I just opened a beer. It felt like free will, but I think it was actually Mrs. Lak going on about yarn and spinning and crochet that drove me to it.

It's not my FAULT.

I would truly say you had no choice in that situation.

I wonder how often she’s driven to a swift sherry by The Big Lebowski...

She's not a sherry drinker, but if I buy white wine.....

Fallible wrote:I wonder how often she’s driven to a swift sherry by The Big Lebowski...

Two to tango as they say.

Hermit wrote:

jamest wrote:Do I want to be the guy who knows everything worth knowing..?

Just to clarify: Are you of the opinion that you know everything worth knowing?

Erm... drumroll...

Yes.

I do, yeah. I wouldn't even be here if that wasn't the case, taking abuse from the likes of yourself on a regular basis.

So, what's worth knowing? Just the truth of yourself, essentially.

Knowing that amounts to everything worth knowing.

jamest wrote:

Hermit wrote:

jamest wrote:Do I want to be the guy who knows everything worth knowing..?

Just to clarify: Are you of the opinion that you know everything worth knowing?

Erm... drumroll...

Yes.

I do, yeah. I wouldn't even be here if that wasn't the case, taking abuse from the likes of yourself on a regular basis.

So, what's worth knowing? Just the truth of yourself, essentially.

Knowing that amounts to everything worth knowing.

Isn't that just the sport of God 0 to experience mortal weakness, ignorance and suffering?

Thing is, you don't "know yourself", do you? You imagine divinity you do not "know". You suppose omniscience yet you are ignorant. You don't even see the implications of your "big idea".

If "knowing yourself as God" was the point of your life, of any of our lives, we wouldn't be living human lives, would we?
The fact that you are endlessly frustrated in your attempts to sell your robes and sandals would be cult is either you are quite wrong about God, or that God wans that experience more than self knowledge. To the extent She denies herself such self knowledge to have that experience.

jamest wrote:

Hermit wrote:

jamest wrote:Do I want to be the guy who knows everything worth knowing..?

Just to clarify: Are you of the opinion that you know everything worth knowing?

Erm... drumroll...

Yes.

I do, yeah.

You didn't have to answer. I knew what it was going to be before you did. The leading phrase just meant to lightly disguise the fact that the following question was rhetorical.

But thanks for confirming (as if confirmation were needed) anyway.

the Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which people with low ability at a task overestimate their ability. It is related to the cognitive bias of illusory superiority and comes from the inability of people to recognize their lack of ability. Without the self-awareness of metacognition, people cannot objectively evaluate their competence or incompetence.

As described by social psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger, the bias results from an internal illusion in people of low ability and from an external misperception in people of high ability; that is, "the miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others."

jamest wrote:

Hermit wrote:

jamest wrote:Do I want to be the guy who knows everything worth knowing..?

Just to clarify: Are you of the opinion that you know everything worth knowing?

Erm... drumroll...

Yes.

I do, yeah.

You’re not even close.

Fallible wrote:

jamest wrote:

Hermit wrote:

jamest wrote:Do I want to be the guy who knows everything worth knowing..?

Just to clarify: Are you of the opinion that you know everything worth knowing?

Erm... drumroll...

Yes.

I do, yeah.

You’re not even close.

You would need to know everything to say that.

Er...no I wouldn’t. Use your brain for once in your life.

jamest doesn't believe in using brains.

FBM wrote:Seems most likely to me that the sense of free will is closely related to the sense of agency that is produced in the parietal lobe (left, IIRC). I don't see any reason to think that it corresponds to anything in particular; it's just a sensation.

There's the work that Libet did that strongly suggests that decisions are made prior to conscious awareness of them. More recently, John-Dylan Haynes, et al, did some experiments that seem to show that decisions can happen unconsciously up to 10 seconds prior to conscious awareness of them. http://brainandlearning.blogspot.com/2008/04/do-we-have-freewill.html

Just stumbled upon this thread. Even if the lockdown were to last for all eternity I wouldn’t read all 686 pages, so I’m just adding a comment to this post on the first page. Apologies if it’s already been said.

I’ve never understood why these experiments are supposed to have any relevance to the notion of free will. All they show is that sometimes we may make choices unconsciously. So what? Making them consciously doesn’t change the fact that everything is predetermined. It seems evident to me that the notion of free will can totally be discarded by thinking alone—no need at all for any experimental corroboration. It’s just intrinsically incoherent.

Some argue that if we reject free will, society will fall apart because we’ll become apathetic and refuse to get out of bed. Leaving aside that this is an appeal to consequences..., even if you reject the idea of free will, the minute you’re hungry (for example), you’ll rise from your philosophy-induced slumber (assuming such a slumber would take place—exceedingly unlikely!) and go look for something to eat. Not much, if anything, would change in our day-to-day life from a denial of free will.

