Sorting through the philosophical-sounding-pseudoscientific-LoShonta on this thread
Free will is the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate; the ability to act at one's own discretion
Minimalistic describes something that is stripped down to its most essential elements or uses only what is needed
What is the most essential element of free will?
It is the power to act without constraint of necessity or fate
The “minimalistic” or “min” attached to the words “free will” is an unnecessary and confusing adjective – it should be eliminated
~ ~ ~ ~
self-betterment is the act or result of making oneself better through one's own efforts
Learning is the acquisition of knowledge or skills through experience, study, or by being taught
Learning in disguise - Learning is wearing a disguise? It’s made to look like something else? It’s presented as another thing? This is a feeble attempt to redefine words and to deceive the reader into thinking that learning is actually something else. It is misleading. The phrase makes no sense – and should be eliminated
~ ~ ~ ~
Determinism is a philosophical view, where all events are determined completely by previously existing causes. The doctrine that all events, including human action, are ultimately determined by causes external to the will. Some philosophers have taken determinism to imply that individual human beings have no free will and cannot be held morally responsible for their actions.
Cause-and-effect in physics is “causal determinism”; state of an object/event is completely determined by its prior states. Cause is the reason behind an action or natural phenomena whereas effect is the result of a cause or the outcome of some chain of events that have happened. There is a cause and is an effect in everything we do. Cause and Effect is a constant series of actions which logically follows from one action to the other. In the cause and effect relationship, one or more things happen as a result of something else.
The concepts of determinism and cause-and-effect are basically incompatible with the definition of free will.
~ ~ ~ ~
...
Now this cool.After all your clumsy criticisms of minFW and juggling of the general concepts, you end up in total agreement with me.
Your last line was: “The concepts of determinism and cause-and-effect are basically incompatible with the definition of free will.”
I totally agree.
Summary:
Determinism incompatible with free will.
Please allow me to massage that sentence a little without changing its meaning:
The DETERMINISM that emerged from Physics and Chemistry in modern times is incompatible with the ancient definition of FREE WILL.
The determinism of Physics and Chemistry is exactly what is used in Neuroscience, and Neuroscience is closing in on the anciently defined free will and will someday delete it from all consideration, labeling it as “folk psychology.”
That is why I am saying we should amend the definition of free will to make it compatible with determinism, which is the bread and butter of Physics, Chemistry, and Neuroscience.
With a better definition of free will, Neuroscience could possibly discover it in the brain’s biology, and can then talk about it, and measure its strength.
The new definition of free will that I am proposing introduces a new idea: deterministic freedom.
Deterministic freedom can be very exotic.
A sailboat enjoys a deterministically driven freedom from wind DIRECTION. The sailboat, and all of its atoms, and all of the water atoms, and all of the air atoms OBEY the Law of Physics; no freedom there whatsoever, but the directional freedom is very significant, though counterintuitive.
Deterministic freedom can also be very dull and simple. How dull is a simple lever? Yet, a lever also provides us with a super simple kind of deterministic freedom.
All of technology, from levers to sailboats to moon rockets, use this same pattern swapping scheme: One undesirable pattern of determinism is swapped out of the system by cleverly using another, less intrusive pattern of determinism.
*/*/*/*/*
A simple mechanical lever moving a heavy weight demonstrates this principle of determinism pattern swapping.
Imagine rock that it way too heavy to move by simply tugging with your arms.
This is a limitation, or a prison of sorts. The weight, compared to our muscle strength, denies us the freedom to move the rock.
With a crowbar or lever the pattern of determinism used against this weight is the lever’s long arm’s “distance of travel,” compared to the short stubby arm's smaller distance of travel.
The pattern of determinism we gain freedom from is the inability to move the weight. Without the lever we are not free to move it. With a relatively easy long motion, we become FREE from the overwhelmingly difficult motion of budging the heavy weight.
Selecting the “just right” pattern of determinism to be the freeing agent can be tricky, and sometimes impossible.
The new definition of free will that I am proposing introduces a new idea: deterministic freedom.
Deterministic freedom can be very exotic.
A sailboat enjoys a deterministically driven freedom from wind DIRECTION. The sailboat, and all of its atoms, and all of the water atoms, and all of the air atoms OBEY the Law of Physics; no freedom there whatsoever, but the directional freedom is very significant, though counterintuitive.
Deterministic freedom can also be very dull and simple. How dull is a simple lever? Yet, a lever also provides us with a super simple kind of deterministic freedom.
All of technology, from levers to sailboats to moon rockets, use this same pattern swapping scheme: One undesirable pattern of determinism is swapped out of the system by cleverly using another, less intrusive pattern of determinism.
*/*/*/*/*
A simple mechanical lever moving a heavy weight demonstrates this principle of determinism pattern swapping.
Imagine rock that it way too heavy to move by simply tugging with your arms.
