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July 25, 2006 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
33:27
346 Science And Free Will Part 2
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Good afternoon, everybody.
Hope you're doing well. It's Steph.
It's 20 past 5 on, I think, something like maybe the 25th of July 2006.
It's a Tuesday. I'm pretty sure of that, but you see, for me, once I start losing track of the days, it's really just downhill from there.
So, I'd like to thank everybody, even our German friend, who is participating...
In a rousing, rousing free will versus determinism debate on the board.
And I certainly do understand that it's frustrating for people.
It's frustrating for me, but that's okay.
I'm allowed to be frustrated because I'm on the free will side of things.
Not from a standpoint of proof, but just from a standpoint of trying to live my life, trying to observe how I live my life and how other people live their life and my own experience and just working empirically from that, which is to say that...
I view the determinists as mad!
No, not mad. They have a consistency to them, right?
And I certainly appreciate consistency in an argument.
The great thing about consistency in an argument, whoever you're arguing with, is that you can get down to brass tacks very quickly, right?
The frustration that always occurs for me is that...
People who are inconsistent, it's really like arguing with the fog, and you can't ever get down to any kind of real stuff, right?
So you want to argue with a status, say, who says, yes, I think that these people should have the right to shoot other people, and I think that you should get shot for disagreeing with me about taxation, and I think that there is no difference between rape and lovemaking and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
The great thing about that, you can get down to brass tacks very quickly.
And so I appreciate the fact that there are certain determinists on our board who are very frank and upfront and aren't doing the compatibilist nonsense route, who are very frank and upfront about the limitations of free will in that it's 100% limited, does not exist, and everything is pre-caused.
And I appreciate that because it lets us get down to brass tacks very quickly.
So, I'm just going to start at the end very briefly and just talk about...
One of the arguments that was put forward, this German gentleman who is debating in free will, did lose his temper today, which I fully understand, and I certainly appreciate his emotional frankness, but he used some pretty harsh terms with me, and I was being intellectually dishonest,
and that I was deliberately misunderstanding him, and that I was obviously not intelligent enough to participate in this level and complexity of debate, and so I won't read you the whole post, because I'm sure you've You'll get the general idea, and you can find it in Determinism number 9, number 9, number 9. Oh, that joke is only going to work with people over 30.
Anyway, so what I pointed out, of course, was that the reason that I always get confused...
When debating with determinists, they keep using concepts based on the existence of free will.
And that's what I mean when I say the inconsistency.
What I see as the inconsistency, at least, of the determinist position has always been quite confusing to me.
So when people who are determinists end up using language like choice and decision and consequences and so on, I always get a little confused.
I get very confused. I sort of feel like they want to have their cake and eat it, too.
And so with this gentleman, what I did was I picked out sort of words that he'd used in his email, in his post, which implied that free will was true, right?
So if I've, you know, to say that I had deliberately misinterpreted something of his, this is the gentleman who wrote this morning's metaphor about the shark attack, shark biting you in half.
And he said, yeah, I deliberately misinterpreted.
But of course, if you're a determinist, then there's no such thing as a deliberate misinterpretation.
I had no choice whatsoever about how I interpreted or did not or correctly or incorrectly.
There is sort of no such thing as correct or incorrect because everything is for ordained, right?
So, like when a rock rolls down a hill and bounces and goes this way or that, you may not know exactly where it's going to land, but you wouldn't look at that bouncing path in slow motion down and say, See, you know, the rock really shouldn't have bounced here.
It should have bounced over there. And then it shouldn't have bounced this way.
It should have bounced the other way. And where it came to rest was completely ridiculous.
And it's deliberately misinterpreting where it should go.
I mean, that would be a ridiculous argument to have.
You don't see geologists arguing with stalactites or stalagmites and saying that they should be in different positions or of different heights or anything like that.
It would be sort of lunatic to engage in a...
A spirited debate with a rock about where it should be in the world.
