Religion – your views

[Ambidextroid]

I don't feel it implies anything, personally (or I've just reconciled those thoughts long ago). Whether or not choices are predetermined is superfluous. These things we feel feel real. Endorphins feel great. It's not like they just stop existing whenever I think about something existential, so of course I'm not going to let it affect the way I function.

What about moral culpability? I think this issue in particular pervades every layer of reality, from the seemingly inconsequential technicalities of free will to the larger picture. For example, if someone has been born and raised in a rough environment, they may have never had the figure in their lives who would have taught them what is right from wrong. Some people cheat and swindle because their perspective is that the world has treated them rough and they've been born into a rigged world, so they're entitled to make up for it. I was lucky enough to experience the many life lessons and role models who shaped my sense of mortality, but some people weren't. And when you learn something as a child, it can be engrained to the point where nothing can change your mind, for example religion (meaning no offence). When a criminal commits a wrongdoing and doesn't feel as though it's wrong, can you blame them?

If you are a believer that free will exists and we have the ability to make any choice we want at any given moment, then your answer would presumably be yes. Since I believe people fundamentally cannot make decisions that aren't completely determined by their environment, I would say no.

[Adsolution]

When a criminal commits a wrongdoing and doesn't feel as though it's wrong, can you blame them?

It depends. Do they genuinely not understand? Do they understand, but feel too weak to do better? If the latter, is it because of laziness, or fear? We each decide how acceptable a given reason is for ourselves really. When you see someone falling extremely short in an area you find important, especially when it has a very negative effect on others, it can be difficult to not feel apprehensive.

If you are a believer that free will exists and we have the ability to make any choice we want at any given moment, then your answer would presumably be yes. Since I believe people fundamentally cannot make decisions that aren't completely determined by their environment, I would say no.

Everyone's influenced by their environment of course. It's a part of the equation, it would be wrong to remove it. If you're referring to making decisions based on information you don't have/things outside your experience, that doesn't really make sense, right?

Moral culpability is just a concept confined to our human thought process (which may or may not be determined entirely by physics, which I think is a completely unrelated topic), so I'm not sure how it pervades all layers of reality. Maybe I'm misunderstanding the question though?

[Hunchman801]

Well, if everything is predetermined, then it's just an illusion that you could let it affect the way you function.

[Greengoop]

I wouldn’t actually care if everything is predetermined (even though it isn’t)

[dr_st]

If everything is predetermined, then you not caring about everything being predetermined is also predetermined.

[Greengoop]

I was clearly not predetermined to care about being predetermination

[Ambidextroid]

Everyone's influenced by their environment of course. It's a part of the equation, it would be wrong to remove it. If you're referring to making decisions based on information you don't have/things outside your experience, that doesn't really make sense, right?

Moral culpability is just a concept confined to our human thought process (which may or may not be determined entirely by physics, which I think is a completely unrelated topic), so I'm not sure how it pervades all layers of reality. Maybe I'm misunderstanding the question though?

For one thing, I think people's thought processes are completely determined by physics, and I do believe it is relevant to the issue. If your brain isn't completely determined by physics, what else is it determined by? Magic?
Of course we don't understand how consciousness works or why it emerges from such simple building blocks as neurons, or what else it might emerge from. But we do know how those building blocks work. We know exactly what a brain is made of from its chemical constituents up to the physical properties of neurons and how they behave. And seeing as all of the higher level structures in a brain are made of these neurons, then where would this, as I would call "magical" ability to think come from? I suppose it must come from some particular arrangement of neurons. My opinion is that perhaps it's something like a phase transition - how water can suddenly become steam at a very precise temperature, and how water and steam have such different properties despite being made of the exact same thing. Perhaps consciousness emerges from some precise density of neurons, where a small number of neurons is no more conscious than a rock, but at some point of complexity, consciousness just bubbles into existence. But that really is going off on a tangent...

Anyway, I think every decision a person makes can be boiled down essentially to two things, access to information and the inherent structure of their brain. Two people may have very similar brains but with different information, they may end up with completely different morals. I'd like to think that if I was born into an aristocratic family in nazi Germany that I wouldn't become a nazi, but that's really unrealistic. Even with the exact brain I had at birth, morals are gained from life and the information you are exposed to, so it's highly likely that I would have been raised a nazi, and would have thought like a nazi. The same goes for anyone. I think from a fundamental physical point of view, what comes out is just a product of what goes in, information wise. So if I have to admit that my brain would have made a good nazi in the right conditions, it makes it difficult for me to condemn other people for their crimes, when they are completely a result of nurture and nature, neither of which you can control.

