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I am religious and believe in free will

71 (27.7%)

I am religious and do not believe in free will

10 (3.9%)

I am not religious and believe in free will

114 (44.5%)

I am not religious and do not believe in free will

61 (23.8%)

Total Members Voted: 251

[TempAcc]

Here's an angle I haven't thought of before. Since change in a species only comes slowly through natural selection, then how did humans go from the stone age to the bronze age to the iron age to the steam age to the information age. There was not nearly enough time for natural selection to bring about these changes, so I think that it is  man's ability to choose that dictated the quick changes through the eras.

Humanity is natural selection embodied. We select tools, try to use those tools and rework them to make them better. We can do a thousand years worth of evolution in a single day, if not less.

This is the reason as to why scientists have said a chimp's hand is actualy more evolved overall then a human hand, except chimps are still animals with rudimental society and no real technology. What we see in evolution is basically animals facing dificulties and then evolving because, through natural selection, their bodies start developing the tools they need to face these problems. Humans have got to the point that there's almost no need to evolve most of our bodies anymore, simply because we have supplanted our physical difficulties with technology.
A man's hand doesn't need to change and evolve to become better at climbing trees because we have developed tools that enable us to do that and many other things better than any animal. One can say that there's no need for radical physical evolution anymore because it has simply stopped being advantageous to do so. There's still some evidence of it still happening (we're progressively becoming taller and our limbs are getting longer, and we're also generaly losing body hair), but its not even close to what seems to happen with animals.

In short, animals adapt to environments, while we adapt environments to our needs.

[Rolan7]

My point is that humans practice natural selection when we build tools and devices.

We, ourselves, select for evolutionary advantages that other species have to breed and die for over millenia.

Origamiscienceguy is technically right, that isn't "natural selection".  Definition-wise.  It's selection though, and inspired by natural selection.  We also have "genetic algorithms" which are explicitly based on natural selection.

[Egan_BW]

In terms of the history of humanity, we are currently in an unprecedented state of rapid technological growth. Right up from the agricultural revolution to now in the blink of an eye, with no signs of stopping. Which is a little terrifying.

[Frumple]

That's literally how natural selection works, man. We embody it. We can practice natural selection as we go along.

My point is that humans practice natural selection when we build tools and devices.

We, ourselves, select for evolutionary advantages that other species have to breed and die for over millenia.

We don't, though, when it comes to technology and whatnot. It's a very different sort of iterative development than what we tend to do with tools. Natural stuff is much more incremental, less directed, etc. They're both, broadly speaking, iterative development, sure, but to call human technological development anything like natural selection is... not particularly accurate. We're not doing some kind of accelerated form of it, we're doing something rather different as a whole.

Last I checked, we've actually only recently started doing anything that looks like natural selection, via computer driven autonomous design programs, and similar systems. S'made a few neat things, even.

[TempAcc]

There's some evidence of the rate of progress slowing down lately. That may change when and if we manage to create a superhuman AI, which may or not happen in the next 100 years, and thats according to the most pessimistic estimatives.

[Rolan7]

In terms of the history of humanity, we are currently in an unprecedented state of rapid technological growth. Right up from the agricultural revolution to now in the blink of an eye, with no signs of stopping. Which is a little terrifying.

Though I'd be willing to argue that, at least right now, we sit on a technological precipice. Most of our recent technological developments have been lateral.

That's always a tricky position to take, since there have always been people arguing that, and so far they've been shown wrong by continued exponential growth.

But actually yes, we may be running into some actual physical limitations.  Not to mention growing too fast and collapsing.

[TempAcc]

There's also the issue of material scarcity, ye, but this in turn stimulates people to develop alternative technology using cheaper methods and materials. This may change drastically when we truly grasp nanotechnology, since there's nothing we know about chemistry and physics that would prevent us from creating just about any material if we gain the ability to actualy manipulate individual atoms.

This would also literally flip economies upside down, since this would technically make materials with more complex atomic structures more expensive then materials with simpler atomic structures. Suddenly diamond becomes cheaper then plastic :v

[nullBolt]

Honestly, the main reason for slowing development is a general lack of interest on the parts of a lot of people because our current economic system can't really handle any of the changes that would be required.

Like you'd have to implement mass automation in the West (because you'd need actual graduates to manage it) but no one is interested in something that wouldn't lower unemployment figures.

[i2amroy]

I think some of you guys are confusing biological evolution with tool use. The two are not related, like at all. I mean you might be able to look at some principles of biological evolution and sort of apply them to the development of tools, but they are two totally unrelated fields. This right here:

... yeah, humans haven't really changed much, physically (including the brainmeat), since the stone age. We're still largely the same critter. The rapid technological/methodological development had... very little to do with the human physical form, and most everything to do with our already-there abilities letting us transfer information intergenerationally effectively enough we rather rapidly (in a evolutionary sense, anyway) built the tools that built the tools, as the formulation goes. Natural selection had already selected for the change being discussed, it was just the sort of thing that had delayed effect, building upon itself over time. No natural selection required, that bit was already pretty much done, so far as getting what we do now done.

is exactly correct. Technically the ability to create all forms of technology ranging up to the computer that I'm typing this on and all forms of tool improvement that we will do for the foreseeable future were already selected for when we were biologically given the ability to cognitively examine our tools and modify them for a given purpose. Every bit of technological development since that point long long ago when we started on the path has just us been playing out the advantages caused by a single biological change.

