Free Will - the illusion

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>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> J u s t ... P a s s I n g .. Thru. >>>>>>>>>>>>>

why doncha just make yourself comfy, set a while?

If true The implications of this idea for society would be astounding.
If we have no free will and just play out pre-determined roles in life is democracy a real thing? Is racism a real thing? Are good and evil only constructed illusions of our minds?

Some deep thought sounds like it might be needed here . Everything you can think of may have already been thought of in the lyrics in a rock and roll song . “ The Grand Illusion” by Styx.

While I'm not a compatibalist I get why people are inclined that way, ie. it's a pragmatic move. For example to understand that people are who they are at any given moment based on a fixed trajectory through life - where does the criminal justice system go? How do torts get settled? I like Sam Harris's answer to this that jail would simply be about keeping people separated from others who would actively be harming others and doing so for strictly pragmatic rather than punitive reasons. The side of the paranoia that I do understand though - would we see a massive uprising in the streets as people went further down the road of activism to abolish prisons or really-really 'defund the police'? I wouldn't have taken that criticism seriously a year ago, now I'm half worried that they may have a point.

---

Considering, Science Shows Most of Our Rational Decisions

Are Directed Now By Emotions First As the Neo-Cortical Brain

Is Actually At Best Helpful Servant for Our Older Evolved Brains;

Or At Worst, Basically Lost As Slave to the Older Evolved Brains;

Like People Who Become Addicted to Substances or Behavioral Addictions,
Where The Emptiness Within Is too Painful to Avoid The Addictions That Attempt to Fill
The Space Within That Is too Painful to Keep Without Whatever Temporary Respite Works...

Ironically, yet

With Common Feel/Sense

As More Eastern Philosophies

Have Done In Terms of Sages Through

Many Recorded Ages in More Specific Terms Like
Prana, Tao, Samadhi, Satori, Where The Aim, The Practice, not

Goal, is to Effortlessly Master The Emotional And Sensory Minds
Of Older Evolved Human Intelligences Far Beyond Any

Words to Actually Gain Greatest Relative Free Will
Control, to Direct More Positive Thoughts And Actions

Through More Balanced Emotions And Senses that as Even
Science Shows Now Will Through Autotelic Bio-Feedback Control

In Flow Now of Whatever Meditative Practice One uses, Allow One to
Transcend the Neo-Cortical Mind And Become One that is More Integral
in Union With their Entire Nature As Emotional And Sensory Beings Who Have

A Tool of Neo-Cortical

Brain As Helpful

Servant

For Cognitive

Executive Functioning

In Excellent Laser Focus,
And Short Term Working Memory;
And Greater Retrieval of Long Term

Memories too; More Like a River in Flow; Yes, Now,
A Free Dance And Song More Than A Mind that
Is Out of Control With 'Monkey Chatter'
Get in the Way Talk (Monkeys don't
talk by the way; Just a Metaphor
As they may be hard to
Understand when they
Chatter, incessantly, Hehe)

Anyway, So Many Metaphors

For Achieving this Relative Greater

Free Will Now Ranging From Yogi, Master

too as 'Marital'/Martial Artist, to Priest of Our Cosmos

Order Within Where Art Becomes the Chaos

of Magic That is The Real 'Reason' We Breathe

in Peace and Harmony Fulfilling More of our

Human Potentials in Joy of Love, Harming

All of Nature Least as Generally

Speaking, When Folks

Are Feeling and

Sensing "Life is Good"

That is Where The Heaven

Lives and Doesn't go Away; Again,
No Woo, 'HeaR', Science Proves this is true

too; Why Don't more Folks Achieve it; it is literally

Impossible to do with only What Science Shows is the

Modern Human Average in Attention Span, Less than

3 Seconds, Literally Less that the Capacity of A Gold

Fish Now; Are We Making More Stuff, Yes;

Are We Evolving in Peace

And Harmony

Of Loving

Life Now In One Lifetime

Through Our Individual

Efforts, Overall, Hell No,

Rhetorical Question Now;

Just Look Around; Relative

Hell, Purgatory, And Relative

Heaven Exists as Relative Free Will

Does too; This Much is True, Our Feelings

And Senses Are As Real as Real as Real Gets, Now

And indeed this is how the So Called Meek Inherit

The Earth For A Naked Master of Gravity Within in

Balance, Outside, Above So Below, and All Around

As Master of Autotelic Flow NoW in Bio-Feedback

Relative Free Will of Greater Regulating Emotions,

Integrating Senses, As Master of the All in all Now

of What Life Even Means Now For Real, For All We

Do to Yes, Drive The Feelings And Senses of Life Now For Real...

