I thought I was being ‘blacklisted’, so I demanded to see colleagues’ emails

Post by ericb » Thu, Aug 01, 2019, 2:07 AM UTC

bena wrote: post #195

ericb wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's disingenuous to both argue that free will does not exist and to proclaim that we should do anything. Not at all. Maybe you are a free-will-lacking if-then bot that takes whatever suggestions someone says we should do and executes them, and maybe I am a free will lacking robot that periodically burps out suggestions. No disenguity or "true choice" required.

But if free will does not exist and you believe that, then you would know that whomever you're making the suggestion to is incapable of changing whatever path they were going on in the first place. By suggesting a course of action, you are implying there is an actor with agency out there. Now, while the actor itself may not actually have agency, that does not absolve you. Any attempt to persuade is an implicit acknow…

> Any attempt to persuade is an implicit acknowledgement of free will.

> But your if-then exhibits no independent action.

Attempts at persuasion don't imply free will, they just change the input to the if-then in a downstream deterministic process.

If bash script A calls bash script B with a command line flag to make it follow an alternate behavior, nothing is implied about the free will of either bash script.

Post by bena » Fri, Aug 02, 2019, 8:11 PM UTC

SkyBelow wrote: post #199

bena wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But Pascal's wager is about risk vs. reward. Here, there is neither risk nor reward. The entire question of whether free will exists or not is pointless. If it exists, nothing changes. If it doesn't exist, nothing changes. And regardless whether you believe it exists or not: If you're right about whether it exists, nothing changes. If you're wrong about whether it exists, nothing changes. So no matter the truth, no m…

>Here, there is neither risk nor reward. I consider being wrong or right risk and reward within themselves. Most others act in such a way that seems to agree even if they don't conceptualize such a thought. >That means the question itself is pointless. How does one determine what does and doesn't have a point? If free will does exist then we can modify our government based on the notion it does exist if we think it d…

Can you articulate those risks and rewards? If you can't, then you don't really have risk or reward.

And it doesn't matter if you consider "being right or wrong" as risks and rewards themselves. It doesn't make it so.

> How does one determine what does and doesn't have a point?

A simple metric is the fact that regardless of the answer, the consequences are the same. And with the question of free will, the consequences are the same whether or not it exists. Nothing changes.

> If free will does exist then we can modify our government based on the notion it does exist if we think it does. If it does exist and we think it does not, then such modifications might be incorrect. That alone is enough for us to determine if there is a point to the question, even outside of any more abstract interest in the question.

You're ignoring the real fundamental point. If it doesn't exist, all that happens anyway. Because we would be fated to do so. If free will does not exist, we can't prevent ourselves from making the decisions we're making. We lose choice.

If we were to discover free will did not exist, there still could be people who are predetermined to not accept the result. They would still believe they had choice. And since free will does not exist, they can't choose to change.

Your crash example relies on free will existing in both cases. Because if free will doesn't exist, we cannot choose to not punish the first guy if we believe he should be punished because we don't get a choice in our beliefs.

Re: I thought I was being ‘blacklisted’, so I demanded to see colleagues’ emails

Re: I thought I was being ‘blacklisted’, so I demanded to see colleagues’ emails