My Complete Views on Free Will

The difference between compatibilism and hard determinism is often just a difference in belief in what we mean when we say someone has free will, and not a difference in belief in what we have.  I am going to focus on the question of what we have.

I am pretty sure the world is determinite (at least in all the ways that matter).  If you were to plug in every fact about the world's past into a supercomputer it would be able to predict what would happen next.  Well this may sound radical to those who haven't spent time reflecting on free will, it really amounts to the thoroughly non-radical proposition that every effect has a cause.  It says nothing about the material or immaterial state of the world we live in.  Importantly, it also does not involve bypassing - the notion that our deliberation and reason isn't part of this causally determined universe.

Determinism usually results in two different reactions: a panic that this must lead to nihilism and/or a view that this discovery doesn't lead to any prescriptions (because prescriptions can't make sense anymore!).  I will argue that both of these are incorrect.

Don't panic. An important part of our supercomputer is that it is really really super.  We don't have access, and likely will never have access, to anything close to it's predictive power.  To all of us the future is unknown.  Further all of our actions are going to have causal power.  Yes, these actions themselves where caused, but that doesn't make them less real.  Let's say at T0 I walk into the kitchen for breakfast and see my options for breakfast are a bowl of oatmeal or a donut.  I begin my thought, instinct, action sequence.  I think about how I had a donut yesterday for breakfast.  I think about how I am putting on some weight. The thought of oatmeal with only a touch of brown sugar and some raisins being tasty crosses my mind.  I decide to eat the oatmeal.  After considering reasons and being confronted with a choice I choose the oatmeal.  The fact that a hypothetical really really super supercomputer could have told me T- whatever what choice I was going to make doesn't change the relevant factors that make this a choice that I made.  In this case,  a close friend that was paying enough attention to my lifestyle and previous choices, could have accurately predicted what choice I was going to make...it doesn't mean I didn't make a choice.  A common reaction however, upon being confronted with determinism is, "Well, nothing I do matters anymore, it will all happen a certain way regardless of what I do."  One thing, which is theoretically knowable will happen and there isn't anything you can do to change that--that is true.  And if your background of nature and nurture has brought you to a place to hear that and this and reflect on them in a way that will paralyze you into a nihilistic inaction then that is what will happen.  If you can't accept that and your reflection leads you to realize the future is and will likely always be completely unknowable and exciting and that you want to continue to use all your best reasons to deliberate and make choices than that is what will happen.

If you find meaning and happiness in pleasure this is not negated by determinism.  Likely the reasons and choices you are making are going to lead to those things. My determined self in this determined universe leads me to the conclusion that I want to still deliberate using the best reasons possible to achieve the best goals I have set for myself and so am thankful that I am not caught in nihilistic inaction.

So why does this matter if I can go back to just pretending it doesn't and since no-one will likely ever get close to predicting things to a level that matters?  The insight presents me with several additional reasons and consequences to consider in consequent deliberation.  One re-think how you look at every should claim.  Not that they can't exist anymore, just they will require removing the blame for the individual self to the process.  A shift of focus when something like a murder occurs from the vague "that is an evil person" to what stimuli and reasons does this person need to act differently.  What can we do in the future so that someone does not come to this point.  If there is a gene that makes someone "born to kill" and that is why they commit the murder, then maybe nothing can be done other than keeping them locked up, since a world with less people murdering is more appealing to me. I predict that our focus would shift in other ways as well.  We would no longer praise the one or few heroes in our society and blame the one or few villians, but rather take part in some of that praise and the blame.  We wouldn't be grabbed by the allure of rugged individualism and rather recognize that it takes a world to raise a child. Of course whether we do this or not is already determined by our supercomputer, but part of what it is processing are my desires and I have a strong desire that we do make this shift and hope that other people will as well and that together we create a world that is better and filled with more pleasure and less pain...but who knows what the future will hold.

*I have a deep aversion to my actions being predictable and it may be a human-wide instinct.  We are rea
lly tied to the idea of being a causa-sui actor.  This is seen in examples where we want to break out of predictable life-patterns (these being the ones that are predictable to others).  It is also shown in how the event of our friend predicting our choice of oatmeal might introduce a new reason not to eat the oatmeal. I think this shows that we think we have a free-will that we don't...but since we have never had it, we shouldn't miss it. (For why we have this view of free-will and how pervasive it is in our society see the forthcoming...How Plato Ruined the World: A Story of the Invention of Other-worldliness and the Benefits of Convincing People they are Ultimately Morally Responsible.)   

Stopping Reflection...

I have often wondered whether I would be much better off if I didn't reflect so much. There are people who seem to reflect very shallowly, or better yet, in a very goal-oriented focused way, and they seem to be generally very happy and very very productive. They have built up and unquestionably gone along with structures of reflection that avoid asking dangerous questions.

I don't have this...perhaps intrinsically. I am currently SET in being at this job. It is stressing me out though and at times I am most stressed out and frustrated I get reflective and when I get reflective I try really hard to not reflect and face the facts of the matter, that I might be better off without the job, with quitting. The fact I am avoiding considering and reflecting on whether that might be true (this is totally analgous to not wanting to reflect on the possibility and truths around whether christianity exists), is apparent to me. Others, I bet, never are granted the insight they are STOPPING themselves or manipulating their reflection....tricking them into only seeing the positives or only having the positives as options to see...

ughhh...

I gave myself years to reflect though and really don't have a lot to show for it...years to consider the truth, whatever it may be...this isn't the answer (I don't think).

