Is man, as Sartre said, condemned to be free? Or is free will just an illusion?
Nidhin George 🔷
@geo_rhymes · 2:57
This may very well be the question that has perplexed mankind for ages. But in choosing to answer the swell or apply to the swell, I have proven that freedom is not an illusion because I had the choice to either reply or not to reply and I chose to reply. And if you look at the stakes involved have nothing to gain in replying to this well and I have nothing to lose in replying to this well. I am not coerced or held at gunpoint
Now, I think think that there are so many contributing factors when it comes to making a decision, a choice, right, from our biology and what our body, brain, et cetera, needs or desires and then our experiences that have shaped, how we might make decisions going forward, the environments that we're in, the people we come in contact with, the way that we shape and reshape our identity year to year, day to day, all of these things. We are in constant flux
Shashank Shekhar
@sshekhar · 2:14
Whether it's a gun being pointed to our head or other things for that person experiencing that constraint, does he really have free will or is it an illusion? You could probably argue both ways. In any case, just notice that So wanted to kind of put it out there and see what people think. Thank you and apologies for the band bad sound quality there. I was driving and the situation wasn't ideal, but hopefully the future recordings would be clearer
I don't know if you want to do that elsewhere or here because I'm not sure that I think that there is an absolute truth. Because whether we're talking that the nuances of state of mind, or whether we're looking zoomed in and out over time, or from a massively zoomed out perspective, or zoomed in perspective, or whether we are spinning around the object to have multiple perspectives on whatever this decision is, whatever this truth is sorry. Of truth, not decision
Shashank Shekhar
@sshekhar · 4:27
But it's convenient that's the only way to interact with other humans. Maybe I'm sort of taking a more purist, but I think it's important to have that distinction between what is it that we are perceiving as truth? There's so many things. I mean, almost everything that we take for granted as truths can be argued that maybe it's not truth in an absolute sense because it's just a convenience of accepting things that every other human that we interact with also perceives the same way
Husna M
@Husna_writer · 4:59
And Shaker, as for the absolute truth, I am really not sure if it even exists. And just like free will, we are once more conditioned by how our minds perceive the world in reality around us, is it not? It sort of reminds me of this line that someone once said there's your truth, there's my truth, and there's we truth. We live in such a postal world today where truth can be doctored by spin and artifice
Husna M
@Husna_writer · 2:21
Thoughts and intentions emerge from background causes of which we are unaware and over which we exert no conscious control. We do not have the freedom we think we have, he says. Further, and as uncomfortable as this may be, it's very much consistent with neuroscientific research where experimenters have used functional MRI to show true two brain regions contained information about the subject decisions a full seven to 10 seconds before the decision was consciously made
So this may be coming full circle, but if we describe, quote, unquote, absolute truth as an abstraction and or a truth by consensus, then what is absolute about it? Like, what is imperfect? What is complete? I don't know. Is it just a language thing? A flawed language use here
I have a lot of visuals in my head and I'm trying to sort of translate them, but the words, let's say synergy, let's say a weaving of sort of done in a linear fashion to give a visual to time
Nidhin George 🔷
@geo_rhymes · 3:48
Hey Husna, loved your perspectives and the challenges you've put forth in asking about people living in autocracies or monarchies. And to be honest, I won't claim to have the answer. The topic is inherently far deeper and collective than that which one mind can answer. Then there was a scientific study you referenced and I was rather taken aback at the power of the human mind to calculate answers at such microscopic time periods. The scientific aspect of it is compelling too
Husna M
@Husna_writer · 2:14
I do believe in the scientific data before me. But then there is also a small idealistic part of me that believes in the sorteric the intangible faith and free will. And I'm sort of like how you mentioned free flowing. My thoughts are always in a state of flux, so I tend to keep my mind open about things, then stick to definitive ideas
Husna M
@Husna_writer · 1:35
Hey, Geo, totally, totally concur with what you have said. I mean, the camo of free will is far too vast and diverse to fit into a swell discussion, right? And personally, I feel I lack the in depth knowledge or the expertise to give a definitive discourse. So, you know, I too am trying to find answers, never really arriving at a conclusion, illusion or affirm. The absoluteness of the reality of free will. As the Scars has said
Shashank Shekhar
@sshekhar · 2:48
So with all of that, it does seem a little challenging to say, hey, do we really have free will or are we just simply responding to events around us? The distinction I wanted to draw was where free will or desire is one thing and the limitations that the physics of the world imposes upon us is another. So just the fact that, okay, I have a desire to fly but I don't have wings to fly so there are physical limitations that limit the fulfillment of that desire
I've been listening to first teachers and then friends, and now also students. Trouble and circle around this question for probably close to 50 years now. And it is true that new theories and also science will intervene from time to time. And yet the conversation continues, and I get a lot of pleasure in that. But what it means in regards to my own life is that I am happy, actually quite happy not to know the answer to that question
Husna M
@Husna_writer · 0:24
Thank you. Katharine? I think that's one of the most beautiful lines I have heard. To choose to live in the belief that we do have free will. And I think that hope is what keeps us going and keeps us happy. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom