Mike Fleming
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Posts posted by Mike Fleming
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From my own early childhood I could remember a strong desire to learn and experience the world and find out about it.
At some point in my later childhood I just stopped caring though and I put it down to the drudgery of public education, the indoctrination, the bullying of parents and all the other cult bullshit that they use to get you to believe in their system of exploitation. Anyone who manages to get through all that and come out the other side as a reasonable thinker does so in spite of it, not because of it. It's a massive battle to not feel like you are being submerged under it all.
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I always assumed he was basing his ideas on the fact that the universe is expanding in all directions at the same time.
Amusing theory, and he's not an unintelligent fellow, but honestly really doesn't make much sense if you actually think about it.
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I'm ok with people on the left at least on an individual basis because they actually give a shit and are pretty well informed compared to most people
some can be pretty annoying and single-minded but others have just been given the wrong coordinates - I was one
That pretty much describes me too. I came from the left. It's a struggle to think straight in this society, and I think patience with those on the left, as well as the right for that matter, is always a good approach, at least initially. Some people on both sides are too far gone but give people at least one chance.
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I don't think it is people giving up. I think that if you want to change the world and you get all fired up about it and really want it to happen that you will end up just burnt out. No one person can change the world. We can all make our own contributions and I think that's what people are trying to say.
When it comes to the corruption of government's, well, to me countries are just cults and I have as little interest in them as I do what are officially regarded as cults by most people. For myself, I am not a spectator because frankly it is a show that I just don't like watching. I largely deliberately avoid political news as much as you possibly can in a statist society. Don't read newspapers. Don't watch TV. The corrupt people are largely non-entities that I have little awareness of. I am trying to bring them down indirectly by bringing down the state by talking to people about why we should abolish government. I have no interest in the specifics of what they are actually doing because it is a disgusting thing to look at and I prefer to think nice thoughts rather than just to get angry and frustrated. Life is too short.
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The problem that you have is that, in reality, there is no such thing as minimal government. How could there be? It is like the ideal of communism. It exists in theory only.
If you accept government then you accept whatever government evolves into. It cannot be controlled and minimised. It's not human nature to think people won't try to expand the role of the government. If you listen closely to many libertarians you will hear this all the time. There are many different ideas about what a minimal government is. There is no consistent view accepted by all minimal government proponents.
The truth is there are only 2 options, government, of whatever size, or no government. Thinking that you can create and maintain a minimal government is folly.
As for ANcap theory, all we are saying is that we should have free market competition in law and order instead of having one group with a monopoly in any geographical area. Forced monopolies are almost always very inefficient and you can see this with the current police and law court system. Do the police really provide a good service? I'm not saying there are aren't good policemen but it's a public service organisation and they just aren't known for good service. The law is decided by a bunch of politicians who are lobbied and bribed to pass laws. The more opaque the law becomes, the more inaccessible to the average person. As a result you end up with far too much of societies precious resources been redirected to the law profession. I could go and on with this but suggest you look up David Friedman's work. He has done a lot of work in the anarchist law area.
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I'm not intending to engage in this thread much further because it's just frustrating, but I will say this.
I see a lot of sophistry in this thread, a lot of complex unnecessary terms and I think it's all designed to make people's head spin. To make them give up on the question entirely as just being too abstract and too complicated. If you can't wrap your head around what someone is saying or the terms they are using it's not your fault, it's because that person is not very good at communicating or is intentionally confusing. It's quite common amongst the pseudo-intellectual set. The need to feel intellectually superior.
So for those people who's head is spinning here it is boiled down. It's actually quite simple.
Either everything is pre-determined or it isn't. If everything is pre-determined, if each effect has a cause and the universe is just one interconnected chain of events then everything that happens is what was always going to happen. That means all the choices that you made in the past were the choices you were always going to make and saying you could have made a different choice is meaningless, because it is equivalent to saying that the universe might have been different. If it is pre-determined, you don't really have free will because what is going to happen has already been decided by previous events. Every effect has a cause in lncluding our own actions because we are matter and energy and thus subject to the same laws.
That is the question. It's not any more complex than that. Nor is the answer.
Does the answer have applicability to your daily lives and society in general? Does it help you achieve clarity in your thoughts regarding your environment? Is the question of free will worth pondering for the average person? The answer to all three is yes, absolutely.
