Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, toxicity and dog-whistling are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !uspolitics@lemmy.world
7) No Hit-and-Run questions.
Please don't delete your post for no apparent reason. If you plan on deleting a question later, say so in the post, or if you feel that you have a good reason to remove it, message a mod beforehand. It's not fair to the ones who took their time to answer, and it's not in the spirit of the community.
8) No Bots.
Posts or comments from bots, LLM's, AIs, Neural Networks, Transformers, or Marvin the Paranoid Android are not welcome in AskLemmy. Real humans only please.
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
Not that I spent much time thinking about it in the past but the belief in free will was something I was disillusioned from by hearing Sam Harris talk about it and then reading his book on the subject.
Now I believe there is just consciousness and its content. There is no "you" that's separate from this process that's authoring your decisions. Nah, everything follows from past events and the belief that you could have done otherwise is just an illusion. How could you have done otherwise. We already know what you did in this timeline. If we rewind back the universe without changing anything you'd just make the same choice again and again and again.
I'd say it has made me a much more empathic person overall. Hating someone for example is no longer compatible with my world view. Not liking, sure, but treating people as if they chose to be this way and could choose to be different but won't - that's bullshit.
Charles Whitman is a good example. Shot a bunch of people from a clock tower, left a suicide note saying he doesn't know why he does this and tells doctors to study his brain when he's dead. Well, they did and found a pecan-sized tumor near his amygdala that could very well explain this behaviour. Would you still hold Charles morally responsible after learning this? I wouldn't. I basically just live as if everyone has a brain tumor.
Determinism is interesting, there are many different interpretations and discussions of it. But I avoid choosing any side because there are arguments for and against it. Maybe you like the buddhist interpretation of it, your views sound similar to it, like anatta and karma
Making decisions based on history feels free to Me. If My decisions were a dice roll, if I could suddenly change and act completely differently? I'd feel less free. I like living in a mostly deterministic universe.
I've been reeling for a month after watching this Dr Sapolsky interview on that precise topic. Halfway through the book that gave way to the interview; I also feel more... humane? when judging people's actions.