Life

[Gabber-Baby]

Yep. Lets have a good ol' debate on life.

Do you believe in fate and that everything happens for a reason? Or do we have set paths that we chose to follow? Or is life just life? We're born, we live, we die.

I personally believe in fate and that everyone has a "destiny" so to speak. Everything happens for a reason, whether it be for good or bad, either way everything we do has some kind of impact on our lives which takes us down a route based on decisions we've made.

Me and my boyfriend always have this argument. So discuss :)

[Shiyiya]

I don't believe that things are decided beforehand. I believe in free will.

How do you debate this though, because what kind of evidence can one put in in support of either viewpoint?

[gembird]

I think this life is all we have, so we might as well make the most of it. I don't believe in fate really, but I do agree that our lives go down different routes depending on the decisions we've made in the past.

I've thought about this sort of thing for quite a while now, and even now I'm not entirely sure where I stand. I'd like to say I'm someone who takes every day as it comes, but I worry too much. I am getting better since my uncle died suddenly- I've started to think about how anything could happen and started living for now a bit more.

I also think that everything we do has an impact on someone else's life as well as our own. Kind of like karma or something, I dunno, but my reasoning is that if you go round being mean to other people, sooner or later they're going to get their own back!

[Gabber-Baby]

Yeah Karma, that's another thing i really do believe in. I always have done but it made me laugh when my mate reversed her car into another car and left a huge dent in their bumper, she drove off and didnt say anything...a week later she drove into the back of someone and wrote her car off.

I think that's a pretty good example of karma :D

[Baaapz]

This idea really bugs me sometimes. The idea that i may not have full control over my actions, and that there is no way i can know for sure. Sometimes when im alone i try to "trick" fate by suddenly jumping off to the right, but then i realise that fate may have made me do this to prevent whatever may happen.

Worse than this is the idea that if someone steps out infront of me and delays me for 20 seconds my whole life has been altered. Who knows what would have happened if they hadnt done that, maybe id go in the shop and actually managed to get the last lucazade original, resulting in me not having the 50p i needed when i went to pay for my car parking. Which would have meant a walk to a cash point and a walk back, risking both death and success with every step i take, a car could hit me, a pang of inspiration might take over and id write the next best novel to hit the shops. All of this was avoided because this woman go in my way, and i went into the shop where there was no lucazade, which meant i could pay my car ticket, which meant i could drive home straight away.

But again, me being able to drive home means someone else has been delayed by the traffic lights, where i went through and they didnt. Which means whoever they're going to meet has been changed and the whole thing just goes on.


It cant be random, it just seems too perfect. And i'd surly be dead if it was random.

[sircheese]

Personally i think that we are born with a certain destiny/fate, however this fate is warped and twisted by the decisions we make during our life. i like to think of it as a river, and the decisions we make causes the river to branch of onto another path.

i also believe strongly in karma , as in my frame of mind it seems to make a lot of sense

mind that's just my opinion :)

[Darkscull]

It cant be random, it just seems too perfect. And i'd surly be dead if it was random.

remember, there can only be one way that things actually happen, even if the possibilities are endless.
So of course everything comes together to cause things to happen the way they do, because if they did something different they would come together to cause things to happen in that way.

I can never put it in very good words, but essentially:
whatever the situation is, things have happened in the past to cause everything to be in that situation.
This means that it always seems amazing and intended that things happen the way they do, even though there may not have been anything in particular that caused that version of events to happen rather than another.

So it could quite easily be random, or it could not. we have no way of actually telling, even though our first impressions might say that it wasn't random.


That shouldn't be anything profound, and has been first principles of philosophical thought for ages (literally), and I certainly worked it out when I first started thinking of these things, but I forget how other people may not realise it.

This is just explaining how possibly random events can be seen to not be, not really saying anything about my views of life, and whether I think it's random or not, that will be another post.

[Baaapz]

Oh yeah i fully agree with you, i generally dont "buy into" fate as such. But sometimes when I think about it in such detail, my whole mind changes, i guess its based on my mood.

If im positive (like now) i guess i view it more as HOW can so many marvelous things occur all at one point in time, as in things that i can barely think about- finding love and keeping it "fresh" for 50 or more years, which could never have happened if the bus wasn't running late when one of their parents was pregnant. The sheer randomness life has in comparison to the way it works out leaves me completely exhausted trying to make sense of it.

But then when im feeling nagative, like i normally am and am thinking rationally (like i normally do :P) I can view it as it is most likely to be a series of random events.

I guess if im honest with myself i love the idea of fate, but could never actually belive it. In the same way that id love to be able to have faith in a religion, but cannot bring myself to believe something I dont already have faith in. Someone telling me fate was real is the same as someone telling me black is gold, my whole perspective would have to change, but id love it. I love the idea of everything that is blac to become shiny, and althogh its not true/never going to happen, i damn well wish it would.

[Socks]

I don't really believe in fate, or the concept of "predestination". It seems that anyone in society can go towards a different path, or destiny, if they really wanted to. It's their choice.

[Darkscull]

@baaapz: Methinks you'd be better off thinking of all the future possibilities rather than the alternate things that could've happened. less depressing :)

Anyway, I have the exact opposite attitude to you because I love the fact that pretty much anything's possible, and I marvel at how the whole of everything is a mass of possibilities and choices all funneled into a single point of time, and how they stretch ahead.
But then I'm a scientist/philosopher (although only actually studying physics), so that attitude helps :)

Also, although it's simpler to put it in terms of 'fate' or 'randomness', even without fate, life if not truly random because of us.
whatever the root of our consciousness may be, it cannot be denied that it is something more than just the physical processes involved (even though it may arise solely from them, much like a computer running windows is more than just a bundle of chips with electricity flowing through them), and we can make real choices that affect reality (even if fate makes our choices pre-determined, it was still those choices that resulted in certain things happening).