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No, I'm watching the impact of political power and financial power and proclaiming that they are both terrible.
By removing political power you are just replacing it with more financial power, unless financial power is also removed.
The only reason why financial power is so great is due to the state. The amount of risk that has to be undertaken for banks to make such massive profits is significant. With great risk comes great reward.
Why are banks taking such risks? Because they have the Fed dropping interest rates below the market rate and backstopping them with taxpayer money. This would not happen in a free society and so the great financial power you are concerned about would not exist. Just look at how banks behaved when they had to take responsibility for losses in the past and you will see much more conservative institutions. When the govt is encouraging them to loan money to everything and everyone and saying they will backstop losses that is is the opportunity for banks to make a great deal of money and wield a great deal of power.
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When you develop a theory you gather physical facts and then develop a theory from them. The entire problem with the free will argument is that there never have been any physical facts for it. Only human intuition. It "feels" like I have free will. But scientists have discarded human intuition as being unreliable. Physical facts all support determinism. What free will advocates are trying to do is work backwards. "I want free will to be true and I don't like the idea of determinism so I'm going to reject it".
I've already said before in here, I didn't like it at first either. The mind rejects it because neuronal connections have been built over many years, pretty much our entire lives that assume free will to be true. It takes time to adjust to the new reality. It takes time for the brain to make new connections which support the new ideas and for the old connections to die.
Determinism is not the horror it is made out to be. It is simple reality.
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OK, fair enough. Can you give me a fairly succinct view of it? Deterministic free will that is.
He had a title of Free Will is Causal and then talked about the child not necessarily turning out a certain way based on certain factors. That seemed to be the only evidence being offered under that title which is just an argument of complexity because all information is just not known. He compared it to the simplicity of the billiard ball. I couldn't really detect any other evidence being put forward under the section of text under that title.
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Straw man of the free will position. No one here has argued that free will is outside physical laws. YOU have concluded that based on an argument from ignorance and projected that conclusion onto our free will position. IOW, you've defined free will as necessarily being outside the "laws" and then argued that it must be outside the laws.
All I'm asking is do you have a physical basis for free will? I admit I haven't read all the pages since I was last here, walls of text. but I haven't seen anything on this page.
I was basically responding to the fact that complexity does not equal free will.
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It's interesting to talk about possibilities every now and again. Things like "are we all plugged into a matrix" or whatever. And these are usually valid possibilities. We don't truly know what existence is, we only have the information that we have to go on.
That information says that the world is real and so I treat it as if it is. It doesn't mean it is, it's just that I don't have any evidence that says that it isn't or reason to think it isn't. It's fun to speculate every now and again but ultimately I live as if the world is what I perceive it to be. If evidence ever comes to light that this is not the case I'll re-evaluate at that point.
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If you want to think about it in an entirely physical way, our decisions are just electricity moving around our brain. Electricity moves along the path of least resistance. So no, we are not really deciding because we have no awareness of this process. All we have is lots of information coming in from our senses which is converted to electrical signals and moves to our brain and comes out the other side as output which then moves our arms, legs, vocal chords, etc.
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Free will is causal
The reason that randomness is brought up by people is, I believe, because there is a confusion between their conception of "causal" and their conception of "determined". This actually presents a big problem for determinists that I will try to highlight again.
There is a form of causal description which goes something like: given X input, we should expect Y output in the system C. The input of trajectory and force applied from the input a pool stick (X) to the billiard ball ( C) should result in it ending up in the corner pocket (Y). This is a determined process and the determinacy is pretty easy to see if we think about it. The billiard ball isn't going to suddenly decide to turn back and fight the pool stick or run away in some seemingly random direction or whatever absurd scenario you can think of.
This same causal form, however, also applies to other things. Given a traumatic childhood (X) we should expect the child ( C) to grow up to have issues with depression and anxiety and possibly drug addiction (Y). At no point is any physical determinacy referred to in this causal description. And further, it may turn out that the child gets help somehow and grows up to not have these problems. The causal description is a valid one even if it's not necessarily going to lead to the expected result. As far as the causal description goes, or the science of psychology for that matter, determinism has absolutely no relevance.
The sense in which we think of the billiard ball example can be a valid causal description must result in the expected outcome, but this same requirement isn't in the traumatic childhood causal description in order for it to be valid.
