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Maybe you’re not trying

(usefulfictions.substack.com)
448 points eatitraw | 3 comments | 16 Nov 25 10:14 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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h33t-l4x0r[dead post] ◴[16 Nov 25 11:43 UTC] No.45944346[source]▶
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yetihehe ◴[16 Nov 25 11:57 UTC] No.45944426[source]▶
> Also, people are made up of particles that behave deterministically. Agency is an illusion.

I like to slap people talking this to my face. Why? I was predetermined to slap them, the universe was set up that way. But I had only one occasion to really do this. The guy was thinking about this for two days. And when I say about this every proponent of "Agency is an illusion" then has some cop-out about responsibility, because in truth they use "no agency" as an excuse to explain their bad behavior.

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Dilettante_ ◴[16 Nov 25 13:36 UTC] No.45945038[source]▶
"No agency" doesn't mean "no consequences". If there's an asteroid flying towards earth, we may blow it up, instead of going "well it's not the poor rocks' fault it's gonna wipe out humanity, so we should just let it."
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yetihehe ◴[16 Nov 25 14:04 UTC] No.45945231{3}[source]▶
"No agency" for me means pretty much that. What does "no agency" mean for you?
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1. Dilettante_ ◴[16 Nov 25 14:34 UTC] No.45945425{4}[source]▶
Difficult to accurately give expression to "the absence of this particular illusion".

In the asteroid metaphor: It means that if you can very clearly see the asteroid coming towards you, instead of going "no, the asteroid is going to do the right thing", you make preparations knowing that there is no do-er inside the asteroid.

And after getting hit by it, you do not go "if only the asteroid had had more willpower it would not have hit us. The next time for sure I'll convince it!"

So by agency, in this context, I mean the ability to change the way reality is into what one thinks it ought to be. (But reality is only ever one way, disregarding quantum mechanical magic for a minute)

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2. yetihehe ◴[16 Nov 25 18:28 UTC] No.45947230[source]▶
> And after getting hit by it, you do not go "if only the asteroid had had more willpower it would not have hit us.

I don't understand this. You tell me that not having agency is not applicable to asteroids?

> (But reality is only ever one way, disregarding quantum mechanical magic for a minute)

I think we can't really disregard quantum mechanics when talking about very complicated systems operating on the edge of being too noisy for any recognisable transmission in our neurons.

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3. Dilettante_ ◴[16 Nov 25 19:03 UTC] No.45947486[source]▶

  You tell me that not having agency is not applicable to asteroids?
The opposite: Having agency is not applicable to non-asteroids, any more than to asteroids. The asteroid was a metaphor for humans. I recognize I am not at my best at explaining right now.

  I think we can't really disregard quantum mechanics
Then we can allow that there is a magical being outside our observable reality that is influencing the result of random-seeming quantum processes, itself unbound by deterministic physics. You may call this being "your self" and this being would indeed have agency that transcends "chain-of-dominoes" causality. I cannot disprove such a theory. But is that an interesting conversation to have?