[katt]

I believe in fate.

I think everything that happened in the past is responsible for setting everyone on the track they are on now. It just keeps snowballing. And each person reacts to things a certain way because of their personalities/situation/etc.

I think that we do have free will but our free will is limited to a specific path by what we are like and the place we are in; and all of that was set in motion by other people throughout history (both present and past) on similar paths of so called 'free' will

if you got up one morning and decided to turn towards a completely new direction who could say that it free will trumping fate instead of fate bending the will to its own ends

So i suppose i believe in a fate that is very much dependant on the person making their own choices based on a reaction to the world

[Darkscull]

interesting definition of fate, katt.

I would say your description of your ideas is the opposite of fate, just using the word 'fate' to describe the single path that our universe travels down in actuality (disregarding possible 'real' alternate realities from that actuality) for some reason.

[katt]

like a very complex and large computer program running itself out; in which the end result was written (by the nature of the program itself) from the very start?

I believe in god and i believe god knows what will happen in the future; at least to a certain extent.

[Darkscull]

like a very complex and large computer program running itself out; in which the end result was written (by the nature of the program itself) from the very start?

I believe in god and i believe god knows what will happen in the future; at least to a certain extent.

:love:

at least on the surface, that does sound a lot like my ideas on life, the universe and everything. The problem is, there are many possible directions in which to take the same analogy.

I've never been able to explain this very well...

The way I see it, God is the equivalent of the computer and operating system and such, and reality is a program running on that computer with the various laws of physics and everything, and also our consciousness/will/whatever controlling ourselves, part of the program but independent of it (if that makes sense).

obviously, it's not a direct analogy, and is only useful to show the nature of the relationships.

The program of reality would not actually need to be ran through in realtime (as it were) for the results to be found, in fact, it makes sense that time itself is just an aspect of the program, and has no meaning for God. We, as part of the program, experience events happening one after the other because of the causal nature of the program (reality), even though they can not be said to be happening in any absolute sense.

So in that scenario, God would know everything, literally everything. However that would not remove free will, because we are fully conscious beings capable of making choices, and although those choices are all worked out at the time everything is conceived in the mind of God, it is still us that made them.

the only times I've tried explaining that to people have either been with extra care to try and explain things from first principles (which usually fails), or have been while drunk (which I think usually fails). This time I don't really care whether anyone understands it or not, but still have all my wits about me trying to explain it. Seems like a happy medium really :)



PS. I never thought I'd be so happy to read something you've written, katt. :p
It may be that you weren't meaning anything like what I've been saying, but it seemed enough like it to set me off, which is what usually happens to make me confuse people when drunk. Oh well.


edit: just to clarify something: Although these ideas seem to imply a Deist concept of God or the non-religious 'God' of Einstein and Stephen Hawking, that doesn't necessarily need to be the case. It's certainly not my concept of God.

[katt]

:

The program of reality would not actually need to be ran through in realtime (as it were) for the results to be found, in fact, it makes sense that time itself is just an aspect of the program,

I was going to add earlier (but i couldnt come up with the word 'realtime' that you used) that god would be the only one with a mind (or whatever god has) big enough to take everything into account to predict things. And he could take a look at everything in the universe at a particular time and would be able to account for the path of each atom in the future; because his mind is that complex and intelligent and he wrote the laws of the program: the physics and the DNA that codes our minds.

Its hard to imagine anything with that sort of processing power but i believe god has it.

So in that scenario, God would know everything, literally everything. However that would not remove free will, because we are fully conscious beings capable of making choices, and although those choices are all worked out at the time everything is conceived in the mind of God, it is still us that made them.

god would be using our 'free will' to his advantage; of course we are just part of god's 'program'.

it makes me happy to think of it like this because our free will and choices are still important in the scheme of things. we are not just robots acting things out but beings of choice who react to things the way we want (but in a predictable way)

,
It may be that you weren't meaning anything like what I've been saying, but it seemed enough like it to set me off, which is what usually happens to make me confuse people when drunk. Oh well.

no that is pretty much what i think too. It makes alot of sense to me because i believe god already knows the 'end'

[Darkscull]

well I think that although we do seem to be going in the same sort of direction, I didn't quite manage to get the full picture of my ideas across. That's lack of good explanation at my end though.

I was going to add earlier (but i couldnt come up with the word 'realtime' that you used) that god would be the only one with a mind (or whatever god has) big enough to take everything into account to predict things. And he could take a look at everything in the universe at a particular time and would be able to account for the path of each atom in the future; because his mind is that complex and intelligent and he wrote the laws of the program: the physics and the DNA that codes our minds.

Its hard to imagine anything with that sort of processing power but i believe god has it.

this is the sort of thing I mean, but not quite. I don't know at the moment how to explain the difference except to say something about taking it one level further so that it's not God studying the universe or anything, but rather the universe being a part of God. that doesn't explain it fully though.

god would be using our 'free will' to his advantage; of course we are just part of god's 'program'.

Well I like to think it's more than that, and that we do actually have full free will, and that God doesn't directly interfere with it, just with little nudges occasionally (if that).
It's my opinion that God doesn't have a particular plan or programme* in mind that he made the universe to follow (except for broad things about how long, the starting points, etc.), and that except for showing the way sometimes, he leaves it up to us to make the decisions that we make with complete freedom. Of course, he would know how things would turn out, but he wouldn't have determined them in as absolute way as he could, as it were.
Thats more an interpretation of the specifics of the concept rather than a difference in the ideas though.

