New Discovery

[Walker]

Someone asked for a 50 words version:

(Hand raises from the back row of the classroom, distant voice warbles up)
“Yes, Professor Knowledge. Walker here.”

First discovery: by divine law, everyone always does what they think is most satisfying to them. If we build an utopistic environment and completely stop blaming people, literally all crime will vanish (Golden Age).

When people find the most satisfaction in blaming, as Leftists do, then to stop blaming would only be an act of suppression rather than the spontaneous, genuine magnanimity that is characteristic of Peace of Mind (POM being the prize).

Second discovery: we see everything in real-time, Einstein sucks.

I once heard that small creatures actually perceive their surroundings in what we would call slow motion. This is how little song birds can fly through a tangle of branches at high speed without crashing. That would be an awesome superpower but it would require a lot of shrinkage. That sucking sound may have been Einstein sipping bitter tea through a sugar cube.

Third discovery: there is something after death.

Otherwise defies imagination, because neither one nor the zero that remains without oneness, can imagine nothing.

[Atla]

PEACEGIRL: Nobody is saying that the individual had no choice. Obviously, he had a choice, which is the whole point of contemplation, but once his choice was made, HE COULD NOT HAVE CHOSEN OTHERWISE. That doesn't mean beforehand, he couldn't have picked a different choice. Once again, the whole point going over options is part of the decision-making process.

The individual has no free will, because at the moment of choice the individual has free will, but once the choice is made, it's made.

Some people might see a fundamental contradiction here, but they are using the wrong definition of determinism.

[Atla]

Second discovery: we see everything in real-time, Einstein sucks.

I once heard that small creatures actually perceive their surroundings in what we would call slow motion. This is how little song birds can fly through a tangle of branches at high speed without crashing. That would be an awesome superpower but it would require a lot of shrinkage. That sucking sound may have been Einstein sipping bitter tea through a sugar cube.

The claim seems to be that we see everything in real-time in the universe, I guess even distant stuff like galaxies, bypassing the speed of light, there is no speed of light. Or something like that. Lessans refuted 100 years of physics and astronomy and biology, it's pretty impressive.

[Walker]

Salvation? This has nothing to do with religion.

The New Discovery ignores religion and says because ...

*

Does the following have anything to do with The New Discovery?

Everyone does what they must to support and affirm their self-concept, including the garbage man, therefore the greatest satisfaction is to affirm the self-concept, even if it makes one miserable on a day-to-day basis ... which btw, is why everything that everyone does is what had to be done ... Determinism. (Do those 51 words explain The New Discovery?)

No.

Matthew Chapter 7, KJV, is a statement of inevitable causation, and if the religious chapter has a relationship to The New Discovery, then that correlation may be A New Discovery.

[Atla]

Atla wrote: ↑Sun Sep 14, 2025 8:00 pm

I don't know what FDP meant by a tautology, I didn't see any, but I like how obsessed you became with him.

For the record, I disagree with the tautology thing, but unlike you I think I can articulate why. There was this:

"It is a 'constitutive' rule, or a principle that governs the very essence of mental states. It is not open to empirical rebuttal: it is a tautology, or principle that defines its subject-matter. Writing in a form on which we can focus, we have an a priori principle of interpretation (API):

• (API) It is analytic that creatures with beliefs, desires and other states of mind, behave in ways that (best) make sense (and not in ways that make no sense) given those states of mind.

The idea behind calling this a constitutive rule is that it tells us what it is to have beliefs and other states of mind. According to API, then, it is analytic that creatures conform to the normative order. A creature which appears not to do so is either a creature that we have misinterpreted, or a creature that has no mental states, but merely exhibits movements."

I think the 'will' is a very real mental structure in humans that probably CAN sometimes go against its own best satisfaction, there is just no reason to do so. I think seeing the 'will' as a rather real mental thing is typically part of folk psychology (at least where I live).

What Blackburn says that the above constitutive rule isn't open to empirical rebuttal, isn't really true. It's not open to empirical rebuttal with today's technology and especially not with the technology of the 50s, but not in principle. If we could monitor someone's brain/mind to a high enough degree, we could tell whether or not they can will their lesser satisfaction.

