Fighting socialism and other problems are we doing it wrong?

[iBlagg]

Yes I meant to post this is self knowledge. All will be explained.

 

Firstly this is a rough idea and I'm not sure how to express it. Think of this as a messy sketch to help us draw a clear picture later. It's going to be long and a little rambling before we can hammer this into a strategy.

 

Debates rage on every political, philosophical, moral etc etc issues with no end in sight. No one is winning no matter how much logic and reason or underhand tactics are used. I put this down largely to confirmation bias. 

 

I've seen creationists come face-to-face with Grand Canyon sedimentary rock. Had an expert explain it all to them and how flood water works and still the creationist said, 'No, this was formed from the flood when Noah built the Arc'. Its the same with politics how many failed socialist states before we get the message. Will all people accept homosexuality is not a choice of free will. Feminism, racial problems, health problems. We're fighting battles like WW1 generals ordering wave after wave of men to walk slowly towards machine gun fire. Never thinking is there another way.

 

We should open another front and free will is the way to go. I don't think free will exsists. We're more like a clock work automaton preprogrammed by life and DNA to react to our environment. 

 

Don't want this thread to debate whether free will exsists, if you want to do that please start another thread. Lets work from the point of no free will. Also this post does talk smack about religion, if you are religious, cool, awesome. But I'm not and we can argue this in another thread.

 

If everyone understood there is no free will we could finally kill socialism once and for all. This is because science is unravelling our reward and motivation systems of our mind. Taking away reward is simply not done in nature. It's not how our minds works. You want my labour, goods I want my reward. Simple. 

 

We can it a step further, if we create a welfare system where a single parent earns the almost the same as a full time low income worker. Will they choose to work cos' it's good or do what humans have been proven to do and serve their own interests? Will they see single parent hood as a career choice which is much more attractive than a low paid job?

 

Can we blame the bankers who knowingly loan to people/governments who can't pay it back. They didn't have free will. Whatever doubts they had about loaning money were swept aside by group mentality, greed and self serving interests. And I believe science is able to explain why. If we understand what went on in their minds we can avoid putting other fallible humans in the same situation again. 

 

Guess what I'm saying is for the individual we're already fighting with the argument of how our minds work. Child see's aggressive parents - child grows up to be aggressive, not by free will, because of the way our minds work. 

 

The smack your child lobby doesn't have a leg to stand on, only because people like Stefan have literally shown them what's happening in the mind of an abused person.

 

Isn't this how we should fight other problems?

 

You can make a documentary on the negative health effects of McDonald's. Doesn't matter. The fat, sugar and caffeine content of a MaccyDee's meal with coke totally scrambles our reward system so that we want more. Science has proved our brains are wired to love 50/50 sugar/fat mix and the caffeine is the kicker. No child's mind can compete with that.

 

Parents and peers can indoctrinate children into any religion. We can highlight contradictions in holy text they won't budge. We should fight with psychology of how they do it. The hymns, fancy clothes, hats symbols, the repetition, the desire for things to have meaning. How the mind works to make religion real. And how we can still do all the good things without religion.

 

For example someone says 'I believe meatball is our lord and savoir, given to us by the flying spaghetti monster, every time I eat meatballs I douse them in ketchup to remember how he died for us'. Instead of arguing is meatball the savoir or not. Just point out psychology of why think that way. How they've been lead to believe that and point out they'd believe any other religion just as strongly if that's what they'd been indoctrinated into. We get past the faith and go straight to the cause.

 

Feminism, they believe men are pigs and are sexist so they start seeing sexism everywhere. Try pointing out why a video game isn't sexist they won't listen. Conformation bias at work. Just the same as someone thinks they're lucky they'll remember all the lucky things and forgot the bad.

 

I think there is more to this idea. By understanding what makes us tick we can eradicate a lot of problems. If we stop trying to make humans fit a unnatural political system, family system. Or put them in a position where self interest will override any 'free will' choice not to be bad.

 

I'd like hear your thoughts on this, Do you think it would be effective?

What other ways could we use this? education, motivation? business? family life?

Please attack this idea.

