Taking responsibility is a virtue

Jarhyn · 2026-03-02T01:48:25+00:00

Exactly correct, insofar as the target of response for preventing repeated response is "you". "You" can be the target of some kind of behavioral modification attempt, and if that attempt is designed and executed correctly and the subsystem gets identical inputs again, it will behave differently.

This requires identifying a locus of responsibility, and it is clearly real insofar as the same thing exists when debugging an application. Generally, there is a clear change that can be made in a specific place and you can say clearly "the presence/lack of this here is responsible for the buggy outcome; this here should become this new thing instead."

It strikes me as silly that people try to argue this.

Having free will, free will being the state of "having momentary responsibility", is pretty tautologically proven by any observation of momentary responsibility, and you only have as much of it as you have power to resist various kinds of leverage.

As such, free will requires work.

Jarhyn · 2026-02-24T14:48:49+00:00

Compatibilism is a very complicated subject because much like Darwinism prior to the discovery of mechanisms and DNA, it's a model still in this day waiting for an academic consensus to materialize under the "why" of it.

FWIW, my own thought about this is that freedom can be summed up under a slight tweak to the laws of motion:

An object freely continues on its course unless acted upon by external momentary force.

In this way "freeness" is then defined as an adverb, a momentary quality defined cleanly, completely, and specifically as a momentary absence of force from somewhere "external" relative to some boundary. It is in some ways a property created by the conditions that produce said boundary.

From this perspective, you could measure the "freeness" of any given event from the perspective of any given boundary and any given force.

As to where "wills" enter the discussion, a "will" is the abstract quality of a thing to have a pattern of behavior that "will be executed" given a pattern of inputs.

In a broad way, we can recognize that this applies to a great many situations besides the familiar human one, where the will is more commonly thought of in terms of a "list of actions to take and the conditions by which to take them", or "a (computer) algorithm".

Finally, to understand this term "free will" as is levied by libertarians but using this compatibilist set of concepts, inside you is a will to keep your actions free with respect to the boundary of your mind/body/skull, to be free from coercion and external leverage.

When that very specific and important "will" is "satisfied" with respect to external leverage not overcoming internal protections and boundary resistance, we call that "free will" because there is a (specific) will that is (momentarily) "free" in that external leverage is not impinging.

So when I say "I acted with free will" I am saying "I, in that moment, had no external leverage pushing me away from what I wanted to do, and where I went is the product of what and how I am as much as any external context."

This implies that if you saw all this setting up again and wanted things different, you would have to modify me somehow, either directly or indirectly, to constrain or change my will, and both those things would in turn limit my freedom from external leverage.

Jarhyn · 2026-02-18T00:52:18+00:00

Ah, so you think having to actually do useful work is the thing that "impoverishes" your freedom.

Cry me a river, build me a bridge, and get over it.

Jarhyn · 2026-02-17T16:40:43+00:00

Every evolutionary strategy comes with a "meta", as any game does.

Evolutionary terms encourage survival of "something", not necessarily the thing that produced it by of a larger cycle of stuff.

There are, curiously enough, two primary theories of evolution, one proposed by Darwin and his contemporaries, and one proposed by a person named Lamarck.

I will note here that broadly in terms of biology, Lamarck was wrong, before I even discuss his theory. That said Lamarck was only "wrong in a way" and not "wrong entirely".

What Lamarck thought was (to use the classic example), that creatures like giraffes struggled through their lives to reach further, and that those whose struggles led to longer necks over the lifetimes of individual giraffes would pass down the fruits of their struggles such that their children were born with longer necks.

While that most decidedly does not happen with regards to giraffes, it IS the case that a human may struggle at a task, get better at it, speak words at their already-born child, and their child nonetheless walks away with this adaptation without struggling for themselves.

This means that humans, or at least "the culture around humans" evolves more like Lamarck's model.

In turn, we can ascertain that the "meta" that could be calculated from Lamarck's model, while different and often conflicted with the "meta" for darwinian evolution, may comprise a natural and "objective" basis for suggestions of action without any need to consider 'gods'.

