I’ve skimmed the answers so far and I don’t think I’m repeating things that have already been said, but please feel free to let me know if I am and skip re-reading.
> What I know about science and philosophy suggests that determinism is probably true
What I know about science and philosophy suggests we shouldn’t be really sure that the understanding we believe to be accurate now won’t be overturned later. There are problems with our physics sufficient to potentially require a full paradigm shift to something else, as yet unknown. So if “determinism is true” is demotivating for you, then consider adding a “according to my current understanding” and a “but that may be incorrect” to that statement.
I also read in some of the discussion below that determinism isn’t always demotivating for you—only in some cases, like when the task is hard and the reward, if any, is temporally distant. So I wonder how much determinism is a cause of your demotivation, rather than a rationalization of demotivation whose main cause is something else. If someone convinced you that determinism was false, how much more motivated do you expect you would be, to do hard things with long delays before reward? If the answer comes back “determinism is a minor factor” then focusing on the major factors will get you most of the way to where you want to be.
But, suppose determinism is definitely true, and is, on further reflection, confirmed as a major cause of your demotivation. What then?
This has actually been said in a few different ways below, but I’m going to try and rephrase. It’s a matter of perspective. Let me give you a different example of something with a similar structure, that I have at times found demotivating. It is basically the case, as far as I understand, that slightly changing the timing of when people have sex with each other will mean a different sperm fertilizes a given egg, and so our actions, by for example by accidentally causing someone to pause while walking, ripple out and change the people who would otherwise have been born a generation hence, in very unpredictable ways whose effects probably dominate the fact that I might have been trying to be nice by opening a door for someone. It was nice of me to open the door, but whether changing the set of which billions of people will be born is a net good or a net bad, is not something I can know.
One response to this is something like “focus on your circle of control—the consequences you can’t control and predict aren’t your responsibility, but slamming the door in someone’s face would be bad even if the net effect including all the consequences that are unknowable to you could be either very good or very bad”.
This is similar in structure to the determinism problem—the universe might be deterministic, but even if so, you don’t and can’t know what the determined state at each point in time is. Within your circle of control as an incredibly cognitively limited tiny part of the universe, is only to make what feels like a choice to you, about whether to hold a door open for someone or slam it in their face. From your perspective as a cognitively-bounded agent with the appearance of choice, making a choice makes sense. Don’t try to take on the perspective of a cognitively-unbounded non-agent looking at the full state of the universe at all points in time from the outside and going “yep, no choices exist here”—you don’t have the cognitive capacity to model such a being correctly, and letting how such a being might feel if it had feelings influence how you feel is a mistake. In my opinion, anyway.
I’ve skimmed the answers so far and I don’t think I’m repeating things that have already been said, but please feel free to let me know if I am and skip re-reading.
> What I know about science and philosophy suggests that determinism is probably true
What I know about science and philosophy suggests we shouldn’t be really sure that the understanding we believe to be accurate now won’t be overturned later. There are problems with our physics sufficient to potentially require a full paradigm shift to something else, as yet unknown. So if “determinism is true” is demotivating for you, then consider adding a “according to my current understanding” and a “but that may be incorrect” to that statement.
I also read in some of the discussion below that determinism isn’t always demotivating for you—only in some cases, like when the task is hard and the reward, if any, is temporally distant. So I wonder how much determinism is a cause of your demotivation, rather than a rationalization of demotivation whose main cause is something else. If someone convinced you that determinism was false, how much more motivated do you expect you would be, to do hard things with long delays before reward? If the answer comes back “determinism is a minor factor” then focusing on the major factors will get you most of the way to where you want to be.
But, suppose determinism is definitely true, and is, on further reflection, confirmed as a major cause of your demotivation. What then?
This has actually been said in a few different ways below, but I’m going to try and rephrase. It’s a matter of perspective. Let me give you a different example of something with a similar structure, that I have at times found demotivating. It is basically the case, as far as I understand, that slightly changing the timing of when people have sex with each other will mean a different sperm fertilizes a given egg, and so our actions, by for example by accidentally causing someone to pause while walking, ripple out and change the people who would otherwise have been born a generation hence, in very unpredictable ways whose effects probably dominate the fact that I might have been trying to be nice by opening a door for someone. It was nice of me to open the door, but whether changing the set of which billions of people will be born is a net good or a net bad, is not something I can know.
One response to this is something like “focus on your circle of control—the consequences you can’t control and predict aren’t your responsibility, but slamming the door in someone’s face would be bad even if the net effect including all the consequences that are unknowable to you could be either very good or very bad”.
This is similar in structure to the determinism problem—the universe might be deterministic, but even if so, you don’t and can’t know what the determined state at each point in time is. Within your circle of control as an incredibly cognitively limited tiny part of the universe, is only to make what feels like a choice to you, about whether to hold a door open for someone or slam it in their face. From your perspective as a cognitively-bounded agent with the appearance of choice, making a choice makes sense. Don’t try to take on the perspective of a cognitively-unbounded non-agent looking at the full state of the universe at all points in time from the outside and going “yep, no choices exist here”—you don’t have the cognitive capacity to model such a being correctly, and letting how such a being might feel if it had feelings influence how you feel is a mistake. In my opinion, anyway.