This is a limitation, or a prison of sorts. The weight, compared to our muscle strength, denies us the freedom to move the rock.
With a crowbar or lever the pattern of determinism used against this weight is the lever’s long arm’s “distance of travel,” compared to the short stubby arm's smaller distance of travel.
The pattern of determinism we gain freedom from is the inability to move the weight. Without the lever we are not free to move it. With a relatively easy long motion, we become FREE from the overwhelmingly difficult motion of budging the heavy weight.
Selecting the “just right” pattern of determinism to be the freeing agent can be tricky, and sometimes impossible.
The classic definition of free will, or Libertarian Free Will (LibFW), has it being instantaneous in time, and over-ruling the laws of physics. Often implied with this LibFW is thoroughness.It is often imagined as effortless, never failing, never needing improvements, requiring no physical energy, and not requiring intelligent maneuvering.LibFW looks pretty cosmic to this old hippie!
By contrast, minFW offers a very, very small amount of freedom, and comes it at a very high price! It’s not freedom WHEN you want it; because you must wait for it. It also takes energy and clever maneuvering in order to work. It fails often.
Not a metaphysical bargain by a long shot, but that’s Biology for you!
The freedom in minFW comes in our being able to self-adjust our synapses, so that we are better robots the NEXT time we need to perform a repeating task.
But that self-adjustment is difficult, and not guaranteed.
It takes good DNA and good teachers, and energy, and applied smarts. It also takes repetition, and clever settings of our human rudders and sails, like the sailboat’s.
So, minFW is not at all the glamorous kind freedom most FW theorists and poets want, which is on the spot and immediate, and with a lot of other metaphysical things. LibFW can be made to sound beautiful, but that’s not the type of freedom that is really needed in everyday life for survival. We need to be looking for our BioFW, and not some imagined medieval idea.
I have slowly come to view immediate LibFW as more of an excessive lust, and that it falls squarely into the category of religion, philosophy, or poetry. It just doesn’t seem to have any real value as an everyday tool for real life. In fact, it can even be detrimental to survival!
Who would want to hire a worker who was known for her wild unpredictable behavior on the job, when highly constrained behavior within well-defined limits is what is needed of her?
By contrast, minFW is NOT the ability to suddenly make a “free” move out-of-the-blue, but only to gradually and carefully nudge one’s life course in a desired direction, using determinism in the process.
This mechanism is, again, similar to how a sailboat operates. It is highly constrained freedom within well-defined limits.
So minFW is not cosmic, not perfect, not effortless, but it DOES have a chance at being biological.
This minFW is merely a partial freedom from some undesirable MACRO PATTERNS of the micro determinism.
It’s a “route to freedom” for things that matter and that are important, like being independent of some “other wills,” and even gaining freedom from some previous versions of ourselves. These are macro patterns.
Micro-determinism is unimportant to us in everyday life. Effective macro patterns of determinism must be used to overcome other macro patterns that are undesirable.
*/*/*/*/*
I see LibFW as over-hyping the simple Biology of the human brain engaged in decision making.
But it’s not only in free will theory that things get OVER-HYPED these days, IMO.
The general phenomenon of human consciousness as a whole has acquired an undeserved metaphysical and grandiose reputation over the past one thousand years.
This acquisition went unchecked, until modern neuroscience started looking seriously at the brain. It is humbling for us to be reduced down to mere atoms and mere biology, but it is also realistic.
I think a long, long time ago intellectuals started worshiping their own brains a little too much. It happens. In developing Philosophy, they wrote into the human mind all sorts of perfections and beauty that are not really there. This started in medieval religion, but by Descartes time it was being secularized, and made to sound scientific.
Thus, the human mind was over-exalted, and for a long time, until recently when the tools were invented (MRI and CAT scanning) that could scientifically analyze it.
It is nice to have a mind, but it is not the glorified “knower” that we poetically sometimes want it to be. It is humbling to think that our mind is made of dirt. This is the essence of the title to Francis Crick’s last book, “The Astonishing Hypothesis.” It is astonishing to think that our wonderful consciousness, qualia, and free will are MERE MECHANISMS.
There is some consolation for all this harsh minimal-ness. There is a hidden BENEFIT to having less than total freedom, on the spot, to act or decide.
I think, as a culture, going over-board with the ideology of human freedom can sometimes become confusing in issues where freedom needs to come up in practical ways.
The idea that too much freedom can be bad or unsafe is too often automatically rejected.
But in theorizing about the mechanisms of the brain, it’s good to remember that too much spontaneous freedom of thought can be VERY bad. Bad in a practical, everyday sense, that is.
Lots of freedom sounds great for artists, but for survival IS cosmic freedom useful?
We live in a culture with great abundance, compared to most civilizations that came before us. We don’t think through enough about how FW and consciousness must work under much more austere circumstances.
