I think I'll be able to attend -- will add to my schedule.

Oops - as it happens, I have to work this weekend. Let us know how it turns out. Maybe a couple games of Resistance?

This, I think, is a major part of it, that it doesn't seem you've accounted for:

The "free will" debate is a confusion because, to answer the question on the grounds of the libertarians is to already cede their position. The question they ask: "Can I make choices, or does physics determine what I do?"

Implicit in that question is a definition of the self that already assumes dualism. The questions treats the self as a ghost in the machine, or a philosophy student of perfect emptiness. The libertarians imagine that we should be able to make decisions not only apart from physics, but apart from anything. They are treating the mind as a blank slate that should be able to take in information and output consequences based on nothing whatsoever.

If, instead, you apply the patternist theory of mind, you start with the self as "an ongoing collection of memories and personality traits." (Simplified, of course.) From that point, you can reduce the question to a reductio ad absurdum. Say that one of my personality traits is a love and compassion for animals, and we're asking the question, "Do I have the free will to run over this squirrel?" Replace "physics" with "personality": Can I make the choice to run over this squirrel, or does my personality decide what I do?

THAT doesn't seem so confusing to us. OF COURSE your personality and memories decide your actions. If you decided to run over the squirrel out of deathlust, you would probably think you've gone temporarily insane or somesuch. You would probably feel as if it wasn't really you who decided to kill the squirrel. It's possible for it to happen, but only if events out of your control come in and zap your mind with the temporary crazies. It is perfectly normal for your decisions to be decided by things that you cannot directly control yourself, and nobody seems to have a problem with this.

The case is no different for physics.

I'd start with that. From there, the explanation of why people get think they have libertarian free will should make more sense. We can imagine ourselves killing the squirrel, which leads us to believe we have libertarian free will. But that is irrelevant: someone who actually chose to kill the squirrel would be a different set of memories and personality traits, and it should not be controversial that they would also be a somewhat different physical makeup.

I hope everyone has fun! I'd like to attend but can't due to my work schedule.

My default response to any question at the cash register is, "No, thank you." That way, if I have to correct, it's in a positive direction, and it seems to work for every question possible. ("Could I have your zip code?" "No, thank you." "... Okay, here's your receipt.")

I once thought that the Future was indestructible.

When I was growing up my childhood friends would sometimes say, "I wish I'd been born five hundred years ago" or "It would have been so interesting to live during medieval times". To me this was insanity. In fact it still sounds insane. Who in their right mind would exchange airplanes, democracy and antibiotics for illiteracy, agricultural drudgework and smallpox? I suppose my friends were doing the same thing people do when they imagine their pop culture "past lives": so everyone gets to be Cleopatra, and nobody is ever a peasant or slave. And the Connecticut Yankees who travel back in time to pre-invent industry are men, because a woman traveling alone in those days just invited trouble.

No, I never wanted to live in the past. I wanted to live in the future.

Mostly because I had a keen desire find out what happens next. I mean, just think of the amazing things in store -- space travel, AI, personal immortality. What a fool I was.

I no longer trust the future will be a glorious place. (It was a little painful to give up that belief.) I once studied history and the history of technology so I could write about imaginary civilizations with some versimilitude. And I learned that everything ends, even Rome. Even us.

So I started studying economics and politics to try to figure out how we got here, and how we might possibly get someplace else. It seems unlikely that the same irrational brains that got us into this mess will be able to get us out. I mean, people are literally not sane. Myself included. The best, the only tool we have is dangerously flawed. (OMFG!!) Which led me here....

Hope for the future? Hope isn't necessary.

As far as RL goes, I have two X chromosomes and live in Minnesota.

Another lurker who took the survey. I suppose I should go find the newbie thread and introduce myself.

I was extra wrong on Principia. Almost disturbing to think how recent it was...