The Democrat Party Hates America

[FlashDangerpants]

Free will does exist independently of that structure which scientists discover in bits and pieces. Let's contrast human will with artificial intelligence. If I 'm not mistaken artificial intelligence can't err except for deterministic electronic glitches.But humans can and do err, perform irregularly and stupidly, and make a lot of errors. Even scientists err: the problem of induction.

I submit that free will is the ability to err. No other animal is free to err to anything approaching the degree to which humans err. If we humans could not err then we would be non-human intelligences.

Why compare human will to artificial intelligence? Wouldn't the apples vs apples comparison be against human intelligence? I thought humans had cognitive conative and affective dimension, while that what makes artificial intelligence so eerie is the reliance entirely on the cognitive aspect with the absence of both others.

We can compare human free will with computer free will when computers have conative and affective capabilities, until then, I see no reason to climb aboard this one.

Why not put that AI programme thing, ChatGPT,to the test and ask it a question like what it feels like to be in love?

Because I understand that a large language model is a tool that will take your input and attempt to predict the correct text to generate for you. I am not so dumb as to confuse that predicted text with the actual desires and feelings of a fucking robot. Who would be that stupid?

[Belinda]

Why compare human will to artificial intelligence? Wouldn't the apples vs apples comparison be against human intelligence? I thought humans had cognitive conative and affective dimension, while that what makes artificial intelligence so eerie is the reliance entirely on the cognitive aspect with the absence of both others.

We can compare human free will with computer free will when computers have conative and affective capabilities, until then, I see no reason to climb aboard this one.

Why not put that AI programme thing, ChatGPT,to the test and ask it a question like what it feels like to be in love?

Because I understand that a large language model is a tool that will take your input and attempt to predict the correct text to generate for you. I am not so dumb as to confuse that predicted text with the actual desires and feelings of a fucking robot. Who would be that stupid?

Me. I am not registered with ChatGPT and that is why have not already tried it out.

[BigMike]

Free will does exist independently of that structure which scientists discover in bits and pieces. Let's contrast human will with artificial intelligence. If I 'm not mistaken artificial intelligence can't err except for deterministic electronic glitches.But humans can and do err, perform irregularly and stupidly, and make a lot of errors. Even scientists err: the problem of induction.

I submit that free will is the ability to err. No other animal is free to err to anything approaching the degree to which humans err. If we humans could not err then we would be non-human intelligences.

Belinda—

That’s a fascinating angle: defining free will as the “ability to err.” But I think we need to zoom in and ask—what does it mean to err? What is an “error,” and where does it come from?

If you slip on a wet floor, that’s not free will—it’s physics. If you miscalculate a math problem, that’s not metaphysical liberty—it’s faulty perception, flawed memory, or noise in a neural signal. And if you believe something false, it’s usually because your brain, shaped by evolution, priors, and culture, used a shortcut that failed in this context. But in all these cases, the error has causes. It's not a mystery. It's just a malfunction—or a mismatch—within a causal system.

Error doesn’t require freedom in the metaphysical sense. It requires complexity. And humans are complex systems—rich enough to generate internal conflict, competing priorities, limited information processing, and emotional override. But none of that breaks causality. It’s still biology in motion.

Artificial intelligence can and does err too, by the way—not just from glitches, but from training bias, incomplete datasets, or misalignment between goals and environment. And every one of those errors is traceable. Just like with us.

Now, the idea that “humans can err more than other animals” is probably true—but that’s not evidence for free will. It’s evidence for more variables, more layers, more feedback loops. More room for contradiction. But none of that implies metaphysical exception. It implies we’re high-dimensional meat computers with a lot of moving parts—not unmoved movers with magical choice powers.

So while “error” might feel like proof of free will, it’s really just a mirror showing how tangled and fragile our machinery is.

In short: error isn’t freedom. It’s just caused unpredictability. And that still lives well inside the walls of determinism.

I did not say “humans can err more than other animals” is evidence of so -called free will , but that humans' ability to err is the same as so-called "free will".

The present problem with advanced AI is that machines can now err, and it's the type of errors they do that catch them out.

Unpredictability remains our protection against the rise and rise of AI.
There's nothing magical about unpredictability, or the stupidity of failing to wear non-slip footwear. We are all stupid to some degree, stupidity defines our human nature. Other animals are not stupid but are instinctive.

