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.

You asked how I experienced liberation from this way of looking at the world, and I have tried to describe it.

But I'm not trying to persuade you that you should/would experience it in the same way.

My sole point in this discussion is to share the deterministic view of the universe.

Okay, if that’s all you’re here for, goal achieved.

We have free will. What we dont have is freedom from consequences.

I could go out right now and kill someone. I would most probably get caught and go to jail. But I could do it if i wanted to.

When people say we don't have free will what they normally means is you can't do and say whatever you want and nothing bad will happen to you because of it. Thats not the same thing as being physically prevented or silenced.

The universe is made up of particles and forces interacting in a ways that are either predictable or random.

Neither of these allows room for freedom in the cycle of choice>action>experience>choice.

The only way of inserting such freedom is by magic

Which, to be clear, I do not believe exists.

It seems on going to me

You don't believe you can make choices, you don't feel jealousy, or gratitude. You don't believe in people deserving things. You feel liberated at not feeling these things. Your belief system seems to be removing all emotion from your life. It doesn't sound like a very attractive belief. I would'nt bother setting up a cult to promote it.

Yes I tend to agree that radical determinism is the most likely scenario for our experiences.

Cognitive dissonance - the ability to believe two contradictory things at once.

Actions believe in free will

Mind doesn't

Hurrah!

I agree

When you have kids you realise they are property of the government. Not yours as parents to make decisions. I found this out when I took my daughter to A&E and after 6 hrs of waiting and her not gets any worse and all the drunks started turning up. I walked out. A couple of hours later when we were fast asleep, I got woken by the police hammering on my door. They insisted I took her straight back to A&E to be assessed.
Tried to explain but they said I had to go back.
Took her, waited a few more hours then doctor saw her for about ten minutes and sent us home.
Massive eye-opener for me.

There’s a song, think it’s by Robert Wyatt. It has a lyric ‘given free will but within certain limitations’ and something about a spider not being able to understand arachnophobia. I think.

To me it’s not necessarily our ‘who we are ness’ that prevents us having free will, it’s societal constraints and expectations. I want to use my free will to be free and not work but I can’t because society expects me to have a house and buy food from a supermarket and so I have to work to pay for those things.

Maybe I’d have more free will if I’d been born in a forest and raised by foxes. I’d only know about hunting, eating and sleeping so would be free from other expectations. Though I suppose the foxes would expect me to be fox like and maybe that’d stop me doing what I truly wanted to do.

I must have explained myself badly.

I believe in joy.

There's so much room for it in a deterministic universe.

Ok i think theres a huge difference between being in prison because you stabbed/batted/shot someone burgling your home, to being in prison for doing exact same thing on the victim of the house you were burgling.

Both were done on free will, difference is one has a defence , the other doesn't.

No, there wouldn't be more free will, but it would be a much foxier life that you led.

Ok im calling AI bullshit......

Define "free will" clearly first...

In fact don't bother, not because I think none of you are capable but because any answer you or I provide will be incomplete and can be contested by any other individual.

Science can't explain what consciousness actually is even though it can explain in great detail exactly how the brain works.

Free will is largely irrelevant to us if you really think about it. If you do have free will you're making your own choices if you don't something else we can't yet explain is making decisions the outcome is the still same. Live and stop worrying about it.

How could I persuade you not.

A woman went into a bar with a very small lizard on her shoulder.

She said to the barman: Meet tiny. He's my newt.

That is a big puzzle in this question: Define will and define free.

I don't deny that we all have will, just that we lack freedom.

I don't think we need to understand consciousness in detail to contemplate this.

And as I've said repeatedly, I have found great comfort and joy in this deterministic position.

Agree. Whether you’re deterministic or libertarian, the outcomes are basically the same.

I'm not sure what you mean by libertarian in this context

Well if you were in Scotland, youll likely be arrested as they are an endangered species 🤣🤣🤣

True, true, but do you believe that I am human?

We don't need to understand anything to contemplate it after all philosophers have been asking this question for thousands of years if not longer but if we did understand what consciousness was then it would certainly help with the answer if there is one..

There we differ. I find consciousness fairly obvious, but that's a different day's AIBU

I think we have free will as in the ability to make choices from a set of available options. We just don't have infinite free will.

If we had no free will then the decisions for each person would be predictable.