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Free will is an illusion and the biggest con ever.

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    #122
    NipNip
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 656 ✭✭✭NipNip


    wretcheddomain wrote: »
    So your DNA has programmed you to say at a future date that you would question its programming.

    Determinism is synonymous with philosophical bullsh1t. How can I disprove determinism? Well, look at radioactive decay; there's a process right there that has no determined path of decay. Look at quantum mechanics, uncertainty built into the fabric of matter itself. If there's uncertainty at the fundamental level, then there's no reason to assume determinism at the macro level.

    Problem solved; don't know what took the philosophers and theologians so long.

    Because you can't find a link, does not mean that one does not exist


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    #123
    debit2credit
    Closed Accounts Posts: 192 ✭✭debit2credit


    NipNip wrote: »
    Because you can't find a link, does not mean that one does not exist

    And nobody minds that so long as determinists recognise that it is an article of faith until the science catches up with their "advanced DNA"....


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    #124
    Snowpavlova
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 30 ✭Snowpavlova


    debit2credit wrote: »
    And nobody minds that so long as determinists recognise that it is an article of faith until the science catches up with their "advanced DNA"....

    Cause and effect is accepted, the burden is on you to prove that processes exist such that cause and effect don't apply.


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    #125
    Macavity.
    Closed Accounts Posts: 2,745 ✭✭✭Macavity.


    Ted_YNWA wrote: »
    If I murdered someone, I can claim that my DNA made me do it.

    Would be laughed out of every courthouse in the land with that defence.

    Judge would send me on numerous mental health studies.

    Wasn't that the plot to an SVU episode before?


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    #126
    Young Blood
    Closed Accounts Posts: 393 ✭✭Young Blood


    debit2credit wrote: »
    Important to whom?

    To our genetic make up.


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    #127
    rolliepoley
    Closed Accounts Posts: 2,874 ✭✭✭rolliepoley


    Its all one big test.


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    #128
    .jacksparrow.
    Closed Accounts Posts: 5,428 ✭✭✭.jacksparrow.


    Hotfail.com wrote: »
    But only one thing can ever happen? But I could have chosen to do something else if I wanted to.

    Is the argument here really that because you can only choose to do one thing at a specific time that it's impossible you could ever have chosen to do otherwise?


    No you were only ever going to do that outcome, it was never gonna be another choice because it only happend one way.

    Everything that happens was always going to happen, there was never another outcome.

    Like when someone says if only I chose to do something differ I could have been a millionaire or whatever.

    That could never have happend.


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    #129
    .jacksparrow.
    Closed Accounts Posts: 5,428 ✭✭✭.jacksparrow.


    debit2credit wrote: »
    Why? Do you believe that you have no moral responsibility because you have no free will?

    Nope we do have moral responsabilitiy in the sense if we do something bad and see the consequences and try not to do it again.

    But why do people continue to do bad things if they know they cause bad consequences?


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    #130
    JC01
    Registered Users Posts: 591 ✭✭✭JC01


    .jacksparrow. wrote: »
    No you were only ever going to do that outcome, it was never gonna be another choice because it only happend one way.

    Everything that happens was always going to happen, there was never another outcome.

    Like when someone says if only I chose to do something differ I could have been a millionaire or whatever.

    That could never have happend.

    The mind boggles at how much free time you have to come up with that crac.

    Simple one for ya; if my DNA predetermines what I'm gonna say/do for my life how can it allow for the variable of other people? E.g if I marry one person rather than another wont that totally change these outcomes you say we have no control over?


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    #131
    .jacksparrow.
    Closed Accounts Posts: 5,428 ✭✭✭.jacksparrow.


    JC01 wrote: »
    The mind boggles at how much free time you have to come up with that crac.

    Simple one for ya; if my DNA predetermines what I'm gonna say/do for my life how can it allow for the variable of other people? E.g if I marry one person rather than another wont that totally change these outcomes you say we have no control over?

    Course not, you were always going to marry that person, because it happens how could it ever have not happend?

    I'm not just talking about DNA, that op was from another site, I'm talking about upbringing, experiences etc all contributes to how our life pans out.

    Its quite simple really.


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    #132
    JC01
    Registered Users Posts: 591 ✭✭✭JC01


    .jacksparrow. wrote: »
    Course not, you were always going to marry that person, because it happens how could it ever have not happend?

    Its quite simple really.


    Ok but say I'm going to marry X in Dublin where I grow up. We are due to forst meet at 19 in college and marry by 25. Now say at 16 my father gets a job transfer to the States and so I havta move with the rest of the family and end up going to college in LA and thus never meet X but rather meet Y at 22 and marry her at 27.

