Comment on Yes, We Have Free Will. No, We Absolutely Do Not

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peanuts4life@beehaw.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

Hmm. I disagree a bit with this idea, but more on the grounds of semantics. In a deterministic world, you might fret over a decision for weeks, taking influence from several factors. You are free to make any decision, and your will may be driven by rational desires.

In this model, at an atomic level, you have no special, privileged position. A magical being with a perfect physical simulation could perfectly predict your actions in the same way as the movement of a falling stone.

However, unlike a stone, your mind is tuned by all sorts of important human factors. Your memories, habits, biases, education, relationships, and perception. Just because they are the result of the same fundimental physical properties doesn’t mean they are suddenly devoid of meaning or random.

Alternatively, if we imagine a world where the human mind is dependent on non physical, non deterministic factors. Does it actually change our previous hypothetical decision? Probably not. You’d still make a similar decision based on all of those human factors. Perhaps, this hypothetical non deterministic human might occasionally decide to “flip a coin” so to speak, and do something truly random, but to me that feels uninformed and uninteresting to my own experience. Few definitions of free will demand that we be able to make random decisions.

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