It makes alot of sense to me because i believe god already knows the 'end'

It was actually this bit that shows most clearly that despite the similarities in appearance and end result, there are core differences between our ideas. I can't explain exactly how or why, but saying that God already knows the end doesn't really mesh with the concepts behind my ideas.




*note the difference in spelling. I know this spelling it a british one, but it isn't necessarily the same as the american one since this spelling is for a specific usage while the american 'program' is used in every situation.
this programme means programme of events (and such) rather than computer program. I wasn't sure but when you said "God's 'program'" it seemed to me you also meant this usage in a way.

[katt]

this is the sort of thing I mean, but not quite. I don't know at the moment how to explain the difference except to say something about taking it one level further so that it's not God studying the universe or anything, but rather the universe being a part of God. that doesn't explain it fully though.



I think god is distinctly separate from the universe. I consider him 'part of the universe' only as far as my belief that he made the rules which govern it.

I don't know how anything could be separate from the universe but i believe god is above it and made it only so we could have some concrete basis for being able to get the slightest grasp of his true nature.



Well I like to think it's more than that, and that we do actually have full free will, and that God doesn't directly interfere with it, just with little nudges occasionally (if that).

Well I think we have full free will too; only that god is able to predict it like clockwork.

If there was a hypothetical situation which someone you were very close to was presented with, the chances are you could correctly predict how they would react (if it were a real situation) just by knowing their personality and ways of dealing with things.

I think it is kinda of like that with God and humans.

I do believe that there are genuinely bad people and it is not god's fault (i hate the idea that no free will means that evil people are no worse than good people because they were born to have that fate of being evil). I think they make the bad choices separate of god and against him; however he can see it coming.

[captain canuck]

life, the universe and everything. ...The answer is 42. ^_^

[maxxy_p]

I do believe that there are genuinely bad people and it is not god's fault (i hate the idea that no free will means that evil people are no worse than good people because they were born to have that fate of being evil). I think they make the bad choices separate of god and against him; however he can see it coming.But God made these people; he created the universe in such a way that these people would come into being and cause harm to others. And he knew that was what he was doing. And he still did it. Where is the free will beyond what God has created?

[Gabber-Baby]

This is leaning too much towards God :p And God is something i chose not to believe in. Although i do believe in life after death and "guardian angels" so i dont really know where my beliefs actually stand.

[Svelter]

I went to see a gypsy fortune teller in May and was told that I would live a long time and become stronger as I got older, so I wouldn't become an old coffin dodger, wanting to die in my old age, that I would do a lot of travelling in my life and journey overseas a lot, returning with much more physical and emotional wealth and that I would have three children, although I'm not entirely sure if she told me I would get married. The chiromance also told me that an ex-girlfriend would come back into contact with me for the better, which was also the 'wish' I was granted.

Now, I only went for a laugh and for something to talk about so, although I'm open-minded about everything, I was cynical about it. The strange thing is that it's all come true so far, and more seems to be happening. My ex called me out of the blue, after ignoring me for weeks and it was for the best, because it helped me see that she was an awful bitch so that I could totally cut her out of my life. I started to actually enjoy holidays, which I used to almost hate in a near phobic degree, and I had a foreign girlfriend for a brief period of time, who I might be going abroad to see in the Summer and check out the universities. I also became a lot more focused and started writing out my problems so I could fix them, and normal life is much better now than it possibly ever has been.

I'm not saying this is fate or that the gypsy was correct, I just think that maybe it was a self-fulfilling prophecy. For example, my friend was told that his daughter would become a brilliant musician, so he might end up persuading her to take up music at a young age and cause it.

I'm going to see one again this year for my English coursework anyway, so I'll tell you how it goes and see if they get the same predictions.

[feeshy]

Weell... I think my attitude is best summed up with 'shrugs shoulders and goes iunno...'. I think that even though we're living it, life itself is far too big a concept for us to grasp, so we all end up muddling through it to the best of our abilities. At this point I generally start on the 'so what's the point in doing anything?' train of thought- for example, we're only young/middle aged/old once, why are we wasting our time with school/jobs when we could be making the most of it? Then I remember that, actually, I'm a saddo with no life so who am I to tell people to make the most of it. I have a nasty suspision that I'm too afraid of death to live properly.

[katt]

But God made these people; he created the universe in such a way that these people would come into being and cause harm to others. And he knew that was what he was doing. And he still did it. Where is the free will beyond what God has created?

I don't think anyone who believes in god can come up with a good answer :P Maybe he is not a perfect god (either because he is incapable of it or because he doesn't wish to create perfection for his own reasons which will never be known). Or maybe creating a world with some evil in it was the only way to create a world at all; an unwanted byproduct of what he set into motion.

And how would we know what good is if it was not for evil ? maybe evil exists whereever good does too; because if you give things the choice to be good or evil it seems only natural that some of them would turn to evil?

[Zhyl]

I agree with Katt in respects that we can appear to have total free will but at the same time what is going to happen is ultimately "written". People are only going to make judgements based on their past experiences and therefore if a person's past experience is the same in a certain situation then they will always make the same decision, based on the factors or whatever that have been presented towards them. And it may not be all that difficult to tell, after all. Although it is impossible to take all the variables in a person's life into account, clever, responsible people will mix with other clever, responsible people and will probably end up experiencing the same sorts of things and going to similar places, no matter where they were born. Although you may see yourself as being lazy or indecisive, if you end up doing the work you will succeed and although you had to put lots of effort it, it was almost written that would at some point pull your finger out and get the grades.

