At the risk of annoying people for copy-pasting my reply to someone else:
That’s a really good question, and I’m not really sure. Part of it is the wide variety of interpretations on what it is which makes it hard to decide where I’d go with it. I think part of it would be just finding neat objects, whether they’re rocks, sticks, gems, whatever, and attributing some kind of secret power to them. Tbh I think as someone else pointed out, it’d really be more of a roleplay thing than actual belief.
Part of what’s eating me up right now is the realization that under known physical laws, free will doesn’t exist. You don’t make choices, you don’t make decisions, these were all things the universe already knew would occur because at the end of the day, you’re a big chemical reaction. All those bigots, all those dictators, they never stood a chance. They never became good people because the conditions necessary for them to change never existed; it was merely an illusion.
I kinda want to believe in free will again, but I’m not sure how to convince myself that free will is possible. I’ve even explored the many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics, but I realized that even then, free will is an illusion. If every possible reality occurs, then does free will actually exist? Probably not.
I know that doesn’t fully answer your question, but that’s kinda where my brain is at right now.
If people who believe in a magical bearded sky father manifesting their bedtime wishes and helping devotees win sporting events and awards are somehow taken seriously, well, I feel perfectly fine choosing to believe in free will.
Humanity didn’t have a clue about all kinds of shit just a few generations ago. It’s quite possible that there is more to the world than what we currently understand and that we really are more than some crazy elaborate finite automata. It’s an egotistical blindspot to think that there are no more unknown unknowns.
At the risk of annoying people for copy-pasting my reply to someone else:
That’s a really good question, and I’m not really sure. Part of it is the wide variety of interpretations on what it is which makes it hard to decide where I’d go with it. I think part of it would be just finding neat objects, whether they’re rocks, sticks, gems, whatever, and attributing some kind of secret power to them. Tbh I think as someone else pointed out, it’d really be more of a roleplay thing than actual belief.
Part of what’s eating me up right now is the realization that under known physical laws, free will doesn’t exist. You don’t make choices, you don’t make decisions, these were all things the universe already knew would occur because at the end of the day, you’re a big chemical reaction. All those bigots, all those dictators, they never stood a chance. They never became good people because the conditions necessary for them to change never existed; it was merely an illusion.
I kinda want to believe in free will again, but I’m not sure how to convince myself that free will is possible. I’ve even explored the many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics, but I realized that even then, free will is an illusion. If every possible reality occurs, then does free will actually exist? Probably not.
I know that doesn’t fully answer your question, but that’s kinda where my brain is at right now.
If people who believe in a magical bearded sky father manifesting their bedtime wishes and helping devotees win sporting events and awards are somehow taken seriously, well, I feel perfectly fine choosing to believe in free will.
Humanity didn’t have a clue about all kinds of shit just a few generations ago. It’s quite possible that there is more to the world than what we currently understand and that we really are more than some crazy elaborate finite automata. It’s an egotistical blindspot to think that there are no more unknown unknowns.