Thoughts on Free Will
          ( two stones in one bird, offending mass quantities | originally posted to: Z(cluster) list )

 

Intellectual copulation in the Chao of Zee

Leaving Doc's entire message attached "Dissident Aggressor" (which is probably the name of six or seven cheezy metal bands by now) agrees with the silly doctor by re-iterating that ol' quantum scapegoat: "There is no free will. Everything is based on probability and interdeterminism"

A rather terrbile explanation. Just what faith are you offending? Sounds like the blasphemy of physics more than anything. Let's deconstruct shall we? You have free will, don't deny it. You ain't a fuckin tree rooted to the ground. - Right Now - you could probably drink and drive, go buy drugs, run over a cat, and all while getting head from underage goth chicks on the drive-thru line at white castle. How much more 'free' does 'will' have to get? Free range of motion will have to suffice, for now. Probabilities? Yeah, you probably won't get caught. Indeterminism?? C'mon, please, what you can't decide between fries or onion rings?

Do mother gaea a favor and kill yourself now.

If you think you have no free will then why not use your will power? Well what the hell is will power? Psycho-somatic strength? Mind controling the body? One thing it's hard to reach/hold a consensus on is the topic of will vs. Will. Especially in a gaggle of chaotes such as the zee. To say that the whole wolrd is a randomized jumble of events is pretty accurate. But, too, too often it is just a shameless cop-out for under-development in a person, usually a person reaching for seemingly hard-to-attain goals, like, let's say, adepthood. To speak in absolutes about almost anything is to invoke it's opposite. "There is no free will" provokes an immediate decree of "bullshit".

The only thing that's true is that there are no absolutes.

Your birth certificate doesn't come with a gurantee. It's its not endorsed by the makers of Live Human Being(tm) incorporated. When the warranty expires, the product is obsolete. No matter what you may read by pope pete.Of course, this depends on your point of view, and it helps to hold more than one belief within a given point of view. I believe this is called perspective as expressed in abstract thinking. Perhaps you are familiar with this term.

"Out of curiosity, how do you manage to not believe in causality?"

Essentially the same way so-called atheists disbelieve in "God". Insufficient proof, lack of empirical evidence, the existence of incoherent mechanisms in nature, and a working overstanding of dimensional uncertainty. All bodies of science are nescient. the more questions we answer the more incomplete the whole becomes. causality is measureable and detectable, but it's only one side of percievable reality. both classical and quantum physics rest upon the notion that one thing causes another (in different ways), yet those causes are merely symptoms of the continuum as there is no First Cause.

Free will is tough.

We have to recline in our chair and fold our arms in contemplation for a moment. Our materialistic self says nothing is free, so it's hogwash. my transcendentalist self says we are all interdependent apsects of one another and therefore we have no will of our own. my magical self realizes that mind control is how societies function so to prove to myself that my will is free of influence i'd have to experiment by attempting to act outside of necessity without castrating my own desire.

Which seems rather impossible when you think about it.

It comes down to holding contradictory beliefs simultanouesly as all of the following are true, false, and meaningless in some sense but just for shits and pierced clits try: There is only free will. Everything we do is highly calculated and intimately determinate. OR There is no freedom. Everything is based upon deliberate and arbitrary judgements (up to an including the afterlife). OR There is no free will only True Will. Every event in the cosmos is part of the One True Universal Will. I like none of the above personally, but we could go on all day here with in nauseating circular logisticifcation.

Don't ask questions you don't want the answers to

 

Insincerely,  

Dr. Ayin R. Inch          

 

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