    Would all my subsequent decisions or "outcomes" not be totally altered and as such not predetermined?


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    #133
    .jacksparrow.
    Closed Accounts Posts: 5,428 ✭✭✭.jacksparrow.


    JC01 wrote: »
    Ok but say I'm going to marry X in Dublin where I grow up. We are due to forst meet at 19 in college and marry by 25. Now say at 16 my father gets a job transfer to the States and so I havta move with the rest of the family and end up going to college in LA and thus never meet X but rather meet Y at 22 and marry her at 27.

    Would all my subsequent decisions or "outcomes" not be totally altered and as such not predetermined?

    No because you didn't marry X it was never meant to happen. You marrying Y is just following the path it was meant to and always was going too.


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    #134
    JC01
    Registered Users Posts: 591 ✭✭✭JC01


    .jacksparrow. wrote: »
    No because you didn't marry X it was never meant to happen. You marrying Y is just following the path it was meant to and always was going too.


    Meant to happen? That's a whole different thing to preprogrammed DNA. Nothing is "meant to happen" if you beleive we are all slaves to a pre-written programme due to our make up. The outcome of that sorta thinking is just that how we react to any given situation is predetermined. That's a whole diffrent thing.

    Based on that comment and your OP about the "soul" I must ask are you religious? Power to you if you are I just learned a long time ago not to have these types of debates with religious people, our viewpoints are just too different to get anywhere constructive.


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    #135
    Frank Lee Midere
    Closed Accounts Posts: 3,780 ✭✭✭Frank Lee Midere


    JC01 wrote: »
    Meant to happen? That's a whole different thing to preprogrammed DNA. Nothing is "meant to happen" if you beleive we are all slaves to a pre-written programme due to our make up. The outcome of that sorta thinking is just that how we react to any given situation is predetermined. That's a whole diffrent thing.

    Based on that comment and your OP about the "soul" I must ask are you religious? Power to you if you are I just learned a long time ago not to have these types of debates with religious people, our viewpoints are just too different to get anywhere constructive.

    Most scientists believe that free will is a myth. Many religions don't. This entire thread is scientific. Largely. The only people who are bringing religion into it are people who don't really understand the arguments.


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    #136
    Frank Lee Midere
    Closed Accounts Posts: 3,780 ✭✭✭Frank Lee Midere


    Although terms like "meant to" are a bit spurious. Ignoring living things for now it's clear that the Big Bang sets off a series of events which, if you knew the initial conditions, and could run the simulation lead to deterministic outcomes. Certain galaxies coalesce. Stars form. Planets are created. Then it either contracts or expands forever ( juries out). Nothing has free will.

    The question is does it apply to life. Is life determined by laws. Clearly lower life is. If it rains x amount and there is y amount of sun, a tree with this genetic ability to grow to size Z will grow to size Z. Unless some other tree blocks access to the sun or soil, but that is also pre determined. If you model the forest mathematically with given inputs of sun and rain you could work it out. Or maybe it gets a disease. But that is also pre determined if you could model the contagion you could model that too.

    So I've included environment, genetics and competition and interaction with other life forms.

    Now you have to argue why humans are different.


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    #137
    Frank Lee Midere
    Closed Accounts Posts: 3,780 ✭✭✭Frank Lee Midere


    I'm not saying that humans are exactly like trees, reacting as we have to - given our genetic ingredients - to each external environmental input; but that's the "no free will" theory.

    Personally I don't know.


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    #138
    Snowpavlova
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 30 ✭Snowpavlova


    JC01 wrote: »
    Ok but say I'm going to marry X in Dublin where I grow up. We are due to forst meet at 19 in college and marry by 25. Now say at 16 my father gets a job transfer to the States and so I havta move with the rest of the family and end up going to college in LA and thus never meet X but rather meet Y at 22 and marry her at 27.

    Would all my subsequent decisions or "outcomes" not be totally altered and as such not predetermined?

    Every one of the events that took place we're always going to take place


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    #139
    bnt
    Registered Users Posts: 12,959 ✭✭✭✭bnt


    I think I'll exercise my free will in posting a link to a relevant webcomic: SMBC.

    From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, ‘Look at that, you son of a bitch’.

    — Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14 Astronaut



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    #140
    _Redzer_
    Closed Accounts Posts: 5,056 ✭✭✭_Redzer_


    .jacksparrow. wrote: »
    From birth we are subject to the controlling factor of our DNA. We ARE our DNA and we cannot change that programming, it's literally who we are.

    So we are nothing more than robotic machines subject to laws and programming at every level of existence.