For example, if you had two sets of 22 boys and treated them in exactly the same way, giving each set exactly the same way (given that inheritance isn't a factor) then you would expect the parallel version of each boy to make the same movements, come to the same conclusions and make exactly the same decisions. If you made them both play a game of football, still keeping things exactly the same at each point, then you would expect both games to be exactly the same at the end.

[lilparp]

I agree with Zhyl, and by extension I am not sure I believe in or fully reconcile myself with the concept of free will.

Within the confines of every situation, I would expect the same outcome to occur invariably.

I cannot reconcile myself with the concept of random occurrence. It seems to me that nothing is random, but humans cannot take in the vast scale of every factor, so we sometimes assume things to be random, which are in fact not - for instance the roll of a dice, the hands dealt in a poker game, etc.

I think the same goes for when human beings make 'choices', because one outcome will always be better than the others according to calculations of the brain. The thought process might be so fast that it seems we are making a snap decision, but surely our brains actually calculate the positives and negatives of each option, thus rendering 'free will' too simplistic a notion.

[gembird]

There's only so much 'free will' anyway- we're just another animal, and our decisions will be based on that to some extent. Of course we can overcome our instincts and behave differently, which is part of existing as a conscious being, but a lot of our behaviour and reactions to various events is down to the way we've evolved to respond to various things.

[katt]

i think if you look at the events of someone's whole life the grand sum of all their little choices could seem alot more 'free and random' than if you look at a particular moment.

Each moment in a person's life is created by all the chains of little events that happened in the past. And there are only so many choices a person can make in a given instant; in a second.

Based on the person's past experiences, personality, interactions going on with other people and human instincts/reflexes/behaviors the choice made in each second is likely to be preferred over the alternatives for that particular person. The clear 'one and only' path of the future or something.

And over time these little moments add up.

[gembird]

That's quite a good way of putting it- a lot less "blah blah science blah blah biology blah blah animal behaviour" than my version :)

As a science student I find it hard sometimes to talk about things like this without talking about things I've learned in lectures. I think it helps to have that side of things, but it's good to have another view of it as well- the view for the less geeky amongst us!

[Splush]

I don't believe in fate as such but I think free will is an illusion to an extent. I don't think anything is planned out for us in advance by a higher force, but I think we generally overestimate our capacity for choice (because of what gembird said about evolution). I generally agree with katt's (and darkscull's) "very complex and large computer program" way of looking at things, although I think it's a procedurally generating program that created itself from scratch, rather than one 'written' at the very start. But a being that understood how the procedural generation worked could, from looking at the way things were at the start (if 'the start' is even a meaningful concept), extrapolate everything that will occur in the future. Although maybe quantum physics puts a dampener on that, I don't know enough about it.

I suppose most things do happen for a reason, but not in the sense that a higher power decided they ought to happen and make it so. I don't believe in karma or anything like that, I think like beliefs like that are just evidence of us having evolved imperfect brains which tend towards pattern searching and will latch on to any explanation that fills gaps in knowledge regardless of how silly it is. Not that anyone who believes things like that is inherently silly themselves, just that we all have brains that tend towards sillyness. See Svelter's post as an example, but no offence to Svelter because I think even the most rational people feel a bit of a tingle when a fortune teller's predictions happen to come true.

I think the point of being alive, as much as there can be one, is to be satisfied with your life. I'd say 'to be happy' but I think a lot of people are very satisfied to be fairly unhappy. I think if people were truly driven by a need to be happy then there'd be no concept of social responsibility or altruism, and the fact that people to exhibit altruism suggests that we'd generally rather be satisfied with being concerned members of an imperfect species than to ignore all the imperfections and focus on personal happiness. Something like that, anyway. I think the dialectic importance of Bad Things is crucial to us feeling satisfied with our existance, and we'll always find things to oppose just because conflict makes us feel alive, and therefore satisfied. There's a lot of political ideologies, for example, that I despise, but I wouldn't necessarily want them to go away because I think the dialectic process of one extreme ideology conflicting with another is what synthesises new ideas, and compromises that actually work.

This is just stream-of-consciousness guff now so I'll shut up.

I can never put it in very good words, but essentially:
whatever the situation is, things have happened in the past to cause everything to be in that situation.
This means that it always seems amazing and intended that things happen the way they do, even though there may not have been anything in particular that caused that version of events to happen rather than another.
This is a really important phenomenon to me, and I know what you mean about it being hard to put into words because it seems like such a simple, powerful, elegant explanation for so much intellectual folly but if I try to explain why in words it never seems as significant as it seems inside my own head.

[katt]

regarding the occult and psychics: I think it is a bunch of nonsense.

However, you wouldn't find me going to a seance, using an ouija board in the middle of the night during a thunderstorm alone or going to an eerie acting fortune teller.

Why? It just seems like good business. I may not believe in these things but i see no reason to tempt fate: they are kinda eerie in some fundamental way that most of us cannot shake. I guess any beings that are left in a universe without knowing much about anything should naturally be somewhat wary of the possibilities (even if they seem silly and unlikely)

Also I believe that going to a fortune teller gives them some small control over your life even if their predictions are bogus. If you get weirded out by what they predict you might change how you live and thus the fortune teller would have some sway in your life.

