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Aug. 31, 2010 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
15:13
1742 Determinism Part 666

I choose to respond to those who say I am not free to choose to respond...

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Oh, you determinists, you are filling my inbox with the most crazy and nonsensical and unthought-out stuff.
You really are going to have to do a little bit better than that if you want to take on the free will position.
So when I say that human beings in the determinist universe are like television sets, people say, Aha!
Steph, you're wrong!
Because a television set doesn't have an input.
It's more like, I guess you could say, it's like a television set where you're changing the dial.
The television set is still responding to external...
And that's what determinists are trying to do when they're trying to debate somebody.
But that's not true at all.
That's not even close to true.
You can't create a universe of pure cause and effect with no capacity for free will or choice or preferred states and then say, but I'm turning the dial of a television set.
If every human being is a television set, nobody gets to turn the dial.
Because that is to say that one human being, i.e.
the determinist, is outside the causality and can choose to turn the dial of a television set.
No. In the deterministic universe, every human being is a robot, a television set, is a rock bouncing down a hill.
Now, other people have written to me and said, oh yes, Steph, but if rocks are bouncing down a hill, I can choose to build a wall and then stop the rock's passage to whatever I don't want it to hit.
No, you really don't get to do that in the deterministic universe.
In the deterministic universe, you are also a rock bouncing down a hill.
Here's how to understand what the deterministic universe means in reality.
Let's say that you're standing on the hotel of a balcony looking at a mountain, and you've got your handy-dandy spy glasses on, and you look and you see a little mountain slide going on with rocks all bouncing down the hill.
And they're all colliding into each other and changing course based upon the collisions and so on, but nobody's going to assume that they're choosing that.
Nobody's going to assume that one of the rocks has decided to influence another rock by making an argument.
No, they're just colliding into each other.
Now, you have no effect.
You can have no effect from your distant vantage point.
You can have no effect on what is happening to those rocks in any way, shape, or form.
You're too far away. And so would it make any sense whatsoever to go, go left, go right, up, down, don't go there, go there, that route is bad, this route is good.
I mean, it would be ridiculous.
I mean, somebody who did that, who was staring through at a rock slide saying, go left, Mr.
Boulder, go right, Mr.
Pebble, it's wrong what you're doing.
I mean, we would look at that person like he was crazy, like he was King Lear shouting at the weather.
Because when you're a determinist and you attempt to debate someone, you're shouting at the weather.
Because the determinist says, complexity doesn't matter.
Everything is causal. And just because we can't predict something doesn't mean that it's not causal.
We know that the weather doesn't have a choice.
We know that the weather doesn't choose to vengefully rain on us, although I hope for our barbecue this weekend it won't.
But we know, even though we can't predict the weather with perfect accuracy, we know that the weather is not choosing because the weather is causal.
The weather is not an effect of consciousness.
It doesn't have free will. It doesn't have choice.
So, arguing with a human being is fundamentally exactly the same as arguing with the weather.
Or saying that if you turn the dial or punch the button on a television set that you are having a debate with the television set.
You're really not. The funny thing about determinism is that determinists say human beings are exactly the same as everything else in the universe.
There's no difference. Consciousness and free will, it does not exist.
We are no different from every other piece of matter and energy in the universe.
It's just causal free wills and illusions, so we're all exactly the same as the weather and a piece of rock.
And yet, if you were to say to a determinist, well, you need to argue with the weather then, he'd look at you like you were crazy.
But what's so funny about determinists is that they say human beings are exactly the same as everything else in the universe, but they never debate with everything else that they say is exactly the same.
I mean, if I say all of these oranges are identical, But I'm only going to eat that one and no other one and it would be crazy to eat any other orange and only that orange am I going to eat.
That would not be a consistent position.
If all the oranges are the same, it doesn't matter which one I eat.
If human beings are exactly the same as every other piece of matter in the universe, then it would be as logical to argue with a soap dish, with a starfish, with a piece of pond scum, with the weather, with an orange, with your finger, with a television set, with a computer, with...
This YouTube video, if you want, it would make as much sense to argue with every other piece of matter as it would be to argue with a human being because we're exactly the same as every other piece of matter.
But determinists never do that.
They say human beings are exactly the same as everything else in the universe, but I'm only ever going to debate with a human being because to do that with anything else would be crazy!
Well... Crazy I'll agree with.
The other thing that's funny about determinism is that...
I mean, I've been arguing with determinists for 20 years.
I gave it up because, I mean, they are robots, as they can't really think.
The funny thing about determinists is that...
