Superdeterminism could reconcile quantum and relativity

> for example, the motion of a limb to the activity of the brain does not stay consistent

That makes sense tho, because the motion of your limbs are controlled in part by neurons (and other things) that are not in your brain. Muscle memory, for example, isn't just a metaphor, you literally have neurons in your foot that have memory which allows you to react faster than it takes for signals to reach your brain, eg if you step on a bed of hot coals.

> no one has found where the will expresses itself in the brain

Why does there have to be one place? Your "will" is the combination of interactions between not only all parts of your brain, but all parts of your body.

> nowhere where the various senses are assimilated and correlated into a cohesive perception.

This is the part that gets me. I have a cohesive cognitive experience where I can sense and think many things simultaneously. I don't understand any reductionist explanation for the existence of my experience. It seems like an impossible thing for a collections of atoms in the brain to create. That hard problem of consciousness is really and truely hard.

However, "free will" to me seems easy by comparison. Your brain (and body) acts based on its structure. You are the structure, and the structure determines what you decide to do. You have some starting conditions, you use those starting conditions to decide to do things (go to school, find a job, cross the street) and at the end of it, you've changed the structure of your brain such that you'll make different decisions now. I think that's as free as free will gets really, despite the fact that we may live in a deterministic universe.

I believe the Universe to be based on rules and therefore deterministic - the difference we're talking about is really just whether we can see inside the random number generator or not. A random number generator we can't peek inside doesn't make you any more free, you are still subject to making decisions based on variables outside of your control. There will always be far too much chaos to simulate large systems and make accurate/detailed long-term predictions.

In terms of free will, I believe it is really some manifestation of the human mind to fool ourselves into believing we are in control. This is useful of course, because if we act as if we have agency then we make better decisions as a result and the outcome is therefore better - despite it not being possible to have happened any other way.

> This is the part that gets me. I have a cohesive cognitive experience where I can sense and think many things simultaneously. I don't understand any reductionist explanation for the existence of my experience. It seems like an impossible thing for a collections of atoms in the brain to create.

I only said that there's no spiritual force acting on the body. It's clearly evident by the fact brain damage can radically alter your personality. That wouldn't make sense with free will.

But I never claimed to know anything at all about the perception of existence, that's a much more prickly discussion because any answer is basically impossible to actually prove.

I personally see no contradiction with the reductionist model here though. You aren't one individual part of the system that has everything fed into you, you are the entire whole of moving parts in unison perceiving itself.

The problem some people have with this is that they think that because they are one person and perceive one "them" that their must be a single "thing" making that perception. The idea of consciousness as an abstract emergent property is therefore hard to accept. You don't feel like a billion neurons, you feel like Dave (sorry if your not Dave and I ruined the immersion).

But if those billion neurons are coordinating together to form a thought about feeling like Dave while juggling all those senses, the state exists in the system. Thus the abstract construct that believes itself is Dave exists in some ephemeral way. Dave exists because the state that makes up "Dave-ness" exists.

And even if there's an ethereal component, ultimately that ephemeral state is what determines all perception. They're instrinsically tied and therefore trying to distinguish them doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Especially when there is no reason to believe the ethereal exists at all.

I'll be completely honest, this paradigm shift was made easier for me from a couple acid trips back in the day. It's a lot easier to come to terms with if you're able to cast off the philosophical hindrance of an ego for a moment and think about how, say, an ant feels. And if the colony acts a single unit, does the colony experience "ant colony-ness" - whatever that may be? Does that emergence apply to molds? And why would this perception only apply to the biological state of nervous systems. Wouldn't such a perception of existence also apply to inanimate things like atoms "feeling" like an atom or enormous scales like ecosystems or planets as a whole?

So in my opinion (feel free to laugh or disagree, haha) it only makes sense that this fundamental perception is shared by all things that exist at every level and in all combinations of state. The state of my full brain's experience and senses and thoughts exist, and therefore I do as well. A little twist on Descartes. :)

Anyway, I find this desperate search for meaning lower and lower is counter productive. Your brain is segments. Your segments are nerves. Your nerves are cells. Your cells are organelles. Organelles are structures. Structures are molecules. Molecules are atoms. Atoms are, etc etc etc. Even if someone wants to look toward quantum mechanics for the soul, there would still not be one single place where this would happen, it would be the coordination of countless subatomic systems interacting and your experience of being you would still be emergent.

Sorry if I rambled a bit there. I hope you have a fantastic day!

On retrocasuality: I find it interesting, that not only people tend to outright reject the notion that future events can be causes for present or past events, but they also are wrong about assuming they are doing it (e.g. rejecting) consistently.

For example, common sayings such as "nothing ventured, nothing gained" or "today's seed - tomorrow's harvest" are actually casually bidirectional, especially the second one.

Eh, if you don't get it you don't get it. I'll give it one more try to explain myself clearly:

You are entering the question assuming your experience is a single point. But that feeling and thought only exists because there is the emergent abstraction of the state of your brain having that feeling and thought. You perceive a singular point of existence because that is the only way your existence can be perceived by the brain you have. That is the state of your brain and you cannot perceive it as separated because the state does not represent it that way. Anything else would require different state.

Remember, we've established that your "soul" cannot change the system, it's an observer. So even if there was no underlying perception of experience and you were a philosophical zombie (so-to-say), you would be saying the same exact thing and "feeling" that same individualism despite that not being true. The ethereal you isn't saying these things, the physical brain is. Your self awareness about your own perception is false, the state of your brain interprets it's own self awareness this way and therefore that's how you perceive it as an ethereal soul. Not the other way around.

But if you, say, take hard drugs, the state of that system can be different and you may not feel a singular perception point. You may feel like a billion neurons coordinating for a moment.

So you think you are a single thing because you have a human ego and your biological brain evolved to think of itself as a single construct with an individual perception.

Your trouble arises from the fact that you're still stuck in the mindset that you have a soul that can affect your thoughts. But that's backwards. Your brain cannot actually understand anything about its observer. The brain is programmed to self-reflect like this and therefore an observer must feel themselves self-reflect in the same way.

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WRT combinatorial complexity, yes. Every combination of everything would have its own "perception" of existence in my philosophy. Because it's entirely emergent, it only makes sense to me that this underlying perception one might call a soul would be more accurately described as just... The nature of existence itself.

"I" exist because my brain exists. I cannot not exist because my brain does exists. That state is real. It has to be this way.

In that same way, if an atom exists, that atom exists. It must. It wouldn't experience existence in any fathomable way, but it still would. And so to would a tree or any colony or chair.

Your example of you and the chair is poor, because you are experiencing the existence of your brain. You are not experiencing the existence of individual parts of your brain or the chair and you as one thing, because your brain does not include that state and therefore the experience cannot be interpreted by a physical thing.

I hope all of that makes sense... But ultimately it's just something that has to "click" or you won't understand.

Anyway, lovely chat. :)