To observe that we don't have free will.

[MesonBoson]

Most of us feel that we have free will.

But when we are faced with making any choice, we are using pre-existing decision-making equipment on pre-existing circumstances.

And so the decision that we make is the only one that our particular mind would make, in that particular situation.

We have to live our lives as though we have free will.

But once you see that life is like the groove in a record, merit and blame become equal imposters.

There's already been a suggestion that I'm drunk!

I don't drink and I rarely do hard drugs.

We might decide to ask someone else's advice before making our decision, and then it might be different from the one we would have made otherwise.
We may also ask AI. As a result a lot of other 'decision - making equipment' and multiple people's circumstances could help us choose what to do.
I think how someone behaves is a lot more organic and nuanced that what you are suggesting.

That particular change was already on their path.

Our wishes and desires change as time goes by; as we learn and experience.

But the algorithm is just clicking along.

We make our choices, be not freely.

I do kind of agree with you.

Very true. There might be all sorts of factors in our decision making. Advice, intuition, experience.

But at the moment we make our choices we are using a pre-existing mind on pre-existing circumstances.

They really aren’t. I’m from a poor, deprived background, lots of crime and relatives doing time for theft and violence. Both parents, from very deprived, dysfunctional backgrounds, only semi-literate and suspicious of education, can’t help with homework, and encourage me to leave my sink estate school as soon as I legally can. My path was laid out for me — a ‘good’ result would have been leave school, don’t get involved in drugs or crime, get a job in a shop and have children young with someone who didn’t beat me, or not much. The ‘bad’ was far worse. Quite a few of my schoolmates died young.

And yet I didn’t do either. I stayed on at school and put myself through four degrees on a combination of grants and scholarships. I have a professional career, have lived all over the world, and currently live between a pair of retired surgeons and a pair of conservation architects.

Nothing in me, my school education, the adults around me, the examples I had ever gave me the ‘equipment’ for any of this. If I were part of a ‘deterministic chain’, this wouldn’t be my life now.

I'm so pleased.

Thank you for telling me so.

It's very liberating to be rid of free will.

Life is thing that is happening to me, and I'm lucky to have such a sweet one.

But I don't merit it

It's just happening.

Isn’t it a meaningless question? You can never get outside of us so you can never be sure if there is free will or not. You can live as if there is or you can live as if there is not and maybe it’s only meaningful to consider which you think is better.

How about when committees make decisions; the decision will have had lots of minds contributing to what is decided on.
'The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.'

So the committee refines something to be done that none of the individuals comprising the group would have come up with alone.

@MesonBoson I think we have a lot less free will than many people think as our decisions are influenced by many things including adverse life events , biology , genetics, epigenetics. Robert Sapolsky is very interesting to listen to on this , his position is that we have no free will at all and I can’t quite get behind that idea but he has written a book on the subject called Determined which is well worth a look

Yes, what you describe are some typical paths for someone growing up among crime and poverty.

But you were not typical, your choices led you along a different, happier way.

This is so.

But the choices that you made were not 'free'.

From the moment that you were born, you were experiencing the world, and imagining the world, and that created your character.

And that character, in any of the situations of your history, would always have made the choices that you made.

You are an individual who chooses, but not freely.

(There are, after all, only 13 particles and four forces)

It's far from meaningless because, without free will, praise and blame are equally invalid.

And life is better for that.

Why are you being snippy? Simulation theory is the theory were sims. Like in a game. People were discussing it. Chill out

I'm not sure how that links to what I'm suggesting.

Organisms interact.

Eh?

There are, after all, only 13 particles and four forces

So? There's only 26 letters in the alphabet, but there's an infinite number of books that can be written with it.

But I was experiencing the same world as the other people around me who died in prison in their 20s, or suffered domestic violence, or became addicts. I was a “character’ created by my environment and heredity, just like anyone else, surely?

I'm sorry if that was snippy.

I didn't mean it to be so!

The same government that controls the laws controls all of us to an extent.

OP is posting because she is having to source an internet connection.

There is no free will in life.

I meant to suggest that the way the universe works is deterministic.

That one thing inevitably leads to the next

Like a machine.

(Unless there are random jumps, but they don't imply 'freedom' either)

Have you seen the Hungarian alphabet? That's just one example because I have.

In that respect - nonsense.

There is still no free will though.

Yes, exactly, your nature and your nurture made you the woman that you are.

And the woman that you are made choices that led you to a better life.

But what I'm suggesting is that we are always re-acting to circumstances.

We feel like we are ahead of the game, but actually we are slightly behind it.

Surfing on the breaking wave of time.

You are speaking of fate.

But my nurture was the same as that of my friends who died, on drugs, in jail. There’s nothing exceptional about my ‘nature’, either. I’m utterly ordinary.

Oh... I take that back...

Violence breeds violence

Abused go on to abuse

No, I don't believe that either.