You never have "real" control over your own actions because free will is an illusion. Thus, my emotional state tends to rarely get angry compared to when I thought free will was a possibility. Since understanding there isn't any control over anything makes me realize what can a person reasonably blame others or themselves if nobody has any choice over how they came to be or act. I don't necessarily gain control but I'm more functioning in society than before. That's typically the goal for everyone because than we have a better living experience.
> You never have "real" control over your own actions because free will is an illusion.
This is facile, and you certainly haven't proven the absence of free will just bey stating it here.
I believe the best assumption, since we feel as though e have free will, is to behave as though we and other people (and animals) have free will.
But aside from that, the fine article isn't really saying anything new. It's a known thing that anger has a dis-inhibiting effect. IIRC, it bypasses the prefrontal cortex in favour of the limbic system.
This is why so many religions and philosophies (esp Buddhism) warn us about the dangers of acting on our anger.
Anger makes us do ill considered things, and we often harm people and regret it later.
There are some interesting arguments that we'd be better off not assuming free will. Yuval Noah Harari (of Sapiens fame) talks about it quite a bit. He mentions his stance briefly in this interview https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2018/aug/05/yuval-noah-h... , but he goes into it deeper in his books. One of his main points is that, as neuroscience and AI get better, external actors to you are able to "understand you better than you understand yourself" and basically start to program you. People are already concerned that this is happening to some degree (the Cambridge Analytica scandal, for example), and it's likely to get more and more severe as technology improves. And one of his big points is that the people who believe most in the sovereignty of their own will will be least likely to protect themselves from such outside influences.
I agree there would be a large moral shift, and it kind of boggles my mind to try to think about it, but I don't think it's necessarily untenable.
Taking the candy bar example, in current society, even someone who doesn't believe in free will probably won't steal a candy bar, since there's a good chance they'll get caught, and then shamed and fined. There can still be a system of rules without a sense of free will.
The mindset would probably affect every aspect of life, but just looking at criminal justice, my intuition is that we would reduce how retributive it is, and switch to something more rehabilitation focused. Then again, it's hard to imagine what the knock on effects of that would be. I could see it going too far and getting exploited. Still, I'd be happy to see society experiment with moves that direction.
Oh, I thought the article was about psychology and where what we have studied illustrates determinism and where nothing has ever shown free will. I mean even what comes out of neuroscience shows how the brain reacts before we're even aware. Free will is an impossibility, how can oneself make choice or decisions that are unaffected by the external forces exerted upon oneself. One's birth being the "starting point" into reality is all that decides everything until the end.
He should have just invented another word for his interpretation of what he defines as free will. Otherwise it creates confusion for people who assume they're making their own choice and without understanding the choice was derived from all the external forces upon oneself; where nobody has any control in what the future experiences shall be.
Why even bother trying to explain something to others if free will is an illusion? What are you relying on to persuade them if they don't have a mind capable of understanding you?
Indeed. Even if you don't believe in it at a philosophical level, you don't exactly have any choice in the matter. We all behave as if we have free will -- the only alternative would be to just stop doing anything (e.g. being catatonic).
I personally believe in free will, but persuasion and learning can still exist even if free will doesn't. It could be argued that people's deterministic reactions led to them reading something someone else posted and that leads to their mind changing. Memes and movements would exist even without free will. It happens in experiments on simple organisms that arguably lack free will (those with very narrow and predictable behaviors).
Some of HN understands hard determinism and once in awhile I see an interesting post. Otherwise it's just a comment triggered from reading the article. I enjoy it.
Better to just read philosophy & psychology from respected sources of academia than an ideology that ruined many lives unjustly. One major negative of religious influence is creating an assumption of free will existing and thus clouding the judgment of the person which can result in depression. The person becomes less aware to how everything effecting them is external forces they have no control over. Then blaming themselves instead of accepting reality.
We have control over our own will, and pretty much that alone. God has ultimate authority over everything else, and works with all things for the good of those who love him and serve him faithfully.
You literally don't, unless you had control of the "starting point" being your birth. One cannot make an action of their own without the influence of the external forces upon oneself. This isn't a bad thing, it's just reality and even studying this brings awareness to how God cannot even have own will. Once again that's not a bad thing.
It's a bit strange to think that the one who is powerful enough to not only create the universe but sustain its existence with just as much power every nanosecond would be unable to stop things from happening within creation if it were against his will, or unable to make something happen within creation if it were in his will.
I think the reality is that we don't have control over everything, not that we don't have control over anything. At a minimum, we have control over our own actions. I also think that accepting what we don't have control over is a path out of depression, not into it.
But that may depend on how much a control freak a person is.
