that they try to appear as if they concern free will rather than the definition of choice, which we all know as humans that we have, even if we do not have a precise definition for what it means.

>>11361550
>deluding yourself into thinking that you have any real control
>You made your choice
Ummm.....

The only insight we can extract from all the arguments against free will is that we cannot define choice to be an action that is not determined by events preceding it. The arguments claim that this is the only definition of free will( without providing any arguments in suppot of this ridiculous proposition) and hence claim to refute the fundamental premise of philosophical thought spanning millennia. Truly ridiculous, reddit tier "philosophy"

>>11361018
>>11360958
Based and truthpilled. I'm amazed how many people can't see the flaws in the arguments against free will, given how demoralizing the proposition is. It's like people are attracted to being miserable.
>>11360698
No he's not. The first thing indicating that he's a retard is that he's referencing physics and our understanding of the natural world in support of the argument, even though they have nothing to do with each other, like the posts above indicate. The poster itself later on says that there could be a degree of randomness, which is not free will, but randomness. Everything about determinism he said was known thousands of years ago.

>>11361018
>You decided whether to type that line or not.
No he didn't
>YOU made that decision.
His genetics (nature) and the sum total of his life experiences (nurture) created the person who was always going to decide that.

Even if you introduce randomness into it, he didn't decide to be random. And even if you do something like flip a coin, the nature/nurture aspects I mentioned before are what determine whether he would use that as an option or follow the results (or flip until he got an agreeable option; best 2 out of 3, etc). None of which indicate free will.

Absent a soul, for which there is no scientific basis, there is no possible way for free will to exist. Even then, I'm doubtful, since you didn't choose which soul to have.

>>11361661
>>You decided whether to type that line or not.
>No he didn't
>>YOU made that decision.
>His genetics (nature) and the sum total of his life experiences (nurture) created the person who was always going to decide that.

>Admitting there's person who was going to decide that
>He didn't decide that
Who is the person that decided to type it then, genius? The absolute state of reddit materialists LMAO.

>>11361667
>Who is the person that decided to type it then
Nobody. Who decides why a hydrogen atom should bond with an oxygen atom? It's just laws of nature.

>>11361682
You are making a false assumption that every cringy 14 year old materialist makes. The fact that thing consists of other things and the other things are simple, doesn't mean the whole thing is simple. Take a computer program. Each bit in your memory is just a zero or one, and yet you can have games and other wonderful complicated systems. Although the parts are only zeros and ones, the whole makes something bigger, a system that is not merely a sum of its parts, but is a greater whole because of the special relations the parts have among themselves.

>>11361693
>take a computer program
You just proved my point. A computer program doesn't have free will, no matter how complicated it is.

>>11361693
>but is a greater whole because of the special relations the parts have among themselves.

Prove these “special relations” allow for you to make decisions that aren’t ultimately the consequences of physical interactions.

>>11361725
Dumb teenager. You don't even realize what I'm debunking, how are you ever going to understand the nature of free will? I merely used it as an example to make you understand that if something is made up of lesser simple parts, that doesn't make the whole object simple. You should try reading more books to develop your reading

>>11361732
>offers an analogy of a computer program
>insists it's not merely the sum of its parts
>clearly doesn't understand how computer programs are made
Let me guess, you're a soft science (or even liberal arts) major?

>>11361018
>You decided whether to type that line or not.

In a sense, and yet that decision was caused by the interactions of particles, not some phantasmal “will”.

> Even if the decision was deterministic [citation needed], YOU made that decision.

We can do what we will, but we can’t will what we will. Our “decisions” are the consequences of physical interactions.

> You've created a definition that can't possibly be satisfied

No, libertarian free will was defined by people who believed in that insane shit. Hard indeterminism is what is true.

>>11361727
My decisions are made up of small physical interactions, but in what sense are they consequences of physical interactions? Why can't it also be said that the physical interactions are a consequence of my decisions? Because clearly I can choose to move a hand, producing my desired physical interactions, which every person who is not philosophically confused would agree with.

>>11361737
Mathematics major. Of course a program is a sum of its parts in the sense that it's made up of parts, but this doesn't allow us to infer anything about the simplicity of the program itself. Complicated and sophisticated systems can be made of smaller, simple systems, is my point.

