The most significant rule change promulgated by the late Jonathan_Chance reads,
In the Great Debates category, we have a current topic titled “Lack of Freewill doesn’t mean lack of choice”. The original prompt was written by a new member, presumably to discuss his or her specific thesis. They made eight posts within a couple hours and haven’t been seen since.
That was November 10. Somewhere within the space of a month we have had roughly 100 posts that seem to share nothing with the original topic except mentioning the concept of free will. It is a wonderful debate that I enjoy following, and the last thing I want to do is stifle it.
But!
The original topic, at least by my reading, was about whether a lack of free will implies a lack of choice. Many tangents have sprung up, which make the current topic harder to follow since we don’t have threaded mode on Discourse.
What is free will / is free will a coherent concept?
Does free will exist / Is free will an illusion?
Is it possible to understand how the human brain works, in detail?
Is free will compatible with determinism?
If free will is incoherent, are ethics and morals incoherent?
If free will is compatible with determinism, can free will exist in a deterministic/fatalistic simulation?
Then there’s the spirit of the rules, is it possible for one topic to contain all of these tangents and still be in compliance?
So how should the mods approach this topic? Or should they approach it at all?
The thread was fine and causing no problems. The rules are not being enforced by a computer but a handful of humans. If it is not causing issues we would probably never look at the thread.
If cited for violation, one could always say the overall context in which we operate caused the post to occur, and that as such the member who so posted had no free will in the matter?