Free will is a hoax.

How does one define free will?

I always assumed it is the ability to make a decision, without direct outside influence, based purely on your own thoughts and.. well.. will.. of course.

But why is this such a big concept?

Even though our decisions may not be based on direct influence, they are always based on indirect influence.
Everything we do, we do because of our previous experiences and received influences.

Every decision we make is based on causality, so it is never truly "Free".. is it?

Unfortunately this also means that we don't really have a say in anything.
All of our lives have been pre determined since the beginning of time, and there is nothing we can do to change our ''Destiny'', because everything that happens in our linear timeline is subject to causality.

Who says it's a big concept? You control your own actions. Seems pretty simple to me. You can be influenced by past experiences if you let them influence you. You have a pessimistic view of human nature. I just chose to drink chocolate milk instead of orange juice even though I know that orange juice is better for me. Chocolate milk sounded better. I feel like I had some control over that decision.

pauladaballa777
Who says it's a big concept? You control your own actions. Seems pretty simple to me. You can be influenced by past experiences if you let them influence you. You have a pessimistic view of human nature. I just chose to drink chocolate milk instead of orange juice even though I know that orange juice is better for me. Chocolate milk sounded better. I feel like I had some control over that decision.

You can't simply ignore your past experiences when making a decision.
Your past experiences make you who you are.
Without them you wouldn't even know how to open the fridge.
Free will never made you get some chocolate milk, you were thirsty and your tastebuds react better/differently to chocolate milk than orange juice.
So in reality, you didn't have much control over your actions.

I don't think i'm being pessimistic, IMO it simply can't be any other way.
I'm just trying to figure out what people think free will means.

reply to post by Skaffa

I am no expert on this, but it seems to me that free will is usually associated with moral choices, that is, Right vs. Wrong, or consideration of others over the Self.

Maybe the Good/Evil decision is actually the only true choice that humans can actually make of their own volition, ie, freely. This ability may even be the divine spark which sets us humans (and other intelligent beings) apart from the rest of nature.

Of course, there are many external forces which try to influence the final decision either way, but if you peel these away, you get to a point, deep in the psyche, where the brain has to make a totally balanced, knife-edged choice: to do Good, or to do Bad.

Is this final choice already determined ? - triggered by a sort of "butterfly effect" welling-up from the subconcious, where the butterfly in this case is some random quantum fluctuation in some neural connection somewhere in the brain?

Did Hitler's past experiences make him commit genocide? I understand what your point is OP, and I know you don't think you're being pessimistic. You think you're just being factual. I think your opinion on the reality of human nature is pessimistic though. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Christians, arguably the biggest advocates of the free will idea, say that all humans are stained by original sin.

reply to post by Skaffa

All of our lives have been pre determined since the beginning of time

So in your opinion everything you have written in this thread was determined at the moment of the big bang or perhaps before that? You do realize if that's true then we cannot technically blame rapists and murderers for their actions because they were destined to do the things they do? Fortunately though, physics says you are wrong. Quantum mechanics is acausal, meaning things can happen without a direct cause which led up to that thing happening.

I wrote a thread very much related to this subject not long ago:

Determinism and Consciousness

reply to post by Skaffa


B b b but what about jesus and the kitties?
Yep, free will is a feeling and nothing real.
I believe in a supreme being, who knows all and sees all.
If that is the case, he/she knows the end.
Including all things that I will do.
This is a scary thing for folks and "the establishment" to accept, as with this being true, there is NO sin!
Folks, do as you please, you are truly free!

reply to post by g146541

This is a scary thing for folks and "the establishment" to accept

On the contrary, I'm sure the establishment would love us to believe we have no free will.

reply to post by ChaoticOrder


We always have free will and choices - sometimes it's the choice of 2 bads, but we still have the choice....

Reminds me of the movie Devil's Advocate - where Keanue shoots himself in the head - free will....

pauladaballa777
Who says it's a big concept? You control your own actions. Seems pretty simple to me. You can be influenced by past experiences if you let them influence you. You have a pessimistic view of human nature. I just chose to drink chocolate milk instead of orange juice even though I know that orange juice is better for me. Chocolate milk sounded better. I feel like I had some control over that decision.

