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[david]

“But you are responsible for helping or neglecting that person who needed help that you happen to come across. You are responsible for your own finances. You are responsible for speeding in your car or driving drunk. You can’t tell the officer that you had no free will. That excuse will not wash.”—proclaimer

of course.   The sort of brain that feels it must kill people must be locked away.  Because we don’t want that brain killing people.  However, what this does change is how we feel about that person.  We should feel about them the same as we feel about the person who got a brain tumour and became a killer.  He is a victim of his brain. A victim of biology.  We all have metaphorical brain tumours.
how do we feel about the grizzly bear that kills someone?  Perhaps that bear must be put to death or at least stopped.  But it doesn’t mean we hate the bear or feel malice towards the bear.  The bear is also a victim of biology.  It’s also not making choices in the way we think about choices.

so we still lock away the criminal.  We still stop the murderer.  But we just think about them differently.  If we had their brain, we would be them.  And we would do exactly as they are doing.

[david]

“Are you free to actually believe the opposite of what you believe?”

“Over time yes. One small step at a time. A decision here and a decision there. Years later, bad decisions accumulate and the weight of them swings the pendulum the other way.”

Yes exactly!   So you understand in that moment with your brain in the state it was in at that time, you didn’t have a choice.  Not really.  You can only believe as is in your brain in that moment.  Other people have other brains.

What you are suggesting is that over time you could essentially have a different brain with different connections.  Your brain state will have changed.  Other people’s brains already are in that state.  So they can only think that way.

Now did you decide to change your brain state?   Would you be making decisions in such a way that you willfully change your beliefs.  No. You can’t decide to change your beliefs.  Yes they will change, but you can’t simply decide to change them while you still believe something.  Try to simply be a Muslim in belief.  Or an atheist.  You simply can’t do this.  Not in the moment.  A lot has to happen in your brain but you don’t decide as a Christian that you are going to become an atheist.  Or a Muslim.

[david]

Ed.  Were you free to say the opposite.   Some people because of what’s in their brains can only agree, can only see it the way I do.  You, and many others can’t.  And you have no choice in how you see it.  You can’t simply decide to see this the way I do.  You simply don’t have those connections in your brain.

You were not free to say the opposite.  You could only think as you do and have said as you said.

[david]

Little bit off point or beyond what I want to discuss but:

 

was god free to say that love is bad, and hate is good.   Was he free to say that you should not help the poor one?   Was he free to say that rape is good?  Was he free to say that steeling is good.

[david]

Let’s reverse this.  Assuming you are married, could you have chosen to not ask your wife to marry you?  Was that option available to you?

[david]

Do you have the ability to choose the opposite of what you wrote?   Are you free to actually believe the opposite of what you believe?  Can you do that now, if only for a minute?   Can you actually believe the opposite of what you believe about free will?  Is there actually a choice.

[david]

“Free will just means when you need to make a decision you can”

I already gave this example but if you had to make the decision to come up with any city, to me that seems like there can’t be a freer choice. And yet when we look, it’s hard to find the freedom.  Out f the millions of cities only a few arose in consciousness.  You weren’t aware of the process in your unconscious brain selecting these cities or promoting them into consciousness.  You had no conscious control over it.  Some cities just popped into consciousness.  Like “Vancouver…Chicago….London.”   And you know the names of hundreds of cities probably but your brain only promoted a couple for you.  Then you went to “deciding.”  Or perhaps coin flipping.
I thin this is a key point.  You might “choose” Vancouver” and you might have a story to tell about why you seemingly chose Vancouver.  But that story will almost certainly be fabricated on the spot.  After the fact.  And perhaps you come up with a reason like: I was just in Chicago so I’ll say Vancouver.  But why didn’t your brain think: I was just in Chicago so I’ll say Chicago?  You can’t account for it.

here, a very simple “decision” that you need to make: pick a city.  But even this to me doesn’t seem to be free will.  And if we can’t find it here in this very simple example, I’m not sure we can find it anywhere.

[david]

I like the driving analogy.  But I believe we are always on what you call autopilot.   You are simply not free to turn into traffic.  That “choice” isn’t there for you.  You can only “choose” to stay in the lines and do exactly as has been put in your head and not otherwise.

someone with a very different brain chemistry who is suicidal can make that “choice”. But when they make the choice to turn into traffic, they aren’t making a choice.  They are doing exactly as you would do if you had their exact brain.   There would be no way for you to do any different if you had their brain in that moment.

[david]

You begin by saying, if your heart is right you will generally make god choices.

