A "Transhumanist"?!

[Shining_Finger]

That seems to me to be different from simply wanting to believe in it. How would your choices be more limited if you didn't believe you had free will?

Personally I think that if he thinks he can believe something "because he wants to" he misunderstands how belief actually works.

Either he is convinced by the idea of "free will" or he isn't. Besides Contra-causal free will is logically incoherent and compatabilist free will is redundant and misleading.

He's probably confusing determinism with fatalism. He is just as open to all choices without a belief in free will, provided that he is not a fatalist.

I'm sure you agree, but it would be fascinating if you don't. Hope you don't mind me chipping in, I do this

I make all my choices on the basis that Free Will does exist, so it is kind of hard to actually implement the belief of free will not existing, which is exactly why I believe it exists despite evidence that it may not.

[Edwardo Piet]

I make all my choices on the basis that Free Will does exist, so it is kind of hard to actually implement the belief of free will not existing, which is exactly why I believe it exists despite evidence that it may not.

If you have no evidence for it existing how exactly do you believe it? Hoping it exists or behaving as if it does isn't the same as believing it.

[Edwardo Piet]

If I didn't believe in free will, that could fairly easily lead to a Rabbit Hole where I don't make the right choice because I don't think I can. 

Disbelieving in free will won't logically make you a fatalist.

[Amine]

You're welcome.

I can't be bothered with it either. I've got shit to do. I do think it could be worthwhile for training conscious attention though.

It's cool that he acknowledges how taboo it is. He's a supremely honest human being. To be honest in the secular sense that he uses the definition of "enlightened" I believe he is to an extent, in the sense that he's intellectually and consciously much more lucid than the vast majority of people.

I agree. I think letting go of free will is enlightening.

It's fascinating, although currently there are problems with it.

Massive respect to you for also recognizing this. I also know very few people who recognize the illogicality of aggregation. You are already one of my favorite forum users intellectually speaking. You're deep. I hope you'd make an awesome friend too.

Agreed. I'm familiar with the Repugnant Conclusion and I have also read that very same LessWrong article that you speak of.

I agree 100% with all of this.

It's not quite that simple, because he believes that, of course, illusions are still part of conscious experience... so qualia in one sense exists and another sense it doesn't. He's all about "In one sense yes, in another sense no.".

Anyway, you're truly epic to talk to and discuss with. You're deep. I fucking love it. I'd massively love to text chat with you on Skype about these deep concepts and topics.

For sure, glad to find similar and provocative minds! I've never really used Skype. Maybe just PM or something?

[...]Emily Ratajkowski[...]

Never heard of her... I googled her and her images please me very much. She's hot as fuck.

Haha yeah, she's my current go-to example of a ridiculously beautiful woman. I dunno if you ever saw the "Blurred Lines" music video, but she was the brunette from that. Protip: there is also a version where she is topless.

That seems to me to be different from simply wanting to believe in it. How would your choices be more limited if you didn't believe you had free will?

Personally I think that if he thinks he can believe something "because he wants to" he misunderstands how belief actually works.

Either he is convinced by the idea of "free will" or he isn't. Besides Contra-causal free will is logically incoherent and compatabilist free will is redundant and misleading.

He's probably confusing determinism with fatalism. He is just as open to all choices without a belief in free will, provided that he is not a fatalist.

I'm sure you agree, but it would be fascinating if you don't. Hope you don't mind me chipping in, I do this

Not at all.

I see what you are saying about the fatalism, though. A lot of people hear about determinism and immediately think, "well then I would just stay on the couch all day", not understanding that deterministically, they would not actually want to do that.

Also, you hear this "choose to believe it" argument from Christians a lot. Recently some woman kept telling me I could just choose to believe in Jesus. I could only insist that if I did that, I would be lying.

---

Welcome!

I am certainly a fellow fan of this elegant interpretation of QM. As a particle physicist however, I am a bit confused what you mean by reducibility to balls bouncing around or some such... explain!

Thanks!

My current understanding is that QM replaces billiard-ball-like particles (with individual identities) with the idea of amplitude distributions in configuration space, which are inextricably linked to one another. Which I guess would be why, for instance, the whole "worlds" "split" in MW.

[The Grand Nudger]

I make all my choices on the basis that Free Will does exist, so it is kind of hard to actually implement the belief of free will not existing, which is exactly why I believe it exists despite evidence that it may not.

Unlikely, unless you ask yourself the question "does free will exist" and answer.."yes, yes I think it does" after due consideration every time you pull up to the McDonald's window. I'd be willing to bet you make the vast majority of your decisions without a single thought to the notion of free will. A complete non-issue.

[Edwardo Piet]

The only sort of behavior that "free will" belief correlates with, is holding people more responsible than they are. Holding people ultimately and absolutely responsible when they aren't.

[The Grand Nudger]

I -just- noticed this is an intro thread...and I;m normally a stickler.  Disregard any of my previous comments.

Welcome aboard OP.

[Amine]

That seems to me to be different from simply wanting to believe in it. How would your choices be more limited if you didn't believe you had free will?

If I didn't believe in free will, that could fairly easily lead to a Rabbit Hole where I don't make the right choice because I don't think I can. 
Sure, the alternative is making bad choices to prove you have free will, so I avoid that line of thinking.

I do see what you're saying. Believing in determinism means acknowledging there are limitations. I don't try to do things that don't seem to be in my nature anymore, but maybe it would be better if I still did bang my head against that wall, in a sense. Honestly, though, I'd still have to think determinism has better consequences than believing you can do things you probably can't. We have to acknowledge the costs. The time I have saved in no longer attempting to do certain things has led me to further develop those things which are in my nature to do.

Specifically, I used to try to have a more active social life because I thought that was what should be. I kept on running into the problem of just not being interested in people, though. I never wanted to hang out. Eventually I just gave up and admitted that I was incapable of doing the same things as other people, and settled for staying home and doing what I always wanted, which is reading and writing about stuff. After so long of that, I feel I've in a sense transcended mediocrity which I would have been doomed to in all areas if I had continued trying to have much of a social life. I would have always been poor at that, and on top of that I would have missed out on the chance to develop what was really my talent. And it gets better still: once I developed my talent more, I began finding people in that particular area who I actually was interested in, thus giving me a social life that wasn't even a burden to keep.

My 2 cents on it anyway.

[Edwardo Piet]

I do see what you're saying. Believing in determinism means acknowledging there are limitations. I don't try to do things that don't seem to be in my nature anymore, but maybe it would be better if I still did bang my head against that wall, in a sense.

Actually I don't think determinism limits matters at all... even in the slightest, even in a way of being realistic about your options. It merely makes your view of the world more correct.

You are still just as able to take gambles and acknowledge multiple possibilities. Yes ultimately there's only one possible future, but no one knows what that future is.... I agree with DD on one point here, the phrase "If determinism is true then the future is inevitable" makes no sense because if determinism is FALSE then the future is inevitable, too. It's a tautologically vacuous concept that "the future is inevitable". There's going to be a future, that's inevitable, regardless of if it is determined. What is not inevitable is any specific future imagined in the sense that we really don't know which conceivable future is in fact determined and does in fact lie ahead of us.

[Amine]

I -just- noticed this is an intro thread...and I;m normally a stickler.  Disregard any of my previous comments.

Welcome aboard OP.

Oh it's fine. It's actually kinda what I wanted; my style. And thanks.