Tfw fell for the hard determinism meme

He's not a trained philosopher, he's a "neuro-scientist." In quotes because

>Sam had no history in neuroscience and he had never conducted an experiment in his life. It’s hard to imagine the UCLA neuroscience department accepting his PhD proposal, until you remember that Sam was by this stage highly connected, filthy rich, and becoming famous. He was given the red carpet treatment by UCLA. Sam got to pretend to do science while the professionals got to work. The various research jobs were passed to his co-authors: conducting the experiments, recruiting participants and designing the entire study were taken off Little Lord Fauntleroy’s hands. Ultimately Sam’s sole responsibility was the final write-up, which is less the account of a scientific experiment and more a screed about his personal views on religion, and a narcissistic flexing of his intellectual cred.

sauce?

Well, he also has a degree in philosophy. Yeah he's bad at it, but he is definitely "trained" which just makes his incompetence at it more surprising, which I believe is what the previous poster was getting at

you're failing classes because you're stupid.

>If you've never looked into the philosophy of quantum mechanics
any good papers that aren't pseud shit?

So you decided not to decide because you decided you can't decide?

rhizzone, I believe

Are you actually unironically making an argument based on the information density of current technology?

No I'm just smart but lazy

But not lazy because I was destined not to put into any effort

>quantum mechanics
Only being able to predict probabilities instead of absolute certainties doesn't make free will exist. Also irrelevant regardless because human brains operate on the scale of classical physics.
arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/9907009v2.pdf
>We find that the decoherence timescale s ( ∼ 10 −13 − 10 −20 seconds) are typically much shorter than the relevant dynamical timescales ( ∼ 10 − 3 − 10 − 1 seconds), both for regular neuron firing and for kink-like polarization excitations in microtubules. This conclusion disagrees with suggestions by Penrose and others that the brain acts as a quantum computer, and that quantum coherence is related to consciousness in a fundamental way.
You are only allowed to honestly believe in "quantum consciousness" if you also believe consciousness has NOTHING to do with neuronal firing, because Tegmark established they will fire exactly the same way as predicted by classical physics regardless of any quantum effects that happens in proximity to them. The timescales for decoherence aren't anywhere near long enough to let them influence neuronal firing.

>lmao it's just your brain chemicals silly!
>every choice you make was influenced by prior causes
>in fact you don't have control over anything, Libet says your actions are completely determined!

who the hell takes this fool seriously?

But from a behavioral standpoint, it's still determinism if the acausal causes aren't you.

Quantum mechanics at best replaces some determinism with randomness, and like Ben Stiller likes to say: No mixture of randomness and determinism gives you free will. At what point does randomness somehow make your decisions "free" in some meaningful way? 1% ... 50% ... 100% ? How is making random choices more free than making causally determined choices?

Your own thoughts on the matter were determined so you don't know that they are true.

>nothing I do matters it's all chemical reactions lmao
A joke of course, but some people seriously think this and I'll never understand why. Those chemical reactions are you, they aren't separate from you.

if you were actually smart you'd either be passing without effort, or would be studying.

>you obviously have control

Hard determinism does not equal fatalism brainlets. Such a noob mistake.

And if QM is true then we do not have enough control for FW either

From what I've seen, free will and determinism both exist. Why? Because in most areas of physics, the universe doesn't give a fuck what people think or experience as long as everything agrees the same chain of events happened.

If the second law of thermodynamics didn't exist, there would be no reason why events couldn't just go backwards and forwards in time. When particles move, you have to consider every possible path it will take because it has the potential to go through them all. The universe does just not give a shit about what happens as long as the end result is the same.

To the universe, it doesn't matter whether free will or determinism exist anymore than it matter is if the Red Sox win next season or a person stabs someone. The end result will be the same anyway, so the universe just lets us sit here arguing on imageboards about it, and it will never give us a definite answer. Its like qualia, does it matter what you or I perceive red to be as long as we both agree its red? Not to the Universe.

>not being conditioned such that the sum of all your influences and your awareness of them causes you to embrace destiny and live to the fullest
Nietzsche looks upon you with disdain.