I think what we call the heart is really a part of the brain.  Our brain of course is what is thinking and responding to the senses and ideas and input.  We are the sum total of everything in our brains.

there was a guy who never in his life had any desire of pediphilia.  Then he got a brain tumour that was pressing on a part f his brain and he developed this horrible obsession.  The rumour was removed.  His pedophilia feelings vanished.  We would say he was a victim of his brain.  We wouldn’t blame him.  The growth returned ad so did he unhealthy thoughts.

a similar story of a man who was never violent but one day found himself with a gun shooting people.  He left a note and asked that they examine his brain.  He just felt something was wrong with it.  Again, a tumour. He was right.

we are victims of biology.  Some of us are born with ADHD.  We didn’t choose that.  And so we will struggle with focus and perhaps won’t be able to sit still.  We might not do as good in life and struggle to keep up.  Another person might be born with great genes into a family where everything just seems to go right.  Still another, born with the genes for bipolar.   He is prone to delusions and seeing far to far into things that aren’t there.  He struggles with life.  He didn’t choose his genes.   He didn’t choose his parents.  He also didn’t choose the programming put in his brain from childhood.

there’s a scripture that says god draws whom he wants to him.  Well does he draw those that already have god hearts.   How did they get good hearts.  What of the bipolar man who doesn’t have a good job and gets very manic and angry at people and drinks heavily to deal with the pain.  Will get draw him since his heart is so good?  We are victims of circumstance.  We are victims of biology and genes.  We didn’t choose our parents.  We don’t choose our wants.

if as you say you are capable of choosing good, I would argue you are ONLY capable of choosing what you choose.  Seriously, could you choose otherwise right now?  No.  It’s simply not available to you.   And for someone on the other side it’s equally not available for them to choose the things that never arise in consciousness for them to choose.  In the same way you couldn’t choose a city you’ve never heard of or choose Allah to worship because you don’t have countless “Allah” connections built into your brain, you can only “choose” that which available for you to “choose.”   There is no freedom in that.  It’s like a person telling a homosexual to be straight and then the homosexual says, “okay, now you “choose” to be gay for one minute.”   You can’t do it.  And nor can he.

[david]

“You can choose the one you [WANT] or the one you like less. Now imagine the one you like less is more healthy. Then you have a good reason to choose it now.”

I changed your “prefer” to want, only because it’s the word I’ve used in all these posts.  And as I’ve said in my posts, you are free to choose the one you want.  You aren’t free to choose your wants.   Or, you are only free to choose the one you want.  Perhaps in that moment your “want” to be healthy is stronger than your “want” to eat either flavour of ice cream.  But why in that moment did this “want” emerge in consciousness?   You can’t account for it.  You can’t control it.   Sure, your brain if pressed will generate some story about the reason why your brain in the moment wants one over the other, whether it’s chocolate over vanilla or the more healthy food over the ice cream, but as I pointed out, those stories are often completely disconnected from reality.  People create reasons when they have none and those reasons often don’t match reality.

If it’s just your brain flipping a coin, that isn’t really free will.
And if it’s just your brain spitting out the option it had to make based on everything that’s already in your brain, that doesn’t seem free either.  one brain based on what’s in it can only choose one.  Another brain can only choose the other.  If you had my exact brain, you would be thinking my thoughts and would have no freedom to somehow magically choose to think as you now do.  I cannot will myself to believe as you do.

[david]

Accidental unconscious acts aren’t free.  So let’s look at purposeful.

There are only two reasons for which you will ever purposefully do anything–you are FORCED to or you WANT to.

(Example: Many people say they don’t want to go to the gym but they go anyway.  Is this an example of someone doing something freely and not because they want to?  No, there has to be a reason for going to the gym—to stay healthy for example.   So, why is the desire to stay healthy stronger than the desire to not go to the gym?  It just is.  You can’t account for it.  For other people the desire to not go to the gym is stronger.  For these people, why is the desire to eat junk food and not go to the gym stronger?  You can’t control the strengths or objects of your desires.  It’s they that control you.

[david]

What does it mean to say you do whatever you want, when you can’t control your wants? Rather than saying: “you can do what you want,” it’s perhaps more accurate to say: “you can ONLY do what you want.”

You can do whatever you want.  You just aren’t free to choose what you want.  And where is the freedom in that?

[david]

Another similar experiment.

Choosing chocolate ice cream or vanilla.

But, why would you choose one over the other?  Why would you choose vanilla over chocolate?  The answer: I would need to WANT it.  But, can we control what we want?  No. Imagine that you don’t want to punch your mother in the face.  Can you decide to want to punch her?  This isn’t the same as choosing to do it.  Can you choose to WANT to do it?  No, no more than I could choose to want chocolate over vanilla.  I just wanted vanilla more than chocolate in that instance.  That’s just a fact about myself that I couldn’t change.

What if I decided to choose chocolate instead, just for the sake of regaining my sense of free will?  The same problem is faced.  In order to do that you would need to WANT to do that, to regain your free will as you see it.  And why is your desire to prove a point like this stronger than your desire to have the ice cream you prefer?  You can’t account for it.

You cannot determine your wants.  Think of something you want.  Try to not want it.  Or think of something you don’t want.  And try to want it. (Try wanting to be attracted to men when you are heterosexual, or the reverse). It’s not possible.  These aren’t free choices.  And even if you were able to change a DON’T WANT into a WANT, you would need to WANT to WANT it.  And vice versa.  You simply can’t control what you want.

