by Terry 159 Replies latest jw friends
randomness is certainly found in quantum mechanics
May I submit this? Our current ability or inability to IDENTIFY causality to motions does not make those motions "random".
A quaint example is in order.
If you saw a candid video of a man ambling about a small town sqaure with __no apparent__intention in mind you might quickly conclude his actions were random. Yes?
Once you interviewed the man you might discover he was breaking in a new pair of shoes.
If an old lady living by herself is awakened in the middle of the night by hearing a stranger in their bedroom she might well reach for her handgun and blow them away.
It turns out the neighbor walks in his sleep and wandered into her house (she forgot to lock her patio door!).
The Court could take the position she PREMEDITATED the killing by having purchased the handgun IN ADVANCE!
Not in Texas.
Some sociologists say that stupid people out number intelligent people by a 10 to 1 margin. They might be right.
Let's consider the old BELL CURVE, shall we?
The cluster (round bump in the middle) is the preponderance of mankind.
As the curve tapers off to a flat line at both ends you have the genius savants and the serial killers and Hitlers of the world.
I submit to you that it is not the BULGE in the center that changes mankind. It is the fringe which moves technology and science forward on one side and destroys by mayhem and war on the other.
In other words, the "average" person is not likely to improve or destroy life as we Know it.
The same mechanism (genetic predisposition) which fuels the genius and savant is at work (negatively) on the Charles Mansons and Joseph Stalins.
We tend to mitigate consequences due to intention and motivation in Western society. But we don't ignore behavior whether it is choiceful or not.
This is the difference between sentencing a sane murderer and an insane one. A sane person knew the deed was wrong and did it anyway - possibly for revenge or personal gain.
Thus the court system supports the notions of CHOICE and FREE WILL.
I sincerely doubt that the argument that an armed robber had no choice in the matter (i.e. no free will) is going to get him off punishment.
Are we acting freely or are we programmed? Well, yes we are all programmed but to what degree?
How will we ever know to what degree because we cannot experience an alternative to what we are?
If we change and start to act out of character, how can we be sure we had any choice in the circumstances that conspired to change us?
Perhaps we think that we chose to change but how can we be sure?
I don‘t think anyone has ever come to a conclusion that all agree on because each new question leads to three more. This is why Terry has entered the arena, to lead us to pathways of righteousness.
If an old lady living by herself is awakened in the middle of the night by hearing a stranger in their bedroom she might well reach for her handgun and blow them away.
It turns out the neighbor walks in his sleep and wandered into her house (she forgot to lock her patio door!).
The Court could take the position she PREMEDITATED the killing by having purchased the handgun IN ADVANCE!
Not in Texas.
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heh heh hehe
We might well ask what predisposition there is among people who live in Texas to either stay or move elsewhere!
I actually know people who have lived in the same place their entire lives never having left the state at any time!
Others move away as quickly as they can.
I have done both!
I moved to Michigan, Los Angeles and returned to Texas.
What folly is at work here?!
I moved to Michigan, Los Angeles and returned to Texas.
Was that by your own choice? or was it just an illusion?
But decisions are based on probabilities more than absolutes. There may have been a 98% chance that I'd wear the clothes I'm wearing today, but if so, there was always that 2% chance that I'd have somehow ended up wearing something else.
Is this in any way experimentally provable/falsifiable, do you think?
Probably not. FWIW, I pulled the numbers out of my butt. It's probably 99.999% to 0.001% for many day to day happenings.
May I submit this? Our current ability or inability to IDENTIFY causality to motions does not make those motions "random".
Current scientific theory has almost entirely settled on the breakdown of causality at the quantum level. This is not because measurement is impossible, it is because that is just the way the quantum world is.
It follows John Stuart Bell's work in the mid-60s which showed "Bell's inequality" is violated. This involves measurements carried out on a pair of quantum entities that were once in contact but have since been separated. Bell described a way to actually carry out such an experiment, and it plainly showed that there was no inequality - that the entities were somehow affected by in instantaneous connection; what Einsteinian physics called "spooky action at a distance".
It pretty much ended the EPR theory from the Einsteinian deterministic physics of the 1930s. I will grant you that some few still want to hold onto quantum determinism, (I kind of do myself), but the experimental and theoretical work of the past fifty years defies this kind of idea.
Things are what they are.
Everything acts according to its nature.
Nothing escapes its own nature.
In mathematics, "A=A" is a useful tautology, principle, or definition, because mathematics is a pure language, having no concrete referants, and 'A' can be intensionally defined and then known with absolute certainty to be nothing more than what is given in that definition.
In life, however, "things are what they are" is a semantically null grammatical formulation, imparting no informational content. Intensional definitions of real-life subjects can easily fool one into thinking that by defining something (applying a label to it), everything worth saying about that thing has been summed up in one neat little idea--this is dangerous, because one can never say all there is to say, or know all there is to know, about any concrete subject.
Having said that, I have a quasi-deterministic view of life--I allow for the possibility of quantum indeterminancies as mentioned by JWood, but these don't somehow magically produce free-will, nor do they necessarily imply uncaused or truly random behavior at the quantum level, but merely behavior far beyond our current ability to predict. So, free will does seem to be a mere illusion, but one that is necessary to human existence. When I first realized the logic of the deterministic argument, I went through an existential crisis and in fact a depression--but finally, I realized that existentially, one has to simultaneously accept (logically) the implications of determinism while irrationally and existentially saying essentially "Yeah, I don't really have free-will, but I think I do, and everyone else does too, so fuck it--that's good enough." This was to prevent my brain locking up and rendering me mentally and physically catatonic. And it's not like we're all tools of some outside consciousness or will who's moving us around like puppets--we're just little clockwork people who think (on some level) that our thoughts and decisions are immune to the laws of physics. We're still capable of feeling and enjoying life and believing we have free-will, so we might as well have a good time of it.
Also, I believe the "Determinism versus Free-will" debate gives a false-dichotomy, or, at best, one against which far too many people have a very violent knee-jerk reaction because there's no way in hell you'll get them to admit they don't have free-will, therefore all logical reasoning is out the window before the debate is underway. I think instead the concept of determinism should rightfully be balanced against the concept of "uncaused events," which in and of itself is one of the most hilarious and nonsensical concepts I've ever come across. After you've gotten them to realize that determinism makes sense--because uncaused events don't--then you add "Oh, and by the way, that means you have no free will."