As I already said multiple times, this would neither prove nor disprove determinism or free will, when using sensible definitions for them. Proving free will empirically would mean imo that we can show that we can use our will to break the laws of physics, change the world around us like a Q could, even if just a little.

And again: in practice it doesn't matter if it's a tautology or not, because even if we can will our lesser satisfaction, no one wants to do that in practice. Maybe once in 10000 choices? Negligible.

So we could just as well throw out the first chapter. We can also throw out the stupid time asymmetry and this "the past doesn't exist" bs. The main claim of the book is in the second chapter: that no-blame will trigger the conscience of even the criminals in an utopistic world. And that's not just wrong but dangerous.

Ps. the tautology thing is also a question of personality types. In some types the 'will' should be more merged with other cognitive functions than in other types. There could be many psychological factors here.

[peacegirl]

FlashDangerpants: Sort of. Peacegirl's theory attempts to do two things at once in a clumsy manoeuvre to "prove" determinism. On the one hand it tries to discover that there is some sort of "direction of life" (don't overthink that, it is misleading) which forces us to choose that which brings us greatest satisfaction. And then she offers as a proof that this is true her test - seen once more in the most recent of her postings - "If will was free, we could choose what gives us less satisfaction when something offering us greater satisfaction was available".

PEACEGIRL: There IS absolute direction in life and it's called GREATER SATISFACTION.

FD: Ranged against that, I pointed out that the usual assumption in all the works of philosophy out there is the common-sense view of human psychology. Normally I would refer to it as BDM (belief desire motivation), but I opted to provide a quote from Simon Blackburn, who calls it the API (a priori principle of interpretation) but it's exactly the same thing, namely folk-psychology:
Simon Blackburn - Ruling Passions wrote: ↑Wed Aug 27, 2025 4:19 pm
"It is a 'constitutive' rule, or a principle that governs the very essence of mental states. It is not open to empirical rebuttal: it is a tautology, or principle that defines its subject-matter. Writing in a form on which we can focus, we have an a priori principle of interpretation (API):
(API) It is analytic that creatures with beliefs, desires and other states of mind, behave in ways that (best) make sense (and not in ways that make no sense) given those states of mind.

The idea behind calling this a constitutive rule is that it tells us what it is to have beliefs and other states of mind. According to API, then, it is analytic that creatures conform to the normative order. A creature which appears not to do so is either a creature that we have misinterpreted, or a creature that has no mental states, but merely exhibits movements."

PEACEGIRL: But this does not only apply to humans. Every creature moves in a particular direction, which is life. Animals don't think the way humans do where their beliefs, desires, and motivations are based on thought. They act on instinct. Therefore, moving away from dissatisfaction to greater satisfaction is not just a constitutive rule. It goes beyond being a rule. It is a NATURAL LAW.

FD: If it is analytic and known in advance that we will be required to interpret the choices made by any thinking being as the result of their motivations to act based on their desires, and beliefs about what will fulfil best their desires.... it is redundant to discover that. It is a tautology already true by definition that we are going to make the actions fit the rule. If Atla lends money against his own better judgment to somebody he doesn't really want to lend money to, we're actually going to probably say that in the moment he evaluated the situation one way and that in a later moment he re-evaluated with regret. If not that, then we will say something else to bridge the gap. All else fails, his actions were caused by some sort of mild brain fart.

PEACEGIRL: You can call it a rule if you want. Lessans used the term "greater satisfaction" because this is something we do every single second, not just when making decisions. We don't have to be thinking about choosing one thing over another. We just move off of the spot we are on, which becomes dissatisfying, or we would never move. This push to move is life.

FD: So the big important principle that everything is supposed to hang off of is worthless if it only applies to all rational thinking beings, as in our case it is already analytic and a priori unless one is specifically dismissing folk-psychology, which is something many hard determinists would do, but not peacegirl. The talk of "direction of life" leads one to suppose my criticism there is bunk because she is surely applying this principle to all life, including non-thinking and non-rational life... but I asked that and she says no, it's just about humans. So that's really the end of the greatest satisfaction thing, it adds nothing at all to the already obvious tautology.

