To be honest I'm not sure what you're trying to argue, compatibilism just says free will is compatible with determinism, that is we can still act freely, make decisions etc regardless if the universe is deterministic. It's not clear to me what you mean by "extra term."

Compatibilism!

In theory but not in practice.

General wigglitivity.

Lol you’re arguing that quantum uncertainty “could be random, could be god idk”

Epicureanism is a hedonism though.

A human needs to be virtuous to be happy. A selfish person is less happy than they could be if they were not selfish. Thinking about one's self too much breeds neuroticism. Thinking about others breeds love, courage, and the rewards of seeing them happy.

All good philosophies have a common core since they're all based, in varying degrees, to the actuality of things. They may also have some amount of historical cross pollination and/or common roots.

True randomness is just as inexplicable as free will. What determines the outcome? A mysterious thing called the will or nothing at all? An undetermined yet somehow concrete outcome sounds pretty paradoxical.

The point is if an outside observer cannot predict the outcome, it's impossible to say anything further about it, either declaring it random or an act of will.

I mean, this is just silly. "Morality is what 'reasonable people' would agree to" might work if you want to say morality is subjective, because of course reasonable people across different times and places have had very different views of what is moral. But to define morality as that while claiming it is objective falls flat.

Agreed. As a parent having children is monumental, and it’s sincerely not for everyone. I respect anyone’s decision to not head down this path. It’s a tough one, but filled with love. That being said, Reddit to me feels distinctly extra antinatalism. Not in this thread specifically, but the platform at large. And I feel as though more people should share how enriching an experience it can be. Because it sincerely can be the greatest thing you have ever done.

TLDR; both walks of life are valid and we should support both parents and individuals.

>big things tend to be made up of...extent of their insight

Specifically, "swerve" being nondeterministic looks a little like quantum superposition/wave function collapse. That's the extent of my comment, and I do think it's notable.

No, obviously, he didn't observe quantum mechanics. Yes, I know early particle philosophy was guess work. I fully stand by my original comment.

You mean Buddhism?

I do not believe in free will. However, I do not think our models of the universe are very complete, so I do not think there's a logical basis for dismissing the possibility of free will.

I don't want to make this about my credentials, I was only mentioning my scientific background to help relate my epistemological framework, not to claim any authority. Furthermore, I like to come to r/philosophy to discuss ideas, and it's unfortunate to see that so many debates veer into various logical fallacies, like ad hominem, straw man, argument from authority, etc. So I think it's very important that neither of us do that, which is why I don't want to claim authority, nor assume you are attacking my credentials. But if it helps to understand my state of mind, I will share that I'm an academic biologist, with expertise in molecular biology, biophysics, cell biology, analytical geometry, optics/microscopy, bacterial pathogenesis, evolution, and genetics.

Obviously, it's not the same field as we are discussing (although, really, there is no one field that encompasses all of the science we are discussing, unless we remain so hopelessly broad as to say something like "theoretical physics"), but biology and physics use the same toolset in terms of building and assessing models. Good scientists are skeptics, and it's important to have some sense of what we are reasonably sure is true, what we are reasonably sure is untrue, and everything else. To quote the statistician George Box, "all models are wrong, but some are useful."

To me, as a scientist... I think it's more fair to say that free will is not predicted or explained by any of our models than to say that our models eliminate the possibility of free will. Hopefully, our models are getting better all of the time, and we can approach but never achieve certainty. Most people want certainty, but there is none, only degrees of uncertainty. So, I am arguing from a place of skepticism.

Since it seems to be getting lost somehow, I will repeat for the fourth time that I do not believe in free will. However, all epistemological frameworks that I am aware of require accepting certain axioms. For example, "I think therefore I am," or "A = A," or "existence exists." How do we decide if something is self-evident?

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'your' world (that is, your experienced reality) probably does both. There is always a bottom-up process orientation happening to resist the ground and gravity and that determines which hemisphere of your brain is getting more pressure-generated sensation and therefore more activity depending on the leg you're standing on. That orientation then also has to form the basis of a goal-oriented hand-to-ground stability that works in more of a top-down manner. For the large majority of humans that usually happens on the right side/left hemisphere

No, he did not. Reading quantum theories into the unusable non-scientific ideas of Greeks gets it backward. It looks familiar because the Europeans who spearheaded the scientific revolution came from a tradition whose education was so steeped in Greek philosophy that they borrowed the language for their original and unrelated ideas. looking around and saying big things tend to be made up of smaller component parts that have some sort of behavior is the extent of their insight.

>constantly learning more about myself and the world by experiencing more of it.

Not having kids lets me do this, just in a different way. It doesn't make me "less", just different from you.

You say you are a scientist, yet your arguments seem to come from a different place. What kind of scientist exactly?

The only way there is a place for free will is if all our fundamental science is wrong. There was no place for free will in classical (Newtonian) mechanics, there is no place for it in quantum mechanics, nor in relativity. There is no place for it in string theory or the standard particle model.

Basically, everything we think we know about the universe would need to be wrong for free will to have a chance. You are grasping at straws.

Can you tackle things at a micro level if they are caused by a macro level problem?

Say I am a serf and the Czar’s men come to collect my owed yields else they take my wife, is my issue hoe many cabbages I have or the fact I live over a serfdom where the Czar believes God gave him command of the world?

I came to this thought as I I live in Jersey and rent is skyrocketing. My choices are work more and or negotiate wage increases, or flee the state. Now I wonder; is the problem by the middle class for not preparing for this crisis or the landlords for becoming robber barons?

Stoicism + Epicureanism tends to remedy most what ails me

I don’t see how random deviation of atoms would cause free will. It would break determinism, but only so to cause random behavior. Not any that is freely willed. I genuinely don’t understand why people are always trying to fit free will into their theories or philosophies, like it’s some innate thing that is self evident. I have seen videos where otherwise very intelligent people explain some mind blowing physics concept and then they’re like “well, that would be the case, but we know it’s wrong because it leaves out free will.” I thought it was just an axiom for the theist, but why then do scientifically inclined individuals still hold out hope for the discovery of free will? I just don’t understand it, and it seems frustrating.

That's interesting! Does the sum of the atomic swerves determine the will - which doesn't sound free to me - or does the will determine the sum of the atomic swerves?

This has nothing to do with epicureanism, but I always thought micro-phenomena determine macro-phenomena - that seems more obvious to me - but you can also think about the possibility of macro-phenomena determining micro-phenomena.

For example in video games, sometimes when a character walks over rough terrain or stairs, the legs are positioned such that the body in a specified position is supported by them. Keyword "inverse kinematics" How Link's Climbing Animation Works in Breath of the Wild (10:48)

Maybe it's impossible to determine if the real world works "process-oriented" bottom-up or "goal-oriented" top-down. It might be impossible to determine empirically. When you assume a bottom-up physics, you will find a bottom-up physical laws (~ forward kinematics). In games, the apparent laws of physics are sometimes broken when no satisfying reason for a desired goal state can be found. That's when a character hovers in the air, "because" their feet aren't long enough to reach the ground or when a character is too far away from the place he is supposed to be, he is yanked there by invisible rubber bands.

Do we control this atomic swerve or is it down to some other factor out of our control?

You want me to find where something isn't?