>>11361748
>I can choose to move a hand
Do you choose or is it merely a reaction to (external or internal) stimuli? fMRI scans have shown that parts of the brain light up in ways that allow the observer to know what the person being scanned will do before they consciously "make the decision" to do it.

At the bottom level, it's all just neurons bumping into each other in ways we have no influence over (either through base laws of physics or randomness)

>>11361604
>The people who argue against free will never provide arguments for why we dont have free will

Those who argue for free will never define “free will” because the idea of “free will” is nonsensical and impossible. All conclusions and actions taken by the mind are the result of complex chemical interactions in the brain mass, so free will can’t exist unless you’re proposing that the first law of thermodynamics is wrong and magical “mind” energy interacts with the brain magically to alter the outcomes of molecule behavior.

>>11361754
Yes, complicated systems can be made of simpler systems. See: pretty much everything in the universe.

That doesn't mean free will is involved. The planet Earth is a far more complex system than a human brain, since it necessarily includes EVERY human brain within it. That doesn't mean the Earth has "free will". You could also expand that to the solar system, galaxy, etc.

>>11361756
I choose it, and my decision depends on the way I react to external stimuli. The stimuli pass through a system, which is me, who is made up of atoms, although that is irrelevant to the argument. And I, the system, produce a response if I decide to. The fact that there's a delay doesn't change anything significant.

>>11361762
It means that the argument that because the simpler parts have some property, the whole must have it too is incorrect.

>>11359947
Your free will is determining everything.

>>11361651
> I'm amazed how many people can't see the flaws in the arguments against free will

Name one.

> given how demoralizing the proposition is

Maybe to you. I don’t give one shit about it because I’m not a pseud who spends hours crying about pointless inconsequential shit like “muh free will”.
Oh no, I don’t have free will! I don’t know why I’d care since free will is an incoherent idea so I’m just going to not care and go eat something.

> The first thing indicating that he's a retard is that he's referencing physics and our understanding of the natural world in support of the argument, even though they have nothing to do with each other

Physics have prime relevance in the discussion, and physics don’t allow “free will”.

>>11361725
>A computer program doesn't have free will, no matter how complicated it is.

Neither do humans. Human brains are more complicated than computers but still consist of nothing more than atoms bouncing into eachother. You’re proposing that the human brain passes some threshold of complication where literal magic starts getting involved.

>>11361765
>my decision depends on the way I react to external stimuli
You don't decide that, is the point. The neurons in your brain will react in predictable ways to external stimuli. You don't choose how your neurons react.
>that is irrelevant to the argument.
It's not irrelevant because you still follow the laws of physics
>The fact that there's a delay doesn't change anything significant.
It's not that there's a delay. It's that your brain has already decided to do a function before you even consciously make the decision to do so. Consider this example using arbitrary times:
>t+0s: fMRI shows activity in your brain indicating you will smile
>t+1s: You consciously "decide" to smile
>t+1.5s: You smile
How can you say you "decided" to smile, when your brain had already subconsciously (physically) decided to do that before you "made the decision" to do so.
>>11361768
If I introduce an error in the code in one function of the program, the whole program will have that error. If I freeze the water molecules in your finger, your finger will freeze.
>>11361780
I didn't propose that. Read what he posted and the post he was responding to.

>>11361748
>but in what sense are they consequences of physical interactions?

My god.
Photon hit eyeball.
Neuron send action potential to brain.
Brain process visual info
Brain react to visual info
Nowhere in this chain of particles interacting is there a magical “will” that comes out of nowhere.

> Why can't it also be said that the physical interactions are a consequence of my decisions?

Your “decisions” are just physical interactions themselves, consisting of and reached by neurochemical impulses. Physical interactions cause future ones, so you can say that the physical interactions that constitute your “decision” caused future interactions if you like.

> Because clearly I can choose to move a hand, producing my desired physical interactions,

That’s just neurons in the brain sending signals down the spinal cord to the hand telling it to move.

>>11361789
My brain and my neurons are part of me, you fucking retard. How can you not realize something as simple? They are not outside me, pulling my strings. They ARE ME.

Not the outside force, it's you deciding, even in deterministic world.

>>11361794
>They ARE ME.

Yeah!
So “you” are a bunch of particles that are interacting within the bounds permitted by physics.

Weird. Not seeing any magical “free will” in there.