But even logically, shouldn’t a totally “free” thought or action be viewed as dangerous to the thinker? To me it sounds like a great way to lose my place in a complicated set of thoughts. I want solid, immovable markers in my mind as I explore complicated ideas.
A thought, totally uninfluenced and guided by any past experience, may be poetically attractive at first, but WHO’S TO SAY there can be any practical, everyday-life benefit to such a type of freedom? Entropy would predict the opposite!
*/*/*
I figure that when we walk into a situation, we behave exactly as our synapses dictate, and it’s a totally robotic response in real-time. We bring with us all the synapses of our growing up AND any character-building synapse adjustments we PREVIOUSLY engaged in.
This way, as we develop our real time robotic responses more and more, eventually we can gradually become a primary agent responsible for our robotic responses. This only happens to the degree that we successfully operate minFW over a long period of time.
This is the emergence of a genuine “self.”
*/*/*/*/*
The main idea in everyday FW, the everyday YEARNING for free will that everyone has, is to possess the ability to steer one’s life better, and to be able to make better decisions.
*/*/*/*/*
So far in my Dennett text travels, page 184 in his “Elbow Room” is the clearest expression of Dennett’s vision on FW:
“What we want when we want free will is the power to decide our courses of action, and to decide them wisely, in the light of our expectations and desires. We want to be in control of ourselves, and not under the control of others. We want to be agents, capable of initiating, and taking responsibility for, projects and deeds. All this is ours, I have tried to show, as a natural product of our biological endowment, extended and enhanced by our initiation into society. We want, moreover, to have enough elbow room in the world so that when we exercise these powers, it is not always a matter of settling for the only desperate course of action that has a chance of fulfilling our desires.”
Earlier on page 60 he says:
“…we can plan in the light of our expectations, and take steps to prevent, avoid, preempt, avert, harness, exploit, or accommodate ourselves to those circumstances.”
Dennett’s focus is on the future conforming to expectations or desires, and not the immediate performance that Libertarian FW focuses on.
By contrast, minFW is NOT the ability to suddenly make a “free” move out-of-the-blue, but to gradually and carefully nudge one’s life course in a desired direction, using determinism in the process. This mechanism is, again, similar to how a sailboat operates. It is highly constrained freedom within well-defined limits.
*/*/*/*/*
So minFW is not cosmic, not perfect, not effortless, but it DOES have a chance at being biological.
*/*/*/*/*
I hope this general principle and its specific application in minFW helps people live better lives, to gain control and act almost as free as Libertarian Free Will promises.
If minFW is developed like a strong muscle it can look, for all practical purposes, just like what we feel LibFW is, and our BioFW should be.
What I have shown, so far in this chapter, is that there is a type of deterministic freedom available to levers, and to sailboats. It seems very likely this can extend to lots of other material objects. Then lastly I assume it can extend to the brain.
The key at this last step is to identify what those freedoms can be and what is the deterministic mechanism that brings them about.
I feel that the mechanism described in Chapter 2 does these last two things in a general sense. The task of Neuroscience is to show how brain cells do them in a specific sense.
*/*/*/*/*
The bottom line is we HAVE free will, but it is like a muscle and needs a lot of exercise to function well.
The bottom line is we HAVE free will, but it is like a muscle and needs a lot of exercise to function well.
Patent bullshonta...this one is right up there with doing spiritual exercises by speaking in tongues....where u make your inner man stronger but God gave it perfect and complete in every way...I digress
Remember in the How to Fake TIP class we were taught if what you say in LoShonta is this long then the interpretation should be that long. But if someone calls you out on your interpretation being way too loooooong - you can cover your a$$ by claiming you went over into Bull-Shonta.
If you ask me, I think this “thesis” (and thread) has gone over into Bull-Shonta.
We need to “master” changing gears - become a shifty gear changer :
Fist gear: LoShonta
Second gear: Mid-Shonta
Third gear: Hi-Shonta
Whenever someone speaks in Hi-Shonta , that’s a known language. I understand Hi-Shonta. One of my favorite pastimes is to go $hi++ing in Hi-Shonta.
It's like I'm binge-watching a Netflix series and the lead character is silently self reflecting, plotting to loosen the personal restraints and escape the asylum undetected. I feel like I should just quit watching., but it's already episode 12 and I just made a fresh batch of popcorn.
It's like I'm binge-watching a Netflix series and the lead character is silently self reflecting, plotting to loosen the personal restraints and escape the asylum undetected. I feel like I should just quit watching., but it's already episode 12 and I just made a fresh batch of popcorn.
I completely understand....I feel like Im watching a movie where the lead character is living out his psychosis and thinks everyone else has all the problems...they were on an island and it ended with a trip to the light house....
