Predetermined Fate
 

I just posted a thread called "Is it anyone's fault?". A lot of people couldn't understand the point I was trying to make. I was trying to talk about predetermined fate.

If we truly could "choose" to do what we wanted to do then we'd be able to do anything and everything we wanted to do. As a matter of fact, we wouldn't choose anything. Making a choice is all about appealing to your inner desires which are things you aren't in control of.

I just ate some pizza a few hours ago. I "chose" to order pizza but why? There are so many factors involved in the reason I made this particular choice. Things that lead me to making that very choice. I'm just frustrated by people who don't believe in something that seems so obvious to me.

I'd like to hear some good arguments against this idea of predetermined fate that I believe in.

Interesting. You know what else? Hold on to your nuts, because it's about to get real. That choice you made to order the pizza? It's already affected the lives of possibly thousands of people. Maybe even killed someone. Maybe Jeff the pizza delivery boy left the shop without the pizza and had to go back to get it?

That change in his timeline put him 20 seconds behind his predetermined fate path, which would have been in the path of a sleeping garbage truck driver who crossed over into his lane. Instead, Jeff delivers your pizza and he lives. While eating your delicious pizza, you may think "Hey, what about the person that was in Jeff's spot to get smashed by a garbage truck?" Well, there would be no one there because that's where Jeff was supposed to be.

Jeff goes on to win the state lottery and marry some porn star that he doesn't even like as a person. They have a baby and he grows up to be the next Hitler. But this is the Hitler that likes to kill dogs. Ordering your pizza has triggered the Great Dog Holocaust of 2055.

I'm gonna get stoned and re-read this thread.

.

How can we see the future, even in a rudimentary way, without their being a page to flip too. :thumbsup

I agree though. Every little thing affects every little thing. I think a "choice" is nothing more than finding your predetermined path in any circumstance.

Our whole lives we look for things we're good at, look for people we can fit in with, look for the right person to have a relationship with. We look for what fits us, we don't make what fits us.

The idea of predetermined fate makes it hard for me to get angry at anyone or blame anyone for anything or praise them for anything good they do.

Well, I was just trying to be an asshole, but I like your point.

Oh, haha. Sorry. But thanks = )

I obviously couldn't write all that stupid shit unless I thought about that subject from time to time. Or I could just be on drugs.

Haha no, you sound pretty sober to me! Unless we're both high.

More than likely your both just stupid. :winkwink:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will :thumbsup

Yeah? "your both just stupid". You mean you're as in "you are". When I hear things from people, I always need to remind myself to consider the source before taking them seriously.

I am going to have to agree with you. If I am going to go around randomly insulting people then I ought to at least have the courtesy to use proper grammar. My apologies.

Well if you're going to insult people, you don't need to use proper grammar. But if you're going to call someone stupid, you better sound smart!

Sorry but that's a silly concept.

Predetermined Fate is just an excuse to hide behind when you make shitty decisions.

funny, this is one of the contradictions I find primarily with religions like Christianity. On one hand they say that your life is preordained. That God knows every thing you will ever do, say or think during the course of your entire life time and knew it before time began.....then they throw down the free choice we are given to accept Him or not.

When pondering it like that, things like prayer and attendance at a church seems to be trivial wastes of time since the outcome was determined before fish crawled out of the primordial slime

having spouted all that BS... everyone is responsible for their own fate, nothing is set in stone until after it has happened. If you are fortunate enough to be a politician you can even change what happened in the past... or at least lie about it enough that you lie becomes true :)

Right on. Everything can be drawn as a consequence of numerous (either physical, biological, social, etc.) circumstances.

Silly? I don't think so, and neither did some of the greatest minds in human history: the Ancient Greek philosophers. Have you ever heard of the allegory of the cave? The truth about the world is that anything is possible. Think about the world, if you hadn't seen everything since birth and removed the strangeness of it all; it would appear to you for what it really is, a freakshow. The order in creation which you see is that which you alone have put there; existence has it's own order which no human mind can, or ever will figure out.


The universe is not a narrow thing, or a great machine that can be explained in a neat and orderly way; it is certainly not constrained by free will. How can choices be free, given that propositions about the future already have a truth value in the present?

Of course we have choice.

Those things didn't lead you to make that choice (as in "an autonomous agent forcing you do make that choice") . You made that choice while taking into account things you knew (at the time) about the world you live in.

You have free will so you could decide that you want to become a billionaire. However, things don't suddenly happen because you decided you want them to happen. We live in a world of scarcity. When you make a decision, you decide how to best use the scarce resources that are available to you.

When you buy a pizza, then you exchange a certain amount of your money for a pizza because at that time you value that pizza more than that amount of money you paid for it.

No divine or omnipresent force made you buy that pizza. You chose to buy it. Maybe because you simply like eating pizza more than not eating pizza. Or because you decided that you preferred ordering a pizza over cooking dinner yourself. Or because you decided that you prefer eating over being hungry.

