Quote:What if the world we think is 'real' - what if this reality we're all so convinced that we live in - is the same thing? A figment of our imaginations, a reality constructed by our own minds? And what if the only reason we all seem to percieve the same reality is because, as Schrodinger once said, "the total number of minds in the universe is one." In essence we are all fragments of the same mind, creating a reality for itself (and by extension, for ourselves).
First, this arguement does nothing to disprove reality or any impact we may have on it. You may well be correct in your surmises, but it does not change the fact that we, the individual bits of mind given life, cannot change reality with mere thought. If we are a hobo's drunken fever dream, then we shall remain a fever dream despite any thoughts we may pursue. All that is left us is the ability to experience whatever our reality is, and the reality is that my Killians is getting warm and I want to experience it cold.
' Wrote:Hello Guys,
First, this arguement does nothing to disprove reality or any impact we may have on it. You may well be correct in your surmises, but it does not change the fact that we, the individual bits of mind given life, cannot change reality with mere thought. If we are a hobo's drunken fever dream, then we shall remain a fever dream despite any thoughts we may pursue. All that is left us is the ability to experience whatever our reality is, and the reality is that my Killians is getting warm and I want to experience it cold.
(Mmm, oreo's)
Another assumption on what is or isnt.
Perhaps we can change the world with a thought, you simply do not know how to do so... yet. Afterall, they say that we use less than ten percent of our brain's functional capability.
Your senses collect roughly 200,000 bits of information per second, your brain only processes about 2,000 bits per second. This is what causes you to miss subtle changes in the world, and it has been tested extensively in the past. Take two pictures that are nearly identical, save for one small difference - perhaps both pictures feature the same building, but one picture has an extra window added in. If you flicker between the two, back and forth, your mind will not see any change - it will assume they are the same image until the difference is pointed out to you.
David Hume, a quite famous philosopher, commented heavily on this - saying that in order to truly understand the world we must do nothing but observe fully. If you expect something to happen, that's what will happen. Everyone sees black crows because they expect crows to be black, it isnt until the one person with an open mind sees a white crow that they are accepted as 'real'.
Simply because you do not know how to do something does not make it impossible. You say that we cannot change the world we perceive with our thoughts - I can analogize that with not knowing how to program in fortran or C++ - I dont know how to do it, but that doesnt mean it isnt real or possible. Someone in the world does, and it is just as founded to say that someone in the universe knows how to manipulate this supposed 'physical world' without physical interaction.
Tenacit Wrote:If you had studied philosophy, you would know that you have no answers at all =P
If I had studies philsophy, I'd be expected to think that and doomed to ask questions that I hope no one ever answers instead of trying to give answers.
Thats why I studied physics.
That and the fact that I actually got a job with phyiscs
Quote:Also, this isnt my major or anything, it's just an elective class to fill the credit requirements I need for my degree.
' Wrote:I think there is neither fate nor free will.
I think there is no fate because it is neither real (because it hasnt happened and therefore does not exist in a real state at present), nor could anyone realistically ever predict a thing like "fate" (because the things we call fate are simply impossible to predict by outselves, free will or no free will, unlike the simple thinks we wouldnt call fate like an apple falling on the ground because of gravity). Since no one will ever really know fate, its nothing more than and abstract concept, or a myth like unicorns and heaven and hell. Sure in the future the universe will be in a certain state, but whether we can affect it with choices or not doenst really matter since we got no idea what the future will look like anyway. So there is no point in thinking about things like "fate", unless you also believe in santa clause and ghosts.
I think there is no such thing as free will, in the way that we could deliberately take two different actions when faced with the exact same problem with the exact same knoledge (apart from a random component over which we have no real control either).
What you might call free will is closely connected what is the "I" that you think is taking choices and is suposed to have free will.
It is the "I" that makes choices and tells us that there is such a thing like free will, like an array of possibel actions.
The "I" (or I call it awareness) is, as far as I perceive it (havent read much about it in psychology though), a thing that constantly draws conclusions from what it sees and remembers, and makes choices based on the conclusions it made.
I think the "I" is so trained on drawing the best possible conclusion (it constantantly does in every aspect of the mind... deciding what is that object you see, what is that pain you feel, is that thing edible yes or no) and making the right choice (its a red light... stop, that pain is a thorn in my foot, I better lift it, no its not edible it stinks) that it would never ever deliberately do the "wrong thing". It could decide to take an action that may seem wrong in some respects, but only if it decided that its the right thing to do for another reason, for example to see the consequence of that action and learn from it.
Our imagination is something the "I" uses to evaluate the outcome of actions it could take. What we image and the actions that we see as options are always products of what we remember (or remember/decide we are seeing right now).
There is a random component that affects memories, imagination, and senses, but it doenst give you real control over your choices and perseptions.
So the "I" has no real "choice" between actions... you will unavoidably do what you think is the correct thing. What you call free will is the options you can imagine, but you are not free to choose another one than what your brain tells you is the correct one.
