Am I the only one on this subreddit with an actual self-directed sense of identity? I can take inspiration here and there, sure, but ultimately the only one that paints on my canvas is me.

This was one of the themes of annihilation.

Determinism (or absolute causality) is not directly observable in the world around us.

Causality is directly observable to some degree, but we don't empirically observe absolute causality everywhere all the time.

We experience (phenomenologically and empirically) choiche/free will (which can be an illusion, but still, an empirical illusion). More in general, we don't have any empirical experience beyond our limited subjective experience.

In terms of empirical evidence, it is very difficult to argue that it can be demonstrate conclusively that any given agent has not the ability to do otherways than he does in any given situation.

So determinsm is mainly a logic deduction/generalization based on the assumption that all the universe operates according to natural laws that govern the behavior of all matter and energy. Which is kind of circular but anyway.

We experience limited causality, and we find somehow reasonable to extentend causality to all things.

So determinism is a philosophical position that should be challenged or confirmed based on its logical correctness.

1. one could argue that jumpinig from personal experience of limited causality to the existence of universal laws of determinism can be considered an example of the ontological leap fallacy.

While it is true that we may experience causality, it does not necessarily follow, from a logical point of view, that these concepts are absolute or universally applicable.

2. epistemologically speaking, if determinism is true, then every statement, including "determinism is true" and "determinism is false," would be determined by prior causes. Both statements would be determined by prior causes in a deterministic universe: whether a person affirms "determinism is true" or "determinism is false" would entirely depend on their "personal", specific set of prior causes.

Which "set of prior causes" guarantees the most correct statements? In a deterministic universe, there is no objective way to determine which set of prior causes is "more true" or has higher epistemological value, as both would be ultimately determined by prior causes themselves. An epistemological inherent and non-eliminable uncertainty is not particulary desiderable for a philosophical theory.

3. The epistemological uncertainty above could be seen as a self-defeating position. If is true that all our beliefs, true of false, are causally determined, we are bound to hold them no matter what, whether they objectively true or false, irrespective for any validating criteria (all validating criteria are also, whether true or false, causally determined).

All our beliefs are therefore suspect, "undecidable" and non-assessable, including the belief in the truth of determinism.

So... determinism seems to be phenomenologically counterintuitive, empirically doubtful and logically precarious (at best).

It raises more problem than it solves in many areas (e.g. law, morals, human relations).

Why should I "embrace" it?

We also offer a full range of Humor lessons.

Gosh, thanks.

Totally agree. I like to think about the discussion of truth as a process that we engage in together.

A year ago I lost someone whom I love very deeply. Your words made me tear up a little. <3

Your not off at all. I'm taking psychology 101 in college and the professor said exactly the same thing. We have different versions of our selves with different people, and when someone passes or we stop talking to them, that version of ourself dies too.

Maybe you should teach psychology lol.

I mean, can't you approach uniqueness or stray farther away from it without touching it?

So...

"Not believing science is the be-all-end-all that the world should revolve around" = "anti-science stance"?

That's a very cult-like mindset.

Science is a very good methodology for gaining truths, particularly truths that lead to technological advancement. That doesn't mean it's a God we should all bow down too - which is how you seem to be treating it.

Survival of the fittest. It was the rule that governed humanity until communism, and then, these 20-something post-modern grievance junkies who call themselves "woke". Funny how humanity has evolved to the point where it has been able to consciously destroy the very heart of evolution/natural selection. I don't think we're done evolving; this species is just too self-righteous to admit it.

Self implies other

I was thinking more of the freewill debate. If someone else chooses a babies gender at birth that would definitely not be freewill from the babies perspective. The baby definitely didn't have freewill over this choice.

That is something along the lines of not being able to choose the gender you have at birth. Despite the advances in modern technology about changing these kinds of things after the fact, we still are hard-pressed to find any way to change these things at the root. Even if we were able to, a tense moral debate would arise, with human-centrist Transhumanist-types wanting advances like these to be made legal, and deep-ecologist-types like myself arguing that such advances go too far down the road of "playing God". In terms of what you want to call this, you may want to look into Buddhist writings on cause-and-effect, which go into these things quite a bit (intrinsic reality, parabrahman, etc.)

A great example of this is the stock market. You have to put money on strong companies that you believe will succeed. You must weed out the weak. It is your job to find flaws in companies and how they will fail in a recession. You don't make money by giving equal opportunity. Bet on the heavy hitters that have a proven track record and a few small ones that show promise.

1st world society is going through a phase where they're acting like everyone is valuable. This mindset only exists when survival is off the table. In any competition or risk environment, like the stock market, this is clearly just a bunch of weak woke nonsense.

