Do you think your prospects in life are more determined by your choices or your surroundings ?

I think it’s choice.

What do you mean by ”we have no freewill?” Can you elaborate on that?

@lucillelucillelucille
We don’t make our own choice outside of the laws of physics we are an elaborate clock.
We can’t make a truly random choice, whatever choice you’d make it was already decided due to how your brain was wired up and due to determinism it could be worked out. Even if you think the randomness of quantum physics plays apart in our choices it still isn’t free will but randomness in the brain.

When I say work out it’s all hypothetical.

@dotlin Just because I can’t choose to explode into my own, tiny new galaxy doesn’t mean that I don’t have free will. Of course choices are limited, but what isn’t limited? What isn’t limited? Is there not a finite amount of even matter/energy?

The presence of limited choices, in my opinon, does not take away from free will. Even if one can only choose to do X or not to do X, that is still will.

@jfos
“Just because I can’t choose to explode into my own, tiny new galaxy doesn’t mean that I don’t have free will. ”
This is a straw man as I never made such statements. I mean hypothetical if we know everything that goes on in your brain plus the stimuli that will effect your brain we can work out everything you think.

If we know how a clock works we can predict what time it will say in 1 hour and two minutes I never said the clock can just explode into it’s own galaxy, etc.

You are a clock, free will means you’re making choice independent of physical laws.

Surroundings then choice. Then surroundings.

@dotlin You said ”We can’t make a truly random choice.”

Are you saying that, in order to make a choice, we have to know what to choose, and in knowing what to choose, the option to make that choice is already perceived, and is therefore not random?

@jfos
Can you reword that not too sure I understand what you are saying.

@dotlin Reworded:

Are you saying that, when I make a choice:
1) I have to know what to choose, i.e., I have to think with the limited knowledge in my brain
2) This option is no longer random, since I could think of it before I chose it?

@jfos
You do not necessarily have to know before hand or consciously or unconsciously, but apart from the randomness in quantum physics it’s predictable if we know all the variables.

The universe runs like clock work and you’re no different.

@dotlin A clock indicates the passage of time. That’s it. A human brain is capable of many more complex tasks. You can predict what time it will be in an hour, because it’s exactly that, one hour. You know what will happen because the brain has already broken time into intervals and invented reliable measuring devices to show these intervals. So you predicting what time it will be in an hour is douchey, at best.

Clocks measure one thing: time. And maybe distance between the ticks/consumption of electricity if you want to be particular.

Clocks do not draw conclusions.

@jfos
I wouldn’t take the analogy too serious, they can be miss-leading and have have different parallels they are only to make the event easier to understand.

Our brains work on the laws on physics nothing else to make choices outside of physics.

Another analogy: Like the weather can be almost impossible to predict but by no means random.

@dotlin Your argument seems to me like a tautology. To me, it seems like you’re saying:
“If we know all the variables, then all the variables are known. And if all the variables are known, then there is no free will. And if there is no free will, then we know all the variables.”

@jfos
”“If we know all the variables, then all the variables are known.”
This is true but this isn’t what I’m saying I’m saying when you know them all you can predict all the event that interact only with these variables.

@jfos
Imagine you have created nanobots, what core functions were to replicate themselves and to collect the data of every subatomic particles position and all other information about them. Becoming omniscient, they have the fundamental knowledge to predicting every single event from that point onward. When and where earthquakes will happen, what random number I choose etc.
I meet up with your omniscient nanobots and ask them a simple question., what hand will I put up? The regulations are, you have to tell me before I make my decision and whatever you say I will choose the opposite.

Free will gives the impression that you are choosing your choices but no where in physics does it show this to be the case.

Even when you get to quantum physics it’s only randomness that could possible lead to all events but still you do not pick your own choices.

I have had more good choices having been born (to educated parents) in a suburb of New York City than had I lived in a slum in Bangladesh.

@dotlin-Free will and reason are all we have within the nature of the universe.

Choices, yes, but more importantly, the beliefs behind your choices. You aren’t going to make positive choices if you have messed-up ideas about yourself, your capabilities, your equality to other people, and your right to live your life as you choose to.

Think of a man who believes that because he is from a poor family of origin, he’s not as good as other people, so chooses not to try his hand at something, or a woman who believes that because she doesn’t look like Angelina Jolie, she can’t approach the men she’s interested in. In either case, the faulty beliefs behind the choices they make is what pulls them down, not their environment.

the surroundings have to be in order before choices can effectively be made. You can choose to go to college, but if you happen to live in a straw hut in the woods, you probably can’t go to college.

@poofandmook
Would you disagree that your choices are determined by your soundings apart from things that are innate? If so could you explain how people could come to conclusions independently of cause and effect?

@dotlin: I think that regardless of what our choices or surroundings are, to put it bluntly, shit happens. So there are things outside of our control that influence both of those things at any given time.

You ‘choose’ your surroundings after a certain age. and Shit does happen but if other’s have to deal with shit too and if you can’t rise above and and stop using it as an excuse to limit yourself, it’s YOUR fault.

@cazzie: I don’t think it’s that rough. Nobody’s placing blame on anyone.. why such an abrasive response?

No… people don’t seem to be blaming ‘anyone’ in this thread, but they do seem to be blaming their ‘condition’, and I find that very sad.

@cazzie: But your statement isn’t true for anyone. Like @gailcalled mentioned.. if you’re born into a slum in a third world country like the Feed The Children ads, you’re very unlikely to even have an education available to you to make any kind of choices when you’re an adult.

What you’re saying may be mostly true here in the States and several other countries that have all sorts of aid and programs to help underprivileged kids and even adults, but there ARE some places where people simply can’t help themselves.

@cazzie
I’ll ask you the same question how can you come to conclusions independent of cause and effect?

I think it’s important that people work hard but you’ll only work hard due to cause and effect you can not choose to work hard independent to cause and effect.

You do not have free will to make your own choices.

Sorry, I think your lack of punctuation must have confused me.

I’m convinced that our choices have much more to do with our success or lack of it than anything else. I’ve seen too many people from the same environment diverge widely in their success.