I think its better to live life without such hindrances and doubts. I would not go to a fortune teller because I think the future is capable of unfolding itself. Also we all can predict our final fates (death) without any help. Why anyone would want to know when or how is beyond me. I think it would torture someone to know that info

[Cooldudebob]

I do not believe in fate.
I believe that everything that happens to you is dictated by the choices that you make. But that is my opinion, i do not tend to believe in god and fate because of my scientific mind. It seems too obscure for me :P

[Erasmus]

There is no evidence to support predestination, nor is there any to thwart it. People who believe one way or the other have simply chosen whichever belief they are most comfortable with. As far as that goes I am equally comfortable with either option. If there is some grand plan then it obviously does not effect the way I live. If I make a choice it doesn't matter whether I was always predestined to make that choice or not. Either way the choice is made and life goes on.

The most irritating argument I hear for pre-determinism is "look at the world and the life here. The chances of things being exactly as they are now is trillions to one. It must be fate!"

And yes, that is true. But if things had turned out slightly differently, if the universe had taken one of those trillions of other paths, there would still be someone saying "the chances of things happening exactly as they have is trillions to one. It must be fate!"

I don't know if that argument has come up already, I haven't read the thread all the way through yet.

[katt]

I think if people knew more about time and how it works things would make more sense. I have a feeling that we are sort of trapped by our time passing like railroad cars stuck to the tracks of a particular railroad. We have to take a particular path even though others exist.

I sort of feel like we are greatly handicapped in what we can do compared to what is probably available to do.

Existing in the first place is such an odd thing. I think most of the time we block out how odd it is to exist just so we can go about our daily business. But its a truly strange thing to be summoned into existence on a floating orb in the middle of who knows what. gah! someone DEFINITELY should have left us an instruction manual full of friendly advice and clear explanations.

[Pie hunter D]

Whoa deep.

I'm not entirely sure about anything, there are no cirtainties in life... Wants, needs, desires, they're all just dreams untill they become a reality. That reallity can end in a hearbeat making it seem like a dream.
I met a guy in a bar once, ended up talking a bit and he told me I was an old soul. I was kinda confused since it came out of the blue. He asked me if sometimes I just knew things, if I had an earie sense of judgement and good instinct. Funny thing is I do and I can't explain it, never been wrong about my gut feeling in my life! That convo threw a whole new ball into my court.

Many people believe in fate, but what we have are choices. Even if that choice means doing nothing it's one of at least two paths. Now I can't say i've never regreted some of the choices I made, and even though may seem really fucked at the end of the day I learned valuable lessons from them. At least I wasn't so blind I never seen the outcome headed my way.
Even though we have choices it's as much as you as an individual can to to choose and influence that choice! For instance, if someone's eyeballing me in a bar, a cute girl. Do I sit and wonder what if's or do I go and talk to her? Personally I always loose it at that point and shy away for some reason, strong in all accounts but too weak to talk to that one girl haha! Fate maybe? Who knows. I'm too much of a romantic to discount anything.

The "God" issue can be argued from many different points. My own philosophy from my lifes point of view is; "Did I stop believing in god...or did he stop believing in me?" . I don't care if that sounds cliche Emo, i'm not bitter, I enjoy life way too much to carry baggage thats going to weigh me down.

When all is said and done i'm not counting on a system to get me through life, i'm going to live it and see where I end up.

[Erasmus]

He asked me if sometimes I just knew things, if I had an earie sense of judgement and good instinct. Funny thing is I do and I can't explain it, never been wrong about my gut feeling in my life!

Intuition is a subconscious system which constantly compares one's current situation with similar past situations, and comes up with likely outcomes. What this translates to is gut feelings about what's going to happen, or what action one should take. As with most physical and mental attributes, some people exhibit it far more strongly than others. I personally don't seem to have much intuition at all, whereas stories of policemen who "just know" a suspect is armed, and gamblers who "just know" when their opponent is bluffing are well documented.

[Zhyl]

regarding the occult and psychics: I think it is a bunch of nonsense....

I think for me, instead of the "tempting fate" idea, I wouldn't attend these sorts of things for the psychological things involved. A professional psychic is MEANT to make you uneasy and MEANT to make you think that there are things that are beyond your understanding and even sceptical people will be unnerved by going to a seance, even though all that is going through their mind is "bollocksbollocksbollocksbollocks". I watch a lot of Derren Brown things and I've read his book and what he says about paranormal phenomena is amazing (he's as skeptic of it as Dawkins is of religion, just in case anyone was worried). Cold reading can be very effective, especially with the sorts of people who will go to these sorts of things who are invariably either believers or people who are likely to be converted.

Of course, if you do a ouija board for a drunken laugh with mates, you can be rest assured that nothing sinister or demonic is going to happen unless the majority of people there are expecting it to happen.

Cold reading is designed to be general and vague, but SOUND specific. Magazine horoscopes are diluted to be relevant to 60 million people in the uk, whereas most cold readings will have a target audience in mind (I will try and find one I found for /b/tards). A live reading is more likely to seem like it is true as the psychic will pick up and exploit clues given off accidentally by the person being read.

There's no need to give psychic phenomena a second thought or you might end up with a self-fulfilling prophesy.

[Splush]

There is no evidence to support predestination, nor is there any to thwart it. People who believe one way or the other have simply chosen whichever belief they are most comfortable with. As far as that goes I am equally comfortable with either option. If there is some grand plan then it obviously does not effect the way I live. If I make a choice it doesn't matter whether I was always predestined to make that choice or not. Either way the choice is made and life goes on.
Yeah, absolutely. I think I believe in a sort of non-supernatural determinism but it totally doesn't matter, because I feel like I'm making choices even if I'm not. I sometimes think "if I'm not really in control of my choices then why do I worry about things?" but the answer I always come to is that I don't have any choice about whether I worry about things or not, so it doesn't matter at all. It's all pseudo-philosophic mental masturbation, and once you've finished indulging yourself by thinking about determinism you've still got to go back to the real world and do real world stuff like feeding the cat.

stuffs
I love that we have people like Derren Brown and Penn & Teller openly explaining how their tricks work and exposing the frauds for what they are, the whole sceptic movement is awesome. The fact that people still get away with exploiting peoples' emotional frailty and make fortunes from cold reading is so messed up. When you've got people like Sylvia Browne on TV telling parents that their missing daughter is alive and working as a stripper when she's really been dead for ten years, 'psychics' stop seeming like a bit of harmless fun and start being a real menace.