There are no consequences to the belief.
This is what is so funny about determinism.
No consequences to the belief whatsoever.
So, clearly, if everything is causal and there's no such thing as choice and free will, then there can be no such thing as a preferred belief.
There can be no such thing as a preferred belief.
Any more than there can be a, quote, objectively moral way for a rock to roll down a hill or a moral and immoral place for it to land or a true or false place for it to land.
Oh, if it lands here, that's true.
If it lands there, that's false. In a deterministic universe, since there are no other options whatsoever, then there can be no preferred states whatsoever.
Having preferred states in a deterministic universe is like judging Han Solo's golden frozen corpse in Empire Strikes Back as a bad dancer.
Well, he's not a bad dancer.
He's not a good dancer. We have no idea because he's got no other thing to do than to go.
Right? So, there is no possible other state.
If you and I are crawling through a tunnel, a really narrow tunnel, and I say, we shouldn't go forward and backwards.
We should go side to side.
You'd look at me like, well we can't go side to side because there's no exit that way.
But... Determinism means that our life course is a complete tunnel, but no possible exits.
So there can't be any preferred states.
There's no such thing as truth in a deterministic universe because there are no alternatives to truth.
There's no alternatives to anything that can happen.
There can be no true beliefs.
There can be no moral beliefs.
There can be no such thing as personal responsibility.
That is axiomatic to determinism.
That has to be accepted by anybody who claims to have three brain cells rolling around in the skull and who is a deterministic.
There is no preferred state.
There is no truth. There is no morality.
That's a fact of determinism.
But whenever you point this out to a determinist, what they'll say is, oh, no, no, no.
There can be preferred states.
You say, well, how can there be preferred states in a universe that has no other possibilities than what is actually happening?
I know you'll get some nonsense back or whatever, but...
So they say, okay, this is determinism.
There is no such thing as any other possibilities.
Oh, but there are preferred states.
There's true and false. There's better and worse arguments.
You should change your beliefs to conform to the truth, even though there's no such thing as truth, and beliefs are an illusion, and free will doesn't exist.
You should still change your beliefs to conform to the truth, even though in the deterministic universe there's no truth whatsoever.
No truth, no falsehood, no lies, no facts, no morality.
Or if you say, well, at the very least, we should...
Not put people in prison.
Well, we need to influence their behavior to do this, that.
No, no, no. You don't get to influence the behavior of others in a deterministic universe because you don't have any choice either.
There's so fundamentally, it's an irrelevant position.
I have yet to meet a single goddamn determinist who has changed one atom of his actual behavior based upon his acceptance of determinism.
And I've asked, I don't know how many determinists, dozens and dozens and dozens, to say, what changes when you become a determinist?
What do you give up? If I go from being a Christian to being an atheist, I get to sleep here on Sundays.
I don't have to feel guilty.
I can enjoy sex.
I don't have original sin.
I'm not going to go to hell. Lots of things change.
I don't pray anymore.
I do something that's actually useful with my hands.
So, when you become an atheist or a Christian, lots of things change.
And vice versa, if you give up atheism and you join the superstitious horde of Christianity or other major religions or minor religions, things change.
You now wake up, you go to church, you pray, you baptize your children, you do all this other stuff.
Rituals abound. Things change.
But determinism, nothing changes.
It's not so funny about it. Nothing changes.
Determinist says, oh yes, everything is determined, but I still choose to debate.
Oh, but I still think that there's preferred states.
I still think there's such a thing as truth.
It's better to choose truth than to choose falsehood.
If you're a determinist, then you should be a determinist.
You should choose truth over error, even though there's no such thing as truth and error.
So you still get to debate if you're a determinist.
I've never met a determinist who has given up on morality because morality is a preferred state.
And so you still get to make moral judgments.
You still get to debate with people.
You still get to try and change people's minds.
So it's exactly the same as somebody who believes in free will.
There is no difference.
Not even the slightest atom of a difference between somebody who accepts free will and somebody who pretends to be a determinist.
Because the behaviors...
Are exactly the same.
You just take your position called free will and you call it determinism.
And what you do is you then get to chase away the hobgoblins of insecurity.
Because, yeah, nobody knows how consciousness works.
Nobody knows how human beings have the capacity to choose.
It's an unknown. It may not be known for hundreds or thousands of years.
It may never be known. But so what?
So what? It doesn't matter.
Just because we don't know why something works, we don't make up some explanation called determinism.
I mean, when we didn't know where the species came from, it was stupid to make up something called God did it.
We don't know where the universe came from.
