Do we truly have free will ?

Originally posted by Wertdagf
reply to post by ProtoplasmicTraveler

 

It does and did appear to me that we have free will in choosing our roles that are then bound by the fate the script has written for them. Can you wear blue or lavender to the funeral you must attend instead of black? Yes you sure can, but you still have to attend. Can you get a three bedroom instead of a one bedroom in the town your part calls for you to be in? Yes, you sure can. You still have to live in that town though. Can you pack two bags instead of one, on the day you have to move to the next town to the next act? Yes, but you still have to go that day. You get a little wiggle room to decide some relatively inconsequential things, the rest is all fate, fate, governed by the weight of the circumstances that propels you and compels you to pay heed and react.

There is no wiggle room. You are ignorant of how much your memories dictate course of action. Without memories there is no selection.... no knowledge and no desire. Your Experiances dictate the number of bags... or the color of your clothes. Nothing is random... everything happens for a reason, cause and effect are never broken throughout infinity.

I do not know enough about this to entirely agree. It depends on whether you are speaking earthly memories from your known existence in it, in time and space, or if you are including the possibility that pre physical manifestation memories exist and can be subconsciously pulled into play.

For instance, the first time a powerful psychic tried to invade and gain enough control of my mind to gleen information from it, I had no lifetime memory of how to defend against the intrusion and repel it and protect my inner most thoughts from being discovered during the course of it. Not through books, movies, or first hand knowledge. My decision in how to respond was instinctual as well as alarmingly effective in my opponents eyes.

Why did I choose to act and react that way, how did I know what to do, how did I know it would be the right decision in a case like that.

Memories can only aid you when encountering an experience that you have witnessed in some form before. They can also only help you to the extent your ability to recall them is effective.

I do like to think as a guy, any old color or style of shirt will do in a pinch.

I also like to think for every rule their must be at least one exception, otherwise why bother to make it a rule!

I think that variables exist, that time, space, matter are all fluid.

Most of the best actors in a movie or play take the script and addlib at least a little to make the production more entertaining. It's not exactly in the script, but it remains within the margin of error and doesn't alter the productions outcome.

I am sure my agent would have negotiated that much for me?

I am firing him when I get back if he didn't!

reply to post by ProtoplasmicTraveler


No one is mentaly attacking you......

How can you allow your mind to accept such rediculous stuff as reality. Were the symptoms of a mental vampire attack the chills, or a cough? Did you see jesus in your pancakes? Maybe it was the GFL playing mind tag. YOUR IT!

There are no past memories... only delusional people. Just like their are no vampires... only delusional people. No one can seem to grasp the creativity of the mind.

[edit on 22-3-2009 by Wertdagf]

Originally posted by Wertdagf
reply to post by ProtoplasmicTraveler

 

No one is mentaly attacking you......

How can you allow your mind to accept such rediculous stuff as reality. Were the symptoms of a mental vampire attack the chills, or a cough? Did you see jesus in your pancakes? Maybe it was the GFL playing mind tag. YOUR IT!

There are no past memories... only delusional people. Just like their are no vampires... only delusional people. No one can seem to grasp the creativity of the mind.

[edit on 22-3-2009 by Wertdagf]

Actually yes, someone did. In fact he was a practicing Master of Zen Budhist meditational techniques, a former U.S. Army Special Forces Officer, and at the time an administrator of a government run facility, and incredibly interested to know the extent to which I had corrupted the institution and orginization in question, and who might be aiding me and why in the endeavor.

I starred your previous post because you seemed to have some inclination to share productively, to both teach and learn on such subjects.

I fail to see how your blanket dismisal and suppositions in regards to this individual case, arrived upon with absolutely no background information let alone detailed background information could be supported or warranted beyond perhaps your own refusal to better consider your own theories, or a desire to deter people from seeking a vaster array of knowledge on this subject.

Silly person, Trix are for kids.



[edit on 22/3/09 by ProtoplasmicTraveler]

reply to post by ProtoplasmicTraveler

Actually yes, someone did. In fact he was a practicing Master of Zen Budhist meditational techniques, a former U.S. Army Special Forces Officer, and at the time an administrator of a government run facility, and incredibly interested to know the extent to which I had corrupted the institution and orginization in question, and who might be aiding me and why in the endeavor.

You are going to cause the people who love you so much pain. Atleast this may stand as an example to those who are following this path to reach into their mind and separate their delusions from reality.

Originally posted by Wertdagf
reply to post by ProtoplasmicTraveler

 

Actually yes, someone did. In fact he was a practicing Master of Zen Budhist meditational techniques, a former U.S. Army Special Forces Officer, and at the time an administrator of a government run facility, and incredibly interested to know the extent to which I had corrupted the institution and orginization in question, and who might be aiding me and why in the endeavor.

