Fatalism Is Mistaken
The future comes from all the thinking you do in the present. If your thinking changes the future, then fatalism doesn’t make sense.
Month: June 2013
The Universe Made Me Do It
The universe always works out the way it’s going to work out, even though that doesn’t necessarily mean it works out for you individually or even for the human species.
People, regardless of whether they assume free will or not, are willing to contain harmful behavior.
Natural Will and Justice
Though we do not regard a hurricane as “evil”, we still try to understand it, prepare for it, and repair after it. This hurricane, this force of nature, is in the same class as thieves and thugs.
Should criminals be detained by society? Probably. It’s a good first step. At the same time, society should exhibit compassion as far as possible. It is not through revenge that society betters itself, but by cooperation.
Free Will is Not Necessary
Belief in free will is not what causes us to love, or stops us from stealing TVs. It is actually precisely the opposite: Natural will presumes the reason for our love and curiosity and passion and order is because of the people we are and the situations we grew up in.
When you compare free will and automatic will side by side, it turns out free will is the real oppressor.
Prepare Yourself for the Future
My point today is to help us realize some things which are theoretically possible but which we have not yet internalized as Going to Happen.
Here is a list of some which are very likely to eventually come to pass but which are hard to accept: artificial intelligence, planetary colonization, artificial life, nanotechnology, creations of wormholes, direct linking of minds, and an understanding of exotic physics, such as dark matter and energy and a Grand Unified Theory.
What Natural Will Is
What is automatic will, precisely? It is choices that are made based on external influences. It is the counterpart to free will, the idea that we can make choices outside of external influences.
Are you freed by free will? No, you enslave yourself when you buy into it. You allow the possibility of fault, of wrongness, even though you operate as a physical process just as a molecule does.
Faith in Free Will
Does the belief in free will promote societally useful behavior? It might. It probably does. However, there’s a term for belief without evidence. Faith.
The problem is not with faith, exactly, but with faith that increases social cohesion at the cost of individual happiness.
Free Will Causes Suffering
If free will is patently false, then how can suffering be caused explicitly by attachment to desires? Suffering from attachment comes about after free will is accepted.
If you realize that you’re not responsible for how you feel then you can let go and experience life fluidly rather than being trapped in your head.
The Transcendentalism of No Lies Please
transcend (v.) mid-14c., from Latin transcendere “climb over or beyond, surmount,” from trans- “beyond” (see trans-) + scandere “to climb” (see scan (v.)). Summary: Every idea can be risen above, even this one. That sums up what this blog is about.
Determinism and Indeterminism are Linked
Both determinism and indeterminism are linked, each able to build the other.
We need not concern ourselves with whether determinism makes us robots or indeterminism makes us dice, and instead we can enjoy the fluidity that knowing our will is automatic gives us.