 

a small anecdote to finish. My girlfriend mother of my 5 month son is an introvert. She's on social media but likes to keep her life private. Until recently she hardly posted anything on Facebook now it's a weekly baby Daniel update. From her point of view she decided to post all those baby pics. Found out yesterday Oxytocin the love hormone also increases the urge to gloat/show off. Every time she stairs into his baby blue eye her brain is pumping out this hormone. And that's why people show off their kids.

 

But also When you're kids are pestering you to show off something they can do; that's a side effect of their love for you   

[webdever]

I'm not really sure what you're advocating. How does understanding that 'there is no free will' help fight socialism? If there is no free will then nobodies minds can be changed other than what is already predetermined so if you are fighting socialism based on the belief that free will doesn't exist then you are starting out from a contradiction and I don't see how that can possibly work.

[shirgall]

I can't imagine asserting predestination is a way to argue for or against anything, since the outcome is unchangeable. You had the free will to make the posting, and people have the free well to make the best trades of value for value for themselves. There is no compelling reason to believe that someone else, or the fates, can make better trades for us.

[Dylan Lawrence Moore]

Yes I meant to post this is self knowledge. All will be explained.

 

Firstly this is a rough idea and I'm not sure how to express it. Think of this as a messy sketch to help us draw a clear picture later. It's going to be long and a little rambling before we can hammer this into a strategy.

 

Debates rage on every political, philosophical, moral etc etc issues with no end in sight. No one is winning no matter how much logic and reason or underhand tactics are used. I put this down largely to confirmation bias. 

 

[/i] 

I stopped reading here. Logic and reason are usless against those who do not or can not use it. Sophisticated chess moves are worthless against someone who just smacks the pieces around.

[Crallask]

Why do you want to propose a stance called "There's no free will" and then not have it discussed?

 

Do you think that's a minor or irrelevant part of your speculation?

[iBlagg]

WOW it's been a week already. I really don't have much free time. 

 

Thanks for everyone who posted. Would have been easy to read, disagree and just leave it at that. But you took the time to point out huge wholes in what I'm trying to explain. Which is a big help. 

 

And to Dylan who stopped reading. You're funny dude. When Dawkins debates Evolution it's not for the benefit of the Creationist sat opposite. It's for the undecided watching. The people who can handle a change of stance. Will Dylan come back and read this? who knows. 

 

Best thing to do is explain & define what I mean when I say there is no free will. 

 

I used to be into fitness, hit the gym 5 days a week. As my life has changed and broken that routine I'm pretty unfit, but I'd really like to get back into fitness. My weights bench leans against the wall of my sitting room unused, but I won't put it out of sight. The benefits of exercise are far greater than being physically fit. It gives your mental health a good boast. Is linked to improved memory and in turn is being linked to decreased risk of dementia and alzheimer. And in all honesty theirs a bit of vanity in there too. All these things I've learned about fitness and my past experience of fitness push me to actually do some. But sill I find it difficult to get started and do some fitness. Where's my free will? oh yeah it's busy thinking of a million excuses to not do fitness. Free-will why do you have to be a jerk.

 

If I have absolute free will I could simply say tomorrow when I awake, I'll be a health nut. I'll exercise and 2 days later I'll exercise again and I'll eat a healthy diet to support my body. I'll keep in going until I decide not to be a health nut.

 

How easy would life be if we could do this. When I awake tomorrow I'll stop smoking, drinking, drugs, procrastinating, being a total jerk to everyone. But it's not that easy. When we awake tomorrow our pattern forming brains will want to continue along the same track. With time and effort we can break those habits.

 

'Ah-ha! you decided to break those habits with free will, we've got you!' Well no, lets say I've got back into fitness. I didn't decide by free will to do it. My mind opinion was formed by my previous experiences, vanity, my dad not being happy with his weight, how much I used to enjoy fitness. Knowing the benefits of fitness etc. Sub-consciously all those Calvin Klein adverts must have had an effect? I grew up watching He-Man and Thundercats.

 

Lets say I don't decided to get back into fitness as has been happening daily. It'll be down to influences of habits, laziness and now I'm 33 and probably have declining testosterone levels.  