>What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: "This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence - even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!"
>Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus?... Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal?

This is what stupid people tell themselves

I'm making an argument based on the information density of spacetime.

One could argue that the universe is a computer constantly calculating its own state, but how then do you construct an analytical machine capable of reading the current and calculating future states without just waiting for the universe to move through time into them? The analytical machine would have to possess and store perfect knowledge of itself and its affect on the universe in order to make accurate predictions- which is already impossible- even before you get around to perfect knowledge of even one instantaneous state of the universe.

Achieving information totality is like having an over-unity machine.

>free will doesn't make sense because i ahve autism
>You can't because of your limited mind. If your mind is limited by experience then how could you make some choice uninfluenced by the chain of events that led you to the fork in the first place?
>presuming

>philosophy of invalid STEM nonsense
Fuck off, redditor
All physics is wrong, sorry redditor!
*begs the question*

Why doesn't it equal fatalism?

It's determinism, not predictablism. It doesn't have to be computable, only computed.

>benstiller.jpg

Determinism is false. Completely and utterly debased. Do we have free will? I sure do hope so and like to think that we do. Doesn't matter ; the important part is that Determinism is out and uncertainty gives us reasons to go on.

Do something. Humans are just goal completing machines. Set goals. Complete them. Die. Otherwise, the suffering you feel until you die will only get worse. Start small.

Knowledge is power. You now know that you are a puppet with strings and instead of grabbing hold of those strings you have chosen to let them have their way with you so you can spite your own pathetic worm-like existence. You have failed in your life. You have failed to cultivate discipline and develop the courage necessary to confront the void, hence why you think,
>nothing I do matters it's all chemical reactions lmao

Get out of bed and make something of your life you pathetic piece of shit. You have no choice in the matter, for my post necessitates your action.

>determinism is false
what universe do you come from?

A highly motivated person can accept hard determinism and still pursue goals, because those goals activate pleasure, which is chemical. If you don't wanna get out of the bed, it's because you're lazy and/or unmotivated, which is due to some sort of chemical predisposition. I know you're having a hard time believing there is no free will, so I want you to do a few thought experiments:
>go 20 seconds without thinking
>turn absolute love for an object into absolute hatred, or vice versa

Free will is impossible. All your actions lead back down a causal chain, which I believe goes back to God. Everything you are composed of is either natural, and obviously causal (physics, chemistry, biology) or supernatural, and therefore causal because God created you that way. Animals don't have free will but they don't have an innate understanding of the causal nature of the universe, so they have no reason to think they don't have free will. A universe without free will look exactly like this one.

How do goal completing machines set goals

But God can grant your immaterial part free will while matter can't grant your material part free will.

How exactly does God grant us free will? Be specific.

I don't have to be specific in the realm of metaphysics. It is not beholden to scientific proofs.

But the physical realm, which is, clearly disallows it.

>And if QM is true then we do not have enough control for FW either
Everything about this statement is retarded, kys

God doesn't give us free will. How can you say that your claim that he does give us free will is more reasonable than mine?

Because I experience seeming free will every waking moment of my life, yet it is inadmissible in a purely physical universe. And I experience it through the same faculties that bring me mundane scientific truths of cause and effect.

Therefore it comes from either an elaborate ruse nature plays on itself or from a metaphysical truth.

At that point, you can flip a coin and go with it. Or you can agree that since a causal universe denies choice, you can't choose the metaphysical explanation and be wrong, since if the metaphysical explanation is wrong, you couldn't have chosen it.

So why not?

>because
>because

what even is this word

So do you think all animals have free will too? If they don't, surely you don't think they understand that they don't?

But if they don't, they still they haven't made an incorrect choice in assuming that they do because they have no free will and have thus not made a choice at all.

Same with us.

>Determinism
>Okay let's talk about the determination ones race makes on behavior which is currently the highest predictor along with iq of ma-
>Hold on there Nazi

Both determinism and racial superiority are true

How do I do this

My point is we can live in a deterministic world and still think we have free will. It wouldn't make sense for us to come out of the womb thinking we don't have free will. It takes observation and reasoning of the human capacity to realize how meaningless a concept free will is. Either the past decides our actions or our actions come partially from nowhere. I prefer believing the former.