You are going to cause the people who love you so much pain. Atleast this may stand as an example to those who are following this path to reach into their mind and separate their delusions from reality.

Now just who exactly is it you imagine loves me and to what end and purpose you fancy that this would cause them pain?

The particular encounter I am referring to in this example happened to me as a young teenager at the time being persecuted for my political beliefs deemed to be subversive by the state.

It was employed as a method after all more traditional methods had been exhausted in attempts to force my submission.

It was an absolutely wordless encounter that lasted a quarter of an hour, initiated by my oponent by locking and freezing eye contact. It took me that long to disengage the lock, while simotaneously concocting lie after lie to the questions I could hear him asking in my mind with his thoughts.

Not one single word or syllable had been audibly uttered before he initiated this attack. He deliberately used the initial prolonged silence to entice me into establishing direct eye contact to look for clues, as to why the meeting he had personally called for and scheduled had remained silent and wordless up to that point, which was a period of 5 minutes.

Upon finally breaking eye contact after 15 minutes of trying, he spoke almost immediately and said "How did you manage to do that, no one has ever broken my gaze like that before?" I greeted that with silence of my own and a shrug of my shoulders to feign I had no idea what he was talking about. He then dissapointingly added "Everything you just told me was a lie wasn't it?" I continued to feign ignorance and replied "I haven't told you anything, these are the first words you have spoken since I got here 20 minutes ago" that only caused more dissapointment and he then asked "Who has trained you to be so powerful" and then asked rhetorically if it was a specific member of the staff he seemed to suspect might have been able to accomplish such a thing. He followed that up with "I shall not underestimate him our you again in the future" my demeanor and stance being what it was he then added "You should really consider talking about this now with me, I can teach you far more than he can". I still continued to feign absolutely no recognition of what had just transpired. In all honesty I was truly terrified by what had just occured but felt it was in my best interest to remain silent and feign absolute ignorane.

I did later ask the staff member he has accused of training me, why such a reference to him had been made. Me smiled from ear to ear and simply said "You beat him didn't you! I had every faith you could" he then even smiled wider and proclaimed "I can't wait to collect the five dollars I bet him and rub it in his arrogant face!" I just stared at him dumb founded and he looked back at me and asked "Do you want to talk about it" to which I replied "No, not particuarly" to which he thoughtfully replied "I sure don't blame you" and headed off to collect his winnings.

There are more things in Heaven and Earth than it appears you are comfortable talking about or acknowledging my friend.

The reality was, I was winning more battles in a war I was fighting much better than anyone imagined I could or should be able to.

It was causing the people tasked and profiting to ensure my submission no small amount of embarassment or inconvenience either.

That I continued to win every battle moving forward to the point that each and every person and institution engaging me in them had to withdraw and admitt defeat is nothing that went undocumented nor unwitnessed by those with various degrees of emotion for me running to both ends of the spectrum.

That someone might so foolishly dismiss that as the product of a deranged mind incapable of grasping the fine aspects of reality bespeaks of someone who is either a unwitting prisoner to his own perception of it, or a jailer of others he wishes to consign to that prison.

Your attempts at deflection suggest the latter, and I can only wonder how much that prison has led to causing so many unwarranted grief.

From this and your other posts I gather you favor a world where war, might makes right, and noone ever questioning the edicts and mechanisms of those in power, should never be questioned regardless of the effectiveness or level of barbarity employed in them.

How very surprising anyone would wish such a reality upon another, let alone actively be engaged to make sure no one might escape it.

One could only speculate what such a mentality would hope to prosper in such a malignant undertaking?

I bet you have a deflective answer for that too?

Silly person Trix are for kids!

Originally posted by ProtoplasmicTraveler

Originally posted by Wertdagf
reply to post by ProtoplasmicTraveler

 

Actually yes, someone did. In fact he was a practicing Master of Zen Budhist meditational techniques, a former U.S. Army Special Forces Officer, and at the time an administrator of a government run facility, and incredibly interested to know the extent to which I had corrupted the institution and orginization in question, and who might be aiding me and why in the endeavor.

You are going to cause the people who love you so much pain. Atleast this may stand as an example to those who are following this path to reach into their mind and separate their delusions from reality.

Now just who exactly is it you imagine loves me and to what end and purpose you fancy that this would cause them pain?

The particular encounter I am referring to in this example happened to me as a young teenager at the time being persecuted for my political beliefs deemed to be subversive by the state.

It was employed as a method after all more traditional methods had been exhausted in attempts to force my submission.