PEACEGIRL: This has nothing to do with rational beings. An irrational being may not be able to think things through with clarity, but this doesn't change THE DIRECTION. He may move toward doing something stupid because he thinks he can fly, but he is not disobeying this natural law if he then decides to jump off a building. He would be basing his decision on a false belief which is motivating him to do something that could kill him, but he would still be moving in the direction of greater satisfaction.

FD: This also undermines her "proof" or "test" or whatever it is: "If will was free, we could choose what gives us less satisfaction when something offering us greater satisfaction was available". If it is a priori that we can't then no, that proof is garbage, the test is broken. Free will is completely compatible with all our actions being guided by our best understanding of our desires at the given moment and what3ever we choose to do will be automatically interpreted as the cumulative result of our preferences... duh.

PEACEGIRL: Being guided by our preferences doesn't give us the free will to choose otherwise. That IS the definition of free will and it's nonexistent.

FD: But I don't find peacegirl really capable of this conversation. It was an interesting exercise to see if we could make progress, but it was predictable that we couldn't.

PEACEGIRL: Bull.

[FlashDangerpants]

Ho-hum. peacegirl has forgotten that limited all this to human psychology to avoid the anthropomorphism problem she otherwise faced. This was covered here already...

You are talking about what you want on behalf of your argument. I am not asking that. I am asking what aspect of logic compels us to see things int he way that suits you here? It is again gratuitous. I see no reason to describe an unthinking object as pursuing satisfaction. Why do I need to anthropomorphise a daisy just to help your argument? Why would I do that, or more importantly, why would I be mistaken not to attach human emotional drivers to brainless plants? There is no persuasive power to this argument, it's mystical.

He was only trying to distinguish between dead things and live things, and live things work in ways that dead things don't. As long as we are alive, we move, and in that movement, we are only able to choose what offers us greater satisfaction than what the present position offers, or we would not move at all because we would be satisfied. This is what he meant by "the movement of life itself." He made a discovery regarding human relations. It really isn't necessary to bring up daisies in his defense.

Now she reverses course in an effort to get out of the tautology problem. I saw this coming ages ago, I have already described the dilemma. Either option fails.

This is not challenging.

[Belinda]

FlashDangerpants: Sort of. Peacegirl's theory attempts to do two things at once in a clumsy manoeuvre to "prove" determinism. On the one hand it tries to discover that there is some sort of "direction of life" (don't overthink that, it is misleading) which forces us to choose that which brings us greatest satisfaction. And then she offers as a proof that this is true her test - seen once more in the most recent of her postings - "If will was free, we could choose what gives us less satisfaction when something offering us greater satisfaction was available".

PEACEGIRL: There IS absolute direction in life and it's called GREATER SATISFACTION.

FD: Ranged against that, I pointed out that the usual assumption in all the works of philosophy out there is the common-sense view of human psychology. Normally I would refer to it as BDM (belief desire motivation), but I opted to provide a quote from Simon Blackburn, who calls it the API (a priori principle of interpretation) but it's exactly the same thing, namely folk-psychology:
Simon Blackburn - Ruling Passions wrote: ↑Wed Aug 27, 2025 4:19 pm
"It is a 'constitutive' rule, or a principle that governs the very essence of mental states. It is not open to empirical rebuttal: it is a tautology, or principle that defines its subject-matter. Writing in a form on which we can focus, we have an a priori principle of interpretation (API):
(API) It is analytic that creatures with beliefs, desires and other states of mind, behave in ways that (best) make sense (and not in ways that make no sense) given those states of mind.

The idea behind calling this a constitutive rule is that it tells us what it is to have beliefs and other states of mind. According to API, then, it is analytic that creatures conform to the normative order. A creature which appears not to do so is either a creature that we have misinterpreted, or a creature that has no mental states, but merely exhibits movements."

PEACEGIRL: But this does not only apply to humans. Every creature moves in a particular direction, which is life. Animals don't think the way humans do where their beliefs, desires, and motivations are based on thought. They act on instinct. Therefore, moving away from dissatisfaction to greater satisfaction is not just a constitutive rule. It goes beyond being a rule. It is a NATURAL LAW.