>>11359947
define free:
beyond resolvable distance fog of really being able to tell...


that antenna you have in skull probably interfere even with fields not yet detected by outside measurement,

>>11361794
>Your brain doesn't have free will
>Your neurons don't have free will
>The other components of your brain don't have free will
So where is this free will coming from?

>>11361801
>>11361805
Nobody ever claimed free will was anything magical. It's just a fact of reality.

It's you who decide in your body. If you don't agree on that it was your decision, then consciousness exist as thing not accepting what have "you" decided as "you" decided.

Then it's just you... All of it.

However deterministic, you are still free to decide what outcome to pursue,.

>>11361813
>It's just a fact of reality.

If it’s such a fact of reality, you should be able to define it and point out how, where, and why it manifests.

>>11361813
Then explain at which stage the free will is manifested. Or are you simply defining free will as "the automated reactions a person has to stimuli"?

Other questions:
Does a dog have free will? Why or why not?
How about animals with simpler brains (insects, etc) or no brain at all (sponges)? How complex does an organism have to be to have free will?

>>11359947
I honestly believe more each day I am in a simulation where I'm the only person that genuinely exists and the world around is manipulated in various ways to challenge me and see how I respond.

Is this the road to schizophrenia?

>>11361621
If you make a choice, but you don't make it consciously. Are you really the one making the choices?

>>11361853
This have nothing to do with the topic. But yes it is.

>>11361853
I believe the same, and you're just a simulated spook designed to make me doubt myself.
Nice try, sadistic AI overlords.

>>11361789
>It's not that there's a delay. It's that your brain has already decided to do a function before you even consciously make the decision to do so. Consider this example using arbitrary times:
>t+0s: fMRI shows activity in your brain indicating you will smile
>t+1s: You consciously "decide" to smile
>t+1.5s: You smile
I assume you're talking about the Libet experiments. They were able to predict (with some better than random accuracy) the timing of a trivial decision to press a button based on fMRI data before the moment of conscious decision to do so. This hardly shows that conscious thinking doesn't actually play any role in decision making at all, just that there are some pre-conscious indicators. It would be indeed a strange finding that the conscious part of a decision making was completely redundant. I'd assume in more complex and significant decisions that have to do with novel situations pre-conscious thinking plays lesser role.
Even without fMRI though people are able to predict the behavior of other people to some non-trivial degree. This is hardly news and I don't see how this is somehow a threat to anybody's sense of freedom.

If we're talking about "libertarian free will" - which I think is a bit like all those "people's democracies", both a redundant expression and an ironic misnomer that has little to do with actual freedom - then it's totally meaningless to appeal to empirical data because it's an incoherent concept in the first place.

>>11359947
>or is everything determined?
You faggots can't find a satisfactory answer because the question itself is retarded. Think of it in terms of falsifiability, by asking if everything is deterministic you're asking if there could be two ways that things go, in a universe where there can be only one way. Like you flip a coin and think "it could go either way" and then you think "oh but it went only one way, could it have gone the other way?" and then you get a headache thinking about it seems both plausible yet impossible because things can only go one way.

Because you're dumb, you're all dumb. Obviously you can choose things, but obviously things can only go one way because there's no do-over. If this confuses you it's because you're a brainlet who corners his own thought process by clinging on to fictitious nonsensical concepts such as "determination" when the possibility of a do-over doesn't exist.

>b-but what if there was a parallel universe that was j-
there's no parallel universe, it's impossible, asking what if there was a parallel universe makes the question nonsensical.

>>11361907
Yeah whatever you say bot, I'm onto you

>>11360251
I only read until this post. You are correct. All fucks who use “muahh QM, therefore free will” are extremely retarded.

>>11362604
what about this then? >>11360430

>>11361010
I'm not talking to a neurologist, I'm talking to you.
Your entire premise, as far as I can tell, rests on this idea that because there are physical mechanisms in our brain connected to (But not necessarily determining) the act of thinking then free will cannot exist.
You seem amazingly confident that all human thought can be reduced to particle interactions despite the fact that a) you are not a neuroscientist, or indeed educated in any specialty related to the field, and b) that is not a view held by neuroscientists, every single one of which will tell you that the physical means by which thinking occurs are, at best, poorly understood and cannot by any means be reduced to simple chemical or physics interactions in the brain.

Perhaps it is time you gave me your definition of free will, so that I have some idea of what you are actually trying to prove.