And so if you predict that a rock is going to sort of land in one place, but it lands in another place, as a scientist, you probably wouldn't sit there and say, well, this rock is being deliberately willful and misinterpreting my intentions, and it's a bad rock, it's irresponsible, it's intellectually dishonest, and it's just not very bright.
I mean, I don't think that you would get very far as a geologist if you took that approach.
In fact, you probably wouldn't get very far out of the funny farm and the self-hugging suit situation.
So this is sort of where it's coming from.
And I understand the emotional frustration that comes from me sort of resisting these ideas of determinism, but that's fine.
I mean, in my world, I'm allowed.
In the determinist world, it's inevitable, so I'm not sure why people are upset.
But anyway...
It's just interesting to me that when personal attacks of this kind come along, and I'm a big boy, I can take it, it's no biggie for me, but when personal attacks of this kind come along, they always rely on arguments about free will, that I'm deliberately choosing something, or that I'm in over my head and don't know it, and so on. And, of course, that basic argument that poor Steph, he's just not quite bright enough to handle the complexities of the free will versus determinism debate, That, of course, is funny, right?
And it's only designed to be insulting to somebody who is intelligent, right?
Because if I really was stupid, then I wouldn't even understand that I was being insulted, right?
So, I mean, that kind of stuff.
When somebody says to you, you're just not bright enough to handle this kind of complexity, then they're not...
Well, I believe it's projection, but we don't need to go there, but they're actually assuming that you are intelligent and that you value intelligence and that's why they're sort of going for you.
And the most interesting thing was that he says, you know, I now eagerly await your response that I had a terrible childhood and that's why I'm disagreeing with you because you put everything down in psychological terms and so on.
And that to me is wonderful because it's a wonderfully complicated response because this gentleman, and I'm not sort of trying to hack at this guy or anything, I'm just sort of pointing out how it looks from the free will side of things.
This gentleman is both saying that my behavior is predictable and he's angry that it is predictable, which is a very, very complex situation for a determinist to be in, right?
Somebody who advocates that people's behavior is predictable should not taunt people with the predictability of their behavior and seem to be angry that it is going to be predictable.
I mean, it really would be rather a strange argument to be in if you were going to take it from that standpoint.
And then another gentleman who's posting on the board, who usually has something wonderful to say, has pointed out that he sort of asked me if I could recognize the following situation.
Actually, no. Before I do that, let me do this other one.
So then... Somebody posted, so I basically, in an exchange, I basically just came down to, is my behavior determined or not?
Am I responsible for my actions?
And then one other determinist posted and said, no, you are not at all responsible for your actions.
Everything that you do is determined.
But I think this other guy who attacked you was irrational, and it wasn't productive.
I mean, do you understand why I'm getting a little confused by the determinist position?
I'm not laughing at anybody in particular.
I'm just laughing. Because for me, and this could be my dull and insensate nature, I'm fully aware of that.
It could be just because I'm not too bright.
And I just don't understand the sophistic subtleties of the interchange.
But for me, to hear somebody say, no, nobody's response to anything is their responsibility.
Everybody's just like a train on a train tracks.
You don't end up in the wrong position, right?
It's just wherever you are is your genes and determinism and so on.
But what that guy did was irrational.
Do you see? I don't even know if I have to say how crazy that seems to me, right?
Maybe, again, this could be all due to my sort of desperate shortage of brain cells as to why I'm not able to figure this one out.
But this is, you know, from my very limited and reptile-like perspective, the logical contradiction is that somebody says to me, no, nobody's responsible for their own behavior.
Everyone is determined. But that guy shouldn't have done this.
He was being irrational.
But there's no such thing as irrationality if everything is determined.
Do you call a tree irrational?
When a dandelion lands in your lawn and grows, do you call its placement irrational?
Of course not. Do you call a cloud irrational or ludicrous or ridiculous or self-deceptive or manipulative?
No, of course not.
Because these are just cause and effect.