Another objection (again an appeal-to-consequences fallacy) is that the very foundation of morality, our sense of right and wrong, our system of rewards and punishments would collapse. Our moral philosophy and justice system might well change, but most probably only for the good: we would still need to lock up criminals for safety and deterrence, but hopefully any inclination towards cruelty, and any notions of revenge or that making someone suffer is their just deserts, would tend to weaken, since we’d have to recognize that they are illogical, and in fact immoral.

And by the way, to adduce that quantum-mechanics randomness may open a window for free will is nonsense. If subject to quantum-mechanics randomness, our will would just act randomly—it would still not be “free”.

CdeLosada wrote:

I’ve never understood why these experiments are supposed to have any relevance to the notion of free will. All they show is that sometimes we may make choices unconsciously. So what? Making them consciously doesn’t change the fact that everything is predetermined...

No it's not!

CdeLosada wrote:
And by the way, to adduce that quantum-mechanics randomness may open a window for free will is nonsense. If subject to quantum-mechanics randomness, our will would just act randomly—it would still not be “free”.

Perhaps not 'randomly', but probabilistically.

Maybe we don't exactly have free will, but probabilistic will?

campermon wrote:

CdeLosada wrote:

I’ve never understood why these experiments are supposed to have any relevance to the notion of free will. All they show is that sometimes we may make choices unconsciously. So what? Making them consciously doesn’t change the fact that everything is predetermined...

No it's not!

CdeLosada wrote:
And by the way, to adduce that quantum-mechanics randomness may open a window for free will is nonsense. If subject to quantum-mechanics randomness, our will would just act randomly—it would still not be “free”.

Perhaps not 'randomly', but probabilistically.

Maybe we don't exactly have free will, but probabilistic will?

Don't know... Honest to God (in a manner of speaking ), I don’t understand free will. I don’t know what it means. I think the key question is, “free from what?”

Naturally, I’m not speaking of being free to do as one wishes, in the sense that if you’re not in prison, say, you’re free to go for a walk. I mean the wish to go for a walk itself—what would it be free from? From the laws of nature? Where does it come from, if not from everything that preceded it? If we could magically rewind time and you go back to where you were before deciding to go for a walk, would you choose differently? How so? Quantum randomness maybe? But then, are you choosing “freely”?

CdeLosada wrote:
If we could magically rewind time and you go back to where you were before deciding to go for a walk, would you choose differently? How so? Quantum randomness maybe? But then, are you choosing “freely”?

Yes, the subject may believe they have freely chosen to go for a walk but have merely succumbed to most probable act of doing so.

I have no problem with accepting that free will is just an illusion. I guess it had some evolutionary advantage somewhere down the line?

campermon wrote:I have no problem with accepting that free will is just an illusion. I guess it had some evolutionary advantage somewhere down the line?

Quite possibly

CdeLosada wrote:

campermon wrote:I have no problem with accepting that free will is just an illusion. I guess it had some evolutionary advantage somewhere down the line?

Quite possibly

I choose to drink to that

campermon wrote:

CdeLosada wrote:
If we could magically rewind time and you go back to where you were before deciding to go for a walk, would you choose differently? How so? Quantum randomness maybe? But then, are you choosing “freely”?

Yes, the subject may believe they have freely chosen to go for a walk but have merely succumbed to most probable act of doing so.

I have no problem with accepting that free will is just an illusion. I guess it had some evolutionary advantage somewhere down the line?

I think the evolutionary advantage of the illusion is in the context of effective cooperation through social control? Humans are far more closely cooperative than any other large animal, and, unlike other animals, we cooperate extensively in groups with non-relatives as well as with kin. We’ve evolved to manage this, at least in part, by setting up rules for the group and then ganging up on and punishing any individual or subgroup that breaks the rules.

If an individual who has broken a rule was coerced into doing so, then there’s no point in going to the trouble of punishing them. We are constantly monitoring each other’s behaviour and judging whether they committed some minor infraction to be laughed or frowned at, and whether they were acting freely or not is relevant. If they made the decision to steal some advantage by breaking the rule, then they can usefully be taught a lesson; if their hand was forced or they were mentally incapable, then the rule-breaking may need to be dealt with in some other way.

This version of free will is compatible with our being evolved mechanisms. If we understood and predicted ourselves scientifically as the mechanisms we almost certainly are, then the concept of free will would probably become irrelevant. So far, science is effectively useless for predicting people in real time, because brains are too complex; instead, we use the evolved, prescientific processes of Theory of Mind. Theory of Mind is largely guesswork based on one brain being very much like another, and it leads to our having illusions such as consciousness and free will, but it works well enough for humans cooperating in groups to have become the dominant species on the planet.

zoon wrote:If an individual who has broken a rule was coerced into doing so, then there’s no point in going to the trouble of punishing them.

Behaviour conditioning via aversion therapy works just as well without having to invoke free will, personal responsibility, blame and the entire moralistic crap that goes with it.