Free Will vs Determinism is a False Dichotomy

--Caller asks about free will and determinism

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Broadcast on February 15, 2019

[Blackmark]

David doesn't actually address determinism. Determinism isn't about influences on our decisions, it's about decisions themselves being illusory.

[ptolemyauletesxii]

For a guy as smart as David is this was a particularly unenlightened take on this question, and didnt recognise at all the importance of it to the real world. In particular his last point about probability was utterly inane. Probability is used to work out the odds of the average person in a certain situation with certain general background factors acting in a particular way, but this says nothing about how a specific person with very specific environmental and genetic history actually will act. In fact it misses the point completely. The notion of predictability is only intersting as a thought experiment and no one has ever suggested that we should be able to look at a person's background and have a perfect idea of what their future actions will be. What determinism is about is that every action a person commits is the product of his genetic potential combined with all his past experiences, which have programmed a brain that could only ever respond in one way at any given moment with the circumstances it was presented with. The takeaway from this is that holding any person accountable for either good or bad actions makes no sense because the person never had an actual choice, but is instead merely a stimulus response machine, being given a very convincing sense of beng in control in the form of consciousness. But any sense of a self having actual control is a total illusion, as should be farily obvious to anyone who stops and considers that the consciousness itself is a post hoc phenomenon, a product of the very brain that it thinks it is in control of. To get around this requires some form of magic, some type of soul, and even then it does not actually work, as no one gets to choose their soul, which, if it existed, would be just another external input.
A very disappointing take on this, but then clearly David's reading of this material has been cursory and he has other things he is more interested in. It's a shame because having an understanding of our lack of free will is essential to any thoughtful and considered rethink of the justice system and of our interactions with our fellow human beings, and the empathy that we either allocate or withold them.

[DayneAW]

"Free will" is a religious concept, and should be treated as such.

[wiptide]

It's stupid to believe in both determinism and such a thing as good and bad.

[DarkKnightOmega]

I find these topics very interesting. Years ago when I first learned about this I couldn’t get it out of my head. I thought, maybe we are all headed toward a fate that is predetermined and all the choices we think we have were predetermined and even us thinking we have choices is predetermined. Because we perceive things as probabilistic doesn’t mean that they are in reality. However, due to our limited perceptive abilities we “probably” will never know the truth about this.

[Tadwitetrash]

You have free will only within your influence.

Both can exist at once. It's to a degree.
And I can prove it.

[Timorio]

We appear to be in a probabilistic circumstance because we lack the ability to account for every variable that leads to a given result. This doesn't mean that there are actually dice being rolled in the background.

[jonbbaca]

Is anyone else aware of a neurological study they did where people's brain functions were being monitored in real time, and they were asked to randomly push one of two buttons? They were told to pick a button at random and to pick which one they pushed right before they pushed it. In the experiment, they discovered that somehow the decision was being made in the brain BEFORE the subject was consciously aware of which button they'd push, so much so that the researchers watching the real time brain scan could predict with like 90% accuracy which button would be pushed. I saw it in a documentary once, but can't find it now. If this is true and repeatable, it really casts doubt on free will from a neurological standpoint.

[Deedeedee]

As both a physicist and a denizen of the internet I both have an opinion on this subject and feel the need to tell it to people who probably don't care. The universe isn't deterministic, but to insinuate that free will exists implies some proces involved in thought that is more fundamental than quantum mechanics that determines the physicsal state of your brain, and thereby your thoughts and actions, that you somehow have control over. This on the face of it doesn't really make sense. So I think the universe won't end up the same as it is today if you started over from the big bang, at least not exactly, but that we have no more control over our actions and thoughts than an inanimate object. Although that shouldn't, and can't, stop us from acting like we do

[Tychoxi]

We are a consequence of our genes and our environment. We only have free will in a "soft" sense, ie. we are usually free to do what we will, but we are not free to will what we will.

[ygolonacable]

I got a PragerU ad whining about the Southern Poverty Law Canter. So I gave the SPLC fifty bucks.

[lonelywuffy]

I’m sure this has been Asked before, but if a person voluntarily murders another person, is it his fault? If we use determinism, then technically it’s not his fault. Even though he “voluntarily” murders someone, he didn’t have the free will to “voluntarily” choose? Determinism seems like a slippery slope to me.

[MaouHoi]

The reason progressives like pakman should run congress is cause they can debate philosophy in a not evasive/aggressive manner. Anyone who feels social philosophy and its affects are pointless to talk about care not for the mental health and well being of humanity.

[niriop]

I liked Daniel Dennett’s theory of compatibilism: we don’t have “freedom of will”, but we do have freedom of choice, because human beings are capable of reason and of analysing their own actions and options.

[janhornbllhansen]

Ohh Pakman, you dodged some pretty profound implications of this question.
Any place where we treat people differently suddenly loses legitimacy without free will.

Punishment in a world without actual free will is just cruel.

[cryptosuperg]

"I don't know if we each have a destiny, or if we're all just floating around accidental-like on a breeze, but I, I think maybe it's both. Maybe both is happening at the same time." --Forrest Gump

[aaronsande]

There's no choice but to act as if you have free will. Period.

[sacluvsBM]

Free will is the biggest lie ever told and believed.

[rylieweaver]

In response to the confidemce interval said by David, those confidence intervals take in only so many variables, as you account for more and more and more variables, the confidence interval gets closer and closer to 100% and determinism.

[FringeWizard]

Everything is 100% deterministic, this notion of indeterminism comes from not knowing all the variables at play. As for free will I have heard if we are future oriented instead of reactive (aka we work towards some set goal) then we are using "freewill" in the sense that a thing without "freewill" simply acts like a rock or something falling and has no inner-power moving it (all living things are defined as alive by this inner power in them that moves them). If freewill means initiating a causal chain I've heard only The All can do that because nothing moves the all outside of itself since outside of the all there is not, whereas man has many things outside of himself and therefore he never initiates anything, and has no freewill. Also important to distinguish is freewill vs freeagency. Agency is choice; we all makes choices though our options are limited to what options we can act upon in a given moment and it is free in the sense that we make these choices intrinsically. Whereas freewill seems to indicate a will that is itself unbounded. However if I think about awareness and the ability of a person to will something even when part of that will is reaction to something external, the awareness factor makes it "free", in that it could theoretically choose otherwise.