And so it just seems that even within this one very brief post, again, this could be my complete lack of understanding of all the subtleties involved in determinism, but it would seem to me that if somebody says, no, everybody's behavior is purely predetermined and nobody's responsible, but this guy is being irrational and he shouldn't have done it.
Well, that's deranged in my view.
Not that this person is deranged, but this statement is deranged.
Because if nobody's responsible for what they do and everything is predetermined, there can be no such thing as irrational.
Because that would indicate that there was some alternative state that could be achieved.
That there was some alternative state that could be achieved.
But if everything is determined, there is no alternative state that can ever be achieved.
So there's nothing to measure what is against.
To use the rock falling down the mountainside.
Yeah, we don't know exactly where it's going to end up because it's very complicated and it hits a bunny and it bounces and then there's a gust of wind and then it breaks in two and we can't predict all of that.
If we had all the variables we could, I understand that determinist position.
But at what point do we say that that rock falling down the hill is irrational and should be doing something different?
Well, it's simply impossible.
If determinism is true, there is no alternative state that could ever be achieved.
So there's no such thing as immoral or irrational or self-deceptive or manipulative or evil or good or proud or love.
None of those things exist because they're all about preferences.
And there's no rational point having preferences in a state of determinism.
I mean, you might have preferences like you throw yourself out of a plane and you go, gee, I wish I'd remember to take my parachute.
But it's irrational.
It's just like, it's a lack of understanding.
It's sort of like how a child reacts when mom goes back to work and the kid thinks that the mom is never coming back.
Oh, I'm coming back.
You just don't understand. It's an emotional, immature reaction.
Now, I got a correction or a clarification, and I hope that this will make some sense.
This one I think I understand.
I think I can get the hang of it.
I think I can close my little bear trap around this big leg.
But... One person said, okay, Steph, have you ever come up with the following, and I'm paraphrasing here, I'm not reading while I'm driving, but have you ever come up with the following, or experienced the following situation?
So you work in a way with a spanner and a nut, and you're trying to get that nut in, and you're twisting, and then it falls down, and you pick it up again, and you twist, and you get more and more irritated, and finally you're like, you MF nut, goddammit, you son of a beep, whatever, right? You just get really angry at the nut.
Well, nobody's saying that the nut has free will.
And nobody's standing over there saying, I'm angry at this nut because it's willfully denying me.
It's defying my authority.
It's being willful and disobedient.
I mean, they may say it as a joke, but nobody would really believe that that nut has free will, but they're still irritated at it.
They're still angry at it.
Is that, have you ever experienced that?
It's like, sure, I was five once too.
And yes, when I was much younger, I did experience frustration where I would get angry.
I specifically remember having an Atari ST and throwing the mouse against a wall when I was very young because it had stopped working.
Or it would just sort of partially work and I was trying to play a video game.
And so yes, when I was very young, I would have those kinds of reactions where I would get angry at inanimate objects.
Which, of course, in the determinist view, we are all, to some degree, inanimate objects, right?
Everything is caused, right?
So, yes, I would get angry at those things when I was young, but I would not view that as mature behavior.
Like, if I saw my kid throwing their CD player against the wall because it was having some skips, I would not say, good for you, son, that's a really great way to deal with your temper.
So yes, of course, absolutely I've experienced.
I don't experience that so much anymore.
Very vaguely, very from time to time sort of irritation.
But it's not something that I view with great pride in myself.
It's inevitable, and I certainly don't mind it, but it's not something that I think is a very good thing.
And of course, I don't act it out against other people.
Because in my view, I have a choice about whether I act out my anger against other people in ways that are destructive and vicious and hurtful.
That's why I'm always talking about the debate, not the people.
And so because I believe that I have a choice in that matter, and I want to make a choice that I feel is respectful towards other people to the degree with which they are worthy of respect and are treating me with respect, as I said before, I treat people as well as I can the first time, and after that I treat them as they treat me.