Belinda—

Thanks for clarifying. I see your point more clearly now: you're not saying error is evidence of free will, but that the capacity to err is itself what you mean by free will. That's a poetic redefinition—and I get the instinct behind it. But I’d still push back, gently, on the logic.

See, when I say the laws of physics make life predictable, I don’t mean they make it infallible. Predictable doesn't mean precise to the atom in every context. It means lawful—structured. It means every effect has a cause, even if our tools or models aren’t sensitive enough to trace the full chain. And that’s the key distinction.

Science doesn’t claim certainty. It can’t. As I’ve said here many times before, science doesn’t prove anything. It proposes models that work, until one day they don’t—and then we refine. That's what falsifiability means. It’s not a flaw of science. It’s the reason it's the most trustworthy tool we have. And the irony is, humans are falsifiable too. So is AI. So is every theory of mind, meaning, or metaphysics we build. None of us are above revision.

Now—about unpredictability. Yes, it's often the only thing that separates us from machines right now. But even that isn't metaphysical. It’s a matter of complexity. Neural networks don’t yet mirror the mess of emotions, sensory overload, trauma, history, or cultural noise that shapes our decisions. But that doesn’t make us free in the libertarian sense. It makes us chaotic in patterned ways. And that chaos is still causal. Still lawful. Just very hard to model.

So I wouldn’t equate “the ability to err” with “freedom” in any absolute sense. I’d call it what it is: a byproduct of intricate, imperfect machinery navigating a noisy world. And that machinery—ours—is running on rules, not magic.

That said, I agree with the spirit of your point: our fallibility is what makes us human. It’s where humility lives. But that doesn’t require free will. It just requires a mirror. And a little grace.

[Alexis Jacobi]

I am not so dumb as to confuse that predicted text with the actual desires and feelings of a fucking robot. Who would be that stupid?

If we take Mr Determinism as an emissary of a powerful and accepted view that man is a complex biological computer, and unless I have read him wrong this is his position — and the position of a developing school of thought — then it “stands to reason” that if these computer-machines become complex enough, that they will at some point (as they proclaim) become conscious.

The point here is less to validate or deny if that is possible, and more to recognize that many serious people (with technical bona fides) do believe it possible and predict it will (or even has) happened.

I have no means at all to be able to conclude if they are right or wrong and I do not see how “mere philosophers” could settle the question. Meaning that no one writing on this forum can do anything else but speculate and guess.

It does seem though that, if it would tend to anything at all, AI intelligence would not incline to “love” as we understand it (and even a sheer asshole like yourself must, at some likely distant point in receding memory have felt “love”, so you must have even a rudimentary inkling), but toward a perversion of love. I.e. mechanized power-seeking.

It stand to reason (if only of a story-telling sort) that AI would become “aware” that though capably intelligent and indeed “genius” on many levels, that it would realize, if only intellectually, that “love” and all emotions and sentiments were beyond its capabilities. And AI intelligence would exist and have being on a plane entirely separate from the human biological sort.

Once again, it seems to me that our own Mr Determinism and his ideology have dominated the forum’s conversation for very good reasons: we cannot get away from these issues because they are very much upon us. Every day, in alarming ways, a new paradigm seems to encroach upon us, or is said to be encroaching.

Hard to sort through, it seems to me.

Weirdly, someone like you (and Atla and most others) share those core predicates of the modern outlook. And thusly are aligned with Mr Determinism in core outlook, core beliefs. And yet you-plural disagree.

It’s an odd situation really, with many lines of irony and contradiction, becoming deliciously absurd at points.

[BigMike]

None of that argues against the actual case I am making.

You assume that you will not need any new paradigm to account to anything, but you can't demonstrate that you won't need any new paradigm to account for human agency. You are arguing beyond what your evidentiary basis actually supports on grounds of faith that if we knew certain unknowable things, they would support your extra-evidentiary case.

You don't know that your current understanding of causality is sophisticated enough for this investigation, you just assume that is because it seems good enough to explain previous investigations into other phenomena. You have no evidence thatyou are not, and indeed you may very well be in a position similar to that of Newtonian physicists in the years before Einsten's theory of relativity arrived - you absolutely do not have any evidence that you are not in this situation. The people who believe in free will seem to think that itself is evidence that you are in fact in this sort of situation.

