>Why would someone labor to profit another?

>This never happens

It happens every single day. It’s called work. What benefit do I get if a store or a business succeeds? Nothing. It’s the submission of one’s own goals before that of another. It’s exploitative because the employee receives less value than is produced by their labor. People work because they have to, it’s a captive audience and there is nothing fair about these arrangements.

Science seems better at some though, like climate change - I challenge you to describe a plausible scenario where religion could pull that one off on its own.

All pro-determinism theories are similarly opinion/meme-based imho.

What i dont understand is, in order for you to produce wealth, someone else needs to lose that same amount of wealth. In that case how can wealth be something that can be produced infinitely?

Here again is an example where distinguishing agency from free will is helpful. There is a point where the baby becomes a conscious agent, taking actions based on deliberative processes. But these processes are still wholly physically determined. I wrote more about this concept of agency in a comment above.

What do you eat?

[deleted]

Idk why you're assuming I'm advocating for anything. I merely made a statement. If you want to have a discussion, that's cool. But this isn't an argument or some zero sum nonsense.

“Misery loves company” and all that

Marcus Aurelius, Lao tzu and other philosophers already came to interesting conclusions. They all experienced pretty much the same thing. This knowledge is known for 1000s of years and you think that's some random Christmas miracle on reddit.

I mean, I'm not sure that your own examples don't disprove your point. McDonald's has plenty of competion - even within the fast food subset of restaurants. So does Coke. Even Google has a solid list of alternatives you can quickly find by using Google.

There are specific markets that tend towards natural monopolies, and these generally need some form of regulation to keep whatever company gets that monopoly in check. And of course individual actors within capitalism can behave badly, and need to be policed as humans always do. But there's a reason all the wealthiest countries use some version of regulated capitalism instead of some other system, and that's because once you understand that wealth is something to be produced and grown rather than a limited thing to be fought over, society gets a hell of a lot better.

The concept of AGENCY seemed to clear up a lot of confusion on this topic in my initial education about the free will/determinism debate (which affected me profoundly, to the point that I would compose an entire rock opera about it 35 years later!).

A leaf falling from a tree follows a trajectory entirely determined by physics—I think we can all agree.

A skydiver falling from an airplane also follows a trajectory completely determined by physics. The difference is the skydiver has eyes and ears that take in information, and memories and training, and a brain that can make calculations based on these factors, plus muscles that can move things in the world. The pulling of the rip cord at time “t” and not “t+x” is a product of the skydiver’s agency—her ability to take an action (among a seemingly wide range of actions or particular timings thereof).

Here’s the rub: although she is not falling “helplessly” in the sense that the leaf is, her trajectory—including the exact time of pulling the rip cord—is following the laws of physics just as ineluctably as the leaf’s. It’s just that the causal stream is much more complex because the exact timing of the rip cord pull is a result of the actions of an agent—that is, a thing that can process information, have memories and do things.

From the vantage point of the agent, it very often seems as though there are indeed many options to choose from whilst deliberating. That internal sense, though, is just that—a feeling from within a deliberating organism. And I think that is what many consider to so “obviously” be free will. And they are insulted/put off by the idea that they don’t have “free will” (when they are really thinking about agency), which they wrongly conclude suggests they are merely like the falling leaf. This ability to deliberate and act on those deliberations is agency, but not free will, in my view.

The question of whether we have free will to me comes down to an entirely different question: Whether we actually could have decided otherwise if placed in exactly the same circumstances with the exact same environment and exact same brain states, etc.

We most definitely have agency (“I” decided to choose option A instead of option B). But agency does not magically allow us to escape determinism, because agency itself is a completely determined—if complex and sometimes conscious—process.

Our having agency does not justify compatibilism, in my view. But a lack of incorporation of this distinction seems to explain how people can believe such a weird idea.

> Providing for basic needs and living a meaningful life are two different things.

You do not require basic needs to live a meaningful life?

Ok, so let's say your are google, and you create this wonderful thing that meets an unmet need and makes you a ton of money. Then others see they could do something similar to make their own market share...you know what happens next, google/apple/coca-cola/mcdonalds etc...etc...do everything they can to annihilate the competition. They don't want to share that market, they want to own that market. Literally anything that threatens their growth will be destroyed, including politicians.

Capitalism even if you ignore its abuse of workers has to provide Profit to shareholders. The only way to continually get profits is to cut the costs that actually make your product good, healthy, useful etc... etc... So the endgame for the consumer is a shittier more dangerous product. Greed runs it all into the ground eventually.

I'm not advocating for anarchy or greed. I'm merely speaking on why people aren't incentivized to treat others with equality 24/7.

agree. the difference is between freedom and free will. we can have free will as long as we have the illusion of choice because we cant perceived that there was no other choice possible (deterministic) Or, perhaps more correct, we perceived choices that were never possible.

In the videos I mentioned, they are using a series of thought experiment, including one about repeating the same day over and over again or even the same universe over and over again. And I trully believe that, if everything starts the same, then they should end the same and all choices, all decisions, everything will turned out exactly as it already has been. But still, as we perceived our choices as our own, we can believe in free will, even if it could perfectly be some coping mechanism.

On the last note, about me, myself and I. I also agree on the several "me" inside of me. I believe in an non conscious part of my brain making or influecing way more than I wish to admit (I dont think about breathing or I dont "think" most of the decision I make in a day). I think there is a more conscious me and also that when I say "I think" there is a thinking me and the "I" that observe the one thinking. Well it s complicated

Providing for basic needs and living a meaningful life are two different things.

[removed]

>You're honestly saying that people profiting from others' labor aren't excelling at the expense of others?

Outside of slave societies, this never happens. Why would someone labor to profit another when they could just profit themselves? People sometimes sell their labor to others, as one component of what that other person is making, but there the trades are generally fair.

>There is no such thing as infinite growth. The wealth of first world nations absolutely came at the expense of the resources and labor of less advantaged nations.

Nonsense. There's more to wealth than just resources. If you don't believe me, just smash up your phone and try to trade it for an unbroken one - after all, it's the same amount of plastic and metal either way.

Now that would be hellishly absurd and enstranging.

It's like people forgot history and how literally every single Empire that existed was built on the backs of an impoverished underclass or slaves.

Because there's nothing left after you're dead. You have the whole of eternity to be dead and the smallest fraction of time to be alive. If we didnt age so much and felt such physical pain of ageing most would probably choose to live than to die.

The Torah is the first attempt at defining the rules and suggesting with great insurance that we follow them.

Maybe the author is part of the longevity movement? They believe that aging is just a degenerative disease and that death will be solved in the future. Check out the Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant and r/longevity for more info.

>You seem fine with the idea that the universe is deterministic. But then you say that some parts of the universe (humans, for example) are non-deterministic. How can you claim this, without invoking magic?

The same way I am fine both with the idea that the universe is non-living and that some parts of it are living. Or that it is non-conscious yet some parts of it are conscious. That you (or I) cannot currently explain a given phenomenon doesn't mean that the answer has to be magic, or that the phenomenon somehow isn't real. That's just an argument from ignorance.