Brit Girls - Fat

[the village idiot]

28 minutes ago, Vespasian said:

I'll concede the point that we have no free will, but what I wont do is accept that that excuses crime and criminal behavior.. 

 

Free will or no free will, environment shapes events one way or the other..   the idea of time in prison concentrates the mind of criminals.. thus the mind is once again shaped by its environment..

 

I don't buy the argument that prison increases re offending rates as well...   I see it like this, an offender does time in prison, they find it ain't as bad as they imagined and calculate that crime is worth investing their time in seein as the punishment is not half as bad as they thought..

 

We should incarcerate people for shorter time spans but make prisons an appalling experience for the criminally minded, see if they want to go back after spending months in isolation with regular beating and starvation diets..   Murderers should be confined in the same manner but with the bonus of a lottery drawn out weekly that picks out one for weekly execution..

 

Lets see if that has an effect on a criminals state of mind... 

 

 

As to why we're now talking about criminal behavior, thats because it effects other people in a negative manner.. two people falling for each other and getting on with life doesn't have the same effect that some criminal running off with your TV and car does..

 

Seriously top marks for conceding on free will. It is an exceedingly high hurdle to clear.

 

The problem with the rest of the post is that if you agree there is no such thing as free will then you have to accept that individuals cannot be held accountable for their actions.

 

It is certainly true that the threat of punishment could have an effect on peoples brains and reduce criminal behaviour in the population, but the individual (by definition of no free will) cannot choose for that information to be utilised by the brain in issuing it's directives at any one point in time. It would be wrong to assume that they could have acted any differently even given the threat of punishment.

Edited December 22, 2017 by the village idiot

[Rough Hewn]

Seriously top marks for conceding on free will. It is an exceedingly high hurdle to clear.
 
The problem with the rest of the post is that if you agree there is no such thing as free will then you have to accept that individuals cannot be held accountable for their actions.
 
It is certainly true that the threat of punishment could have an effect on peoples brains and reduce criminal behaviour in the population, but the individual (by definition of no free will) cannot choose for that information to be utilised by the brain in issuing it's directives at any one point in time. It would be wrong to assume that they could have acted any differently even given the threat of punishment.

So we do have free will except vesp?
[emoji12]

[TGB]

Yes we don't need to get out of the chair to order a take away these days just eat and that other one and there are probably more of these apps but the big question to me is in years to come what will all this cost are already stretched and crippled NHS, it won't be millions but more like billions of pounds, as let's face it the bigger you are the more pressure there is on all your body parts and organs.

I agree. As much as I whole heartedly support the NHS and want it to continue, it's only a matter of time, before this government succeeds in smashing it into the mud; and introducing private health care only across the board. So the wealthy will live in good health and the poor & needy will go to an early, painful grave.

 

[Mesterh]

On 21/12/2017 at 10:27, the village idiot said:

This will sound like complete claptrap but I think it is more accurate to view fat people as unlucky rather than as people who are making bad choices.

 

It is rather unsettling, but as we find out more about the brain and it's processes it is becoming increasingly clear that there is no such thing as free will. It feels very much like we can freely choose from a variety of options in any given moment, but the fact of the matter is that our brains produce a directive up to seven seconds before we are conciously aware of making a decision.

 

Our actions are pre-determined by our brains (which we didn't pick). We do not choose to do things in the way we think we do. Despite appearances, we are not in control. Our brains, shaped by our genes and our environment, lead us through life unconciously and our thoughts- also generated unconciously by the brain- scrabble to keep up and make sense of it all.)

 

It gets even spookier and more un-intuitive than that. It is now widely accepted among neurosientists and psychologists that our sense of self (the feeling of being an unchanging 'I' or 'me' situated in our heads, experiencing the world and located somewhere behind our eyes) is also an illusion, generated by our brains to help us get by in the world.

 

This is an incredibly difficult concept to get your head around, I understand it logically but it is really hard to map it onto our day to day experiece, mostly because the perceived sense of self (and it's partner in crime-free will) are so strong and we reinforce them constantly. There are however various ways to demonstrate that all is not as it seems.

 

If you are able to accept that free will and the sense of self are illusiory it radically changes your perception of things, particularly in terms of how you judge other people, their actions and most importantly...you.

 

Fat people are ultimately the victims of circumstances over which they had no concious control. As are we all.

 

This is not to say that people can't change. Brains can be influenced by all manner of inputs which can affect behaviour. The perspective shift is to realise that in a fundamental way the 'person' is not responsible. Blame the brain.

 

Notice your shift in perspective when you hear about Gary's sister's thyroid condition. The nature of our brains in any given moment is entirely analogous to this. Thyroid function is controlled unconciously by the brain, as are all human functions and thoughts.

 

Have a think about all this over the Christmas break, It's a confusing wild ride which can connect you more positively to all sentient beings including the one you call you!

Looks like karl pilkington was right all along, what a mucking genius!

