Do We Have Free Will or Are We Predetermined? 

good point

@Bush 911 - Good point Bush911. Does that also include all the workings inside our brain?

As I finished this video, I was just about ready to refute that very point and here I see someone already did! Cheers!

your attitude is already predetermined but but... hmmm...🤯

@@KM-04 👍

Is there such a thing as objective truth

dbsk06 Well that's a whole debate on it it's own. :D I think an objective truth can be constructed if one agrees on the axioms and logic.

it initially feels like a dodge. However, you can argue that the position of regarding yourself as freeish is sufficient for most people. It's impossible to dismiss the possibility that free will is illusory, but an ongoing illusion of free will might be functionally equivalent to the real thing. If a clear answer is impossible, then it makes an amount of sense to pivot to what is a useful position. However, even with that you could debate whether pivoting is an exercise of will or simply the universe program continuing to run. The same issue is contained in whether the audience is actually making a decision about altering their perception on the question. Framing things as a choice implies some level of control. Or does it? Any answer is probably better than "who knows? Eat more vegetables and try not to think about it.". (A proper answer is probably initially a philosophical question and then requires some explanation of what free will actually means. I assume the answer is more complicated than if you're a materialist or not.)

we have compete free will. nothing is predetermined.

Hard Determinism is the truth but it doesn't really matter because you'll never have enough information available to you in order to determine what every single human is motivated by in order to predetermine all of their actions. An example of this is if I asked you to name a city. You will more than likely name either the last city that you heard that day, the one you heard the most often in your life, or one that you like the best. You cannot name me a city you have never heard of. So your options are limited by these things and if I knew the answer to all of these questions I should be able to predetermine your answer but even this kinda simple question would take a lot of information gathering to figure out what the answers could be and gathering enough information on 6.2 billion people to figure out how everybody will interact with one another would take too much work for it to ever work. However, if you could gather that much information you could see how everybody will impact one another till the end of time. Maybe a super computer some day will be able to do it. Probably not though.

J. P.M. yeah, I'm disappointed

Jpm that's really all anyone EVER does about ANYTHING lol. The human mentality can only accept ONE truth at a time ( some see the glass half FULL others see it half EMPTY but NO ONE can see it BOTH ways simultaneously lol) granted one may see the glass as half empty at first may realize they depend on what is in it more than they had planned and begin to see it half empty. The same thing happens in reverse but it takes TIME to change that perception. No one goes from Christian to atheist overnight. People ALWAYS believe what they WANT even when it differs from what they KNOW! The bible is FULL of examples of this ( raising the dead,healing the sick,feeding the hungary,etc,etc and just the ENTIRE perception of religious "miracle" to begin with) we already KNOW these feats are humanly IMPOSSIBLE so to choose to believe they ACTUALLY happened goes AGAINST your human logic yet if your Christian you CHOOSE to believe through the imposed fear of ETERNAL consequences if you DON'T!!! Lol People CHOOSE what they believe and REFUSE the rest.

Funny, J. P.M.

Your comment is insightful. Thanks.

Individualism is the discourse of modernity.

Michael Wu good

U must be A loaner

In this world, is the destiny of mankind controlled by some transcendental entity or law? Is it like the hand of god, hovering above? At least it is true, that man has no control, even over his own will. - Berserk

will can do what he mans, but he cannot man what he man - Reuahnepohcs

parker469a Power lies in where man believes it to lie. Man in the world of Berserk suffers excruciatingly, and began to imagine a god which dictates their fate and casts upon them pain. Their imagination becomes their subject of belief, and thus, they grant power to this image of god through this belief. The god who had its power granted by man now holds enough power to overpower man, albeit being an abstraction of man themselves. And in the world of Berserk, this image of god crept out of man’s own hearts, morphs, and materializes as the being it is now-the heart of the astral world, the world where all that are transcendental and spiritual resides within. And thus, it is within the world of Berserk, that man created god.

It's a never ending cycle.

@temporary Traveler bro. When did they ever say that?

Jack Mehoff prisoners are bring to the jail to keep us safe out of these people.