But it's, to me, a very different thing to get angry at a nut and then to get angry at somebody else It's quite a different thing, right?
So if I'm dealing with somebody who's kind of not very bright and I'm trying to teach them something complicated and they're having real trouble, getting angry at them and calling them stupid is quite a bit different from getting angry at a nut that I'm trying to get on threaded, right? I mean, that's very different.
Now you're impacting somebody else.
So I understand that you can get angry at things even when you don't ascribe free will to them.
But let me sort of take this metaphor a little bit further, just so that the people, and I've posted this already, so if you've been on the board you've seen this, but just for the people who are into the audiobook version of the message board.
If we take this metaphor, let me sort of show you how it looks.
From somebody who is not a determinist, i.e.
myself, when looking at the behavior or actions of determinism.
So let's say that you and I are working in the same garage, right?
We're working on two cars and I'm trying to get a nut threaded.
And the nut is not getting threaded and it keeps falling down and I have to reach down to get it and maybe I cut myself and I get a cramp and it's hot and there are mosquitoes and I don't know, whatever you want to do to come up with whatever's going to provoke an explosion of anger from me, right? Well, that's sort of one thing, right?
So you're trying to get this nut on, and eventually you're just like, God damn it, you son of a whatever, right?
You're just so angry at the nut.
I understand that. I mean, that can happen.
And of course, that does not imply that I am ascribing free will to the nut if I do that.
But let's just say that you're, and you'll see why the word nut is so important here, let's just say that you and I are working in the same garage.
And I'm having trouble with the nut.
And so what I do is I start debating with the nut.
So I start to say, oh nut, you really should not be so willful.
You really should not willfully misinterpret my desires.
You should not be wriggling out of my hand and trying to thwart me and trying to pretend to be stupid in order to embarrass me in front of my friend here.
Oh nut, you are so very wrong in your perception.
And you're so very manipulative.
And all you do is you say that I can't get this nut on because I had a bad childhood.
And that's your explanation for everything.
And you can't handle being corrected, oh nut.
You just are totally incorrect in that.
I am trying to be reasonable with you, my friend the nut.
I'm trying to be reasonable, but you just won't listen.
You're making me so angry.
You've got to start listening to me and stop willfully misinterpreting everything that I'm saying to you, oh little nut of mine.
I'm so frustrated.
Because you keep willfully not doing what you engage me in this debate, oh little nut of mine, and we're supposed to have these parameters and you keep changing them on me and you're just driving me crazy.
And you're just trying to upset me.
You're willfully misinterpreting my intentions and falling on the floor.
Right now, imagine this goes on for a couple of hours.
At what point am I going to start to look a little less than well, let's say?
I wouldn't say that it's going to be very long before you sort of say, maybe I should get out of the garage just a little bit and maybe I should talk to him when he's calmed down and say, you know, you keep engaging in these lengthy debates with inanimate objects.
I just don't quite understand why you would do that.
And then I would say, look, I know it's an inanimate object.
I know it doesn't have free will.
It's like, but then why are you bringing all this evidence?
Why do you say to the nut that you should do it because the threads and your inner grooves match perfectly, and it's going to make the car run, and it's going to be more efficient, and it's going to be more effective, and boy, Mr.
Nut, if you could just get on that screw, then, oh man, everything would just be so much better.
Everything, the car would run, I'd take you out for a ride, things would be beautiful.
But you're trying to appeal to some self-interest on the part of this nut?
That's kind of, oh, you know it's coming.
You know it's coming. It's kind of nutty.
And from that standpoint, and this is a, you know, I understand this is a perspective that may be offensive to some people and so on.
I'm just trying to be honest about how it looks to me when determinists debate with me and get angry.
And then say, no, I know that you're a nut and you have no free will and so on.
And I can understand an explosion of anger, but a lengthy debate that goes on for days...
Doesn't seem quite right to me.
Doesn't seem quite like in keeping with the premises.
