midnight rain

Are you truly responsible for any of your achievements?

Purposely keeping this short just to see what direction you guys decide to take this

Burning Down

Yes, I think so. I think this can be broken down to free will, i.e.: what made you want to achieve the things that you have? People make decisions for themselves - we are not puppets solely controlled by any higher beings.

Pride is not illogical either. Some things take a lot of time, effort, and money to achieve (like a university degree or something), and there's no shame in being proud of accomplishing something.

midnight rain

Before I comment on anything else, I'll just say that I do not believe in free will, and that the belief comes not from a higher power controlling us like puppets, but the combination of nature and nurture that shapes us and influences us into doing what we do.

When you boil it down to what a 'choice' is, it's neuron activity sending a pulse to your body to execute an action. We have far less control over that than we think we do imo.

Face

**** you.

Don't blame me, free will doesn't exist.

I didn't mean that.

My point is, whether free will exists or not is irrelevant. We have to assume it exists to have any form of meaningful reaction to each other as people. You're also separating our "choice" from our neurons "choice" I would argue they are one and the same. But it is a bit of a moral dilemma. A recent study showed that an mri can accurately "predict" what choice you're going to make (left or right) up to 6 seconds before you're even aware you've made one.

As for pride, it is an emotion. So you have to ask what extent an emotion can be logical.

The thing is, logic can only exist given axioms. Axioms are arbitrary assumptions/declarations. Such as 1+1=2. That is an axiom, logically we can then deduce that 1 is half of two, two twos make four ones and so forth.

So what are emotions axioms in order to determine the logic? it's up to the individual to decide, which throws up a few more problems if they have no free will to do it with in the first place.

midnight rain

Why? Prison and the like have never been about blame and punishment, it's about keeping people who make society a less pleasant place off the streets for the betterment of humanity as a whole. That's all morality is. stealing is only wrong because it makes society a less functional place, so it has been indoctrinated in us not to do so. Generally accepted morality is determined by how it affects society at large, right?

I would argue that our neurons are not a choice, but a reaction. Choice is the feeling of empowerment that we chose (yeah I used the word in the definition, DEAL WITH IT) something independent of any previously existing factor imo.

Face

Never been about blame and punishment? Let's leave that for another time.

I was thinking more along the lines of normal human interaction. If no-one has true choice over their actions why appreciate anything anyone ever does or feels for you? Do you coldly think "my parent didn't choose to hug me, they have been conditioned to, I will be nice to them in order to maintain the social contract". No, while we may appreciate it on some level no-one actually processes human interaction like that on a personal level apart from sociopaths, and they can only survive on the goodwill and trust of others.

You can step back and evaluate it in the way economists, psychologists and the like do (purely as a social contract etc), but that isn't how people consider their own interactions in the moment (I don't think).

As for choice, I agree, you cannot choose anything without previous existing factors. First and foremost because previous factors are a always a given.

However if you do want to completely remove free will from the equation.....

You're saying people are input, output machines. I don't necessarily disagree. But given the same input in each machine, you should judge each on the (entire) output/effect it gives. Not because it's the machines "fault" or "choice", but because it's what that machine "is".

hip hop bunny hop

Illogical or not, it's awfully fun & I'm not going to let failures get in the way of my ability to enjoy my life.

__________________
Have mercy on the poor.

Franco Pepe Kalle

Pride is not illogical however if you misuse your pride and you spend time wanting to hurt others, then you will be miserable. I mean the problem is that some people use their pride to demean others. This is going on all over the world especially in the Western places. This is why Canada, USA, France, UK, and other Western entities are falling apart. I mean USA has a 16 trillion debt and they are going to pay big time and other western countries are going to be worse.

Pride has been miused by many fools and that is why some people think having pride is evil. It is not. I am proud of the fact that I am a Congolese American and although I know mostly English, now I am being better at speaking French, Lingala, and Swahili. But I don't use my pride to say other Africans born in USA soil are stupider because they are not Congolese descendent.

So pride is not illogical but if you use to hurt others, you are nothing but a sniteful fool.

__________________
The problem with Franco Pepe Kalle is that he is a unpredictable character. There is surprising info about this man. You think he only likes Franco and Pepe Kalle but when you find out that he hears other artists, you are shock.

Girls are the sexy thing that God created.

Important to notice FPK.

midnight rain

I don't know why I said that cause it's not even close to true lol. It's certainy headed in that direction though.

Emotions have proven an effect survival too for many species and humans are no different. Our emotions just happen to be more complex than all other species.


Well by same input I assume you're meaning same set of DNA and same exact environment? (Which is obviously physically impossible for a multitude of reasons, but I know you're presenting a hypothetical). In those ideal circumstances, the output would be identical I imagine.

Face

I agree. But my point wasn't trying to separate us from animals.

It was that while we can appreciate that (maybe) we have no free will. We emotively treat it as their choice to hug us, otherwise why would we have an emotional response?

It's almost like suspended disbelief (which is what what makes us cry/fear when we are being told a story we know is fictional). In this sense, free will (of the characters) definitely doesn't exist, but we can respond at a veryt fundamental level (emotively) that it is.

At the end of the day, deciding we have free will or not changes nothing. Either we have free will and are all responsible for our actions, or none of us have it, so can't be "held responsible" for how we react to others actions. If a criminal's nature&nurture caused him to commit a crime then a judges nature&nurture will determine the sentence he gives and you can't "blame" either.

I agree but that wasn't what I was going for.

In that analogy
Machine = individual's brain at that point in time, determined by genetics and all experiences up to that point in time.
Input = The particular situation each person is assessing.
Output = Their choice/reaction

If you take free will out of the equation, then the different outputs of each machine given the same input show simply what they are, judge them on that.

Maybe it's a weak anology. Whatever, I'm off for dinner.