@@AriffRed01 LOL :"D

@A N It may be argued that their crime-doing behavior was predetermined. It may be argued that it's their fate to live that "bad" life.

Quick Fix if you do sit on your ass and observe the world well that is predetermined. In fact the thing I'm saying to you is also predetermined. Everything is.

Khvote Windrunner It is relevant, really. If we can predict the future it means everything is a result of other things (basically it is like the butterfly theory). Which means everything is determined by what happened before... and so on. Consequently, we are laso determined.

Quick Fix That is my philosophy of life. I believe indeterminism but I also want to believe that I am determined to do great things.

Quick Fix yeah i totally agree The thing is that some people who realised that there is no free will think that they dont have to do anything And yes they can nothing for that 😂

Parallel Universe the problem is, people who DO try are people who don’t believe in predeterminism. If everyone knows and believes in predeterminism, everyone will stop working and stop being optimistic. Life is just a waiting game, right? Everything will fall from the sky.

Your neurological condition/fysiology might already be predetermined as well ...

@@Meow-gp5nk i was born to fail at life. Born ugly, bullied by father,, bad childhood and teenhood, cant get a gf, all these experiences lead me to do bad decisions as an adult. You see how all the pieces come together? I was predetermined to fail by way of domino effect.

@@karlhans6678 you could also have been predetermined to win against all the odds. but probably not because these "predeterminately useless" are the thoughts that are going inside your mind. unless you were even predetermined to have a change of mind as well. So change your mind and believe that you can. because even that could have been predetermined. who knows

@iam_bryan012 Rodriguez it's not possible for free will to exist. Your feeling of freedom is just because you have never say down and observed consciousness. Once you start paying attention it's easy to see that you are not in control in any meaningful way

yes but no one is forcing you to react on a certain way, to some degree you are free, absolute freedom obviusly doesn't exist because after all we are a bunch of atoms interacting whit the world

Sad

Eternal sunshine of a spotless mind.

this is a young american's thinking

​@@humbertlong3042 how does old Americans think?

Yeah it’s like if I want a hot E girl to want me but then see she’s taken by a fat fucking neck beard who gets her days on end when you’ve been told you look like you pull TONS of women. That’s one example, honestly though, some fools don’t deserve what they have, I feel many have their days at an end, they simply abuse what they have, I just don’t agree with either philosophy, one implies we choose and the other that there MAY be a power bigger than us which is dog shit.

I feel like it's more of a probability thing,when you toss a coin,you only get 3 outcomes,same thing is with life,look at wt all people are doing,they are kinda doing the same shit

@@Look73689 I agree with this. However I’m curious about the 3rd outcome of flipping a coin?

@@dinonspace8620 i mentioned the 3rd outcome because if i had just said 2 outcomes then people would say oh we can even get a 3rd one too.

you were presented a situation and chose what to do about it

PROdigeYw Subconsciously decided. Your conscious mind can have the ability to override your subconscious impulses, but for me in this case, nope.

Notification determined you starting the video, but it was your choice to finish it.

@@ironmantis25 You do realise with over 50 muscles to move at a time in the span of a second that unconscious brain activity has to work extremely fast to do whatever you chose?

@@anabanana9582 nope choosing is predetermined as well

If you could do that, you could see into the future

You can't control the thoughts that pop into your head. I think that was your point.

Well as soon as you "predict" it actually became your next thought... Trippy paradox

I did that awhile ago on my job interview. I said to myself "fuck it, que sera sera" it didn't end well of course 😅

@Ryan Smith after reading your comment, my next thoughts were either to reply or not. But i chose not to..... wait...

'Predetermined' usually refers to ' events' causes are events themsleves are predetermined '. It's like: football rules, field's lengths and matches' times and teams are predetermined this moment for the next 4 years. Well, DUH! But are you determined to fail? That is the question.

@@reda29100 no but what if it's already planned to make us believe that we have free will

@@abdullahrazack I'm sorry. You sound like a troll, that's why my response sounds so sarcastic. So you doubting and thinking now that you have no free will is part of the programming too? How about the other way around? What if we're programmed by an evil simulator that wants us to believe that we *don't* have free will?! Wouldn't that make it easier for him to perpetuate this cycle with him/it interfering? I do sound so toxic, and I apologize in advance.

@@reda29100 But what if in the end, whether we believe in free will or not is what he wants.

@@reda29100 Why would he not want us to believe in free will? Because free will exists? That would be too stupid. Anyways in the end, it questions our reality. Who are we? What is our destiny? What are we supposed to do?

What inspired you to write that?

William, I can't tell you how much I love you :- )

You say it detracts from the free will debate? I say it's an excellent thing! It's one of those useless and sterile debates along with "does God exist?" or "are there other universes?" Instead of seeking the truth in a case where the truth is clearly not accessible to us, we can try to answer the question for which we can find an answer: " what effect do my beliefs have on my life?" Once we answered that and we still have time to waste, sure let's debate what was before the big bang.

@Rui Ning Wang I agree, in this case I found it very relevant and meaningful.

Do not think about pizza. I bet you just thought about pizza didn't you. No free will.

Nyctimene I think even hard determinists agree that rational thinking is not the only factor coming into play into determining a human action or decision. Instead it's a convolution between your beliefs, desire, and temperament. It might be your utopic ideal to only rely on rational thinking, but the reality of humanity is very different. Some people believe the earth is flat and that vaccines give autism to children..

Well you said it yourself, we all think we are being rational, but others might very rightly disagree with us. I think you underestimate how good we are at lying to ourselves. I'm not saying that people consciously choose to believe something contrary to the extent of their rational capabilities, but instead our beliefs are subconsciously shaped by much much more than what we are ready to acknowledge, or even able to acknowledge, starting by our own desires and temperament. And the other point is that our human perception is very limited, even when we try to look into ourselves! So when we try to build our beliefs, we often only have a very limited set of data. So of course if you build your belief rationally with this meager set of building blocks, it's going to be very shaky and uncertain and with holes. But we are often overconfident in the validity and "sea-worthiness" of our beliefs. Having only our own mind, we don't have so many other perspectives to compare with. There is kind of a Dunning-Kruger effect at play here! I think we all often overestimate our rational capabilities. tldr; we think we are being rational, but we often don't realize how little we know and how shaky our beliefs are.

Good thoughts but you might get some more traction if you look for some typos.

SylenDraws did the universe tell to type this comment

Austin duh, that's what he was saying.

What typos?

SylenDraws my bad, I misread the second sentence. I don't see any actually.

You are determined to look both ways. As a child you got a free will but everyone watches upon you, to not cross the street on red light, to not touch the power supply etc...

Richard Kelch me too. I have experienced life as you have, something's are completely unalterabe and already set and won't or can't be changed yet religious people say that we have a choice and can affect outcomes.

Yes. It’s a promotion for stoicism. I was surprised there wasn’t a book for sale at the end of video.

The son of Liberty In your definition, absolute freedom would be boring as fuck, not considering the logical problems that arise when you enter the real of omnibeings

The son of Liberty The same with mine. Our mind should undergo transcendence to truly understand freedom. Maybe to the point of understanding the mind of god.

Eating shroom's must be like an all out jail-break!

It really depends on how much you can maximise your consciousness to.

The son of Liberty thats very deep And i agree but i think there is just a limit and we cant wide it

Control Theory Or does it? If you are just a cog in a machine, how can you say your failure or success is based on your choice?

@@woah5333 Regardless of whether free will exists or not, this video is harmful to the conversation. This is just one of many times that School of Life has employed very shallow philosophy which the channel has been criticized for by many.

@@woah5333 You can't when your choices aren't free and are only a reaction to your current sensory input, the stuff you remember, the futures you predict.

@@user-bl4oq7fd8d well, isn't that exactly what people mean by free will? To do what they wish to happen and avoid what they don't? No one asked any one to stir the dust on Mars' surface, rather to not carry knives around malls! Predetermined in the sense that we, the society, don't want cute little things leak bodily fluids and eradicate a being we care about. The free will debate is about *that kind* of predeterminism that society pushes to. And, before expanding the technical meaning of free will to looser terms, *remember: no one asked to stir the dust on Mars!*

@Snow Snow where the choice is yours. Whether you spend money wisely or waste it recklessly. That is whay I mean with free will. Not the absolute freeness to choose whatever that could ever be done.