Sorting through the philosophical-sounding-pseudoscientific-LoShonta on this thread
Free will is the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate; the ability to act at one's own discretion
Minimalistic describes something that is stripped down to its most essential elements or uses only what is needed
What is the most essential element of free will?
It is the power to act without constraint of necessity or fate
The “minimalistic” or “min” attached to the words “free will” is an unnecessary and confusing adjective – it should be eliminated
~ ~ ~ ~
self-betterment is the act or result of making oneself better through one's own efforts
Learning is the acquisition of knowledge or skills through experience, study, or by being taught
Learning in disguise - Learning is wearing a disguise? It’s made to look like something else? It’s presented as another thing? This is a feeble attempt to redefine words and to deceive the reader into thinking that learning is actually something else. It is misleading. The phrase makes no sense – and should be eliminated
~ ~ ~ ~
Determinism is a philosophical view, where all events are determined completely by previously existing causes. The doctrine that all events, including human action, are ultimately determined by causes external to the will. Some philosophers have taken determinism to imply that individual human beings have no free will and cannot be held morally responsible for their actions.
Cause-and-effect in physics is “causal determinism”; state of an object/event is completely determined by its prior states. Cause is the reason behind an action or natural phenomena whereas effect is the result of a cause or the outcome of some chain of events that have happened. There is a cause and is an effect in everything we do. Cause and Effect is a constant series of actions which logically follows from one action to the other. In the cause and effect relationship, one or more things happen as a result of something else.
The concepts of determinism and cause-and-effect are basically incompatible with the definition of free will.
~ ~ ~ ~
Sorting through the unnecessary-and pseudo-spiritual-red-tape-of-the-LoShonta on this thread
We seek what we desire
Hebrews 11:6is addressing believers NOT unbelievers – therefore the prime requisite of the Christian seeking after God is faith – it is not an intellectual pursuit – rather we seek after a living Being.
John 20:31says that the Gospels are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. This is the power of the Gospel message.
16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile. 17 For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed—a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.”Romans 1: 16, 17
Contrary to the red tapethat some wierwille-defenders “envision” taking place over the course of many months - or 20 years of coming to Grease Spot Café - salvation through Jesus Christ is easy!
I for one am annoyed by anyone that acts like an incessant troll and expects us to endure how he prattles on about the greatness of PFAL with its minimalistic required donation and the demand for “free will offerings” going above the tithe on a regular basis – or else - ooooh I so scared!
Simply hearing and believing the Gospel message of Jesus Christ, saves you the time, money, effort, and abuse you’d get taking the long and drawn-out journey to nowhere via PFAL.
It’s pretty clear when you lay it out like that. I think cults do not like the simplicity of the new birth and making Jesus Lord in your life because then they can’t lay out microstructures of Pharisee hierarchy wherein they control people. The leaders desire is to control.
I dunno guys...haven't used my freewill in a while...think it's suffering from atrophy...I know....I'm gonna go grocery shopping without a list!! That'll work...freewill will be all muscled out in no time...especially if I get lots of spinach...I mean speaking tongues is like spiritual spinach for strengthening the inner mann...bullshonta malakas many la seetay toasted naan lamb saag good eeatsaytay.
I feel like I’m being played by one of those virtual insanity games …from its inception this thread is determined to make me think I’m Leo DiCaprio dreaming about standing on top of a sinking lighthouse - Kate Winslet is yelling “I’m queen of the homecoming” …I shutter to think what would happen if one of the wolves of Wall Street turns out to be me in a cheap wool suit - but I stuck it out so far - and I figure I have freely received Bull-Shonta so I’m gonna freely give Bull-Shonta to everyone - with or without distinction…A/V crew please cue Celine Dion singing “This thread will go on”
This movie/game is rated FD - Freedom Determinators…teaser after end credits has Arnold saying “I’ll be back…whenever I feel like it.”
Yeah this thread is kinda like the age old predestination debate over Gods foreknowledge precedes pre destination, but way stupider and bound up by a lot of theory of various things.
If your PFAL Jesus more resembles a dashboard Jesus, maybe you ought to dump the bondage mental models and go sit down have a chat.
17 pages of derailed, schizophrenic bullshonta. The topic is The 7th THE Man of God, the Music Coordinator, his wife and her lover. Period. H. O. W.
The APPARENT topic is Determinism and the Illusion of Free Will. HOWEVER, that's the dar gato por liebre. It's a figger of speech. Also, irony. Victor's whole game was bait and switch, and the topic is standing on his shoulders imitating him.
Bless your little hearts. Goebekli Tepe.
Edited by Nathan_Jr How stupid? Four crucified stupid.
Patent bullshonta...this one is right up there with doing spiritual exercises by speaking in tongues....where u make your inner man stronger but God gave it perfect and complete in every way...I digress
NO. This that I describe has NO SPIRITUAL component.