Understanding the deepest sense of reality is best for navigating what's thrown at oneself. Even if one has no control over what happens in life, such as one's thoughts, or actions because its all decided by a linear progression of external forces upon oneself and one's genetics. Ultimately it comes down to the individual desiring to be the best person they can be with using their awareness to their advantage. I can definitely handle problems & emotions better when understanding how nobody has a choice in how they are as a person. Specifically if I'm wronged by someone. That's just a small portion of what philosophy and psychology can be used for in living life.
I think the conflict is the idea of the majority claiming what "normal" is for everyone and the real problem being society is structured for this normal; not designed for the non-standard persons. The persons who think they should prize their difference are either deluding themselves of the negatives experienced or are seldomly at an advantage than the majority classified with the same illness. Maybe it's also needed to just get through a miserable day.
I'm skeptical of the image against terrorists being just a facade. I theorize the massive data collection is for studying psychological patterns in society.
I, too, am skeptical. I theorize that the massive data collection is for control purposes. But watch out - the first people to come under surveillance are those who object to surveillance.
More seriously, if you google "jane harmon alberto gonzalez" you'll find a nice, complicated scandal from GW Bush years that never got the play it should have. Sure, Representative Harmon seems to have done some things wrong, but the real issue is "...Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez later quashed a DOJ investigation into this incident in order to secure Harman’s support for the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program."
That's right, the Attorney General of the US might have (probably did) blackmail a US Representative, using surveillance data. We're all accustomed to autocratic executive branches now, but that's a bridge too far, if you ask me.
When I googled "jane harmon alberto gonzalez" I found a lot of blog spam linking to Jeff Stein's original reporting on that, but Stein's article 404ed.
I have no objection to surveillance if people are open about it and the information is accessible if reasonably needed. I honestly would rather live in a world that had cameras everywhere, including the rooms of my apartment and making victims actually have an opportunity to receive justice instead of the reality we live in today. Of course what I'm writing will be attacked because such a system is hard to design but it's not impossible and if it was made it could make it so the abused no longer be abused. Anyway I'm now in Canada because United States is only where the financially privileged get justice & healthcare.
It will be nice when the religious old generation with their ideology die off. The repressive outcomes restricting a better timeline from proceeding earlier is so sad to witness. Speaking as an LGBT person who has witnessed suicide among peers and when this treatment likely could help the tolls of abuse in correlation to antiquated beliefs. Thanks to the dying god.
You must realize it's a false equivalence: oppression in the name of a more just society is much more worthwhile than oppression in the name of magical imaginary friends. For example, our society oppressing serial killers (for the mission statement of keeping people safe) is much more worthwhile than serial killers oppressing our society (for the mission statement of indulging urges, delusions, etc.) to any reasonable person.
And, of course, I think you have to be very divorced from reality to think that social justice is, has been, or will be as oppressive a force as religion is, has been, or will be to begin with.
> oppression in the name of a more just society is much more worthwhile than oppression in the name of magical imaginary friends...
The thought behind this statement has been used historically to do some pretty bad stuff that resulted in a lot of pain and suffering...be careful that you don't build up a power structure that "works" now when you and people who think like you are in power but can be used to utterly rob the people of their freedom and liberty...its very sad to see this happening again
I've heard some Christians claim it counts as "witchcraft" (KJV translation of φαρμακεία (pharmakeia), which is specifically referring to drug use, and the origin of the English word "pharmacy"). Considering also the use of the word "entheogen" (meaning a substance that manifests a god within you) by some users of psychedelics, and historical pagan use of psychedelics, this seems reasonable.
Sure there is. Churches would love to have a monopoly on providing religious experiences. Any profound experience not associated with church practice is a direct threat to church hegemony.
Michigan is awful for a LGBT person and the state isn't approaching modern lifestyle for the young since I've last been there; it's more of just a catering state for the age-group approaching retiring or already retired. The outdoor activities "the only thing it has going for the state" become tiring and when any decent city in a non-brain drain state has YMCAs that are built to facilitate fun social/active activities. The winters are awful as well.
I guess this risk could be mitigated if the browser had recognition code running in the background for if the top of the screen was mimicking the search bar. I'm not fond of the idea that we put restrictions of fullscreen mode where it requires user approval when scrolling down or something of that sort.
In the US, the typical consensus for law enforcement & government entities, is basically use whatever's available that's beneficial and when nothing has been written into law about it. So I doubt warrant covers much about digital data and that can be accessed from third parties or intercepted when traveling over the air with special devices.
I don't know if I completely believe the more room for your memory part. That's my excuse for not memorizing things that take a few minutes to look up. I don't necessarily believe it as a truth. I've heard the memory of people in countries where paper is scarce tends to be amazing. This was before the everyone had a phone. I think we would have to measure how much memory is achievable for certain tasks before we can calculate room saved for concepts and where the threshold becomes an advantage. Anyway I'm a skeptic either way.
I always star the main packages I use on GitHub but I realize I'm missing out on the required packages being used as well. It would be nice if an alternative sprung up that was p2p truly decentralized by developers and intertwined with where developers typically host their repositories.
