I would like to know how you understand free will. But since philosophical definitions are generally useless, I would appreciate if you can give a few examples of not having free will. I asked this question on this forum once before, and some people struggled to described the sensation of not having free will, and those who did describe it gave very different descriptions. I am quite sure that your examples of lack of free will would clash with those of others, indicating that the notion is too poorly defined to be discussed productively.
This is a general problem with intuitively understood notions, people use the same term for overlapping but different concepts and/or qualia. "Existence" is one of the worst. People use it in different and contradictory ways, often in the same sentence (this is easy to detect by asking "what does it mean for to not exist?").
Anyway, just wondering about 3 examples which you personally think describe not having free will.
I would appreciate if you can give a few examples of not having free will.
Alright, that sounds like a good idea. I don't think there can be a sensation of having or not having free will, any more than there can be a sensation of drawing a conclusion from premises. In a loose sense, there might be an 'experience' of these things, in the sense that I might remember having done so. But if drawing an inference produces in me some sensation or other, that's totally accidental. Same goes, I think, for acting freely.
1) I throw a rock down a mountain and kill T...
ErinFlight said:
Thinking about it, I realized that this might be a common concern. There are probably plenty of people who've looked at various more-or-less technical or jargony Less Wrong posts, tried understanding them, and then given up (without posting a comment explaining their confusion).
So I figured that it might be good to have a thread where you can ask for explanations for any Less Wrong post that you didn't understand and would like to, but don't want to directly comment on for any reason (e.g. because you're feeling embarassed, because the post is too old to attract much traffic, etc.). In the spirit of various Stupid Questions threads, you're explicitly encouraged to ask even for the kinds of explanations that you feel you "should" get even yourself, or where you feel like you could get it if you just put in the effort (but then never did).
You can ask to have some specific confusing term or analogy explained, or to get the main content of a post briefly summarized in plain English and without jargon, or anything else. (Of course, there are some posts that simply cannot be explained in non-technical terms, such as the ones in the Quantum Mechanics sequence.) And of course, you're encouraged to provide explanations to others!