It is the simple case of a body and soul man. People have been trying to spiritualize free will for 1,000 years and it has completely confused the issue so bad that Neuroscientists are poised to reject it altogether. The new kind of weak free will I am proposing will fit with Neuroscience.
and u can tell they are simply body and sould how....but I see you are back to dispariging your fellow man again....maybe teh body soul man is really the set up for a straw man argument...I really dunno...
Now this cool.After all your clumsy criticisms of minFW and juggling of the general concepts, you end up in total agreement with me.
Your last line was: “The concepts of determinism and cause-and-effect are basically incompatible with the definition of free will.”
I totally agree.
Summary:
Determinism incompatible with free will.
Please allow me to massage that sentence a little without changing its meaning:
The DETERMINISM that emerged from Physics and Chemistry in modern times is incompatible with the ancient definition of FREE WILL.
Dear Mike,
Dear whoever you are
To whom it may concern,
“Mike” said: Now this cool.After all your clumsy criticisms of minFW and juggling of the general concepts, you end up in total agreement with me.
~ ~~ ~
I’m not surprised he’d say something like this.
What is it - some 20 years?
And in that time a lot of folks have tried to engage him
but
his modus operandi appears to be acting like a troll
and thathas frustrated everyone’s efforts
instead, what occupies the attention of a lot of folks is his acting like a troll
in some ways this seems like a war of attrition - a prolonged period of conflict during which each side seeks to gradually wear out the other by a series of small-scale actions.
I notice the person acting like a troll will periodically play the victim card – saying folks are silencing him and shoving him in a closet – which is a ridiculous claim for him to make - since he's still around spewing out toxic waste
His troll-like agenda of being insincere, digressive, extraneous, and posting off-topic replies appears to be driven by the intent of provoking Grease Spotters into displaying emotional responses or manipulating others' perception of him as well as obfuscating the insidious nature of wierwille / PFAL. Observant Grease Spotters on other threads have repeatedly pointed that out.
I will say this – his incessant and deliberate use of smoke screens has whittled his credibility down into the negative numbers and I’m thinking it would be handy to have atoxic hazard emoji we can use when quoting him.
He protests when someone suggests he might be on TWI’s payroll....when someone strives to remain enigmatic for some 20 years – I tend to ignore anything he says about himself. He bragged about being smart and spiritually pure enough to NOT go in the way corps – so, who knows – he might really be ex-way corps. He might be TWI-clergy. He could be LCM…he could be anyone that his troll-act needs him to be...provided the needs and wants are parallel.
NO. This that I describe has NO SPIRITUAL component.
It is the simple case of a body and soul man.
So, then, in essence, what you are describing really DOES have a spiritual component because you are making a distinction between spiritual and non-spiritual individuals. It reminds me of those election issues where no means yes and yes means no.
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Mike
Now this cool. After all your clumsy criticisms of minFW and juggling of the general concepts, you end up in total agreement with me.
Your last line was:
“The concepts of determinism and cause-and-effect are basically incompatible with the definition of free will.”
I totally agree.
Summary:
Determinism incompatible with free will.
Please allow me to massage that sentence a little without changing its meaning:
The DETERMINISM that emerged from Physics and Chemistry in modern times is incompatible with the ancient definition of FREE WILL.
The determinism of Physics and Chemistry is exactly what is used in Neuroscience, and Neuroscience is closing in on the anciently defined free will and will someday delete it from all consideration, labeling it as “folk psychology.”
That is why I am saying we should amend the definition of free will to make it compatible with determinism, which is the bread and butter of Physics, Chemistry, and Neuroscience.
With a better definition of free will, Neuroscience could possibly discover it in the brain’s biology, and can then talk about it, and measure its strength.
Edited by MikeLink to comment
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Mike
The new definition of free will that I am proposing introduces a new idea: deterministic freedom.
Deterministic freedom can be very exotic.
A sailboat enjoys a deterministically driven freedom from wind DIRECTION. The sailboat, and all of its atoms, and all of the water atoms, and all of the air atoms OBEY the Law of Physics; no freedom there whatsoever, but the directional freedom is very significant, though counterintuitive.
Deterministic freedom can also be very dull and simple. How dull is a simple lever? Yet, a lever also provides us with a super simple kind of deterministic freedom.
All of technology, from levers to sailboats to moon rockets, use this same pattern swapping scheme: One undesirable pattern of determinism is swapped out of the system by cleverly using another, less intrusive pattern of determinism.
*/*/*/*/*
A simple mechanical lever moving a heavy weight demonstrates this principle of determinism pattern swapping.
Imagine rock that it way too heavy to move by simply tugging with your arms.
This is a limitation, or a prison of sorts. The weight, compared to our muscle strength, denies us the freedom to move the rock.