 

I understand the concept but I don't agree. If we didn't have free will then I think our past would have made the future so dim that we wouldn't excist. If we don't have free will then we can predict the future, do you think we can do that?

 

I think that without some kind of control we would all be war mongering psychopaths'.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[spudulike]

Depends on how you define freewill! You can decide to stay in bed or take a different way home one night, that is freewill but generally it is dictated by law, by people around us, what is socially acceptable etc......for most anyway.

If we didn't have freewill, tonight we would all be eating gruel on the dictate of our leader!

You guys chose to get in to tree work.....how did that happen? Was anybody FORCING you to do it???

Going back to fat birds, some may have medical issues and that is a sad story especially if they have been slim and physically fit in the past. Some are just lazy, have a poor lifestyle and eat too much. I don't see too many overweight walkers when we are on an 8 mile walk.....funny that!

[the village idiot]

8 hours ago, Mesterh said:

Looks like karl pilkington was right all along, what a mucking genius!

 

I understand the concept but I don't agree. If we didn't have free will then I think our past would have made the future so dim that we wouldn't excist. If we don't have free will then we can predict the future, do you think we can do that?

 

I think that without some kind of control we would all be war mongering psychopaths'.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Good questions Mesterh!

 

I don't think we are able to predict the future in any meaningful way, however I do believe that it is theoretically possible to do so. The barrier to doing this, as pointed at in an earlier post, is that some computing device would have to be able to be aware of every single causal influence that has affected everything in the universe since the beginning of time. I dont think we are ever going to have this, even given the fact that our developments in AI are truly terrifying.

 

I believe that everything that we think and do is the effect of an unimaginable number of causal influences, none of which we picked, stretching back to the beginning of time. When Vespasian noted that it doesn't really matter whether our outputs are predetermined or not I think he was probably right. It does have important implications for things like our criminal justice system, and systems of governance, but in terms of living out our day to day lives it pretty much is business as usual.

 

To accept the existence of free will you have to either assume that there is some kind of central collection point for information in the brain that collates all the neural firings and combines them in a sensible way to issue a directive with the additional power to 'change it's mind'. We know there is no such region, and this is not how the brain works. Or you have to assume that there is some kind of non-material force independant of the brain that can veto it's deliberations. This would be, by definition, supernatural.

 

The worry that we would all become psychopaths is an interesting one, but there is no reason to assume that this would be the case. Ultimately we may not have free will but our actions are most definitely influenced by outside forces. This is where aspects like good governance come in. Despite perceptions, the world has become a hugely less violent place over time. This is largely due to the development of governmental structures which influence cultures and by extension our behaviours.

 

The question of whether we have free will is still certainly a hotly debated topic amongst scientists and philosophers. We do not yet have a definitive answer. All we can do is weigh up the available evidence that we become exposed to and make a choice (or not)

Edited December 23, 2017 by the village idiot

[the village idiot]

If I may, I would like to revise my statement above. I think it is probably entirely possible to predict the future in the specific terms of which posts Matelot is going to click the 'like' button on!

[the village idiot]

The main problem with getting your head around the issue of free will is that to do the topic justice you have to discount the evidence presented by your own subjective experience (a necessary control for almost all scientific endeavor). 

 

The complication is that it is subjective experience itself that is the article of examination. You end up in a spiralling loop of brain bending confusion. It's no wonder it makes our brains hurt.

 

Most people are convinced that free will is a real phenomenon because it feels to them obvious that they have it. You have to try and bend your brain around the obstacle of subjective experience to carry on down the road of discovery!

[tree-fancier123]

On 21/12/2017 at 19:35, the village idiot said:

You certainly can help it if you open your mind to let other ideas trickle in to the back room.

 

People often mistake determinism (the absense of free will) with fatalism (nothing can be changed).

This is not the case. Our brains and their outputs are constantly changing due to new inputs.

so if there is no free will how can you decide to open your mind, or close it?

fatalism isnt all doom and gloom, people still focus and enjoy their lives, even if every neurobiological event is an emergent property of a complex physical system (the universe) much like gravity and electricity are also properties of that system. If you believe the scientists, once upon a time there wasnt even gravity or electricty, could have been less exciting back in those times

Edited December 23, 2017 by tree-fancier123

[the village idiot]

28 minutes ago, tree-fancier123 said:

so if there is no free will how can you decide to open your mind, or close it?

 

determinism isnt all doom and gloom, people still focus and enjoy their lives, even if every neurobiological event is an emergent property of a complex physical system (the universe) much like gravity and electricity are also properties of that system. If you believe the scientists, once upon a time there wasnt even gravity or electricty, could have been less exciting back in those times

Fundamentally you can't, but if the brain is seeded with the appropriate information and it processes/stores it in a certain way (dictated by the brain's physiology and chemistry which is constantly morphing) it may 'open your mind'. If these inputs don't happen in this way you will have a different outcome. 

 

A human brain that has never been exposed to the initial input (in whatever form) that free will doesn't exist can never come to the conclusion that it doesn't.

Edited December 23, 2017 by the village idiot