No Objective Space or Time = No Free Will or Events

[AshvinP]

No you’re stuck in a materialist mindset. Our choices matter. If you study the history of terrible events where people who would be normal people in normal times do terrible things, it’s where they just go along with things, where they don’t want to stand up and be counted, to chose something different no matter the consequences. The biggest risk of a country going into totalitarianism is when the collective will trumps the individual will. So I would say not only are you wrong, you’re dangerously wrong.

Amen. This is illustrated very clearly and profoundly in books like The Gulag Archipelago and Ordinary Men.

[Brad Walker]

The only interesting things about free will are how it's so widely misunderstood, why it's so precious to some, and the concept's undeadness. The questions of agency, responsibility, and punishment still have relevance when free will is admitted impossible/incoherent, but have different solutions.

I'm not a physicalist. Determinism doesn't entail physicalism. No free will idealist ever explains free will, it's just unnecessarily fundamental and idealism magically subverts determinism.

[Brad Walker]

No you’re stuck in a materialist mindset. Our choices matter. If you study the history of terrible events where people who would be normal people in normal times do terrible things, it’s where they just go along with things, where they don’t want to stand up and be counted, to chose something different no matter the consequences. The biggest risk of a country going into totalitarianism is when the collective will trumps the individual will. So I would say not only are you wrong, you’re dangerously wrong.

Amen. This is illustrated very clearly and profoundly in books like The Gulag Archipelago and Ordinary Men.

That's a question of agency, not free will. It's irrelevant whether those events were predetermined, or whether those people thought events were predetermined. What if the rebels thought they were destined to succeed?

[Cleric K]

Society could be less predatory if people got over the illusion of free will.

Can you explain what you mean?

[AshvinP]

The only interesting things about free will are how it's so widely misunderstood, why it's so precious to some, and the concept's undeadness. The questions of agency, responsibility, and punishment still have relevance when free will is admitted impossible/incoherent, but have different solutions.

I'm not a physicalist. Determinism doesn't entail physicalism. No free will idealist ever explains free will, it's just unnecessarily fundamental and idealism magically subverts determinism.

I don't know why you insist it's only precious to "some". If someone inflicts terrible pain on you or someone close to you, are you not holding them to account? Are you justifying their punishment solely on the basis that it is in their "nature" to inflict terrible pain on others?

[Brad Walker]

I don't know why you insist it's only precious to "some". If someone inflicts terrible pain on you or someone close to you, are you not holding them to account? Are you justifying their punishment solely on the basis that it is in their "nature" to inflict terrible pain on others?

If I could see the future I would support whatever would maximize utility globally while preserving myself. That could be anywhere on the spectrum of giving them all my assets to immediate capital punishment or torture.

Consult Sam Harris for exploring this question. His analysis is independent of ontology, although he's a "spiritual materialist". Determinism exists because of causality, not physics. Jordan Peterson doesn't understand free will.

[Brad Walker]

Society could be less predatory if people got over the illusion of free will.

Can you explain what you mean?

Should pay day loans be legal? Should soft drinks be sold in schools? Etc.

[Cleric K]

Should pay day loans be legal? Should soft drinks be sold in schools? Etc.

Sorry, I really feel dumb in this moment
I still don't get it. Soft drinks would be illegal in schools if everyone believed that free will is an illusion?

[AshvinP]

Society could be less predatory if people got over the illusion of free will.

Can you explain what you mean?

Should pay day loans be legal? Should soft drinks be sold in schools? Etc.

Yes and yes. Societies are not made less predatory by making everyone weaker. Coddling people in that infantile manner is the quickest way to make them weak and resentful.

Sam Harris would never promote such an idea. As for the "free will" issue, I am only pointing out that you believe in free will despite your protests to the contrary. I do not have to "understand" free will to know that you believe it exists.

[AshvinP]

I don't know why you insist it's only precious to "some". If someone inflicts terrible pain on you or someone close to you, are you not holding them to account? Are you justifying their punishment solely on the basis that it is in their "nature" to inflict terrible pain on others?

If I could see the future I would support whatever would maximize utility globally while preserving myself. That could be anywhere on the spectrum of giving them all my assets to immediate capital punishment or torture.

Nice dodge... now can you answer the question? Just as a normal human being who can't see the future.