With a crowbar or lever the pattern of determinism used against this weight is the lever’s long arm’s “distance of travel,” compared to the short stubby arm's smaller distance of travel.
The pattern of determinism we gain freedom from is the inability to move the weight. Without the lever we are not free to move it. With a relatively easy long motion, we become FREE from the overwhelmingly difficult motion of budging the heavy weight.
Selecting the “just right” pattern of determinism to be the freeing agent can be tricky, and sometimes impossible.
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Rocky
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OldSkool
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Nathan_Jr
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OldSkool
Im thinking its off to the lighthouse...
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waysider
I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue.
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Mike
The classic definition of free will, or Libertarian Free Will (LibFW), has it being instantaneous in time, and over-ruling the laws of physics. Often implied with this LibFW is thoroughness. It is often imagined as effortless, never failing, never needing improvements, requiring no physical energy, and not requiring intelligent maneuvering. LibFW looks pretty cosmic to this old hippie!
By contrast, minFW offers a very, very small amount of freedom, and comes it at a very high price! It’s not freedom WHEN you want it; because you must wait for it. It also takes energy and clever maneuvering in order to work. It fails often.
Not a metaphysical bargain by a long shot, but that’s Biology for you!
The freedom in minFW comes in our being able to self-adjust our synapses, so that we are better robots the NEXT time we need to perform a repeating task.
But that self-adjustment is difficult, and not guaranteed.
It takes good DNA and good teachers, and energy, and applied smarts. It also takes repetition, and clever settings of our human rudders and sails, like the sailboat’s.
So, minFW is not at all the glamorous kind freedom most FW theorists and poets want, which is on the spot and immediate, and with a lot of other metaphysical things. LibFW can be made to sound beautiful, but that’s not the type of freedom that is really needed in everyday life for survival. We need to be looking for our BioFW, and not some imagined medieval idea.
I have slowly come to view immediate LibFW as more of an excessive lust, and that it falls squarely into the category of religion, philosophy, or poetry. It just doesn’t seem to have any real value as an everyday tool for real life. In fact, it can even be detrimental to survival!
Who would want to hire a worker who was known for her wild unpredictable behavior on the job, when highly constrained behavior within well-defined limits is what is needed of her?
By contrast, minFW is NOT the ability to suddenly make a “free” move out-of-the-blue, but only to gradually and carefully nudge one’s life course in a desired direction, using determinism in the process.
This mechanism is, again, similar to how a sailboat operates. It is highly constrained freedom within well-defined limits.
So minFW is not cosmic, not perfect, not effortless, but it DOES have a chance at being biological.
This minFW is merely a partial freedom from some undesirable MACRO PATTERNS of the micro determinism.
It’s a “route to freedom” for things that matter and that are important, like being independent of some “other wills,” and even gaining freedom from some previous versions of ourselves. These are macro patterns.
Micro-determinism is unimportant to us in everyday life. Effective macro patterns of determinism must be used to overcome other macro patterns that are undesirable.
*/*/*/*/*
I see LibFW as over-hyping the simple Biology of the human brain engaged in decision making.
But it’s not only in free will theory that things get OVER-HYPED these days, IMO.
The general phenomenon of human consciousness as a whole has acquired an undeserved metaphysical and grandiose reputation over the past one thousand years.
This acquisition went unchecked, until modern neuroscience started looking seriously at the brain. It is humbling for us to be reduced down to mere atoms and mere biology, but it is also realistic.
I think a long, long time ago intellectuals started worshiping their own brains a little too much. It happens. In developing Philosophy, they wrote into the human mind all sorts of perfections and beauty that are not really there. This started in medieval religion, but by Descartes time it was being secularized, and made to sound scientific.
Thus, the human mind was over-exalted, and for a long time, until recently when the tools were invented (MRI and CAT scanning) that could scientifically analyze it.
It is nice to have a mind, but it is not the glorified “knower” that we poetically sometimes want it to be. It is humbling to think that our mind is made of dirt. This is the essence of the title to Francis Crick’s last book, “The Astonishing Hypothesis.” It is astonishing to think that our wonderful consciousness, qualia, and free will are MERE MECHANISMS.
*/*/*/*/*
I think consciousness, qualia, free will, and subjective first-hand experience have all been over glorified in previous centuries by religion and philosophy, but science is now just getting around to dealing with this problem.
*/*/*/*/*
There is some consolation for all this harsh minimal-ness. There is a hidden BENEFIT to having less than total freedom, on the spot, to act or decide.
I think, as a culture, going over-board with the ideology of human freedom can sometimes become confusing in issues where freedom needs to come up in practical ways.
The idea that too much freedom can be bad or unsafe is too often automatically rejected.
But in theorizing about the mechanisms of the brain, it’s good to remember that too much spontaneous freedom of thought can be VERY bad. Bad in a practical, everyday sense, that is.