FD: If it is analytic and known in advance that we will be required to interpret the choices made by any thinking being as the result of their motivations to act based on their desires, and beliefs about what will fulfil best their desires.... it is redundant to discover that. It is a tautology already true by definition that we are going to make the actions fit the rule. If Atla lends money against his own better judgment to somebody he doesn't really want to lend money to, we're actually going to probably say that in the moment he evaluated the situation one way and that in a later moment he re-evaluated with regret. If not that, then we will say something else to bridge the gap. All else fails, his actions were caused by some sort of mild brain fart.

PEACEGIRL: You can call it a rule if you want. Lessans used the term "greater satisfaction" because this is something we do every single second, not just when making decisions. We don't have to be thinking about choosing one thing over another. We just move off of the spot we are on, which becomes dissatisfying, or we would never move. This push to move is life.

FD: So the big important principle that everything is supposed to hang off of is worthless if it only applies to all rational thinking beings, as in our case it is already analytic and a priori unless one is specifically dismissing folk-psychology, which is something many hard determinists would do, but not peacegirl. The talk of "direction of life" leads one to suppose my criticism there is bunk because she is surely applying this principle to all life, including non-thinking and non-rational life... but I asked that and she says no, it's just about humans. So that's really the end of the greatest satisfaction thing, it adds nothing at all to the already obvious tautology.

PEACEGIRL: This has nothing to do with rational beings. An irrational being may not be able to think things through with clarity, but this doesn't change THE DIRECTION. He may move toward doing something stupid because he thinks he can fly, but he is not disobeying this natural law if he then decides to jump off a building. He would be basing his decision on a false belief which is motivating him to do something that could kill him, but he would still be moving in the direction of greater satisfaction.

FD: This also undermines her "proof" or "test" or whatever it is: "If will was free, we could choose what gives us less satisfaction when something offering us greater satisfaction was available". If it is a priori that we can't then no, that proof is garbage, the test is broken. Free will is completely compatible with all our actions being guided by our best understanding of our desires at the given moment and what3ever we choose to do will be automatically interpreted as the cumulative result of our preferences... duh.

PEACEGIRL: Being guided by our preferences doesn't give us the free will to choose otherwise. That IS the definition of free will and it's nonexistent.

FD: But I don't find peacegirl really capable of this conversation. It was an interesting exercise to see if we could make progress, but it was predictable that we couldn't.

PEACEGIRL: Bull.

Greater satisfaction( see Peacegirl, above) is obtained from progressing along a given trajectory and also from choosing alternative trajectories. All choices are caused by causal chains through time, present causal circumstances, and nomic connections. Therefore it is not the case there is "absolute direction in life".

[peacegirl]

Someone asked for a 50 words version:

(Hand raises from the back row of the classroom, distant voice warbles up)
“Yes, Professor Knowledge. Walker here.”

First discovery: by divine law, everyone always does what they think is most satisfying to them. If we build an utopistic environment and completely stop blaming people, literally all crime will vanish (Golden Age).

THAT IS NOT WHAT HE SAID WALKER. HE WAS ADAMANT ABOUT THAT. STOP MISUNDERSTANDING WHAT YOU NEVER READ. JESUS CHRIST!!

Therefore, it should be clear that the corollary, Thou Shall Not Blame, does not mean that you should suddenly stop blaming because you have discovered that man’s will is not free. It only means at this point that we are going to follow it, to extend it, to see exactly where it takes us — something that investigators like Durant have never done because the implications prevented them from opening the door beyond the vestibule. The fact that man’s will is not free only means that he is compelled to move in the direction of greater satisfaction. If you punch me, I might get greater satisfaction in punching you back. However, once man understands what it means that his will is not free, this desire to punch me is prevented by your realization that I will never blame you for hurting me. Until this knowledge is understood, we will be compelled to continue living in the world of free will; otherwise, we would only make matters worse for ourselves.

When people find the most satisfaction in blaming, as Leftists do, then to stop blaming would only be an act of suppression rather than the spontaneous, genuine magnanimity that is characteristic of Peace of Mind (POM being the prize).

