[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]

> at the end of they day you are removing their ability to choose murder.

No, I'm not, because the consequence only gets imposed after they have made that choice. Removing their ability to choose murder would mean changing them beforehand so they don't choose to murder in the first place. Which, if it can be done while respecting their right to freedom of choice, would of course be vastly preferable.

[Layke1123]

You can't respect someone's freedom to murder without approving of said murder. You actually do not believe what you are saying or are being intentionally obtuse.

If you could prevent the unlawful murder of someone, you don't give a damn about their choice. You are making the choice for them by saying it is not allowed. Your implementation of that forced choice is currently handled by the law. In the future, it might be before they are even able to generate a murderous impulse.

[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.

[pdonis]

> it likely is a cause and effect system

Of course consciousness is a cause and effect system like everything else. I have never claimed otherwise, and the viewpoint I am defending certainly does not require otherwise.

> My definition of free will is the common understanding of free will

The common understanding of free will is that people can make choices and that those choices affect what happens to them. That can be true even in the deterministic universe you say you believe in.

[Layke1123]

It is not free will in the sense that you can spontaneously decide it for yourself. I can choose to eat vanilla yogurt or plain yogurt. That is the narrative my brain hallucinates. The reality behind the illusion is that the choice was made before I even am aware of the "story I tell myself" that I chose one or the other.