Post said:

Fear has two meanings:

Forget
Everything
And
Run

or

Face
Everything
And
Rise

The choice is YOURS.

(Post was about business but it got me thinking about the "The choice is YOURS" part and books/video's I've read/watched on the idea of Free Will.)


It may appear that the choice is yours but if you get under the hood so to speak you begin to discover that people have much less than a full choice in the matter.

One may RUN and another may RISE, and you may think, well that was their choice, but was it just that really?

Some all over the place bullet points:

• "Take a moment to think about the context in which your next decision will occur: You did not pick your parents or the time and place of your birth. You didn't choose your gender or most of your life experiences. You had no control whatsoever over your genome or the development of your brain. And now your brain is making choices on the basis of preferences and beliefs that have been hammered into it over a lifetime - by your genes, your physical development (brain structure, nutrition, etc) since the moment you were conceived, and the interactions you have had with other people, events, and ideas. Where is the freedom in this? Yes, you are free to do what you want even now. But where did your desires come from?"

• Once you see the myriad of factors that go into a person's bad choice (bad genetics they didn't choose, bad parents they didn't choose, bad experiences they didn't choose, bad environments they grow in, etc) the more you see, it's not just a "The choice is YOURS" matter you're dealing with. Running away may be the natural reaction/choice in the brain of the above person.

• "There are so many underlying causes of human behavior, and most of them are hidden to us. Because you are not consciously choosing what you want. Our wills are often so influenced by prior causes so the intention to do one thing and not another does not originate in consciousness. Rather it APPEARS in consciousness. You can do what you decide to do - but notice you cannot decide what you will decide to do. You cannot decide your next mental state, thought, or action until it arises."

• "Many seem to have absolutely no awareness of how fortunate one must be to succeed at anything in life, no matter how hard one works. One must be lucky to be able to work. One must be lucky to be intelligent, physically healthy, and not bankrupted in middle age by the illness of a spouse. Consider the biography of any “self-made” man, and you will find that his success was entirely dependent on background conditions that he did not make and of which he was merely the beneficiary. There is not a person on earth who chose his genome, or the country of his birth, or the political and economic conditions that prevailed at moments crucial to his progress."

• "To have true choice, you would need to be aware of all the factors that make up your thoughts and actions, and you would need to be in complete control of these factors. You would need to be aware of all the factors that determine your thoughts and actions, and you would need to be in complete control of these factors. Unconscious neural events make up our thoughts and actions, and are themselves determined by prior causes of which we are subjectively unaware."

• There are famous studies done with fMRI techniques which show that our brains will indicate the choice we are going to make 700 milliseconds before we are aware that we are going to make the choice. Other studies have found even larger discrepancies of 7-10 seconds. So you are not consciously choosing what you want, but subconsciously. You simply want it. You can’t explain why you want it, but you do.

• And so, choosing to do what you want (or choosing one want over another) does not mean you have free will because your wants have been given to you not determined by you. When it comes to the underlying causes of human behavior, in many cases, these causes are hidden to us. It is impossible for us to know the causes of our choices and wants.

• Most everything you do is either because you feel like you have to do it or because you want to do it. If you do something because you have to, then you weren't truly free and if you do/choose something cause you want to but don't even know why, then that's not free will either. (I.E. I like vanilla ice cream over chocolate ice cream and I have no idea why, I just do.)

• "You are not in control of your mind—because you, as a conscious agent, are only part of your mind, living at the mercy of other parts."

• “I generally start each day with a glass of milk or juice —sometimes two. This morning, it was milk (two). Why not juice? I am in no position to know. I wanted milk more than I wanted juice today, and I was free to have what I wanted. Did I consciously choose milk over juice? No. The choice was made for me by events in my brain that I, as the conscious witness of my thoughts and actions, could not inspect or influence. Could I have “changed my mind” and switched to juice before the milk drinker in me could get his bearings? Yes, but this impulse would also have been the product of unconscious causes. Why didn’t it arise this morning? Why might it arise in the future? I cannot know. AGAIN, the intention to do one thing and not another does not originate in consciousness—rather, it appears in consciousness, as does any thought or impulse that might oppose it.”

• You may get an argument and punch someone and then the next time you find yourself in a similar circumstance, more wisely decide not to punch. But, if you were to be taken back in time to the time you did punch (every feeling, smell, stance, medication you may have been on or just came off, words exchanged, chemicals, etc, in your brain in the exact same place/amount/ every atom in the universe rewound to the same exact place) it seems you would punch every time, the exact same events would follow. That is devastating to the notion of libertarian free will.

• And what if the thought to run never occurred to the riser? Is one free to do that which does not occur to them to do? Like, why didn’t I decide to drink a soda this morning? The thought never occurred to me at that time. Am I free to do that which does not occur to me to do? No. Edit: So, hmm, maybe I think we don't have libertarian free will but maybe have some kind of like "weak" free will? Not sure yet. Well, I'm quite sure on the us not having the traditional view of libertarian free will part. Oh, I just thought of another thing, put more testosterone or estrogen in a person's body, and watch their behavior change...I'm too tired to get into all of that.