To be clear I'm not saying I would let a nazi off the hook. But I believe justice for the sake of justice, as in causing punishment and pain to someone just for the sake of getting back at them, is pointless and wrong. I think if a criminal is punished, most of the time they're just thinking "fuck you I hate this I want to get out of here". Punishment has other purposes of course, such as setting an example to deter other people from committing crimes, but in terms of pure justice, I think the only punishment I can really agree with is rehabilitation. To be able to change someone's mind so that they truly regret what they have done, and now have to live in their own internal punishment of regret. But if course you can't just get anyone to regret their actions, sometimes it is impossible, or at least impractical to the point of impossible.

I think my point of view is pretty uncommon as most of the friends I have talked to about this believe they have an inherent sense of justice, that if a criminal put their family to harm, they would want to see the same mystery inflicted on that criminal. But I don't share that view, and I think my beliefs on free will have let up to me having that view.

Again I think I've gone off topic a little. But it's in the same vein and I think it's interesting so wotevaa

[Adsolution]

Well, if everything is predetermined, then it's just an illusion that you could let it affect the way you function.

Of course Any reference to choice here is speaking below the reaaaalm of illuuuusion

If your brain isn't completely determined by physics, what else is it determined by? Magic?

I pretty much said exactly this (even the magic part) in my last post, but I edited it out since I didn't think it was directly relevant

For one thing, I think people's thought processes are completely determined by physics, and I do believe it is relevant to the issue.

Relevant to moral culpability? Does whether it's magic or physics necessarily change the outcome of our thought processes?

Of course we don't understand how consciousness works or why it emerges from such simple building blocks as neurons, or what else it might emerge from. But we do know how those building blocks work. We know exactly what a brain is made of from its chemical constituents up to the physical properties of neurons and how they behave. And seeing as all of the higher level structures in a brain are made of these neurons, then where would this, as I would call "magical" ability to think come from? I suppose it must come from some particular arrangement of neurons. My opinion is that perhaps it's something like a phase transition - how water can suddenly become steam at a very precise temperature, and how water and steam have such different properties despite being made of the exact same thing. Perhaps consciousness emerges from some precise density of neurons, where a small number of neurons is no more conscious than a rock, but at some point of complexity, consciousness just bubbles into existence. But that really is going off on a tangent...

I like the steam analogy, it's a fun thought experiment

Anyway, I think every decision a person makes can be boiled down essentially to two things, access to information and the inherent structure of their brain. Two people may have very similar brains but with different information, they may end up with completely different morals. I'd like to think that if I was born into an aristocratic family in nazi Germany that I wouldn't become a nazi, but that's really unrealistic. Even with the exact brain I had at birth, morals are gained from life and the information you are exposed to, so it's highly likely that I would have been raised a nazi, and would have thought like a nazi. The same goes for anyone. I think from a fundamental physical point of view, what comes out is just a product of what goes in, information wise. So if I have to admit that my brain would have made a good nazi in the right conditions, it makes it difficult for me to condemn other people for their crimes, when they are completely a result of nurture and nature, neither of which you can control.

To be clear I'm not saying I would let a nazi off the hook. But I believe justice for the sake of justice, as in causing punishment and pain to someone just for the sake of getting back at them, is pointless and wrong. I think if a criminal is punished, most of the time they're just thinking "fuck you I hate this I want to get out of here". Punishment has other purposes of course, such as setting an example to deter other people from committing crimes, but in terms of pure justice, I think the only punishment I can really agree with is rehabilitation. To be able to change someone's mind so that they truly regret what they have done, and now have to live in their own internal punishment of regret. But if course you can't just get anyone to regret their actions, sometimes it is impossible, or at least impractical to the point of impossible.

I think my point of view is pretty uncommon as most of the friends I have talked to about this believe they have an inherent sense of justice, that if a criminal put their family to harm, they would want to see the same mystery inflicted on that criminal. But I don't share that view, and I think my beliefs on free will have let up to me having that view.

I agree with you, revenge does nothing for me. At least in concept. You might not know how you feel until it happens, and in the heat of the moment when I've seen people I love get hurt badly by someone who seems to find joy in their suffering, I've wanted to slam that person up against a wall and make them beg. Realistically though, it's not about revenge, it's just wanting them to empathise and realise the horror of what they've done. To some extent that also goes for those you said genuinely don't understand, because hopefully now they will, but it greatly depends on their demeanour.

Will that work? Who knows. Will it fix anything? Depends. I think the instinct to want to do that is mostly to scare them off from ever thinking of doing it again.

