Things you can't get your head around...

[Sampson]

1 hour ago, leicsmac said:

What is determinism, if taken as absolute, if not a "higher power" that determines the actions we are going to take and as such are beyond our control? Perhaps "fate" is the wrong word but the effect is the same IMO - what you do is based on circumstances beyond your control and laid out by a pattern you cannot influence and are merely part of.

 

Perhaps people would take that idea, if proven, less harshly than I think they might. But as you say, people like to have a sense of importance in themselves that often manifests itself around control of at least their own lives and belonging, it's the human condition. Knowing that such a belief is a lie would strip that away, in brutal fashion and I'm not sure how well people would take it.

Determinism taken as an absolute has nothing to do with a higher power. It just means that everything that happens has been determined by cause and effect of the events that happen before it and that everything is essentially one giant chain of events of that you can trace back directly to the start of the universe, which if you play them back then the universe would play out the same way. How this universe began is by-the-by or what was the original creator. It is nothing to do with any creator or that the chain of events was decided upon by some being. It is simply that everything is determined and caused by what came before it.

Determinism is just Newtonian physics, it's nothing to do with a higher power. It's the objective concept that almost everyone agrees to be proven beyond any doubt that "every action has an equal and opposite reaction" and that if you hit a ball a certain angle at a certain velocity at the same point on earth with our laws of physics that hits the exact same tennis racket in the exact same spot it will always land in the exact same spot - now if you take that back to the particular way in which the first singular entity that had every atom in exist expanded during the big bang then you could accurately predict everything that happened before it - the first 2 atoms that formed would've coupled with each other in exactly the same way because they were in exactly the same conditions at exactly the same time.

Then you continue that and every atom forms as a result of the atoms next to it, all the laws of physics would form the same way, the stars would form the same, the elements would form the same, the earth and the moon, evolution as every quark in the universe would be formed and spin in the same way. And that human brains would obviously not have the ability to overrule Newtonian physics as the molecules and neurons in your brain which make your decisions are as much a produce of nature and everything that has come before them as anything else. And that everything is fundamentally a reaction from the big bang.

That's nothing to do with a creator, but it simply says that the universe is one long chain of cause and effect and if you knew everything about every molecule in the universe then you could predict absolutely everything that would happen in the universe in the future and therefore everything is a predictable and determined path solely laid out by cause and effect including every human action and every human thought which are all governed by what every molecule performing a reaction to everything that's gone before it within every human's brain.

Current quantum physics explanation seems to suggest there is a small element of randomness in the universe though at the quantum scale which means that a purely deterministic universe isn't the case. But the element of randomness is also something that no human brain can obviously control and it is at a small enough level that it doesn't really affect our lifespan and is virtually non-existent at our scale.

And that at a practical human level it's very hard to see how free-will can exist. Or well, put it this way - if you could make a decision and then rewind it 10 seconds then there is no real chance in the laws of physics that you could change that decision consciously within your own brain - there's a statically extremely insignificant (like once in a hundred quadrillion years or something crazy at the human scale) chance it might be different through random chance, but in a practical sense your decision was determined by everything that has gone on in the universe before you to the moment which effected how the neurons in your brain fired at the particular moment in that particular situation and that it seems completely out of the laws of nature and the laws of physics that can cause a part of your brain to be able consciously decide and control how your neurons fired at that moment (or how your neurons fired to decide how your neurons fired or how your neurons fired to decide how your neurons fired to decide how your neurons fired etc. etc.).

Again, I don't think it needs to be proven any more than non-belief in the Christian description of a creator need to be proven, I think the lack of free will is implicit in the laws of physics and how our decisions are made in the chemistry of our brain which just like anything else is determined by how atoms and molecules react and the laws of physics. The burden of proof is absolutely on those saying free will exists - the free will side is the side of this debate which is completely at odds with our understanding of the universe.

Edited 14 December 2021 by Sampson

[leicsmac]

1 minute ago, Sampson said:

Determinism taken as an absolute has nothing to do with a higher power. It just means that everything that happens has been determined by cause and effect of the events that happen before it and that everything is essentially one giant chain of events of that you can trace back directly to the start of the universe, which if you play them back then the universe would play out the same way. How this universe began is by-the-by or what was the original creator. It is nothing to do with any creator or that the chain of events was decided upon by some being. It is simply that everything is determined and caused by what came before it.