I can already hear the determinist in my own head telling me "well it's only because we don't have all the variables and we treat the second as 'good enough' that makes it valid". And maybe this is true, but it's not something that can be taken for granted. This must be demonstrated by the determinist that it must be a lack of accounting, and what is a principle "traumatic childhood produce dysfunctional adulthoods" will be replaced by a superior physics of psychology.
Yes, it can be taken for granted. You can't hide free will in complexity. We have matter and energy and the physical laws of the universe. We, ourselves, are a physical part of this universe. Life is not something special, it is just energy moving matter around. Our bodies are as subject to these causes as anything else.
If you expect the determinist to demonstrate effectively the entire future state of the universe then you are correct, you will never accept determinism. But I expect the free will people to provide some physical basis for free will, some basis for why we we stand outside the physical laws of the universe. I can already prove that if you do not have enough variables, if you don't have enough information, you can't predict a future event.
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I enjoyed the first few years of the comic book. For those who don't know you can pick up a 48 issue anthology which is great value and a great read.
The TV show? Season 1 was kind of OK. I enjoyed season 2 when they were on the farm. When they went to the jail it started going downhill fast and by the time they got to the season finale, which was completely pointless and nonsensical and boring, it was the last straw for me. I haven't watched it since.
I already listen to Fdr podcast plus I got tired of politics . I try to keep them out of my mind most of the time
Me too. I regard countries as cults and the politics is just the functioning (or dysfunctioning if that is a word) of the cult.
I have as much interest in the cult of Australia, or the cult of America or whatever as I have in the cult of Scientology.
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Okay then. So none of my neurons fired when you interacted with me, right?
Consciousness is a one way street? The neurons and synapses do things and consciousness is a final cause? The consciousness that is you can have no effect on the neurons, etc. Is that right?
What I'm saying is your consciousness does not choose to fire them. In fact, it has no knowledge, no awareness of them at all. That's why choices happen in your brain and you then later become aware of them. The physical process happens first, consciousness later.
This is just another piece of evidence in the determinism argument. I'm not making it as if it's the only one. It's just adding to the weight of evidence.
Do you have evidence of this?
There have been experiments done on it. It is generally regarded that consciousness is an emergent property in neuroscience. I don't have any links on hand sorry.
Sam Harris, a neuroscientist, talks about it here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cf9eGUWGtyo
I think it means that I'm an idiot.
Obviously you're not an idiot, far from it. I have enjoyed many of your posts on the forum. I just wanted to apologise for the snarky comment. It wasn't warranted. I'm sure it didn't do too much damage
, but I apologise regardless. It's obviously an issue of mine and not about you. I look forward to continuing the discussion of something I am quite passionate about with the rest of you. -
It is true that major social changes occur due to the protests of a minority. However no major social change has ever come close to what us anarchists are suggesting. All revolutions have manifested out of the suffering of its participants, but they have all resulted in either the creation of a centralized state that is slightly less violent, or a centralized state that is even more violent. No state has ever been founded on the idea that governments should not exist.
Save one..arguably...
Anarchist Spain is the only fairly modern example of a revolution that resulted in an anarchist state, but unfortunately it no longer exists. Its failure is a perfect example of the concerns I have risen. It was not enough that the populace who desired change within Spain actually cooperated and manifested their vision, because it was destroyed by both internal dissent and external forces.
I hate to say it but it leads me to believe (at least by using Spain as an example) that the Anarchist state is weak in comparison to its more aggressive and lucrative fascist neighbors. If the US for example dissolved and became a completely anarchist society how would it hope to compete against China, or the EU now that it no longer has the ability to collect taxes from its people?
This is why in my OP I mentioned consensus, because without it the state will continue to exist. Given that such a consensus (at least at this moment) is impossible leads me to my original assertion that the Anarchist state is a futurist vision dependent on a resource and technological revolution.
I do not mean to be pessimistic. I'm just trying to be realistic. We have obviously taken the first steps in achieving our vision; I think the internet for example is the first true piece of technology that supports an anarchist society.
You are taking one instance, that, well let's say for argument's sake was a failure because I really don't know enough about the situation to comment on it.
