Hard Determinism

[Miss Anthrope]

I truly feel bad for those of you who have not felt the loving eight armed embrace of Ganesh, or experienced the scintillating thrill of reincarna...

Just kidding, don't start talking about shampoo!

But seriously, on to hard determinism. To put it simply, I think it sucks. This doesn't mean I deny that it might be true, I just think that if I had a firm belief in it I might want to just roll over and die. It's one thing to not believe in a literal soul, but hard determinism takes the poetic concept of a soul and efficiently smothers it into oblivion. As if modern advertising and mass media haven't zombified us enough, to think that at the most fundamental, personal level we lack any sort of control is just so oppressing.

For one, I clutch onto personal accountability with a death grip. I live by it. You throw a bunch of babies off of a bridge, I want to see you pay. But, as a reasonable person, if I accept that it was just that monster's sad "fate" do commit such a crime, than I have no choice but to also see him as a victim of this cosmic farce. You could blame the Big Bang, DNA, etc, but you couldn't actually blame the "person" for anything, because his consiousness is just trapped inside of a train on broken tracks.

Imagine if hard determinism become a generally accepted fact in society. Lawyers' jobs would become incredibly easy: "My client's present consiousness can not be held accountable for the actions that his prior consciousness was forced to witness through his body, which, as we all know, is subject to the immutable laws of physics." Even though that defense would be true, I'd still be mad about it, and, of course, I'd have no choice NOT to be mad. The remaining 1% of human emotions which ARE rational would suddenly become completely irrational. I mean, really, who doesn't get kind of pissed off when they hear a person trying to explain their bad behavior in a way which sneakily dismisses personal accountability: "I was mad, I had no choice but to smash your collection of Hummel figurines."

Innocent Hummel figurines. The real victims of hard determinism.

[AlP]

I recommend Richard Feynman's QED. It's popular science book about physics by a Nobel prize winner. It'll blow your mind but reassure you about hard determinism. It's maybe a little out of date. Perhaps some of the folks here with a physics background can say something about its relevance today. Also don't make my mistake and think that he says antimatter moves backward in time =).

[Miss Anthrope]

I recommend Richard Feynman's QED. It's popular science book about physics by a Nobel prize winner. It'll blow your mind but reassure you about hard determinism.

Wait, you want me to want to roll over and die?   In many ways, though, I do agree with many elements of hard determinism (it might be more accurate to say that I'm somewhere inbetween hard and soft). But I really don't believe that we'll ever have a solid answer on this, because 1)language needs to evolve (words like "illusion" and "reality" are kind of stupid IMO) for us to really understand reality (and yet I use the word ), especially when it comes to issues that involve time, 2) I believe in "hidden-variables" and 3) Godel's incompleteness theorem and Tarski's undefinability theorem (the latter obviously being related to reason #1).

Also, accodring to Daniel Dennet the belief in free-will is a desirable evolutionary trait, because people who lack the sense that they are in control of themselves and their lives tend to become depressed and stop struggling for survival. I'm not one of those people who asks "What has science done for us?", but one day I might find myself asking "What did science do to us?"

[AlP]

What I said was ambiguous. Sorry. As far as I can tell from reading popular science books (!) like QED, hard determinism is not at work. Physics can predict things but only with a certain probability. Physics has not found hard determinism to be fact as far as I can tell. Newton's laws are a good approximation but in reality they are wrong. If you really want to fuck yourself up, read a 101 psychology textbook. Way more fuck-up-worthy than hard determinism.

[Miss Anthrope]

What I said was ambiguous.

Oh, by "reassurance" you meant contrary to hard determinism. A bit ambiguous, yes, but I get it now. Makes more sense, actually, because I was looking up some info about the book and it seems to venture into some of the weirdness of physics, which I guess doesn't necessarily exclude hard deterministic principles, but it just didn't seem to fit the theme. Bizarre physics; now I'm even more interested!

That misunderstanding was pretty funny; I wasn't angry about it at all, but it was a little taken aback, especially by the casualness. Like if I had written "I really need my faith in Jesus, maybe it's irrational but if I lost it I'd just want to die." and somebody replied "Here, read this book that disproves what you believe in, it'll clear things up for you."  :crazy:

[SSY]

[derail] could one of you recommend a psych textbook for maximum mind fuck up?[/derail]

Speaking of Feynman, his lectures have been put online by Mr gates ( Billy to his friends ), he bought the rights off someone or other and decided to give back to the community, what a thoroughly nice chap.

