| HN Mirror

> Claiming a different definition of free will does not make you right about free will existing.

You are missing my point. I explicitly said that I used a different term, "making choices", instead of the term "free will", exactly because it allows one to avoid all the pointless arguing about whether free will "exists" or not.

> Defining free will as "making choices", such as building a fire to warm your house because you are cold is not proving free will exists.

Again, you are missing the point. Sure, you can say that "free will" doesn't exist because "particles react to their environment". And my response is, who cares? Sure, people are ultimately made of particles reacting to their environment. That doesn't mean they can't make choices, and it doesn't mean the choices they make don't make a difference, to themselves and to others. It doesn't mean that some people's bad choices don't cause other people to suffer. It is perfectly possible to both understand that, at a microphysical level, everything is "particles reacting to their environment", and that, at a personal level, people make choices and their choices have consequences. And if you focus solely on the former and ignore the latter, the result is worse consequences, not better ones.

Free will does not exist, so telling people they have a form of free will called "making choices" is a misdirection. You aren't actively making choices even if you feel like you are. You are only reacting to the stimulus you receive from the environment. Change the stimulus, and the behavior changes.

Your definition of free will is useless because it doesn't accurately reflect the reality. I make what "feels" like a choice, but it isn't really a choice.

This kind of reasoning actually does lead to better consequences, not worse.

> This kind of reasoning actually does lead to better consequences, not worse.

I strongly disagree. Believing that people don't make choices is just a handy excuse for some people to make choices that cause others to suffer.

See my response to abellerose just now (edit: and my response to you upthread about child trafficking).

You can disagree. You can assert that believing people can't make choices in a true sense of free will causes other to suffer. You can also be dismissed for said assertion without providing any evidence.

For instance, if your assertion is true, why do I, as someone who does not believe I make my own choices, do no harm to others? Shouldn't I be on a killing spree according to your logic? Shouldn't I be repressing and hurting people left and right? All I have to do is prove it's possible to not believe you make your own choices and not do harm. That single data point is enough to prove your claims wrong.

> You can assert that believing people can't make choices in a true sense of free will causes other to suffer.

I didn't assert anything about "believing people can't make choices in a true sense of free will". Nor did I assert anything about individual cases.

Since you are apparently unable to properly understand statements that use terms like "choice", I will rephrase my assertion using your ultra-physicalist language:

There are causal processes that happen inside human brains. Those causal processes have effects outside of the particular human brains in which they take place. Those effects can include effects on what happens to the particular human in whose brain the causal processes are taking place, and effects on other humans besides that particular human.

The question is whether the causal processes that happen inside a particular human's brain have a much greater impact, on net, on what happens to that particular human, than causal processes that happen in other human brains; or, by contrast, whether causal processes that happen in other human brains have a much greater impact, on net, on what happens to that particular human.

My assertion is that a society in which the former is the case will have less human suffering, and more good things, than a society in which the latter is the case.

Note that the effects the causal processes inside human brains have outside those brains, whether on that particular human or on other humans, happen regardless of the beliefs held by the particular human in whose brain the causal processes are happening, unless you count the beliefs themselves as part of the causal processes. Which is fine with me personally, but in fact, in your ultra-physicalist language, the word "belief" is just as out of place as the word "choice"; in your ultra-physicalist language, people don't have beliefs any more than they make choices. But the causal processes happening in their brains have the effects they have regardless of what language you use to describe them. Using obfuscatory ultra-physicalist language to describe them, instead of the common, intuitive language of beliefs and choices that everyone understands, just makes it harder to think clearly about what is going on. It's like doing arithmetic using Roman numerals; yes, it's possible, but it's just making things much harder than they need to be for no good reason.

How can you claim things that happen inside the human brain have causal influences on things outside the brain and yet at the same time ignore the causal influences the outside world has on the internal brain processes? Information flow is a two way street if it can happen in one direction as far as I am aware. What you seem to not grasp is the idea that external events can influence your behavior.

> Shouldn't I be on a killing spree according to your logic? Shouldn't I be repressing and hurting people left and right?

No and no. Nothing I have said implies either of these things.

Then why is my outcome not worse for believing I don't have free will?