[abellerose]

The main reason for me of suggesting email is because I simply don't find writing responses on HackerNews as a great medium to have a conversation that likely will be lengthy. Basically, there's no good way to quote or even make a list with bullets and I prefer my macOS mail interface than a html textbox.

The phrase "making choices" is just semantics for the topic of free will being an illusion. There's no different outcome for how a person will live from start to end. That's the reality we live. Science hasn't proven otherwise and the current evidence from neuroscience suggests we don't have free will. Even logically it's impossible to imagine free will being possible when you're inside a system and every thought or act you perform is because of the system you're in. People are no different from water choosing to flow downstream.

Knowledge is power in society. Does it change your fate? The answer is no but generations do get better than the past because humans are progressing from knowledge. So the argument I think we truly are having is whether the norm of the populace should be deceived that they have free will or told the truth that there is no free will.

You already know what I believe the answer is for the foregoing. I have my own personal reasons as well. My life was fairly damaged by people that believed in free will because of religion and after many years of self reflection. I realized they were in fact acting mentally ill because of their belief that people make choices when regarding one's sexual orientation and gender identity.

I don't blame them or ever want to desire they had free will because I would've sought vengeance for the conversion therapy I suffered. Instead I'm glad fate had me realize they weren't to blame but how the universe unraveled and no individual had any power over how they came to be. I personally don't think that means people should be left scot free when they violate others. I think the social systems just need to change to a rehabilitation system like how the healthcare system treats people that get sick. It just happens in life and the systems are what make people behave the best and have the best life contrary to other systems.

Anyway I'm writing in a text box and if you want to have lengthy discussion about it. I really do enjoy email back & forth about it. I personally could probably chat about the topic in-person and never get bored about it.

[Layke1123]

This was a very eye opening response that even made me think about things in a new light. Thank you for sharing your story.

[abellerose]

Thanks. I felt lucky to read your responses to the person that's stuck on semantics or by whatever force(s) that make him assume he has choices when there's no choices.

Majority of people I've been able to have the discussion with do eventually understand free will is an illusion and "making choices" is just a human expression that doesn't describe reality. So, I think it's possible that one day determinists will out number free will believers. Would be nice to have been born into such a society that's modern and well structured for everyone's health with a dream of equality.

Btw, I have cancer so I don't have as much energy and cannot write on HackerNews as much as I used to be able to. Once again, thanks for writing what you did and even when it was just by fate.

[Layke1123]

Ahh to have been born into a society that is free of misinformation and the willing propagation of it indeed would be something else.

I'm sorry you have cancer. =/ I wish we would have figured this one out by now but it seems we are more interested in how to sell batteries instantly over the internet more than we care about solving the medical problems of others. We are still a very self centered form of life for the moment. I wish you the best of luck and if I can donate at all to your fight against cancer, I hope my small contribution would make a difference none the less.

[abellerose]

Yah it could've been something else. :)

I'm not getting treatment because life has never been great by being disfigured from the wrong puberty and while remembering the conversion therapy with everything else that happened back then.

I'm now somewhat curious if your understanding of not having free will makes you okay with death as well? I've had a few conversations with my Oncologist and most patients of his are really fearful of death.

I personally think under different circumstances life would've been amazing to know free will is an illusion in my younger years for also having a stronger mentality of protecting myself from people I wanted to love but were really ill in a controlling way of thinking choices are everything. That's why I think understanding free will is an illusion allows oneself to have a better life even if everything is fated. Since that added information will make a person be able to realize how they need to adjust when they can, improve realization of why others are acting ill towards them and maybe even mental health would really benefit from it. I think that because I was surrounded by people that would sit & pray and well that never did anything lol.

[Layke1123]

I am Okay with death not necessarily because of my views on free will being an illusion (which I think it can help people cope with death), but my far more potent though on death is that I see it exactly as before I was born. I do not remember before I was born, and therefor I'm just as likely to not remember my death, but one thing is for sure.

I can enjoy whatever slice of infinitesmially small time I have here on Earth, or I can not exist faster than what nature is trying to do to me. I'll continue to exist for as long as I can simply to spite it all and make my time here as long as possible, even if ultimately I would later realize I would have liked to end it sooner, I simply have made this a resolute position I will not falter on and will strive to find a way to make this existence as pleasant for me and others as I am physically and mentally capable of. Who knows if I will succeed, but I'm gonna try my hardest to be like that.

