What You (Want to)* Want

This is a very interesting definition of "free will" and not one I would expect most philosophers to agree with, but more measurable and useful than most would propose. In this case "free will" reduces to self-modifying action with randomness injected by the environment, which feels more like a stochastic model than genuine self-determination. That said, the existence of a "reflection" function is still the primary determinant of any moral responsibility.

Maybe I'm the only one who liked it, but I found the essay nice as it gives a simple model to understand ourselves better.

Here's my take on it: there're many things out there (musical genre like classical music, cooking like Indian, French, Ethiopian) and your utility function has coefficients for most of them.

When you don't know the coefficient, you try, and you come with a quick conclusion (like or don't like) that can be further refined by experience (ex: like Indian food, vegetarian Indian food is ok-ish, vegan Indian food nope)

Sometimes you want to alter the coefficient because it can create conflict with your identity (what if you're vegan? what if your parents are Indian?) or other things.

Sometimes you succeed through different methods, sometimes you just can't.

And there're things you like you shouldn't, because of society (taboos, or banned substances) or the consequences on yourself (addictions, risks for your future health) but it's just the same thing: trying to alter the coefficient in your utility function.

It may be worth it (learning something new) or futile (something you just can't change) which leads us to Seneca prayer (the wisdom to separate the two, knowing the battles you can win to avoid wasting effort). And there's another dimension if it's possible: the amount of effort required, which might be measured in years (and what if you're old and bound to fail?)

Personally, I find it simpler to go epicurian and if I find something new I enjoy (right now, Russian rap lol) just enjoy it without asking myself too many questions.

And if I don't like something or have no want for something I should like (Drill rap, Trap rap), I don't force myself but don't exclude it out of my life either: I leave that to serendipity :)

Suppose there are n number of hidden, indeterminate variables in your environment... "You," the individual observer, are free to choose the important variables to navigate life. Your "mind" is the thing which assigns value to hidden variables in your environment but "the mind" is not you... the "mind," from my perspective, is the mirror upon which we witness/experience every day reality/waking life, etc.

If you think rolling dice is important, it is. If you think randomness will effect and experiment, it will. If you don't think randomness is important, it probably is... (a thing is defined by what it is not.)

When you assign an indeterminate (X) value to randomness, this is chaos. If/when you think or realize chaos is an important part of free will... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Are you personally unable to select new variables or assign different "weights"? If so, I contend, you don't exist.

> Most serious philosophers would agree with the idea that scientific evidence is a good way to rule out beliefs inconsistent with reality.

And how did they get to that conclusion? The answer of whether or not the mind or the senses can be relied upon as a path to bedrock truth is something that cannot be found with scientific inquiry because it begs the question.

> Almost zero serious economists are marxists, almost zero serious philosophers embrace Spinoza with no revisions, and please don't read Ayn Rand.

It is precisely that these philosophers were so well followed, and presently rejected, that I enumerated them as examples of castles built on sand. The very same thing could be said of Russell. If there were a public event, more apparent than even the nuclear explosions that went off in Japan, that was strong evidence for the First Cause argument much of Russell turns to mush.

That a philosopher is serious or not is a function of time and opinion. Not veracity.

> what makes a question interesting

What makes your response interesting to me is that Russel had the very same counterargument to Solipsism and in my opinion Russel decided that he couldn't find the rock so he built his philosophy on sand.

This question was important to me so I went searching in philosophy and I found some value there, some manners of perception that proved useful, but it, in my opinion, is a largely broken field.

I can understand that. And I appreciate you sharing your opinion and thoughts on it. I'm not familiar with the Illusory truth effect but will get some reading into today (thanks for the link!)

In speaking. I try to approach things as always mutable. If I put a disclaimer in front of everything I state (when I perceive the I talk about to always be some form of a hypothesis based on the data that I currently have), it tends to slow down discourse and get very messy. In my mind, because I've already accepted the potential for bad data-- that's how I approach others works/papers. There are no absolute truths in anyone's words (or very likely period).

I understand your concerns around this (and at least from my current understanding of our social/political issues) and I agree. It is extremely dangerous and detrimental to hold beliefs like that. However, one could argue that a substantial portion of our society already holds those beliefs. They ignore the free will that they have and operate inside of the system that they perceive.

No real arguments/points here. Just chewing on things/"thinking out-loud". I think it's equally important for people to be able to share thoughts in an unformed state (in the right environment).