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Post by johnjacobjingleheimerschmidt on Feb 15, 2005 23:07:32 GMT -5
i think this best fits under culture more than anywehre else:
what do you all think about free will? this is not, mind you, whether or not you're free to choose between coke and pepsi. but rather, whether or not the choice you make could've been made any other way. to put it simply, do any of you think that it is possible for me to go into a 7-11 and rob it. then go back in time, and, with all the same background and history, and genetics and EVERYTHING the same as when i robbed it, could i, instead of robbing it, buy a slurpee instead?
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Post by Drychnath on Jun 30, 2005 17:30:34 GMT -5
Yes, you could have opted not to rob it. Given the parameters of the example, it is unlikely that you wouldn't (since this isn't the sort of action people undertake lately, there are likely a lot of reasons why you would do that, and they wouldn't change), but it is nevertheless possible.
Apparently inexplicable things serve as excellent examples, such as suicide, drug overdose, freaking out on your boss at work, and other impulsively self-destructive activities, which defy surrounding logic and certainly aren't a part of any genetic programming.
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Post by johnjacobjingleheimerschmidt on Jun 30, 2005 23:32:29 GMT -5
now see blough, this one is one of my favorites, and as i can't say i've actually fully worked out my stance on this subject i'd like a bit more, if that's possible. i mean to say, i really think that a large portion, if not all of my actions are determined by who i surround myself with, what sorts of things i'm surrounded by early in life, what things i learn to be good and true(and i don't think it can be denied that those things change from culture to culture...whether either culture is right about it is for another argument), these things really effect my judgement. i guess my question is, how much am i effected by it, whether i can chose to ignore it, and, if possible a good explanation/stand behidn what you say.
my current idea on this subject is more something that i want to believe rather than what i actually believe, that said it goes something like this "a person is very responsible for their actions, however, their actions themselves are heavily influenced(if not controled) by their environment. because a person is always learning, and a person's environment is always changing, it is impossible to predict exactly how a person will react to a given situation, thus the feeling/illusion of free will."
i don't know why, but i find this subject extremely fascinating, mostly because of what it would mean would either side be proven correct. to show my meaning, if there was no free will, we just act as we learn to act, and do what we learn to do to stay alive, wouldn't that mean that, if someone with enough power realized this fact, and was able to manipulate the environment of a population so minutely and powerfully so that each person had exactly a certain sort of environment in which they would experience the world, couldn't you create whichever sort of world you wanted, without any sort of dissatisfaction or despair, simply because the population never learned anything different?
for a nother topic i guess, but a rather rhetorical question, is any sort of harmony on this planet to be reached? if so, how do you see it? how, if at all, do you see this world being unified in any sort of way?...never mind i'll start a new topic for this
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LordEpathus
you people are kinda cool
"For the Greater Good"
Posts: 47
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Post by LordEpathus on Jul 13, 2005 1:42:18 GMT -5
Free will is over rated. Now I'm not one of them, but a lot of people like bondage. Why? That should be a topic in and of itself. And doesn't this topic more or less verge on the idea of destiny/fate/luck?
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