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What, no short responses? Well I'll make one: That diagram of field purity is funny. GO MATH! Which is game programming. GO PROGRAMMING!

I like how nobody has responded to or apparently even read my first two posts

Ragdollmaster wrote:I like how nobody has responded to or apparently even read my first two posts ...

As for me, i read your long ass post and it managed to influence some of my future posts ...

But none of what you said really helped my side of the debate, lol.

Korban3 wrote:What, no short responses? Well I'll make one: That diagram of field purity is funny. GO MATH! Which is game programming. GO PROGRAMMING!

It's VERY interesting that you should say that ...

Some people here may want to watch the entire episode of this series because it touches base quite frequently with what we are talking about. (but its really fucking long, like an hour episode )

This? On Randomness?

I liked the diagram. I have a joke.
An economist, a logician, and a mathematician are entering Scotland by train, and they see a brown cow standing parallel to the train. The economist exclaims "Look! The cows in Scotland are brown!" The logician corrects him, saying "No, there are cows in Scotland, at least one of which is brown." The mathematician corrects both of them: "There is at least one cow in Scotland, of which one side appears to be brown."

Anyways, I skipped most of this thread but I did read the first page, so I'll comment on that.

I believe we are all born as a clean slate, with equal opportunity to be successful or unsuccessful, pleasant or unpleasant, happy or depressed. Now some children are born with less intelligence, or without an arm, or with a predisposition for heart disease. But really, that shouldn't affect anything. Someone without an arm could just as easily be successful in a field that doesn't require two arms, and you don't have to be smart to be a professional athlete. Everyone has an equal chance to be anything. But the factors that we encounter after we are born do shape our lives, and a mass murderer might have been a cashier at a health food store if maybe his dad hadn't hit him so much. So I do believe that we are victims of circumstance. However, there are factors other than a good or bad upbringing at work. We, as builders of this society, recognize that we are all equal at birth, and as such, someone who commits a crime against humanity can't be treated as just a victim of circumstance, because he made the choice to let himself be a victim of circumstance. If I went back in time and went over a decision I made earlier I probably wouldn't change it. But that doesn't mean that I have no free will. It means that I chose what I felt was best, and I would choose it again. Why would I make a different decision? "Free will" doesn't mean "random."
It may seem like I'm contradicting myself, saying that we are victims of circumstance, and then that we shouldn't let ourselves be victims of circumstance, but basically what I'm trying to say here is that the argument of "We are only controlled by factors in our life" isn't complete, because we can make our own factors.

Now feel free to tear that post to the ground

But how do we know we don´t make those factors just because the factors in our lifes controlling us make us do that???(ugh, overly complicated sentence)

Jacktheawesome wrote:...It may seem like I'm contradicting myself, saying that we are victims of circumstance, and then that we shouldn't let ourselves be victims of circumstance, but basically what I'm trying to say here is that the argument of "We are only controlled by factors in our life" isn't complete, because we can make our own factors.

If I got him right, (not) letting yourself be a victim of circumstances would be an example.

Yes, I did get the counter-argument that our choices are also controlled by outside factors and therefore we don't have free will, but I just won't buy that. It's not that it makes me uncomfortable; if ever there was someone to rationalize things too much it would be me. I believe that no matter how mistreated or pampered we are there is something objective in us that can make good or bad decisions. That's all.

Just so you know, I screwed up earlier and labeled your views as "fatalism" when the theory is actually called "determinism". Sorry about that ... fatalism is a much much worse view to have on life.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Determinism

So you agree that we do have free will, and thus, contrary to your original post, we are not only victims of circumstance, and are in fact responsible for our actions?

And yeah, I think so.

Renegade_Turner wrote:... Is "fatalism" the whole "We're all fucked and we're gonna die anyway, so what's the fucking point?"

not quite. fatalism suggests that our destiny is not at all determined by our actions. Which in turn suggests that a higher being has control over what happens to us and whatever we do will not have any effect on our destinies. This would cause people to not strive to be successful in life or not care about important decisions.

So if I get sick I am either going to die because it was my destiny, or i am going to get better because it was my destiny and any actions we take will not effect that at all such as getting medical help, medicine, rest, etc. Basically effect without cause.

Determinism suggest that our actions lead to our destiny. Therefore I make the decision to call a doctor to get better, but only because it was destined to make the decision to call the doctor which lead to my destiny of getting better. Or I made the decision not to call the doctor and therefore I die, either way it was my destiny to make that decision and the results of that decision was my destiny as well. Cause and effect.

Pretty much the same linear view on life though.

Jacktheawesome wrote:So you agree that we do have free will, and thus, contrary to your original post, we are not only victims of circumstance, and are in fact responsible for our actions?

And yeah, I think so.

You listened to my words, but you didn't seem to hear them. I never said anything about having or not having free will. We as people have will to do different things. But that will is determined by who we are at our creation and who we become due to exterior things acting on us.

So the person you begin as is as if a room was painted on a canvas, but it's sparsely populated. As you go through life, more things are painted into this room and it becomes more cluttered and defines the type of person who lives in the room. Bad fucking analogy, but I had to have some sort of way of turning it into an image.

So my point is, you do have a will, but what will determine your will or resolve is based on the type of person you're born as and the type of person that person transforms into over the course of their life.

Also, this is neither fatalism or determinism. This is not saying our life is set out in front of us and is predetermined. This is saying that we as creatures become certain types of people, and it's not actually our choice what we become. We can trick ourselves into thinking it's our choice because that makes life easier to deal with, but really it isn't.