But you can't live in a deterministic world and choose to believe you live in a deterministic world.

>Both determinism and racial superiority are true

Absolutely, but Wh*te scum are not the master race and are doomed to all die off.

read emerson. absolute determinism logically includes being determined to have personal freedom. they aren't mutually exclusive.

At least Quantum.

what does that even mean

Ask a mason if you can join their lodge. Become initiated. Make your way through all the degrees over a few years. Learn the unexciting mysteries of old white men. Possibly drive a miniture car during parades.

>If your mind is limited by experience
he thinks there is mind and experience and the two are not same

The entire point of my first post is that it doesn't matter that the future states are computed, because it's impossible to access knowledge of those future states.

That information does not and can not exist within the universe until the point in time in question has been reached, therefore making the concept of determinism irrelevant for points of view embedded in the universe.

...

no. the very power of calculation is the power to calculate future states of determination

determinayion is not.meaningless. determination can be calculated

ehy is lit so stupid. do you guys all have postmodern lit majors

Did you just have a fucking stroke?

Do you have any concept of information density?

you dont need to calculate all information to know a future state within reasonable boundaries. statistics works precisely because the world jis deterministic

you calculate the most salient factors and you have information relevant to that future state.

are you asking to predict the weather? thats useless even if you could

anything else ither than macro weather is calculable. fucking IRREGULAR stellar orbits for fucks sake

Again, did you have a stroke? Are you trying to tell me that anything but macro-scale weather patterns are predictable?

This thread is discussing free will, which for the purposes of determinism requires perfect knowledge and calculation ability for every particle.

wrong. the brain is an amalgamation of modular units, most of which use threahold calculation. the most complex units of calvulation do so stochastically from ergodic units.

we can already map facial visualizations from brain scans of monkeys.

we dont need knowledge of every atom any more than we need knowledge of every atom kn a computer to surmise its basic functioning principles, and to figure out what its terminal value is

are you dumb?

have you read any literature on free will at all? pop science doesn't count

>have you read any stoned musings on free will?
>cutting edge neurology doesnt count
jesus fucking christ

chemical reactions?
The brain is composed of atoms, molecules, chemical compounds...
But it isn't
These are just concepts for people to establish some kind of reference point concerning their microcosmic being in the world

Everything is actually poetic in substance

Only when there is a science of poetics or a poetics of science will people really see things as they are

Science as science will just create people like yourself, existentially anxious that everything is a "billiard ball equation" clanging about in the void

That is a really trite picture to paint about the expansive reality, the endless perspectives to inhabit, it has its place only as a point of reference as a crippled perspective that through its lack propelled civilisation into considering perspectives that compelled people to repsect themselves and life and beauty and poetry and art and eternity and the universe and love and god and religion and science, yes science as one among a congress of functions of the eternal function

most discussion of free will is scientifically informed and for the last few decades has thoroughly discussed the libet and split-brain experiments which are probably more relevant to free will than the jumbled mess of whatever you picked up from the latest sam harris book/intro-to-neural-networks course/whatever

it helps to understand what you're talking about before you talk about it

Meaning could be considered a predisposition of sorts. A very core, causal link that borne understanding would will to impose on the sensibility of life within scope. We constantly search, muse, to dwell and sort the very underpinning of our own deep-set considerations and fear. I am afraid that this very exercise is a sort of rabbit hole. In itself, it does not perpetrate forthwith, as far as I can determine... and as it so happens... inevitably, two stances develop on the presupposition of logic, and truth: otherwise regarded as an esoteric, coincidentally, subliminal, justice. Stance one: there is none. Following a presupposed path is tomfoolery; life is but a begin onto another, yes? Every birth a rebirth of a sort, yeah. We as thoughtful beings cannot allot for the whole breadth of creation and destruction. It is not in our grasp, better known as will, ever. This is the bay of the layman, or, cynic. Stance two: Logic, truth, are both emblematic and transient...corroding an inherent chaos in everything...even the cosmic-sum countenance which happenstance misery is rule; that too holds silver lining. Virtue proceeds ... not begotten by scorn or envy, but its very own precedence. Virtue is devised of us, for if we continued on absent of that very sacred thing, we would no longer exist. Of course, that inclination is, in sorts, a kind of confirmation bias. Propagation does not equal salvation, but it can beget hope to a better end, I believe: and the continued survival and contrivance of mankind would give hope to that. And this would be the bay of the transcendent, or, lunatic.