 

So here's my metaphor our lives are like trains on a track, We're laying the track as time goes. And like a train we can change direction and head to a new destination, like Fitness Town. But because there is no absolute free will we can't turn 90 degrees and head in a new direction, we'll de-rail. We can't jump track.

 

In essence we've preprogrammed ourselves to react in certain ways to certain situations.

 

At this point you might think "well duh, yeah you can't just change your personality with a click of your fingers but I do have free will to change my personality over time and I can definitely choose red as my favourite colour and I'm going to roll this dice and bet it lands on...... hmmmm 3! yes I chose 3 and nobody but me did that. And not I wasn't preprogrammed to choose 3."

 

Here's where it gets interesting (for me anyway I'm a right geek for this stuff). Egg heads in white coats have observed the minds of people making decisions. http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0021612 it's heavy reading but put simply they had people watch a screen it just flashed up letters. Participants had their fingers on both hands on 4 button each. They were told to relax watch the screen if you feel like pressing a button press a button. Then they were asked about what letter was on the screen at the time of pressing and such.

 

But essentially, feel like pressing a button? then press it. What could be more free will than that! 

 

The egg heads through means that seem like magic to me can actually observe the thought of pressing a button form in part of brain milliseconds before it gets to the concious mind. They literally decide to press the button before they know it.

 

It's like our minds are a complex work of gears and cog's someone cranks the handle the gears turn out pops an action and at the last moment our concious mind says

 

"I THOUGHT OF THAT! that was me my idea! it's all me" Naughty conciousness taking the credit for all the mechanism and workings of our deeper mind, shame on you.

 

So we have our illusion of free will even in the most simple decisions. Just as an off shoot though. If our unconscious mind decides stuff for us why have conciousness? why don't humans run on zombie mind unconscious thought? why evolve conciousness what is the benefit?

 

To answer webdever and shirgall's questions; why bother if there is no free will then we can't change peoples minds? and questions of things being predetermined.  

 

Am I saying the hand of fate controls everything? God NO! (see what I did there :-))

 

Yes we can change peoples minds, but they'll think it was there idea, of free will. Or they'll know someone's worked to change their mind but ultimately they'll think they chose to. Or we can change our own minds and we'll think we did it all.

 

Wish I knew how to embed this, 6 minutes of Derran Brown showing just how much you can manipulate someone's 'free will'. 

 

 

What's all this got to do with fighting socialism?

 

This is already a wall of text we'll leave it here for now. I look forward to your responces and help hammering this idea into something useful. I hope. 

[MMX2010]

 

How easy would life be if we could do this. When I awake tomorrow I'll stop smoking, drinking, drugs, procrastinating, being a total jerk to everyone. But it's not that easy. When we awake tomorrow our pattern forming brains will want to continue along the same track. With time and effort we can break those habits.

 

But it is that easy.

 

As long as you don't wonder why you are the way you are, and as long as you set up simple questions like, "Did I satisfactorily work out today? Yes / No", it is that easy.

 

But you think you need to unlock the mental structure of the entire human race BEFORE you can just Do What Needs To Be Done.  That's the roadblock, not the scientific uncertainty surrounding the mental structure of the entire human race.

 

Stop introspecting.  Stop reading scientific articles.  And just lift. 

[Mister Mister]

Many socialists also believe in determinism.  It's just that they imagine some intellectual class that can act on behalf of, even reprogram, the mechanistic masses, towards some Platonic greater good.

Also you are imagining that through making abstract arguments you can unlock a key in peoples' brains, and they will abandon false ideologies, as simple as if you correct an error in their math, and they say "oh, I see where I made an error.  thank you so much for instructing me ".  But the truth is that people tend to have an attachment to ideologies for emotional reasons.  Without dealing with this you are just making mouth-noises.  We have all fallen into this.  Because it's easier to talk about abstractions like free will or the calculation problem, than fundamental moral truths which threaten relationships, and false identities based on irrational collectivist bullshit.