[pdonis]

> The phrase "making choices" is just semantics for the topic of free will being an illusion.

I disagree. See my response to Layke1123 just now.

> Knowledge is power in society. Does it change your fate? The answer is no

Again, I disagree; see my response to Layke1123 just now. I understand the attitude you are taking; I just don't think it's a good idea. Believing this will cause more harm and more suffering. More on that below.

> I realized they were in fact acting mentally ill because of their belief that people make choices when regarding one's sexual orientation and gender identity.

I'm very sorry you went through what you went through. And how you deal with it personally, in your own life, is of course entirely your choice. But that very observation (see the irony?) illustrates the error in the general conclusion you are drawing from it.

Even if people's sexual orientation and gender identity are not choices they make (which I agree they aren't), that doesn't mean there are no choices at all, period. For example, even if you can't choose your sexual orientation, you still choose who you partner with, and those choices make a difference. And that's not all; see further comments below.

> I don't blame them or ever want to desire they had free will because I would've sought vengeance for the conversion therapy I suffered. Instead I'm glad fate had me realize they weren't to blame but how the universe unraveled and no individual had any power over how they came to be.

First, as your very next sentence illustrates--"I personally don't think that means people should be left scot free when they violate others."--you admit that the matter of vengeance is separate from the question of choice. Whether or not people make choices is a separate question from how we should respond to what people do.

Second, even if your family didn't choose the religion they got brought up in, or the beliefs that religion inculcated in them, they did choose to put you through the ordeal they put you through. They could have chosen otherwise. What's more, they themselves might not have realized that they could have chosen otherwise (more irony)--those very same religious beliefs quite possibly included the belief that they were forced to do what they did, and if they had instead believed they had free will, the ability to make their own choices, they might have stopped to think instead of just acting automatically on their beliefs about sexual orientation and gender identity. In other words, they were blaming you for what they claimed was your choice (when it wasn't), but they were also refusing to admit their own ability to make choices and that those choices affected you. Whatever that is, it is not a simple "belief in free will" and wouldn't be fixed by a simple eradication of "belief in free will".

> I think the social systems just need to change to a rehabilitation system like how the healthcare system treats people that get sick.

But that system is screwed up as well. Homosexuality used to be defined as "sickness"--and the system then forcibly medicated people with sex hormones to "cure" them. (Look up what happened to Alan Turing, arguably one of the best mathematicians of the 20th century.) And don't even get me started on all the other ways the healthcare system disempowers people and thereby makes their condition worse instead of better.

The only way to avoid having people be abused is to respect their freedom of choice. What should happen in cases like yours is that the person themselves should choose how they want to deal with whatever it is they are dealing with. Their family shouldn't dictate it to them. No "system" should dictate it to them. No "system" should label them, whether it's labeled as "sickness" or "non-standard sexual orientation" or "gender dysphoria" or whatever. No system should tell them they need "rehabilitation". If people ask for a particular kind of help or care, that's fine; but a belief like "free will doesn't exist" has always been a handy excuse for others or "the system" to force "treatment" on people and abuse them.

[abellerose]

> I'm very sorry you went through what you went through. And how you deal with it personally, in your own life, is of course entirely your choice. But that very observation (see the irony?) illustrates the error in the general conclusion you are drawing from it.

No. I didn't have a choice at all. You keep using the word "choice" or assuming it when there's no choice and I'll repeat there's truly no choice. I think or act from a set of unique forces that interacted upon me in the past and even now. The only possibility things could've been different is if the starting point of the universe made the unique set of forces different and resulted in a different outcome because of it. Similar to everything else you write, I disagree.

I also am aware that the "feeling" I have from what happened to me and how I became aware about free will being illusion.. is outside my control as well like everything else in life. Anyway I think you're not willing to have a lengthy discussion by email and so for some reason by fate that won't happen. I'm always up for the emails though because it's an interesting topic that some people are destined to grasp while others aren't.

[pdonis]

> I think you're not willing to have a lengthy discussion by email

Correct. I'm sorry you had to go through what you went through (and I'm sorry you have cancer and have to deal with that too, I saw your post upthread about that). I wish you the best, and I will leave it at that.

[Layke1123]

Your reasoning defeats itself. No system should tell people they need "rehabilitation", and yet you still support prisons that try to "rehabilitate" prisoners.