A slightly creepy mature student at my university had a party trick of sorts where he would ask people questions about their life for a few minutes and then tell them what their birthday was. He often got it wrong but he certainly got it right more times than you'd expect by chance. Fortunately he never pretended it was anything more than a psychological trick, but if we can do tricks that amazing without any need to claim psychic powers then why on earth do we need psychics in the first place. Somebody who deeply understands how cognition and non-verbal communication work is way more impressive than somebody who gets information beamed into their head from the ether.

[faragher]

I cannot reconcile myself with the concept of random occurrence. It seems to me that nothing is random, but humans cannot take in the vast scale of every factor, so we sometimes assume things to be random, which are in fact not - for instance the roll of a dice, the hands dealt in a poker game, etc.I'm sorry, but in what way is the roll of a die (in ordinary circumstances, assuming a reasonably well crafted dice, and not thrown with any clever tricks) not random?

I believe in complete free will, with the caveat that we are all affected heavily by environment and chemistry - though not by fate or any mythical being.

In fact, one of the great revelations of my life was realising how much control I have and how I always, always have a choice. And that we all make choices every day, whether we know it or not -

For example, you are in a shitty job, which you hate. Why do you stay? Because the alternative (no moneys, starvation, homelessness - or even just having to give up the cable TV) is a worse choice than going and doing the job. Once you realise that YOU have made that choice, and no one else but you, the easier it is to go and do that job everyday...

On a sidenote - this debate will never end. The 'higher power' folks will be all "you think you are making a choice but really it is the higher power guiding you" and I'll be all "no, you are anthropomorphising a basic brain function because it helps you rationalise the world around you", and then we'll shout and cry.

Maybe we could just stop that and skip straight to the going out for a beer and a burger?

[Zhyl]

Yes, the menacing part is certainly true. One of the things in this book (all my knowledge of this sort of thing is from that book, so if he goes loopy in the next few years, I'll stop quoting it) is about "hot reading", where a psychic used a news article she'd read in the paper about a boy drowning to appear to be psychic when she'd had a long succession of "misses" with the cold reading. They'd invited the mother of this boy along especially to be asked questions and the mother was, naturally, furious.

I guess people like to believe that there is something "out there" and sometimes turn to it in desperation for a loved one. Many people slate religion for being sick, but most religions will focus more on the consoling of people and of letting go rather than trying to contact them from beyond the grave.

Quick note on Derren Brown's tricks:

He quite often given an explanation that is either made up or is stretching the truth. This is part of the act and will admit to it being part of the act when questioned, but his role of psychological illusionist is to sometimes provide false explanations about things.

This will be in things like "tricks of the mind" or his stage shows, as the programs where he slates the paranormal are usually above counter to the camera, so to speak.

[Splush]

I'm sorry, but in what way is the roll of a die (in ordinary circumstances, assuming a reasonably well crafted dice, and not thrown with any clever tricks) not random?
I suppose you could say that if some sophisticated machine observed the size, shape and weight distribution of the die, the forces put upon it by the thrower, the surface it would land on and so forth, it would be able to tell you the outcome of the roll before it had hit the ground. So you could do the same for the choices we make as biological machines, and say that all our future actions are non-random and predictable, albeit way beyond the processing power we'll ever have available. That's the basis for the sort of determinism I talk about, that everything is essentially non-random but so complicated as to be unpredictable in practice. Although I guess there's stuff in physics that puts a spanner in those particular works.

"God plays dice with the universe, but they're loaded dice" - Joseph Ford :trex:

[Pie hunter D]

Wooo that interesting Erasmus! I shall take this information with me and confound others with my newfound knowlages!

Also, I like the way Splush is thinking here...

[Splush]

While we're talking like we're all stoned, has anyone read about Nick Bostrom's simulation hypothesis? He's got a whole website about it: http://www.simulation-argument.com/

The basic idea is that if we assume firstly that the human race will eventually develop modelling systems sophisticated enough to generate a convincing model of the universe, and secondly that they would want to model human history, any model they create will be definition also develop such systems (within the model), and that model will create its own model, and so on so that you have models generating new models indefinitely. And, given that there will then be many more models than there will be real worlds (there is only one real world), the probability of us being in a simulation is greater than that of us being in the real world. I think the initial assumption is a bit of a hard one to swallow, but it's a fun thing to think about.

[Zhyl]

Wooo that interesting Erasmus! I shall take this information with me and confound others with my newfound knowlages!

Also, I like the way Splush is thinking here...

This doesn't add to the debate at all.

I agree with Splush that there are more factors acting on the dice than can be processed currently. As said, something like radioactive decay pisses on this theory, as it seems to be totally random at the moment. If we can find a rule for it then it would be theoretically possible to know many of the factors and possibly predict events.

Plus you will only ever know how fast a particle is moving (Uncertainty Principle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle)), or its exact location; you can't know both. Therefore it is impossible (with current technology) to even access ALL the factors and so there will always be guess work and unpredictability in life, even if big brother had the big clampdown tonight.

