(09-03-2024, 02:29 PM)The Real Marty Wrote:

(09-03-2024, 02:01 PM)Jaguarmeister Wrote: Isn't hypothetically rewinding a part of your life and watching it a new perspective or new information?  I would suggest such an exercise would quite often lead to other outcomes.  I've actually used this exercise in the past to help with public speaking by rewatching myself on camera and it has absolutely made me conscious of things I wasn't previously and changed behaviors.  It's a desire for self improvement which is an attempt to overcome your programming and to me is evidence of free will.  I think the fact that we even contemplate the concept of free will is evidence of free will.

You appear to speak in absolutes about concepts that are quite gray.  It's kinda religious in its apparent conviction.  What's the point of living under the above set of circumstances?  Which brings us to suicide.  Wouldn't it be a form of free will?  People commit suicide for more than one reason and it's not always depression related. Some people with the same reasons and experiences don't commit suicide though.  Are the ones that go through with it all carrying around the suicide gene?  If the answer is they haven't all had the exact same experiences and couldn't have, then you've effectively brushed away the argument as such a statement always will, but its not so brushed away as to support such strong conviction in determinism.  You're essentially saying there is no proof of free will, but there is no proof that determinism guides us either, yet you show apparent strong conviction that you believe this to be the case.  Do you not leave room in your opinions to allow you to be wrong about ideas and concepts and to allow for a change of mind?

I didn't mean rewind it and watch it.  I meant rewind it and re-experience it without knowing what happened the first time through, and without being aware that you have rewound it.  If you did that, there would be no reason for anything to happen other than what happened the first time.  And there's no reason for you to make any decision other than the decisions you made the first time.  Because nothing has changed.  

As for my "apparent religious conviction," I will admit that I could very well be wrong.  This is all just my opinion.  But I do believe it pretty strongly. 

A lot of people have a very hard time with this concept of determinism, and that free will is an illusion.  It can be depressing to some people.    

As for your example about suicide, no two people are exactly alike and no two people have the exact same life experiences, so the fact that some people kill themselves and some people don't does not have any bearing on the subject.  

Read up on "determinism."  I don't have a Ph.D. in Philosophy or Science, it's just something that I thought of a few years ago, and I found out that a lot of people who do have Ph.D.s in philosophy and science are thinking the same thing.

Ok, but that still relies on the belief that there is no level of randomness in a person's thoughts throughout the day.  Sure, most thoughts are put there by external stimuli, but all?  I have doubts.  The assertion either way is something that can only be speculated and debated in the gray area this topic occupies.  You can't say with certainty that rewinding to the beginning of yesterday for everyone on earth and then pressing play is going to result in the exact same outcome for every single person on earth because such an exercise is impossible to implement.  You're welcome to believe it, but to state unequivocally that's what would happen is a matter of faith, not necessarily fact.

Suicide has as much to do with the subject as any other decision a human being makes which your argument says they aren't really making freely. It just has a finality to it that no other decision does and human beings do not come out of the womb intentionally trying to kill themselves, so something else is absolutely involved in reaching that final conclusion and overcoming the programming of self preservation, life experience certainly having a significant part for most, but is that the only aspect?

Reading up further on "determinism" sounds like a depressing waste of time because 1) it's not going to change anything if those who subscribe to the philosophy are correct, 2) more detailed knowledge on the topic is not going to improve me or my mindset, 3) it essentially absolves individuals of all responsibility for their thoughts/actions and 4) it sounds pretty straight forward in our brief discussion here. What more do I need to know?  

Number 3 above is one reason why I'll have fun debating gray areas such as this for a time, but will eventually go back to ignoring it.  You can take any topic into the grayest of areas and come away with and rationalize some very unproductive and dangerous conclusions for society, by Ph.D.'s no less.

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