I say in the end does it really matter whether it's free will or fate? Either way, we're still gonna be at the same place no matter how we see it. You could say "Oh! I shot a guy in the chest for no reason and now I'm in prison! That was soooo random!" Sure it was, but maybe you were meant to do it. Then again, maybe you were meant to still be sitting in your kitchen scratching your scrotum eating Cheerios. Maybe that was guy was meant to be in your path when you shot him. Or maybe he was supposed to get out of work at 5:00 instead of leaving a few minutes early. Who knows? But it doesn't really matter because that's a question you could never know unless there was perhaps an afterlife and you could discover the truth: and even then you wouldn't be able to tell anyone so ha on you lol

"Fate" is the wrong word, it's too loaded. The question is "free will or determinism".

I say determinism. But you're still responsible for everything you do, because the determinism is on a deeper level and is impossible to detect from the context/perspective of the conscious.

But what good is fate if you can't perceive it a priori?

Indeed.

Noone really has free will.

You may want to walk on the ceiling...but you can't...you're stopped by gravity

You may want to go back in time and kill someone...but you can't (that we know of at the moment)

I believe in God, but we have enough free will to do what we want and make choices by ourselves...can we be influenced to create things and do certain things? Yup.

So here's my problem.

If i believe in fate, that means i believe every aspect of my life is predetermined or decided for me by a higher power. however, i don't believe in a God in the traditional sense.

i won't go into it, but it works around the Arthur C Clarke quote that "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic". Hence, i find it hard to believe in a God as we all see it, but not hard to believe in an omnipresent being. that is something that COULD be explained by science, even though we are not advanced enough to explain or understand it.
In any case, i reject the notion that my life is being pushed in a direction by someone else


Free will is hard as well. I'd love to be able to make decisions in true free will, but i know i am bound by laws or customs that i do not agree with, but i understand that at the moment it is not in my best interests to challenge or go against these rules/traditions/laws. is it free will to be able to recognise this and deal with it because i understand the options and choose to take the logical path? or is it only free will when i make the decision that i truly believe in?


Having said this, i believe in Free Will, but i also believe that we are all heading somewhere specific for a reason, and that everything happens for a purpose. not that fate may be guiding our every move, but that unexpected things come from unfortunate events, and that I am heading down some path for a good reason, even though i wouldn't be able to see what the end result would be.
I also believe that i could step off this path at anytime.

I don't believe in karma per-se, but if you do bad things, it will affect other peoples' perception of you, and possibly your perception of yourself, which can lead to bad things happening to you further down the road. The bad consequences are not guaranteed though.

I don't believe in fate, in the way most people would describe it. I'm an atheist, and don't have a belief in the supernatural. In my view, for something to be "meant to be", it would require an intelligent force behind the universe to make it that way.

I'd say free will.

To some extent, I'd say free will is an illusion. The neurons in your brain are wired a particular way, so you were probably always going to make the same decision at a particular point in time, or at least were highly likely to.

I've never believed that determinism is necessarily mutually exclusive with free will though. Say for example, that the future exists somewhere out there, and that it's set in stone, I don't think that necessarily negates free will. Yes, if you make a decision, you were always going to make that decision, but it was still always your own choice to make. The past is set in stone, along with all the decisions you have ever made, but that doesn't change the fact that you made those choices yourself.

The neurons in your brain are wired a particular way, so you were probably always going to make the same decision at a particular point in time, or at least were highly likely to.

Agreed. but then i can't help thinking that we don't know entirely how our brains work - who's to say that something our respective mothers ate messed up our brain development in some unseen way that lay dormant until the time where we made that certain decisions?

hell, what about the theory that nothing exists until we think of it?

that's what really floors me.

what about the scientific proof that photons act differently depending on whether they're being observed or not?

Agreed. but then i can't help thinking that we don't know entirely how our brains work - who's to say that something our respective mothers ate messed up our brain development in some unseen way that lay dormant until the time where we made that certain decisions?

Yeah, but your brain is always in some state at some particular moment in time. Ignoring quantum physics and randomness for a second, in a completely deterministic universe, if you were able to rewind time and feed your brain the exact same set of inputs at the same time, I think it'd produce the exact same set of outputs. What caused your brain got into that state is another story entirely.

A single threaded computer program will always produce the exact same set of outputs for a specific set of inputs (as long as the hardware it's running on is working properly), obviously our brains are infinitely more complex than a computer program, but I think the same principle applies to some extent.

what about the scientific proof that photons act differently depending on whether they're being observed or not?

Yeah, quantum physics. I used to believe the universe was completely deterministic until I heard about quantum physics, it's a total headfuck when you learn how random the universe really is on tiny scales, and how different it is from what we see in everyday life.

