Message from @Alexander Pechorin

Discord ID: 521078416032792591


2018-12-08 21:25:38 UTC  

this has happened to people in the past

2018-12-08 21:25:55 UTC  

do I really have free will if I can turn liberal by being stabbed the right way?

2018-12-08 21:26:03 UTC  

That’s like saying free will can’t exist because we can’t fly

2018-12-08 21:26:16 UTC  

Physical reality inhibits my free will. No.

2018-12-08 21:26:57 UTC  

No, because you can try to fly all you want. If I have the right genes or a rod in the right part of my head, I will cease to even want to not be liberal.

2018-12-08 21:27:56 UTC  

This is a lifeboat scenario that isn’t relevant. You don’t make philosophical conclusions by exceptions. You wouldn’t say, for example, humans have 6 toes because some humans have 6 toes.

2018-12-08 21:28:23 UTC  

An abnormally functioning brain is not an argument against normally functioning ones

2018-12-08 21:28:49 UTC  

Let's say I'm super based and redpilled identitarian right until the second I get stabbed. Now I'm suddenly liberal vegan satanist. Doesn't that imply at least some parts of the brain are involved in determinism?

2018-12-08 21:28:55 UTC  

It's not just malfunctioning though

2018-12-08 21:29:06 UTC  

Genes influence behavior in normal people, too

2018-12-08 21:29:31 UTC  

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/481597551272001546/521075881247244301/nff4ugc2hx221.png

2018-12-08 21:30:06 UTC  

These are preconditions upon which will is built. You’re, perhaps accidentally, separating mind and body

2018-12-08 21:31:29 UTC  

I read an article that said a certain type of magnet could be used to make someone less religious/more accepting of refugees

2018-12-08 21:36:14 UTC  

@Alexander Pechorin If there's preconditions, is the will entirely free?

2018-12-08 21:36:40 UTC  

I think I’ll keep my threat-processing ability, thanks

broke: they’re taking away your guns
woke: they’re taking away your brain

2018-12-08 21:37:27 UTC  

@Isabella Locke-MT That's a good example of what I'm talking about. If the parts of the brain can be modified to do something else, then clearly they were already determined to do something.

2018-12-08 21:37:28 UTC  

Of course, objective constraints of reality are never a denial of your freedom

2018-12-08 21:38:20 UTC  

No. Impulses and tendencies are not the same thing as will

2018-12-08 21:38:47 UTC  

What, then, is determinism? If the objective constraints are within your brain itself, is that not at least some form of determinism?

2018-12-08 21:39:35 UTC  

No. Determinism and free will have very little to do with emotions or tendencies.

Let’s define free will: “the ability to act at one's own discretion.”

2018-12-08 21:39:59 UTC  

That you might have an existing tendency towards one particular view or feeling does not deny your ability to act against it

2018-12-08 21:40:12 UTC  

Only an abnormally functioning, damaged brain would do that

2018-12-08 21:43:23 UTC  

Isn't that tendency, at least to since extent, determined, though? There's a distinction between choosing to react a certain way to stimuli that may or may not be present, and "stimuli" being present in the brain itself, which determine how one reacts to outside stimuli.

2018-12-08 21:44:43 UTC  

Your tendency to be hungry when you don’t eat is determined too. That is not, philosophically speaking, related to free will at all

2018-12-08 21:44:49 UTC  

Only the choice to eat or not eat

2018-12-08 21:48:30 UTC  

A better comparison would be the tendency to actually act on hunger, which would be a form or determinism. How can we say that our will is entirely free if the mechanism used to determine that will is itself held captive by certain tendencies?

2018-12-08 21:50:30 UTC  

You aren’t “held captive” you do indeed still have a choice regardless of the urge. And as you’ve claimed, “we can modify our tendancies”

2018-12-08 21:52:42 UTC  

The very fact that a tendency might exist and we have potential and capacity to recognize it and to modify it or alleviate it is enough, though even if we couldn’t modify it, so long as we could act against it, free will exists.

2018-12-08 21:58:45 UTC  

By what mechanism are those tendencies modified, though? At what point is the predictive power of the presence of particular allele high enough that we can say its presence is deterministic? Does it have to be 100%? What if it's 95%? Can we really say that our will is entirely free if there is only a 5% chance of breaking with the effect of a certain allele? If the Monoamine Oxidase 2 Repeat allele causes a significantly increased likelihood of aggressive behavior, how high does that likelihood have to be for us to say that the allele at least partially determined behavior?

2018-12-08 22:00:44 UTC  

Keep in mind that the issue isn't so much that the allele acts as a form of stimulus, the issue is that this particular stimulus is present within the decision making capacity of the brain itself.

2018-12-08 22:11:24 UTC  

@Isabella Locke-MT. So basically magnetizing threat processing (a healthy, natural occurrence) out is acceptable in their minds, but shocking the gay (unnatural and unhealthy) out of someone wouldn't be... <:really:453005408064241674>

2018-12-08 22:14:00 UTC  

Yep. As long as it suits their needs, they don't care if they damage brains.

2018-12-08 22:15:19 UTC  

Substance abuse death at Google HQ in NYC? Say it ain't so....they're such high quality people.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/google-software-engineer-22-found-dead-at-new-york-headqaurters-report

2018-12-08 22:30:56 UTC  

So apparently it's really difficult to fire someone from a government job. Does this mean we could all get government jobs and be dox proof?

2018-12-08 22:31:14 UTC  

Or is it a lot more complicated than that?

2018-12-08 22:31:49 UTC  

You’d have trouble advancing in the best case

2018-12-08 22:34:28 UTC  

Yeah they can’t really fire you for opinions but a dox would make life harder ofc

2018-12-08 22:37:15 UTC  

Government jobs have lots of diversity hires who would make up reasons to fire you, but legally you're more protected there

2018-12-08 22:54:24 UTC  

Don't know if this is real but if it is....based Santa

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/481597551272001546/521097245156704256/DtrA9f9WsAEPmJd.jpg