But this was a different time in the history of world. Different education, different technological levels, etc. It could be argued that true anarchist thought, especially when it comes to economics did not develop until the late 20th century. Plus, this would have been an isolated incident in a thoroughly statist continent in the time of a great depression and WW2. I'm not sure you can draw proper inferences from it.
Looking at one instance that has been tried and saying that makes it hopeless signals a lack of imagination to me. It's clear that libertarian and anarchist thought is on the rise. I postulated a possible situation that might arise from this. Others could probably come up with others. I honestly can't see why you are so pessimistic. I think you need to talk a lot more and think it through a lot more. Sorry if that sounds condescending. If you are expecting immediate gratification, then yes, you will be disappointed. I have been doing this for a few years now and expect to be doing it for many more years before we ever reach an anarchic situation. It may not even happen in my lifetime. But if I've left the world better than I found it, and helped plant the seeds of a true freedom, then my life will have been worthwhile.
My advice, don't get worked up over this stuff expecting immediate results because you'll just burn out. Slow and steady wins the race. Focus more on the freedoms in your own life particularly in regards to your family before you focus too much on the state. You may find much of the freedom you are looking for by dealing with, or detaching yourself, from a bad family situation.
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Actually, that makes me feel a lot more depressed.
Although the feeling of "specialness" is probably a basic survival mechanism built into our brains, I'd find it hard to argue there is anything more unique or special in the universe than consciousness.
Well, he wouldn't be "wrong" because there was no possibility of him being anything else. He'll just be aware of the train tracks.I think the only way we'll ever figure this out is if we push these thoughts and theories to their full boundaries, and I believe the best way to do that is to make the theories as close and as easily practicible as possible.Here's a question we can start with: Do I CHOOSE whether or not I continue to believe in free will?We'll just work off that and see where it goes.
EDIT: Ignore these empty quotesEDiT: I hope my question wasn't too stupid; I know determinism concludes that we don't have choices, but I'm wondering how a determinism deals with the question as a whole.
Do you choose to continue to believe in free will? Not really. You know the truth and so any attempts at denying it are just going to lead to cognitive dissonance which leads to further consequences.
Were you depressed before you realised there was no free will? We're all in the same boat together still. It's not like free will has been removed from you. It's not like anyone else has it either. It's a meaningless concept in the same way that God is.
The reason I like determinism is because it means there is an order to the universe. That things can be explained, even human behaviour. That it's not just all randomness and people going round doing the the things they want, but there are clear reasons behind dysfunction. That I can see the general trend towards more freedom and why it's happening and that we can see a huge reduction in violence in this world.
I still feel like I have free will. The illusion is a powerful one and I don't go round thinking that I don't.
What is it about determinism that depresses you?
A cause is more like a description of the relationship between events.
What caused you to make your post?
I don't really understand what it means either.
You understand that consicousness emerges from neuronal interaction and not the other way round? That consciousness does not control neurons but that physical neurons determine the conscious experience?
How can you say that your consciousness is in control if this is true?
it's like saying the computer screen determines what the processor is doing.
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I don't understand what this means... I'm so confused
i'm not surprised frankly.
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Is your consciousness exercising any control over Kevin Beal's neurons?
No. I don't have control over another person or their neurons.
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I would like to know what determinists would do if a neural basis for free-will was found or at least know what they'd guess they think they would be determined to do.
That's like saying would I believe in the soul if scientists found there was a soul. The question doesn't make any sense. Either we are part of the causal chain of events of the universe or we aren't.
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No, consciousness is necessary, but not sufficient. I think we can agree on that.
And absolutely consciousness and free will are physical and are causal. I'm not sure how that could be denied. I just take issue with the idea that this results in determinism (which it doesn't).
Consciousness is an emergent property. it arises from the physical interaction of neurons. Not the other way around. Our consciousness does not and can not control the physical neurons in our brain.
To realise this just try to control a neuron in your brain and get it to fire. Of course you can't.
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this is why free will can not lead to solutions, because it does not account for everything that is causing the problem. imagine if there is a child in a violent home, a person with a deterministic perspective can say to this child: "your home is a violent and dangerous place, not only will you physically suffer, but over time you will also be degraded mentally. you should remove yourself from that environment, because it will cause your self-integrity to be compromised over time." this quote recognises that environmental factors (the violent home) will have negative influences upon a person and will impair their "free choice" (so to speak), and so the solution that can be proposed is to remove oneself from that violent home to avoid such consequences.