    Our personalities are simply creations of a simulated and "known" programmed reality.

    How can the soul (holy spirit) that animates the human body be responsible for the bodies programmed actions?
    No such bloody thing as a soul. It doesn't exist at all. There's no way for you to die and go to an afterlife, because that would mean you'd have to breakdown and assemble into another form -and for that to still be 'you', your brain would have to be exactly as it is, but in another form -so that could be light or radiation, thing is, these things do not assemble in such a way as to be able to reconstruct a brain and for that to be you. It is not a property of light or radiation to make structures.

    Long story short, you live, you die, and that's it.


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    #141
    Ted_YNWA
    Registered Users Posts: 71,799 ✭✭✭✭Ted_YNWA


    .jacksparrow. wrote: »
    Course not, you were always going to marry that person, because it happens how could it ever have not happend?

    I'm not just talking about DNA, that op was from another site, I'm talking about upbringing, experiences etc all contributes to how our life pans out.

    Its quite simple really.

    Upbringing & experiences are not hardcoded into our DNA. Now you are agreeing that they affect life decisions.


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    #142
    SaoirseRose
    Closed Accounts Posts: 68 ✭✭SaoirseRose


    How did you equate the soul with the holy spirit? What the hell is the holy spirit meant to be anyway? Don't Catholic kids 'receive' it or some **** when they're baptised? Does that mean that babies have no soul?

    No wonder newborns are such scary looking fcukers.


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    #143
    Snowpavlova
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 30 ✭Snowpavlova


    Ted_YNWA wrote: »
    Upbringing & experiences are not hardcoded into our DNA. Now you are agreeing that they affect life decisions.

    Of course they effect decisions, and those experiences were always going to happen and those decisions were always going to be made.


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    #144
    Tail Docker
    Closed Accounts Posts: 2,954 ✭✭✭Tail Docker


    I can't hear a pipe band playing without the hair on the back of my neck standing up and getting the desire to march behind them. All our family going back generations were soldiers. I'm with you OP, even if you are mad.


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    #145
    Ted_YNWA
    Registered Users Posts: 71,799 ✭✭✭✭Ted_YNWA


    Snowpavlova wrote: »
    Of course they effect decisions, and those experiences were always going to happen and those decisions were always going to be made.

    So what I Will eat tomorrow has already been determined?


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    #146
    Snowpavlova
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 30 ✭Snowpavlova


    Ted_YNWA wrote: »
    So what I Will eat tomorrow has already been determined?

    Yep, It can only happen one way.


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    #147
    Ted_YNWA
    Registered Users Posts: 71,799 ✭✭✭✭Ted_YNWA


    Snowpavlova wrote: »
    Yep, It can only happen one way.

    & my DNA Will tell me whether to wear my blue tshirt or black one.


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    #148
    bnt
    Registered Users Posts: 12,959 ✭✭✭✭bnt


    Ted_YNWA wrote: »
    & my DNA Will tell me whether to wear my blue tshirt or black one.
    No, DNA only sets some of the initial conditions of your life. No-one's saying that your DNA determines your whole life. Drop the reductio ad absurdum straw man stuff.

    For example, did you know that the amount of sunshine your mother got, while carrying you, has an effect on your health? People born in spring months (April-May) have a higher incidence of multiple sclerosis than average, but there is also a genetic tendency to MS. We're playing the odds here.

    From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, ‘Look at that, you son of a bitch’.

    — Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14 Astronaut



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    #149
    Ted_YNWA
    Registered Users Posts: 71,799 ✭✭✭✭Ted_YNWA


    bnt wrote: »
    No, DNA only sets some of the initial conditions of your life. No-one's saying that your DNA determines your whole life. Drop the reductio ad absurdum straw man stuff.

    For example, did you know that the amount of sunshine your mother got, while carrying you, has an effect on your health? People born in spring months (April-May) have a higher incidence of multiple sclerosis than average, but there is also a

    I am trying to see how snowpavlova is basing his theory that everything is predetermined.

    I am firmly with you in that DNA does not control everything.


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    #150
    .jacksparrow.
    Closed Accounts Posts: 5,428 ✭✭✭.jacksparrow.


    Ted_YNWA wrote: »
    I am trying to see how snowpavlova is basing his theory that everything is predetermined.

    I am firmly with you in that DNA does not control everything.

    I know it's hard to accept what we do isn't our choice, but you will and you will be happy once you realise this...!


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    #151
    Ted_YNWA
    Registered Users Posts: 71,799 ✭✭✭✭Ted_YNWA


    Think I prefer to live in the delusion that I have some control over my life.

    Thanks for giving me a different perspective though Jack & Snow.


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