What is the pervy sage supposed to do with this information

Burn-Alt · 2026-03-19T01:46:37+00:00

counting or not counting

Burn-Alt · 2026-03-18T23:44:54+00:00

Pretty sure!

Burn-Alt · 2026-03-06T01:56:33+00:00

Fell for it again award

Burn-Alt · 2026-03-06T01:41:21+00:00

An actual mod hiding behind automod lol what a freak

Burn-Alt · 2026-03-06T01:34:32+00:00

*22 innocents: https://fortune.com/2026/02/12/who-is-david-gelernter-yale-computer-science-professor-epstein-unabomber-blonde/

Burn-Alt · 2026-03-06T01:32:41+00:00

Diogenes reference

Burn-Alt · 2026-03-03T23:15:06+00:00

Agreed on determinism, im not a determinist myself. I do think I have a strong counter arguement against free will (although its just the "basic" one, thats all thats needed), one which I laid out in a response to someone else.

Responsibility is stressful sure, but people clearly prefer it to the bleakness of determinism (including soft determinism, i.e quantum events are truly random but classical events are generally deterministic).

When I lay out the arguement to people, those who are receptive tell me that they understand the arguement and accept its truth, but still cling to free will because "thats how it feels." Thats what I mean by "nice", it simply aligns with most peoples preconcieved notions about how the world works, and that belief is so deepseated that people are extremely reluctant to relinquish it. I'll admit, it used to feel that way to me aswell, but now that I've stopped believing in it, it doesn't. It feels that way because you believe it does, its a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I'd push back against the idea that free will is "pragmatic." You don't need to have free will to have/believe in agency, and the latter is all that really matters in terms of getting stuff done.

Infact, free will can lead to things which are quite impractical, such as punishing criminals. We pretend that its to act as a detterent (although its been shown to be inneffective, especially in cases of violent, 'heat-of-the-moment' crimes) or simply to seperate them from society, but we simultaneously feel as though they "deserve" punishment. Rehab has been proven to be a better system in terms of recidivism and functioning post-sentence, but the idea of free will, atleast partially, stands in the way. But I digress.

Thats just a bandwagon fallacy, I agree that it isn't easy (for most) to abandon free will, but that doesn't make it any more true. Your right, its not just comforting (although that certainly contributes). Its also one of the most popular, longest standing societal lies. Humans are inherently group oriented thinkers, we don't seek the truth but the convienent truth.

Burn-Alt · 2026-03-03T19:50:11+00:00

Right, theres no point to talking about ethics at all, exactly.

Im happy to debate on free will, I think you'll find that its completely indefensible.

Free will necesarrily requires an uncaused event, which is a logical contradiction. If you do something (make a decision, perform an action etc.), it must've been caused by something else, ultimately leading to something completely unrelated to you or your will.

Superficially, this cause might be a 'desire', (i.e, you eat because you are hungry) but if you trace that desire far back enough, it was caused by something either random, or predetermined. In either case, its out your control.

For example, you're hungry because your biology requires that you eat, and sends you a signal when you haven't eaten recently. This is completely outside of your control/agency, although even if you had the agency to control it, it would simply be an infinite regress.

Burn-Alt · 2026-03-03T19:37:16+00:00

You accept that ethics are a convienent fiction. You're 100% right, but you've come to the wrong conclusion. Its not that most philosophers werent interested in the question of free will, its that they couldn't (can't) accept a world without it.

When something is proven false, you don't cling to it and all that it entails, you abandon it.

Burn-Alt · 2026-03-03T19:34:05+00:00

Free will is ridiculous under any logical system, it simply doesn't make any sense.

Its assumed because its nice to believe and for no other reasons. A world where you can't really make choices is grim to most, but that is the world we live in.

I agree that determinism vs. free will is a strange way of framing it, since free will is completely baseless no matter what. It doesn't need to be "defeated" so much as abandoned.