[Miss Anthrope]

[derail] could one of you recommend a psych textbook for maximum mind fuck up?[/derail]

Speaking of Feynman, his lectures have been put online by Mr gates ( Billy to his friends ), he bought the rights off someone or other and decided to give back to the community, what a thoroughly nice chap.

Well, I never really went much past psych 101, other than some skimming of some Freud and Jung books (and those guys are pretty dated). I'd imagine, though, that material about some of the really crazy mental disorders would be pretty interesting, or anything about the convoluted way the brain works (I've been meaning to read up on that for a while). Also, here's a link to some interesting studies, some of them are really strange: http://www.spring.org.uk/2007/12/10-wei ... te-now.php

Feynman's lectures: that is nice of Gates, almost makes up for Windows Vista....almost. I've been checking out some Feynman clips on YouTube, and I like his accessible style. Also, I hadn't realized that he was the guy who figured out the O-Ring/NASA problem with a glass of ice water. He was already one of my heros before I knew him by name!

[AlP]

[derail] could one of you recommend a psych textbook for maximum mind fuck up?[/derail]

I'm reading Psychology by David G. Meyers. It's well written and full of interesting information.

[brekfustuvluzerz]

the op's sentiments remind me of the often heard protests from christians saying, in effect, "i can't imagine life without god. if there were no god, i would want to kill myself," or "what is the purpose of life if there is no god? . . . what? there is no purpose? it just happened and i am free to make of it what i wish? how can you live like that?" often times, the truth is more difficult to accept than the lie. i feel that hard determinism is very likely, and any argument against it always seems to me to be caused by a failure of the antagonist's imagination (similar to the arguments against evolution).

[Miss Anthrope]

the op's sentiments remind me of the often heard protests from christians saying, in effect, "i can't imagine life without god. if there were no god, i would want to kill myself," or "what is the purpose of life if there is no god? . . . what? there is no purpose? it just happened and i am free to make of it what i wish? how can you live like that?" often times, the truth is more difficult to accept than the lie. i feel that hard determinism is very likely, and any argument against it always seems to me to be caused by a failure of the antagonist's imagination (similar to the arguments against evolution).

First of all, there was an, I hope, evident hyperbolic humor in what I wrote. The whole thing was kind of tongue-in-cheek.

Second, there's a big difference between my sentiments and the protests you describe. In your example you say " ...i am free to make of it what i wish?". Based on hard determinism, you are not, you are a complete slave to "fate". So if you were to on the other side of the conversation with that hypothetical Christian, you might have to bring them down even further and say "Well, no, your fate is determined by physics...and also, you were adopted and you have cancer."

Seriously, a belief in God is something which is taught, thus rather artificial, whereas a belief in free-will is a natural one and is most likely a beneficial trait preserved by natural selection. Because the other alternative hints of a very depressing reality, which is the point I was making (notice I didn't actually try ot DEBUNK hard determinism). Say a parent, who believes in hard determinsim, loses their child, who was playing outside, to a drunk driver. In order to not be a hypocrite, they would have to accept that that was their child's fate and that the driver cannot actually be blamed. Of course, I doubt there are very many parents who would actually be willing to see it that way.

"...any argument against it always seems to me to be caused by a failure of the antagonist's imagination." - The same could be said for those who don't believe that there could be more to it. If anything, believing in variables takes more imagination. "Imagination" doesn't even make sense in a strictly deterministic universe, becasue anything that is thought, or "imagined", is just an inevitable process. The freedom of imagining very much depends on some degree of free-will, at least of the mind.

Also, why do you feel that hard determinism is very likely?

[brekfustuvluzerz]

good reply, and i agree that your sentiments are different from the ones i listed, what you said just reminded me of the same desire to not consider the difficult truth. the reason i find hard determinism to be likely is that in my own personal experience, i find that i am always doing the best i possibly can for myself. this is hard to explain, but i'll try. every decision that i make i feel i can trace back to a few main reasons that moved me to make that choice. for example, last night i stayed out with some friends a little too late and drank a little too much. when i crawled into bed i told myself that i was going to work, regardless of how tired/hung over i was. so this morning the alarm goes off and i sit up in bed and quickly decide that i am not going to work,

[Heretical Rants]

In a world where an electron could potentially be in every point in the universe at any one time...


(insert favorite carl sagan quote here)

We are like machines, but we have fuzzy bits.

[brekfustuvluzerz]

In a world where an electron could potentially be in every point in the universe at any one time...


(insert favorite carl sagan quote here)

We are like machines, but we have fuzzy bits.

weirdest post ever

[AlP]

Unfortunately it's not weird. Read physics.