The stone age was, in evolutionary terms, yesterday.  There hasn't been time for hardly any macroevolution since then, which is why the "races" of humanity are completely the same species.

Technically there are three distinct "races" (anglo, african, and east asian, IIRC) that have differentiated enough that they get somewhat different responses to certain medicines and treatments and have some genetic trait differences (for example a gene which greatly prohibits the processing of alcohol is rather common among the east asian "race"). We're still the same "species" because we haven't differentiated even a 1000th of the amount that would be required to prevent us from breeding together (which is what biologically defines a species), a thing which is then even further held back by the fact that in the modern world we're getting very good at mixing those boundaries compared to how we were before.

[TD1]

Hrm. I have changed my mind - our minds follow the laws of nature. As such it is not free will, but something determined. It does, however, have a certain amount of complexity to it. So much so that we could name it free will if we were so inclined, given that it's the will of what was already predetermined which is free, even if it is within the range allowed by nature. In other words, it's not utterly free will, but there is some individual agency exercised. Just within the constraints of what they can do.

I don't know if I made sense or not, but ah well. I'm currently still in the pondering stage - I could always change my opinion again.

[scrdest]

Honestly, free will as a concept is redundant nowadays, in the context of the thread topic. It was used primarily as some sort of self-ennoblement, contrasting with the view that animals are essentially fleshy robots running on instinct which is... a bit inaccurate.

The whole determinism vs. indeterminism debate is completely unrelated to the idea of free will, because even if it isn't deterministic but running on all them quantums, that wouldn't make it free will, it would make it just as restricted as determinism would, except the state your reach would be random, but the conclusion you reach would be reached by mechanistic processes nonetheless.

[Harry Baldman]

Free will and determinism seem increasingly like the same thing. You choose based on your preference. Determinism is using extrapolation to fruitlessly maintain that this makes us inherently predictable with more knowledge, which is obviously true to anyone who is familiar with the concept of being acquainted with someone. Freewillyism meanwhile stresses that it's impossible for anyone to have that much knowledge (or extract it consistently enough to be properly useful) - including the gods themselves. This is also completely and obviously true to anyone who is familiar with the experimental methods of psychology or really anything which tries to measure something that hasn't been made specifically to be measured. There's a reason a dice roll is said to be random, after all. Nobody's going to actually calculate that shit with relativistic mechanics, aerodynamic calculations and material science insights or obtain the necessary precision with any of the previous to say with reasonable certainty what side a die will land on in any given moment. Or discovering where an electron is inside an atomic orbital as well as ascertaining its momentum, which has the additional difficulty of being physically impossible if I understand correctly.

So from my point of view, determinism is correct. But it doesn't actually matter, since determinism posits a theoretical, impossible state of absolute knowledge (which if, say, the LORD were to actually possess, would also render any action of His entirely pointless). So free will exists by default. I guess the problem begins when somebody notices that an essentially unfillable gap (aside from this bit, greatest hits include things outside the universe and times which actual history has not properly documented) is quite possibly the very best place to inject some God into. Infuriating, I suppose, but still irrelevant, no?

[MonkeyHead]

... are you defining free will as a function of the difficulty of realistically simulating reality enough to determine future states, and that free will emerges as an illusion due to insufficient computing power or too "rough" a mathematical model of reality? Interesting.

[Loud Whispers]

The stone age was, in evolutionary terms, yesterday.  There hasn't been time for hardly any macroevolution since then, which is why the "races" of humanity are completely the same species.

Also because we killed all the other species

Sapiens:   1
Floriensis: Nil

[martinuzz]

The stone age was, in evolutionary terms, yesterday.  There hasn't been time for hardly any macroevolution since then, which is why the "races" of humanity are completely the same species.

Also because we killed all the other species

Sapiens:   1
Floriensis: Nil

Neanderthals survived though, by interbreeding with prehistoric eurasian populations of homo sapiens. A recent studies has shown that the most distinct genetic difference between Eurasians and Africans is, that Eurasians have (quite a bit of) neanderthal genes incorporated into their genome, while Africans do not. If you regard neanderthals as more primitive than homo sapiens, you could say, that white and yellow folks are a bit more primitive than african black people hahaha.

Biologically though, this implies that neanderthals were no different species than homo sapiens. In biology, two specimens are only regarded being of different species if they cannot produce fertile offspring. The prescence of neanderthal DNA in so many of us proves that mating of a homo sapiens with a neanderthal must have produced fertile offspring, or the genes would not have been incorporated into general population.