YOU ARE JUMPING AHEAD IN YOUR MIND AND MAKING INACCURATE ASSUMPTIONS. I CAN'T EVEN GO THERE WITH YOU BECAUSE YOUR THOUGHTS ARE BASED ON WHAT GOES ON IN THIS WORLD, NOT WHAT WOULD OCCUR IN A WORLD WHERE POLITICS DON'T EXIST. CAN YOU HEAR WHAT I'M SAYING?

Second discovery: we see everything in real-time, Einstein sucks.

YOU ARE JUST MIMICKING WHAT YOU'VE BEEN TAUGHT. HE HAD HIS REASONS BASED ON HIS OBSERVATIONS, AND IF HE IS RIGHT, TRUTH WILL WIN.

I once heard that small creatures actually perceive their surroundings in what we would call slow motion. This is how little song birds can fly through a tangle of branches at high speed without crashing. That would be an awesome superpower but it would require a lot of shrinkage. That sucking sound may have been Einstein sipping bitter tea through a sugar cube.

NOTHING HE CLAIMED VIOLATES GRAVITY OR ANY PHYSICAL LAWS. TO USE EINSTEIN AS PROOF THAT HE WAS WRONG IS MISSING WHAT SCIENCE IS ALL ABOUT. IT IS NOT ABOUT A PERSON WHO COULD NEVER MAKE A MISTAKE OR DO WRONG. IT IS ABOUT PROOF. ISN'T THAT WHAT SCIENCE IS ALL ABOUT? YOU'VE GOT IT ALL WRONG. HOW IRONIC.

Third discovery: there is something after death.

Otherwise defies imagination, because neither one nor the zero that remains without oneness, can imagine nothing.

I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT. YOU HAVE NO UNDERSTANDING ABOUT HIS DISCOVERY ON DEATH; YOU'RE JUST GUESSING, SO PLEASE DON'T MAKE A FOOL OF YOURSELF!

[peacegirl]

The New Discovery ignores religion and says because ...

*

Does the following have anything to do with The New Discovery?

Everyone does what they must to support and affirm their self-concept, including the garbage man, therefore the greatest satisfaction is to affirm the self-concept, even if it makes one miserable on a day-to-day basis ... which btw, is why everything that everyone does is what had to be done ... Determinism. (Do those 51 words explain The New Discovery?)

No.

Matthew Chapter 7, KJV, is a statement of inevitable causation, and if the religious chapter has a relationship to The New Discovery, then that correlation may be A New Discovery.

INSTEAD OF READING WHAT HE WROTE, YOU CHOOSE TO GUESS WHAT HE WROTE, AND YOU'RE WRONG AGAIN. INEVITABLE CAUSATION IS THE PROBLEM WITH THE DEFINITION BECAUSE DETERMINISM CANNOT CAUSE US TO DO ANYTHING, AS IF WE ARE AUTOMATONS.

[Walker]

I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT. YOU HAVE NO UNDERSTANDING ABOUT HIS DISCOVERY ON DEATH; YOU'RE JUST GUESSING, SO PLEASE DON'T MAKE A FOOL OF YOURSELF!

Of course I realize that you and Atla may not agree with the meaning of what I have not read.

That's rather obvious.

However, Atla provided a quick, easy-to-respond-to summary, which is what I was responding to.

If you offer your version then I may be inspired to not only respond to that, but read further. However, after a turning point I seem to have lost the need to read much more than how-to instructions for mechanical devices, although there was a time when I was a real page turner.



May I ask, why should I read what you suggest? Surely, it can't be to only stop invective and seek approval.

[Walker]

INEVITABLE CAUSATION IS THE PROBLEM WITH THE DEFINITION BECAUSE DETERMINISM CANNOT CAUSE US TO DO ANYTHING, AS IF WE ARE AUTOMATONS.

That means that determinism is just a description of what naturally has to happen. That makes sense, since everything that everyone does is what they must do.

[peacegirl]

Ho-hum. peacegirl has forgotten that limited all this to human psychology to avoid the anthropomorphism problem she otherwise faced. This was covered here already...

