That’s the sort of logic I found myself arguing against throughout much of the discussion topic I linked in my previous post. That combined with wishful thinking to get many, many people to say that free will must exist.
To be clear, my alternative interpretation of your use of the word “nonsense” was that you meant that it was very unpleasant, or something. At any rate, I don’t think those are the only two alternatives; I neither believe I can’t change anything, nor do I act like free will exists precisely. I act like it doesn’t but doesn’t matter, or something; I just act in my own best interest (which, hopefully, usually coincides with that of others around me) for practical reasons, even though I sometimes am reminded that I could have done no different, according to my own beliefs.
EDIT: as it turns out, you can’t view that thread I linked without an account at aarinfantasy… ah well.
I actually wanted to do something like this in the game of real life but instead of the whole world just humans we place them into a massive area so let’s say lots of russia some og Mongolia and Kazakhstan and a tiny bit of china. We place lots of groups of brainwashed human around the area and then watch how it progresses. Of course we would have to control the climate immigration of animals where they live weather, the harvest, etc.) but I kinda of gave up on it as it was too big of a project for one man you can take it up again if you want and I’ll help but I wont be doing it by myself
Yup, pretty much true. Except I will be upset because it’s against my nature, I have empathy, I will get caught and thrown into jail, and I will ruin my life and the lives of the people close to me. So maybe I won’t.
It makes no practical difference in life to have this belief, because you still need to behave the same way for practical reasons. Your actions still have consequences. We still have to imprison killers in jail so as to prevent them from doing it again and to discourage others from killing. We still reward people for doing well so as to keep them doing it and to encourage others from doing similarly. The only difference is that I don’t care for the arguments about justice and how someone deserves certain suffering, or rewards.
I’m going to take that as a joke and consider it pretty funny
Yeah, well, just take responsibility for all your actions. Most decent people do that, and I would say it helps them but since you don’t think anyone has free will…
Of course I take responsibility. Like I said, you need to for practical reasons. Like I also said, it makes no real difference to have this belief of mine, for the most part. I certainly don’t go around saying “Well, due to determinism I really couldn’t help it” whenever I do something wrong, even though I believe that to be true*. I do hope you’re not thinking of me as something less than a decent person because of this… but if you are, well, you can’t help it (just kidding)
If nothing else, I’m quite good at the “judge not, lest ye be judged” (or whatever the precise phrasing is) thing, which I think people often consider a good thing.
(*) The thing is that one’s understanding of determinism and one’s acting in accordance with a belief or disbelief of it are still factors that can influence the outcome of a situation. In terms of how I put it before, these are still cogs in the machine of reality. Because of this, it makes no sense to defend something you wouldn’t have done without a belief in determinism (e.g. going on a killing spree because there’s “no other choice”) with determinism.
I think people are forgetting that humans have only been on the Earth a realitively short time (some suggesting 10-50000 years). In that time, we as a species have evolved…yes we were intelligent to begin with, in that we learned to use tools, build shelters instead of just huddling in a cave, recognizing foods that did more than just filled our bellies. But that knowledge took time to aquire, through trial and error…how many Neanderthals died because they ate the wrong mushroom; that is also learned knowledge passed down.
My point is, if you had intelligent raptors, they would also adapt and learn to use tools, just not tools as we see them…perhaps they build a device that attaches to their tails to hammer in nails (very basic idea but it’s a tool).
And yes, food and energy are a in issue, but we figured out that we could farm crops and animals…so could they…grow crops that they then feed to the animals that would become their meals.
(just kidding)