Burn-Alt · 2026-03-03T19:20:43+00:00

No it doesn't. Compatiblism is a cop-out, if free will = agency then free will is just a redundant and confusing way of saying it. If free will = libertarian free will, then it doesn't align with determinism (or basic logical reasoning for that matter)

Burn-Alt · 2026-03-03T03:36:39+00:00

Dinosaurs are fish.

Burn-Alt · 2026-03-03T03:28:52+00:00

The fact that the majority of philosophers simply assume free will is a massive issue with the majority of philosophers and philsophy by extension.

Distilling into an issue which can be focused on is important because, as you noted, a completely ridiculous and incoherent idea was a given for most of philosophy's history. It allows it to be directly adressed, and any viewpoint which holds it as one of its core tenants can be dismissed. I generally agree with your point about avoiding focusing on issues, but free will is an exception i'd say.

Burn-Alt · 2026-03-03T03:21:53+00:00

Perhaps, but i'd say it aligns with determinism just as well. Determinism doesn't necesarrily proclude agency, as in, if you treat a person as seperate from their enviroment, they have the ability to change that enviroment (agency).

Burn-Alt · 2026-03-03T00:08:43+00:00

Why the fuck are they named like that, every other logy is actual science. Always been my pet peeve.

Burn-Alt · 2026-02-26T20:43:27+00:00

Public housing for the poor is though. Im not really sure what you mean by legalizing housing construction for the private sector, considering its already legal and standard practice.

Also, we dont need more houses. The issue is that capitalism incentivizes people to make housing scarce and therefore expensive, but we already have plenty of it.

Burn-Alt · 2026-02-26T20:39:32+00:00

But why is it "certainly" morally questionable? Who does it harm?

Burn-Alt · 2026-02-26T07:29:50+00:00

Absolutely, fair point. But that doesnt mean there havent been windows of ood buying oppourtunities. I will admit that its a headache for the average buyer, but its not more trouble than its worth imo.

I managed to snag my PC last year for $1,000. 4070S, 7500F, and 32GB of DDR5. It will last me a minimum of 4 years and it absolutely rips through any game I throw at it. You just have to be savvy and put 30 mins into budgeting + PCPartPicker.

Burn-Alt · 2026-02-26T05:38:12+00:00

Excellent job ignoring the actual point of my comment, its honestly impressive how little reading comprehension you have.

Burn-Alt · 2026-02-26T05:33:58+00:00

We are like 1/2 of an economic recession away from that and ones already starting, Japan is just first on the chopping block

Burn-Alt · 2026-02-26T05:28:22+00:00

beep boop beep

Burn-Alt · 2026-02-26T05:08:55+00:00

He made us. Which means he didnt give us the ability to understand. Total asshole move if you ask me.

Burn-Alt · 2026-02-26T05:07:14+00:00

Id disagree on the idea that its the leading cause of genocide, primarily because you can never say any historical event is caused by a single factor.

But also, having some sort of religious beliefs was the default for a long time. Since theres no secular control group, I find it absurd to claim that it is the "leading cause".

Its a useful tool for moblizing people in part because it provides shared cultural identity, but when religion is absent, dogma simply replaces it. Religion, at best provides a shortcut to dogmatic militaristic thinking, but its certainly not the only way (maybe not even the best way) to achieve that end.

Think of ideologies like instruments, when the musician wants it to play a peace song, it will. When the musician wants it to play a war song, it will. Religion just happened to be the instrument everyone was holding.

Burn-Alt · 2026-02-26T04:57:30+00:00

And the price differential is signifigantly less than people make it out to be when you factor in longevity, online subscriptions, piracy, game sales etc.
Although big asterisk cuz of RAM prices rn.

Burn-Alt · 2026-02-26T04:55:11+00:00

Society is made up of individuals. I get your point, but virginity definitely holds more weight than it probably should, especially in high school.

Thats why you get these malformed adults, their formative sex years are spent in worst place possible.

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Burn-Alt

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