In this world of scarcity, things happen. It rains, the sun shines, there can be a hurricane, a drought etc. There's a limited supply of water, wood, oil, iron... And there's a limited amount of 'fuel' in your body. Those are the facts of life. Those are things that define the physical world we live in.

How you act in this world, is entirely your decision. If your body runs out of 'fuel' (you get hungry), it is you who chooses to act on that. You can choose to ignore it for an hour or two. You can choose to ignore it for the rest of your life (and die of starvation). You can choose to buy a pizza. You can choose to eat grass etc.
Things happen and you make a choice.

You have free will. To deny the existence of free will is to deny the existence of personal responsibility.

THANK YOU! thread closed...

Those decisions can be said to rely on a person's strength of character, which can be affected by the culture in which they were raised, their genetic makeup, or a chain of events that shaped their character up to that point in time. Given that, how can you say that they act freely?

did you get a C in your intro to philosophy course that you took? The allegory of the cave has nothing to do with free will. Its used as a metaphor stating that maybe we shouldn't always trust our senses--which is not the same as 'anything is possible'.

Further, it is a philosophical question being asked or introduced in Plato's allegory. Just because some of 'the greatest minds in human history' asked some questions doesn't make what they said true or fact. It is just that, a question...

The point I was making is that nobody can say for certain, even Plato realized that he was still stuck in the cave to a certain extent, so you really can't dismiss it offhand as silly.

this kind of post is EXACTLY why I'm sticking around here :1orglaugh

Say you walk outside to meet the pizza man and you get struck by a car, is it by your own free will that you didn't move in time? If Every act is precipitated by a chain of events, how can you say that every action is by your own free will? Could it not be said that your fate on that day was predetermined?

Did you post that because you wanted to, or because an imaginary being has his hand up your bum and is working you like Orville the Duck?

I don't even know who the fuck Orville the duck is, but a chain of events led me to this page at this particular time to be able to reply, it had little to do with free will, although that did play a part. Determinism and free will are compatible.

he posted that because reading this thread caused a certain biochemical reaction to take place in his brain, which created an "itch" in his mind, he resolved that itch by posting in this thread...

one could say that he "chose" to post in this thread, but did he? maybe it was just a reaction, not unlike one you get when you touch a hot object which causes you to move away? :helpme

That's a reflex you can't control though. Posting or not posting involves choice.

Now you're thinking!! For instance, I would like to post a lengthy response to this, however, at this particular time the cosmic forces that exist outside of my free will require me elsewhere. There is a combination of forces at work here.

I don't really see why "reflex" would be necessarily different... reflex you know you can't control, why are you so sure you can control your other actions? It could be just an illusion that you can control them...

Will you "choose" to reply to this? or will my reply cause an itch in your mind, causing a reflex-like reaction making you post a reply? :)

I think if there was true free will, then there wouldn't be such thing as a choice. Let's think of a girl trying on clothing in a clothing store. She won't pick every single item of clothing there, she'll choose what fits her personality, taste and outward appearance. She's just looking for what fits her.

1. I already addressed that. You make a decision based on the information that is available to you at the time.

2. You're using circular arguments (circular reasoning / logical fallacy).

The diversity of mankind is a basic postulate of our knowledge of human beings. The fact that all human beings are different and have different goals, wants, wishes, desires,... in no way disproves the existence of free will.

we can (in the here and now) definitely choose what we're going to do next, so in a way, we are free to select our own future. but since we cannot UNDO what we did, we're still not really free and bound to something we call "fate".

No, that's just a consequence of the physical world we live in. If you choose to eat your cookie now, than you obviously can't eat the same cookie again 12 hours from now. You make a choice and you live with the consequences. That is free will. When did "free will" become "the power to end scarcity and control time and space"? LOL :)

@itto: You still have the epass logo on your site.

swoooooooosh

Porno Jew's predetermined fate awaits

Yes it does disprove free will. Not everyone can be President or Steve Jobs or Bill Gates or Bruce Lee etc. You'd have to grow up in exactly the same environment they did, experience exactly the same things they did, have the same exact personality as they had and as I keep going, you'll see in order to be them, you have to be them. Every single factor even on the smallest level, involved in making them them, is the reason they were or are who they are.

I had a really fucked up dream last night.. It was about time travel and was pretty detailed in what was going on, which isn't usual for me as I never remember dreams. Just figured I'd drop that in here as it seemed like the right place.

:1orglaugh

you were predetermined to eat pizza?

and Yes, you make a decision based on information available to you at the time. Exactly, you're limited to a certain number of paths and the path you choose will be based on a number of other things but the bottom line is, you're only selecting which path works best for you or for the situation. So I think choice is just you finding your predetermined path.

Today, I shall eat Chipotle

so.. how would you explain the 'alternate reality' theory.. a universe where you are predestined 'not to eat pizza'?

or even go so far as to talk about the big bang thing that everything is actually 'going back in time' and what we view as 'reality' is simply reality in rewind

Each alternate reality would then have a predetermined fate.

thanks for the heads-up, man! -fixed.