Like, we’ll probably find out that eating boogers actually makes you immune to select illnesses or something crazy like that.
Like, we’ll probably find out that eating boogers actually makes you immune to select illnesses or something crazy like that.
If it turns out there really is no free will. What will happen? Do we get a kind Utopia? Or fascism where you are mistreated based on your lot in life?
There’s no functional difference, unless you can accurately predict someone’s actions, and to do that you’d need to predict the environment in which someone is making choices as well, which requires omniscience. So, there’s no functional difference.
Remember the reasons we have punishments? To discourage further misdeeds. Also, to restore justice by inflicting suffering on those who deserve it. Punishments would still be dished out for pragmatic reasons, but retributive punishment would be rendered entirely meaningless.
It would also shatter all sense of acomplishment an individual could have. All that would be left is maybe a perverse pride in knowing you where born “better” than others.
I don’t think society would survive if it was a common knowledge.
Like I said, how can you prove that free will exists now? We could very well already live in your scenario, and the world isn’t ending because of a lack of free will (if it doesn’t exist). I mean, it is ending, but not because of free will or the lack thereof.
Unpredictability is not the same as free will.
Yes, but if there is true free will, the universe would not be perfectly predictable. If it is, then there could not be free will. Luckily, it isn’t.
I would say deterministic rather than predictable.
I think the universe is deterministic and that there isn’t something inside our heads that bypasses determinism and creates free will.
Sure, that’s consistent.
But we know for sure that the universe is not deterministic.
From a fundamental level, it is probabilistic.
Simple experiments can show this chaotic action.
Take for example the dripping tap experiment. The time for next drop cannot be predicted by knowing the timing of the previous drops!
This is not a random process, there is a pattern, but it is also clearly not deterministic.
We can’t predict it because we can’t possibly know everything. But unpredictably isn’t the same as randomness or implies nondeterministic behaviour.
If you are really interested, look into the uncertainty principle.
At this point in science we are as convinced as is possible to be; that the universe is probabilistic in nature.