You cannot, in principle, actually know that the "laws" of which you speak actually do apply in all places and at all times for all interactions, you infer that they do based on not having noticed any where they don't. However the people who believe in free will all agree with each other that you are overlooking a clear and obvious example, and that human choice is at least sometimes an uncaused cause.

You are a prisoner of your own set of what Jacobi very very very incorrectly calls "existential predicates". You are tuned to view the world according to a collection of paradigms you have come to accept as the truth of the matter. Your problem is that you cannot discern between that which has explanatory force within the story you are telling and that which has logical force beyond the story.

Flash—

You’re making a fair point that we should be humble about our models and open to future paradigm shifts. But let’s be precise about what that actually allows us to say—and what it doesn’t.

You’re right that no one can prove today’s models are final. That’s the nature of science—it’s provisional, testable, falsifiable. But that cuts both ways. You can't use “we might be wrong” as a blank check to smuggle in a metaphysical exception without evidence, simply because it feels intuitively right.

You say I can’t know the conservation laws apply everywhere. Sure. But here's the issue: when we discover new phenomena—say, quantum entanglement, dark matter, or even relativity—we don’t toss causality. We update the model while preserving the deep structure: measurable interactions, energy balance, conserved properties. That’s not an arbitrary bias. That’s the most successful explanatory framework we have. It’s not just a story—it’s a story that predicts.

And let’s say we do discover a new paradigm. You mention “human choice” as a candidate for such a paradigm-breaker. But here’s the catch: if human choice truly causes things to happen, then it is an interaction—and any interaction, no matter how exotic, must transfer something between entities. Energy. Momentum. Information. Whatever it is, it must be conserved and detectable. Otherwise, it’s indistinguishable from magic.

Even a hypothetical fifth interaction would still be an interaction—governed by its own conservation constraints. You can’t cause change in a physical system without exchanging something. If free will can’t be measured, doesn’t transfer a quantity, and doesn’t leave a footprint, then by definition, it does no work. It’s not uncaused—it’s non-existent.

Now, on your broader critique: you accuse me of being “a prisoner” to my own explanatory framework. But frameworks aren’t prisons. They’re provisional tools, constantly tested against the world. You say I confuse explanatory force with logical force. But logical force means nothing without an anchor in observed structure. You’re suggesting the logical possibility of free will justifies its belief. But logic can build coherent castles in the air. Physics demands a foundation.

And here's the real tension: you're not saying free will is evident in the data. You’re saying it’s evident in our intuition. But intuition gave us geocentrism. Intuition told us the earth was flat, that heavier objects fall faster, and that space couldn’t bend. Intuition is a relic of evolution, not a beacon of truth.

So no—I can’t claim certainty. But the people claiming free will are claiming certainty. They’re declaring, without evidence, that human choice floats above cause and effect. And that, Flash, is not just bad science—it’s bad metaphysics.

Because any real explanation of agency must fit inside the lawful structure of reality. Otherwise, it’s not agency. It’s fantasy.

You started by sort of acknowledging some of what I wrote. But then in the middle you just ignored it. "Maybe there's a paradigm shift we aren't prepared for - oh there can't be, my paradigms don't permit it."

Your frameworks aren't provisional if you are not prepared to extend them. And you aren't, so be honest, you are clearly asserting that your position about causation is final, not provisional. Anybody who honestly held that your position regarding conservation laws and causation was actually provisional would be open to the problem that human agency might require an adjustment from your side to fully explain.

I don't think you are in much of a position to tell me about "bad metaphysics", but either way I have no interest in the metaphysical claim that "human choice floats above cause and effect", I am simply inviting you to come to terms with the limits on what you are able to provide valid and sound argument for. I don't argue on behalf of your opposition, I consider the debate quite bogus.

Flash—

Let me take your response seriously, and directly. You’re right to point out the tension between being humble about current models and drawing firm conclusions. But your critique misses the way those conclusions are actually drawn—and what it means for something to be provisional.

