[flabbergast]

Free will does exist, only we don't have it. We live in our own little world of illusions, thinking and dreaming. In reality every random influence can change our path.

Reality only exists in the present moment; just try to "be" there for a few minutes (without thinking) and you realize you don't have "free will". These are qualities that come with a huge price that almost none of us can or want to pay for, mainly because we love to dream we already have it.

Examples of people with free will are: Jesus Christ, Buddha, etc..

[montenegrohugo]

I'm curious as to what your theological beliefs are? How come you list Jesus (which I would understand if you are christian) but also, in the same breath, Buddha?

[ardillaroja]

As I understand it there's pretty firm evidence that both Jesus and Buddha existed and arguably they both had some pretty cool ideas...

[delinka]

That doesn’t mean that their ideas weren’t generated by a deterministic machine inside their skulls. GGP doesn’t explain why he thinks these individuals had free will and the rest of us don’t. Seems to me even in “random” yet deterministic systems, you’ll still get “anomalous” behavior that others within the system catagorize as “somehow different” - still doesn’t mean their will is freer than others’.

[ardillaroja]

Yeah absolutely. I don't agree with his 'examples', but I'll defend to the death his right to use them in the same breath. It seems absurd to claim a handful of humans to have free will and others not, not really sure what that would even mean.

[manfred_macx42]

In Buddhism there is a notion that the human conscious experience is a largely automatic state of "waking sleep" where the individual navigates life reactively, subject to the karmic law of "cause and effect". (Determinism)

The metaphor of "waking up" is about practicing a present state of mind, such that one recognizes how they are living life with about the same amount of awareness as a dream, with the aim to cultivate the same agency of a lucid dream in waking life. (Free Will)

A Gnostic reading of the New Testament reveals a similar allegorical prescription to awakening in Jesus' teachings, whereby adherents strive to attain "Christ Consciousness" and achieve liberation.

Many contemplative traditions hold that human suffering is caused by our baseline instinctual unconscious tendencies (a feedback loop from hell), and that it takes sustained practice to become present enough to "take the car off autopilot" permanently.

A cursory survey of the brutishness of human history is a testament to how rare this mental state is, and explains the high regard by those who attempt to emulate the characters (historical or fictional) claimed to have mastered it.