Agreed

This completely misses the point of the debate

Unless all of that is already predetermined; your outlook, "wokeness" about conditioning, environment, others, etc.

GODDAFUCKING DAMMIT !!! FINALY SOMEONE WITH SOME SENSE !!! THANK ANYTHING THERE IS IM NOT ALONE !!!!

@Sam certain factors within a life lane are predetermined but a choice to switch to a different more favourable one is yours .

But what if, still, everyone's choise combined (totality of conscious beingd combined) *is* what determine which universe we go to? Like, we are 3 beings and tons of atoms. Atoms' actions and influence in which universe we tend to is out of our hands, but our decisions, we the 3, of doing hundereds of different things (moving hands or thinking about doughnuts) will lead the branching (within the universe atoms lead to from possible worlds) to specific universe? More like the dog and the leash but within the choices we ourselves can choose. More like the free will is meant in the choices we may have, not those out of hands.

i know it's been 3 years, but i just wanna say: nice poem, pal

@@xx_xxxxx_xx4800 Thanks!

@@macronencer i think its a disgrace to humanity. shame on you sir, shame on you. remove this horrid poem

@@macronencer By looking at these facts as an objectivist-compatibilist, I definitely agree with you.🙂👌 Besides, there's also sufficient evidence in the scientific community to support the existence of free will (which came in the product of evolution, where living beings that make conscious choices tend to surivive more✅ than those that dont) slate.com/technology/2013/09/free-will-debate-what-does-free-will-mean-and-how-did-it-evolve.html Hence, I agree with you and its the reasonable and sensible statement to have.👍

The illusion of free will has nothing to do with philosophy, but of biology.

@@ThriftyCHNR - Heheheh, then explain to me, biologically, why and how i see the world as i do. Biology study living things, but certainly not everything about Life ! If you don't agree, then explain me why we have Psychology to study human mental functions and behavior when it can be explained by Biology ? Where there isn't a methodology to do things and study them, Philosophy applies ! That's why Philosophy deals so much about subjective experience, why things happen as they do, rather than gravity or other methodological subjects for example.

@@Hgulix62 Psychology is v.flawed; the biological mechanisms can be adressed once the technology is here in a few centuries. Psychology is currently just treating the symptoms and not the underlying biological cause.

@@Meow-gp5nk - Not at all, Therapeutic psychology is just one of many psychological fields. Cognitive psychology underline biological causes of mental functions.

@@ThriftyCHNR does philosophy exist?

Love

Do you mean causality?

I thought that was kind of strange too. Simply knowing the limitations of free will isn't enough to make someone so defeated unless they want to be. If that were the case, a lot of religious people I know would be pretty nihilistic right now.

Thing is: they made studies in which they either told the subjects that they had free will or not. Consistently, those that believed they had free will acted more accordingly to their better judgement than those that didn't. It's an old pragmatist point of view that free will is a useful belief, and I agree

It's exactly like people who say you don't believe in God and so don't have any purpose in life, that's just not how it works.

I thought the whole point was that you should find a balance between the believe in determinism and free will to prevent defeatism

The studies may reflect a large proportion of people who believe they have no free will and in turn also often believe their actions and thoughts have no impact on the world or their life outcome (which is obviously false). You cannot get trapped in that false assumption, if you do believe in free will. (Which is probably the point the video is trying to make). The vid is still oversimplified and confusing, imo.

You don't choose though because free will doesn't exist.

Lol fucking horrid comment

But your choice is predetermined, you just don't realise it

That question is irrelevant as long as one doesn't define what one understands under "Free Will". If you mean it to be a complete detached pure mind that can feather decisions based on a divine insight then there will never be an end to the discussion. On the other hand once one accepts our brain to be a dependente entity one must value the myriads of outcomes it can produce when it starts grinding over a problem. Sure, if one only looks at pure reaction we are less competent but give us some time and open circumstances to reflect and the decision tree with possible outcomes becomes vast.