It was an absolutely wordless encounter that lasted a quarter of an hour, initiated by my oponent by locking and freezing eye contact. It took me that long to disengage the lock, while simotaneously concocting lie after lie to the questions I could hear him asking in my mind with his thoughts.

Not one single word or syllable had been audibly uttered before he initiated this attack. He deliberately used the initial prolonged silence to entice me into establishing direct eye contact to look for clues, as to why the meeting he had personally called for and scheduled had remained silent and wordless up to that point, which was a period of 5 minutes.

Upon finally breaking eye contact after 15 minutes of trying, he spoke almost immediately and said "How did you manage to do that, no one has ever broken my gaze like that before?" I greeted that with silence of my own and a shrug of my shoulders to feign I had no idea what he was talking about. He then dissapointingly added "Everything you just told me was a lie wasn't it?" I continued to feign ignorance and replied "I haven't told you anything, these are the first words you have spoken since I got here 20 minutes ago" that only caused more dissapointment and he then asked "Who has trained you to be so powerful" and then asked rhetorically if it was a specific member of the staff he seemed to suspect might have been able to accomplish such a thing. He followed that up with "I shall not underestimate him our you again in the future" my demeanor and stance being what it was he then added "You should really consider talking about this now with me, I can teach you far more than he can". I still continued to feign absolutely no recognition of what had just transpired. In all honesty I was truly terrified by what had just occured but felt it was in my best interest to remain silent and feign absolute ignorane.

I did later ask the staff member he has accused of training me, why such a reference to him had been made. Me smiled from ear to ear and simply said "You beat him didn't you! I had every faith you could" he then even smiled wider and proclaimed "I can't wait to collect the five dollars I bet him and rub it in his arrogant face!" I just stared at him dumb founded and he looked back at me and asked "Do you want to talk about it" to which I replied "No, not particuarly" to which he thoughtfully replied "I sure don't blame you" and headed off to collect his winnings.

There are more things in Heaven and Earth than it appears you are comfortable talking about or acknowledging my friend.

The reality was, I was winning more battles in a war I was fighting much better than anyone imagined I could or should be able to.

It was causing the people tasked and profiting to ensure my submission no small amount of embarassment or inconvenience either.

That I continued to win every battle moving forward to the point that each and every person and institution engaging me in them had to withdraw and admitt defeat is nothing that went undocumented nor unwitnessed by those with various degrees of emotion for me running to both ends of the spectrum.

That someone might so foolishly dismiss that as the product of a deranged mind incapable of grasping the fine aspects of reality bespeaks of someone who is either a unwitting prisoner to his own perception of it, or a jailer of others he wishes to consign to that prison.

Your attempts at deflection suggest the latter, and I can only wonder how much that prison has led to causing so many unwarranted grief.

From this and your other posts I gather you favor a world where war, might makes right, and noone ever questioning the edicts and mechanisms of those in power, should never be questioned regardless of the effectiveness or level of barbarity employed in them.

How very surprising anyone would wish such a reality upon another, let alone actively be engaged to make sure no one might escape it.

One could only speculate what such a mentality would hope to prosper in such a malignant undertaking?

I bet you have a deflective answer for that too?

Silly person Trix are for kids!

More proof for those of you out their allowing imagination to overide logic. Please promise me one thing.... do not bring children into this world while you are under this survailence. Please let this only affect you.

reply to post by Wertdagf

More proof for those of you out their allowing imagination to overide logic. Please promise me one thing.... do not bring children into this world while you are under this survailence. Please let this only affect you.

You are funny! Too late by the way. In fact I was already busy fathering my first of six children at that tender age.

As far as logic, I have one of the keenest logistical minds, and political ones you might ever stumble in to. In fact I am highly respected and accomplished in every thing I do.

Now believe me when I say, I am one of the few people to enjoy that. Thankfully it affects lots, and lots and lots of people!

As far as surveillance? That's the kind of thing that the powers that be learned a long time ago is likely to tick me off.

I am not looking to lead a jail break my friend. I just refuse to live in the one you are so eager to maintain.

They are maintained and inhabited by folks like you for a reason. They find some comfort in being the pawns and cannon fodder of a world their inability to utilize logic makes them ideal for.

Very sad. Personally I am against cruelty to animals. I tend to really dote on my pets and friends and loved ones.

I can see that's not a concept welcome in your reality.

Silly person.

Trix are for kids!

I would say there's only the illusion of free will, simply because we are probably living inside an illusionary simulation within a quantum reality where every conceivable outcome has already been calculated. Therefore everything we do is already predetermined. Then again I may be wrong.

reply to post by Wertdagf

More proof for those of you out their allowing imagination to overide logic. Please promise me one thing.... do not bring children into this world while you are under this survailence. Please let this only affect you.

