The Democrat Party Hates America

[FlashDangerpants]

Flash , the end results of determinism and absolutely free will would not be the same end results. If absolutely free will were the case people would not make decisions based on inductive reasoning if---then.

I never introduced any silly notions like "absolute" free will so I don't know why you are troubling me with that.

The only sort of free will or deterministic argument I could possibly waste my time on would be the ones that purport to describe how the world came to be exactly as it is with our experiences and our psychological vocabulary exactly as they are. Even discussing that is lowering myself into a silly debate. Some other crap that doesn't even purport to do what I put right there is too fucking stupid to get any of my time at all ever.

[henry quirk]

Your meat machine model

It ain't mine.

Here’s the brutal truth: your brain is a deterministic machine, operating under the same unyielding physical laws as a rock rolling downhill. You don’t control your thoughts, your desires, or your decisions. You are driven by a cascade of external inputs, biological processes, and environmental stimuli—all of which you neither initiated nor directed.

He's the one sayin' you're meat.

[Atla]

I learned, the hard way, that once a man has set his sight on bein' less there's not a helluva lot anyone can do to change his mind.

It makes no sense to me that you guys wanna be meat machines, but, of course, it doesn't have to make sense to me. You're both free wills. Your lives are yours to piss away on insanity if you choose.

'nuff said.

A common characteristic among low-IQ people is that they can't differentiate between what is true and what someone wants to be true. Where did I say that I want to be a meatbag devoid of (4d) free will?

[Belinda]

Flash , the end results of determinism and absolutely free will would not be the same end results. If absolutely free will were the case people would not make decisions based on inductive reasoning if---then.

I never introduced any silly notions like "absolute" free will so I don't know why you are troubling me with that.

The only sort of free will or deterministic argument I could possibly waste my time on would be the ones that purport to describe how the world came to be exactly as it is with our experiences and our psychological vocabulary exactly as they are. Even discussing that is lowering myself into a silly debate. Some other crap that doesn't even purport to do what I put right there is too fucking stupid to get any of my time at all ever.

How free do you reckon you are? It must be agreed some people are more free of restrictions than others.

[BigMike]

I learned, the hard way, that once a man has set his sight on bein' less there's not a helluva lot anyone can do to change his mind.

It makes no sense to me that you guys wanna be meat machines, but, of course, it doesn't have to make sense to me. You're both free wills. Your lives are yours to piss away on insanity if you choose.

'nuff said.

-----

For everyone else...

My good friend and fellow free will, Mike sez atrocity has happened..

He's right. Free wills can and often do choose to do wrong. Imagine how much worse it would be if Mike's global re-education program hoodwinks everyone into believin' they're meat machines only doin' what blind, amoral, deterministic forces direct them to.

Henry, let's get to the root of it.

Are you actually disputing that you’re a meat machine—an organic system running on electrochemical processes, shaped by evolution, environment, and experience? Or do you know that’s what you are… and just really, really don’t like it?

Because those are two very different positions.

If you’re rejecting the biology, the neuroscience, the physics—then we’re having a factual disagreement. But if you accept the science and just can’t stand what it implies, then this isn’t about evidence. It’s about discomfort. It’s about a refusal to live in a world where your sacred sense of self isn’t the author of its own story.

And here’s the thing: you can call it “less,” but it’s not. It’s honest. It’s grown-up. You didn’t choose your wiring—but you can understand it. You didn’t write your impulses—but you can examine them. That’s not giving up agency. That’s redefining it.

So I’ll ask again: do you dispute that you're a meat machine, governed by physics? Or do you just wish it weren’t true?

Because pretending won’t make it otherwise. And rejecting the truth because it doesn’t flatter you—that’s not strength, Henry. That’s fear.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Challenge to free-willers:

1. Using your free will, increase your general IQ by 50 points and your stock-market-prediction-IQ by 100 points.
2. Predict the stock market, get rich.

Now you are smart AND rich. (Wonder why free-willers don't do this?)

Strawman.

How so? Also, if you have free will, you can just freely will to worry less.

My dear child Atla, you bring up an interesting issue. Though I am the classic “unreliable narrator”, and though I am completely trustworthy and illuminatingly righteous yet still cannot be trusted …

…in the broadest sense the issue that Darkneos tells us about is that he borders on psychosis: the most acute human psychic tragedy — and tell me if you agree or not — this issue is actually of social and philosophical concern because masses of people, floating down nihilism’s rivers on rickety rafts springing leaks, begin not to be able to hold their fragmenting personalities, their very selves, together, and must commit themselves to restraining care by some agency or other. But that Agency is outside of themselves.

