Thread 18072562

>If free will isn't real. Then you should be okay with people raping your mom. Because they can't help it after all!

Why do normies think this is some kind of clever gotcha? I actually hear this phrase or variations of it quite often anytime you try to debate free will vs determinism with them. I don't want you raping my mother for the same reason I don't want a wild lion, tiger, or bear raping my mother. Most people accept lions, tigers, and bears don't have free will, rights, or morality and we deal with them just fine. Even though they can't help it. We don't just let them do whatever they want.

>>18072562 (OP)
> muh lion
We are not lions. We have complex brains capable of reason, empathy, and foresight. Determinism doesn't mean we turn off our fucking programming that makes us feel pain when we harm others or see our family suffer. The entire point of justice under determinism is consequence management and behavior shaping. We stop the rapist for the same reason we put a fucking leash on a dog or build a fence to keep out bears. To cause and prevent future events. You are too stupid to understand the difference between explanation and justification.

>>18072562 (OP)
If free will isn't real than punitive justice becomes far more important, actually.
Because while we inevitably can only make one decision, take one path given that we can't rewind time, what influences are decision making in our environment can be changed.

Many people who are tempted, or otherwise would, commit crimes don't because they fear punishment.
Increased punishment means the 'odds' of people committing crimes would go down. Which given that a lack of free will implies a fully materialist world where there is no greater form of morality, is the highest end.

I say 'odds' not to suggest that we have freewill. (I personally believe we do, to some extent, but I'm just following by the hypothetical) but rather because we don't know what any given person will do, the only way we can communicate the outcome which is underwent by people is with the language of chance.
What I mean is, if there were a study where we had a 100 people tempted with crime in a world with severe consequences, and another 100 in a world without them, more of the 100 people in the consequence free world would commit said crime.

erm if free will isnt real then retarded thing

shut up faggot

>>18072562 (OP)
Because it is and you got buttmad enough to post it.

>>18072562 (OP)
>Why do normies think this is some kind of clever gotcha?
Because it reminds you that free will has profound ethical connotations, while determinism is really just a position about the physics of it, and outdated physics at that. Lions, tigers and bears don't have an ethical dimension.

>>18072562 (OP)
People actually want free will to be real precisely so that they can feel justified punishing people. If you provide groups of people with two different scenarios, one where a person performs a good deed and one where a person performs a bad deed, reading about the bad deed increases their belief in free will, but reading about the good deed does not. The desire to reward people, the idea that people deserve merit for good deeds, does not incentivise belief in free will. As Nietzsche perceptively noted, it is the desire to punish that is behind belief in free will

>>18072562 (OP)
Midwits will have muh free will muh determinism debates but really its just 50/50, many things in your life are deterministic but you have the free will to choose from the cards youre dealt by determinism and those effect future cards, essentially every choice you make from the starting point of your determinism effects determinism negatively, neither full determinism nor free will can be obtained it is a constant struggle

>>18072606
>The entire point of justice under determinism is consequence management and behavior shaping.
>We stop the rapist for the same reason we put a fucking leash on a dog or build a fence to keep out bears. To cause and prevent future events.

Then there must be some sort of ability for us to change the course of events that isn’t determined by previous outcomes. Your argument assumes an ability to change what is predetermined while holding that everything is already predetermined. That to me is a contradiction.

There are certainly things that rely on other things down the chain. Some things are deterministic in nature, but that doesn’t mean that we as humans are. The strawman >>18072562 (OP) cites keeps being brought up because it’s summarizing the contradiction most people see: if everything is determined by previous outcomes all the way down, then we have no power to change what is already determined. Thus there is no moral impetus to do anything since we have already been determined by previous outcomes to do said future things.

When put like that punitive and rehabilitative justice means nothing because those actions can’t change the outcomes of a criminal: the criminal may be predestined to change and be “better” or predestined to not, completely without any outside input justice may provide because of all actions being determined by the previous.

In this light, the only way justice of any sort works without being pointless is if there is some aspect of the world that isn’t deterministic, that can shape events independently of the past and provide meaningful, substantial change in behavior of its agents. That nondeterministic aspect is what we call free will.

>>18073314
It's not, thats an actual brainlet critique of determinism. Presuming determinism then there's no "should" there just is. He's pre determined to not want people to rape his mum and is predetermined to want to punish those individuals.

>>18073864
I don't really care. These conversations are pointless. I'm not going to convince you of my position or vice versa and lets leave it at that.

>>18072562 (OP)

If by someone's own admission. The only thing stopping them from raping and murdering is they have to constantly and actively use their "free will" to fight themselves from doing it. That says more about them. Determinist believers usually don't have to wrestle with rape fantasies.

>>18073899
Whose admission mentioned "constantly and actively fight themselves"?

>>18072562 (OP)
That isnt even their worst gotcha. "If you dont have free will, why dont you just stay in bed all day and do nothing?" is a common one that is so stupid it makes me seethe

I bet there are people in this thread right now who have said this and they should all be ashamed of the causality that led them to say this

>>18073963
>they should all be ashamed of the causality that led them to say this
>under determinism we can’t change the outcome even if we want because we don’t have the free will to decide our actions
>shame is meant to make us feel bad so we can decide on doing better actions in the future
>see point #2
>mfw shame is pointless

>>18074005
Shaming them to stop IS the predetermined outcome though. I was destined to shame them and they were destined to stop. But this is wishful thinking on my part, the actuality of it is far more likely that they are destined to continue saying it and im destined to continue seething

>>18072562 (OP)
Strawman, in determinism if a nigger rapes whitey then they aren't personally responsible for being a nigger raised in an environment that would make them rape whitey. So they get more empathy and leniency on retribution than a free agent who actively chose to rape someone

>>18074029
Just because niggy didnt have a choice in raping whitey doesnt mean that the rape of whitey wasnt a bad thing, its just that it doesnt make sense to blame niggy for it
What does make sense is to reduce the possibility of the bad thing occurring because its still bad a thing

>>18074049
Noone says it wasn't a bad thing, the point is in determinism you can't blame a nigger for raping whitey any more than a bear for eating a person. Except here the nigger gets more empathy because it's perceived to be a person capable of being changed with enough rehabilitation, as opposed to being gunned down like another animal would be. So they are less personally responsible and retributive justice makes less sense

>>18074059
Thats mostly the bias of humans going against what should be ideal. Its true that its easier to change something with more capability but its also gets harder to control too. Its probably easier to deal with a bear by keeping it in captivity than rehabilitating a niggy. Its just that we people choose crueler methods to solve a problem the less we relate to something.

If theres a psycho goldfish, it would be impossible to change but resolving its problem empathetically would be as easy as moving it to another fishbowl because it has too little capability to do anything about it

I think it comes down to people with functional brains have free will, or rather what we perceive that to be i guess, and people who cant think or visualize in their mind dont have it, midwits getting into the discussion is what added noise to the clear signal answer possibly

>>18073814
So we don't have free will becuase we cannot choose to not breathe or eat?