Now, the last thing I'll say sort of on this particular topic is that I don't think it makes a huge amount of difference, personally.
I don't think it makes a huge amount of difference if you see me getting angry at the nut or debating with it reasonably.
According to the determinist position, I have no more capacity to change my opinions or behaviors than a nut does.
Or a rock. And so this is sort of when I say, when you debate with people, you're kind of assuming a kind of capacity to decide and choose, right?
So you're sort of assuming free will.
And again, I know that I'm going to get flamed on this and that's fine.
This is just my, you know, ascribe it to my lack of intelligence, if you'd be so very kind.
And I'm perfectly happy to sit there and just say, look...
Maybe I had a blood clot or a brain aneurysm or maybe this whole part of my brain doesn't light up at all and I've developed some odd abilities in other areas to overcompensate for my lack of capacity to understand in a logical manner and in a consistent manner the determinist position.
But if I'm not capable of changing my opinions, or any more so than a rock, then debating with me is exactly the same as debating with a rock.
And I know you start to get this stuff about, well, it's inputs, and you don't know how things are going to change.
But no, somebody's going to say, well, I'm programmed to debate with you, and you're programmed to respond.
Well, I understand that. But then you're like two rocks debating with each other.
It's even less purposeful, right?
At least in my world, somebody with free will who's debating with a rock, at least one person has free will there, and at least they can choose not to debate with the rock once you point out that the rock isn't going to change, except based on its nature of being a rock.
So, this just, and again, this is not to say that the determinists are dumb at all.
This is just to say that I'm dumb, right?
I'm perfectly willing to stand there and say this enormous white flag of ignorance is being waved from the free will side of things because I can't, for the life of me, understand what it would mean to debate with a nut.
For free will people, I can understand that getting angry, and I sort of talked about that this morning, doesn't make much sense to me if everything is predetermined.
But if things are not predetermined, staying less angry in the debate doesn't exactly raise the comprehensibility quotient for me, or to some degree you would say the sanity quotient.
In fact, it might be said that having a reasonable debate with a nut might be a little less sane than having...
Like, having a calm, reasonable, rational, and evidence-laced debate with a nut might be a little bit less sane than yelling at it, right?
That's just sort of my perspective.
So, let's just sort of take a look at that.
A couple more of the arguments that I've thrown around, which I'll get to the responses of the gentlemen who responded to these a little bit.
I think tomorrow probably is when I'll get to them in the morning.
But I sort of wrote that all human beings...
This is sort of some proofs, some evidence for, or supporting arguments for.
All human beings claim to experience free will innately, naturally and without coercion, as I sort of mentioned before, which is different from religion or statism.
And determinists also experience, quote, free will, but they believe it's an illusion.
Number two, almost all human beings believe in free will without coercion.
This is sort of important.
This is the natural state of things, that everybody believes in free will.
And this is not something that is the same as believing that the earth is flat or any of these kinds of things, as I talked about this morning.
Our perception of our own free will can be called illusory, of course, but then so can the evidence of our senses or reality itself.
And this, I think, is somewhat of an important point.
And there's a rebuttal, which I'll read in the morning.
Our perception of our own free will can be called illusory.
Yes, the universal perceptions of all mankind can be called illusory, right?
But why would you just stop at free will?
Why wouldn't my perception of the road, or a view of this argument, or the message board, or the existence of clouds, or the existence of reality as a whole, or any of the evidence of my senses, or anything like that?
Why aren't we in the Cartesian world of the infinite demon, as we've talked about before?
So, yes, you can say that the universal self-generating and automatic and non-coerced perception of all mankind is a complete illusion, but then why would you just stop there?
Anything that you perceive then can be an illusion.
I also wrote, all human beings act as if free will were true.
This includes determinists who argue for their position, try to change other people's minds, say that we should change our behavior based on new knowledge, and blah, blah, blah.
And I'm not able to comprehend this response, so I certainly will read to it, right?