[Miss Anthrope]

good reply, and i agree that your sentiments are different from the ones i listed, what you said just reminded me of the same desire to not consider the difficult truth. the reason i find hard determinism to be likely is that in my own personal experience, i find that i am always doing the best i possibly can for myself. this is hard to explain, but i'll try. every decision that i make i feel i can trace back to a few main reasons that moved me to make that choice. for example, last night i stayed out with some friends a little too late and drank a little too much. when i crawled into bed i told myself that i was going to work, regardless of how tired/hung over i was. so this morning the alarm goes off and i sit up in bed and quickly decide that i am not going to work,

No, what you say does make sense, and bear in mind that I'm not out to try and falsify hard determinism. Thanks for explaining things a little more, becasue I was originally a little insulted, partly my fault for using the hyperbolic humor. While I doubt I would want to "roll over and die", I have considered the difficult truth, and I find it very rather depressing. My major concern about such a thing becoming fact is very related to ethics, and whether or not the human race would actually make the necessary adjustments to the way we treat criminals and each other based on such knowledge. There is enough inhumane treatment already, so to be forced with the knowledge that all criminals are just innocent conscious entities trapped inside of a faulty piece of hardware is very much to me like imprisoning a young child. The only justification for it would be from a utilitarian POV, in which case I'd probably become an uber-misanthrope/radical becasue I would not want to be complicit in a society that willingly allows such a degree of inhumane treatment simply for the benefit of themselves even though they acknowledge that the criminals are fundamentally innocent...so basically, there would be no difference between criminal and law-abiding citizen.
Now if real ethics won out and it was decided that criminals must undergo intensive rehabilitation and could be introduced back into society "guilt-free", that would be a different story and I could really be proud of humanity...but personally, I think the utilitarian approach would win out.

Again, what you describe makes sense, and i agree with those aspects of your observations. I don't believe that I can choose to harm a person for no reason. This is why I'm "inbetween" hard and soft determinsim. Like you, I notice that most of the things I do are sort of automatic, to a degree that I believe that any free-will we have is extremely limited, perhaps limited to "little windows". I also think that (and for some reason my mind is kind of relating what I'm about to say to what Heretical Rants wrote about being "fuzzy") we have the greatest control over our thoughts (if there's anytime I feel the most in control it's when my mind is being bombarded with thoughts and I suddenly decide to stop them). Maybe that's illusory, who knows, but if it isn't, I believe it can be connected to a sort of external exercising of free-will. For instance (and this is going to be an extremely rudimentary thought experiment of what would defintily be an extremely ridiculous and convoluted thing to do), say I think "What if I wanted to decide to kill my mother. I can't do that, I don't want to. I would have to almost program myself to do such a thing." So, this absurd version of me starts employing mental gymanstics over a long period of time so that I reach a point in which I'm obsessed with killing my mother, and thus I do. Now, of course, it could be argued that HD is still possibel and that all of that was inevitable anyway; i.e. I don't use such a thought experiment to disprove HD in any way, but just to illustrate a type of free-will we might have. To come back away from thought experiment land, and back to real life implications, it doesn't do me much good to not believe that I have some degree of choice. For instance, if I choose to play videogames rather than get work done, and later while lamenting my bad decision, I feel as though i have a choice to believe that I can either pat myself on the back and think "it's OK, you had no choice, it was just your fate" or believe that I'm a goddamn idiot and rightly bombard myself with mental punishment so that I get back on track. My self-discipline is very much based on wheter not I can blame myself, because I can be  adversely opportunistic if I'm capable of finding an "out"; might be related to my almost all-encompassing "agnostic" way of thinking: the middle  can be a very convenient place to be. this also might be why I'm kind of the opposite of you as far as my behavior: I often go through lengthy "consideration" periods (like in a case like the one you described about going to work) with no real consistent standard in how I make my decisions, and because of this I can be very erratic. This makes me feel like I'm always making my own choices.

So yeah, while I wouldn't just give up on life, I think HD as a fact would have very negative affects on many aspects of my life, and many other people as well. i'm all for scientific progress, but not just for the sake of progress, so HD might be one of those things best ignored since a belief in some degree of control over one's life is a beneficial trait.  And from an ethical POV, if society didn't adjust itself to accomodate such knowledge I would be extremely depressed (might sound odd from a self-professed misanthrope, but understand that my misanthropy stems from a sympathetic outlook, not a simple bitter "screw everyone" attitude because of stupid petty social injustices expereinced in high school and other such things; I actually like people very much, just not as a whole or group. One example: mob mentality.)