To be fair, the if you look at the scientific evidence at face value, free will and the sense of self are probably both illusions that work because our brain is not a magic computer but a survival machine. It’s made to process input and help use information to aid survival. It simplifies, cuts corners, and creates an illusion of a narrative self.
(the sense of self)
“you” are just a narrative heuristic for your brain. An effective simplification/method to make decisions based on finite data and finite computational power in a world with near infinite complexity.
I would enjoy talking to you at a party.
Only if I can start that conversion remotely and at a time I decide.
Got any books in this direction?
“Free Will” by Sam Harris is a good one. Also “Why Buddhism is true” by Robert Wright. If these tickled your fancy there are tons more. It’s a surprisingly flourishing area of science. Also, remember, nothing of this is anything you have to believe in, it can all be tested by yourself. All very free of “woo woo”. If that is something you would like to explore then I recommend Sam Harris app “Waking Up”. Enjoy!
But our consciousness influences our mind (we can store in our memory what we feel/sense for example), so my take is that the self has a role, probably in survival because it’s cheaper energy wise, but still. What do you think?
Not saying it’s free will, just that “we” influence our lives from time to time.
Yeah, but your consciousness was itself shaped by your experiences and genetic predispositios. There’s no “you” that can be separated from your material circumstances.
Self is made of thought, there is no control center anywhere that is “self”. Thoughts appear by themselves spontaneously, you can’t stop them, you can’t make them, you can’t foretell what they will be. And thought has been proven time and time again to appear after the fact that a decision is made, a movement is started. There’s science behind this but you can also experiment with this by yourself.
It is not for the faint of heart and it may lead to a rabbit hole of other insights that might feel scary. The good thing about that is there have been many walking that path, so there is guidance to be had and that scary feeling is also “just thoughts”.
Very well put! I love that you explained it from the scientific perspective.
People who think they’re in control of their life are just like maggie driving the car in the simpsons intro. It only looks like control because of a narrow viewpoint. A wider understanding shows this can’t possibly be true. We no more control our lives than a mountain controls how erosion shapes it.
You can control a million things about life. You can change almost anything. It doesn’t mean you can do anything, let’s be real, but every second of your life you have a choice.
You can get up tomorrow and be a completely different person. Hate your job? Get rid of it. Hate your friends? Get rid of them. Go to a coffee shop and talk to new people. There is literally nothing stopping you from taking control over your life.
Yes, there’s limits. You won’t be a millionaire tomorrow. But that doesn’t mean you’re just sitting in the car being driven somewhere. Just get out the fucking car.
Your life must be a cruel joke if you think this is in any way true
We live in a deterministic universe and control is just not real. It’s not something that could possibly exist.
I do find that funny in a lot of ways, and the universe is cruel is many ways. But mostly I find the illusion of control a silly joke, or sometimes a kind joke.
Wether it is deterministic or not is not written into stone though. Determinism and free will have been debated heavily in the philosophy in the last centuries. Just stating “we live in a deterministic universe” is a point of view, but not a scientific fact.
It is a scientific fact. We definitely live in a deterministic universe - all branches of science confirm this. Well I think there’s some dwindling hope for non-determinism in some interpretations of quantum physics.
At the moment the debate is between hard determinism and compatiblism, which states that the universe is deterministic but we can still meaningfully talk about free will, because even though it’s an illusion our brains create, the fact that our brains create this illusion makes it real enough for our purposes.
Lots of Maggies in this thread lol.
We live in a deterministic universe […]
We literally do not, processes on the micro scale that in sum determine the outcome on a macro scale are all at bane of the uncertainty principle, randomness and noise.
People who think the universe is deterministic are not nearly cynical enough.
It’s indeterminate, just random bullshit.
Random because we cannot obtain the correct perspective to see the order.
There are concepts like pilot wave theory that remove the non-deterministic.
When you realize the math doesn’t care you’ll be one step closer to truly understanding what quantum mechanics actually means and that it’s not much different to how ancient astronomy explained planet movement in a earth centric universe as wanderers such that planet translated to wanderer in Ancient Greek.
To put that another way, wuantum mechanics is not unlike the ancient’s ability to measure and predict the movement of planets but the description and of why is because their perspective was entirely wrong.
I think you and u/deur are talking about 2 different levels of control, similar to the difference between weather and climate.
I control when I get up in the morning, I control what job I sell out or stay at, etc., etc. But I have no control over the wildfire/tornado/hurricane/flood/landslide that takes out my house. I don’t have control over the mass shooter/suicide bomber/terrorist attack that takes me out. I don’t have control over a government insistent on destroying foreign relations and weakening the spending power of my dollar.
Individuals have control on a micro scale. The larger the scale gets, the less control one has. The only real control we have is how we react to the world around us.
We live in a deterministic universe and control is just not real.
There is as much proof for that statement as when you would have said “God determines everything”
People realizing slavery never stopped
Oh you are free now, free to choose which sidewalk you starve to death on
This is what a burnout and depression can feel like.
PTSD/C-PTSD too. Trauma can lead to a state of numbness and partial dissociation, like you’re just floating (kind of apathetically) through your own life.
The asexual experience, stumbling through kinks to see if anything hits. (It won’t)
mood.
at best I’ve been able to finagle some kind of gerry rig of empathy where i can tell that someone else is enjoying it and i can kinda emulate it…
… this has been little more than a survival camouflage, however, to blend in temporarily and only long enough to slip by.
only after realizing and accepting that I’m asexual does it finally click why the “locker room banter” I’d always encountered in life felt so DEEPLY UNCOMFORTABLE for me. relationships too when we got close to particular milestones. then i wouldn’t be able to maintain the illusion and they would recognize SOMETHING was “off” about me and become obsessed with trying to “solve” me like i was some kind of riddle… OR WORSE: they began assuming that whatever i “must” have “really” been into “HAD” to have been some really fucked up shit.
these people were literally incapable of comprehending that shit didn’t do anything for me.
at least i can appreciate aesthetic beauty in the same way that i appreciate waterfalls or sunsets or shit like that but I’ve never wanted to fuck those either >_>;
The real NPCs were inside us all along.
I’m in this picture and I don’t like it.
And boys is how your mother found me at the gang bang.
I’m in a long distance relationship with my own body, fam.
I feel that and I plan for the future like crazy but the best laid plans and all. Heck nowadays I have actions for plans for different scenarios that to some degree contradict each other.
I had this feeling until my egg cracked and I realized I’m trans. Apparently it’s one of many signs of dysphoria.
…again…
deleted by creator
