Quote:
Originally Posted by SecretMethod70
Technically speaking, I would say none seeing as how I'm not convinced there is such a thing as free will. That said, it's impossible to live life according to that assumption, and free will provides a useful tool to describe our perception of the world, even if it does nothing to describe it's technical underpinnings.
So with that in mind, I would say I agree with Cynthetiq that eventually there comes a point when the individual's choices ought to be considered to play a significant role in the outcome of events. Even then, it's important to keep in mind that outside factors never go away, and we should be open to the fact that what seems an easy and obvious choice for one person can be much less so for another.
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I'm inclined to agree with you here about free will. I think it's a useful idea, but ultimately that it's nothing more than fantasy.
In terms of choice, well, going back to the free will thing, I don't think it exists in any sort of meaningful way. I'm not entirely certain that people deserve credit for their choices because I think that the choices people make are the simply the manifestation of a whole collection of external factors interacting in an inconceivably dynamic and complex way. So the fact that I'm not an IV drug user isn't something I can really take credit for, because given a few different rolls of the dice up the line a bit, I could easily have ended up an IV drug user. The difference between the IV drug using filtherton and the current filtherton isn't filtherton, it's luck, so why would I get any credit?
I'm not saying we shouldn't take appropriate measures to mitigate the potential harmful effects that result from the choices people make. Clearly we need to deal with people in appropriate ways according to whichever arbitrary standards we've defined for ourselves. What I am saying is that I think that people are merely conduits for the manifestation of an impossible to reduce combination of personal experience and physical laws.
In other words, nothing's personal.