Brit Girls - Fat

[matelot]

31 minutes ago, peatff said:

We can all do as we please but we must also be prepared for the consequences of our action not blame someone or some set of circumstances for what happens as a result of doing what we please so some self moderation is required, some people don't realise this and never will because they are totally self centred. What happened to the original topic of this thread ? 

I think the last few pages are basically saying fat birds can't help being fat as they can't walk past a Greggs or Burger King without going in.

[the village idiot]

25 minutes ago, peatff said:

We can all do as we please but we must also be prepared for the consequences of our action not blame someone or some set of circumstances for what happens as a result of doing what we please so some self moderation is required, some people don't realise this and never will because they are totally self centred. What happened to the original topic of this thread ? 

I completely understand where you are coming from. It really feels as if we can all do as we please. There is some truth to this at the macro level. There is some scope for a sort of distant 'self' guidance in vaguely the desired direction, but at the micro level (inside the brain at crunch time) the concept of doing as we please basically falls apart.

 

Sincerest apologies for monopolising this thread, but this is really important stuff. Starting a new thread would stop anyone interested (anyone??) from following the argument through.

[Stubby]

Start a new thread V.I.  I was not going to reply to this to prove I had free will  so I wont . It wasn't me coz I never dun fuffink honest . Actually I wasn't even there . I was down a rabbit hole

[peatff]

6 minutes ago, Stubby said:

I was down a rabbit hole

 

Eating fat fingers ?

[Vespasian]

the village idiot..

 

It certainly is a mind warper. You kind of have to hijack your brains natural processes and turn them in on themselves to gain the necessary insight. Real mental gymnastics.

I'm not even sure that you can sort it all out through thinking alone.

 

Brain training (ie meditation) really helps. After a while this gradually gives you the opportunity to observe how your mind is fuctioning. You get to see that you are not in control and the 'self' becomes an untenable concept.

 

 

 

 

Not sure I understand all this.. I don't need to do any mental gymnastics to get a flavor of whats being got at.. to feel a sense of helplessness when you understand you're not what you think you are, like an out of body experience.. i can do that at will..  theres a disconnection with what you imagine you are...  its pretty easy if you're asking me...

 

Whats getting me is why it matters..  how it should change you in any way beyond having a philosophical argument..

 

 

I can see the sense of investigating the mind but its application in the real world seems a bit removed from what we do in real life...

 

Theres a paradox at play with some of these applications, better to understand criminal behavior.. but when you understand that behavior, your bound to be more forgiving of a criminal and his crime...   which obviously leads to more crime as more people know they'll be treated leniently if they do bad things...

 

Thats something I sense you don't understand..  that raking up subjects like free will might do more harm than good..  its gives bad behavior a get out of jail card..

 

I mean if someone invented a pill to stop crime then that would do the trick..  but is it ever likely to happen?..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[the village idiot]

3 minutes ago, Vespasian said:

the village idiot..

 

It certainly is a mind warper. You kind of have to hijack your brains natural processes and turn them in on themselves to gain the necessary insight. Real mental gymnastics.

I'm not even sure that you can sort it all out through thinking alone.

 

Brain training (ie meditation) really helps. After a while this gradually gives you the opportunity to observe how your mind is fuctioning. You get to see that you are not in control and the 'self' becomes an untenable concept.

 

 

 

 

Not sure I understand all this.. I don't need to do any mental gymnastics to get a flavor of whats being got at.. to feel a sense of helplessness when you understand you're not what you think you are, like an out of body experience.. i can do that at will..  theres a disconnection with what you imagine you are...  its pretty easy if you're asking me...

 

Whats getting me is why it matters..  how it should change you in any way beyond having a philosophical argument..

 

 

I can see the sense of investigating the mind but its application in the real world seems a bit removed from what we do in real life...

 

Theres a paradox at play with some of these applications, better to understand criminal behavior.. but when you understand that behavior, your bound to be more forgiving of a criminal and his crime...   which obviously leads to more crime as more people know they'll be treated leniently if they do bad things...

 

Thats something I sense you don't understand..  that raking up subjects like free will might do more harm than good..  its gives bad behavior a get out of jail card..