So... I'm going to also point out that children believe in free will almost from day one.
So if you snatch something from a kid, they're going to get angry.
It indicates that the experience of free will is innate.
And just in the same way that a belief in the validity of the senses is innate.
Now, this must arrive from an inner experience, since it's universal and does not come from an external source.
So everybody experiences free will in a universal manner.
As a species, of course, our entire emotional and neurological apparatus is finely and closely tuned to the proposition that free will is true.
This is not a proof. This is just a support, right?
So, the fact that when something is snatched from us, we get angry, and when somebody betrays us, we feel hurt, and when somebody...
whatever, right? All of our emotional apparatus and our entire neuropsychological response mechanisms are all predicated on the existence and the innate belief in the existence and universality of free will.
I mean, a woman who gets raped does not say, well, that's just where the universe ended up.
That was inevitable. I'm not going to get angry.
I'm not going to press charges because that would be indicating that there was some other possibility, which there wasn't.
So you don't press charges against a piano that falls on you from a building, and you don't press charges against a rapist because the two have exactly the same degree and level of free will.
So, our entire emotional apparatus is predicated on the fact that free will is a universal perception, belief, and experience.
So, you know, it doesn't mean that it's real or it's true or whatever, right?
But it does sort of argue that it's a pretty universal phenomenon, which means that if you say it's not true, you might need some fairly high level of proof, right?
So, arguments to change someone's mind assume the capacity to change one's mind, which indicates a belief in free will.
And determinists, of course, believe that such a change of mind is strictly causal in nature.
But in trying to change, you have a desire for someone to have a different mindset than they do.
And so your desire is that things be different from how they are or how they appear to be within your own experience.
And, of course, to me, again, just based on my simplistic understanding of these things, that would appear to be something like wishing for things to be other than how they are.
It's a belief in the capacity of the mind to choose based on particular kinds of stimuli.
So determinists don't argue and say, well, I'm going to hold my breath until you believe in determinism, which would be a causal thing to do, or a injection of a new factor.
They tend to say, well, I'm more effective in my beliefs or in my arguments if I choose rationality and evidence and so on.
So They do believe that the mind changes based on the right kinds of arguments and not just based on anything you do, right?
You sit home and will it, or you sort of say, I'm going to do the funky chicken until you believe in determinism, right?
So there's specific goals, specific purposes that determinists pursue in order to change people's minds, which would indicate that some methods are better than others based on people's respect for evidence and that that changes over time and it's more so now than it would be in the pre-scientific realm and so on.
I just think that that's some sort of argument towards the belief that free will occurs and you should appeal to people's capacity for rationality and respect for evidence and so on.
Now, there are certain aspects within society, and we talked about this briefly before, that would indicate that everybody believes in free will to their economic disadvantage if it's not true, right?
So things like propaganda, arguments, science, love, hatred, revenge, religion, religious instruction, advertising, wooing, my wife's occupation, psychotherapy, parking fines, and all that.
All of these thousands of aspects of human society are all predicated on the belief of the existence of free will.
This indicates that it's a universal experience, and it also indicates that people are willing to spend money in order to change free will or people's choice.
It's sort of important. If free will is not true, then advertising is a complete waste of time.
Now, given that companies are continually trying to figure out how to save as much money as possible, and given that advertising is, you know, a multi-multi-hundred-billion-dollar-a-year industry, I think that it might be fair to say that if there was a way to not accept free will, then companies would find a way to do that so they could then companies would find a way to do that so they could save all of their advertising money and
If a perfectly deterministic theory were to be invented, right, this is sort of an important sort of gut-level check, right, for the sort of validity of this and this, there are some logical reasons for this as well, but it struck me in the gut first.
So, if a perfect determinist theory were invented...
That would accurately predict, sort of, quote, in five seconds you will raise your hand.
Does anyone seriously believe that it would be impossible to alter that action so as to disprove that theory, right?