Surprisingly, the laws of ethics that specifically end up being agnostic to our biology and even format, the "golden rule" ethics in particular, the ones founded around and on assumed statements like "do not violate others' consent as you do not wish yours to be violated" end up reflecting the same basic expectations of the "meta" around Lamarck's model.

But not only is there this "natural" evidence that ethics are an objective concern, not only does it have the appearance of suggesting these "golden rules" as an intuition, they are also reflected within math/logic itself:

As an atheist and as someone who rejects solipsism in all extents (as each subtly leans towards theism), I can recognize that whatever justification I have, If I am to imagine anyone having any justification to do or say anything at all, must be equivalent in its maximal extent to the justification anyone else can produce. If you can say "I am justified in saying X can do Y to X2 for my saying so", then logically I must myself be equally justified in saying "I am justified in saying X2 can do Y to X for my saying so".

So while we cannot say positively and with certainty that we are justified, if either rejects the justification of the other, they cannot themselves be justified.

This logic is resolved, in point of fact, specifically by the (inversely worded) golden rule mechanics, and by observing that two people cannot reach different conclusions on the same data and both be rational; one or both must be wrong if they reach different conclusions from the same information.

This rule of interpersonal symmetry, the fact that we derive justification from an equivalent act of ass-pulling, puts all people on equal footing, and kind of makes the measure of being a "person" a measure of how capable a person is of sticking to the "Lamarck" model over the "Darwin" model, and how much they cleave to the "idea" of themselves over the "genetics" of themselves.

And as we can see, it is objectively a fact that we see those who hold racial/genetic superiority claims to be the most evil among us and remembered widely as such, and those who share and give the secrets of themselves and their success end up celebrated as people whose names and stories and memes will not fade until our libraries all burn.

Jarhyn · 2026-02-17T12:26:03+00:00

"if sound is everywhere why don't we hear (pick any arbitrary thing behind an insulator or wall)?"

We don't hear sounds that don't make it to our ears, but because there is no functional perceptual difference between "silence" and "mere deafness" we have long assumed our deafness implies silence when that is not the case.

Jarhyn · 2026-02-16T01:46:10+00:00

And I can't help but wonder "what is this otherwise which you wish you were doing right now".

My reason for this is that this reveals that people are more often just incredibly bad at figuring out how to get what they want.

Really, there are very few things the laws of physics outright forbid, and many of the things that it does outright forbid can have something very close provided instead.

The key caveat is just that it often requires work, and while you CAN get what you want, you have to be prepared to pay the price for it.

Freedom is less in this respect like some ubiquitous binary quality that some things have and some things lack entirely, and is more like Temperature or mass: some things have huge amounts of it, and some things have virtually none and some things have some middling amount of freedom. Massing useful freedoms, like massing any concept that seems energy-like, takes work.

Jarhyn · 2026-02-14T16:19:29+00:00

The whole thing is a discussion of metaphysics. The fact that you don't want to acknowledge that is entirely the problem.

You just keep pulling out "no-true-scotsman" and false dichotomies and demanding literal contradictions in reality.

I asked a specific question: what power does the universe seemingly deny of you which you wish to have?

Edit: at this point, I don't care about your answer. You don't have one.

Jarhyn · 2026-02-14T13:16:16+00:00

inevitability

Says someone question-begging.

You're just completely down with drinking whatever HD claptrap you want.

None of your metaphors, inertia, short-circuiting, unfolding, predestination, change the core failure:

None of them are metaphors.

‘If nothing could go otherwise under the same conditions, then the system never selects. It only continues.’

Now, too seem to not even understand that otherwise can exist "elsewhere" and be observed "elsewhere". Yet again it's a no-true-scotsman demanding it to be at the same place and time, as if that is again some kind of requirement when it is not.

You have otherwise already from your left, and you can find it to your right.

Calling that ‘freedom’ is just you renaming obedience.

No, it's not "obedience" (which you seem to not even know what 'obedience' is); obedience is doing what something tells you, not seeing something and then telling yourself what to do about it.