 

I mean if someone invented a pill to stop crime then that would do the trick..  but is it ever likely to happen?..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I've done the best I can Vesp with my lumberjack's brain capacity. I think I have already addressed these questions in earlier posts.

 

Re. the crime pill. That would be a very effective solution and I think we should be working towards it. Brain science is coming on leaps and bounds. It may not be as unrealistic as it sounds.

[Mesterh]

19 hours ago, the village idiot said:

Hi Mesterh.

 

We haven't yet got a grip on quantum mechanics, it may well be that it provides a barrier to ever being able to predict the future. This doesn't in any way bolster the free will argument. If anything it supports the argument against it. If there is unpredictable randomness at a sub-atomic level this would suggest that we have even less control over events (thoughts and actions).

 

Even if nothing is determined at quantum level our brains still do what they do with what they have access to. This is determined. We have no control over what our brains command at any given moment, it just feels like we do. Our brain state in any given moment is dictated by our genes, stored memories, the strength of particular neural connections, the environment and ultimately every event (including thoughts) from the beginning of time up until a microsecond ago. We have no initiation control over any of these things. The only logical inference from this is that we don't have free will.

 

If someone truly lost their memory their actions and thoughts would be different but their 'amount' of free will would be the same. None.

 

Chaos theory doesn't affect free will either. To think about the nature of free will you have to consider the state of the brain that preceeds any thought or action and understand that you have no control over that exact state. You could have a thought that changes the mind at the last second causing you to carry out a different action, but that thought itself arose automatically too. It feels very much like 'You' have changed 'Your' mind but this is just an illusion (again, created automatically by the brain).

 

It is absolutely possible to know we have no free will. There is nowhere for it to be in the material world. Even if you imagine a 'supernatural' force independant of the physical brain/body deciding which option to go for (this is what it can feel like sometimes), that in itself would be contrary to free will as it would not be you deciding.

 

Hanging 'thieving scum' is certainly an option. It would presumably stop them thieving, but it would be immoral and do we really want to go down that road. If you accept the no free will argument, and I don't really think there's any way you can't (admittedly, as a humble stick technician I am crap at explaining it), then purposefully punishing a murderer would be akin to torturing a grizzly bear for killing a human. The murderer should be locked up, but every effort should be made to change his brain. This should be entirely possible with the right inputs and we will get better at this over time.

 

Understanding that we have no free will will also help governments and societies to put things in place to reduce the frequency of bad behaviour in the future. People worry that the realisation of no free will will lead to more destructive behaviour. In actual fact it has great potential to take things in completely the opposite direction.

I will have to read some of your previous posts otherwise I will probably be going over old ground.

 

Wether we have free will or not to say prevent someone becoming a paedophile ever becoming would require so much information that I don't think it would ever be possible. Everyone would not only have to be scrutinised and monitored from birth but so would their parents, their parent's parent's, the forming of stars and back to the beginning of time, not possible surly?

 

Most people commit crimes not because of necessity but because they don't give a fuck. Saying they have no free will will just give them another lever. 

 

It is mind boggling to say I have no control over my life but you do have control over my life. 

 

I say if we truly have no free will then are we really alive? We are no different than a computer program. We may as well be a computer simulation, which quite a few clever people think is the case, therefore why waste time trying to diagnose and fix broken criminals. Just let chaos reign.

 

I think you only have to look at how brilliant the world is due to us humans to realise that whatever it is we have or perceive we have is something special. Maybe we can't call it free will but it is something. Btw, I don't think it is anything supernatural. Surely we are aware and that's all it is.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Mull]

I've done the best I can Vesp with my lumberjack's brain capacity. I think I have already addressed these questions in earlier posts.

 

Re. the crime pill. That would be a very effective solution and I think we should be working towards it. Brain science is coming on leaps and bounds. It may not be as unrealistic as it sounds.

 

 

Poor man wants to be rich, rich man wants to be king, king ain’t satisfied till he rules everything!

 

Greed is the bastard!

 

If you can sort out greed you’ll be going a long way to sorting out humanity

(Not that it is possible to sort out humanity)(coz we’re all greedy bastards)

 

Yes, I know I’m a stuck record☹️

B.S