What if they stop selling orange juice and only stock chocolate milk?

ChaoticOrder
reply to post by g146541

 

This is a scary thing for folks and "the establishment" to accept

On the contrary, I'm sure the establishment would love us to believe we have no free will.

I disagree, if people truly knew they could not stave off fate, they would become emboldened.
We all say that when your time is up, it is up.
However, I don't think people actually fully believe this, "it cannot happen to me" or "this cannot happen here" mentality that I have seen before, usually directly after a catastrophe.
Yes, it can and did happen here, and it did happen to you.
You are free to live your life unafraid!

reply to post by g146541

if people truly knew they could not stave off fate, they would become emboldened.

That is a contradictory statement.

You are free to live your life unafraid!

If I knew I had no power to change the things that were going to happen to me I would be extremely paranoid about those things and extremely disheartened that I had no ability to change them.

captainradon
reply to post by Skaffa

 

I am no expert on this, but it seems to me that free will is usually associated with moral choices, that is, Right vs. Wrong, or consideration of others over the Self.

Maybe the Good/Evil decision is actually the only true choice that humans can actually make of their own volition, ie, freely. This ability may even be the divine spark which sets us humans (and other intelligent beings) apart from the rest of nature.

Of course, there are many external forces which try to influence the final decision either way, but if you peel these away, you get to a point, deep in the psyche, where the brain has to make a totally balanced, knife-edged choice: to do Good, or to do Bad.

Is this final choice already determined ? - triggered by a sort of "butterfly effect" welling-up from the subconscious, where the butterfly in this case is some random quantum fluctuation in some neural connection somewhere in the brain?

Does a baby, consciously / subconsciously know right from wrong?
Maybe.. but it would know because it has experienced something good/bad that has left a good/bad impression and thus this impression would be the source of its future good/bad decisions.
Morals are taught, and even if we were born with them, something must have caused our DNA to be embedded with them, no?

ChaoticOrder
reply to post by Skaffa

 

All of our lives have been pre determined since the beginning of time

So in your opinion everything you have written in this thread was determined at the moment of the big bang or perhaps before that? You do realize if that's true then we cannot technically blame rapists and murderers for their actions because they were destined to do the things they do? Fortunately though, physics says you are wrong. Quantum mechanics is acausal, meaning things can happen without a direct cause which led up to that thing happening.

I wrote a thread very much related to this subject not long ago:

Determinism and Consciousness

edit on 20/12/2013 by ChaoticOrder because: (no reason given)

Technically no, we couldn't blame criminals for their actions.. but of course that doesn't mean that we shouldn't punish them.

Your thread is an interesting read, but how can we be sure that randomness cannot be affected?
After you manipulate something that is random, will it behave like it was never manipulated, or will it behave differently, following the rules of causality?

And how prevalent is randomness in our decisions?
It's clearly not the only factor, if it was i would probably not be posting here, i could be too busy having staring contests with pies for all i know.. nothing would make any sense.

Free will could be real, but i think it would only represent a tiny fraction of the cause,
barely having any effect.


(skip to 1:53)

ChaoticOrder
reply to post by g146541

 

You are free to live your life unafraid!

If I knew I had no power to change the things that were going to happen to me I would be extremely paranoid about those things and extremely disheartened that I had no ability to change them.

But you do! And most likely you will change them.
The only difference is that you will never actually make a choice.
I would only be disheartened if i were to already know my choice beforehand.

reply to post by Skaffa

Free will could be real, but i think it would only represent a tiny fraction of the cause,
barely having any effect.

It doesn't matter how large or small the degree of our free will is, if we have any free will than that allows us to make our own decisions to a certain extent (regardless of how much our decisions are being influenced by other factors).

But you do! And most likely you will change them.
The only difference is that you will never actually make a choice.

This is another contradictory statement. If I cannot make free choices then I cannot change anything because my entire future is set in stone and there's nothing I can do to change it because I cannot do anything I wasn't predestined to do.

ChaoticOrder
reply to post by Skaffa

 

It doesn't matter how large or small the degree of our free will is, if we have any free will than that allows us to make our own decisions to a certain extent (regardless of how much our decisions are being influenced by other factors).

