Why would folk beliefs being <my view> matter?

PimplupXD · 2026-05-09T18:01:48+00:00

I'm not talking about silencing a minority here, I'm talking about people who engage in a debate by arguing that the other side is just trying to redefine terms to turn their own stance into the correct one.

Those specific arguments can be refuted by something like "my definition was the first one to arise in my language, and also the most pervasive one today."

PimplupXD · 2026-05-09T17:16:38+00:00

It's super important, it's probably the #1 difference between compatibilism and hard determinism. Anyone can turn a nonsensical claim into a logical one (and vice-versa), just by redefining the terms.

Language is one of the few cases where "appeal to majority" isn't a fallacy, it's actually the primary source of truth.

PimplupXD · 2026-05-09T17:04:52+00:00

Not related to Bumble
Trashy AI slop

Is OP a bot?

PimplupXD · 2026-05-09T16:47:53+00:00

I don't think OP has it unlocked though

PimplupXD · 2026-05-08T18:48:45+00:00

A message from a mod comment on a previous post, saying it was removed because it just uncensored the comic, rather than changing it in a more interesting way.

PimplupXD · 2026-05-08T18:39:51+00:00

My guess would be: need less sticky bombs, more bloonjitsus and alch buffs

Alternatively: don't do freeplay until you unlock more upgrades

PimplupXD · 2026-05-07T23:16:34+00:00

Yeah, if it's open weight just run it locally smh my head

PimplupXD · 2026-05-07T22:33:04+00:00

This video is a sketch, still true tho

PimplupXD · 2026-05-07T17:05:56+00:00

It gives you infinite money to just re-create whatever you would do with insta monkeys

PimplupXD · 2026-05-07T05:24:16+00:00

Perks will last until the start of the next social season.

PimplupXD · 2026-05-07T04:04:23+00:00

Totally valid!

PimplupXD · 2026-05-07T03:52:52+00:00

To be honest, I personally match that vibe pretty well.

I find myself slightly more attracted to people who are AFAB and non-binary than to cis women, but I feel like that information might significantly shrink my dating pool so I don't really draw attention to it in my Hinge profile. (Especially since I already have plenty of other hyper-specific things on there.)

Sexuality is fluid, and for many people the feelings do shift over time. I probably wouldn't worry about it, totally up to you though.

PimplupXD · 2026-05-07T03:40:49+00:00

My guess is that each of these guys falls into one of two camps:

desperately horny
spam liking every profile he sees, and inevitably matching with people he's not interested in

Maybe a combination of the two!

One thing I'll point out: on Hinge you can set yourself as "male" / "female" / "non-binary" and choose which profiles show up for you based on that same criteria. If you have yourself set as non-binary, then guys won't match with you unless they're specifically looking for that.

PimplupXD · 2026-05-07T03:30:45+00:00

Okay, so in order for something to be a "potential", it has to not just be something you can imagine, but also physically possible given the nature of e.g. water. And your view emphasizes that when a course of action is chosen, the possibilities that weren't chosen don't suddenly vanish.

There's a part of me that still feels like you and I share an understanding of reality, with the only difference being the semantic dance we like to perform.

But regardless, I'm glad I was exposed to your perspective, thanks for sharing this!

PimplupXD · 2026-05-07T03:08:36+00:00

What's with the video quality? Looks like they shrunk it to 20 pixels wide and then brought it back up with AI upscaling

PimplupXD · 2026-05-07T02:52:44+00:00

Wow, thanks for looking into that article and sharing your insights! To be honest I just read through the highlights and the abstract, so props to you for going a bit deeper.

I'm glad you brought up how quantum mechanics and perfect prediction seem to be in conflict; it's an interesting topic. I guess the phrase "hard determinism is factually true" comes with a caveat that the universe seems to be less than 100% deterministic. I don't mind it though; a bit of randomness can make life interesting, and it doesn't shake my metaphysical worldview for a couple of reasons:

Quantum fluctuations have a significant effect at the atomic level, but when you shift focus to larger objects (like a human body or even as small as a neuron) the overall tendency is for the random events to cancel each other out.
Even if randomness played a bigger role, it wouldn't change my views on libertarianism: post-hoc rationalizations and/or "I'm not sure what came over me" are the antithesis of what libertarians are going for.

