So saying the phrase “It’s better to beg forgiveness, than ask permission” makes a person an asshole?
I’m with dogzilla on this one. How so?
“We are all going to die someday anyhow, might as well enjoy it, all you healthy people that exercise are going to get hit by a bus or something anyway.” Real logical dumbass, way to support laziness and ill health. Perhaps some people enjoy the feeling of exercise, or like how being healthy feels. Perhaps you are an idiot and don’t know anything.
As someone who has often said this, I can say it’s not to support laziness and ill health. It’s to justify one’s own bad habits and convince one’s self that bad shit won’t kill one. It’s a sort of defense mechanism.
And an idiotic one at that.
Another one for my woo woo list is “I can’t conceive of any other explanation, therefore I’ll believe the weirdest thing I can.” I got a really good dose of this a few months ago. Apparently there was some street magician on TV the night before. He did some sort of trick where he levitated a few inches off the ground. I think the magician even admitted that it was just an illusion.
However, in a watercooler discussion the next day, one viewer was intent on saying “How could that be a trick? I didn’t see no wires, that shit was real, man! The dude was floatin’!” When people tried to explain to him that magicians have tricks to make fake things look real, this guy would have none of it. He just shouted louder about how real it was.
Hmm, I wonder what defense mechanisms I have and how they appear to other people. Probably quite a few of em make me illogical or idiotic.
Makes sense though.
“It’s a fact that gaybashers are actually secretly gay themselves.”
OK, I understand the need to portray your enemies in the most horrible and disgusting manner possible, and in this case, you do it by making them into hypocrites, as well as the very thing they say they despise. It puts the gaybashers on the defensive, and they mentally check themselves over, hoping that nothing they’ve done or said will make people think they’re gay.
But how is this a FACT?
Did some independent government study coordinate a test somewhere, survey applicants who were anti-gay, and show them gay sex pictures to see if they got aroused? Is this something that’s mentioned in a scientific study somewhere? Is there some sort of gaybashing gene that swims around next to gay genes?
To overuse a cliché: cite?
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Actually, it did. If you’re going to argue with something, at least try to understand what you’re arguing with first (I realize that thinking about it for a moment, and then presenting a counterargument consisting of more than “nuh-uh, and you’re a dumb head”, may be beyond your grasp).
It is possible to imagine the concept that free will does not exist. It is possible to consider this concept, and to understand it as completely as one wishes. However, it is NOT possible for a person to truly believe that this is the case. Humans are hardwired to believe ourselves to be conscious. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t bother doing anything, since what would be the point? Anybody claiming nonbelief in free will is either misguided or lying. My example of the person who (like most people) wouldn’t kill somebody for no reason. Requiring a reason to kill somebody implies that you have some choice in the process. Hell, even postulating that you believe anything, one way or another, implies an acceptance of consciousness and choice.
The human mind cannot, under any circumstances, truly accept the idea that its function is purely mechanical rather than guided by conscious thought. If it did, who knows what would happen…the reason we don’t know is because it’s impossible to begin with. I would suspect that the higher functions of the mind, i.e. thought, would shut down completely for lack of a reason to continue. But the end result is irrelevant.
I concede that people may be able to delude themselves into thinking they believe in determinism. From my own experience, I have found that nine times out of ten, it is based on either a lack of understanding of what determinism actually is, or else the person is simply full of shit. The other 10% of the time, they genuinely seem to think they believe that they’re robots. That’s when I tell them to go kill somebody. Haven’t had anyone do it yet. Odd, that.
I’m going to take a wild guess that that’s not what he was trying to say. You started your argument re: free will, in the middle without “setting it up” so to speak, or appearing to have replied to anyone else’s argument ABOUT free will.
I doubt that he didn’t understand your intent, just your garbled rambling that you’re attempting to use to define your argument. It has no rhyme or reason, it doesn’t follow any kind of reasonable writing pattern of explanation, description or definition.
If that’s NOT what he meant, I’m sure that he’ll correct me, but that’s the gist I got from his post.
Here is a nice page on them. It’s pretty educational. You’ll note that some of these intersect with the list of forms of faulty thinking, and the list of poor debating techniques. For instance, all-or-nothing thinking (“Either you’re a patriotic American who supports our troops or you kiss Saddam on the lips every night”) can be on all three lists (but is mysteriously missing from the above link).