[Crallask]

Here's where it gets interesting (for me anyway I'm a right geek for this stuff). Egg heads in white coats have observed the minds of people making decisions. http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0021612 it's heavy reading but put simply they had people watch a screen it just flashed up letters. Participants had their fingers on both hands on 4 button each. They were told to relax watch the screen if you feel like pressing a button press a button. Then they were asked about what letter was on the screen at the time of pressing and such.

 

But essentially, feel like pressing a button? then press it. What could be more free will than that! 

 

The egg heads through means that seem like magic to me can actually observe the thought of pressing a button form in part of brain milliseconds before it gets to the concious mind. They literally decide to press the button before they know it.

 

It's like our minds are a complex work of gears and cog's someone cranks the handle the gears turn out pops an action and at the last moment our concious mind says

 

Scientists did an experiment that seeks to illuminate free will as being a thing. 

http://hplusmagazine...ates-free-will/

 

Check it out.

[Dylan Lawrence Moore]

And to Dylan who stopped reading. You're funny dude. When Dawkins debates Evolution it's not for the benefit of the Creationist sat opposite. It's for the undecided watching. The people who can handle a change of stance. Will Dylan come back and read this? who knows. 

 

Yea, but just this paragraph.

[ProfessionalTeabagger]

Without freewill you have no control whatsoever over anything you do so fighting anything is logically impossible. Therefore your idea for fighting socialism is logically impossible. It would be like wind fighting rain.

What's worse is that socialists often ARE determinists (no free will) and they use it as a justification for socialism. They argue that because no one is truly responsible and every unfortunate person is a victim of genetics/environment that's beyond their control then everyone should be taken care off through taxation. It's only fair. 

So your argument fails before you even finish making it and even if it didn't it fails on its own terms. 

[Frosty]

Just for the record, physics tells us that the universe is deterministic, that's a relatively uncontroversial point of view in science right now, our choices are made by deterministic systems and influenced by deterministic systems, the outcome is deterministic. There's different reasons for believing this but the simplest that I'm aware of comes out of special relativity - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativity_of_simultaneity

 

"In physics, the relativity of simultaneity is the concept that distant simultaneity – whether two spatially separated events occur at the same time – is not absolute, but depends on the observer's reference frame."

 

It means that in theory you could observe events that are in another observers future, for this to be the case those events have to have a fixed outcome. This is something that all the major respected physicists seem to agree on, Lawrence Krauss, Brian Greene, Leonard Susskind etc. Here's a documentary with Brian Greene explaining simultaneity in a fairly easy to absorb way - 

 

That kills the idea of traditional free will in the sense that at any time we're free to pick any choice we like, we're not, our decisions are influenced by prior events. I happen to think that's compatible with libertarianism and certain other definitions of free will, free will is defined in all sorts of ways.

 

Back to your original point which I'm struggling a bit to grasp, but seems to be that educating ourselves and each other is the primary way to create an outcome which is desirable. I think that's just inherently true, to be able to interact with the universe in a rational way you need to first understand how it works. To say that the rapist is just inherently bad because he chose to be bad is an ignorant way of viewing the universe, when we understand that he was almost certainly abused as a child and we know how to look for these things and correct them, we can start producing a society with less rapists, these are ideas which value the scientific view of cause/effect and determinism and avoid the judgement of bad decisions.

 

Its funny because when we really want to solve a problem we go straight to science and physics to maximize our chance at interacting with reality in a way that will get us what we want (e.g less rape), but we're still happy to judge others as being free to make that decision when we want to point blame or get retribution.

[ProfessionalTeabagger]

Just for the record, physics tells us that the universe is deterministic, that's a relatively uncontroversial point of view in science right now, our choices are made by deterministic systems and influenced by deterministic systems, the outcome is deterministic. There's different reasons for believing this but the simplest that I'm aware of comes out of special relativity - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativity_of_simultaneity

 

"In physics, the relativity of simultaneity is the concept that distant simultaneity – whether two spatially separated events occur at the same time – is not absolute, but depends on the observer's reference frame."

 

It means that in theory you could observe events that are in another observers future, for this to be the case those events have to have a fixed outcome. 

