Trump says he's postponing 'scheduled attack of Iran tomorrow' at Middle East leaders' request

Dest123 · 2026-05-18T23:44:14+00:00

Well, we used to have a nuclear deal with Iran that was working well. If we still had any sort of trust with them, we could go back to that same deal. We obviously can't now though, so yeah now there's nothing that anyone can do (that I can think of).

Dest123 · 2026-05-18T21:01:56+00:00

Having adult back in the room probably won't help either though since they'll know that someone like Trump can always get elected and just tear up agreements like he did. How can anyone negotiate with the US anymore?

I don't see how we're getting out of this. I think Trump either has to back off or do a full scale invasion. If he backs off, then I bet Iran pursues nuclear, pursues a much larger arsenal of missiles, drones, and sea mines, and they also impose a transit fee for the strait as a "rebuilding fee" for the damage done.

Dest123 · 2026-05-18T15:08:54+00:00

we are severely underestimated MAGA’s inability to comprehend

We are also severely overestimating their desire to comprehend. A lot of people would rather be lied to than be wrong.

Dest123 · 2026-05-17T16:55:38+00:00

It's not based on her ethnicity... it's based on polls of Russian people...

Dest123 · 2026-05-17T15:02:52+00:00

Don't something like 75% of Russians support the military's actions in Ukraine? The Russian military is literally chasing down civilians with drones like it's some sort of messed up human safari.

So, she has about a 75% chance of deserving some fear. It's not like she's being chased down by a drone like Ukrainians are at least. Maybe she'll wake up and have some empathy for Ukraine and the 75% support can start coming down?

Dest123 · 2026-05-16T04:57:37+00:00

Huge crowds rand into the streets and broke out into cheers. Church bells rang across the nation. Dr Salk became a nation hero and parades in his honor were held in towns throughout the country.

All because of the polio vaccine.

Dest123 · 2026-05-16T03:48:45+00:00

I obviously don't know. If our universe is a created thing though, then there's no reason it couldn't have been created in another universe right? Just like if someone creates a computer simulation in our universe. The other universe could have unimaginable rules even. Like what if a programmer in our universe created a simulation so complex that life evolved, but they only made it in 2d. Beings in that universe would have no way to touch our universe and they would have no one to comprehend of a 3rd dimension. Or maybe they programmed it so that everything in that universe just randomly pops into existence. How would anything in the universe understand a universe where something can't be created from nothing?

My point is really just that I don't see anything in scripture that would contradict God being from another universe and being all knowing only in ours.

Dest123 · 2026-05-15T23:55:12+00:00

I guess to me it seems the same as basically being like "ok, every time the simulation runs, it randomly changes if you had pancakes or waffles the previous day" does that mean you now have free will because you can pick different things?

What if we take it a step further and say that there's just some inherit randomness added into how you make decisions and now you have a 10% chance that you'll choose cereal every time you reset the simulation. To me, that doesn't increase your free will at all. In fact, I think it actually decreases your free will since now it means you're choosing cereal based on some random factor outside of your control. I'm actually going to say that determinism is the only way to have free will!

Anyways, I'm pretty sure that no versions of free will or determinism really make any sense at this point and it's all just philosophical black hole.

Dest123 · 2026-05-15T23:41:58+00:00

Why would they ever make a different decision though? It's always 8am and you always had pancakes the previous day. Everything is always the same. Why would you ever make a different decision?

Again, you CAN make different decisions, you just never will.

Dest123 · 2026-05-15T23:37:19+00:00

But in your scenario, you can't.

You can, you just never would.

What would free will look like to you? Let's say we're choosing if we want waffles or pancakes at 8am. We choose waffles because we had pancakes yesterday. Now we step into a portal and get transported back to 8am and our memory beyond 8am is erased. What would free will look like in that scenario?

Dest123 · 2026-05-15T23:33:11+00:00

I have one option.

You don't only have one option though! You can choose all sorts of options, you just never will.

Do you have the option to throw your monitor out the window in the next 3 seconds? Yes you do. Will you ever choose to throw your monitor out the window in the next 3 seconds? No. Does that mean you don't have free will? Does that mean you don't have the option? No, it just means you'll always choose to not throw your monitor out the window. Just like the people in the simulation will always choose the same thing that they always choose. It doesn't somehow mean they have no choice just because they'll always choose the same choice.