[david]

Thought experiment (not mine):

Think of the name of city.  Choose any city you WANT.  Pay attention to what this conscious process of choosing a city is like.  This is as free a decision as you are ever going to make.  You have all the cities in the world to choose from and I’m asking you to pick one.  Several cities have probably occurred to you.  Choose one.  Just to see what the process is like, pick a different city, not the same as the first and notice what that experience is like.  Done?

Okay, did you see any evidence for free will?  If we can’t find it here, it’s not anywhere.   First, let’s set aside all those cities you don’t know, and therefore weren’t free to choose.  You couldn’t have picked one of those if your life depended on it.  There is no freedom in that obviously.  And then there are many other cities whose names you know, but simply didn’t occur to you to choose.  Perhaps Cairo didn’t occur to you.  You absolutely know Cairo is a city but for whatever reason your Cairo circuits were not engaged.  WERE YOU FREE TO CHOOSE, THAT WHICH DID NOT OCCUR TO YOU, TO CHOOSE?  Based on the state of your brain a moment ago, Cairo was not coming.  Where is the freedom in that?  You probably thought of several cities, maybe Paris and New York and Tokyo.  Then maybe you thought: “I love Paris, I’m going to go with Paris.”  And then at the last second you thought, “no, I’m going to go with Tokyo.”  This is the sort of decision that motivates the idea of free will.   You’ve got a couple of choices and you are picking between them and it’s just you with your thoughts.  You are choosing, apparently.  But when you look closely, you are in no position to know why you chose one over the other, in this case why you picked Tokyo over Paris.  You might have some additional story you tell yourself about why you picked Tokyo.  You might say: “I had Japanese food last night and remembered it, so I picked Tokyo.”  We know from psychology that these stories we tell ourselves are very often false.  When people are manipulated in a lab they always have some story to tell about why they did what they did and it never bares any relationship to the actual variables that caused them to behave that way.  You can cause one person to like someone more than another or cooperate more by giving them a hot beverage as opposed to a cold beverage.  And they never tell you that the reason they were biased as they were was because of the temperature of the beverage they were given. Psychology is filled wit evidence that we are very poor judges retrospectively of why we do what we do.

But EVEN IF you were right in this instance.  Even if your choice of Tokyo over Paris was based on your having Japanese food last night, this still doesn’t explain why you remembered having Japanese food last night.  Or why the memory had the effect that it did.  You could have reasoned, well, I just had Japanese food, so I’m going to pick something new, let’s go with Paris.

YOU AS A CONSCIOUS WITNESS OF YOUR INNER LIFE, ARE NOT MAKING THESE DECISIONS.  YOU CAN ONLY WITNESS THESE DECISIONS.  You no more picked the city you settled on, in subjective terms, than you would have if I picked it for you.

There was this first moment when I said: “pick a city.”  And then there was a moment where nothing occurred to you.  And then various cities start to get promoted into consciousness for reasons you can’t inspect.  And it’s almost like me saying: “Telaviv…Vancouver…Paris,” and you simply hearing the words, becoming conscious of them.  If you pay attention to how thoughts and intentions arise, and how decisions get made moment to moment, it’s hard to see free will.

Thoughts just emerge in consciousness.  We are not the author of our thoughts.  That would require that we think them before we think them.

If you attempt not to think, you will immediately see that this is next to impossible.  Thoughts just emerge in consciousness.  Your mind is flooding itself with thoughts almost all the time.  And the thoughts that we feel we consciously choose to think, are merely the ones we happen to agree with.

When it comes to leaning forward, you didn’t consciously decide: “I’m going to lean forward.”  You were just an observer of this action.  It’s similar with breathing and blood pumping.  And thinking.

[david]

I wasn’t free to come to that conclusion as if to suggest I could come to another.   I was “free” to only come to that conclusion. And that’s not freedom.

[david]

Free will as most people think of it is an illusion.  I’m trying to think it isn’t but I don’t seem free to do that.

[david]

Hey Ed

ya it’s been a while.  I spent like a couple hours a day on here for about 8 years, but I basically switched to much shorter and even more frustrating conversations on YouTube about 5 years ago.

Im not the person I once was.  This website broke me.

[david]

Hey T8,

Been thinking about you and this forum in the last week or so.  Not sure what to say, but hope you are doing okay given what happened.

[david]

I have a friend that has the DJI inspire drone and it can go pretty high up.   I’m also co soldering getting the DJI mavic air.

Any way to tell of the earth is flat or round with a drone?

[david]

I’m in the boring middle of Canada.

Its not just that the same image isn’t seen.

It’s that if you take someone near the North Pole and someone at the same longitude near the South Pole, the moon will appear upside down when each person is shown the others image

If it is a globe, we would expect an upside down image of the moon when viewed at one end

This seems super easy to prove     It will be the same image but upside down    But if we use the flat earth idea, then while the two people would see different images, it would be different parts of the moon they are seeing    Not the same image

 

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