https://twitter.com/obruchez/status/447740823678230528
- Re: your post ("Ignorance doesn’t imply nonexistence"):
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I don't know where you're going with this. Yes, ignorance doesn't imply nonexistence. But ignorance doesn't imply existence either. Knowledge/ignorance and existence/nonexistence are independant. So what?
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e.g. someone who "knows" or understands god is not a proof of God's existence, of course ; see "Ontological argument (I)" from "Hundreds of Proofs of God’s Existence" (fun list, BTW!).
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Also there's a huge problem with your analogies/examples (combustion engines and quantum mechanics). They obviously exist. Nobody is seriously questioning the fact that combustion engines and quantum mechanics (as a theory, i.e. a set of papers, equations, models, etc.) exist. Of course, you could argue that we live in a simulation and that nothing really exists, but it's another discussion altogether. Free will is not like that at all. A lot of people are doubting its existence, at least when defined the way libertarians are defining it.
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We're back to talking about "free will" again, instead of "libertarian free will" or "compatibilist free will". There are several kinds of free wills. I can conceive that "compatibilist free will" exists, but not that "libertarian free will" exists. That's another difference with combustion engines and quantum mechanics, which are not ambiguous concepts (or are at least way less ambiguous than free will).
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It looks like you're doing the same mistake as Daniel Dennett (sun vs movement of the sun) all over again. So I'll just quote myself (January 28, 2014 tweets): "People didn't disagree on the existence of the sun. They disagreed on the reasons for its apparent motion. People don't disagree, at least not as much, on the existence of the "feeling of free will". They disagree on whether it really exists or not, on whether it's an illusion or not." And Sam Harris: "Of course, the sun isn’t an illusion, but geocentrism is. Our native sense that the sun revolves around a stationary Earth is simply mistaken. (...) But free will is like the geocentric illusion: It is the very thing that gets obliterated once we begin speaking in detail about the origins of our thoughts and actions. You’re not just begging the question here; you’re begging it with a sloppy analogy."
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Re: DS: maybe. That would make sense. Just like many people don't want to admit they're afraid of death. The other shock of my teenage years, along with determinism: the realization that I will one day completely and definitively cease to exist.
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Re: Koch: not sure if you're asking 1) why I need to be reassured or 2) what would reassure me.
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In the first case: that's the Determinism Shock (DS) I already mentioned. The idea that everything that happened in the past had to happen (by necessity) and hence that everything I thought in the past had to be thought is kind of depressing.
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In the second case: I don't know whether anything can really reassure me. I learned to live with it, just like I learned to live with the idea of death, more or less. I think we have to take a meditation-like approach here. Reality is the way it is. Take it or leave it. Like Daniel Miessler, I think we should learn to live with both views: the low-level view (atoms) where it is obvious that there's no absolute liberty (everything happens by necessity) and the high-level view (social beings) where it seems that there's some kind of practical liberty, which is emergent from lower levels.
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This reminds me of Camus. There are only three ways to react to the absurdity of life: 1) (physical) suicide 2) (philosophical) suicide and 3) revolt. Accepting that libertarian free will exists, to me, would be a philosophical suicide. I choose the revolt (or, rather, the meditation-like approach). In that context, I still don't know what it means to use "free will" in the compatibilist sense, though. :)
- Re: libertarians beliefs: yes, but, again, "libertarian free will" and "compatibilist free will" are not the same thing. You're a compatibilist, right? So the libertarians and you are not talking about the same thing. Not exactly. You're just using the same words.
https://twitter.com/avernet/status/446849456713912322
https://twitter.com/avernet/status/446850191669211136
https://twitter.com/avernet/status/446851270603591680
https://twitter.com/avernet/status/446854699778461696
https://twitter.com/avernet/status/446855279372537856
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"A follow-up on the child-like understanding of free will: "Ignorance doesn’t imply nonexistence". https://medium.com/p/b78b40341065"
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"About people not talking much about DS, maybe they don't because they don't want to appear confused."
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"You're saying Koch is reassured by quantum indeterminacy and you're not. What is there that one would need to be reassured of?"
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"Unlike you, libertarians believing free will exists for the wrong reason doesn't make me want to say that free will doesn't exist. This happens often: people argue for an idea I support using incorrect arguments. It drives me mad, but I still support the idea."
https://twitter.com/avernet/status/444293417711841281
https://twitter.com/avernet/status/444294327401857024
"I'm with you on believing in hard/pure determinism, if only because adding uncaused causes doesn't seem to change anything."
"And I'm also with you on the pre-DS understanding. This is more or less Alice from https://medium.com/p/a94fee12bd4d."
https://twitter.com/obruchez/status/443122216809807872
https://twitter.com/obruchez/status/443122458137468928
"My reply to your January 20, 2014 tweet: https://github.com/obruchez/public/blob/master/Twitter/Reply%20to%20%40avernet%20(2014-01-20).md"
"My reply to your February 26, 2014 tweet: https://github.com/obruchez/public/blob/master/Twitter/Reply%20to%20%40avernet%20(2014-02-26).md"