Another one that amuses me is a particular form of Denial, a denial of emotions. Often this is seen in someone who is bashing the “touchy feely liberals who are ruled by emotion.” That person claims to run on pure unemotional logic. When pressed, that person often exclaims “Dammit, I am NOT emotional, you prick, and if you say I am one more time, I’ll kick your ass!”
Uh huh.
Roland Orbizal:
You know what I don’t get? People who believe in “love”. I looked all up and down West 14th Street and inside pencil sharpeners and under the microscope and through the telescope and on the oscilloscope: no love. Tried x-raying a box of chocolates, dissecting a bouquet of roses to no avail. Ran 49 love songs through my digitizer and cancelled out all the waveforms that could be traced to musicians and their instruments and background noise and there just wasn’t anything else left when I was done. Besides, Occam’s Razor says there’s no compelling reason to posit the existence of “love” when references to utilitarian social reciprocity, sexuality, and alliance-making in power and politics is sufficient to explain all relevant observed phenomena.
And don’t get me started on “freedom”…
Just because you use the incorrect instruments to try to measure something does not mean that it cannot be measured. Using a telecsope to measure a human emotion is only half again as silly as using it to measure electrical resistance. Therefore such a comment is foolish.
Human emotions (including ‘love’) can be measured to some degree, perhaps not to the ‘nth’ decimal place that many science instruments are capable of measuring other aspects of nature, but they can be measured.
I’m sorry, but this is actually one of those woowoo arguements that I find so silly. Mockingly saying “So what is the wavelength of anger.” is like asking what is the velocity of density.
I see what you are saying, I think. You were asking for huge changes in evolution…Hmmm…outside the academic, I can’t think of a practical use yet.
In the future though, it might be possible to tinker with Genes to a great extent; effectively ‘evolving’ an organ (or organism). For example, and I don’t know how on earth this could be accomplished (or even if), scientists could possibly evolve a human heart/body that could last an astonishingly long time.
Perhaps we could tinker with species of germs and create new ones that patrol our bodies, looking to fix them…
I know you were asking for practical applications in today’s world, but I guess I just got to thinking…
Ahunter3
I made the post you quoted, not Roland.
You missed the point of my post. The nature of God is internally contradictory. He quite simply cannot exist. In the same way that an immovable object cannot exist in the same universe as an unstoppable force, an omnipotent, omnibenevolent, omniscient God cannot coexist with evil. Since evil exists, God doesn’t. At least, not as he is described by the major monotheistic religions. Is there something internally contradictory about love or freedom?
You’re right that my failure to empirically verify the existence of a thing doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist but if the existence of a being directly contradicts what we know beyond all doubt to be true then that being cannot exist.
I started a GD thread about this yesterday. Why not join in?
The velocity of density is 42. The question is, how long is a piece of string?
The one I hate is “Oh, everything on the internet is fake, so I’m gonna listen to a FOAF.”
Uh, no. There are not Laotian gangs killing people for flashing their headlights. No, Snopes is not just “one of those websites that anybody can make up stuff on.” They actually research things and provide references.
Wow…I was all prepared to get roasted for the “pure atheism is not conceptually different from pure religion” comment, even though it wasn’t intended as inflammatory. I just figured some people would misinterpret me and I’d have to put out some fires. Instead, people seem to get that one (save for one bizarre comment out of left field that I chose to leave alone), and instead I’m catching hell for saying that humans believe themselves to have free will.
Is this really such a difficult thing to understand? By deciding to do anything – ANYTHING, be it eating a sandwich, talking to a friend, or even getting up in the morning – we are acting on our inherent belief that such actions have the capacity to be meaningful, and that they are guided to whatever extent by our thoughts and decisions to do them. Now, if you stop and think about it, that’s not saying a whole hell of a lot. I’m not trying to make a grandiose statement, like “determinism is definitely wrong”, or “free will is a function of human thought”. I’m just saying that humans think they think things. That’s it. That’s the ball game.
Oh, and regarding my somewhat unorthodox writing style when discussing these topics: you’re right, it may well be difficult for some to understand, and for that I apologize (and I’m not being snarky here whatsoever). What I’ve been posting here is essentially a direct conversion of my progression of thought into words. If things seem a bit jumbled, or certain statements seem out of place, that would be why. I’m a lot less confusing when I have time to gather my thoughts into a more recognizeable manner before writing them down, but for the purposes of a realtime message board, that’s unfortunately not usually the case. Oddly, it’s not a problem I experience when talking, but I suspect that direct human contact has something to do with that. Oops, rambling again. Sorry. Anyway, this somewhat irrelevant and rambling explanatory paragraph aside, my point still stands: humans believe themselves to have free will, and following logically from that, cannot possibly believe in determinism. Ok, I’ll shut up now 
I agree, you genuinely aren’t making any sense.
