No matter, nothing will dispel peoples beliefs, i simply stated the case that this blog/article is nothing but conjecture, no hard evidence to back up what is being said. If your going to make an intelligent opinion about something, shouldn’t you have some evidence to back it up?
I stated my position and gave information on where to get substantiated evidence on the subject and im voted out?
As for the article on “dissolving the problem” rather than trying to answer it, this is the very pompous cop out. By calling something meaningless and diffusing it you can do that with the very nature of philosophy ie. “Reason and rational thought is subjective and meaningless and i challenge anyone to truly define it.”
do you see how absurd that is?
I agree that in a complex debate like this it is ignorant to claim that you have the ultimate truth, and i by no means do. In fact i said “the verdict is still out.” But holding a position my not holding a position just seems like a trick. If you really want to get to the bottom of something you dig up facts not conjecture.
Im sorry i wont do a pompous intellectual 2-step with everyone, when discussing matters like this i prefer to get down to business, OPEN MINDED, but discussing facts if there are any.
Calm down! I’m not saying what you think I’m saying.
First off, I suggested you go and introduce yourself on the welcome thread in part because that’s usually good for a few upvotes, and that avoids the annoying feature where people with negative karma can’t comment more than once every 10 minutes or so. I think there should be a buffer, because getting a comment downvoted isn’t such a rare or awful thing on LW, but in lieu of that it’s worth it to make an effort to get some karma at first.
Again, the downvotes are more about style than substance. We don’t run our arguments here the way they happen elsewhere on the Internet, and because of that we have fewer flamewars and more real arguments. If you want to discuss things with us, you might have to adopt a different style than usual. I know that’s an asshole thing of me to say, but that’s how it is.
Finally, I’m not at all arguing against determinism, and I’m not defending the current post. Determinism holds without exception, and the idea of free will as most people think of it is incoherent. However, just stopping there isn’t actually sufficient: it remains to ask why we feel that we have free will— are those feelings an illusion, and if so, why do we have them in the first place, or are they a reflection of something that actually goes on within the deterministic mind, and if so, why do they feel to us like something incompatible with determinism?
Those questions are a lot more interesting, and don’t just go away once one realizes that the universe is deterministic in nature.
thanks
thanks for the information, honestly i got to this site cause i get e-mail alerts from google with anything about determinism. So when i read the article i thought it was some regular commentator. i had no idea that it was written by someone in a smaller community. That is why i was so harsh in my opening line...
Well now that i have a better understanding of what this site is about, if i make anymore comments i will word them a bit differently thanks again.
e-mail alerts from google with anything about determinism
Now I am curious. First, I didn’t know that it is possible to be alerted this way, but mainly: why have you adopted this feature? There is surely a lot of determinism-themed crap around, you have to get tons of e-mail every day. Or am I mistaken about how it works?
This sounds like intellectual snobbery to me.
No matter, nothing will dispel peoples beliefs, i simply stated the case that this blog/article is nothing but conjecture, no hard evidence to back up what is being said. If your going to make an intelligent opinion about something, shouldn’t you have some evidence to back it up?
I stated my position and gave information on where to get substantiated evidence on the subject and im voted out?
As for the article on “dissolving the problem” rather than trying to answer it, this is the very pompous cop out. By calling something meaningless and diffusing it you can do that with the very nature of philosophy ie. “Reason and rational thought is subjective and meaningless and i challenge anyone to truly define it.”
do you see how absurd that is?
I agree that in a complex debate like this it is ignorant to claim that you have the ultimate truth, and i by no means do. In fact i said “the verdict is still out.” But holding a position my not holding a position just seems like a trick. If you really want to get to the bottom of something you dig up facts not conjecture.
Im sorry i wont do a pompous intellectual 2-step with everyone, when discussing matters like this i prefer to get down to business, OPEN MINDED, but discussing facts if there are any.
Calm down! I’m not saying what you think I’m saying.
First off, I suggested you go and introduce yourself on the welcome thread in part because that’s usually good for a few upvotes, and that avoids the annoying feature where people with negative karma can’t comment more than once every 10 minutes or so. I think there should be a buffer, because getting a comment downvoted isn’t such a rare or awful thing on LW, but in lieu of that it’s worth it to make an effort to get some karma at first.
Again, the downvotes are more about style than substance. We don’t run our arguments here the way they happen elsewhere on the Internet, and because of that we have fewer flamewars and more real arguments. If you want to discuss things with us, you might have to adopt a different style than usual. I know that’s an asshole thing of me to say, but that’s how it is.
Finally, I’m not at all arguing against determinism, and I’m not defending the current post. Determinism holds without exception, and the idea of free will as most people think of it is incoherent. However, just stopping there isn’t actually sufficient: it remains to ask why we feel that we have free will— are those feelings an illusion, and if so, why do we have them in the first place, or are they a reflection of something that actually goes on within the deterministic mind, and if so, why do they feel to us like something incompatible with determinism?
Those questions are a lot more interesting, and don’t just go away once one realizes that the universe is deterministic in nature.
thanks thanks for the information, honestly i got to this site cause i get e-mail alerts from google with anything about determinism. So when i read the article i thought it was some regular commentator. i had no idea that it was written by someone in a smaller community. That is why i was so harsh in my opening line...
Well now that i have a better understanding of what this site is about, if i make anymore comments i will word them a bit differently thanks again.
Now I am curious. First, I didn’t know that it is possible to be alerted this way, but mainly: why have you adopted this feature? There is surely a lot of determinism-themed crap around, you have to get tons of e-mail every day. Or am I mistaken about how it works?
First: Google Alerts.