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What You (Want to)* Want

paulgraham.com

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Re: What You (Want to)* Want

#161

Post by nonbirithm »

98codes wrote: post #130
xianshou wrote: post #80

Schopenhauer: "Man can do what he wills, but he cannot will what he wills." I've wrestled with this question from time to time and, to the extent I've found a solution, the key is duration: In the short term, choices are mutable (but determined by character), and character is fixed. In the long term, character is mutable, and determined by some inner nature plus the integral of experience, influence, and choice. Ther…

As someone with a lifetime of fighting with the executive dysfunction end of ADHD, I very much understand what Schopenhauer has saying. I can know what I need to do and have the willpower to do it, but the door to the cupboard where the willpower resides is locked, unlocks randomly, and nobody knows where the key is.

I have to wonder how interest can be affected by some conditions. For example, specific interests are frequently described as a trait of autism spectrum disorders. However, the idea that some types of people express interest in different ways could be hard to swallow, especially if genetics are involved.

Re: What You (Want to)* Want

#163

Post by tshaddox »

dinosaurdynasty wrote: post #150
sph wrote: post #10

I probably don't have much to contribute, but I wanted to share some thoughts on the concept of free will Paul seems to brush against. I found the concept of free will at odds with my opinion that the brain and physics are very deterministic. But one thing the "free will doesn't exist" people tend to forget, is that the brain rewires and changes itself. You are destined to do what your brain is wired to do, but doing…

I'm pretty sure the answer to "do we have free will" is "no", and the much more interesting question is "why do we feel that we have free will?" which I don't know the answer to.

Of course, we don’t all feel that we have free will.

Re: What You (Want to)* Want

#164

Post by pclmulqdq »

xianshou wrote: post #80

Schopenhauer: "Man can do what he wills, but he cannot will what he wills." I've wrestled with this question from time to time and, to the extent I've found a solution, the key is duration: In the short term, choices are mutable (but determined by character), and character is fixed. In the long term, character is mutable, and determined by some inner nature plus the integral of experience, influence, and choice. Ther…

A good response to people like Schopenhauer is: "Not everyone has an ordinal complex, Mr Freud, just you."

Willpower is absolutely a muscle that needs to be cultivated over the long term, as is every other character trait.

I don't think people realize this, but it only takes about 2-3 months of hard, conscious effort to build a habit. On the scale of a lifetime, that is such a short time to make a change in your character. Unfortunately, it can take as little as 2 weeks to break a habit.

Re: What You (Want to)* Want

#165

Post by theonemind »

Roger Penrose doesn’t think the universe is computable or a computation. For now, we can’t reconcile general relativity and quantum mechanics, so I really don’t feel we have very strong evidence that it is—thinking it computable seems like an article of faith as well. We also have Godel’s incompleteness theorem—even if it appears we can model the universe as something computable, I think there’s going to be room for mystery, and human consciousness seems like just the sort of strange self-referentiality eddy where that kind of thing would come in to play. I think a lack of free will be unfalsifiable--you'd have to measure all aspects of a brain, including the quantum state, which would change what you observed--so maybe then you can predict it, but you also had a hand in determining it, which undermines what you want to know, that it was determinable.

On the other hand, free will seems to just refer to the feeling you could’ve made a different choice. But you didn’t. I don’t see why people get so defensive about a junk concept. At some level, it doesn’t really seem like there are separate things, and I don’t feel like there’s a need to invoke some kind of separate individual free will aside from the operation of a universal stoicism type logos/the totality of natural law operating as something like a universal “will”

Re: What You (Want to)* Want

#166

Post by carapace »

> the feeling that I could choose to do whatever I wanted

That feeling is an illusion. This has been demonstrated with brain scans. By the time you feel like you are making a decision your brain has already made it and you are just becoming aware of it.

It's actually possible to turn off that feeling, to do without the illusion of free will. Your body keeps moving and doing "all the things" but you are totally non-agential, just watching it, along for the ride. It's fun and deeply relaxing once you get used to it.

(Note that this does nothing to resolve the question of free will. Your conscious mind doesn't have free will, but that doesn't mean your unconscious mind necessarily doesn't have it.)

Re: What You (Want to)* Want

#167

Post by dqh »

Given the observable order of the universe, I have always found it hard to accept that pausing it, copying it, then resuming both copies could result in two different universes over time.

Re: What You (Want to)* Want

#168

Post by Thursday24 »

Thursday24 wrote: post #124
nopinsight wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do people still read philosophical writings by the likes of Plato and Socrates? This piece like quite a few others is a kind of musings which many find interesting and PG doesn't claim it to be scientific. There are areas of human interests that lie well outside our scientific capabilities. People should be allowed to speculate on them. Reasonable conjectures often precede solid evidence/proofs in math and science. T…

A more stark example is that of Newton. A true philosopher, by hacker news standards he'd be considered a misguided madman, since he spent 2/3rd of his life on "unproductive" topics such as religion and alchemy. However, the "productive" 1/3rd cannot be separated from the rest. One must remember that the word "scientist" was coined merely in 1834...the word isn't 100 year old even. Newton saw himself as a philosopher…

*200 year old

Re: What You (Want to)* Want

#169

Post by scott_w »

slothtrop wrote: post #121
scott_w wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I don't think the universe is deterministic, the existence of evolution isn't proof of this. It's possible that what we perceive as "randomness" is actually just the result of variables and things happening that we're not able to perceive. Take rolling a dice: which number comes up is determined by the starting conditions, the force you throw it with, what it lands on and any external forces acting during the t…

Well you can't conflate the banality of rolling dice with evolution. Based on what I've read, randomness has been a necessity for it's fruition, but of course this isn't my field.

My point was we call both “random” but, when you think deeply about it, you know that rolling a dice isn’t really random, we just can’t reliably predict the outcome.

There’s no reason the “random chance” in evolution is any different. It can just contain a million times more complexity in its determinism.

To prove determinism one way or another, we need to prove the fundamental building blocks of the universe are deterministic (or not).

Re: What You (Want to)* Want

#170

Post by morjom »

xianshou wrote: post #80

Schopenhauer: "Man can do what he wills, but he cannot will what he wills." I've wrestled with this question from time to time and, to the extent I've found a solution, the key is duration: In the short term, choices are mutable (but determined by character), and character is fixed. In the long term, character is mutable, and determined by some inner nature plus the integral of experience, influence, and choice. Ther…

I very recently discovered this muscle and I'm in the process of training it. My life was very passive until a year ago when my parents divorced and the amount of responsibilities I had increased. Everything felt so unbearable and I couldn't do anything unless it was a solid requirement for something else, or an official matter.
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