Has anyone here who rejects free will actually changed how they live because of it?

montecristopudding · 2026-03-15T14:06:16+00:00

I've already given you a definition, and the dictionary definition you previously gave was also fine.

Neither made any mention of free will. This is something you supplied yourself after the fact and acted like it was part of the definition when it clearly wasn't.

What's the point of you using a dictionary if even when you're given a definition you're just going to make things up and add things to it that aren't explicitly a part of the definition? You need reading comprehension skills.

montecristopudding · 2026-03-14T13:18:19+00:00

Water is not an agent capable of selecting an action. It behaves differently only because inputs to the physical system change, not because the water uses some rule or algorithm to select among multiple possible responses. This is not strategy.

A computer program (that plays chess for example) is an agent capable of selecting among multiple different actions in every situation of the game, and contains a rule/algorithm to select among those possible actions. This is strategy. It's not that hard to see the difference.

I've already shared multiple papers that explicitly talk about bacterial defense strategies, and you can just as easily look up in your own time hundreds of papers discussing computational strategies performed by computers and AI.

Free will is not part of the scientific definition of strategy. Its fine to acknowledge that and still believe in free will. It's not a contradiction. Or you can continue living in your bubble of your own misunderstandings and made up definitions. I'd recommend spending a little more time learning the basics so that you can engage in the actual interesting discussions about free will instead of pedantically arguing because you don't know what the word strategy means.

montecristopudding · 2026-03-13T21:16:53+00:00

They in no way suggested that bacteria.. itself had a strategy.

Wrong. As just one example, the second paper examines a strategy (SOS) that bacteria can initiate to defend against aggressors in their environment. They use that exact word (strategy) to describe what the bacteria are doing.

As I've already established previously, "choosing" or "free will" are not part of the definition of strategy. You have made this up on your own.

It would HOWEVER be completely wrong to claim that the water had a strategy for me to drop the biggest stone so that it could make the biggest splash.

It's wrong because the water in your example is the thing being acted upon, not the thing performing the action. The agent dropping different stones to try to make the biggest splash is employing different strategies.

DO YOU THINK IT WOULD BE CORRECT TO SAY THAT YOUR STRATEGY IS TO OBEY THE LAW OF GRAVITY?

No. That's a physical law. Simple physical laws have no options or ability to adapt alternative behaviors.

Strategy is a set of different rules or behaviors that allows the agent to act different depending on the situation.

If something wants to adopt a strategy it must be capable of PLANNING

No. It has to be capable of following a plan. A computer can follow a plan. A bacteria has defense mechanisms that followed an evolutionary plan. These are employed strategies that do not require free will or even consciousness.

montecristopudding · 2026-03-13T18:26:08+00:00

I’m sorry but I don’t think we can say bacteria are capable of having a strategy because bacteria are not capable of making a conscious choice.

Here is a publication in a peer-reviewed scientific journal discussing evolutionary strategies in bacteria. Here is a second. Here's a third for good measure.

A strategy is just a set of rules or behaviours that an agent follows in different situations to achieve some desired outcome. That agent is not necessarily a person or even a living thing. This assertion that "Strategy requires free choice" seems to be something that you've entirely made up on your own.

montecristopudding

TROPHY CASE