Oh by the way my friend. Your entreaty in this regard is highly indicative of the fact that you do believe free will exists.

Your original post to me stated clearly, that you do not believe free will exists, that everything is fated down to the last little nuance.

If you truly believed that to be true, you would not waste the energy to ask me even for the sake of intellectual mockery to make a specific personal choice that would lead to a preferred outcome in your opinion.

I would simply have no power to do so in your version of reality, and your belief regarding freewill.

So you have clearly demonstrated that you personally do not believe in the theory you are disingenuously foisting upon others in absolute terms.

This appears to indicate the Zionist hand that espouses Freud’s coc aine induced psycho babble nonsense of humans lacking freewill and not even desirous of its burdens. Though Jung and Freud’s other contemporaries and peers exposed this as the ramblings of a drug addicted, sexual deviant who suffered from incestuous predilections, it has never stopped the Zionists from developing it into an entire industry assumed to be primarily for the sake of monetary profit.

Yet obviously it does not take a great intellect to surmise the political usefulness too in promoting this concept as a tool to convince people that freewill is nonexistent and to comply with what ever they are told.

Next time you engage in what is essentially a battle of wits, try to not engage in it so poorly armed.

You have through your own words, completely discredited your entire argument.

Silly person, Trix are for kids!

Isnt it true that every day you make your own decisions, what to eat, what to wear, where to go, what to do so wouldnt that conclude that you have the ability to decide your own fate. If you can decide your own fate arent you free from outside control.



[edit on 22-3-2009 by caballero]

Free will is just a way for people to feel good about hating their enemies. It assumes that there is an "x-factor" aside from one's environment and genes that makes them act how they do, which is just not true and couldn't be true.

reply to post by Donnie Darko

Could Mother Teresa POSSIBLY be evil?

If human beings can be called evil, then Mother Teresa definitely was.

She squandered the millions she received as donations to her Little Sisters of the Poor on endowing chapels and shrines while the people for whom those moneys were intended had to endure a slow death in the bare, comfortless hospices of the charity. In other words, she stole from the poor to give to the rich - her church.

She also accepted donations from criminals; in other words, she took money from them which was not theirs to give.

And let us not forget her acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize (which she was scandalously unworthy of), in which she told the assembled great and good that abortion - abortion! - was the greatest threat to world peace. Who knows how many people she condemned to miserable lives with those influential words?

The Fanatic, Fraudulent Mother Teresa

However, since I do not believe in free will, I do not believe Mother Teresa, or anyone else, is evil. There is no such thing as good or evil. There are only right and wrong actions, and people are just people.

Originally posted by ProtoplasmicTraveler

Originally posted by Wertdagf

Originally posted by ProtoplasmicTraveler
You get a little wiggle room to decide some relatively inconsequential things, the rest is all fate, fate, governed by the weight of the circumstances that propels you and compels you to pay heed and react.

There is no wiggle room. You are ignorant of how much your memories dictate course of action. Without memories there is no selection.... no knowledge and no desire.

I do not know enough about this to entirely agree.

Well done, ProtoplasmicTraveler. Don't let the hard determinists bully you.

Actually, what you're talking about has a name and a respectable philosophical pedigree. It is known as provisional free will and it was argued for by David Hume.

It depends on whether you are speaking earthly memories from your known existence in it, in time and space, or if you are including the possibility that pre physical manifestation memories exist and can be subconsciously pulled into play.

Let's not zoom off into the wild blue yonder just yet, okay? Start by considering this life. Every decision you take in it is based on three things, not one as Wertdagf would have us believe. These three things are

• your circumstances at this particular moment.
  
  
• your personal history, and
  
  
• your instincts, which are hardwired into you.

And now look:

• You cannot control the world you find yourself in at any given moment. You might have changed that world through some earlier action, but that moment is now past and you're stuck with the moment you've got.
  
  
• You cannot - obviously - go back in time and change your personal history. And even if you could, you'd never know you'd done it, which is effectively the same as not being able to do it.
  
  
• Likewise, you cannot change your genetic inheritance, so you're stuck with the instincts you've got.

Since you have no control over these factors, you have no free will. Any decision you make has to be dictated by them, or else it will be a random, meaningless decision.

