Matrix is a movie labeled Fiction

free will exists,
but you are "wrong" imho, that no one can control your future,
everybody is actually modifying, affecting, controlling another human destiny, choices, everyday,minute and second.

just as you reading what i am posting right now,i somehow already change your destiny.
if you are not spending the little few minutes to read, maybe you doing something else, and maybe you plan to meet with ur friend in oldtown, then somehow late by few minutes because of reading what i posted, then somehow this few minutes could change your friend entire life. and so on. this is all chain reaction and connected.

so, i could actually change this world and i am changing it daily. (from my point of view).

---

Added on October 16, 2009, 5:58 amto above red colored part.
the very dangerous part of this idea is, by believing God is just, it is actually a "perception" of human thoughts.
and subscribing that idea also mean, whatever God did, it would be just no matter what.

from my interview with God believer people, the ultimate idea that they usually hold is, "God is just".
and they need to hold this idea really tight otherwise, probably they wouldn't believe in God either.

but little did they knew, it is just a weak perception that they hold.

This post has been edited by sleepsleep: Oct 16 2009, 05:58 AM

Free Will or Determinism has been seriously debated for the last few centuries. Human being has been trying to understand it from the two most influential systems, i.e. sciences and religions

Sciences
In newtonian mechanics, every object moves along a trajectory that is uniquely "determined' by the forces which act on it. It permits, in principle, the "accurate prediction of everything that will ever happen" on the basis of what can be known at one instant.

An example to this is the snooker game. The rigid network of cause and effect is deterministic.

Religions
Philosopher's argument on onmiscient and onmipotent deity against free will is they are self-contradictory.

- If god has a plan for the universe, which is implemented as part of his will, why does he not simply create a deterministic universe in which the goal of the plan is inevitable?

Moving towards a planned goal for the universe means determinism.

- If the universe is indeterministic (free will running), however, does that not mean that god's power is limited because of his inability to predict or decide what the outcome will be?

In order for onmiscient and onmipotent to hold true, the universe must be deterministic.

When one person says "I have free will to decide if I want to have tea or coffee for breakfast", he forget the fact that the so called free will hold true only if the larger system, the supply of the tea or coffee is always there. When the waiter says "I am sorry, we are running out of coffee, what about a good Earl Grey tea to complement your breakfast?". That leave us little choice I am afraid.

However, one can argue that he can go down town to buy the coffee in a shop and run back to the restaurant. The point here is our free will is inevitable bound by the constraint of the larger system.

Imagine the following cases:
- A gunner is pointing a gun to one's head. "Your live or your money? You have free will to decide, I give you 30 seconds"
- Polices block one of the road and tell the car drivers. "You all shouldn't proceed in using this road, you have free will to decide, however whoever cross this road will get a bullet".

We seem forced to the paradoxical conclusion that freedom of choice is actually a restriction that we suffer, namely, our inability to know the future........

Our inability of knowing what next give us an illusion that this universe is full of free will......

My understanding so far;

Free Will within Determinism.

Good one. Even free will within determinism is still determinism.

In omniscient and omnipotent pespective, it could be argued that the god is free to relinquish some of his power if he wishes. However there is one logical problem, for omnipotent deity to relinquish some power and give us free will to act "against" his plan causing a new outcome that is not being predicted and decided earlier. After all, this could not be a surprise to the omnicscient and omnipotent deity as he already knew it before you do it.

If one have to choose which one, then yes I'd say determinism.

Having said that, I still like to say it like I said it earlier. This is because there are 'simpletons' out there who simply stop doing things with the excuse of "it doesn't matter! all have been determine".

As far as I know, everything was determine at one point. Closest parallel that I can think of atm is game programming. Everything in a game is coded even the sand-box concept one. You can do anything within the game rules. The different between determinism in games and determinism in life and the universe as we know it now is the determinism of life and the universe is immense it gives us the feeling of FULL free will.

no they stop doing things because they are meant be be lazy bums. those that keep on striving are meant to be the opposite

i`ll give you different angle....


1) taoism.. call it bazi.. destiny....
2) buddhism.. call it karma from pass life
3) christian/islam call it god`s will or intention for human...
4) simply put, just chances...all things in this life happen to be chances... and we all constantly affecting each other... we are all ONE... there are no absolute you or me

I believe that free will is not opposed to determinism. I believe that free will is determinism in a sense that we are free to choose whatever we will but that choice is predetermined not by a God, but by the very first few particles that created our Universe. I maybe thinking of this in a layman's mentality, but i believe that when the Big Bang occurred, the trajectory of expansion of each individual particle of the universe was determined mathematically. Theory of conservation of energy, resolution of forces. Given the trajectory of the 2 particles that collided, this is the exact way the universe is meant to be.
Dinosaurs, humans and animals don't play out of this either. Because of the butterfly effect, it may be hard to agree with determinism, but it's all like a perfectly tuned mechanical clockwork. A petal was meant to fall on the lake. A man was meant to see it when he was 3 years old. That affects his mentality like a pivot, as all things do when one is young. Based on previous experiences, he draws conclusions and perceptions. This affects how he reacts to something else in a specific manner which in turn affects something else in a specific manner. It goes on and on, all predetermined even before he was born. I am meant to type this word here, just as you are meant to read (or not read) it. Grim as it seems, i believe everything is mathematically bound and is therefore precise. Our free will is actually determined by our minds, which are shaped by experiences and memories, are they not?

I have done no research on this, but based on that guy talking on one of those channels, i believe it correlates with the theory of everything? The one formula that summarizes our entire universe, physical and even social