 

The mistake here is that this notion presupposes determinism (no free will). It assumes that the other person's future events would be observable because the theory says two simultaneous events can be observed from a different temporal frame of reference. But the the properties of consciousness/free will are unique and the relativity theory is based on observations and experiments that are not part of consciousness. In other words, you assume the free will mind operates just like everything else when the naturalist free will theory says it doesn't and this is why you can't just extrapolate the properties of non-conscious matter to conscious matter. 

Also if if a person could theoretically observe events in another person's future then they could theoretically change them. That would mean any such events could not necessarily be fixed in the first place. 

 

BTW the idea that determinism is now uncontroversial in science is a falsehood. If you're going to state this then you need to prove it. 

[green banana]

It means that in theory you could observe events that are in another observers future

 

It does not work in theory. Information is transmitted at maximum at the speed of light. Lets say somebody is far away from the earth and moves towards the earth. That does not mean that the person can the see the future, because this information has to get to that person first. Relativity of simultaneity means that there are different nows for people on different inertial systems. It is not a method for time travel. 

[Carl Green]

Why not just respect the clearly emphasized request of the original post? Either debate under the terms of determinism OR DON'T.

 

(not trying to say either way with that, just pointing out that the request should be granted)

[iBlagg]

So many things I want to reply to, might have to multi post    

 

Also you are imagining that through making abstract arguments you can unlock a key in peoples' brains, and they will abandon false ideologies, as simple as if you correct an error in their math, and they say "oh, I see where I made an error.  thank you so much for instructing me ".  

 

Like your whole post in general. But sometimes people will thank you for correcting their maths. For example during my childhood I was on the receiving end of a few clips around the head. Nothing too bad. And upto about 6 months ago I used to wish some parents would take a tougher stance and give their children a clip too. Shut the little brats up and teach them respect! Whilst I didn't want to be as aggressive and short tempered as my father, I probably wouldn't have ruled out a clip around the head, the naughty step stuff like that.  

 

Then I stumbled by accident across Stef's Ray Rice scandal vid'. Agreed that what he did was totally wrong. But this Stef' guy what about him isn't he going over the top a little? I turned out okay after all? This lead me to dig deeper the defining moment was I think the bomb in the brain. The hard scientific evidence that physical abuse of children stays with them for life.

 

But that's me scientific data can override any sentiment, I think?

 

And I thank Stef for correcting my Maths.

 

For others maybe they won't be so thankful. But then why spend all this time debating and discussing stuff unless you're trying to convince someone of your point of view. 

 

 

 

It's like our minds are a complex work of gears and cog's someone cranks the handle the gears turn out pops an action and at the last moment our concious mind says

 

http://hplusmagazine...ates-free-will/

 

Check it out.

 

 

Very interesting stuff. Makes a lot of sense because it's our unconscious minds that people like Derran Brown like to play with. Our unconscious minds are the most predictable. Free Will having the power of veto on choice it pretty cool. Next step; what would cause free will to step in? Something did. It also supports that we're doing a lot of things on auto pilot. 

 

 

Without freewill you have no control whatsoever over anything you do so fighting anything is logically impossible. Therefore your idea for fighting socialism is logically impossible. It would be like wind fighting rain.

What's worse is that socialists often ARE determinists (no free will) and they use it as a justification for socialism. They argue that because no one is truly responsible and every unfortunate person is a victim of genetics/environment that's beyond their control then everyone should be taken care off through taxation. It's only fair. 

So your argument fails before you even finish making it and even if it didn't it fails on its own terms. 

 

I would re-read my second post with the metaphor of how I see us as people laying the tracks for our lives. It kind of fits with what Crallask linked as well. 

 

Unfortunately I've barely begun my argument. My first post was very rough. As mentioned it's a sketchy idea that I've asked for help putting together. And everyone who has posted has helped even Dylan (glad you came back). I wanted to avoid a discussion on does free will exists as I thought it would de-rail my idea, but it's all helped. Plus I thought the idea that we have at least very limited free will was more widely accepted. 

 

It's also clear a lot of you know a lot more than me on the subject of determinism and such. It probably deserves it's own thread.

 

So how does this help fight Socialism? Are we doing it wrong?

