What You (Want to)* Want

None of these words make sense. I can't want what I want (author's thesis here). This higher level of abstraction that you talk about is an illusion caused by not paying attention. I can ruminate for years about how I am going to do this and that; but at the end of the day, the impetus to actually do it is still mysterious. I can't want to change. I just change. I just do the little things that shifts my life for the better and then one day just simply stop. I can forge some reasons as to why I change but I could have easily muster my way through it. Can I choose how much will power I have?

Now people will say because free will doesn't exist means that choices don't matter. It absolutely does. The fact that you "chose" to do good things matter. Because experiences matter. Because experience pain/suffering however you wish to define it is not a "good" thing.

I can perfectly understand some issues people have with this concept because it causes them trouble with their addiction/depression. But just because we tell lies like we always do in programming to facilitate discussion/teaching/abstraction does not mean that those things are not real. You don't want to make decisions on a national/scale on lies that you tell yourself to get to sleep.

It’s a cool old dude sharing his shower thoughts on the internet. What exactly are the negative consequences of these writeups?

It feels like such an overstatement that it makes me wonder if there’s something else at play here…

Action: Act(Environment|Character)

Reflection: Act(Character|Environment)

An agent has free will iff it engages in actionreflection cycles.

Also:

An agent A "could have taken" action X vs Y: ActX(Env|CharA) vs ActY(Env|CharB) in the sense that there is a graph "of some sort" linking their CharA to the CharB which could realise ActY.

Eg., Bob can either steal the money or return it. Bob chooses to steal it. Bob is morally responsible for this act because there is a realisable "actionreflection" path from bob's actual character to the one he should have had. If bob had had this character, he would not have stolen.

>The way we experience our lives indicates that we make choices and they have consequences

Even if we don't "make" our choices, why would that not matter? Experience matter (it's the only thing that matter). It still matters that some unconscious rock fell over your head. It matters that you "decides" to be better because that means that you will experience better life.

I am sorry to hear that you struggled with addiction and I can understand that some knowledge is poison. We do not drill the concept of suffering to our young children every waking minute of their life. That does not mean that any of those things are untrue. If your doctor consistently denies that death is a concept you would rightly be asking for a different one. Truth matters.

I have some addiction problems myself and I think free will is one of the most poisonous concept. It says that the lotus of blame is solely on me. _I_ have to decide to change and actually perform it. But we know better than that, we know that _I_ can be influenced. Therefore we know to avoid things that feeds into our addiction. I can't just "not do it".

>I have in fact done so on many occasions. At that point I didn't choose, RNG did.

You did not choose to follow this through. You could have easily said, "I am going to do the opposite of this to assert my free will! Take that!" and you didn't choose to do this either.

https://superbowl.substack.com/p/church-of-reality-schroding...