[Ambidextroid]

Relevant to moral culpability? Does whether it's magic or physics necessarily change the outcome of our thought processes?

Well, bringing the discussion back to religion, I think a religious person would say yes. I haven't asked, but I would guess that a religious person who believes we were created by god would also believe that god always gives us the ability to make the right choice - that there is no situation in which it is not possible to make the morally sound choice. Otherwise the whole sin and afterlife system would be kinda rigged. It's why there are many conservative religious people who are convinced that being a homosexual must be a choice, otherwise why would god create people who are unavoidably destined to go to hell according to the Bible? Then again the whole born into sin thing... I don't really get how that's supposed to make sense.

Anyway, whether you are religious or not, my distinction is between the ability to make a given choice or not. If you have this magical ability to choose one of several futures for yourself, then you can theoretically always make the best moral choice available to you. But if your brain is just a machine that follows the rules, and can only operate on the information it is fed, and processes that information depending on the state that it's currently in, then sometimes there are just situations in which people cannot make the morally sound choice. In fact I believe that everything everyone does is the only possible thing they could have done - a criminal who commits a crime simply couldn't have not committed that crime. To me, saying someone can make a choice is the same as saying a billiard ball can choose to bounce in any direction it chooses. If the layout of the balls on the table is complex enough it may seem like there are several possible outcomes, but of course we know there is only one.

You might say what does it matter, when it feels so much like we can make decisions, when the illusion is so powerful. It seems so inherently real and obvious that we can and do make decisions all the time. It might seem like for all intents and purposes we have free will, so we might as well operate on that assumption. But I say an illusion is just an illusion, no matter how powerful, and if the physics says that in reality we cannot make decisions and everything we do is completely linear, then that is just the reality of the situation. The repercussions are that if you can't blame a billiard ball for falling into a given pocket, then you can't blame a human for anything they do. If you did, then it would be admitting that it was possible for them to choose a different outcome, thus admitting that magic exists. Perhaps it just highlights that the word "blame", along with so many other words that become nonsensical under this worldview, really have a fundamentally different meaning to what we think it does. And yes I really do think it would take magic to explain free will. The idea that your human brain, which is made of the same stuff and follows the same rules as everything else from rocks to tables to apples, can somehow do something that nothing else in the universe can, to be able to foresee several futures and decide which path the universe should take, is just crazy talk.

More food for thought is the fact that we all know people can be impulsive. Some people have mental disorders that cause them to do and say things that are out of their control, to the point where people who are determined legally insane or otherwise mentally unsound can avoid punishment altogether. That goes to show that our society has at least some tolerance for dismissing moral culpability when the person in question is deemed unable to make sound decisions. But you don't need to have a mental disorder, I'm sure we can all relate to the experience of doing or saying something completely impulsive or irrational at some point in our lives and thinking "why did I just do/say that". And what even is a mental disorder? Is there a hard line between people who have a mental disorder, and people who are going through an episode of mental disorder, and people who just haven't had enough sleep, etc.? The human brain is far from perfect, in fact the neural-network nature of our brain means that nothing about it is perfect. Everything we experience is just a meaty organic approximation. So if we as a society are prepared to let certain people off the hook when we accept that they cannot make a particular decision, then what is the difference between that, and every decision everyone makes under the no-free-will worldview?

[Hunchman801]

I think my point of view is pretty uncommon as most of the friends I have talked to about this believe they have an inherent sense of justice, that if a criminal put their family to harm, they would want to see the same mystery inflicted on that criminal. But I don't share that view, and I think my beliefs on free will have let up to me having that view.

In fact I believe that everything everyone does is the only possible thing they could have done - a criminal who commits a crime simply couldn't have not committed that crime.

The thing is, is you believe that, due to the laws the universe being deterministic, "everything everyone does is the only possible thing they could have done", then all those considerations are absolutely futile. While push for or against punitive justice vs. rehabilitation, when in fact, every response to every crime that will ever happen is already predetermined?

Such determinism does not affect our morals, it renders the actual concept of morality null and void.

[lyndo64]

The thing is, is you believe that, due to the laws the universe being deterministic, "everything everyone does is the only possible thing they could have done", then all those considerations are absolutely futile. While push for or against punitive justice vs. rehabilitation, when in fact, every response to every crime that will ever happen is already predetermined?

Such determinism does not affect our morals, it renders the actual concept of morality null and void.

Reading this then looking at Among Us avatar made me laugh

[Ambidextroid]

The thing is, is you believe that, due to the laws the universe being deterministic, "everything everyone does is the only possible thing they could have done", then all those considerations are absolutely futile. While push for or against punitive justice vs. rehabilitation, when in fact, every response to every crime that will ever happen is already predetermined?

