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United States10467 Posts
I'm a determinist.
What is that exactly?
Well you know how people have genes that will influence how tall they are, what ethnicity they are, and how susceptible to certain diseases they are?
Well I take that to the next level.
I think about how people are born with parents that are either rich or poor, that they are born within a certain country, a certain town, a certain home, a certain school district, and a certain year that they will share with all their classmates.
Then I take it a step further.
I believe that people's environment and genes will continue to change in a theoretically predictable sequence of cause and effect occurrences that will decide everything about what will happen in any individual's life.
I even believe that everything that will occur in the universe, even for the stars that human's have never touched, has been predetermined since the big bang.
This doesn't mean much to me. I think it's important to try harder because this cause will lead to an effect of greater success in the future. But it's nice to sometimes think that my failures were predetermined. I have to be careful never to let myself let this go, never to forget the cause and effect, but I don't think a belief in determinism has major harmful effects if any.
 
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The problem with this kinda of determinism is the following:
If you get depressed and lie around all day, the only thing that will motivate you will be believing you can change your future. But if you think about what you just blogged, well...no cigar. There is no way to prove it either way.
in face, you are a PREdeterminist.
In fact, I could post a picture of donald duck next. In fact, right now Boxer could be driving a truck in africa with Dongraegu and Marineking in it.
Everything has a cause. But at some point the cause is so abstract that it becomes pointless to try to predict. Therefore, it is more logical to see things as new events happening by chance. Yeah, maybe a stray electron is making me say this. But maybe it's something else.
In fact, who cares. This subject leads my own typing around in circles.
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On May 07 2012 14:57 Bippzy wrote:
The problem with this kinda of determinism is the following:
If you get depressed and lie around all day, the only thing that will motivate you will be believing you can change your future. But if you think about what you just blogged, well...no cigar. There is no way to prove it either way.
in face, you are a PREdeterminist.
In fact, I could post a picture of donald duck next. In fact, right now Boxer could be driving a truck in africa with Dongraegu and Marineking in it.
Everything has a cause. But at some point the cause is so abstract that it becomes pointless to try to predict. Therefore, it is more logical to see things as new events happening by chance. Yeah, maybe a stray electron is making me say this. But maybe it's something else.
In fact, who cares. This subject leads my own typing around in circles.
Obesechicken is determined to care!
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On May 07 2012 14:57 Bippzy wrote:
The problem with this kinda of determinism is the following:
If you get depressed and lie around all day, the only thing that will motivate you will be believing you can change your future. But if you think about what you just blogged, well...no cigar. There is no way to prove it either way.
in face, you are a PREdeterminist.
In fact, I could post a picture of donald duck next. In fact, right now Boxer could be driving a truck in africa with Dongraegu and Marineking in it.
Everything has a cause. But at some point the cause is so abstract that it becomes pointless to try to predict. Therefore, it is more logical to see things as new events happening by chance. Yeah, maybe a stray electron is making me say this. But maybe it's something else.
In fact, who cares. This subject leads my own typing around in circles.
You probably aren't understanding this properly, since the thoughts that would motivate you to change your future are still predetermined. In fact, so is every thought or action you have had or will ever have about anything and everything.
The thought that would motivate you to post either a picture of Boxer or Donald Duck would be equally predetermined. It's just simple cause and effect, right down from the Big Bang.
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Heh, yeah. I tend to agree with you. But really, theres no point in dwelling on it! Even if I may not have real choices, they still seem real when I'm making them. So in the end, it doesn't matter too much if they're pre-determined or not. I've found it best to just put it out of my mind, unless I'm in the mood for philosophical discussion.
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Do you consider yourself more of a fatalist or a hard determentalist? I suppose fatalism is a bit more mystical, but I dunno.
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I've considered myself a determinist for quite awhile as well, op. I've heard arguments that there are subatomic happenings that are truly random, but I doubt there is any way for us to really know if this is true. It is very plausible to me that EVERY effect has a cause and is thus predetermined, whether or not we understand what that cause is. Even if determinism is not strictly true in the grand scheme of things, I don't believe any of us truly have free will. Our decisions and actions are merely a product of our biology and environment. It makes issues of justice and punishment a bit morally unclear to me.
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SO are you pretty much saying a person cannot change what they are born into? it is all pre determined for them?
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On May 07 2012 14:57 Bippzy wrote:
The problem with this kinda of determinism is the following:
If you get depressed and lie around all day, the only thing that will motivate you will be believing you can change your future. But if you think about what you just blogged, well...no cigar. There is no way to prove it either way.
in face, you are a PREdeterminist.
In fact, I could post a picture of donald duck next. In fact, right now Boxer could be driving a truck in africa with Dongraegu and Marineking in it.
Everything has a cause. But at some point the cause is so abstract that it becomes pointless to try to predict. Therefore, it is more logical to see things as new events happening by chance. Yeah, maybe a stray electron is making me say this. But maybe it's something else.
In fact, who cares. This subject leads my own typing around in circles.
I rationalize that I am determined to try harder in the future.
I've concluded that I am a determinist also after a long bout of philosophiznig and reading up on it.
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Determinism doesn't really have any interesting entailments, imo. Even if it's determinate, it's not computationally tractable, so it doesn't make any difference either way.
edit: Probability is just because you don't know which possible world you're in.
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Had this discussion with a friend in high school. As he said "other than your genes and environment what affects your decisions? your soul?". Usually people that can't accept this are sort of stubborn because they don't like the idea of believing they aren't special compared to others or that their achievements aren't "theirs". That if they were born as someone else they'd somehow retain their "soul" and do things differently.
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Determinism is just an excuse. Doesn't matter if it's real or not.
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United States10467 Posts
On May 07 2012 16:14 Emporio wrote:
Do you consider yourself more of a fatalist or a hard determentalist? I suppose fatalism is a bit more mystical, but I dunno.
Fatalism is what I try to stay away from.
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this falls into the realm of sort of worthless philosophical musings, in my opinion (as does free will etc). I'll elaborate by using your example:
"Well you know how people have genes that will influence how tall they are,"
Actually a survey of the human genome and its possible influence on variations in height has only been able to link 10-15% of the variation in height to variation in genes, which is fairly worthless. The rest of the variation has causes which are simply unknown.
Consider the proposition: it is possible to explain the remaining variation with more complex models/theories with its opposite: it is not possible to explain the remaining variation. Given that the cause of this variation is currently unknown, the proposition is not resolvable; it is not possible given the information we have now to say whether the proposition is true or false. When propositions are not resolvable, we tend to resolve them arbitrarily based on how we feel about them; this is an effective tool for a sort of solipsistic model of inference, but its communicative value is very poor (see exception below).
When communicating directly, or attempting to communicate under the guise of a mighty proclamation/revelation of truth as you have above, it only obfuscates your claim to acknowledge the bounds of your information and yet take on premises that are grounded in a higher level of information. Unless you think that the reader, or interpreter of your signs, will derive aesthetic value from the nonliteral meaning that they convey (as is the case in general with religion, or for that matter much communication). But in philosophy this mode of communication is greatly frowned upon (not that philosophers frown upon religion, or nonliteral communication; but that the philosophical mode of discourse simply happens to have different grounds, to speak a different language as it were).
edit: sam!zdat and Opec basically said the same thing in different language, afaik
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I think it does give one pause to think when assessing guilt or punishment. There are already legal defenses based on ones environment or mental state which can basically absolve someone of murder. You can plead insanity. You can kill in situations of self defense or war environments. When you consider determinism, the line that we draw where these sorts of defenses are acceptable seems a bit arbitrary. If a man was genetically predisposed to have poor impulse control and an inability to empathize with others (yet not considered mentally incompetent or insane), coupled with an environment of poverty, child neglect and criminal peers, a determinist would contend that he really did not "choose" to commit his crimes; the wheels had been set in motion far before he was ever born. Of course, he should still be locked away, both to remove him from society and provide a deterrence effect for others, but I'm a bit conflicted (I don't completely buy into this, but I consider it) over whether it is morally just to have punishment as a goal of the legal system when this criminal can't technically be considered to have "chosen" his life of crime. I think that is the only practical implication of determinism for me- that and being able to look back and forgive my mistakes as what was destined to have happened rather than beat myself up over them.
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Genes? Pah. Us Moirians stopped thinking we could change things before it was cool.
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United States10467 Posts
Omg such a low rating. This blog is bad and I should feel bad 
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I was thinking about this the other day. I've been a determinist for a while now but I've always known that it doesn't really matter. The future is too complicated to be predictable and thus it doesn't matter if we have no choice over our future because of molecules following classical physics, molecules randomly following quantum physics or a "soul" or whatever people believe. Doesn't matter.
What I think is so cool about classical-physics-based determinism is that if time were to be turned back (not that it would, but just saying), I would still make all the same decisions. I wouldn't go "well maybe I'll actually choose to go to this college instead". It'd be the same because I am me and the decisions I make -- for whatever reason -- are final. I like the sort of feeling of continuity. If I didn't make the same decision every time I was given the opportunity, then who the hell am I?
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EPT