It's Like this; i See Folks Struggling Everyday for Just A Teaspoon

Of Heaven i've Earned 'own my own', Just From Generating it all Within...

It's Really Sad, Yet This is the Price of Wearing All Cultural Tools As Clothes

And Becoming

Those Tools, including

All the Abstract Constructs;

Words, Thoughts that Most

Folks Can't Control as the

Words are Not what

Control us;

It Is All Our

Emotions and
Senses First As
Science Shows; Nah,

Ya won't find that/this

in Any Standard IQ Test or 'Common' Work or School;

Yet, one Will Find it Among folks who Master the all within...

And Nah, Nope, i Didn't Have to Go to Work or School For this;

Just Dance and Sing Free in Autotelic Meditative Flow And Live Life

Eternally Now As Free As Free Will Gets in Life is Good For Real Now.

Oh by The Way, Excellent Reference to the Styx 'Grand Illusion' Album

From 1977, i'm Well Past the American Grand Illusion Dream of Replacing

My 2014 Civic That is In "Perfect Working Order" To the Chagrin 'So far' of my

Wife For A Brand New SUV Subaru Forrester; So Far 'No Rolling Over' for me...

As Far As Theme Songs; Gonna Go With 'Secret Journey' And 'Ghost in the Machine' By 'The Police' For this...

As Only 'The Shadow' Really 'Knows' Who We Are; Master 'The Shadow' and Become The Light in The 'Rains' of Life

With

Zero Levels

of Emotional Pain...

No Matter How Much

The Rest of the World

Is Bringing Nightmares to

Fruition of Illusions Folks Soullessly Follow...

Yes, Perhaps Not a Politically Correct term to

Use; Yet our 'Shadow'; Our Subconscious Mind Controlling

As Our Older Evolved Brains Still Do is Truly Our Soul and

What Most Folks Name 'God'; As It is so Far Away For them to

Touch And Master

As Is For Real Now...

"Ghost Hidden

Away in the

Machine" of

Mechanical Cognition

Gone Rogue in Neo-Cortical Ways of Illusions Indeed...

"Eve" already Brought me A Cup of Hot Chocolate;

Where i Live Stays Just the Right Amount of Warm

Now, No Matter Season or Weather, i Master 'The

'Invisible Sun' Within And "Synchronicity" too...

Better Put, i Surf Synchronicity NoW as the

Wave i am Water Drop Ocean True

Yet Hey, For Real too, Gotta keep All the

Yang in Balance, With All the Yin True too;
And That's A Significant Part of my Daily
Routine, coming to 'The Wrong Planet' to
Get A Helpful Serving of Yang too; Great Place for Yang Indeed;

Yet Yang is More

Of 'A Machine'

More Specifically

Neo Cortical Focused Away
From Our Much Deeper Realities
of Human Potential Unleashed As

iMaGiNaTioN And Creativity Most
Definitely Do Dance And Sing In
'Coca Cola' Or 'Pepsi (it doesn't
matter which one) 'Perfect Harmony'
Enough NoW As Practice in Peace of Love

Within For All With Least Harm Possible Now For Real True..

---

A quote from Einstein, at least Albert Einstein's name is in the image. So don't want to be 100% sure that he actually said it at the time. I have also come across the quote in other languages ​​with his name attached.

Spinoza wrote about this ages ago. Not a criticism of your post, I just find these kinds of articles funny.

Growing up in a small, fundamentalist church, it was drilled into my head there is no such thing as free will. God had already predetermined and predestined our fate, and there’s nothing we can do about it.

Science Hasn’t Refuted Free Will
A growing chorus says that science has shown free will to be an illusion. But it actually has offered arguments in its favor.
February 6, 2020
https://bostonreview.net/articles/chris ... free-will/
"
... For the time being, then, the hypothesis of free will is corroborated by the sciences of human behaviour. Free will, for the purposes of the human and social sciences, boils down to agency, intentionality, and choice, which are well-supported and indeed explanatorily indispensable ideas. Denying free will would be warranted only if these ideas weren’t needed for explaining human behavior or if they were somehow incoherent, which they aren’t.

To be sure, future science might vindicate a reductionistic approach and explain human behavior without representing people as choice-making agents. But science doesn’t seem to be heading that way. So far, psychology, broadly speaking, has resisted reduction and has been augmented but not replaced by neuroscience. Just as we wouldn’t deny the reality of ecosystems, institutions, and poverty merely because fundamental physics doesn’t refer to them, so there is no reason to deny the reality of agency, choice, and free will either. The skeptics’ mistake is to assume a reductionistic picture of humans that is neither mandated by science, nor adequate for understanding human behavior.
"
and

Breathing may change your mind about free will
Do you think that you are clicking on that button when your mind decides to do so? Think again
Date:
February 6, 2020
Source:
Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 080449.htm

"
Interpretations of the RP have been debated for decades. Some interpret the RP to show that free will is an illusion, since the RP precedes the conscious experience of free will. It seems to show that the brain commits to a decision (chocolate) before we are even consciously aware of having made that decision.