 

 

Extreme socialism like 'pay everyone the same wage for whatever work' has already been defeated because we know how humans work on fair trades. Why have a stressful hard job when I could earn the same money sweeping the street. We simply all won't pull together for the good of humanity. As pointed out earlier in the thread we're all looking for fair trades. 

 

Plus we've seen Soviet style socialism fail anyway.

 

What else could we brush aside. What about socialism is hurting us most? Taxes. 

 

Currently a lot of corporations have been caught not paying their 'fair share' of tax. We have the usual public outcry. Or Individuals don't pay tax. Or politicians fiddle their expenses. People facing a life of low paid jobs see having a large family as a ticket to no work (this might not apply to your country, I'm from the UK where the Tax Credit system is abused). We have taxes to pay for school, health care, everything. It's all very inefficient, keeps us in debt and it's madness when you take a step back and look at the whole mess. And people still call it capitalism. 

 

Currently the political argument is who should pay the tax. Rich, Poor or business. We've got it all wrong because that's all socialism. Somebody is going to get taxed. And they argue over what tax policy is ethical or fair, it's all just blurb to cover the fact they're bribing certain voters.

 

But if the general public knew that we have, lets say 'limited free will', that the human condition is that we'll always look for the best trades to benefit ourselves, we'll always try to beat the tax man and have a better, easier life. We'll always do that because of the way the human mind works. And we're not changing without a great deal of time and evolution. That we can't just decide to pull together for the common good and have some kind of Starship Enterprise future where money is obsolete. Knowing this on it's own won't defeat socialism. But should serve a foundation for all arguments.

 

If the problem is people will always abuse the system, now we can argue against tax.

 

We can argue that people should pay for their education, health care, they shouldn't receive money for having more children but should decide if they can afford another child.

 

The first people to argue against paying for education will be the working class. Ironically they are the ones who are repeatedly over taxed compared to the wealthy. When a politician says lets tax millionaires, someone will argue against citing how millionaires will simply hide their income. Stef recently did a video on Greece and how austerity hits the poorest most.

 

So my point is, cos' I'm running out of time here. That when the Librarian party of the not so distant future, wherever you live is on the News arguing that we need to stop relying on tax and pay for everything directly. Wouldn't it be a great help if the general public at home sat nodding on their sofas thinking. 'That makes sense, after all everyone would avoid paying tax if they could'.

 

There has always been tax avoidance since the beginning of tax. Now we're starting to understand, it's not because people decided with total free will to hoard wealth. They were doomed to do so from the start and will continue to do so long as their is a tax system.

 

Could we raise a generation where everyone is indoctrinated so they willing give up all taxes owed? Possibly Religion was pretty good at convincing people to hand over wealth. But that was built on lies and false promises.

 

It just seems logical to me, remove the tax. Fair trades, fair world.

 

This is just one small example. Just a small part of socialism. It's already a big post. Sorry if it was difficult reading, didn't have much time to edit and correct etc.

 

If you have other ideas how this could be applied to socialism, religion or feminism please go for it.

 

(also I might come back and edit this into neater sections)

[Mister Mister]

Sorry, I'm not sure if I was very clear iBlagg.  My point was, most people WILL appreciate you correcting something like an error in math, as this is something without emotional content.  But you are suggesting that people can be talked out of socialism if you explain to them there is no free will.  First of all, many socialists don't believe in free will to begin with.  But that's beside the point.  You said the Bomb in the Brain stuff had a big impact on you.  Well one of the big points of that series is that ideology forms as a post facto rationalization.  It's important to understand that something like socialism fundamentally serves an emotional need in people, which is then capitalized upon by politicians and others for their own benefit.  People don't fundamentally believe in socialism because of some error in epistemology, metaphysics, economics, assumptions about human nature, and so on.  It's because the ideology and the rhetoric taps into something emotionally for them.

[iBlagg]

Sorry RoseCodex thought you were being sarcastic 

 

And think I got it wrong it was Adrian Peterson not Ray Rice and might have been a different video to bomb in the brain now I think about it.

 

Just seen these, this is part one, Gene Wars

 

 

It might not literally be about free will. But it's an example of how in this case epigenetic's dictate our behaviour.