So if I come up with some perfect deterministic theory which says in five seconds you're going to raise your hand, is it really the case that you would be absolutely unable to not raise your hand?
Well, of course not. You'd simply keep your hand down and that would disprove my theory.
So, you know, from that standpoint it would seem to me...
That it would be the case that you're never going to end up with a deterministic theory because the moment you come up with one, people are just going to change their behavior.
So it seems like you're chasing a bit of a will-o'-the-wisp or a bit of a ghost here.
But that's sort of the perspective from that standpoint.
Determinists believe that a belief in free will is false, which contradicts determinism.
If everyone's beliefs are predetermined, then one's beliefs can no more be false, then a rock can fall in the wrong place.
I've mentioned this before. So, we've talked about this before.
I don't need this anymore. Of course, I do point out that the human mind is radically different from everything else in the universe.
Evolution is a slow progression from what came before.
A man can create a new painting in a day, or a new poem in an hour.
The fertility of the imagination is strong evidence for self-causality, since new things come into existence all the time, self-generating consciousness.
And so it's just something that's a little bit different from everything else that goes on.
It's different from plants, it's different from computers, it's different from mammals and like dolphins and so on.
Being skeptical of determinism is not the same as being skeptical of atheism, rationalism, or the scientific method.
You sort of get this kind of thing, too, right?
It's not the same as being a flat-earther or a creationist.
It's not the same as worshipping randomness or being ignorant of physics.
Just because people believed false things in the past does not mean that we must now believe everything in the present, right?
So that's sort of the non-sequiturs or, to some degree, the ad hominem attacks that come along or oppositions that come to these kinds of people, right?
Now, my last sort of the 13th point, not having the answer as to how free will works, does not add one atom of proof to the determinist position.
Since, just to take one example, the determinist position cannot explain the fertility of the human imagination, which seems to create both ideas and objects out of nothing, or sort of self-generating, I would say out of nothing, or self-generating in ways that we can't quite understand.
So the lack of an explanation for free will is not a proof of determinism.
So that's just sort of something to understand from that perspective, that that is quite a different situation.
That just because I can't fully explain exactly how free will works, or even approximately how free will works, because I can't explain that...
It doesn't mean that determinism becomes any more legitimate as an explanation, right?
I may not have come up with the...
I don't have to come up with the Copernican theory to prove that there are problems with the Ptolemaic theory or whatever, right?
So that standpoint, people say, well, you can't prove free will and that's fine, but it's a little bit different from God, a little bit different from the idea of God, as we've talked about before.
So, I mean, these are not proofs or, you know, anything like that.
I think that there's some pretty strong sort of support mechanisms here for our little friend we call free will.
But I'm certainly looking forward to a debate, but I'm going to be quite rigorous in this debate just so that I can...
Keep my own little brain from getting too strained.
I'm going to be quite rigorous in this debate that we have, though, which we're trying to set up for this week with the determinists, in that the moment that a determinist utters free choice language, I'm going to have to stop them and ask them to explain it, right?
So the moment we get choice and consequences and circumstance and changing people's minds and all this kind of stuff, then I'm going to have to stop them and ask them to explain what they mean, because what I would like, of course, is a free will debate We're good to go.
Because Einsteinian physics was an extension and a deepening of Newtonian physics and did not contradict the basic assumptions of Newtonian physics, whereas free will versus determinism are completely, totally, and utterly opposite positions.
So, if you are taking a completely opposite position, then you can't accept the premises of the opposite, right?
So, for me, again, just from my paltry mental standpoint, it's sort of like saying that I'm going to attempt to disprove the existence of God By praying for atheism, it just seems like if you're going to go for a complete opposite approach, you can't use the premises or language of the opposite.
So I hope this has been helpful.
I look forward to continuing this debate.
It's a very interesting one, and it's certainly getting me firing on, I guess, 2.2 cylinders.
So, I mean, it's all I got, so I'm doing the best that I can.
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