Determinism is just Newtonian physics, it's nothing to do with a higher power. It's the objective concept that almost everyone agrees to be proven beyond any doubt that "every action has an equal and opposite reaction" and that if you hit a ball a certain angle at a certain velocity at the same point on earth with our laws of physics that hits the exact same tennis racket in the exact same spot it will always land in the exact same spot - now if you take that back to the particular way in which the first singular entity that had every atom in exist expanded during the big bang then you could accurately predict everything that happened before it - the first 2 atoms that formed would've coupled with each other in exactly the same way because they were in exactly the same conditions at exactly the same time.

Then you continue that and every atom forms as a result of the atoms next to it, all the laws of physics would form the same way, the stars would form the same, the elements would form the same, the earth and the moon, evolution as every quark in the universe would be formed and spin in the same way. And that human brains would obviously not have the ability to overrule Newtonian physics as the molecules and neurons in your brain which make your decisions are as much a produce of nature and everything that has come before them as anything else. And that everything is fundamentally a reaction from the big bang.

That's nothing to do with a creator, but it simply says that the universe is one long chain of cause and effect and if you knew everything about every molecule in the universe then you could predict absolutely everything that would happen in the universe in the future and therefore everything is a predictable and determined path solely laid out by cause and effect including every human action and every human thought which are all governed by what every molecule performing a reaction to everything that's gone before it within every human's brain.

Current quantum physics explanation seems to suggest there is a tiny element of randomness in the universe though which means that a purely deterministic universe isn't the case. But the element of randomness is also something that no human brain can obviously control and it is at a small enough level that it doesn't really affect our lifespan and is virtually non-existent at our scale.

And that at a practical human level it's very hard to see how free-will can exist. Or well, put it this way - if you could make a decision and then rewind it 10 seconds then there is no real chance in the laws of physics that you could change that decision consciously within your own brain - there's a statically extremely insignificant (like once in a hundred quadrillion years or something crazy) chance it might be different through random chance, but in a practical sense your decision was determined by everything that has gone on in the universe before you to the moment which effected how the neurons in your brain fired at the particular moment in that particular situation and that it seems completely out of the laws of nature and the laws of physics that can cause a part of your brain to be able consciously decide and control how your neurons fired at that moment (or how your neurons fired to decide how your neurons fired or how your neurons fired to decide how your neurons fired to decide how your neurons fired etc. etc.).

Again, I don't think it needs to be proven any more than non-belief in the Christian description of a creator need to be proven, I think the lack of free will is implicit in the laws of physics and how our decisions are made in the chemistry of our brain which just like anything else is determined by how atoms and molecules react and the laws of physics. The burden of proof is absolutely on those saying free will exists - the free will side is the side of this debate which is completely at odds with our understanding of the universe.

Agreed. However, to human perception of our level of choice there is very little difference between the two, and that is my overall point here, that humans won't see the difference between determinism and a higher power because they exert control over our actions in the same way.

 

Apologies for the brevity of my responses - you deserve longer ones - honestly, I think that what you're saying is quite possibly correct, but I just have concerns about its implications for the future of humanity. I honestly don't think people would take it as well as you do if it became widespread accepted common knowledge. And I think that is important.

[Kopic]

[leicsmac]

Related to the above:

 

"There is no higher power, Devil-boy! And I am no-one's pawn, neither man nor wych nor whatever entity you speak of."

 

"I do not speak of entities. I speak of the force that created the physics of the universe, the force that makes time flow forward and not allow everything to happen at once, the force that sets the patterns to which the planets turn. Its weapons are coincidence, unlikelihood, happenstance. It is there when a man stops suddenly to pick up a coin dropped by another man ten days before, and the woman who is to be his wife bumps into him, and five hundred years hence their offspring rules half the world. It is there when a chance comment causes a scientist to think, What if...? and ten years later a great plague is cured. It is so vast that what we call chaos is simply another part of its order, with a shape too big to see. It has no name, nor will it ever have, though man may hint darkly at fate and destiny. It is what it is... the pattern. We may choose our own paths, but the pattern is always ahead of us. It is a way. It is the way."

[SystonFox]

Greggs have seemingly pulled the sausage and bean melt. Worlds gone mad

[davieG]

How complicated and difficult LCFC have made it to access the Self Declaration Form, it's like they don't want people to manage it.