Comments by "XSportSeeker" (@XSpImmaLion) on "The Free Will Illusion" video.

  1. It's a social construct, and a bit of semantics play perhaps, to have things that are far more encompassing than what it first appears to be. On a purely scientific and theoretical degree, I personally understand that there is no actual complete free will, freedom of choice, among other related concepts. Most people have the power to imagine alternate scenarios in their minds because that's also a useful biological tool for species growth and maintenance perhaps. Or just part of the chaos that defines our species, and potentially the universe. But if you take an absolutist approach and don't think about other semantical meanings of free will, taking only the literal scientific approach - then even the criticism about violence against criminals is also a moot point. If criminals don't have free will while committing crimes, then those who punish them with violence also don't have free will to chose how they feel and act upon it. Everything becomes justifiable, because everything is deterministic. In the very same way that you could attribute criminal violence as deterministic, you could also determine violence against criminals as also being deterministic. There is no separation there. Violence is also just a result of evolutionary processes, that if it's already determined to cease at some point in the history of our species, it will. You don't have to do anything about it. Or rather, you will already do something about it as it's pre-determined. We also start making all sorts of questions around ethics, morality, religion, radicalism, and other concepts that are valid or invalid on the basis of it not actually being a choice, but just something that came up due to genetics or environmental factors. And you know, there is definitely some of that happened that people overestimate in being purely a matter of choice, but we need thresholds to define responsibility and actions to be taken as response. Interpretation is important because if you frame everything as being deterministic, then why would you take action for anything? Hedonism, ennui, emptiness or something takes over and you do whatever, or do nothing, and go with it. See that it's contradictory to ask for a change in the system, when you are questioning the concept of free will entirely. Everything is deterministic, so why are you fighting? Is that your own determinism? Ex. if I as a person who wishes the most gruesome punishment against those who commit crimes don't have a free will to chose whether this is right or wrong, why should I change my opinion on that? Isn't that just my genetics telling how I should feel about it? And for that matter, who chose what is right or wrong anyways? And further, isn't wishing horrible stuff to happen to people you don't like also not a product of free will, but rather a consequence of physics, genetics, or evolution as a whole? This also can have dire consequences in terms of hedonism and plain amoral behavior. Mostly because of semantics. Free will is like a structure or scaffolding to think about your relationship to the world that surrounds you, or rather the construct made in your brain to interpret it. That structure supports the way you think you should deal with relationships, with yourself, with communities and societies in a larger scale. It may not be a literal sense of acting freely according to your own will, just part of a deterministic event that's like an invisible hand that guides your actions, but it is still there, and you can still think about it as something that guides your actions. The fact is, we humans have limited perception, limited capacity for reasoning, and a limited interpreted understanding of the physical world that surrounds us. We can only process and interpret so much of the "real". Allegory of the cave and all that. We could go on and on in this discussion. For instance, how cruel and unusual punishment became a thing for our species. Does it really purely entails immoral and unethical behavior, or is it a coping mechanism for our species, plus a tool for social behavior enforcement? Is looking at it (cruel and unusual punishment) as a "wrong" thing to do purely scientific, or just another social construct? Did it make more sense on other settings and societies? Is it really evolution, or just a different way of thinking, different ideology, different politics? And how do you decide which is right and wrong? If your decision on that is not the product of free will, but rather determinism, would the choice of others to reject it also not be free will, but rather deterministic? Anyways, it's kind of a discussion that folds into itself. For the free will paradox, I kinda think about the simulation hypothesis. Whatever the result is, I don't think the brain is equipped to have a full understanding of it. It goes beyond our capabilities. So I tend not to consider those for real life choices, as it's not practical to think in those terms. For the good and the bad.
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