inqbtor comments on Dissolving the Question - Less Wrong

44 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 08 March 2008 03:17AM

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Comment author: inqbtor 25 October 2012 01:30:30AM 0 points [-]

My tackle at this question: Why do people debate free will?

The topic itself is of intense interest to humans, because we’d like to believe we have it, or that it exists. This is because we’d like to believe we have control over our own actions and our thoughts, since that would give us the feeling that because of said control we can shape our surroundings in search of our own happiness, or that happiness is achievable. But the crutch of the problem is we can’t just believe in free will now, because we have no idea, no proof or theories on how it exists. Thus we can’t fully and wholly believe free will exists. But we want to, so we try to justify its existence to ourselves by focusing our confusion through the question "Is there free will?" and try to answer the question, as our past experiences have taught us by shaping our confusion into a question, the confusion can usually be absolved with an answer. And we know that if we can arrive at a logical conclusion, we will believe in the answer.

I'm not sure if I even approached the right question, but I feel like I'm done.