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by xtrapol8 628 days ago
I would like to drive a nail in the coffin of “deterministic causality” by at least two mechanisms.

- In every scope there is a super scope which may influence in incalculable ways (however well their rules maybe understood.) Even in a model of the whole Universe, the base potential of cosmic background radiation (non-zero vacuum of void) is a non deterministic influence.

- ultimately radiological decay may not be predicted (a feedback mechanism of unpredictable external scopes)

There is more to consider yet these alone are enough for all physicists to agree that universal determinism is not actually possible.

Decay and the exogenous scope.

Everything in the universe fails eventually, only we may not know which part or when. Everything has an outside influence that cannot be predicted, even if that is how external decay will be involved.

These are NOT the basis of free will, merely an example of how determinism is a dead horse.

Free will is the “determination of resolve in the moment of now.” A different kind of determination than determinism. It is not that will cannot be coerced or manipulated or even anticipated (we are creatures of habit.) it is that the feedback loop in the mind is made of constructive and destructive interference and that may self reflect in unbound scalar ways.

What we think of as determinism is a blessing not a curse. Who wants the Earth to spontaneously turn to jelly? Or marshmallows to suddenly fall from the sky? We cannot function without mostly predictable outcomes.

1 comments

Thanks for this!

I suppose for our purposes, both determinism and indeterminism create the same paradox of free will. Determinism gives every event a determined prior cause, and indeterminism opens the door for random or otherwise undetermined prior causes, but both are incompatible with the notion of free will.

Would you agree with that reframing, or am I missing something?

Well, these topics are useful mind fodder. Free will is the ability to be arbitrary as much as to be contrarian.

I am a proponent that consciousness allows a singular resolve from constructive and destructive interference. This may not sound like much, though it is better than “swerving atoms.” My constructive and destructive interference has been shaped by a life of tenacious willfulness and expansive trial and error.

I suppose I would claim preemptive error correction makes my will more free than that of my muddle minded reactionary peers.

Determination of resolve and determinism are two separate uses of the same word, confusing their interdependency.