Also, detecting such factors will, in itself, change the course of events (Observer effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observer_effect)) and so by knowing one's fate you are, consequently, altering it.

Quantum stuff will never be relevant scaled up, especially when you have things like the human mind to deal with, not to mention MANY human minds.

[Erasmus]

While we're talking like we're all stoned, has anyone read about Nick Bostrom's simulation hypothesis? He's got a whole website about it: http://www.simulation-argument.com/

The basic idea is that if we assume firstly that the human race will eventually develop modelling systems sophisticated enough to generate a convincing model of the universe, and secondly that they would want to model human history, any model they create will be definition also develop such systems (within the model), and that model will create its own model, and so on so that you have models generating new models indefinitely. And, given that there will then be many more models than there will be real worlds (there is only one real world), the probability of us being in a simulation is greater than that of us being in the real world. I think the initial assumption is a bit of a hard one to swallow, but it's a fun thing to think about.

You may like to read the sci-fi novel Polystom by Adam Roberts (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Roberts). In it a civilisation create a massive simulation, as you describe, but they start to think the "simulation" is actually a reflection of the universe outside theirs, which is the real simulation, because inside their simulation is a simulation of their own universe. Yeah, it hurts my brain as well.

[lilparp]

I'm sorry, but in what way is the roll of a die (in ordinary circumstances, assuming a reasonably well crafted dice, and not thrown with any clever tricks) not random?


Splush has already answered this better than I could, but I will just say that what I meant was that the roll fo a dice depends upon the forces upon it, which are fixed and certain, and as such the outcome is also certain, whether we know what it is or not. Given a knowledge of the forces, a dice roll could be predicted, but as we humans cannot know automatically either the exact forces we exert, or process the information, we often assume the outcome to be random.

Nick Bostrom's theory makes me ask, if we were computer models, and accepting Descartes' theory of proving self-existence, to what extent could we consider ourselves human as compared to real, physical humans, the like of which we currently understand ourselves to be?

[Darkscull]

full on determinists argue that the dice example is true of all things that appear random, and that we just haven't discovered (or can't discover) what the rules governing each thing are.

In which case, the only functional definition of random would be things that we cannot predict the outcome of.




this is kind of a pointless post now that I've forgotten what else I was going to say. I'll leave it here though in case I remember, and because it's useful to have things stated simply like that sometimes.

[lilparp]

In which case, the only functional definition of random would be things that we cannot predict the outcome of.


True, but I am just considering that the concept of 'random' occurrence might be inaccurate and fundamentally flawed.

It is a word we use to explain things which we do not absolutely need to process, and so I agree with you on that point, but humanity's lack of understanding and ability to calculate some things cannot override the certainty of some events. What I mean is that just because I do not know that a dice will land on a six does not stop that outcome being certain rather than random in its nature.

[Darkscull]

well I wasn't really referring to your posts, but the conversation on 'random' in general.

humanity's lack of understanding and ability to calculate some things cannot override the certainty of some events. What I mean is that just because I do not know that a dice will land on a six does not stop that outcome being certain rather than random in its nature.

I agree wholeheartedly.
did it seem like I was saying something different?

[lilparp]

well I wasn't really referring to your posts, but the conversation on 'random' in general.



I agree wholeheartedly.
did it seem like I was saying something different?

Not at all, now that I read it again. Sorry about that.

[katt]

I'm sorry, but in what way is the roll of a die (in ordinary circumstances, assuming a reasonably well crafted dice, and not thrown with any clever tricks) not random?



?

I think the very fact people CAN do clever tricks to affect the roll of the dice shows the rolls are not random.

The only reason that, over a great many rolls, the numbers balance out is because most people do not bother to try and tweak the factors leading to what sides land face up.

So the way a pair of dice ends up on the table is a reflection of so many non random things: their initial position in the hand, the amount of force they are thrown with, how long they are shaken about in the hands , the size of the person's hands:, etc

So people who believe in compatibilism believe that all the little factors set in motion since the start of time have a huge say in the choices people make. Their choices are made of free will yet that free will was molded by the past and present.

Just like how a roll of the dice is affected by many things and is not entirely random

[Splush]

You may like to read the sci-fi novel Polystom by Adam Roberts (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Roberts). In it a civilisation create a massive simulation, as you describe, but they start to think the "simulation" is actually a reflection of the universe outside theirs, which is the real simulation, because inside their simulation is a simulation of their own universe. Yeah, it hurts my brain as well.
I'll keep that in mind, it can go on my enormous mental list of books that sound cool that I'm probably never going to get around to reading :(

Nick Bostrom's theory makes me ask, if we were computer models, and accepting Descartes' theory of proving self-existence, to what extent could we consider ourselves human as compared to real, physical humans, the like of which we currently understand ourselves to be?
I don't think I'd call us humans as such, but I reckon we'd be alive, as much as a theoretical sentient machine would be alive. I'd say (without anything to back it up) that the definition of human would include a physical presence.

But then a pertinent question would be do we have the same rights as genuine humans, and is somebody who unplugs the Simulatron 3000 murdering billions of hyperhumans?

Speaking of sci-fi novels I love the Iain M Banks Culture novels, and one of the big things in that universe is sentient, artificial intelligences with much more processing power than biological brains. In one of the books he briefly deals with the history of the development of the Minds, as they're called, and supposedly the first Mind to be switched on quickly assessed the nature of consciousness and instantly decided to kill itself, and later Minds had to be built with safeguards against that type of thinking. Good times!