Lots of freedom sounds great for artists, but for survival IS cosmic freedom useful?
We live in a culture with great abundance, compared to most civilizations that came before us. We don’t think through enough about how FW and consciousness must work under much more austere circumstances.
But even logically, shouldn’t a totally “free” thought or action be viewed as dangerous to the thinker? To me it sounds like a great way to lose my place in a complicated set of thoughts. I want solid, immovable markers in my mind as I explore complicated ideas.
A thought, totally uninfluenced and guided by any past experience, may be poetically attractive at first, but WHO’S TO SAY there can be any practical, everyday-life benefit to such a type of freedom? Entropy would predict the opposite!
*/*/*
I figure that when we walk into a situation, we behave exactly as our synapses dictate, and it’s a totally robotic response in real-time. We bring with us all the synapses of our growing up AND any character-building synapse adjustments we PREVIOUSLY engaged in.
This way, as we develop our real time robotic responses more and more, eventually we can gradually become a primary agent responsible for our robotic responses. This only happens to the degree that we successfully operate minFW over a long period of time.
This is the emergence of a genuine “self.”
*/*/*/*/*
The main idea in everyday FW, the everyday YEARNING for free will that everyone has, is to possess the ability to steer one’s life better, and to be able to make better decisions.
*/*/*/*/*
So far in my Dennett text travels, page 184 in his “Elbow Room” is the clearest expression of Dennett’s vision on FW:
“What we want when we want free will is the power to decide our courses of action, and to decide them wisely, in the light of our expectations and desires. We want to be in control of ourselves, and not under the control of others. We want to be agents, capable of initiating, and taking responsibility for, projects and deeds. All this is ours, I have tried to show, as a natural product of our biological endowment, extended and enhanced by our initiation into society. We want, moreover, to have enough elbow room in the world so that when we exercise these powers, it is not always a matter of settling for the only desperate course of action that has a chance of fulfilling our desires.”
Earlier on page 60 he says:
“…we can plan in the light of our expectations, and take steps to prevent, avoid, preempt, avert, harness, exploit, or accommodate ourselves to those circumstances.”
Dennett’s focus is on the future conforming to expectations or desires, and not the immediate performance that Libertarian FW focuses on.
By contrast, minFW is NOT the ability to suddenly make a “free” move out-of-the-blue, but to gradually and carefully nudge one’s life course in a desired direction, using determinism in the process. This mechanism is, again, similar to how a sailboat operates. It is highly constrained freedom within well-defined limits.
*/*/*/*/*
So minFW is not cosmic, not perfect, not effortless, but it DOES have a chance at being biological.
*/*/*/*/*
I hope this general principle and its specific application in minFW helps people live better lives, to gain control and act almost as free as Libertarian Free Will promises.
If minFW is developed like a strong muscle it can look, for all practical purposes, just like what we feel LibFW is, and our BioFW should be.
What I have shown, so far in this chapter, is that there is a type of deterministic freedom available to levers, and to sailboats. It seems very likely this can extend to lots of other material objects. Then lastly I assume it can extend to the brain.
The key at this last step is to identify what those freedoms can be and what is the deterministic mechanism that brings them about.
I feel that the mechanism described in Chapter 2 does these last two things in a general sense. The task of Neuroscience is to show how brain cells do them in a specific sense.
*/*/*/*/*
The bottom line is we HAVE free will, but it is like a muscle and needs a lot of exercise to function well.
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OldSkool
Patent bullshonta...this one is right up there with doing spiritual exercises by speaking in tongues....where u make your inner man stronger but God gave it perfect and complete in every way...I digress
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T-Bone
Remember in the How to Fake TIP class we were taught if what you say in LoShonta is this long then the interpretation should be that long. But if someone calls you out on your interpretation being way too loooooong - you can cover your a$$ by claiming you went over into Bull-Shonta.
If you ask me, I think this “thesis” (and thread) has gone over into Bull-Shonta.
We need to “master” changing gears - become a shifty gear changer :
Fist gear: LoShonta
Second gear: Mid-Shonta
Third gear: Hi-Shonta
Whenever someone speaks in Hi-Shonta , that’s a known language. I understand Hi-Shonta. One of my favorite pastimes is to go $hi++ing in Hi-Shonta.
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waysider
It's like I'm binge-watching a Netflix series and the lead character is silently self reflecting, plotting to loosen the personal restraints and escape the asylum undetected. I feel like I should just quit watching., but it's already episode 12 and I just made a fresh batch of popcorn.
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OldSkool
I completely understand....I feel like Im watching a movie where the lead character is living out his psychosis and thinks everyone else has all the problems...they were on an island and it ended with a trip to the light house....
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chockfull
You know I think that minFW has some potential. As a model. For cult members.
Its kind of like regular and fully exercised free will.
