Asklemmy

43966 readers

1496 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

What are some physics-based arguments against hard determinism? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago by CodingAndCoffee@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

65 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I don't believe free will is real. I'm not a deep physics person (and relatively bad at math), but with my undergrad understanding of chemistry, classical mechanics, and electromagnetism, it seems most rational that we are creatures entirely controlled by our environments and what we ingest and inhale.

I'm not deeply familiar with chaos theory, but at a high level understand it to be that there's just too many variables for us to model, with current technology, today. To me that screams "god of the gaps" fallacy and implies that eventually we WILL have sufficiently powerful systems to accurately model at that scale...and there goes chaos theory.

So I'm asking you guys, fellow Lemmings, what are some arguments to causality / hard determinism, that are rooted entirely in physics and mechanics, that would give any credit to the idea that free will is real?

Please leave philosophical and religious arguments at the door.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] A_A@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

At what point does the causal chain get interrupted ( ... ?)

The system is diverging at every point in time :

In chaotic systems, the uncertainty in a forecast increases exponentially with elapsed time. (... same article from Wikipedia)

I believe one has to see this before being able to apply it to free will explanations.

[–] grabyourmotherskeys@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

So, at what point is your personal decision making controlling the divergence so that it reflects your will? That is what I am asking.

[–] A_A@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

at what point ( ... ? )

Before answering this I need to know if you get the basics : what do you understand so far ? About chaotic systems ? About their variable rate of exponential divergence ? About their "liberty" ? About the fact we have such systems in us, only far more complex ?

And beyond any explanations, if you came to know we have free will, how could we stand the shame and guilt of not doing enough ?

[–] grabyourmotherskeys@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You can't answer the question.

[–] A_A@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It’s something I think about constantly, whether I want to or not! ;)

When I was young I was in that situation, with those same questions. But I was lucky : I had the right science and the right IQ and I found the answers. You are now thirsty and I gave you some salt ; if you are too blind to see it or too arrogant, bad for you, so i will not come back to this.

Goodbye.

[–] grabyourmotherskeys@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

You still haven't answered the question and have made at least a couple of inferences about me that aren't really accurate.

Anyway, people say it you can't explain it you don't understand it

Edit: sorry, wrong thread. I would still say you are making lot of assumptions.

How old do you think I am? Let's start with that. :)