More recently, it was suggested that the RP could be an artefact of measurement, potentially putting free will back into our command.

But if we take on the view that our conscious decisions arise from a cascade of firing neurons, then the origin of the RP may actually provide insight into the mechanisms that lead to voluntary action and free will. The way the brain's neurons work together to come to a decision is still poorly understood. Our conscious experience of free will, our ability to make decisions freely, may then be intricately wired to the rest of our body.
"

I don't see how this should matter to anyone who isn't religious. As for those who are, it's my impression that the whole idea about mankind being made "in God's image" has to do with people having free will. At least so far as Judaism is concerned, God handed down a set of Commandments to his creations then gave them the free will to obey them or not. Although I don't necessarily believe that, it makes a lot of sense. It explains how, on the one hand, we can say that God is omnipotent, but on the other hand we can believe that our salvation is in our own hands.

I believe most "traditional" churches take that view. OTOH you have the Protestant Reformation which sometimes rejected the idea, however for different reasons, depending on sect. So nowadays you can't really say whether "Christians" believe in Free Will or not.

I think Mormonism also makes a big deal about Man being made in God's image however their take on this is quire different as I believe they are also basically predeterministic. However Mormonism is really Christianity 2.0 so adding it to the mix here just confuses the issue.

This thread causes me to speculate about freewill. It is almost as if the chicken or the egg, concept …seems to apply here … but I will be darned to explain it .. It seemed like a logical extrapolation . Would you have done this if that were the other available idea or course of action an available choice. “ but would have god willed it that way “
Or is it all a series of coincidences ?

My problem with it, and I think it always will be what bothers me, the definitions of free will never really stop shifting - particularly in that they're considered useful in terms of influencing conduct, human behavior, holding people to account, etc. so in other words it's really a kludge rather than a coherent philosophy.

The easiest thing to attack and rip down is libertarian free will, ie. the idea that you 'could have done otherwise' in a given situation. If you believe in sufficient causation at all that goes up in smoke on any close inspection.

What occurred to me back in my late 20's - I could walk into a casino, walk up to a craps table, throw lucky 7's, all of this happens in the course of five minutes, and there's absolutely no reason to believe that if one could rewind time and play it forward I should be able to replay that moment ten times, one hundred, one million, trillions of times, and get the same exact result. If I could do that with a five minute slice what rule would cause that not to apply to the entire time horizon of my life? If there's quantum indeterminism, the way Brian Greene suggests, then I can't replay and get the same result however the mechanics are really the same just less convenient for a demo of the concept.

What gets illusive is the degree of complexity and apparent autonomy we seem to have from our environments - to the degree that we can pick and choose which inputs, memories, we like best and maximize those, sometimes to the point of blotting out bad environments. That raises the complexity level of what's happening internally but it doesn't remove our slavery to causation, it just means that the more space we can grant ourselves between stimulus and response the more we can take more optimal routes by our own estimation. Routes not taken, IMHO, were only virtual, they didn't actually exist in a proper sense - ie. it might look like you could do one of five things, you process the math of your own emotions, environment, needs, and figure out that out of the five options that option D was your best choice - that A, B, C, or E weren't going to be it was already clear from the information you had in your head - you just hadn't processed it yet, or maybe someone came by and gave you a piece of information you had earlier. You can only act on the information you have.

IMHO this completely ignores whether we live in a reductive materialist / physicalist universe, idealist universe, panpsychism, it's completely irrelevant to the argument how populated the cosmos and even waking lives are with occult forms of consciousness and agency whispering in our ears of that were the case, we're in a one way flow of time and you only have the information you have as well as senses from weighing the information you do have what kinds of unknowns might be worth the risk. Adding more agents adds complexity but it doesn't change the rule.


If by 'free will' people want to say that this means acting according to their desires, okay, that's a different thing however than saying they could have done differently. They don't chose their desires, rather their desires foment from childhood, the ways in which they grew up, the degree of self-insight they had or didn't have, their OCEAN five-factor profile, all sorts of things like that. Something feeling 'right' or 'self-evident' can also feel wonderful but something feeling wonderful doesn't mean that you originated it. Similarly if you have lofty goals and even achieve them those goals were given to you more than anything, even if it took you a lot of processing to order them.