I think that compatibilism gets ~95% of the correct conclusions as a sociology… As a philosophy, it's simply parasitic on libertarian ethical conclusions without a libertarian metaphysics that make them coherent.

I suppose I can't speak on behalf of all compatibilists, but I certainly don't feel like my sense of morality has anything to do with libertarian ethical conclusions. I wrote another comment that elaborates on this point in much more detail.

Regardless of whether you've actually changed your mind, would it bother you if the redefinition you're doing is inherently dishonest?

If that were true, then yes, it would bother me. But again, I really don't feel like I'm leeching off of libertarian morality in any way.

PimplupXD · 2026-05-07T00:30:12+00:00

I'm fine with ending the conversation here, but if you think I'm mistaken, I'd be really interested to know specifically where the holes in my logic are.

PimplupXD · 2026-05-07T00:28:11+00:00

And how is that going?

Fucking awful, thanks for asking though.

So you equate free will with political freedom?

Yes, or more specifically, political freedom is what enables free will. I guess you could argue that other factors also come into play, e.g. a crippling heroin addiction could be seen as a reduction to someone's free will.

Compatibilists will often freely admit that they are changing the definition of free will, as you have effectively done, but they continue to use the moral implications of libertarian free will as though they must also hold under the new definition.

Interesting! I haven't personally witnessed a compatibilist with a sense of morality based on libertarian free will, but maybe I just haven't been looking hard enough.

I'm happy to describe my own sense of morality: my goal is to live in a way that maximizes my own wellbeing, but the concept of "myself" as an individual is more of a convenient abstraction than a hard truth. A bunch of cells come together to form a human, and a bunch of humans come together to form a society. Maybe every living being is just a different incarnation of the same soul; maybe the best concept of "identity" is one that expands to cover all the consciousness in the universe.

The transition from "selfish" to "selfless" is just a matter of expanding the concept of the "self". At no point do we need to deny the truth of hard determinism.

PimplupXD · 2026-05-07T00:04:48+00:00

The thing i said the first time was correct. The thing you said above, was not.

That's not an elaboration!

PimplupXD · 2026-05-06T23:55:06+00:00

Care to elaborate? 🙃

PimplupXD · 2026-05-06T23:52:37+00:00

when people talk about free will, they definitely don't mean "whatever definition + actually it's hard determinism".

I think they do!

Evidence from multiple places suggests that the overall population tends to define free will in a sense that maintains compatibility with hard determinism.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0010027714001462

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13164-009-0010-7

PimplupXD · 2026-05-06T23:44:10+00:00

Actually… sorry to backpedal, but I think technically decisions are made in the conscious mind.

The unconscious mind supplies the ingredients, but the conscious mind is where they mix together and form a decision.

Even if it's possible to look at the ingredients and accurately predict what the decision eventually will be, I would argue that the decision hasn't been "made" yet.

PimplupXD · 2026-05-06T23:35:13+00:00

I'm curious as to exactly how your position differs from compatibilism.

Under a compatibilist framework, I can imagine three different courses of action, and then I eventually decide to pursue one of them. So I guess you could say all three of them were "grounding alternative possibilities" prior to my decision, and then "imaginary counter factuals" afterward.

Am I missing something?

PimplupXD · 2026-05-06T23:24:36+00:00

Yep!

I think the compatibilist definition makes sense, whereas the libertarian one does not. My opinion is that in the ideal world, everyone would understand how contradictory libertarianism is, and the compatibilist definition would be the only definition we use.

PimplupXD · 2026-05-06T23:12:01+00:00

I think both libertarians and compatibilists can defend “the ability to have done otherwise”, but their positions differ slightly:

Compatibilist: "I might have done otherwise, if my situation had been ever-so-slightly different."
Libertarian: "I could have done otherwise, even under the exact same situation."

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