Lumifer comments on Is Spirituality Irrational? - Less Wrong

5 Post author: lisper 09 February 2016 01:42AM

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Comment author: Lumifer 26 February 2016 05:48:30PM *  0 points [-]

It would be ridiculous to say that Peter isn't free, and that I am wrong about my story.

Since I have no problems being ridiculous, I will say that Peter does not have free will even if you claim so in your story.

Take at a puppeteer with his marionettes on a stage: when he says "Do not look at me, look at the puppets, they are free to do whatever they want!" are you going to believe him?

Being a bit more explicit, the problem, as TheOtherDave noted, is inconsistency. Saying "Peter will freely choose to go left" is self-contradictory.

And the issue with separating things into "worlds" -- e.g. the world of the Creator and the world of the created -- is that it's not useful or illuminating. I can do the same thing, too -- I can make an abacus and use it to calculate. Can I declare that my abacus has "free will" on its own, lower, plane of existence?