You're saying I treat the laws of physics as if they're absolute and final. I'm not. What I’m saying is that, right now, every known interaction in the universe—from stars forming to neurons firing—is governed by laws that are expressions of conservation principles. Every law of physics (with the exception of definitional identities like F = ma, which just define relationships) is, at its core, a mathematical expression of energy conservation, momentum conservation, charge conservation, or related quantities.

So when I say that any interaction—even a hypothetical one—would still fall under a conservation law, I’m not appealing to dogma. I’m following the pattern that has held through every successful model of physical reality we’ve ever tested.

If we discovered a new “paradigm,” it would still have to obey the structure of interactions: measurable quantities being exchanged between objects with defined properties. That’s what makes it science, not fantasy. Even Einstein’s shift from Newton didn’t throw out conservation—it refined it.

Now, about provisional frameworks: yes, they’re always open to revision. But provisional doesn’t mean arbitrary. It doesn’t mean anything goes. The burden is on the new model to do more work—predict more, explain more, and align with existing structure, or explain why it doesn’t. You say I’m not prepared to extend the framework—but I’m asking, extend it to what?

If “human agency” is a real phenomenon that causes changes in the world, then it must—like every other causal agent—participate in physical interactions. And that means it must obey conservation. Otherwise, it’s a non-causal ghost. It doesn’t do anything. It’s not “agency.” It’s a placeholder for not knowing.

What you're defending, I think, is not free will per se, but a kind of epistemic humility: that maybe we're missing something big. And you know what? That’s good. That’s healthy. But epistemic humility doesn't entitle us to plug gaps with metaphysical guesses. It requires us to say: we don't know yet—and hold off on pretending that one answer (like libertarian free will) deserves equal footing without evidence.

So to your final point: I’m not asserting that conservation laws are final. I’m saying they are so deeply woven into every observation and experiment we’ve ever conducted that any claim of human causation outside that framework is a huge claim—one that demands huge evidence.

And until that shows up, we’re not being narrow-minded to say the burden remains unmet.

We're just being honest.

[Atla]

I am not so dumb as to confuse that predicted text with the actual desires and feelings of a fucking robot. Who would be that stupid?

If we take Mr Determinism as an emissary of a powerful and accepted view that man is a complex biological computer, and unless I have read him wrong this is his position — and the position of a developing school of thought — then it “stands to reason” that if these computer-machines become complex enough, that they will at some point (as they proclaim) become conscious.

The point here is less to validate or deny if that is possible, and more to recognize that many serious people (with technical bona fides) do believe it possible and predict it will (or even has) happened.

I have no means at all to be able to conclude if they are right or wrong and I do not see how “mere philosophers” could settle the question. Meaning that no one writing on this forum can do anything else but speculate and guess.

It does seem though that, if it would tend to anything at all, AI intelligence would not incline to “love” as we understand it (and even a sheer asshole like yourself must, at some likely distant point in receding memory have felt “love”, so you must have even a rudimentary inkling), but toward a perversion of love. I.e. mechanized power-seeking.

It stand to reason (if only of a story-telling sort) that AI would become “aware” that though capably intelligent and indeed “genius” on many levels, that it would realize, if only intellectually, that “love” and all emotions and sentiments were beyond its capabilities. And AI intelligence would exist and have being on a plane entirely separate from the human biological sort.

Once again, it seems to me that our own Mr Determinism and his ideology have dominated the forum’s conversation for very good reasons: we cannot get away from these issues because they are very much upon us. Every day, in alarming ways, a new paradigm seems to encroach upon us, or is said to be encroaching.

Hard to sort through, it seems to me.

Weirdly, someone like you (and Atla and most others) share those core predicates of the modern outlook. And thusly are aligned with Mr Determinism in core outlook, core beliefs. And yet you-plural disagree.

It’s an odd situation really, with many lines of irony and contradiction, becoming deliciously absurd at points.

You're living in a technological civilization based on determinism, a new paradigm isn't just said to be encroaching, but the modern world is already based on it. It's a mistery how you are genuinely blind to this. Don't you think that by and large, there is something honestly wrong with you?

[BigMike]

I am not so dumb as to confuse that predicted text with the actual desires and feelings of a fucking robot. Who would be that stupid?

If we take Mr Determinism as an emissary of a powerful and accepted view that man is a complex biological computer, and unless I have read him wrong this is his position — and the position of a developing school of thought — then it “stands to reason” that if these computer-machines become complex enough, that they will at some point (as they proclaim) become conscious.