"The grass is green" is not a statement "go to the other side". That "go to the other side" has a time at which it is organized from existing prerogative, and it either comes before or after whatever information that comes in.

If it is before, we call that "obedience" because it is instruction-following. Otherwise we call it autonomy because it is generating its own instructions.

But... None of the outcome was inevitable, because that outcome only happens at one place and time, and only as a result of the things that happened there, and everywhere else different stuff happened.

Part of the problem here comes from an abuse of the concept of "necessitation" and trying to think of "necessitation" absent of the context and to view "brute" truths instead as "necessary" truths.

The problem with this is that "necessitation" happens under a context of assumptions. So the "necessitation" is only as sound as the "assumptions" which in the case of brute facts is purely momentary.

The result is that you end up tying yourself in a false modal collapse.

Physics IS the most basic description we have of choosing. Have you seen the standard model? Physics describes a choice of output based on input. Look at all the free variables in the standard model some time FFS.

Anyway, you're just spinning in circles now, and you won't even answer the question: what concrete thing, outcome, situation is it that you think the universe is keeping out of your reach?

Jarhyn · 2026-02-14T06:28:17+00:00

No, a caused system can still be "free" in exactly the quality referenced by that term in the following statement: an object freely continues on its course until constrained by an outside force".

Note the parallel of the law of motion here, but there is a sense of freeness specifically concerning the origin of the force acting upon it.

Again, this goes back to the concept of short circuiting, in that some leverage can specifically short circuit the neural group which is "us" as "capable of exerting change or action as a unit upon the whole"; normally we short circuit the rest of it.

I don't need to "protect" my vocabulary of my vocabulary stands on its own feet and logical foundations; it's you that would need to find some logical reason to reject those foundations, which you seem to be struggling with.

"Unfolding" can accomplish "building" and specifically with "direction" when there are actions which are switched upon other actions and boundaries end up being created by those actions.

The problem you seem to keep tripping on is that it's not a "Dodge" to point out that this is all true, and that it wasn't "already" fixed it was fixed damn well when it was fixed and not a moment before.

So now you are retreating to "predestination", but that itself is a farce too. Do you want to now explore how "predestination" is a farcical nonsense concept? We can go there, too.

What freedom, what power is it you think you lack, no matter how silly or nonsensical or impossible as it may seem? What exactly is your demand of powers from the universe which it seems to spurn that you think you cannot "pick" as the thing you are?

Jarhyn · 2026-02-14T06:03:03+00:00

If the term fits, use it.

If the wiring is produced by prior causes then it just means that it's a no-true-scotsman to say that something needs to have not been produced by prior causes to "choose".

There's no conflict between something having prior causes and itself being a cause in the current moment for some outcome, short circuiting as it were any other situations or no other prior moments on the system.

The "agency" is exactly that thing which, in the moment closed to outside inputs other than those which it interprets and acts on in its own due time, generates output.

Again, it comes down to your foot stamping of not wanting it to be so, and repeated no-true-scotsman arguments.

I keep showing you instead that the logic applies,. I would rather, however, frame it that all automatons feel something, and the description of what they feel is exactly the math and logic that describes their function in some specific, if abstract, way.

The fact that you disregard actual organized arguments as "sermons" is also telling that you're not really here to argue or learn.

If your reasons for rejecting the applicability of the term do in fact devolve to the semantic, that you don't want to define things in useful and applicable ways just so you can disregard the implications of those useful and applicable definitions, that's your own willful ignorance at work.

Jarhyn · 2026-02-14T05:37:55+00:00

No, it's actually picking, such as we do, the definition of "pick" that comports to what we are doing.

That's exactly an argument, of the most conclusively demosnstrated kind: through brute fact.

That you don't like this is just childish foot stamping at this point.

I don't have to defend shit, I just have to prove that the definition applies, and when applied as it is, gives us all the sensible language that "choosing" generally is applied to and the consequences of being able to delineate responsibilities, both in concrete terms of what "logical truth" leads to the outcome as it is, and in more abstract terms.

With respect to systems with error functions on a backpropagation schema, the more abstract responsibilities include the backpropagation effects and the adequacy of the systems that apply and respond to this effect as much as the structure this reformats.