So, your question is a good one (though you certainly did not grasp its wide import). If we have at least in some degree this freedom of self-determination, how can, how will, the multitudes of Darkneos turn their situation around? What brought them to this hopeless plateau? To what degree was it determinism’s current? and to what degree series of choices made?

Is this mental health crisis linked to the Nietzschean prognosis of what results when “horizons collapse”? Perhaps you’ll answer “yes” and if so the next question is: How will the multitudes of Darkneos recover themselves? What are the principles of recovery?

Challenge to free-willers indeed!

[Atla]

Maybe I shouldn't say this in front of the Appallon, but while I'm a determinist and while the 4-dimensional free will vs determinism debate has already ended decades ago (it's common knowledge that determinism won decades ago, you guys are just weird), I'm still always looking for some (at least apparent) free will in the 5th dimension. A problem is that if there's a 5th dimension, it's imperceptible.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Do you realize, Atla, that all that I make such efforts to communicate to you comes straight out from that 5th Dimension?

All theory, dear friend, is gray, but the golden tree of life springs ever green.

[FlashDangerpants]

Flash , the end results of determinism and absolutely free will would not be the same end results. If absolutely free will were the case people would not make decisions based on inductive reasoning if---then.

I never introduced any silly notions like "absolute" free will so I don't know why you are troubling me with that.

The only sort of free will or deterministic argument I could possibly waste my time on would be the ones that purport to describe how the world came to be exactly as it is with our experiences and our psychological vocabulary exactly as they are. Even discussing that is lowering myself into a silly debate. Some other crap that doesn't even purport to do what I put right there is too fucking stupid to get any of my time at all ever.

How free do you reckon you are? It must be agreed some people are more free of restrictions than others.

I am familiar with that move. So sure, I have freedoms that are not available to people with no imagination, but I lack freedoms that a billionaire with a private jet has to go to some places etc. Or if you want to go Berlin style, I have the negative freedom to leap leap tall buildings in a single bound - there is no act of man that can stop me, but I don't have the positive freedom to do so because I am no Superman.

That was fun, but it has nothing really to do with the metaphysics of free will, it's a bait and switch move.

[Atla]

Do you realize, Atla, that all that I make such efforts to communicate to you comes straight out from that 5th Dimension?

All theory, dear friend, is gray, but the golden tree of life springs ever green.

No it doesn't come from there, and you know nothing about the 5th dimension and never will, sorry. That level of philosophy is beyond your conception.

[henry quirk]

Are you actually disputing that you’re a meat machine...? Or do you know that’s what you are… and just really, really don’t like it?

Does it matter? If I'm a meat machine then them blind, amoral, deterministic forces are callin' the shots, not me.

-----

Where did I say that I want to be a meatbag devoid of...free will?

I stand corrected: you don't wanna be less, you just choose to you be.

[Atla]

Where did I say that I want to be a meatbag devoid of...free will?

I stand corrected: you don't wanna be less, you just choose to you be.

Are you really that dense? Why the hell would I choose that? I want to be an immortal energy being with a fair amount of free will and creation powers.

[Alexis Jacobi]

That level of philosophy is beyond your conception.

Are you free to discourse a bit on this “level of philosophy”?

Instruct, for thou knowest

And what about ?

[BigMike]

Are you actually disputing that you’re a meat machine...? Or do you know that’s what you are… and just really, really don’t like it?

Does it matter? If I'm a meat machine then them blind, amoral, deterministic forces are callin' the shots, not me.

Yes, Henry—it absolutely matters.

Because if you're conceding that you're a meat machine and still clinging to the illusion that you're the one "calling the shots," then we’ve moved past debate and into denial. That’s like a marionette insisting it’s dancing by choice, while the strings are visibly yanking it around.

But if you aren’t a meat machine—if you're proposing some soul-stuff, some uncaused chooser floating above biology and physics—then say so. Let’s be honest about what you’re defending. Not agency. Not responsibility. But metaphysics.

You keep railing against determinism like it’s a moral failing. It’s not. It’s just how the universe works. And admitting that doesn’t make you powerless—it makes you informed. It doesn’t mean you do nothing. It means you understand why you do what you do. And that’s what lets us intervene. Improve. Progress.

So yeah, it matters. Because if you know you’re a machine and still fantasize otherwise, that’s not rugged individualism. That’s self-flattery dressed up as philosophy.

[henry quirk]

Why the hell would I choose that?

Damn good question. Why do you, a free will, choose to see yourself as a meat machine?