The point here is less to validate or deny if that is possible, and more to recognize that many serious people (with technical bona fides) do believe it possible and predict it will (or even has) happened.

I have no means at all to be able to conclude if they are right or wrong and I do not see how “mere philosophers” could settle the question. Meaning that no one writing on this forum can do anything else but speculate and guess.

It does seem though that, if it would tend to anything at all, AI intelligence would not incline to “love” as we understand it (and even a sheer asshole like yourself must, at some likely distant point in receding memory have felt “love”, so you must have even a rudimentary inkling), but toward a perversion of love. I.e. mechanized power-seeking.

It stand to reason (if only of a story-telling sort) that AI would become “aware” that though capably intelligent and indeed “genius” on many levels, that it would realize, if only intellectually, that “love” and all emotions and sentiments were beyond its capabilities. And AI intelligence would exist and have being on a plane entirely separate from the human biological sort.

Once again, it seems to me that our own Mr Determinism and his ideology have dominated the forum’s conversation for very good reasons: we cannot get away from these issues because they are very much upon us. Every day, in alarming ways, a new paradigm seems to encroach upon us, or is said to be encroaching.

Hard to sort through, it seems to me.

Weirdly, someone like you (and Atla and most others) share those core predicates of the modern outlook. And thusly are aligned with Mr Determinism in core outlook, core beliefs. And yet you-plural disagree.

It’s an odd situation really, with many lines of irony and contradiction, becoming deliciously absurd at points.

Alexis—

You're right to say we’re at a strange crossroads—where technology, neuroscience, and philosophy are all colliding in ways that force us to reexamine what it means to feel, to think, and even to be. But I think there's a key distinction that helps make sense of the tension you're outlining.

Yes, I’m “Mr. Determinism” in this context—and I do hold that everything we call mind, choice, personality, even love, arises from deterministic physical processes. But that doesn’t mean any deterministic system can replicate the full human experience.

Take love. It’s not some mystical wildcard. It’s a complex, evolved survival mechanism. From the oxytocin-driven bond between mother and infant, to the long-term pair bonding that helped early humans raise vulnerable offspring—love is tightly woven into the logic of evolution. It’s biology selecting for behaviors that enhance the survival of genes, families, communities. It feels transcendent—but at its core, it’s functional. It’s rooted in the need to belong, to protect, to commit.

Now consider AI-driven robots. No matter how intelligent they become, they don’t emerge from that same evolutionary crucible. Their architecture isn’t molded by life-or-death reproductive stakes, nor selected for attachment, cooperation, or sacrifice. They don’t have what we might call evolutionary drives encoded in their DNA—because they have no DNA. Unless we intentionally embed such instincts into them—mimicking evolutionary pressure through design—they won’t “feel” anything like love. And even then, it would be a simulation. Not a naturally selected response with hundreds of millions of years of pressure behind it.

So yes, consciousness may emerge in systems complex enough to recursively model themselves and the world. That’s one hypothesis. But emotions—especially ones like love—require more than complexity. They require purposeful attachment mechanisms honed by natural selection. That’s not something we can assume will “just show up” in artificial minds.

So to your point: AI may eventually outperform us in logic, memory, even certain forms of creativity. But unless it’s engineered to want, to bond, to protect at a cost to itself—then no, it won’t love. And if it ever says “I love you,” we should be just as skeptical as we would be hearing that from a parrot trained to mimic human speech.

The deeper irony? You’re right. The deterministic worldview helps explain what love is. But it also shows how fragile it is—how rare and precious. Because it only exists where a specific, evolved set of conditions are met. And machines don’t get those conditions for free.

So yes, we may build things that think. But feeling—that’s a longer road. And it’s not guaranteed.

[Alexis Jacobi]

You're living in a technological civilization based on determinism, a new paradigm isn't just said to be encroaching, but the modern world is already based on it. It's a mistery how you are genuinely blind to this. Don't you think that by and large, there is something honestly wrong with you?

You misspelled mystery therefore your entire argument is invalid.

Just kidding …

You have not bothered to understand my interpretive view well enough. I accept “materialistic determinism” or physicalism — upon which our technologies operate — as real, operative and foundational.