School of life follows a philosophy of extreme pragmatism. They don't care about finding truth or deep considerations. As long as you understand that, not only you won't be disappointed, you will predict what they will talk about

Free will and predetermined fate are not mutually exclusive. In the future you'll do what you'll do regardless of if freely or not.

Yes, self awareness and iterative thinking broaden the decision space beyond pure reaction. If not rushed and over time a vast tree of influencing factors and capabilities interact (and interlock) with each other. Even if this happens deterministically the logic inside this interaction network is so vast that it needs it's own name. This "competence" as Daniel Dennett calls it is virtually independent of an underlying deterministic or indeterministic universe. Freedom therefor depends on your competence (giving you freedom of choice) and unavoidable circumstance (constrains on your choice). To value one over the other and align your life accordingly is the task portrait in this video.

That's a good point. Is the way someone feels about something, their attitude is pre-determined. How do you change that, since your attitude is not really that easy of a fix with a whole lifetime of subconcious infiltration and influence from everyone around you. We are to some extent a collection of reactions that we learned in the past.

Both are results of the butterfly effect & the butterfly effect is build off of freewill

@@pacman207 butterfly effect is built off of determinism because determinism dictates that everything happening now is based off of something that came before, like a chain reaction that was predetermined at the beginning of it all. Like the first domino falling, or the butterfly effect.

I think we hover between a state of free will and a predetermined one.. The two coexist.. Another question what If freewill is part of the fate..?

Choice ≠ Free Will

@@memenchance1747 not necessarily, a lot of people only have choices to choose between that they don’t want. Like all the choices. Someone in jail for instance. Sure we have choices still, you always really got some sort of choice, that doesn’t equate to free will.

What have you experienced that you would say aligned strangely or perfectly?

Only if we assume that it is possible to know every input and that there is no coincidence at all. But the world (quantum physics) teaches us that coincidience is a crucial part of the universe. Even if everything was pre-determined and we knew all inputs/ starting values and laws, it still would be impossible to calculate, because you calculator would need at least the same complexity and energy as the universe itself.

Adding randomness doesn't actually help matters. When people claim to have free will I don't think they typically mean "I picked coke instead of Pepsi based on random fluctuations at the quantum level that I have no control over"

Agreed. Randomness doesn't create free will. But ultimately, it doesn't matter if free will exists or not, because we never know what will happen in the future.

Chriss Pagani i dont see any evidence that the randomness of quantum mechanics is effecting our world, therefore we should be able to calculate everything, & our decisions to some extent.

Jeffery Theador Cornelius Crawford i dont think that its correct that our decisions are just the product of brain chemicals, it is to some extent, but i think the bigger cause to our decisions is prior knowledge

Nope, this video appeared in your youtube account. It caught your eye, and you were compelled to click on it. Then you, being stupid, wrote your comment. No free will at all.

@@ThriftyCHNR - How did you know that he did not chose to click ?

StupidityKiller - Nobody just has thoughts with no strings attached to them my dude that not how the brain works. People have always believed in some spirit or soul that guides our actions but it’s been proven time and time again to be nothing but something invented by the mind to cope.

That makes an interesting philosophical question. In my opinion, that depends, if your happiness means negatively impacting other people through your beliefs, then that's not a good thing. But if your ignorance makes you a better person for yourself *and* for others, why is there a need for truth? "When ignorance is bliss, it's folly to be wise."

@@Kevin-qh1ve - Can really ignorance makes a better person ?

No we don't. You can't decide to be convinced or not about an argument. If determinism makes sense to you; you will believe it is true. If it doesn't make sense to you; you won't believe it is true. Where is the freedom in what I described?

Throughout your entire statement. Your argument is that we can consider one verse the other and make a choice. That is free will.

understand this and then you can see why "free will" is impossible ---> "our "free will" is based on past environmental and genetic interactions" "free will" is something that we feel/experience it as because we never think about all the events that go on that we can't perceive.