However, this does give us, as you say, be a tiny bit of wiggle room. If a choice has to be made that will result in equivalent outcomes, then you are free to make that choice without restriction. However, it is arguable - as I'm sure Wertdagf would point out if I didn't - that such 'free will' is barely worth having, because the decisions are about meaningless things - really trivial, really meaningless. Your example - what colours you choose to wear to a funeral - certainly doesn't qualify. Our clothes are highly efficient signalling mechanisms: both the colours you choose to wear and how you look wearing them will communicate stuff about you to the other mourners, whose opinion of you will be coloured - so to speak - by these perceptions. Not a meaningless decision at all.

As for past lives, higher-dimensional spaces and other existences, we can design them as we please, to give ourselves free will or not as the whim takes us, since we have no way of knowing what conditions prevail in them or even (pardon my scepticism) whether they exist at all.

reply to post by organism315
[more

Yes, more or less you've got the jest of it. Everything is predetermined, "hard determined" as you said.

Now my question, is since we are hard determined, is there any point in thinking about free will?

Most people are understandably in favor of free will, it gives life a sense of purpose and makes them feel in control.

If we have free will, and we are in control then we are in big trouble. As far as I know, Mankind has the least self control, and if the future were left up to any Joe Blogg out there, some idiot would surely botch it up for the rest of us and wipe us out of existance by choosing to wake up on the wrong side of bed.

As depressing as Hard determinism may seem, it is surely the safer bet. And after all, just because you have no choice in the matter doesn't mean that the future will not turn out exactly the way you want it. In fact, maybe if you go with the flow, all your dreams may come true without you lifting a finger. Or maybe there is free will and you ccould excercise your free will to bring about your downfall. The choice is up to you.

i personally think that there are paths set in front of us and we merely choose which one to take

now how the paths come about is a much more complicated issue i wont go into because of laziness, unless anyone would be interested in hearing it

Who wants to know if we have free will?
Well it is easy to find out, you just have to dictate a task to yourself and see if you can achieve it.
Try this:
Ask your mind to think about nothing for 30 minutes?
And I mean nothing at all; thinking about nothing for these laps of time is a proof of how strong is your free will…
Now, yes someone in this thread said that we have no much of a conviction to fulfill our free will.
I think he is right on this.

Kacou.

Galen strawsen said something along the lines of: One possessing true freewill is a being able to choose from an infinite number of choices, hence possessing, in memory, an infinite amount of time. I think that your general I.Q. determines how much of a pleasure inducing illusion you may cast over hard determinism, having an infinite I.Q. being the only route to true freewill. Because having more brainpower you would have more timelines to choose from, a smart person chooses between A. B. C. D. E. or F., a stupid person chooses between just A. B. or C., an infinite person chooses between A- infinite. Someone able to choose even from A. to Z. would still be a determined being and thus would be prdictable, however much harder. Any current life expierience would be irrelevant given that the infinite person(mind) already has taken every path, it would just be a question of what way he or she wants to live this time, true freewill.Such a being would be the only mathematically unpredictable thing in the universe. Us on the other hand do not have the luxury of knowing all time and so we are slave to our already infinitesimal expierience. We have a weak, predictive nature (in choice anyways). Many have called this grounds for suicide.

Help me if I have said something ignorant my I.Q. is only107

reply to post by R3KR


Some interesting neuroscience regarding unconscious determinants of free decisions in the human brain.
Nature Neuroscience April 13th. 2008.

These recent studies follow Benjamin Libets work on detecting brain signals which preceded conscious decisions .

The researchers found that it was possible to predict from brain signals which option participants would take already seven seconds before they consciously made their decision.

Normally researchers look at what happens when the decision is made, but not at what happens several seconds before.

The fact that decisions can be predicted so long before they are made is a astonishing finding.

Max Planck Society

This is a fascinating study . But the researchers, Haynes and colleagues note that the study does not rule out free will.

"Our study shows that decisions are unconsciously prepared much longer ahead than previously thought. But we do not know yet where the final decision is made.
We need to investigate whether a decision prepared by these brain areas can still be reversed."

Marcel Brass, PhD, of the Max Planck Institute

"The capacity to withhold an action that we have prepared but reconsidered is an important distinction between intelligent and impulsive behavior," says Brass, "and also between humans and other animals."

News-Medical.net

reply to post by bigheadjay

Do we truly have free will ?

Here's kind of the way it seems to me -

Free Will

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/f3e12b7b93a9.jpg[/atsimg]
Source : Gurdjieff - Wellbeloved

reply to post by Astyanax


It would only be a part of a larger causality.

EVEN IF (which it doesnt) memory before life exists. Can you not see the many mental disorders you are making much worse. You magicaly pull memorys out of your etheric ass. Your god doesnt exist... sigh.

you dont have free will and spouting new age bull crap ISNT logic...

[edit on 10-4-2009 by Wertdagf]