• 2 Posts
  • 24 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
Cake day: August 4th, 2023
  • Dadifer@lemmy.worldtoComic Strips@lemmy.world•Your Worst Fear
    5·
    2 months ago

    Two things: 1. Considering we can’t even predict which slit a photon will go through in a double-slit experiment or a stochastic system like the precession of a top spinning, it’s difficult to say that our actions, each of which the results of many millions of synapsis firing in concert, are predetermined.

    1. The complex series of algorithms including personality and prior experience are who you are. Furthermore, they’re fully under your review, so if you don’t like them, you can change them. You also have the ability to change your environment, i.e. inputs. So saying that our responses to stimuli are predetermined can only be true in the sense that you yourself have predetermined them.

    Even if we were able to create a complete replica of our brains to the synapse level, that model would not be able to predict our future responses 100% because synapses are always changing. So who you are 2 minutes from now is not the same as who you are now.

    All this to say that the belief that we have no control over the cause and effect in our lives is facetious at best and cowardly at worst.

  • Dadifer@lemmy.worldtoComic Strips@lemmy.world•Your Worst Fear
    6·
    2 months ago

    I don’t agree with this version of the free will argument. I prefer to ask the question, is anything outside the local system affecting my decisions. Think of a toaster. It has buttons and levers, but once you press them, it can do whatever it wants. It’s a contained system. It was preprogrammed or designed to respond a certain way, but if it short-circuits or something inside changes, it does that independent of your will or input.

    In your case, you are made of chemical and electrical signals, so your argument is like saying, do I have free will if my brain is making the decisions? The real question is, is there anything outside your brain that is affecting your decisions. Otherwise, congratulations! You have free will!