The term "greater satisfaction" is not just limited to human psychology and the tautology that you think destroys his proof. Although animals don't think in terms of satisfaction, they are subject to the law because they move in one direction ONLY. They don't choose in the human sense. They just do what they do by moving from one moment to another when the urge (or whatever you want to call it) pushes them to move. When a bird sits on a branch, it flies off the branch then that urge hits them. This is not an anthropomorphism problem. I am giving them human characteristics that they don't have.

You are talking about what you want on behalf of your argument. I am not asking that. I am asking what aspect of logic compels us to see things int he way that suits you here? It is again gratuitous. I see no reason to describe an unthinking object as pursuing satisfaction. Why do I need to anthropomorphise a daisy just to help your argument? Why would I do that, or more importantly, why would I be mistaken not to attach human emotional drivers to brainless plants? There is no persuasive power to this argument, it's mystical.

Daisies do what daisies do. You are now making a joke out of this. All of life does what it is instructed to do by its DNA. This has nothing to do with the soundness of his proof that we cannot move against our nature, which is always and ever moving toward satisfaction from a dissatisfying position, but what is good for you may not be good for someone else.

“Just because some differences are so obviously superior in value where you are concerned that no hesitation is required to decide which is preferable, while other differences need a more careful consideration, does not change the direction of life which always moves towards greater satisfaction than what the present position offers. You must bear in mind that what one person judges good or bad for himself doesn’t make it so for others, especially when it is remembered that a juxtaposition of differences in each case presents alternatives that affect choice.” [/i]

He was only trying to distinguish between dead things and live things, and live things work in ways that dead things don't. As long as we are alive, we move, and in that movement, we are only able to choose what offers us greater satisfaction than what the present position offers, or we would not move at all because we would be satisfied. This is what he meant by "the movement of life itself." He made a discovery regarding human relations. It really isn't necessary to bring up daisies in his defense.

Now she reverses course in an effort to get out of the tautology problem. I saw this coming ages ago, I have already described the dilemma. Either option fails.

This is not challenging.

I'm not trying to get out of anything. The issue of greater satisfaction is much broader than choosing what we desire or what we are motivated by. I explained that we don't have to have a belief in order to scratch an itch or to stretch after sitting for too long. It's not just about making decisions based on the pros and cons, although this proves that any alternative other than the one chosen is just a realistic mirage that could never have been chosen because comparing meaningful differences is the compulsion that desire is forced to take. That is why evil will necessarily come to an end because it would impossible to choose evil as an alternative to good when evil would be considered the worst possible choice. There is no free will in this choice whatsoever.

[peacegirl]

INEVITABLE CAUSATION IS THE PROBLEM WITH THE DEFINITION BECAUSE DETERMINISM CANNOT CAUSE US TO DO ANYTHING, AS IF WE ARE AUTOMATONS.

That means that determinism is just a description of what naturally has to happen. That makes sense, since everything that everyone does is what they must do.

That is true, but we can change the environment to create a paradigm shift in what people choose --- in the direction of what gives them greater satisfaction. If free will were true, we couldn't change the trajectory of human conduct no matter what we did because a person could choose to hurt others in spite of the environmental conditions that prevail, but that's entirely false.

[FlashDangerpants]

That's all a complete mess. Underlying all the other problems with the book in question there is it's lack of actual coherence and consistency. None of the arguments know what sort of logic they are composed of, if they are composed of any at all, mostly it's not even argument, just assertions backed up only by incomprehension that they might not be both true and important.

As appropriate, or at random, this greatest satisfaction thing has sometimes been nothing but "a discovery regarding human relations", sometimes it describes generic animal instinct, and then other times it is "the direction of life". It's none of these things when you pin it down, but all of them when the author wants to exaggerate.

But still there is no provided rationale. No argument. Nothing that shows that it is erroneous not to concede this point. Just peacegirl's faith in her book, or her desire to sell it, who really cares?

There's no premises, no conclusions, it's not philosophical but it's philosophy and one day all the philosophers will teach it. The confusion is never ending. The demonstration cannot be located or described, apparently it claims to be science but cannot be falsified, and maths, but needs no mathematical reasoning, and all this indescribable shit is of course "undeniable" but good luck finding out the actual details of the thing that you are unable to deny.

Complete shambles.