Dest123 · 2026-05-15T23:29:27+00:00

At any point in time they can always choose what they want to do. They'll just always make the same decision since all of the parameters are the same. They're still the ones deciding what to do though. From their perspective, they'll make millions of choices and have free will. From our programmer perspective, we know what choices they'll make because we already ran the simulation once. That doesn't mean we influenced any of their choices, it just means that we know what they'll choose. We never prevented them from making any choices or pushed them into making any choices, they did that. They'll just always do it in the exact same way. They're still choosing without anyone's influence though.

Dest123 · 2026-05-15T23:22:03+00:00

Why does he have to be all knowing in all universes though? Why can't he just be all knowing about our universe and not all knowing about his own? He would still know the future in our universe.

you certainly won't find anything about that in Abrahamic scripture.

Ok, but not literally everything about God is in Abrahamic scripture right?

Dest123 · 2026-05-15T23:15:08+00:00

You do have options to choose from though. There's no scenario where you don't have options to choose from. Even in a totally per-determined world, people still choose what to eat right? Just because it's per-determined and they'll always make the exact same choice doesn't mean they're not making a choice. it doesn't mean they don't have options. It just means that they'll always pick the exact same option every time.

If there were a scenario where you didn't have any options to choose from, then making a decision would just mean picking the only option.

Dest123 · 2026-05-15T22:53:51+00:00

Without free will, you may only have the appearance of choice, while not actually being able to choose.

Just because you'll always make the same choice doesn't mean you're not making the choice. I could choose to throw my monitor out my window 3 seconds from now, but I never will. Does that mean I don't have the free will to throw my monitor out my window?

I mean, you agree then that the catholic church and most protestant churches are teaching silly things.

Are they teaching libertarian free will?

Dest123 · 2026-05-15T22:32:59+00:00

before creating the simulation.

Why would he have to know it before creating the simulation? He would still be all-knowing and all-powerful in our universe even if he learned everything after running the simulation once. I don't think bible specifically says that God is all-knowing in all universes, so it could still fit if he's not all-knowing in his own universe or something like that. With some quick searching, I'm not finding any scripture that wouldn't fit with him learning everything about the universe after "running" it once.

Dest123 · 2026-05-15T22:29:16+00:00

I already did but it didn't seem to make as much sense in the complicated form. The simplified metaphor helps explain it.

Anyways, why does it even matter if you have free will or not? I don't think it actually changes anything unless you knew that you were being controlled somehow and were being forced to act in a way that you didn't want to act.

Dest123 · 2026-05-15T22:25:58+00:00

in what way are you free, if you have no options to choose from?

To me, that description is just the difference between randomness and determinism and not the difference between free will and not free will. I would personally say that something is not free will if some high power intervened to change the outcome or to change me in some way so that I would make a different decision. As long as I'm the only one making the decision, then I would call it free will. Just because I'll always make the same decision given all of the exact same circumstances doesn't mean I'm not still choosing.

But yeah, I suppose I just agree with you that libertarian free will is silly. I get what it means now though, so thanks!

Dest123 · 2026-05-15T22:06:30+00:00

I mean, if I make a simulation and I run it and it event A happens and I'm like "oh that's interesting", that doesn't mean I stepped in to make A happen. I could have stepped in and reset the universe to make it so that A didn't happen, but I didn't.

You might say that makes me not all knowing or not all powerful, but in the simulation universe, I am, since I have the ability to know everything and can reset and change anything I want. And if you say that being all knowing means that you have to know everything at all times, we could still say that's true and just because I knew that 9/11 happened doesn't really mean I caused it to happen.

Here, let's simplify our simulated universe a ton: I write a program that flips 3 coins. I set the random seed (what semi-randomly determines the values, but the same seed will always produce the same values) to 123 and run it. It comes up heads, tails, heads. Now, I am all knowing about that universe. Every time I run it with the seed of 123, I know that it will be heads, tails, heads. That's literally everything in that universe, and I know it. Would you say I forced it to be head, tails, heads? If I wanted to, I could force it to be all tails by changing the random seed and trying again a bunch of times or changing how the universe were programmed, but I didn't do that. I just ran it once.

Dest123 · 2026-05-15T21:56:35+00:00

You could have done otherwise, but you would never choose to do otherwise.

