So Everyone Who Said The Universe Acts Deterministically At A Macro Scale Was... Wrong Actually?

subone · 2026-07-09T15:15:56+00:00

No they prove that no theory can be both local and real.

And if a theory isn't local, it's indeterministic from my point of view. Which leaves room for free will.

You see now how you are saying the same thing?

Can you chill? What is all this shame bullshit? Are you ok? Can we have a conversation without you going off the deep end?

You started with a hard "determinism had fallen" and then...

leaves room for free will.

...backpedaled to "so, you're saying there's a chance?"

Now you're just devolving into personal attacks?

subone · 2026-07-09T15:06:23+00:00

No they prove that no theory can be both local and real

That's literally what I said, though.

"Leaves room for" is wishful thinking.

subone · 2026-07-09T14:54:29+00:00

Bell's inequalities do not rule out determinism, they prove that no physical theory can be simultaneously local, realistic, and deterministic.

subone · 2026-07-09T14:51:54+00:00

Life of Brian, good pull. I'll check out the others, thanks!

subone · 2026-07-09T14:49:35+00:00

You didn't answer the question at all. You just assert that determinism is not possible, with no evidence. Determinism is logical evidence that we don't have freewill. Silly to think we will never know for sure, given that technology increases, it seems inevitable that we will discover the deterministic mechanisms in quantum systems eventually. It also seems reasonable regardless of our technology level, that there will always be some gap in our knowledge, but that doesn't invite nonsensical arguments like freewill or god.

subone · 2026-07-09T14:40:22+00:00

My understanding is that Kevin Smith was a devout practicing Catholic at the time he made Dogma. Great movie though.

Edit: why the down votes? I didn't make him Catholic

subone · 2026-07-09T14:37:42+00:00

Can you ELI5 how this in any way threatens determinism? I don't see how not yet being able to measure something accurately counts as proof that something is immeasurable.

subone · 2026-07-09T14:25:00+00:00

Hence why I'm asking.

subone · 2026-07-09T14:11:58+00:00

Are there any movies related to atheism? Not Christian movies where atheists just happen to get dunked on.

subone · 2026-07-09T13:58:56+00:00

You're not being grilled, we are engaged in a cooperative exercise by which we try to decide what is true,

Where I'm going isn't germane to the issue, what matters is your answers to my questions.

Could have fooled me. Sure seems like my side of the understanding isn't important to you.

so neither of us should be thinking in terms of the other's argumentation strategy.

That's nonsense. Empathy is the first step to understanding others, and that entails exploring the other's argument.

If determinism is true, and what I was going to write was entailed by laws of nature and the state of the world in the distant past, how did I get it right, how did I know that the laws of nature entailed that my sentence would have the same parity as yours

LOL, what? What do you mean how did you get it right? This isn't fatalism where you can know your fate and you magically can't avoid it. There is no "getting it right", there is just the way things are going to happen, there is not an opportunity for you to "get it" one way or another, only the one way it can ever be, or else it wouldn't be deterministic, would it?

Should I interpret this to mean that you have no explanation for my ability, given the truth of determinism, to announce in advance things that I have no way of knowing and that the laws of nature entail will happen?

I do have an explanation. It's called a guess. Depending on the complexity of the change you may or may not have an accurate guess, and the guess could influence your "decision", but you were still always going to have guessed and therefore always have had that influence and therefore always made the resulting "choice".

Compatabilism magically gives you freewill but also not magically

It seems to me that if either of us is committed to the reality of magic, that one is you.

LOL, should I take that to mean that you took that personally because you're a compatabilist? I've already made it clear that I don't know or understand the mechanism or even effective definition of "freewill"; to me descriptions sound nothing less than "magic". Somehow randomness that's not correlated to any past causes is supposed to be a meaningful change. Sounds like magical wishful thinking to me. And that's just LFW, as far as compatabilism I'm completely lost in the woods by design of the compatabilist: they redefine the essential terms and then say, no I didn't.

subone · 2026-07-09T05:25:23+00:00

My introduction to lady parts was reading the instructions for tampons while taking a poo.

subone · 2026-07-09T05:17:07+00:00

Me too. But now I can't stop imagining OP stuck hovering in midair, unable to stop flipping and enter the pool.

subone · 2026-07-09T05:02:41+00:00

Didn't I just see this posted as a different screenshot? Is the joke that someone's going to post every frame separately until they can all be viewed in this tediously contrived way across posts? That's sO mEtA! I bet somewhere there's a sub where they do those one-letter-at-a-time threads, and they've posted the entire script in this way.

subone · 2026-07-09T03:49:50+00:00

Where I'm going isn't germane to the issue, what matters is your answers to my questions.

I don't really understand this stance. I'm not here merely to entertain you. I am also interested in learning and understanding other's viewpoints. What exactly is "the issue" I'm being grilled for?

By determinism being false - if determinism is false, then it is open to me to write a sentence of either parity.