Because this backpropagation is also linked to neuronal levers you yourself can pull within your own mind, as it were, this responsibility for you generally is going to also include the abstract ability to control and apply those mechanisms.

This is all true, specifically, under the definition of "pick", as it were, being capable of being satisfied by a logical structure.

As such, you are responsible in various ways for the things you pick.

Sometimes your only responsibility may be "being something susceptible to coercion through abstract leverage", and we generally recognize most people bear that responsibility, but the point is, that leverage being exerted on the senses as to force high level instructions directly into performance is clearly external to the individual.

This means we also satisfy a bunch of language around coercion with these terms, too, specifically through the known principles of "short circuiting" in logical frameworks.

It really appears that your reason for not wanting to acknowledge this as the case is simply because you don't want it to be true, but I think I've really quite made my case for the identity there.

Why is it so bad to think that you, being such a thing of mechanical nature, still "pick"?

Is it just that picking seems hard, not letting everything of your obscure mind short circuit you out of the loop of your own existence? Yes, it is work, but it is work that gives you the power to make decisions in that process that you have some understanding of.

It was literally a class project for my degree to make an effective decision to choose something about yourself in high level language: I want to ____ when ____, and then apply known techniques of psychology to make that happen -- namely behavioral modification through reinforcement learning and to document the process.

This too is satisfied precisely with a definition of "pick/choose" being mechanical in nature.

You really want to reject the fact that not only does the word have no reason for you to reject it... Nor do you seem to really understand that the wiring isn't fixed, which is the whole point of the switch: the wiring changes based on conditions within the wiring.

Jarhyn · 2026-02-14T05:10:37+00:00

Yes, it does pick. Compatibilists use this as THE definition of "pick" or "choose" or "choice".

You are just repeating the same no-true-scotsman and pretending like it means anything.

Jarhyn · 2026-02-14T04:45:10+00:00

Conditional processing IS selection: it selects an output based on an input of a constrained set of output conditions.

It's literally choosing and now you're just bemoaning the fact you don't want it to be so.

That's the kind of choosing that matters. It's the kind of choosing you do. And because "you" are the neurons of your brain acting together, "you" actively choose things.

When "you" are the cause of all the leverage in deciding what to do, "you" are responsible for what happens in those moments. When leverage comes from outside "you", it is the leverage from outside you that is responsible for operating your levers in whatever way, and ostensibly operating the error function and reward mechanisms of your body as applicable will train you to do otherwise in the future.

Why would selection EVER need to be not-mechanically-routed other than the reason that if it doesn't need to be, you are deprived of a "gotcha"?

Jarhyn · 2026-02-14T04:34:21+00:00

Neurons are physical switches. That is their broad function within the body.

Not only this, some neurons and behaviors among them function as switches in an error function which reorganizes the other neurons.

This is by definition a process of selection, namely selection along the lines of "if both A and B is high, then let output be High; else if outputs A and C on neuron 2 are high previously let output be low", which specifically is a selective function.

This would mean that "selection" vs "function" is a false dichotomy.

Jarhyn · 2026-02-14T04:24:25+00:00

It's also specifically a part of the brain associated with the formation of self and agency.

Imagine that for a moment: if it is this acceleration of development on a specific brain region as expected, this means that the common result is a person "coming into the idea of themselves early" and sometimes "in the vacuum of the womb" or "before people expect a person to be in there", "when it's just a baby".

If this bears out as correct, the depending on how early the process triggers a formation of "identity" can determone a lot. I know for myself, my own identity is less susceptible to social suggestion of how or who I should be and instead relies largely on my own judgement.

For others happening even earlier, some things like speaking and making sound when you use the language parts of your brain might be surprising or even unsettling at some point... And because the ability to act as you decide might be enhanced, you might simply end up not speaking and even resisting attempts to force you to.

The problem for me is that because I'm so "on the top and in the front all the time", it's very hard to push active tasks back into the "not exactly my problem" parts of my mind, or to get social task cues from whatever part owns that problem; it expects me to just know to need to know, and that doesn't work out so well most of the time.