If you are going for max survival of the species then we should have a section of the government hand selecting high value people to breed with one another. We would still have regular people procreating as we need the variety. It just takes so long to breed humans. They did a study where they took wild foxes and it took 50 years or like 30 generations to breed out the wild in them and make them into domesticated pets. This would take several hundred years for mankind to breed ourselves. I personally am betting we will merge with robots in the next 200-300 years way before the breeding would be valuable.

Yeah there is no perfect system of rulling over man.
At some point in the next 2000 years mankind will be able to edit themselves and our shit systems to be more in alignment with intelligent action. Even then we will fight over how we should edit ourselves, but that will be the beginning of a more homogenized collaborative society.

I posted on here an idea that mankind doesn't have freewill over the natural levels of testosterone we all produce. Multiple comments said that we do have freewill over this and you can always take hormones. That is besides the point though... None of us have free will over the natural levels of hormones we produce and how they rise and fall throughout multiple decades.

The idea of not having free is obvious like if you are born with a crooked nose. Then the freewill people come out and say "well you can get a nose job".
That's not a counter argument. What is this called? When you clearly don't have freewill over something like how a Mole is created on your arm, but then someone says you can get it removed is somehow freewill????

You prove a valid point. Some kind of political landscape is intrinsic to any society as complex as ours. Without one, there would be chaos. There are too many decisions needed to be made about too many social issues, many of which don't exist in simpler societies (abortion, human rights, etc.). My little paragraph was simply to hint at the theoretical framework of a future society where the complexity in social structure has been reduced to that which is undoubtedly needed to advance intellectually as a species, instead of materialistically.

In terms of the synthesis of science and religion, I meant that there could be a future when the true nature of death and the soul was realized (so a "spiritual science" would be a reality), but that's a road that leads into a lot of unpopular ideas that I wouldn't want to get into.

The opposite is still in relationship with its object. Negative is still in relationship with positive. Anti-social people often are simply reacting to others, just as if they were interacting with them.

That would still only be bright stripe of purple paint from a very flamboyant someone else.

Stop waiting for someone else to come along. Be that someone who comes alongside someone else.

> In science, the endpoint at which truth is realized is when a theory is proven

A whole lot of people would argue against the notion of theories ever being “proven” in science. Meanwhile, a whole lot of people would raise the point that there’s a path to truth in politics—one that’s determined by evaluating historical evidence, making use of rational argument, and proposing policies that are in accordance with whatever latest research the social sciences, whatever latest developments political philosophy and ethics have to offer, and whatever the latest developments in history are. Or something like that.

However, we can easily imagine a political party that makes all the right decisions policy-wise, makes competent use of all the frameworks to analyze complex social phenomena in the right way, and still collapses into a corrupt entity suddenly determined by special interests because rather than opinion being central to politics, it is power structures. But in that sense, politics isn’t all that different from science. It’s just that in politics, there’s usually a whole lot more at stake than in science. So science can afford progressing “one funeral at a time” as Max Planck described:

“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”

For politics, that’s usually not a desirable option.

Or rather, there’s a political and sociological aspect to science that requires our attention. The works of Kuhn and Feyerabend and I guess “continental” philosophy of science has demonstrated as much.

>In this way science and religion are quite similar and a future where the two are synthesized into one field is possible.

What does that mean concretely? Science and religion (or, I guess, “spirituality”) being thought of as “non-overlapping magisteria” is a rather recent development. Aristotle’s conception of the sciences included theology for example.

This is literally a song

I think there’s a pretty wide diversity of religion; ranging from quite fundamental, toleration, abusive, ignorant, and violent sects, to very helpful, community oriented sects.

In that regard, I think a person who seeks a religion, either seeks one which matches their own heart (alignment to compassion/love; or one with mis-alignment to compassion/love) or otherwise are simply born into it and are consumed in the fundamental ideology and for lack of a better term “programmed” to see only that version of reality.

I don’t think religion it’s self is a compass for moral rightness; but that people with moral rightness (people having the innate sense of moral rightness from genuine compassion/love) is the compass.

A mother holding her new-born, an elderly man tending to his sick beloved dog; share universal attributes in that love; compassion, empathetic sensitivity, innate desire to serve the other, an automatic valuing of the others innate worth; and from these qualities come a wisdom of right moral action.

And of course anyone who has developed a visceral state of alignment to that particular state of consciousness.

The positively religiously oriented may attribute that love to Jesus (or fill in the blank) and I pick no bones about that; though love is not an abstraction, or a 2000 year old story, or a “belief”; it’s a here and now available state of consciousness to develop alignment with.

Any religion without that of course has no moral compass regardless.

That's why I hate everybody.