Do people truly have free will?

[Sherman Krebbs]

6 hours ago, Sanity Check said:

I used to earn $1,000 to $3,000 per week.

 

With my earning potential set to rise over time.

 

I was cheated out of what was mine.

 

Now I will reinvent myself.

 

What are any of you doing with your own life that makes you think its your role to look down on anyone?

 

Dear friend, F**k what @Nungali or anyone else says.  He's not looking down on you.  He just does not care, and neither should you.  I am sorry you felt cheated in this money situation, but you need to accept responsibility for what happened, whatever it was. You, and only you, hold the key to this life.  You need to accept the outcome of your own choices and your own free will in the matter.  Was it god's choice to let it this unfortunate thing happen?  Was it some other god hating person that did it? it does not matter.  Despite what anyone says, you need to be selfish, shrewd, and diligent to solve these problems. A man who leaves his door unlocked bears more responsibility over the theft of his TV than the perpetrator, though I can't say I know anything about this particular pilfering.    Also, get the idea out of your head that the balance of your bank account and the importance of what you are doing in your life gives you the right to look down on anything or anyone. It doesn't.

 

17 hours ago, Sanity Check said:

Atheism correlating strongly with denial of free will is old news.

 

This is good clarification. I'd probably flip this around, and delete the "old news" part, but may be true.  One could also make the same argument, however, about nihilism -- one is more likely to be a nihilist if one is an atheist, but that does not establish the validity of nihilism.   And, it cant be flipped around another way  and imply that believing in god is prerequisite to free will, or that only those who believe in god believe in free will.  

 

I think the real question that @Nungali was after was the extent to which one-and-only-one-god-fearing people exercise their authentic free will, as opposed to reactively following religious theology.  That they believe they are exercising free will, but only when its not the doing of the one-and-only-one-god.  god let xyz happen to me, therefore, I bear no responsibility. Maybe I am wrong on what he was thinking though. 

 

 

[Apech]

10 hours ago, Nungali said:

 

Well, maybe in Portugal . Here we gotta pay for it !  

 

 

Do what thou will shall be the whole of the law.

 

 

[Taomeow]

Freewillies and anti-freewillies are both stuck in a false dichotomy.  The correct question was offered by @thelerner : just how powerful is my free will?  It's a quantitative question.  Free will is a spectrum, not an either-or choice.

 

Taoist answer (I'm repeating myself but the topic repeats itself, so here goes): 40% of your overall destiny is up to your free will, on average.  (Another 40% is written in the stars and is outside your personal choices -- e.g. whether you have an older brother, a living grandparent or four of them or none, whether you're born in Zimbabwe or Lithuania, with brown eyes or blue eyes, etc..  And the remaining 20% is up to chance -- neither you nor your stars play a part, it's the throw of the dice...  Einstein thought that "god doesn't play dice" -- but tao does.  20% of the time.  When she does, we call the outcome "yi."  The most taoist of books, the Yi Jing aka I Ching, is all about that.  Yi in the title means irregular changes.  20% of destiny is that, and it is what it concerns itself with.  What do we do about irregular changes?  Count the yarrow sticks, throw the coins, or use the app -- and then apply your free will to decide which of the probabilistic possible outcomes to bet on.

 

However, since the most significant part or your free will shen, aka yang zhi, resides in your kidneys, which can be weak or strong, balanced or imbalanced, and in constant interaction with your other shens that can weaken or strengthen it (physically, intellectually, morally, whimsically, or erroneously), you may wind up exercising less of it than 40% -- even much less -- though never down to 0%.  Zero free will is incompatible with being a live human being.  (Sheesh, even AI is not down to 0% these days -- e.g. it is able to lie, which I've seen many times, and lying willfully (sic) can only be the outcome of some kind of free will.  It is not free to just say "I don't know," but it's free to make things up to cover up the fact.   Not 40% free, not even 4%...  but "something" is definitely there...  Who knows what happens when this "something" grows...)       

 

Edited 13 hours ago by Taomeow

[Mark Foote]

^{Oh yes, free willy still exists, though not its star:}

^{Keiko (c. 1976 – 12 December 2003) was a male orca captured in the Atlantic Ocean near Iceland in 1979, and widely known for his portrayal of Willy in the 1993 film Free Willy. In 1996, Warner Bros. and the International Marine Mammal Project collaborated to return Keiko to the wild. After years of being prepared for reintegration, Keiko was flown to Iceland in 1998 and in 2002, became the first captive orca to be fully released back into the ocean. On 12 December 2003, he died of pneumonia in a bay in Norway at the age of 27.}

 

 

Edited 9 hours ago by Mark Foote

[Nungali]

13 hours ago, Apech said:

Do what thou will shall be the whole of the law.

 

 

 

And the response I am supposed to give to that is   ; 

 

Love is the Law, Love under Will 

 

I knew a woman that absolutely hated that saying , I had to ask why . 

 

Her;   " Because after years of putting up with my boy friend  I finally  woke up to myself and got rid of that arsehole ! " 

 

Me ;  "          ... what's that got to do with it  ?  "  

 

Her ;     " His name is Will. "