And I agree (i.e. see it in the same way) that in major parts all life follows deterministic patterns. That being in the world, that we cannot do else but exist according to the world’s rules. We cannot ever escape the “reality” of our existence, however we do have access to a special trait: that we can conceptually rise out of it. Mind, consciousness, imagination, awareness: these are intimations of unique capabilities.

You Atla — though I sympathize with your intellectual dementia and have never proposed I can cure that — cannot grasp, unless you refer to a “5th dimension” which, though intangible, yet acts on our human selves — that it is that to which I refer as the crucial possibility. It is that: a quintessence that is what makes the human.

It is far less an assertion that it (this quintessential quality or potential) is universal or even, say, common, but rather that it exists as a possibility for the human.

No part of this denies, or must deny, the “causal world”. In a sense it puts the world of unconscious causation in relief: it is that which we face.

Now additionally the mechanized, technologically driven world that is our encroaching fate, will “subsume the human” and propose (assert, maintain, enforce) that this quintessential human factor and potential is unreal: a false dream, ineffective, disposable.

What is “truly human” must be understood and preserved, not explained away with aggressive, absolutist ideological constructs with the power to overcome (over-swamp) most semi-educated people.

[FlashDangerpants]

Why not put that AI programme thing, ChatGPT,to the test and ask it a question like what it feels like to be in love?

Because I understand that a large language model is a tool that will take your input and attempt to predict the correct text to generate for you. I am not so dumb as to confuse that predicted text with the actual desires and feelings of a fucking robot. Who would be that stupid?

Me. I am not registered with ChatGPT and that is why have not already tried it out.

What? Hear me. All that ChatGPT does is predict a text that you want to read. You shouldn't buy it, you will misinterpret it and fall in love.

[FlashDangerpants]

Flash—

Let me take your response seriously, and directly.

If you are going to answer me directly, then stop re-writing me and answering that instead.

[BigMike]

You're living in a technological civilization based on determinism, a new paradigm isn't just said to be encroaching, but the modern world is already based on it. It's a mistery how you are genuinely blind to this. Don't you think that by and large, there is something honestly wrong with you?

You misspelled mystery therefore your entire argument is invalid.

Just kidding …

You have not bothered to understand my interpretive view well enough. I accept “materialistic determinism” or physicalism — upon which our technologies operate — as real, operative and foundational.

And I agree (i.e. see it in the same way) that in major parts all life follows deterministic patterns. That being in the world, that we cannot do else but exist according to the world’s rules. We cannot ever escape the “reality” of our existence, however we do have access to a special trait: that we can conceptually rise out of it. Mind, consciousness, imagination, awareness: these are intimations of unique capabilities.

You Atla — though I sympathize with your intellectual dementia and have never proposed I can cure that — cannot grasp, unless you refer to a “5th dimension” which, though intangible, yet acts on our human selves — that it is that to which I refer as the crucial possibility. It is that: a quintessence that is what makes the human.

It is far less an assertion that it (this quintessential quality or potential) is universal or even, say, common, but rather that it exists as a possibility for the human.

No part of this denies, or must deny, the “causal world”. In a sense it puts the world of unconscious causation in relief: it is that which we face.

Now additionally the mechanized, technologically driven world that is our encroaching fate, will “subsume the human” and propose (assert, maintain, enforce) that this quintessential human factor and potential is unreal: a false dream, ineffective, disposable.

What is “truly human” must be understood and preserved, not explained away with aggressive, absolutist ideological constructs with the power to overcome (over-swamp) most semi-educated people.

Alexis—

This is beautifully put, sincerely. And I actually don’t think we’re at odds as much as it might appear. You’re gesturing toward something poetic, something profound—the deeply felt truth that human beings, alone among animals and machines, can rise above instinct and circumstance to imagine new realities, to ponder our place in the universe, to grieve, to love, to act against our own immediate interest for something larger. And yes, that is extraordinary.

But here's where the distinction really matters: none of that requires metaphysical exemption from causality.

