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Originally Posted by MakingMoves
Agreed. His belief sure makes himself feel good though. Questing his belief probably isn't good for him. People tend to believe whatever is good for them. Hence why it is so hard to move people off their religious beliefs even though it seems so clear to some of us how foolish their reasoning is. It's not good for them to question the existence of their god.
Meale: Any interest in continuing our discussion on this statement you made, I find this topic interesting:
In regards to our torture, deterrent thoughts:
Because it in no way contributes to a reduction in suffering but rather the direct antithesis.
I have a very sort of out-there interpretation of it. If, for the sake of argument, our society's goal is to reduce total suffering in the world, then we can look at "punishment" as an INCREASE in suffering. Since, from the person who is being punished, they certainly suffer.
So what I wonder about is whether we can entirely remove this notion of punishment from our judicial system. At this stage, it's merely a utopian ideal but I don't think it's an impossible concept. The issue is whether we can create deterrents (i.e. to murder) without threatening punishment as a consequence.
So at the moment, here's how it works.
Total murders: 100
Total suffering: 100 + 100 = 200 (the victims and the murderers now suffer as well as a consequence of their crime. Assuming 1 murderer per murdee).
But the way this works is by acting as a deterrent to murdering in the first place. People reconsider whether they're going to murder because they want to avoid a life sentence (i.e. suffering). WITHOUT punishment acting as a deterrent, we might get something like the following (i.e. people murdering willy nilly).
Total murders: 800
Total suffering: 800 (since the murderers are not punished for their crime)
The goal is to reduce total suffering. So if we could introduce a deterrent that doesn't increase suffering, that'd be +EV. So perhaps consider a "reward" based system for abstaining from murdering.
Total murders: 100
Total suffering: 100 (since murderers are no longer punished, but instead, since they murdererd someone, they cannot collect their $1million good behaviour bonus).
Of course, this is a crazy idea with myriad considerations I've not put forth.
I suspect the best approach would be some sort of education/reward/punishment hybrid thing but ATM for me it's just about thinking about alternatives to the existing system.
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You lack the authority to determine that as you can't achieve the required perspective to observe and decide for that person.
As I said, it's not a matter of empathy. It's not how "you view free will". It's how you actually semantically consider the entire concept of free will. This is far less subjective than you make it out to be.
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Agreed. His belief sure makes himself feel good though. Questing his belief probably isn't good for him. People tend to believe whatever is good for them. Hence why it is so hard to move people off their religious beliefs even though it seems so clear to some of us how foolish their reasoning is. It's not good for them to question the existence of their god.
FWIW, I think it's perfectly good and just to hold beliefs, even if they're not true or accurate or righteous. At some point we abandon happiness on the quest for wisdom/truth, it seems a futile mission. The happiest people, regardless of their beliefs or values, are the best and most sovereign people.
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You should never say "I" but somehow manage to say the "gene did it" as I mentioned in the "devil made me do it" quote. You might say "my brain did it" but never the "I".
Yeah, this is more along the lines of how I'm thinking. There is a consciousness within us, but the actual US is the thing/ego/awareness which is observing this consciousness.
I think this idea of causation fits in here, carlo. If we don't get to pick our parents, then anything we do after birth is a result of things completely out of our control. Our socioeconomic upbringing, the thoughts we have (which are simply responses to surrounding stimuli), and even our most introspective thoughts regarding topics like free will. It's about how these ideas and thoughts crop up in our mind. It happens in an arbitrary manner, so there's no freedom involved. It's almost a semantic debate though because as Dennett would posit, we certainly feel as though we're free agents and the authors of our thoughts and actions. But in reality (Harris), these thoughts are given to us. They simply appear in consciousness with no screening process before they go to work in our minds.
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Tolstoy sits down to write War and Peace, considered one of the GOAT and very long. By some manner he has created the plot and characters and the words appear on his paper through the commands of his mind (or brain if you insist).
What made him sit down to write this book? What went through his mind? I suspect an idea appeared to him one day, "I want to write a book". At the inception of this idea, ONLY this idea came to his mind. There wasn't a screening of these ideas, i.e. "Tolstoy, today you can choose to have either of the following ideas: the idea that you might consider writing, or the idea that you might consider going fishing. Which shall it be?"
Now if Tolstoy got to choose between the two ideas, he'd have free will. But instead, only one idea came to his mind. He didn't choose that idea. He didn't choose it to float to the surface of his mind. He didn't choose that over the fishing idea. The idea just happened. It happened to him. It all went on within his mind, so it's unintuitive to say it wasn't a decision he made, but we have no say in what finds its way into our minds.