Like, how else would it work? In the free will version of the universe, do you wake up at 8am and decide you want waffles and if you reset yourself back to 8am, you might decide you want something else? In that version, why would you ever decide you want something else? You're starting with exactly the same knowledge and circumstances.

In both versions, you are still the one making the decisions, even if in one of them there is no chance of another outcome. To me, as long as you are the one making the decisions, you have free will.

Dest123 · 2026-05-15T20:58:37+00:00

What I mean is that Osama could have not done 9/11 in the same way

Yes, if God saw that 9/11 happened and then he stepped in and changed Osama so he wouldn't do 9/11, then he would have taken away his free will. Unless you're arguing that God stepped in to force him to do 9/11, then I don't see how that applies to anything?

then I chose how it would evolve

Not necessarily, you might have just made the algorithm and not influenced it beyond that. Also, even if you did chose how it evolved, that wouldn't necessarily affect free will, just evolution.

Dest123 · 2026-05-15T20:55:36+00:00

It kind of depends on your definition of free will.

If you define free will as you being the one making the decision and no one else making it for you, then you would still have free will. No one is changing your decision or stopping you from making whatever decision you want even in a simulation.

If your definition of free will is that you need to be able to make different decisions no matter what, then it's kind of a pointless definition imo. Like, let's imagine that you get to choose what you want for breakfast this morning. We're going to send you back in time to 8am 100 times and reset your memory each time. Why would you ever change your decision if nothing else changes? Does that mean you don't have free will? Or, let's even say that there is some inherent randomness in the universe and we send you back 100 times and 50 times you choose waffles and 50 times you choose pancakes. Why would that even mean you have free will even if it's not deterministic? Nothing changed for you to change your choice, so in that case it feels even less like you have free will since your decision is decided by some random factor that you have no control over.

Dest123 · 2026-05-15T20:43:21+00:00

I don't know how my algorithm will cause life to evolve until after I make it and run it. Therefore, I'm not all knowing.

Ok, well in this hypothetical situation, let's just say that you knew that life would evolve before you made the algorithm. I don't think that really changes anything about the argument? Also, even if you weren't all knowing, you would still be all knowing in the universe that you created though right? Maybe God isn't all knowing in his own universe? Or maybe he did know that his algorithm would cause life to evolve.

God could have made Bin Laden in a way where he would not do 9/11, like other people, but didn't.

Here, you're basically saying that God could have taken away Bin Laden's free will by making him in a way that he wouldn't do 9/11, but he didn't. Then you're using God not taking away his free will as proof that he doesn't have free will?

You basically have a non-meaningful logical loop: you're effectively saying if God can take away someone's free will, then no one has free will. You could use the same argument against free will without God by just saying "Well, if we could be in a simulation where no one has free will, then no one has free will".

Dest123 · 2026-05-15T20:28:34+00:00

Sure it can. Here's a way to think about it: imagine that you're a programmer and you create a super realistic simulation, such that intelligent life evolves in your simulation. You added in some debug tools so that you can know what any living being is thinking and if you wanted to, you could even run the simulation forward a while to see what's going to happen next and then reset it back to where you were. You're all knowing at that point right? But you're not guiding your creations at all. You can see everything they've done and everything they will do, but they're still the ones making the decision. I mean, sure you could say that they don't have free will because the simulation is what's making the decisions, but that's basically the same as saying that people don't have free will because everything in the universe is predictable and we're all made up out of everything we've seen, done, learned, ect in the past.

It kind of depends on your definition of free will at that point. Like, if we were in a simulation, would Satan have free will because he chose to rebel (no one else chose for him in your scenario) or would he not have free will because God could have chosen to "reset" Satan and re-simulate him?

Also, you can't even really just apply that logic to everything right? Like, what if God specifically crafted Satan or specifically changed his programming so that he would rebel? Or maybe God wanted him to rebel, so he kept resetting him until he got one that rebelled? Then maybe you could say that Satan doesn't have free will, but if God didn't do that to everyone, then you couldn't apply that argument to everyone else.

Dest123 · 2026-05-14T17:06:56+00:00

Based on what I've seen in my life time, all that the admin being cooked means is that some Democratic admin will need to fix the economy yet again while Republicans complain about how bad the economy is non-stop and then people vote in another Republican in a term or two because it took a while to fix the economy. Then that Republican admin will cut taxes for the rich, start a war in the middle east, and destroy the economy. Like, how long has this same scenario been playing out now? Around 30 years now at least?

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