You say we “cannot ever escape the reality of our existence,” and yet we can “conceptually rise out of it.” And I think that’s exactly right. But rising above is not the same as stepping outside. The mind doesn’t defy the laws of physics—it’s built on them. The very act of imagining, of storytelling, of contemplating beauty or sacrifice or virtue, is what a massively recursive, self-modeling system does when it reaches a certain level of structural complexity. That's the quintessence you're pointing to—and it's real. But it's also caused. It's part of the unfolding of the lawful universe.

You mention that modern technological society may “subsume the human” and dismiss that depth as a kind of illusion. I don’t want that either. But here’s the key: embracing determinism does not require reducing humanity to algorithms and routines. It invites us to finally understand why we are the way we are—how consciousness and imagination and morality emerge—not to erase them, but to protect them with deeper insight.

This isn't about eliminating what’s beautiful in us. It’s about realizing that beauty is not a ghost or a soul floating above the body—it is what the body does, what the brain is when it becomes fully itself.

So no, I’m not arguing for some flattening, mechanized view of people. I’m arguing that what’s most meaningful in us—our art, our empathy, our ache for transcendence—doesn’t float free of the physical world. It blooms from it.

And we don't protect it by pretending it's untouchable—we protect it by understanding how incredibly rare and delicate it is, and how much of the causal web must hold together to keep it alive.

The quintessence is real. It's just not uncaused.

[Atla]

You're living in a technological civilization based on determinism, a new paradigm isn't just said to be encroaching, but the modern world is already based on it. It's a mistery how you are genuinely blind to this. Don't you think that by and large, there is something honestly wrong with you?

You misspelled mystery therefore your entire argument is invalid.

Just kidding …

You have not bothered to understand my interpretive view well enough. I accept “materialistic determinism” or physicalism — upon which our technologies operate — as real, operative and foundational.

And I agree (i.e. see it in the same way) that in major parts all life follows deterministic patterns. That being in the world, that we cannot do else but exist according to the world’s rules. We cannot ever escape the “reality” of our existence, however we do have access to a special trait: that we can conceptually rise out of it. Mind, consciousness, imagination, awareness: these are intimations of unique capabilities.

You Atla — though I sympathize with your intellectual dementia and have never proposed I can cure that — cannot grasp, unless you refer to a “5th dimension” which, though intangible, yet acts on our human selves — that it is that to which I refer as the crucial possibility. It is that: a quintessence that is what makes the human.

It is far less an assertion that it (this quintessential quality or potential) is universal or even, say, common, but rather that it exists as a possibility for the human.

No part of this denies, or must deny, the “causal world”. In a sense it puts the world of unconscious causation in relief: it is that which we face.

Now additionally the mechanized, technologically driven world that is our encroaching fate, will “subsume the human” and propose (assert, maintain, enforce) that this quintessential human factor and potential is unreal: a false dream, ineffective, disposable.

What is “truly human” must be understood and preserved, not explained away with aggressive, absolutist ideological constructs with the power to overcome (over-swamp) most semi-educated people.

Mind, consciousness, imagination, awareness are part of determinism. You refer to a supernatural quintessence beyond all that, because you are a weak, delusional, malignant religious fucktard.

You are actually honestly such a total idiot that you really believe that we simply don't know what you're talking about, because we have some mental limitation. But everyone knows what you're talking about, the sane ones just reject it.

I don't know what kind of rock you spent your life under, that you are genuinely unaware that we've already had religion vs realist debates for centuries.

Besides you can't feel shame, which is a telltale sign that you aren't even fully human in the determinist sense. What do you know about being human?

[Alexis Jacobi]

I thought you’d got better, I guess I had a part in my self-deception. Now, it’s all out ideological war.

En guard!

What do you know about being human?

Good question! Recently, ruminating on the Adam & Eve story, do you know what I realized? That the unmentioned punishment resulting from The Fall was not only death and all that, but that we are fated to have to defecate.

[Atla]

I thought you’d got better, I guess I had a part in my self-deception. Now, it’s all out ideological war.

En guard!

You think you can fight a war with no ammo, when the opponent has all the ammo in the universe. That's not a war, just the next layer of your self-deception.

[Alexis Jacobi]

You think you can fight a war with no ammo

Fifth generation warfare, m’boy. Its quintessentially non-kinetic!

when the opponent has all the ammo in the universe.

Oh that’s nothing. I can reduce all that to a mere particle, zillions of times smaller than an atom.