Okay, what’s YOUR definition of free will? Keep in mind it might not be the one others share.
If you are materialist, it is impossible to concieve that “belief” is anything other than a physical configuration of the mind. Are you a materialist?
I agree with you on this and I believe I have stated this, dunno if in this thread or not.
This is where you make absolutely no freakin sense. If materialism is the case, there is no difference between the “reason” you have for killing versus the “reason” a computer has for divulgin information: a physical configuration.
Depends on what you mean by believe. I see no reason, especially considering the current state of brain science, to think that belief resides anywhere other than the neurons.
Sure I can, as much as I can accept anything else. I, however, am a hard agnostic about everything, not only theology, so I concede that it is metaphysically possible that this is not the case. However, assuming physicalism, it is definitely the case.
I can do that, it’s relaxing.
bwahahahaha. Who said the universe is deterministic?
I refer the esteemed gentleman from Location: to the answer I gave several questions before. It’s fully compatible to believe that your actions are completely the result of physical interactions, and yet not believe that your mind is capable of changing its course. In fact, if you TELL someone to do something and they cant do it, it’s pretty much evidence that they CANNOT change many of their actions.
In addition, I think you are making the mistake that we are of one conscious mind. Part of us may want to do something and part of us may be trying to stop us from doing that. After all, you are claiming that there is much of the brain, or at least SOMETHING in the brain we do not understand. There is also proven to be much processing that takes place behind the scenes.
When you asked them to kill someone, you, JUST LIKE THE COMPUTER EXAMPLE, did not have access to the entire system. If you were given access to their entire sensory perceptions, you might be able to convince them that someone was trying to kill them and make them do that then.
Far be it for me to defend someone in the pit. But I understood Roland Orzabal hypothetical the first time through. Unless I am mistaken, he is simply posing a hypothetical to someone who claims that they have no free will. That every decision they take (or rather every action they perform) has been determined in advance. Such a person shold feel no guilt whatsoever in killing a random stranger. If his actions are truly determined by outside forces or prewired or whatever then he has no responsibility and thus no guilt. Roland Orzabal’s hypothetical is simply constructed to demonstrate that a person who professes a belief* in determinism as to his own actions does not really live his life that way.
I can find several holes in the hypothetical without claiming that it is nonsensical. A determinist could simply say that they were not meant to kill the random stranger. Or more ominously something like “well, if it is to be, then it will be. Keep looking in the obituraries for his name if you like.” In my experience determinists are not so easily disuaded.
BTW, Roland Orzabal you say that no one has ever taken you up on the offer to kill a random stranger. Have any of them then changed their opinions about determinism?
As to the OP, how abou this:
“I know <such and such> because I read the papers! Google it yourself!” Does that count?
Mr Miskatonic, consider yourself wooshed.
Only one. He admitted that he’d had a faulty conception of what I meant by “belief”, and accepted that he could not truly believe determinism to be true. The vast majority of the people I’ve tried this on just choose to ignore it completely and continue in their misguided notions. I do appreciate your concise rephrasing of my hypothetical example, as well as the description of its point. I had thought that context would make it clear, but apparently some (such as yourself) can follow my chain of thought better than others.
Usually, if someone seems to have no idea whatsoever what I’m talking about, I’ll assume one of two things: either they’re not smart enough to understand what I’m saying, or else (if I respect the person’s intellect) that our thought patterns are merely incompatible. That’s why I’m responding to Ludovic. I think he actually understands the question at hand (unlike BlackKnight, who had nothing to say but said it anyway), but he doesn’t get where I’m coming from. I’m not positive what he’s getting at, either, so I’m thinking our preferred methods of logical communication just don’t mesh with each other. I’m ignoring the personal insults that were thrown into the mix, because A) this is the Pit, and people get carried away; you have to read past the insults to get at the person’s actual point; and B) I’m just as guilty of writing gut-reaction posts lambasting people for perceived slights.