But it’s more limited, like it’s in a box. Just like Jesus is for them.
minFW. Learn to love it cult members, like a jail cell you have to do time in.
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chockfull
It’s pretty clear when you lay it out like that. I think cults do not like the simplicity of the new birth and making Jesus Lord in your life because then they can’t lay out microstructures of Pharisee hierarchy wherein they control people. The leaders desire is to control.
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OldSkool
I dunno guys...haven't used my freewill in a while...think it's suffering from atrophy...I know....I'm gonna go grocery shopping without a list!! That'll work...freewill will be all muscled out in no time...especially if I get lots of spinach...I mean speaking tongues is like spiritual spinach for strengthening the inner mann...bullshonta malakas many la seetay toasted naan lamb saag good eeatsaytay.
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T-Bone
I feel like I’m being played by one of those virtual insanity games …from its inception this thread is determined to make me think I’m Leo DiCaprio dreaming about standing on top of a sinking lighthouse - Kate Winslet is yelling “I’m queen of the homecoming” …I shutter to think what would happen if one of the wolves of Wall Street turns out to be me in a cheap wool suit - but I stuck it out so far - and I figure I have freely received Bull-Shonta so I’m gonna freely give Bull-Shonta to everyone - with or without distinction…A/V crew please cue Celine Dion singing “This thread will go on”
This movie/game is rated FD - Freedom Determinators…teaser after end credits has Arnold saying “I’ll be back…whenever I feel like it.”
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chockfull
Yeah this thread is kinda like the age old predestination debate over Gods foreknowledge precedes pre destination, but way stupider and bound up by a lot of theory of various things.
If your PFAL Jesus more resembles a dashboard Jesus, maybe you ought to dump the bondage mental models and go sit down have a chat.
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Nathan_Jr
17 pages of derailed, schizophrenic bullshonta. The topic is The 7th THE Man of God, the Music Coordinator, his wife and her lover. Period. H. O. W.
The APPARENT topic is Determinism and the Illusion of Free Will. HOWEVER, that's the dar gato por liebre. It's a figger of speech. Also, irony. Victor's whole game was bait and switch, and the topic is standing on his shoulders imitating him.
Bless your little hearts. Goebekli Tepe.
Edited by Nathan_JrHow stupid? Four crucified stupid.
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Mike
NO. This that I describe has NO SPIRITUAL component.
It is the simple case of a body and soul man. People have been trying to spiritualize free will for 1,000 years and it has completely confused the issue so bad that Neuroscientists are poised to reject it altogether. The new kind of weak free will I am proposing will fit with Neuroscience.
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Nathan_Jr
Not so fast!!
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OldSkool
and u can tell they are simply body and sould how....but I see you are back to dispariging your fellow man again....maybe teh body soul man is really the set up for a straw man argument...I really dunno...
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Nathan_Jr
It's a simple case of bait and switch.
Edited by Nathan_JrNothing says, “I love defecating in the mouth of God,” quite like teaching four crucified.
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T-Bone
Dear Mike,Dear whoever you areTo whom it may concern,
“Mike” said: Now this cool. After all your clumsy criticisms of minFW and juggling of the general concepts, you end up in total agreement with me.
~ ~~ ~
I’m not surprised he’d say something like this.
What is it - some 20 years?
And in that time a lot of folks have tried to engage him
but
his modus operandi appears to be acting like a troll
and that has frustrated everyone’s efforts
instead, what occupies the attention of a lot of folks is his acting like a troll
in some ways this seems like a war of attrition - a prolonged period of conflict during which each side seeks to gradually wear out the other by a series of small-scale actions.
I notice the person acting like a troll will periodically play the victim card – saying folks are silencing him and shoving him in a closet – which is a ridiculous claim for him to make - since he's still around spewing out toxic waste
His troll-like agenda of being insincere, digressive, extraneous, and posting off-topic replies appears to be driven by the intent of provoking Grease Spotters into displaying emotional responses or manipulating others' perception of him as well as obfuscating the insidious nature of wierwille / PFAL. Observant Grease Spotters on other threads have repeatedly pointed that out.
I will say this – his incessant and deliberate use of smoke screens has whittled his credibility down into the negative numbers and I’m thinking it would be handy to have a toxic hazard emoji we can use when quoting him.
He protests when someone suggests he might be on TWI’s payroll....when someone strives to remain enigmatic for some 20 years – I tend to ignore anything he says about himself. He bragged about being smart and spiritually pure enough to NOT go in the way corps – so, who knows – he might really be ex-way corps. He might be TWI-clergy. He could be LCM…he could be anyone that his troll-act needs him to be...provided the needs and wants are parallel.
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waysider
So, then, in essence, what you are describing really DOES have a spiritual component because you are making a distinction between spiritual and non-spiritual individuals. It reminds me of those election issues where no means yes and yes means no.
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