Yes, like I said fate decides. I'm not saying we have control and I wrote responses but they're dead. I think they're still good responses and even if fate decided.
The issue is that you're talking out of both sides of your mouth.
Free will's existence not mattering doesn't do anything for the "thrilling observations" or whatever. It says nothing to whether things get better or worse.
Not to mention, you have no choice whether you find it thrilling or not. So trying to convince someone else that it is thrilling is also implicitly figuring people have some sort of free will or discretion.
And you're assuming that you're right and that people need to get on board because "being aware of the nature of reality is a good thing". Well, the nature of reality is that whether free will exists is pointless.
You don't even address your cherry-picking of my other comment.
I don't think there is a disagreement here. I agree with your long post conveying it's all fate in the end. I can still write about what I think while observing everything and knowing fate has made my impression. I just like the discussion because who knows if today will be the day to read something thought provoking around it.
Anyways, I'm not trying to convince anyone something is thrilling. I just find it thrilling and even while knowing I don't have free will in any regard of my life.
I think nobody can be right in the traditional sense (traditionally assuming free will exists and one person can be right). My views are just of how I wish society functioned because I think I would prefer to live in a society that cared about the misfortunate by fate. Maybe that's how the multiverse would work for people moving (after death) to a universe more suited for how they turned out. Still wouldn't bring free will but would be cool.
Anyway I'm not trying to cherry pick. I just thought I would express myself best with what I pulled out to write more. Thanks very much for the discussion!
Free will exists or it doesn't. There's no middle ground. Someone is going to be right and someone is going to be wrong. But, like I said, it doesn't matter. The answer doesn't change anything. It's a purely academic question.
If you weren't trying to cherry pick, then why did you do it so blatantly?
> Free will as a concept is much simpler than God as a concept
How so? I assume the opposite when it comes to what's simpler. A person sees creation by God as cause & effect. The free will concept doesn't even make sense if thought about. Your actions are cause & effect from the summation of all events experienced.
For starters, generally the view is that free will either exists or doesn't exist with free will being the concept that we have some control over our actions.
Compare this to God, where you have plenty of religions, many with their own distinction God, some with many, some with concepts that may or may not quite count as God. Even with just Christianity, you have God, but then you have the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit which makes up God. With some belief systems you have spirits which are kinda like a god but kinda not and with other systems you have demigods which are part human.
So with free will, you options are:
Option | Free Will
1 | N
2 | Y
With gods, you options are
Option | God | Trinity | Allah | Shiva | Zeus | Thor | ...
1 | N | N | N | N...
2 | Y | N | N | N...
3 | N | Y | N | N...
...
And that isn't even counting the difference within a given religion. It is like comparing the cardinality of boolean options with the cardinality of the reals.
I don't see how that would give me comfort in a society that is conditioned and even manipulated to think contrary. I see people in prison and even if they're innocent (in the traditional sense) of the crime. Your rhetoric is typically voiced from people assuming it's not good to understand reality and I typically think what nonsense. I guess similar to how some people preferred everyone assuming the world to be flat. Simply, assuming it's better to think contrary doesn't make reality not so.
I'd suggest that there is no way for either of us to know whether we actually have free will or not. So you are free to go on acting as if we don't, and I'm free to go on acting as if we do.
Those three positions are substantive? How so.., I assume if you're that loose with the word.. the most widely shared definition of free will should be substantive to you. Even one could say free will rejects the idea that we are imprisoned by a physical nexus of 'cause & effect' and typically what people follow from reading the bible. Evil fairy tales that delude a person. Anyhow I wish I knew of cause & effect very young because then I wouldn't have been grossly taken advantaged of and I assume is the reason the majority of people are conditioned to stay deluded.
Maybe email me at alizeebellerose @ icloud .com and we can have a better discussion. I was temporarily banned from HN for conversing about this topic. In any case the discussion would be better by email or elsewhere. I'm agnostic in the sense of purpose but I enjoy neuroscience enough and with physics that I cannot see real control existing in reality. Although, I would love to have someone explain to me how they see otherwise.