Do you mean "exact starting condition", or "almost exact" starting condition? Right now I dont know where the difference in outcome would come from, but Im not into quantum physics really. Im more familiar with cybernetics and prognostic modeling physical, and in those that doesnt happen for "exact" starting conditions, but of course its not done on quantum physics level.
About the chaos theory thing...technically I had that wrong. Chaos happens when initial conditions are very slightly changed. What I was thinking is that on a quantum level, we can't ever totally know the initial conditions, so we can never precisely model the universe and figure out exactly how it will play out. But that's going off on a tangent I guess...
As far as your other point that we are always 'trapped' into doing whatever our brain decides is the best choice - it's an interesting thought, but it's a circular argument: any decision you make is automatically the best one because you made it :crazy:
The whole idea of fate and free will sort of seems silly if you think about. I mean, at the end of the day what does it mean for humans to make choices? It's about neurons in our heads firing in certain ways, programmed so that we act according in some kind of logical manner. When I started working with computers, I was fascinated by how a simple program like chess could give the impression of intelligent decision making - but do you ask whether a chess-playing computer is governed by free will or fate? It is programmed to act in a certain way that maximizes its chance of winning the game, even though there's a near infinite number of ways the game can be played out. You could make the leap and say that our entire universe is just a really fancy computer simulation, but that would mean that someone programmed it all and had a purpose in mind when creating it. But then where did the guy who made us come from?:crazy:
Did any of us use free will to chose our date of birth,place of birth,century,skin color,sex,parents and there's social and educational status,country that your parents live,historical circumstances,your DNA,nationality?
Did we chose our first childhood friends,kinder-garden-primary school...did we choose our talents...
Did we chose our first love or it chose us...?
Free will is not choice between hamburger or pizza,it's a choice between good and bad every sec of your life....
Most of a really important choices are made for us before we are born...
We do have a choice, but it is possible to predict what choice one will make with sufficient amounts of data. (In a large majority of cases, we do not have enough.)
If you had knowledge of the position and nature of every atom and particle in the universe along with a sufficiently strong computing device, you could predict anything from the creation of the universe to its end.
It'll never happen, though.
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<span style="color:#000000">All morons hate it when you call them a moron.
Free will is determined by your past, every action you intend to take it's already in you by your previous experience. And choices that are new to you , you choose by actions of other trough the past. But as a rational and very nonreligious human being, I had my share of choosing wrong, sometimes just for the laugh of it.
Determinism - if you look at it as destiny, something that must happen, or something that already happened and you can't affect that is idiotic. If you look at it in a way you can't change it cause society shapes your decisions every day of your life, you can find a fragment of truth there. But in the end it's your choice, to live among the people to accept people's way, and to do what you learned from your own life experience.
Free will - free will is there, "I think there for I am" is the core of this very own stand or point of view. But now sometimes you can't think, and that's not connected to determinism it's connected to your instincts. We are pre determined in the way in rational or instinct moment we will do anything to survive, but as in everyday life , everyday choices, you have complete 100% impact on everything you do.
Now this is a main example of this debate. I say you do today something, and you choose not to do it, and I say, ah it's already determined that you wouldn't do it. You have an evidence in your head about your will deciding against it, I have poor vocabulary and couple of old mind games to make you think. Religion based itself on this question, and survived 2000 years or more on this stupid question. Cause people don't know how to take responsibility for their lives and their actions.
Cossac Wrote:About the chaos theory thing...technically I had that wrong. Chaos happens when initial conditions are very slightly changed. What I was thinking is that on a quantum level, we can't ever totally know the initial conditions, so we can never precisely model the universe and figure out exactly how it will play out. But that's going off on a tangent I guess...
There are also situations where differences between two systems are just eliminated as the systems progress in time. Kinda like if the temperature difference inside the system is 5 to 15 degrees in one system, and 0 to 20 degrees in another, they may both have an even temperature of 10 degrees without gradients in the future.
But I'm not paranoid enough to think that this will happen to everything I do.
Well... at least not that kind of paranoid.
And even if the Earth blows up one day and there is nothing I can do about it, I'll still be grateful that I had the privilege to get me some strawberry ice cream before it happens.
Cossac Wrote:As far as your other point that we are always 'trapped' into doing whatever our brain decides is the best choice - it's an interesting thought, but it's a circular argument: any decision you make is automatically the best one because you made it
The thought was less about free will vs fate, but more about free will vs instinct.
I think the human brain acts just as instinctively as other any living being, except that its actions are more based on long term memory and thinking, which makes us think we have more free will than a microbe or a tree.
Swif Wrote:If you had knowledge of the position and nature of every atom and particle in the universe along with a sufficiently strong computing device, you could predict anything from the creation of the universe to its end.
It'll never happen, though.
Because the computer would have to be bigger than the universe:P
We absolutely have free will. It is also true that our decisions are influenced by the events of the past and the environment around us. This is not in anyway related to fate or destiny. It simply means that humans have been given the gift of reason. It is our ability to think rationally that allows us to use things we have learned in the past to determine that which we do not yet know. This is what separates us from every other form of life on this planet.
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