>>11361756
Here's a thought experiment for you:
>Pick a random number, now pick another one.
>Keep doing this at a rate of at least 2 numbers per second.
Eventually, you will have picked more random numbers than you have had experiences/stimuli to influence them, where are these numbers coming from?

>>11361777
I encourage you too look up the Islamic golden age, It ended when Muslim scientists concluded that there was no free will as Allah determined everything. Ever since then the Islamic world has steadily declined culturally, economically and scientifically and continues to this day.
By stark contrast, the European scientific community determined that free will did exist, and then used that free will to conquer the planet.
This is not an argument as such, I just think it's worth noting the historical result of convincing yourself that free will does not exist.

Just sit and observe thoughts coming into your head. Thoughts just appear. """You""" didn't make them appear, """you""" are not in control of them. Essentially you are not in control of yourself (but you have the illusion which you are, which is probably pretty useful). When I realized this it totally destroys the idea of free will.

we don't have free will

but it's too complex (for us humans) to predict what a human will do

as in a casino roulette

from our point of view we do have (relative) free will

>>11362845
You have more than 2 experiences/stimuli per second. Every photon hitting your eye is a stimuli. Every scent in the air. Every sound.

A persons answer to the free will question is just a matter of intelligence. It is an unknowable. Therefore a logical person would not believe in free will, but not deny its possibility.

>>11362611
The fact that “free will” is useful as a psychological and social construct to regulate and encourage beneficial behavior (by providing a rationalization for feelings like “guilt”, “shame” and “pride”), is irrelevant to the semantic/ontological question of its conceptual possibility/truth.
I think the post somewhat misses the mark. (Except if you adhere to a pragmatist definition of truth)

>>11363122
It's not about rationalizations. Feelings like guilt, shame, and pride increase free will by helping you function in society. If you don't function well in society, you'll be limited by basic things like not having a house, not having food, not having stable relationships, etc. Things like that will limit your ability to navigate the world.
Free will only makes sense when you're talking about some entity/organism/agent and its desires, goals, or values. What does it mean for a rock to have free will? Nothing, because it does not want anything, in the broadest sense of the word.

Much of the discussion around free will seems to get stuck on the idea that something only exists if you can decompose it into its real parts, which completely discounts emergent properties. That's probably a failing of western education, because we've focused so much on the objective world/turth and so little on subjective truths.

yes but also no

>>11359947
>free will
>>>/x/
\thread

>>11359947
Everything is predetermined.

>>11359947
Neither. Regardless of determinism the true free will is impossible.

>>11363866
>It's not about rationalizations. Feelings like guilt, shame, and pride increase free will by helping you function in society. If you don't function well in society, you'll be limited by basic things like not having a house, not having food, not having stable relationships, etc. Things like that will limit your ability to navigate the world.

You seem to employ another definition of “free will” than I do.
I would describe what you call free will as freedom of action/political freedom. In particular positive political freedom (freedom to be able to do something/engage in the world in accordance with once own nature) as opposed to negative political freedom (freedom from external legal/societal constraints). I don’t have a problem with that, but wouldn’t call that free will. As Schopenhauer said: “We are[should be] free to do what we want [within reasonable limits], but we are not free to want what we want”

> Much of the discussion around free will seems to get stuck on the idea that something only exists if you can decompose it into its real parts, which completely discounts emergent properties.

I agree that there probably are emergent irreducible aspects of reality. But as you said, it’s hard to adequately describe them in our current scientific framework. As to whether there can be a plausible definition of free will as an emergent property, I’m agnostic.

>>11359950
Midwit
>>11359947
Both. Stop making these threads.
>>11360513
I hate you gif poster.

You have some free will but in my opinion our lives are like 80% determined by things that you can't choose because they exist before yo are born. For example the type of parents that you have and their influence in you, the country where you are born, the year, the social environment, the technology, etc.

>>11359947
Can u do things with ur money and shut the fuck up?

>>11365794
>“We are[should be] free to do what we want [within reasonable limits], but we are not free to want what we want”

We are to some extent free to want what we want as well. It's possible to realize a desire is harmful and try to get rid of it. Naturally we still can't "freely choose" in the inane "libertarian" terms, but there's no reason to care about that.

Free will doesn't exist. But it doesn't matter. The Universe is cyclical in nature. The Hindus got it right. It's time to YEET ourselves.

>>11361550
what if you flip a coin and always obey the coin?

>>11366425
Are you retarded? That changes nothing.