Max Brinker , you are misusing a verse to prove your point. Any man has the choice to do anything he wishes. A man can still do good, even if he isn’t saved; and vice versa, those who are saved can still do wrong. We are given that choice, otherwise we’d be mindless drones unable to even have this conversation. And that verse does not mean what you’re saying. Yes, only God can approach God of his own accord; but that divide was destroyed when Jesus died for us. I’m not sure where you got this point of view, and I’m not sure I totally understand what your even saying with this comment, but I hope I can shed some sort of clarity.

There are a lot of people who are butthurt in this thread over OP's joke. I am sorry the ones who are were predetermined to have a stick up their ass

Refuted: Does you statement make sense? If it does then everything is not meaningless :P

thats the meaning you derive from it. you say everythings meaningless, but if someone asked you what it meant, you would say "nothing" which is and of itself a meaning technically. nihilism alot of times is an expression of silent depression, a form obscure and behind the scenes it has escaped the grasp of your conscious awareness, and has instilled itself as a "fact of life" within your philosophy. ive felt the same way, and still do at times, but i know that what im saying is more or less a fact. how could it not be?

so when you die, does everyone else stop existing? ...solipsist logic...

Can you support your claim with evidence?

Sounds like defeatism

You are designed to react with a choice... If only there was a HUD.

Or do you ? Hello vsauce, michel here

We are never without a leash around our neck.

Free will is an illusion and here is the argumentation: From the lense of neuroscience: Marcus Du Sautoy (Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford and the Simonyi Professorship for the Public Understanding of Science) participates in an experiment conducted by John-Dylan Haynes (Professor at the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience Berlin) that attempts to find the neurological basis for decision making. Short summary: The experiment explores the relationship between free will, decision-making, and brain activity. Marcus Du Sautoy participates in an experiment in Berlin where they have to randomly decide to press either a left or right button. Brain scans and computer records track when the decision is made in the brain and when the button is physically pressed. The results reveal that up to six seconds before Marcus Du Sautoy consciously makes a decision, their brain has already made that choice. Specific patterns of brain activity can even predict which button will be pressed. This finding challenges the notion of free will, suggesting that unconscious brain activity significantly shapes our decisions before we become consciously aware of them. The experiment also delves into the nature of consciousness. It argues against dualism-the idea that the mind and brain are separate entities. Instead, it posits that consciousness is an aspect of brain activity. The unconscious brain activity is in harmony with a person's beliefs and desires, so it's not forcing you to do something against your will. Marcus Du Sautoy finds the results shocking, especially the idea that someone else can predict their decision six seconds before they are consciously aware of making it. The experiment raises profound questions about the nature of free will, consciousness, and the deterministic mechanisms that may govern our decisions. From the lense of pysics: In order to question the belief in free will, one can conduct experiments and contemplations. Take an action you are convinced you performed and reverse-engineer it until you realize you had no control over it. This leads to the conclusion that all actions in life are the same, and the notion of claiming ownership falls away, so free will is non-existent. By 'reverse-engineering an action,' I mean tracing back the steps that led you to make a specific decision. Upon close examination, you'll find that your choice was influenced by a series of past events and conditions over which you had no control, and that your choice didn't originate from a single point. One could argue that everything originates from the Big Bang, making us essentially biological robots. This realization may prompt you to reconsider how much 'free will' you actually possess, as your actions are shaped by factors beyond your control, both in the past and likely in the future as well. So you can summarize everything is a happening according to cosmic laws.

Exactly my idea as well!

Deyw that has nothing to do with free will you know? I dont even think that the rick and morty universe has this question in it but it would be interresting

come watch tv?

Nice reference

+Schinkenkeks Affirmation of Infinite universes is the ultimate destroyer of free will. Every choice is made. Every outcome is experienced. Some are just far more *likely* than others. The likeliest outcomes are the universes where we act like we have free will.

I believe it does. Especially some of the quotes that relate to the analogy of us drifting like a piece of dust in the cosmos, or to put a saddle on your universe. Regarding the determinism representing ricks nihilistic outlook as well as doing what he can to enjoy that which he chooses what matters to him regarding in which he struggles to admit what he really cares about behind the complicated characteristics of rick himself. Its really interesting the concepts of some philosophy and theoretical science that is stirred up within the show.