I think this is a great point.
From one perspective, enlightening the population at large to the reality of determinism, I think, leads some people to think that it means people will decide they are not responsible for anything and go out and kill, thieve or whatever and say they had no choice in the matter and therefore can't be criminally prosecuted. But to me, this is like people warning that anarchy will be chaos and we are better off with the lie, or necessary evil, of government.
If we do have the situation described above by June, then because the person knows that determinism is true, because society at large knows, and what the consequences are, they will be more effectively able to remove themselves from that situation, with the blessing of society, than what currently happens where it is not clear to people what the consequences will be and societal guilt allows the abuse to continue, even into adulthood to some degree, with the attendant negative effects on society.
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I got what you were saying. But if he's just a machine and his anxiety is the result of a subroutine processing A, B, and C while conditions X, Y, and Z are just so, wouldn't trying to talk him out of it be ineffectual? Or is the argument that the code is self-correcting and being exposed to an alternative view can sometimes be enough to tweak the values of the variables considered.
I'm asking out of genuine curiosity. Although I feel embarrassed to admit it, your input has me curious on the subject for the first time. I've just assumed that because people make arguments to humans and not to spoons, that this was an acceptance of free will. I still think this holds despite this thread, but there is something very sexy about comparing it to losing God. It's like reliving the liberation I experienced when I started re-learning how to think and pursuing self-knowledge.
OK, let me see if I can articulate this properly.We are machines, but we are very sophisticated machines. We care. We love. And all that stuff. Now you can break it all down to biology ultimately of course, but we still feel these things. I'm still as much human as anyone else. I care about others, love some people. I still feel special and I assume that special feeling we have about ourselves is a type of survival mechanism. It's the body saying that it's survival is important, I think. But to me it just comes across as a special feeling.I should stress that I'm still working out determinism and all it's implications for myself. There really isn't a whole lot of satisfying literature out there about what it all means for ourselves and society as a whole. I understand why because it's so challenging, it literally makes my head ache but I always find myself coming back to it. Partly because it almost seems like the last frontier. Somewhere where someone could come along with some good theories and ideas surrounding it and really make a mark. I've seen Sam Harris, in particular talk about it, and for me it's a very unsatisfying experience. While he makes a good case for it he doesn't really talk about implications much. He either isn't communicating it well or hasn't properly worked it all out in his own head at the moment.But it was a very profound moment for me when I realised, yes, determinism is true. It came after a long process of reading books, reading articles, watching videos from many people and thinking it through in my head. When I got there it all seemed so obvious, kind of like with God, but the journey was necessary. I think it's a more profound truth than there is no God, which itself is a very profound truth.So coming back to your question, we all effect each other. There's strong empirical evidence for that. If you give someone some information that they didn't previously have, or even just a different perspective, it can change that person's philosophy. It's happened to me from reading things people have posted on the internet. The guy said he found it depressing. I was trying to articulate why it wasn't depressing from my perspective. Obviously, I can't make him do anything.The quote I was responding to made it sound as if the abuse was causal. If I misunderstood, I must both apologize and ask if you could elaborate on what you did mean.
No problem. Causal in one direction. Violence has reasons behind it, whether it is abuse in the past or whether it's a tumour in the brain. But abuse itself doesn't always lead to violence as you pointed out. I myself, was bullied and abused but yet I have not been violent as an adult. I've been more self-destructive than anything else.
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"Is a free market for marriage really efficient? I had thought so but then I bucked the shot, quivered my throat and looked at the hard-fact data: when men and women freely chose to marry, neither were happy with their choices shown in several recent studies of marriage over the last 50 years. As humbling as it sounds, I decided to back down from my previously stone-settled position on the matter."Back to arranged marriages, I guess then.
And he says "neither were happy" as if to intimate that nobody is happy with their marriage which is clearly false.
I would tell the person that the solution to this problem would be to give people more information so that they can make better choices but I think it's likely he just wants an excuse to control people.
Los Angeles: A City In Decline?
in Current Events
Posted
Isn't the movie industry becoming more decentralised? I would think it would be logical that, over time, Hollywood's influence will diminish in the movie industry, and with it much of the money that flows there.