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Originally posted by TheBandit795
reply to post by sulaw
Yes there is still a choice. It's primarily done unconsciously. But take note of what I said earlier. We don't have free will in the way we define free will to be. We make choices, but those choices are almost always made before we are even aware of them.
Originally posted by bbracken677
True enough, but we have not been "creating" as long as nature has been.
What will we be capable of in a couple billion years if we survive and are left to our own devices?
This is why the thought of alien beings from outer space trip me out...they are just as likely to be millions of years ahead of us, technologically speaking, as they are just a couple of thousand years...in fact they are probably more likely to be hundreds of thousands of years ahead of us than just a couple thousand.
It totally boggles my mind thinking about what that would mean....look at the advances in technology in just the last 100 years. Or just the last 50 years...
Originally posted by Symbiot
Might also consider the social aspect of things. When we look a thousand or so years into our past we consider our way of life barbaric and brutal. If alien beings thousands of years ahead of us were to land, what would they think of us? Not speaking technologically, but from the social aspect would they look at us as we look at the Romans and Egyptians? Would they consider us callous and brutal?
Imagine if you were an alien living as you do today on another planet and had the capability to visit earth as it was a thousand years ago. Would you even say hello knowing that there's a good chance they'd just consider you un-roman and therefore villify, capture and enslave you?
Originally posted by NewAgeMan
reply to post by TheBandit795
Were you compelled to make the OP in this thread to tell us that we don't have free will?
Originally posted by bbracken677
Yeah...I didnt even want to get into that. Generally society has changed with technology. Not going to say for better or for worse, but it is different.
We believe our society today is better and more progressive (from strictly a societal standard) but we are also looking at it through our own trained perceptions. Is our society truly better than say, the societies of the North American Indians? Is our way truly better than that of the Incas? What about Ancient Greek society?
I am not so sure we have advanced so much as just adapted to a more technological environment.
If we continue on our current trends will we become totally cut off from others except via whatever media is predominant in any point in our future? Will we become a society of hermits? Our needs provided for according to our skills and no real need to enter the "real world"?
Originally posted by akushla99
reply to post by vethumanbeing
Question beg.
All information is good information...
A question easily dodged...Of what use is information? (...and it matters not whether you 'believe' the free will illusion or non-illusion, in any form you choose to accept it [presumably using some other fabled 'agent' within the construct of phsychological and chemical processes - 'Anyone can make up any crap and make it sound legit'])...
If any are of the opinion that the information is there to be unmanipulated, subconsciously massaged by ethereal ghost-in-a-machine type forces (that are as little understood by 'white coated's' and the lay man), and that the information (essentially of feedback-loop nature)...has no goal/purpose (...and this somehow independant of preferences, choices, will)...you are quite FREE to accept this...and 'stuff' will happen TO you...therebey removing any responsibility, through the freedom to CHOOSE...
Talk about painting themselves into a corner...and saying, 'it was because of the walls, that I'm in the corner...'...'and I didn't make the walls, so it's not of my choosing...'...