True, but we still wouldn't really be able to judge that rapist, his free will would have had very little say his actions.

This is another contradictory statement. If I cannot make free choices then I cannot change anything because my entire future is set in stone and there's nothing I can do to change it because I cannot do anything I wasn't predestined to do.

Please show me my first contradiction.

How could you not change anything? could you not eat an apple?
You may not be the sole cause for change, but your previous experiences can be.

reply to post by Skaffa

his free will would have had very little say his actions.

As long as he has enough free will to stop himself from doing what he knows is wrong then that's enough. And I think we do have enough free will to prevent ourselves from doing things we know are wrong. We just need to pay attention to that part of us which allows us to think before we act, instead of just listening to our instincts and emotions.

How could you not change anything? could you not eat an apple?

If I have no free will then I ate that apple because I was destined to eat that apple from the start of time. You said it yourself. If I can choose to do something which was not determined at the start of time then that means I have free will.

ChaoticOrder
reply to post by Skaffa

 

As long as he has enough free will to stop himself from doing what he knows is wrong then that's enough. And I think we do have enough free will to prevent ourselves from doing things we know are wrong. We just need to pay attention to that part of us which allows us to think before we act, instead of just listening to our instincts and emotions.

You are talking about knowing, thinking, instincts and emotions.
All these things are only affected by experience / predetermined human behavior.

ChaoticOrder
reply to post by Skaffa

 

If I have no free will than I ate that apple because I was destined to eat that apple from the start of time. You said it yourself. If I can choose to do something which was not determined at the start of time then that means I have free will.

Yes, you are incapable of changing your destiny, but you are not incapable of change.

Where lies the problem? Is destiny really such a bad thing? Why?
Free will / Causality.. Does it really change anything?

reply to post by Skaffa

You are talking about knowing, thinking, instincts and emotions.
All these things are only affected by experience / predetermined human behavior.

Yes, and there is also a highly chaotic and imaginative part of our thoughts which allows us to do things like create original works of art or invent new devices which have never been created before. These types of thoughts do not have to be determined by our past experiences.

Where lies the problem? Is destiny really such a bad thing? Why?
Free will / Causality.. Does it really change anything?

Because if causality is true (which it isn't according to science) then it means we aren't even conscious beings, it means that consciousness is just an illusion, and the only reason we are typing out this conversation right now is because events that happened in the past led up to my fingers tapping the keyboard in this specific way, not because I have decided by my own free will to type these words, but because it was determined at the start of time, and the universe unfolded like a perfect clockwork machine to eventually produce this conversation in a deterministic fashion.

A very similar thread to;
www.abovetopsecret.com...

All it comes down to is one's belief.

If you believe you have free will and that you control your destiny... Then that's what you have.
If you believe that your destiny is predetermined and that no matter which choice you make will effect that Destiny... That's also another viable option.

To whom ever claimed physicists / scientists have proved Destiny is not real... Poppy cock.
In the infinite words of Ygritte... "You know nothing".

And it is true... We humans know barely enough to keep us from annihilating ourselves; let alone the audacity to say is what in the matters of the Universe.


We make the world around us... Be it in the decisions we make to what we will to happen.

In the thread linked at the start... My stance is that our future is already predetermined.
Our life is already mapped out and all our decisions accounted for.
Your end goal has already been chosen by yourself before you started this life. (Not at the start of the Big Bang)

Your decisions throughout your life have always been influenced by this even though you don't even realize.
So no matter what decision you make... You made it. You made them all and all the outcomes are by your doing.
Your free will is expressed to its totality.


Ultimately... No one can tell you what to believe or what moral compass to follow.
All you can do is go with your gut.

reply to post by Skaffa


There is nothing 'hoax' about it. In fact the very word suggests that free will is a deliberate trick perpetrated on us and that is plainly nonsense. A mature person understands that choice is influenced by circumstances and that the two are not mutually exclusive.
An abused woman may feel unable to leave her husband, a slave or a prisoner will be severely restricted, a disabled person may be unable to run etc etc..
To think that free will means you can do anything, anytime unrestricted by peer pressure or morals or circumstances or environment or even individual mindset is to misunderstand the nature of free will.