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[Scoops Novel]

No, no. We all expect a certain amount of heaven from our lives. A certain amount of limbo. A certain amount of hell. It's a reasonable question to ask what that certain amount is.

I feel like a medieval person would have answered this question with 10%.

[hector13]

None of these things exist so NaN%

[Cthulhu]

Hell is the state of permanent separation from god so life is 100% hell from the moment you look in a mirror and recognize yourself

[Loud Whispers]

No, no. We all expect a certain amount of heaven from our lives. A certain amount of limbo. A certain amount of hell. It's a reasonable question to ask what that certain amount is.

I feel like a medieval person would have answered this question with 10%.

Everyone needs more limbo in their lives. How low, can you go. How low, can you go!

[Scoops Novel]

To beat Limbo all you have to do is balance... that's deep.

[Magmacube_tr]

People say how that neurology disproves free will piss me off.

Putting aside the utter meaninglessness of the very concept of free will- Can anyone tell me what constitutes "un-free will"? Exactly.

Anyways, they say that since my thoughts start forming before they appear on my consciousness, they are somehow not mine and I am some powerless puppet spectating my life.

I'd like to point out that this is akin to saying, "The chainsaw's chain is moved by an unseen motor, and therefore it is not the agent that does the cutting! OH NOESSSS!1!1!1!"

It is neither the motor, or the chain that does the cutting. It is the chainsaw that does it. Both of their sum. What they make together.

My subconscious processes take stuff from the inside to the surface, and my conscious processes take those surfaced stuff, add and craft new info and send it back down. Rinse and repeat. Ad mortem.

I am not under attack by some nefarious overmind. That thing back there is also me.

And I am doing all the thinking. All of it.

[McTraveller]

The debate between free will and determinism usually boils down to philosophical impracticality, because most people still hold individuals responsible for their actions. If humanity truly believed in determinism, then morality and legal systems have no meaning because any action of a person or persons is an inevitable result of the evolution of physical systems according to basic laws of physics.

It's an interesting flaw in the premises of pieces of art like Minority Report because it proactively punishes people for crimes they didn't actually commit because of the intervention.  So how could the precogs see the crime if it never came to pass?

Modern thinking on this boils down to "hey quantum mechanics!" because QM inherently has this weird microscopic unknowability - it's not random but it's probabilistic.  It's unclear how the microscopic uncertainty collapses to macroscopic phenomena, but there's a lot of investigation (rigorous and not-so-rigorous) on how QM may influence thought.

At its core the idea is, what are all the possible subsequent states of thought/action given the current state - and do we choose the subsequent state, or is that state simply a statistical outcome based on QM? Do we choose it, or does QM "cause" our choice?

[EuchreJack]

Humans are hypocrites. It's actually a normal part of being human. Still annoying.

[Telgin]

I think people fall back on quantum mechanics too readily when talking about consciousness and free will, just because it's mysterious and random.  I'm not sure anyone has provided any evidence that quantum mechanical effects manifest meaningfully at the scales needed to drive thinking, but I'd be very interested in reading about it if they have.

The other side of it too is that even if decisions are influenced by quantum mechanics, it's still random.  Probabilistic is still random, just with some constraints - there's still no you making the decisions at that point, unless souls are somehow quantum mechanical in nature and drive hidden variables we can't observe.  That's not impossible, but it's also unfalsifiable so it'll never leave the realm of philosophy.  On topic here I guess.

I like to think of it this way: either we make our decisions entirely based off of our past experiences and current situation, or there has to be randomness involved.  What alternative is there?  If you make a decision that isn't based on previous experience and your current observations, then that implies the decision was influenced by something not even based in reality.

On the topic of punishing people even when their behavior is deterministic, I don't think that's necessarily illogical.  People still learn from punishment and it influences their future behavior.  I think it should guide the way we punish or rehabilitate people though.

[McTraveller]

I think determinism (QM or otherwise) is even worse than you are portraying - it's not saying "your decision is based on past experience" it's saying "given your past experiences and the current physical state of the universe, this is the only decision you could have made."  Kind of like if you have a time varying electric field, a time varying magnetic field must also be present.

QM doesn't resolve this either, because sure things are now according to a distribution* but they are not "decisions" they are just "outcomes" - I mean does a die "decide" to land on a 6 instead of one of the other values? If you have a billion dice and roll them, did they "decide" to land in the pattern they did (this is more akin do a macroscopic object, like "the human brain" perhaps)?

Spoiler: * (click to show/hide)

I'm going to be pedantic here - QM is not random at all, because outcomes are not equally possible (and in fact some outcomes are forbidden!).  Probabilistic does not mean random!

[EuchreJack]

Nah, it's Magnetic Forces that determine human behavior. Damn Quantum Mechanics stealing the spotlight from Magnetism!

[McTraveller]

Sure, but did it decide to steal the spotlight, or is that its inevitable role?

[Magmacube_tr]

Ugh, "Free Will" this, "Determinism" that!

You are a series of logic systems built on a biochemical and bioelectrical signals. You take the data in, you transform it, and then you put it out. By this process, you are given form.

There is free will. There is no estranged will.

Like, genuinely. What does this endless tirade even mean?!

[Telgin]

That's probably one of the most important questions to ask, and I'm having a hard time even defining it.  Ultimately it's just the notion people want to feel like they have control of their actions, but even saying that feels like a circular definition or is sidestepping the real question.

I can only really explain it in the context of religion, most specifically the notion of being responsible for what you do if faced with an eternal afterlife predicated on your actions in life.  People who believe in that want it to be "fair," and it surely isn't fair if you face eternal punishment when you were destined to end up there from the moment the universe came into existence.

Maybe someone can come up with a better, more general way to talk about it, since it should go beyond religion.

[EuchreJack]

Determinanism comes from a belief in an All-knowing, All-powerful being controlling everything, relegating humans into the roles of Actors with little control over the script.

It underestimates God's Power by taking infinite power and understanding from outside The Universe and Time itself, then trying to define in petty human terms.

Bullshit is a correct and proper response to Determinism, but there are times it "makes sense", if only because the Human brain WANTS things to "make sense".