Anyhow, Ludovic, on to your statements. The first thing you do is ask me to define my concept of free will. My accepted definition of “free will”, to put it as simply as possible, is “the ability to select one’s course of action”. Some philosophers further require that the decision must fulfill some desire, but that would lead into the whole “desire is a function of a presupposed consciousness” debate that I hope you’ll agree we can do without. In other words, Free Will = the ability to make decisions.
(To get a couple of things out of the way: I never said the universe was deterministic; like yourself I am a soft agnostic. When I said that the people I was talking to didn’t understand determinism, I meant that they didn’t understand their own argument that belief in it was possible. Furthermore, your statement about the dual-naturedness of human consciousness, while correct, is irrelevant to this debate. To have multiple levels of consciousness, one must accept that consciousness exists in the first place, which was the entirety of my inital assumption. Your argument about the computer does indeed touch on the topic, and thus will be addressed shortly.)
As I said, my entire point is based on one assumption: the human mind without exception believes itself capable of making decisions. You say that you accept this. The only other thing I said, and thus the only thing you can possibly disagree with me about, is that it logically follows from this assumption that true belief in a deterministic universe is impossible. If you accept my definition of free will, then you accept this conclusion by fiat, since [belief that we make choices] = [belief in free will] = [non-belief in determinism]. If you don’t, then you have to draw a direct logical connection between [belief that we make choices] = [non-belief in determinism], which is where your computer argument comes in.
In this argument, you seem to presuppose that belief in conscious decision can be equated to the deterministic nature of a computer following its programming. In other words, given a deterministic universe and adequate information about the human mind, one could conceivably alter the state of that mind to follow whatever path one pleased. In other words, I could make somebody kill a random stranger. What you’re missing is that while this may or may not be true, we cannot honestly believe it to be the case. The difference between your example and mine is that computers do not believe themselves to have free will. Humans, whether it’s true or not, do. Without exception. We may well be instruments of cosmic programming. We just don’t, and can’t, believe that we are.
We can think of a deterministic universe. We can understand a deterministic universe. We can imagine ourselves existing in a deterministic universe. We can admit the possibility that our universe is deterministic (and indeed, I make this concession myself). The only thing we cannot do is accept, without any doubt, the fact that we are living in such a universe. Humans believe that they make decisions. Ergo, they believe the universe to be non-deterministic. Have I adequately illustrated my point? I imagine that the others reading this thread, whatever side of the fence they stand on, are growing kinda tired of this whole thing…maybe we should confine it to email instead?
Correction: you stated yourself to be a hard agnostic, not soft as I had incorrectly recalled. Personally, I believe that it is possible (though vastly unlikely) that existence will someday reveal its nature to humanity, and thus I cannot say for certain that we will never be able to know. A minor distinction, to be sure, but I didn’t want you thinking I was putting words in your mouth
In retrospect, I could have definitely been more diplomatic about my first post in this thread.
That said, Roland’s example seemed completely unrelated to the thing it was supposed to be an example of. pervert, thank you for clarifying the purpose of his example a bit.
I notice that Roland has used the phrase “truly believe”. It’s possible he means something by this other than what I assumed he meant. Roland, could you explain to me the difference between “believe” and “truly believe”? Are they different things entirely, or just different forms of the same thing?
I took it to mean “actually believe, not just saying or pretending to believe”. If this is the case, then I think you’re wrong. Whether or not someone acts in a manner that one would expect from a person believing X has no bearing on whether or not they believe X. For example, I believe that eating fast food on a regular basis is bad for my health. I believe this. Yet, I eat fast food on a regular basis. I know I shouldn’t, but I do. Let’s assume that your example shows that a person acts as if they don’t believe determinism (I don’t think it does; see below) - that doesn’t mean that they don’t actually believe in determinism. Someone eating cheeseburgers left and right may or may not believe that too many cheeseburgers are unhealthy. It’s possible they know and just don’t care (among other possibilities).
Now to the example you used - I think it’s a poor one. I can tell my computer to kill someone. Its response or lack of response has no bearing on whether it is deterministic. Likewise with telling a person to kill someone. There are countless reasons why someone would not kill on your command, all of which are compatible with belief in determinism. For example, I wouldn’t kill because you told me to. Why? Well, simply put, because I don’t want to. Why don’t I want to? Because I have certain emotions / desires / etc. that conflict with following such an order. Why do I have those emotions and so forth? How I was raised, my physiology, and sundry other reasons.
To put it crudely, I am determined to not want to. And I can believe that I am determined not to want to, while simultaneously not wanting to.