[dead]

My view's a little complex, but not too bad.
Basically, I see everything as being basically predetermined, but less so as chaos theory stuff is superimposed over the path.
I don't see it as being predetermined due to god, I see it as being predetermined due to chemical and physical laws. All human thought is simply chemical interaction, determined by previous reactions and other reactions. Free will is an illusion, choice is an illusion. If you choose not to do something, it is not a choice, there is no other way you could possibly have reacted to the situation based upon everything currently affecting you, including past experience, moods caused by previous stuff etc.
It seems like free will because it is so ludicrously complex. Billions of chemical reactions in a single mind, interacting with an obscene amount of other organic and other chemical/physical reactions, superimposed with chaos theory. It's an illusion, but it's a very, very good one.
I quite enjoy it sometimes.

[Darkscull]

I don't think I'd call us humans as such, but I reckon we'd be alive, as much as a theoretical sentient machine would be alive. I'd say (without anything to back it up) that the definition of human would include a physical presence.


how do you define physical presence though?

as far as the inhabitants of such a simulation are concerned, it is the universe, and things in it are real (assuming an ideal, perfect simulation, which this hypothesis is) to them.

the whole point is that there is no way of distinguishing the simulations from the original, and so there is no difference at all, in any 'real' sense, just a vague concept of originality.

so the inhabitants of the (ideal, perfect) simulation are just as human as those who are in the original, because there is no difference.

well, in my view.


edit: the reason the 'in my view' is tagged on at the end there is because I believe that nothing is absolute, which seems completely obvious to me, and I always forget that there are some who do have ideas of various absolutes.
It's not an arrogance thing, it's just that it's such a fundamental difference in philosophy that I forget since my thoughts never stray there.

[Splush]

If we're saying that there definitely is one objectively real, physical universe, necessitated by the simulations, then the humans in the real universe are objectively physical creatures while those human-feeling entities in the simulated universes are objectively not physical creatures. But yes, there's no way for either either party to actually know which one they are. So we who are talking about a simulated universe theoretically can objectively say that the inhabitants of the simulation aren't human (if my working definition of human is any good), but they themselves couldn't possibly know either way.

Although, the way Bostrom sees it it's nearly possible to objectively conclude that you're in a simulated universe because the probability of you happening to be in the simulated universe is so great.

[Svelter]

One thing that is a bit of a mindfuck for me is the literal nihilism of the universe. We're living in a world made of atoms, which aren't really made of anything. Sure, there's a nucleus and electrons but let me put it into scale.

If you imagine a normal-sized stadium with a golf ball in the centre, that's the nucleus. Then, around the outside by the seats with the size of a pea, is each electron. The rest is just emptiness, yet tap your monitor and it feels totally solid. Crazy.

[Darkscull]

One thing that is a bit of a mindfuck for me is the literal nihilism of the universe. We're living in a world made of atoms, which aren't really made of anything. Sure, there's a nucleus and electrons but let me put it into scale.

If you imagine a normal-sized stadium with a golf ball in the centre, that's the nucleus. Then, around the outside by the seats with the size of a pea, is each electron. The rest is just emptiness, yet tap your monitor and it feels totally solid. Crazy.

add on top of that that the majority of the universe is empty of anything more than loose gas molecules at stupidly low densities (ie, a single molecule every meter, or even less), and that the solar system is similar to the atom relative distance-wise (well, not as separated, but still mindboggling), and that solar systems are at even bigger distances apart.

well, you get the picture, and that sort of thing had it's own thread.

I just wanted to amplify the feelings :p

[lilparp]

Well, I just saw a video which shows stars scaling up to VY Canis Majoris.

Now that makes me feel either nihilistic or incredibly priviledged. I'm not sure which.

[Darkscull]

Well, I just saw a video which shows stars scaling up to VY Canis Majoris.

Now that makes me feel either nihilistic or incredibly priviledged. I'm not sure which.

that was in the other thread I mentioned :p

[Svelter]

add on top of that that the majority of the universe is empty of anything more than loose gas molecules at stupidly low densities (ie, a single molecule every meter, or even less), and that the solar system is similar to the atom relative distance-wise (well, not as separated, but still mindboggling), and that solar systems are at even bigger distances apart.

well, you get the picture, and that sort of thing had it's own thread.

I just wanted to amplify the feelings :p

Darkscull, you have fucked my mind more than a paedophile with a brain fetish...

[Darkscull]

Darkscull, you have fucked my mind more than a paedophile with a brain fetish...

I shall resist the temptation to go into the scales of the galaxy, galaxy groups, superclusters and the fact that there are an estimated 10 million superclusters in the universe then :p

sorry to get the thread a bit off topic, but it's hard to define the topic of a debate such as this anyway.

[Zhyl]

Now that makes me feel either nihilistic or incredibly priviledged. I'm not sure which.

Going off on a tangent here, but I was under the impression that feelings of non-existence and lack of meaning was more existentialism? A single point of meaning (i.e. you) in a world of endless absurdity.

I thought nihilism was a philosophy that there is no philosophy, a total lack of any ideas or thoughts which would mean that man ultimately destroys itself.

I'm going to read up on this while people correct me.

[lilparp]

Going off on a tangent here, but I was under the impression that feelings of non-existence and lack of meaning was more existentialism? A single point of meaning (i.e. you) in a world of endless absurdity.

I thought nihilism was a philosophy that there is no philosophy, a total lack of any ideas or thoughts which would mean that man ultimately destroys itself.

I'm going to read up on this while people correct me.

Pretty sure you're right actually.

Woops.

[Lawrence]

I believe that all life was created and is governed by a flying deity made of pasta.
www.venganza.org