[sethammons]

We should be thankful for the systems that enabled us to achieve. From roads and a government that has made things relatively stable, and we should acknowledge the dark parts of our life that have helped tailor who we are. A lot of life is chance (your genes, where you were born, and to whome). However, I firmly believe that you are wrong in your last paragraph. You can argue determinism, but that is lazy. I escaped poverty and it was a lot of work. I chose to do that and I got lucky. It required both luck and hard work.

[xorfish]

> However, I firmly believe that you are wrong in your last paragraph. You can argue determinism, but that is lazy. I escaped poverty and it was a lot of work. I chose to do that and I got lucky.

It doesn't need to be determinism. You have no control over random events as well. How exactly did you decide to chose the way you did? Why were you able to stick to the hard work part?

Of course you can assume some supernatural you that is able to make decisions for your brain. But there is no evidence for that. As far as we know, how the neurons are connected and how they interact with the rest of the environment determines all our longings and our decisions.

I find that Robert Sapolsky's "Behave: the biology of humans at our best and worst" is a must read for anyone who wants a small glimpse on the topic of why humans are the way they are.

[filoleg]

If i understood it correctly, your whole argument can be boiled down to “we have no free will, because all our decisions are influenced by a ton of factors outside of our control, thus making us not in control of anything.”

While this is debatable, it is not a useful lens to look at the world through. Why work out or study or attempt to do anything difficult and work on improving yourself to try and achieve something? If you dont feel motivated, it is all your brain chemistry and other factors outside of your control. Poor you, and lucky all those other people who worked hard and tried achieving something, too bad your brain chemistry and outside factors didn’t convince you to work on yourself and improve things. Nothing you can do about it, so why worry about it, right? /s

I am not trying to evoke the “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” point, that’s not what i am trying to say at all. A lot of things in life are definitely due to luck and factors outside of our control. But a lot of things require both hard work and luck, with luck alone not being enough.

Think about it. Imagine you randomly meeting Elon Musk at a grocery store, and you got lucky, he decides to have a conversation with you while waiting in line (it is a far-fetched scenario, i know, but bear with me here). He asks what do you do and what you are into. If you worked hard in the field of aerospace engineering and made significant contributions, that conversation can easily turn into a job or learning something new and cool. If you didnt work hard (regardless of the field), then the conversation will prolly be about some surface level topic like the weather or tesla stuff, and you are left with nothing at the end.

Just working hard isn’t enough by itself, but it ensures that you are prepared to take the most advantage out of a lucky situation that could present itself.

A Thomas Jefferson’s quote comes to mind as relevant as well: “I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.”

[jlokier]

If you are motivated by the belief that your efforts will make a significant long term beneficial difference to your life, go for it.

But what if it really isn't true? What if for each thing that appears to be obtained through your own effort, there are plenty of other random factors in your life that interact with your apparently-obtained gains and tend to cancel out the benefits by making something else worse?

Then you'd be labouring under a convincing illusion. One that probably can be examined by people interested in studying it.

If it could be studied, would you rather know the truth, or would you rather not even look, so you can stay motivated?

(Btw, I'm a fan of the quote as well. Above is written from a devil's advocate sort of approach.)

[xorfish]

Personally I value truth quite high.

I find that reading behave gave me a new perspective on how to look at people that are less fortunate than me and how I think of "evil" people.

> While this is debatable, it is not a useful lens to look at the world through. Why work out or study or attempt to do anything difficult and work on improving yourself to try and achieve something?

Incentives and desires don't go away just because you came to the conclusion that free will as it is often used, does not exist.

I still have a desire to better myself and improve my life. I'm just clear that my ability to do that is the result of a cascade of events that I had no control over.