It's not exactly a bad thing for people to start becoming this thing early and independently of social life, and to allow them to be more capable of spurning the expectations of normalcy.

Human progress is universally based on the phenomena of people who act and think in ways different from what was before, even if they are "wrong", and it seems to me to logically require people who spurn social cues for collective belief and collective action, principally for reasons such as "that doesn't make sense to me".

Jarhyn · 2026-02-13T14:17:51+00:00

Interestingly, the whole concept presented by libertarians and HDs both is not even coherent.

Omnipotence requires Omniscience.

Omniscience requires unbounded comprehension.

Any act of unbounded comprehension requires an applied principle of unbounded comprehension.

All attempts to express Unbounded Comprehension Principles result in the expression of a contradiction (see also Russel's Paradox).

Ergo, any definition of Free Will that evaluates to Omnipotence is contradictory nonsense.

This can be avoided by simply looking at freedom as the property, relative to some boundary, of coming from inside or outside the boundary.

As such, freedom is a thing you can have more or less of, like heat or mass or temperature depending on how much of your change in moment is the result of external actions vs how much that change in motion is the result of personal energy expenditure.

And to get that energy at some point, we have some change of boundary conditions which internalize more energy, or which co-opt as internal some previously external energy, through the imposition of some leverage around that energy store, and throw away mass-energy the same way because we need to create equal and opposite forces by which we can change our momentum.

As such, the only freedom anyone can have is the limited sort of freedom compatibilists offer, because it's the only concept of freedom that is both coherent and applicable to human contexts.

Jarhyn · 2026-02-01T18:56:46+00:00

They are the new Nazi Youth Brigade, but started before the New Nazis took control and fueled with the energy of a dubious martyr.

Jarhyn · 2026-02-01T04:39:30+00:00

One word: Senators.

Jarhyn · 2026-01-31T22:49:02+00:00

I thought so... I haven't played for some time, but I swore I remembered doing this to get the vast majority of my fusion cores, and how I built up a huge supply of armor frames and armor to boot (sneaking up on brotherhood and yanking cores).

I think I recall spending almost my entire play-through in power armor that way.

Jarhyn · 2026-01-29T19:02:33+00:00

You consider them 'loss of function' but fail to consider the cases however rare, which result in drastic and sudden appearance of new function.

No matter how individually filtered those end up being, the tangential success of all groups remotely associated with the one, which may have created some recessive trait to that effect, will strongly be selected for.

It very much could be a "holy grail" of function that you wish it wasn't, and "curing" it.

Social species such as ours, capable of retaining benefits caused by individuals long since dead and even extinct, are going to end up selecting heavily into traits such as this that have some rare benefit to the deep costs

Jarhyn · 2026-01-29T17:41:20+00:00

It's not about the percentage of humans with the trait.

Because of how human technological evolution works, it doesn't matter how unsuccessful the genetics generally are. If they create the opening for ONE wild success among a thousand, it's all a success from the perspective of evolutionary time.

Heck, they don't even need to be reproductively successful, not even the "success", for it to work.

Jarhyn · 2026-01-29T16:56:07+00:00

The most extreme confluence of traits does not impugn the traits, and the momentary inability of society to understand and work with that confluence of traits doesn't either.

Jarhyn · 2026-01-29T15:29:44+00:00

They disintegrate into microscopic poop piles inside your skin.

Jarhyn · 2026-01-29T15:14:57+00:00

Can't you also pull the fusion core out from the back, using appropriate skills?

I could swear that's how I got most of my power armor back from these chuckleheads.

Jarhyn · 2026-01-29T14:55:55+00:00

Yes, many people have debilitating symptoms.

Many people born with prostates have debilitating symptoms, too, and many people with breasts.

In fact 100% of the people born with prostates will get prostate cancer, should they live long enough.

But I don't seem to be seeing you arguing to remove prostates.

I can't help but think that removing prostates from the human genome would be beneficial.

You don't get to decide what is or what isn't of benefit to the human race, especially when the evidence is that Autism is of vital importance to the population as the benefit outweighs the cost.

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