I guess the question is, on the scale of human neurons, how much of an effect does quantum randomness have on the workings of your brain? I'm pulling this out of my arse, but my (uneducated) guess is that it would have some effect, but the effect would be so small, or would be cancelled out so much, that given the exact same brain state, and exact set of inputs and outputs, your brain would make the same decision the vast majority of the time.

Karma.

One of my friends explained to me the true definition of Karma, but I totally forgot, his band did a wicked song about it though...

I'm of the opinion that it's a bit of all three. I like to think of things as a big pachinko machine.

By the nature of fate, we'll all end up in any of a number of predetermined slots. By the nature of free will, we end up choosing which ones we aim for. By the nature of individual Karma, the slots available is altered by prior decisions. By the nature of group karma, other peoples decisions(other balls) bounce us closer or further from our destinations.

wow, interesting topic, whilst everyone picks their own brains, awesome read guys! i'll pick my own gnoggin too. picky picky picky.

I'd say free will, but also.
Karma, in a sense, in that you reap what you sow
Also one factor, probebly the strongest i've found, Gods hand of providence which (for me) ties in with both free will and reaping what you sow.

Fate does not exist from God (for me) well, theologically (biblically) incorrect, as we do choose the way we act, though we dont choose the outcomes and plans that are before us, no one can control their own reality so to speak, you can most definantly, effect it, but it is unknown to us as we all take the journey. then again God is another paradox, how can we have free will, and have an all knowing being? I think it says something about our level of comprehension of God more than anything, and its not like some hidden mystery, if God was comprehensible he wouldnt be God? Basically for me, God has a huge factor in the dealings of future situations, once you have desired God especially

Labelling something as 'fate' is always only an afterthought, therefor it is a contradiction, it cant be fate after it has happend, that is, just 'us' reasoning and labelling a previous event.

[Keeker]

The older I get, the more I learn, the less I know. I'm going to hang my hammock on the fence and say it could well be a bit of everything. We simply don't know enough yet. Or I could just be too sleepy to work it out just now.

In any case I have a lot of sandwiches to make. It is by my own free will that I choose to make these sandwiches. However it could have been fate that my name was drawn from the hat to be the hostess this month. Also could it be karma that the other co-hostess phoned up and said she'd bring the cakes and biscuits to the hall thereby meaning I only had to make the sandwiches?

Possibly I made cakes in another lifetime and my punishment/reward is to make sandwiches this time.

The basic premise of asking about free will vs. determinism is flawed, because it comes with the inherent assumption that we possess some matterless ethereal "soul" that is capable of making decisions. In actuality, the more scientists study the brain, the more areas of consciousness are ascribed to certain parts, and it's becoming increasingly obvious that every aspect of thought is derived from the arrangement and firing patterns of our neurons.

The second fault I find in the question is the definition of what exactly a "decision" is. A decision is a choice between two or more outcomes, arrived at by the weighing of various factors associated with each. Soul-ists posing the question seem to think that people "decide" based on NOTHING at all. This is NEVER the case! Our decisions are always based on something--if you choose mint chocolate chip icecream over cookies 'n' cream, it's probably because you like it more, it has less calories, you know you'll get a bigger scoop, or you haven't had it in a while and you crave the novelty. Try telling people to choose with only their soul--they'll fail every random number test every created miserably.

So to summarize what I've just said: the free will question is moot because 1) we cannot make decisions independently of our brains (there is nothing to make a decision), and 2) a decision is inherently deterministic by definition. "True" spontaneous behavior has yet to be shown, and I seriously, seriously doubt it ever well.

So if you want the pessimistic viewpoint that we are deterministic, so be it. I see determinism and free will as identical. As for "fate"...no, fate does not exist. People think it's "fate" when something works out well, similarly to how people thank God when something good happens, but never get angry at him when something bad does.

Karma is hippie bullshit.
Really. Who's got the upper hand?
Only people with a conscious are living with the awareness of karma. People without one don't give a fuck and don't lose any sleep at night. They're probably great business men as well and drive a nicer car than you do.
We all contruct our own reality within our minds. We all have different ideas of good and evil as well. We're all alone, basically.
The shit I wrote is just a product of my own experiences and my little silly human brain.

Argh fuck it.

forget who said it first, but have you noticed that even people who believe in fate tend to look both ways before crossing the street?

De ja vu's give me the feeling things are being pre-determined, were is this happening, in dream, this is were we can create, = free will. Multiplicity playtime. Ultimately 'your beliefs form the pivot of your reality', it'll mold around you.

Quick response, I'm late for work, 'say's to myself, you won't have to keep doing this soon, believe believe, better opportunity, you can find it or it'll find you'.