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Maybe you’re not trying

(usefulfictions.substack.com)
448 points eatitraw | 5 comments | 16 Nov 25 10:14 UTC | HN request time: 0.002s | 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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h33t-l4x0r ◴[16 Nov 25 12:06 UTC] No.45944482[source]▶
Most people will accept a brain tumor as an excuse for bad behavior, but not low blood sugar.

I have successfully convinced people that hungry judges have less agency than full ones, though. (google hungry judge effect if you're curious).

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yetihehe ◴[16 Nov 25 12:57 UTC] No.45944783[source]▶
As a person who would like to excuse my overeating on confirmed problems with blood sugar, I agree with you fully. We have different amount of willpower in different situations and in the same situation between different times of day. But we still have some agency, it's not fully predetermined. And like being overweight, training can help. I would even say that combating fat needs willpower and increases your available willpower too.
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h33t-l4x0r ◴[16 Nov 25 13:17 UTC] No.45944912[source]▶
That's not my position at all. Obviously you had no agency in your genetics. I assume you don't believe you had agency in pre-natal nutrition or the circumstance of your upbringing.

The rest of your life is just reacting to things downstream from that with an algorithm based on your nature and your nurture.

If it weren't for quantum effects you could model the outcome and it would be the same every time.

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yetihehe ◴[16 Nov 25 14:02 UTC] No.45945218[source]▶
> That's not my position at all.

I would like to understand your position more. Most people believe that they have choice. They could for example do more work or lie on a couch. You mean they have no choice and whichever decision they took is not from their will, but only from their circumstances? I agree that a lot of the weights in such decision is a result of previous happenstances, but "no agency" model suggests to me that we can't make any serious changes in our life, because whatever happens, happens and maybe we were not destined to change our life. This further suggests: "why even try".

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txrx0000 ◴[16 Nov 25 15:43 UTC] No.45945903[source]▶
I believe OP's original implied position was "the universe is deterministic, so why even try", but I was able to convince them that trying is worth it regardless. In fact, the universe being deterministic would mean that it's always worth it to believe that you can accomplish something (if you want to increase the probability of accomplishing that thing).

> You mean they have no choice and whichever decision they took is not from their will, but only from their circumstances?

It is from their will, but a person's will is either completely or partially derived from circumstances. If you believe that the universe is deterministic, then a person's will (brain and body state) is completely derived from their circumstances (prior interactions with the rest of the world).

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1. yetihehe ◴[16 Nov 25 18:23 UTC] No.45947197{3}[source]▶
From what we know, universe is not deterministic. For example even trying to calculate motion of two massive objects with gravity with good precision runs up against heisenberg limit. For massively complicated systems like out bodies, there is just too much uncertainty. Also from neurobiology we see that our brains operate at the limit of noise in neurons. We are as close to total noise on our neuronal links as possible, while still operating properly. And thanks to better neurons than animals, we can operate with lower signal-to-noise ratio. It's not like we use some special quantum effects as a base of our consciousness, we just use quantum noise as a base and amplify it so that we actually respond properly to stimuli.

As for being only shaped by circumstances - IIRC there were experiments with cloned fish, where all of them were kept in conditions as similar as possible and those fish still had behavioral differences. Having deterministic universe is meaningless for agency.

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2. h33t-l4x0r ◴[19 Nov 25 07:25 UTC] No.45976761[source]▶
Oh this is interesting, so you're saying the cloned fish "free-willed" themselves into having different personalities? Like one of them woke up one day and said "From now one I will be the sassy one."

I mean, it's a silly idea on it's face but let's say it's true: where did that thought come from? It came from a long sequence of effects that followed prior causes (starting with the Big Bang), plenty of quantum noise, I have no objection to that (superpositions collapsing / parallel universes forking) and ends with tiny neurons firing in a fish brain, do you not agree?

So where's the free will?

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3. yetihehe ◴[19 Nov 25 07:48 UTC] No.45976905[source]▶
I think that free will ends up in that randomness of neurons firing. That can't be really predicted and steered. Free will is essentially freedom from manipulation/overriding external to the entity having free will. Theoretically that doesn't even need randomness.

And I don't think those fish free willed themselves. They just grew more random due to randomness inherent in our universe, despite us trying to force them into being exact. This was example of randomness of complicated biological processes, not of free will.

4. txrx0000 ◴[19 Nov 25 18:20 UTC] No.45982946[source]▶
Are you guys even talking about the same thing? Because it doesn't seem like you are. You should try to define "free will" first and know exactly what you mean by it. Otherwise you're just arguing over the definition.
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5. yetihehe ◴[20 Nov 25 08:30 UTC] No.45990306{3}[source]▶
I agree with you. Like I said in sibling comment: Free will is essentially freedom from manipulation/overriding external to the entity having free will.