Such determinism does not affect our morals, it renders the actual concept of morality null and void.

Well, I don't think it really makes sense to invoke the argument of "why do X or Y when you don't have free will, since everything you try to do is futile". Because I see "why bother if you don't have free will" as a category mistake. The premise of "why bother" is already invalidated by the hypothesis "we don't have free will".

Imagine an AI robot, one of those kinds that is super intelligent and stupid at the same time - the kind that, when asked to make paperclips, proceeds to destroy the planet in an endless tirade to turn everything into paperclips simply because it wasn't told when to stop.
Imagine taking one of these robots and telling it to climb a mountain. Now imagine if the algorithm considers every possibility and comes to the conclusion that "my mind is a deterministic program, so I don't get to choose the outcome of my future, I have no control, so I might as well not bother since my future is set in stone anyway - any consideration or decision I make will not make a difference." Well it's true that it doesn't get to choose the future or make free will decisions since it just follows its internal programming. But then it's invoking the fact that it can't make decisions to come to the decision not to move, which is a category error - because we are talking about two different categories of the word "decision". One is the kind of decision a chess bot makes when it "decides" to make a certain chess move over another - it's not a decision in the free will sense, it's a decision in the decision tree sense, or in other words the "this algorithm has several possible outcomes depending on the input, so comparing against this heuristic, this input results in this output" sense. And the other sense is the "I have the god given ability to make a real free-will, nondeterministic decision, not determined by prior events or heuristics but a completely original, nondetermined branch in the space of possible futures" sense. If our mountain climbing robot was using the fact that it didn't have the ability to make free will decisions to come to the conclusion that it can't make algorithmic decisions, it would be a category mistake, as these are really two separate concepts attached to the same word, and it would end up not climbing the mountain. But if it didn't make that mistake, it would make the necessary heuristic/algorithmic decisions and reach the top of the mountain no problem.

I think the same is true for humans. When we make decisions, we are really making the algorithmic kind of decision. Our brain is like a marble run with several different end points, and "making the decision" is really just watching the marble fall down it's convoluted path and seeing which of those end points it reaches. And that outcome is determined by information, knowledge, logic etc.

So to answer the question "Why push for or against punitive justice vs. rehabilitation, when in fact, every response to every crime that will ever happen is already predetermined", I would liken it to the robot climbing the mountain. The "code" of our brains is still capable of taking in information and spitting out results, results which can either improve the standard of living of the general populace or make them worse depending on the heuristics and algorithms our brain is using and the information we are taking in. Sure, our inclination to improve that standard of living and adhere to morals is predetermined by the fact that, from an algorithmic point of view, it is the optimal outcome for our collective happiness. But if our brains were using the fact that we don't have free will to throw out that process, it would be a category mistake!

[Hunchman801]

That's a good point, and indeed, the absence of actual free will does not prevent all forms of intelligence, natural or artificial, from making decisions in the algorithmic sense; it's just that the decisions in question are already set in stone, provided that the laws of the universe are deterministic.

There's always been activists and nihilists, and the world has been changed by activists, regardless of the fact that their actions were predetermined.

However, I do not believe that the realization that "everything everyone does is the only possible thing they could have done" should push us to stand more for rehabilitation than punitive justice (or the opposite, for that matter). Like there are two categories of "decisions", those matters reside at entirely different levels, and it makes no sense to be more forgiving (level of category 2) towards people because of their lack of actual free will (level of category 1). Social matters belong in the realm of our algorithmic, predetermined decisions and there is no reason for the the aforementioned realization to influence us one way (activism) rather than the other (nihilism).

[Greengoop]

Do you guys think we should merge this thread with this one, but keep its current title? There doesn’t seem to be any overlapping posts.

[PluMGMK]

Well, 90% of that topic seems to be spam, but I suppose if we cleaned it up that could make sense!

[Greengoop]

Have you ever tried to clear the Conversational Network posts in the past?

Also my only fear is that it’ll mess up the poll, but I assume you have an option to save it.

[PluMGMK]

Actually you're right, I have no idea what merging the topics will do to the poll, and I don't really have the nerve to find out. Probably best they stay separate

[Greengoop]

If you have a secret forum then you could test it there

[EdgyRabbid]

I’m gonna try to go to Church this Sunday. Despite being catholic I haven’t really been to Sunday church before. I hope they don’t mind me being there. As like, an unaccompanied teenager. I wish to seek forgiveness from my lord and Jesus Christ, maybe that’ll help my overthinking. Maybe God will help me in that remark.: