When is a "What if?" scenario more acceptable?

I'm thinking about joining a Bridge club. Might improve negotiation type shit.

free will is a necessitated social construct.

>The way you play your hand is free will.

Except the way you play your hand is also a part of the hand that is dealt to you.

are you saying it's not real?

Yes, yes he is.

Isn't stoicism somewhat pic related? As far as I remember, stoics say that circumstances in which you were born are determined, but it is up to you how to operate within your limitations.

*predetermined

yes, but without it, it'd be chaos; ergo the necessary part

there's a small muslim anecdote it about this.
a guy goes to a sheikh (i forgot who he is or if he's fictional) and asks him:
"do i have the ability to choose (free will) or am i a mere slave (predetermined)?"
the sheikh first tells him to raise one of his legs above the ground, regardless of whether it's the left or right leg. then he tells him to raise his other leg (he obviously can't raise it because he wouldn't be able to stand up) and then he tells him "well there you go"
i hope you enjoyed this anecdote

I liked it, thank you.

you're welcome, friend

I enjoyed it despite being a Muslim anecdote.

sounds very mullah nasruddinish

Holy shit, this is what humanities majors sound like when talking about probability

Try to wrap your head around this - google "frequentist vs. bayesian probability"

edumucate yourself, pleb

>Engiqueers
A time will come when we'll hang you alongside with other pretentious faggots like you.

basically, yes in a deterministic universe there are no probabilities (((but not really, because of quantum mechanics)))

so bayesian statisticians use the word 'probability' to be synonymous with "belief in something"

"there's a high probability it will rain tomorrow" = "i strongly believe it will rain tomorrow"

frequentist statisticians use the word probability in the traditional sense: the number of times something will happen if you repeat an experiment over an over again

Of course, you can never truly repeat something in a deterministic universe, but you can get "close enough"

e.g. I can never repeat the same coin flip, but a coin flip is a coin flip

"There's a high probability it will rain tomorrow" = "in my miniature virtual world on my computer, 95 times out of 100 it rained tomorrow"

kapeesch?

That makes more sense. We'll still hang you, but that makes more sense.

So in a Deterministic universe there's absolutely 0 point at saying "What if?".

You can try, but we'll have guns and tanks while you'll have hermes scarves and unread copies of infinite jest

There is a point, of course - because our world follows pretty consistent rules of causality that we can understand (that is the goal of science). That's precisely what is meant by a deterministic universe.

Anyway, we can make good and principled guesses when we ask "what if", so it's not a pointless exercise.

I'm 95% sure that's the Mulla Nasrudin.

>unread copies of infinite jest
My fucking sides.

Yeah, but when you consider that there's absolutely no way to replicate it and it's purely speculative, isn't it useless? Strictly speaking from a past perspective, as in "What if I that man had a chance to go to college earlier in his life? What if he had done great things?".

That's the kind of scenario where it's pointless. For the future, sure, we can rack up some numbers and make educated guesses, but. Fuck, I'm having a hard time expressing this, I fucked up my back and I'm on painkillers and I'm hoping against hope that this is as transparent as it sounds to me.

>Yeah, but when you consider that there's absolutely no way to replicate it and it's purely speculative, isn't it useless? Strictly speaking from a past perspective, as in "What if I that man had a chance to go to college earlier in his life? What if he had done great things?".

Well, to give a practical example, the technocrats you seem to hate so much can exploit the causal, deterministic nature of the universe to build stuff. Like cars. Or your laptop.

Regarding your example, yes, it's purely speculative. If you're not going to act in the future based on the outcome of your "what if" question, there's no material value, perhaps other than any pleasure you might gain from such an intellectual exercise.

>That's the kind of scenario where it's pointless. For the future, sure, we can rack up some numbers and make educated guesses, but. Fuck, I'm having a hard time expressing this, I fucked up my back and I'm on painkillers and I'm hoping against hope that this is as transparent as it sounds to me.

The knowledge that one fucked up one's life by being lazy and could have avoided it by working harder, or whatever, is what impels us to get better in the future. As primates, we can draw upon the pain of distant past mistakes to avoid making those same mistakes in the future. So there is value, in a sense, in having these feelings.

But again, that is contingent on ACTING on the answer to your "What ifs"

It's the evolutionary pastiche of basic Hebbian conditioning , writ large.

> I ate that flower yesterday and got sick. Better stay away today or I'll throw up again.
> I should have gone to college 10 years ago. Better get my shit together now or else I'll feel even worse about my place in this tribe of monkeys.

Same old shit.