It was stupid to make up something called God made the universe, because all you do then is you stop looking.
And yeah, human consciousness is a mystery.
Choice is a mystery.
So, don't just make up something called determinism and think you've answered something.
It's ridiculous. It is an embarrassing position, logically, and I find it ridiculous.
The other thing that's the last thing that I'll say about determinism that makes it such a futile and pointless thing...
Let's say that determinism were proven true tomorrow.
Determinism were proven true tomorrow.
That everything that we believed, everything that we did, everything that we said was just a mere series of dominoes from the beginning of time until the end of time with no choice, no options, no truth, no preferred states, no morality, no responsibility, no ethics, no love, no hate, nothing.
Nothing! Well, if determinism were proven true tomorrow, I could continue...
To believe in free will. And nobody would be able to rationally correct me because my belief in free will was simply predetermined by the peculiar and particular behavior of the atoms and cells and neurons and energy within my body and brain.
So, if determinism were proven true tomorrow, and a determinist came up to me and said, Aha!
Determinism is proven true. You must give up your belief in free will.
And I said, I don't want to.
I'm not going to. Well, he couldn't correct me, because then it's like talking to a television set again.
Because my behavior, the contents of my mind, is completely predetermined for me to accept free will, cannot be corrected any more than you can yell at a rock going down a hill that it should go left or right or anything like that.
And that's what's so funny about it.
It's such a fundamentally immaterial, inconsequential, bullshit, hypocritical, nonsense, unthought, unempirical, no-consequences kind of belief.
And, you know, in a funny kind of way...
Okay, one more thing to say. In a funny kind of way, determinists are kind of right.
But not universally.
I've never met a determinist who has...
Really, any self-knowledge at all.
Any self-knowledge at all.
They tend to be very reactionary.
So, if you debate with a determinist, and if the determinist feels like you're misinterpreting his position, he'll get frustrated and angry with you.
And as I always say to determinists, why are you getting frustrated and angry?
You're a determinist.
My responses are entirely pre-programmed.
It's like you're yelling at the weather.
I mean, only an immature idiot yells at the weather.
Why are you yelling at me if I'm just a predetermined bag of cause and effect?
It makes no sense. They say, well, but I'm reacting to your stimuli and I'm predeterminedly going to get frustrated.
And it's like, right, so it makes no difference to be a determinist.
You get to wave away whatever you can't figure out, like consciousness, which I can't figure out either.
But then whenever the consequences of your belief accrue to you, you say, well, but I'm reacting just in a predetermined way.
So it's just a complete nonsense bit of superstition, determinism.
But determinists are kind of right in a way because determinists who lack self-knowledge, and this is a scientific fact.
You can look at my Bomb in the Brain series.
People who go through therapy, people who struggle and strive to understand themselves, to examine themselves.
Self-knowledge is...
Virtue. The first virtue is always honesty.
And the first honesty must and forever always be honesty with the self.
A sense of self-knowledge.
Why do you do what you do? What are the thoughts that come before the emotions, that come before the actions?
What relationship does your early childhood experiences have to your current life?
These are all things that anybody with a decent sense of self-knowledge and a decent approach to self-understanding, with philosophical wisdom, with psychology, with therapy, with self-knowledge of every kind, This is what a wise and responsible person does because this changes the brain to the point where impulses from the amygdala before they hit the neofrontal cortex can be intercepted and modified.
This has been fairly well established.
So I'm talking about some science here.
I don't mean to shock the determinists who use pseudophysics to pretend to explain the mystery of human consciousness.
Oh, and quantum physics doesn't matter because quantum physics occurs at the subatomic level and consciousness occurs at the cellular level, so they don't translate.
Anyway, If you don't have self-knowledge, then you will forever be bouncing off your own automaton.
You will be bouncing off your own defenses and avoidances and history and trauma and whatever.
So you will be, if you lack self-knowledge, yeah, you will be just reacting and bouncing off people and getting mad and getting upset and this and that.
You will be a robot programmed by history in the absence of self-knowledge.
This is what determinism really is.
It is a description of what results from the avoidance Of wisdom and self-knowledge.
If you don't have wisdom and self-knowledge, you can't have wisdom without self-knowledge, then yeah, you will experience the world like a robot experience a stimuli because you will just be bouncing off defenses and immaturity and emotional acting out without the interception of rational thought, wisdom and self-knowledge.
So if you avoid self-knowledge, then you do end up kind of like a robot.
And in that sense, determinism, I'm sure, feels pretty true.
It just isn't true.
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