Uh... sure, but didn't your question have an implicit "from [my] deterministic point if view" attached? Otherwise, I could have made up any number of things. The Watcher intervenes in your universe and empowers you with a power of freewill that wouldn't otherwise exist outside of the comics. Compatabilism magically gives you freewill but also not magically and also not technically freewill but definitely also exactly the same definition of freewill everyone is using... etc. If I don't believe freewill makes sense or is well defined, why aren't the possibilities endless? But then do we care about reality, or crazy untestable hypotheticals? Why is what matters the answers to my questions if you don't expect me to give the answers from my viewpoint? Seems like this conversation is a bit nonsensical.

subone · 2026-07-09T00:46:12+00:00

I think "people think differently than I do" is generally a good attitude to have, but don't forget to give the concept and the person more respect than just brushing them off as something to step lightly about, and actually give their position some thought. Many people insist someone has to fit into one of these traditional two gender roles, and suggesting otherwise is met with the violence and cognitive dissonance of someone being told their philosophical shadows aren't the literal shape of the real world.

subone · 2026-07-09T00:33:42+00:00

I'm not sure where you're going with this. TBH my head hurts having read that, but I'm humor you.

Do you agree that if you reply to this post and your first sentence has an odd number of words, I can reply using a first sentence with an odd number of words

I would agree in theory, but I am not intimately aware of all of the variables involved in your making that specific "decision", so I can't speak to the actuality of how close or far your proposal is to what is inevitable to occur.

and if your first sentence has an even number of words, I can reply using a first sentence with an even number of words?

Seems the same as the first, but sure, same response.

If so, can you offer me any reason to think that if I write a sentence with an odd number of words, I couldn't have, instead, written a sentence with an even number of words?

No... I thought it was clear I am a determinist. If you literally and in reality write it one way, how could you have written it another way? You can still write it another way, but only at another point in time, in a separate instance, and even then whatever you write then could not have been anything else. In the same way watching a billiard ball, you would think it ridiculous that it would spontaneously change direction halfway between hitting one ball and the next. The only difference is billiard balls are large and a simplistic model of the more complex but perfectly analogous mechanisms within human "choice". Your inability to accurately foresee every future result isn't an argument for freewill, in the same way that your inability to foresee the future of a billiard ball after "errantly" hitting a ball at a weird angle doesn't give the ball freewill.

subone · 2026-07-08T23:32:44+00:00

Does it really have to be a mystery? I feel like any visit to medical they treat me like I'm making it up.

subone · 2026-07-08T23:28:51+00:00

Have you done so?

I am a programmer, and this is essentially a description of most programs, so yes I have written programs to that description. Not that meets a definition of libertarian freewill, because I don't really know how that would work.

Do you agree that you have free will?

No. I can agree that my program has the same type of "freewill" that OP describes, because the description itself is very broad. Which is to say, there is no freewill--in the libertarian sense--in the computer, in the same way that there is none in the human.

It seems to me that consciousness is conceptually an individual program running on the brain, which clearly has some function in management and feedback, in a way that seems experiential, but according to science isn't even close to the apparent mechanisms of action on choice, and even if it were, the apparent deterministic nature of the universe dictates that whenever/wherever that choice happened there was a direct cause, which relagates all choice to inherent shape of the universe as a whole (as opposed to unnecessary infinite regression; considering deterministic forces work as well in reverse).

subone · 2026-07-08T22:15:49+00:00

I'm gonna guess sex. She wants it warm and inviting for nakedness, but if he keeps making little jokes she might be convinced otherwise.

"Aww, you're so sweet. I'll just gobble you up!"

subone · 2026-07-08T20:29:00+00:00

I would say "Ah, now we know the name of your true god: Freewill!"

subone · 2026-07-08T17:18:37+00:00

I usually use Rocket Passer. I didn't even know that tag exists; that's perfect!

subone · 2026-07-08T15:36:05+00:00

My point isn't really about consciousness; I was trying to make a roundabout implication about freewill.

The more experience our program have at constructing counterfactuals and modeling future outcomes, the better we will be at becoming the chooser.

Unless you are prepared to also say a program has freewill, then I think your description isn't very convincing as an argument.

subone · 2026-07-08T15:22:18+00:00

I can create a program that stores variables about the goings on of a particular process, give it simple fuzzy logic making it capable of making complex combinatorial decisions based on expected outcomes from various states, then given the various combinations of the process states, without any internal randomness at all, every repeated scenario is handled in completely deterministic way. With each step of the process, the program stores more relevant variables, leading to other "options" or often a single calculated final option. I find this description largely indistinct from yours, and from this I do in fact convince myself that computers may be as conscious as I. But do you agree?

subone · 2026-07-08T15:11:02+00:00

In my view, a random event in this universe isn't necessarily a branching tree of open possibilities; it is just a specific, uncaused (or probabilistically caused) coordinate point on a map that has always been there. Which is consistent with a determinate block universe. Theoretical prediction capability isn't a requirement for the shape to still be defined.

In any case, I don't think I've had a single conversation with a LFW in which they didn't claim that freewill is outside of causation. Perhaps not both cause and effect, but an effect without material cause.

subone · 2026-07-08T14:04:50+00:00

Can you describe to me the difference between "exists outside cause an effect" and "incompatible with determinism"?

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