The Forms, The Falsity - Why Ancient Philosophy Matters

You can start out arguing against Plato and unbeknowst to you end up arguing against most of the values that all of western civilization are based on. The Forms do not exist and never have, except in human language.

Golden Era of Humanity

Perhaps the golden era of humanity will be the moment in history between the discovery of the secrets to our genetic code and material existence, which will bring on a cure for cancer and other diseases, and the moment it dawns on all of humanity that there is no going back from this and they are stuck with facing the deep existential angst that comes with the Truth. Realizing that everything is “predestined.”

The Question That Separates Most Beliefs

There is a key perspective change that separates hundreds of belief. It is who you trust and how much you trust. Do you trust the opinion of a great thinker that you know has thought about it all a lot more than you? When do you not trust them? If that was always the case there would be no new thoughts.

Ya, I liked that band before they got popular...

Have I said this? Yes, but I didn't mean to imply causation.

When it comes to movies and books...rather film and literature, I feel justified with the causal connection, but really I feel justified never beginning to like it--never having liked it. Why? Because these deal with content. They take you along a conscious journey, where you are to identify with your beliefs, thoughts, and your "philosophy." You are asked to buy into it. To accept it. To be content with it. To find it.."ahh, so true." And I never want to say that, feel that, think that about anything that the majority...the massess...the herd also believe.

But music. Music is different. Music gets at something that is beneath consciousness. Beneath that which separates those who are great, who are revolutionary, who extend culture, who enrich life, and provide the only antidote to death...to those who are content, happy, unreflective and instead enclosed, chained, jailed by their thoughts. By their need to be average, common, OK.

Music reaches something we all still have access to, since it doesn't appeal to us as thought, it appeals to us as animals. As the type of thing who want to dance and want to jump. To that underlying reality that we can tap in to. Where the thoughts and the goals, the for and the against, are fighting and fucking...where being indifferent and not causing trouble, where being afraid and being peaceful, is to be cowardly and disgusting.

The Only Hope For Change

I have tried to understand what these protests are for. The closest thing that I have been able to come up with is this statement on the side tool bar of occupywallstreet.org:

Occupy Wall Street is leaderless resistance movement with people of many colors, genders and political persuasions. The one thing we all have in common is that We Are The 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%. We are using the revolutionary Arab Spring tactic to achieve our ends and encourage the use of nonviolence to maximize the safety of all participants.

This is great and I understand the whole "we don't want to make specific demands since these can be co-opted by the political/financial system that we are fighting against," I really do, but seriously, what is the plan, what does it mean for protestors to "win" in this case? What does it mean that we will "no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%"? Or, that they are using the revolutionary Arab Spring tactic? Does this mean that they are willing to risk their lives in order to drive out the government and live in anarchy or military rule (also, it is not like we will have the U.S. military supporting us like those uprisings, and the gov't we are talking about is a tough bigger and more powerful)? And if so, what then?

Further, if coup is what they are going for, I hate to be a buzzkill for the 1% that have this in mind, but I am pretty sure 99% of Americans are not in a bad enough situation--or fearless enough--to be willing to be run over by tanks protesting their out of control credit card bill or grad student loans. (Also, while 100,000 people is a lot (this is the most generous estimate of people who have stepped out to protest across the country) it is still roughly only .03% of the country.) The majority of us have simply become too accustomed to our cush lifestyles, where food is never too far away, death is never a real, immediate, concrete threat, and cheap amusement is readily provided in a multitude of forms. Until these things are taken away we will never have anything close to "revolutionary," whether that is a good thing or not.

So, what could happen? What could come out of these protests? For one, no one will pay attention to a completely decentralized group of people shouting inconsistent and/or incoherent general greivances. There needs to be a clear concise answer to the question: "what are these protests about?" If it is not chosen by the protesters it will be chosen by the media, or by someone antagonistic to the group, or by someone co-opting it for their own narrow ends. This has already happened, with unfortunate consequences. Although the one clear statement about the protest claims it is for the "99%" and includes people of all political persuasions, it has been labeled by the three aforementioned groups and protestors themselves with incredibly narrow terms. A common one, and perhaps the most unfortunate one is, "the left's tea party." One problem, not even the biggest, is that this implies a ridiculously simply political spectrum that somehow runs perfectly horizontal with the tea party just being really Republican, and this new movement just being really Democrat. Another problem is that "the 99%" just became 5%. Both these problems are solved by one simple understanding:

There are a lot of people fet up about a lot of different things spanning a wide range of political viewpoints, BUT there are areas of agreement. These similarities need to be recognized and clarified, the people from both (and all bases) mobilized, and these few simple, clear, common demands unrelentlessly fought for.

That is the only way the Elite, or better yet the millions of Americans in the 99% who are still very much satisfied with the status quo, will even begin to listen. If a group isn't clear and inclusive with simple, widely agreed upon injustices to argue for other elements of the 99% will be pitted against them until both are easliy controlled and marginalized.

What are some of these commonalities? One that I imagine both could agree on (and it need not be more than one at a time) would be the injustice that is our two-party system. When I am confronted about voting third-party I am usually confronted with one of two responses, neither of which is "I am against third-parties, I think only two options should be available." Beyond this there are several other commonalities the "left tea party" and the "right tea party" have if they would only listen and recognize this (for example the influence money has in politics). I am not the only one recognizing this either. Here, the intellectual purists of each "side": Paul/Nader.