You are right, my brother. Every moment of instantiation of the real truth into the manifold of multiplicity is a moment that frees us from the crushing tyrrany of vituperative taperings of existence.

Science is nonsense.

>nonsense philosopher reads some science and spins it into wild fantasy
>totally informative
>what an actual neurologist who xan brain scan monkeys writes
>its nonsense
oh. got it buddy

maybe you should go and jerk and off. offer them your anus

jesus christ. did you even graduate high school. if i was your english teacher i would beat you

dude kill yourself

To be fair i'm about a half case deep and it's 4 AM here. I wanted to see if I could type out some bullshit that sounded philosophical and if anyone would buy it.

you are literally trying to invalidate neurology

kay. my mistake. sorry for blowing your cover. i think most of the idiots here would believe it

nigga you are chemical reactions, the level of complexity that is your whole allows you to chose. Though most of you is just an autopilot machine of unconscious reason and instinct, and completely automated processes. You still have some choice.

But I do, though

No, you only imagine you do, by your own dogma.

>At least Quantum.
Go back and read this:
You personally are the activity of a deterministic brain. Quantum scale phenomena have literally no involvement with nor impact at all upon neuronal firing. At best you can argue phenomena that have nothing to do with you aren't deterministic, in which case congratulations, you might have the possibility of beginning to make a failed argument for the free will of subatomic particles (will end up being a failed argument because randomness isn't any more "free" than determinism; random number generators don't have free will).

quantum effecta do change biology actually. we cant tell why. look up differences in iodine metabolism. majoe differences

that said, yea, the poster you are replying to is an idiot

Why is he so dead-eyed? Is that what a lack of free will looks like?

I'm talking about neuronal firing, not all of biology. Your iodine metabolism isn't really relevant to free will.
That said, do you have a source for the iodine metabolism / quantum effects thing? I tried a regular search engine and didn't see results that matched what you're talking about.

I forgot about >presuming
Do we still use that? When did it disappear. I member it from /b/

I just had a quick did of his neuroscience publications and they're all well underpowered. The most cited one is an fMRI study of neural correlates of 'belief' with 14 participants, with some flimsy results vaguely pointing to regions well associated with decision making behaviour already

100% possibility Stiller is a zombie.

>You personally are the activity of a deterministic brain. Quantum scale phenomena have literally no involvement with nor impact at all upon neuronal firing.
Neurons have literally no impact on me, since they are too small to matter, like Quantum mechanics.

No, that's not how physics works.

We already know neuronal firing matters for you. Try continuing to have thoughts with no neuronal firing. It probably won't work out well.
There's a timescale for when quantum decoherence can operate and neuronal firing isn't compatible with it. Your neurons will fire the same way as predicted by classical physics regardless of any quantum scale effects.
arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/9907009v2.pdf
>We find that the decoherence timescale s ( ∼ 10 −13 − 10 −20 seconds) are typically much shorter than the relevant dynamical timescales ( ∼ 10 − 3 − 10 − 1 seconds), both for regular neuron firing and for kink-like polarization excitations in microtubules. This conclusion disagrees with suggestions by Penrose and others that the brain acts as a quantum computer, and that quantum coherence is related to consciousness in a fundamental way.

statistics doesn't work

Do I have to fuck and eat children too?

>the purposes of determinism requires perfect knowledge and calculation ability for every particle
No. This claim fails to take into account the existence of irrelevancies. Not everything has causal influence on everything else.

It was a joke. Quantum is everywhere especially because it is so small.

I know it was a joke. You were trying to use that joke to make a point that isn't true.

>Quantum doesn't affect us
Shame about perception.