i feel like i’ve known this for a long time and it’s something i’ve heard different people talk about in different ways, but i think while i got the idea, i never really grasped the totality of it, until now
so basically everything that one does, is deterministic; there is a explicit series of causes and reasons why ones thoughts and actions are produced
and that by itself is neither good nor bad, it’s just how ones internal computer computes things, here’s input - oke: here’s output
when one does something bad, it’s not bc they decided to do something bad, bc that’s what they want to do, its just that their system is wired in a way that leads to a computation that we perceive as objectively bad
the system works perfectly fine, it just computes based on differently tuned sys
if i say something, and i ask myself, why did i just say that, sometimes i can actually tell why, eg by past situations (reason)
why am i not good at some things, well looking into at my sys, i can tell, if i lack experience (reason), its not tuned in that
i had that dream the other day seeing that person, even tho i hadn’t thought about them for like forever, but there was something on that day that had a semantic overlap and similarity to that person (reason), so it totally makes sense, why my brain pulled them into my dream; that clearly showed me, its not frame-me doing that, its my sys that’s computing that, it’s reading my stored state
another time i wanted to get something done, but i wasn’t feeling like it, and i thought, why can’t i just get motivation mode and do it, why does my brain create this sorta barrier and makes it harder for me to just do it; well evolutionary if you weren’t in immediate danger, your sys would default to power saving mode, like why bring the energy up now, where there is no danger, i should preserve to when there actually is danger.
so i would argue if there were a hypothetical machine that one could configure with all the inputs of a human brain, you could determine what they would do at a frame of their life
inputs are:
so that machine would have to be a complete human sim to be accurate, but maybe one could actually get decent enough results from just some sensors like video and audio with some memory recall and some neurochemical readings
idk and i think it won’t have any value on an individual level, bc one has ones body already, no sim needed, unless it malfunctions
also some ppl talk about it as free will
tho personally if i think about free will, i think about 2 buttons and my ability to pick one randomly, what’s the point of that, i never had to do something like that irl
so i don’t think there is free will at a moment / a life frame, it’s just a computation based on the sys that you or ppl have tuned into you prior to that timeframe
which raises the question, if my life is a series of deterministic frames, doesn’t that make my whole life deterministic?
wouldn’t you be able to predict one’s future? yes and no; hypothetical if you would run that machine frame by frame and you would know all the inputs for each and every frame, then yes absolutely
BUT, since part of the frame inputs are external, like you meet someone or an asteroid hits earth, etc; you would have to simulate not only every other living thing, but the entire universe. and a universe scale sim by nature requires at least the same amount of energy that we have in the universe, which makes it an impossible task, we can’t just 2x all energy - therefore no
since it’s impossible, there’s no point in even thinking about it, it can’t be done
also what’s the point, yes we are run by a system, which works deterministic based on it’s state, and on a universe level there’s a system too, at the end there is ever changing state in that big system will always configure our system with different inputs, which are impossible to predict
like when i experience sexual arousal, it’s not that i have to press my left thumb on my belly button and pull my right ear with my right hand for 3 seconds to activate arousal circuits in my brain, no, its a much more complex process than that. it depends on external and internal factors, a specific set of inputs in context of how my sys is tuned. so yes, it comes down to a sys that works in a specific way, but if that way is complex enough, it allows for something that - to us - is freedom, and at the end it’s as real as real can be, so yes, it’s real, like we can only experience real, there’s no more real than real.
since it’s an impossible task to pre-compute future inputs / sim the universe, that means to us, our life will always be dynamic, this means we are perfectly capable of shaping ones system and inputs to our likings to make us think and act like we want
i’d say that is ultimately what freedom is
to put it differently, there is no such thing as complete freedom at the moment - i can’t just think up my entire function to compute, but there is very much so freedom to evolve - i can develop and iterate on it over the time of my life, and the changes i make determine how my outputs change as well
thus yes, one can do whatever they want
one just has to step back and define what that is, reflect and tune until one gets closer - a lifetime of iteration
and to me, i think that’s kinda what it means to be alive for me
it’s more about understanding some basic system features and what causes what actions to be computed, so we can change stuff and by that change how and what we compute now and in the future