People do not have choices. They are particles reacting to their environment, and what you describe as a "choice" is actually a carefully choreographed cascade of chain reactions. You can attribute a sense of "making choices" to that all you want, it doesn't change the fact that if I interject into that process and stop any one piece of that chain reaction, your behavior is altered.

You only have the illusion of free will, because you don't understand exactly how the system works. You brain has hallucinated not just the outside world, but your internal world as well. It is inescapable, and rather than fight it, you should embrace it like some us do and learn to operate in this new mental paradigm, not out right reject it because you fail to be able to operate in that space.

The fact that I exist is the only evidence you need to show that "not believing in free will" doesn't lead to your prediction of "worse outcome".

[pdonis]

> you still support prisons that try to "rehabilitate" prisoners

You don't get to declare by fiat what I support and what I don't. The fact that I can make choices does not make me omnipotent. You are simply failing to recognize the fact that everybody makes choices--including the people who set up our current prison system and who keep it running. If the prisons they are running are abusing people, that is their responsibility, because they are the ones that made those choices.

> you should embrace it like some us do and learn to operate in this new mental paradigm

I don't understand what "new mental paradigm" you are even describing. But even without understanding it, I can still ask an obvious question: has this "new mental paradigm" enabled you to fix the prison problem you describe? If so, how?

[Layke1123]

I didn't declare it by fiat. You claimed no system should dictate how you behave, and yet you dictate how a person should behave. Your own argument defeats itself.

"New mental paradigm" means you don't think like you used to. I.E., if you were ever religious, that was one mental paradigm. If you ever lose your religious beliefs, now you have a new mental paradigm to understand the world and operate in it.

As for fixing the prison problem, it absolutely does. It means what we have decided as acceptable public behavior is to be cultivated, and if we can remove the part of your brain that wants to violently subject others your will, we excise it and then you suddenly become a productive member of civilized society again. It's not even your whole being, just a small part of your collection of particles that we annihilate.

[pdonis]

> you dictate how a person should behave

Putting a person in prison because, say, they murdered someone, is not dictating how they should behave. It is imposing a consequence on their behavior.

Evidently you are unable to tell the difference between those two things. That doesn't mean there isn't one.

> As for fixing the prison problem, it absolutely does.

You are either extremely ignorant and naive, or trolling. Anyone who has seen One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest has seen an excellent depiction of what happens when people who think the way you describe actually get the power to implement their ideas. No, thanks.

[Layke1123]

Forcing consequences on a person is absolutely imposing your values and beliefs onto said person. All it a consequence a you want, at the end of they day you are removing their ability to choose murder.

As for your One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest comment, next I expect you to tell me Whote Walkers are headed my way because narrative episodes are so indicative of what happens in the real world. /s

[pdonis]

> You brain has hallucinated not just the outside world, but your internal world as well.

Very interesting. I agree with these statements--yet I also think they are perfectly consistent with people making choices. In your ultra-physicalist language, human brains hallucinating "the outside world" and "the internal world" are just part of the causal processes that happen inside those brains. And those causal processes still have effects outside those brains even so.

[Layke1123]

Those causal processes still have effects outside those brains does not remove the idea that your brain only exists because of external causal events, and your brain is only reacting to those external causal events. At no point is there a spontaneous reaction that is unpredictable according to the known laws of physics, therefore, you don't have free will.

[pdonis]

> your brain is only reacting to those external causal events

No, it isn't "only reacting". It is processing the incoming causal events, in a very complex way that "only reacting" doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of describing.

> At no point is there a spontaneous reaction that is unpredictable according to the known laws of physics, therefore, you don't have free will.

This definition of "free will" is pointless. Obviously nobody can violate the laws of physics, so if "free will" means violating the laws of physics, of course it's impossible. But nobody cares about that kind of "free will". The kind of free will people care about is having their right to make choices respected. Your metaphysical claims do not address that at all; and from what I can gather of your image of what society should be, it would be a horror worse than the worst tyrannies in history.

[Layke1123]

You can't claim it that "only reacting" doesn't help explain the process because at the end of they day, you, nor I, can exactly explain how consciousness works. The only evidence we have to likely explain it is that it likely is a cause and effect system like EVERYTHING we can observe externally so far.

And again, just because you claim my world view would be tyrannical DOES NOT make it true. My definition of free will is the common understanding of free will that you are trying to redefine to fit your world view.