You should just skip ahead and realise free will itself is an illusion. You can't not do what you have a high enough drive to do, for example if you're trying to lose weight, a long term goal you think you set for yourself (lol) but there's a tasty free pizza offered to you, just sitting there, if your drive to lose weight is high enough you'll resist the pizza, if not, you'll eat it because of your other drive, hunger/craving for tasty things/craving for nutrient you need from that item.
You don't choose your needs, everyone knows that, but most people haven't figured out you don't choose your wants. They just exist.
Next time you get an itchy ear, try not to scratch it, unless your drive to prove me wrong is high enough, you'll scratch it, so no matter what you do, you did it because you had to, scratch the itch or prove me wrong, which ever matters more to you, a thing you didn't decide.
Enjoy your uncomfortable feeling for a few days before your brain makes you forget this as a coping mechanism :)
Free will isn't even an illusion, it's a nonsensical leftover from when primitive frenchmen believed in the existance of an immaterial soul. I've been forced to conced that the universe may not be deterministic because of those quantum mechanics dickweeds, but choice is almost certainly illusory at best.
I have severe long term treatment resistant depression, anxiety disorders, severe executive dysfunction from time to time. If I had free choice of the will I would go punch Rene Descartes right in his stupid face.___
Ah so you know already, fair enough! I can't say I understand quantum mechanics enough to know if or how it might prove our universe isn't deterministic, but I'm willing to bet it's one of those things that eventually the people studying it will loop back around to thinking it proves determinism again on a larger scale or something (such as infinite dimensions with infinite configurations of atoms/quarks/whatever).
PS sorry to hear about your mental health issues. I've got an anxiety disorder myself so know some of what you're going through.
I believe in you, if you want to go punch Rene Descartes I think you can achieve that goal if you want it enough.
I appreciate the solidarity. I have this ongoing suspicion of a lot of philosophy specifically because so many of the people talking about will and perception and whatnot don't consider the failure states of the human mind. Asserting "I think therefore I am" sounds very cut and dried until you encounter people who don't have any internal process that they're aware of, or people who have a persistent, hopefully delusional belief that they do not exist.
I have a hard time with philosophy bc it seems like you need to invest many years to even get to the point where you can evaluate the merit of what you're reading, but i get the impression that mental illness is a huge unknown unknown for many philosophers. They seem to have an unwarranted confidence that they're not unwittingly experiencing the same kind of cognitive aberrations as mentally ill people. But if you take a really big step back and observe that billions of people have delusional beliefs like the existence of gods and magic that are utterly resistant to interrogation or evidence, you kind of have to wonder if there are gross distortions we're all subject to that we're incapable of recognizing.
I read somewhere that very intelligent people can be more susceptible to delusion and misinterpretation because in so far as "intelligence" involves highly capable pattern recognition, that pattern recognition does not necessarily also mean that the individual can correctly evaluate the truth value of that pattern. Eg correlation vs causation. Without empirical testing and experiment there's no way to reliably establish causal relationships. So if someone was very smart, and working with an idea that is currently untestable, or even nonfalsifiable, they could very well use that intelligence to construct a delusional belief very far from reality without being aware of doing so.
Ps - had a funny idea. Guy from our universe where free will isn't really a thing gets isekai'd to a universe that works on Shonen Anime rules where just being real real dedicated to something and yelling real loud will let you violate physics and do magic and stuff.
You should just skip ahead and realise free will itself is an illusion. You can't not do what you have a high enough drive to do, for example if you're trying to lose weight, a long term goal you think you set for yourself (lol) but there's a tasty free pizza offered to you, just sitting there, if your drive to lose weight is high enough you'll resist the pizza, if not, you'll eat it because of your other drive, hunger/craving for tasty things/craving for nutrient you need from that item.
You don't choose your needs, everyone knows that, but most people haven't figured out you don't choose your wants. They just exist.
Next time you get an itchy ear, try not to scratch it, unless your drive to prove me wrong is high enough, you'll scratch it, so no matter what you do, you did it because you had to, scratch the itch or prove me wrong, which ever matters more to you, a thing you didn't decide.
Enjoy your uncomfortable feeling for a few days before your brain makes you forget this as a coping mechanism :)
Free will isn't even an illusion, it's a nonsensical leftover from when primitive frenchmen believed in the existance of an immaterial soul. I've been forced to conced that the universe may not be deterministic because of those quantum mechanics dickweeds, but choice is almost certainly illusory at best.
I have severe long term treatment resistant depression, anxiety disorders, severe executive dysfunction from time to time. If I had free choice of the will I would go punch Rene Descartes right in his stupid face.
___Ah so you know already, fair enough! I can't say I understand quantum mechanics enough to know if or how it might prove our universe isn't deterministic, but I'm willing to bet it's one of those things that eventually the people studying it will loop back around to thinking it proves determinism again on a larger scale or something (such as infinite dimensions with infinite configurations of atoms/quarks/whatever).
PS sorry to hear about your mental health issues. I've got an anxiety disorder myself so know some of what you're going through.
I believe in you, if you want to go punch Rene Descartes I think you can achieve that goal if you want it enough.
I appreciate the solidarity. I have this ongoing suspicion of a lot of philosophy specifically because so many of the people talking about will and perception and whatnot don't consider the failure states of the human mind. Asserting "I think therefore I am" sounds very cut and dried until you encounter people who don't have any internal process that they're aware of, or people who have a persistent, hopefully delusional belief that they do not exist.
I have a hard time with philosophy bc it seems like you need to invest many years to even get to the point where you can evaluate the merit of what you're reading, but i get the impression that mental illness is a huge unknown unknown for many philosophers. They seem to have an unwarranted confidence that they're not unwittingly experiencing the same kind of cognitive aberrations as mentally ill people. But if you take a really big step back and observe that billions of people have delusional beliefs like the existence of gods and magic that are utterly resistant to interrogation or evidence, you kind of have to wonder if there are gross distortions we're all subject to that we're incapable of recognizing.
I read somewhere that very intelligent people can be more susceptible to delusion and misinterpretation because in so far as "intelligence" involves highly capable pattern recognition, that pattern recognition does not necessarily also mean that the individual can correctly evaluate the truth value of that pattern. Eg correlation vs causation. Without empirical testing and experiment there's no way to reliably establish causal relationships. So if someone was very smart, and working with an idea that is currently untestable, or even nonfalsifiable, they could very well use that intelligence to construct a delusional belief very far from reality without being aware of doing so.
Ps - had a funny idea. Guy from our universe where free will isn't really a thing gets isekai'd to a universe that works on Shonen Anime rules where just being real real dedicated to something and yelling real loud will let you violate physics and do magic and stuff.
:wojak-nooo: YOU, A BRAINLET: So do we have free will or are our actions predetermined????
:gigachad: ME, AN INTELLECTUAL: Yes.