What's your unpopular opinion?
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you simply don’t want to get into trouble
Why's that?
The same reason you don't want to keep your hand on a hot stove. It's uncomfortable.
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The same reason you don't want to keep your hand on a hot stove. It's uncomfortable.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Exactly, we tend to fear uncomfortable things, no?
We're scared thus avoid, and avoid, and avoid, untill we feel trapped.
Each day starts to feel the same. Each holliday too, even. Nowhere to escape to. Mind racing.
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Can you decide that you'll enjoy cutting off one of your fingers? If so, it seems silly not to, since you'll enjoy it!
wrote last edited by [email protected]Sadly you can, and it happens. What also happens is harming others because of one's own pain
. I know as both victim and perpetrator.
Luckily you can try other things first!
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Sadly you can, and it happens. What also happens is harming others because of one's own pain
. I know as both victim and perpetrator.
Luckily you can try other things first!
No, I mean you, right now, with your free will.
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No, I mean you, right now, with your free will.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Luckily I have free will. I don't need to do what you tell me to do! I get to decide myself.
And so do you: you can decide what you want to do
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You're thinking of a fatalistic universe, where the future is predetermined, rather than a deterministic one, where every action follows from a prior cause. It’s not that you choose to follow the speed limit out of free will - you simply don’t want to get into trouble, so you’re compelled to obey it. But even that want isn’t something you chose.
I figured out recently from Lemmy discussions that people have different concepts of what free will means. Humorously, one of them operates within a deterministic mindset, while the other points out the determinism.
Best analogy that I can think of at the moment is the difference between a drill press and a 4-axis CNC mill. The drill press has one degree of freedom, down and up. It's locked in. The mill has 4 degrees of freedom, and it can run code that makes its behavior highly complex. For some people, that's good enough: The mill has free will while the drill press does not.
The view of free will that recognizes determinism says that humans have innumerable degrees of freedom, so our behavior looks complex, but our conscious choice is just the various competing influences shaking out.
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Luckily I have free will. I don't need to do what you tell me to do! I get to decide myself.
And so do you: you can decide what you want to do
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I'm not telling you to do anything, it's all hypothetical: Could you decide that punching yourself in the face—hard—is enjoyable? It seems like if you could decide that right here and now, that'd be a real easy way to make life (as good as it may be) even better.
Cards on the table, I'm pretty sure we all know the answer. No, we cannot decide to improve our lives by cutting off digits or socking ourselves in the nose, because those things are damaging, and we cant simply decide to make them feel good. I feel very confident that I can't convince you to to it. (Thank goodness!)
The things that we can change our emotional reaction to are things that we were conditioned by an external stimulus (tradition or trauma or whatever) to have a certain reaction to. The decision to change is always driven by discomfort with that emotional reaction, another stimulus. Nobody is going to decide that they need to stop enjoying social affirmation, for instance, unless there's some powerful, outside factor driving that decision.
In short, if we all react to the same stimulus in predictable ways, where's the free will?
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I'm not telling you to do anything, it's all hypothetical: Could you decide that punching yourself in the face—hard—is enjoyable? It seems like if you could decide that right here and now, that'd be a real easy way to make life (as good as it may be) even better.
Cards on the table, I'm pretty sure we all know the answer. No, we cannot decide to improve our lives by cutting off digits or socking ourselves in the nose, because those things are damaging, and we cant simply decide to make them feel good. I feel very confident that I can't convince you to to it. (Thank goodness!)
The things that we can change our emotional reaction to are things that we were conditioned by an external stimulus (tradition or trauma or whatever) to have a certain reaction to. The decision to change is always driven by discomfort with that emotional reaction, another stimulus. Nobody is going to decide that they need to stop enjoying social affirmation, for instance, unless there's some powerful, outside factor driving that decision.
In short, if we all react to the same stimulus in predictable ways, where's the free will?
wrote last edited by [email protected]Could you decide that punching yourself in the face—hard—is enjoyable?
In the past, I have participated in auto mutilation, yes. At a certain point you want to feel anything.
The decision to change is always driven by discomfort with that emotional reaction, another stimulus.
You're right! And it's very scary, facing the thing that's causing the discomfort.
That's why I spend so much time trying to occupy my mind with puzzles, code, games, alcohol. Anything to distract me! Anything to direct that racing mind towards. But in the end I had to face the discomfort, walk inwards, towards it, to find where it came from.
It wasn't my body, it wasn't the calculating part of my mind.
In short, if we all react to the same stimulus in predictable ways, where's the free will?
Luckily we don't all react to the same stimulus in the same way. We can look back and learn from past mistakes.
We can share experiences, learn from eachother.
We can look eachother in the eyes.
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If you have interest in indigenous histories, I can recommend the YouTube channel Cogito. A lot of their earlier works give a nice overview of different indigenous cultures.
How potatoes saved the world and How aboriginal Australians made Australia are two videos that really help connect some of my thoughts and experiences on what I had learned about indigenous history, especially in regards to colonialism.
wrote last edited by [email protected]I've thought about it and I think you're right. People feeling caged is what causes so much pain. Pain they then inflict on others.
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Milk is gross
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You don't need more protein, you need more fiber.
fr fiber deficiency is a major issue
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We should not try to save every creature, plant, business, whatever that is threatening to become extinct. Maybe it's just their time.
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Same, but skin hydration / moisturizing. That's 300,000 years of human history without Aveeno. The skincare industry is a scam to sell product, and our skin works fine if you mostly leave it alone.
thats also 300000 years of forced marriages where a gigantic pimple didn't matter and nobody cared about beauty
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This “hydration” crap.
Up until the late 1970’s for approx 300,000 years of humans being around hydrated themselves just fine.
Long as there was water available one would drink when their body signaled them by getting thirsty (don’t care about exceptions to the rule where someone has a medical issue or if water was limited in high school, your a big person now). All of a sudden humans forgot to drink fluids?
Bullshit.
It’s just yet another scam the drink makers have perpetrated to get people to buy the various liquid products they sell.
It’s just yet another scam the drink makers have perpetrated to get people to buy the various liquid products they sell.
you know you can still drink water, right? you dont need dr pepper or airup or whatever scam is currently trending to be hydrated, just water
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The stock market is a scam, value has become meaningless, and capitalism is a slow march to societal breakdown and revolution.
that would be unpopular on twitter, not here
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I think education should be demanding, so much so that we should all be fine with kids failing at it instead of blaming the school for it. I think grades should only and honestly reflect the level of understanding of each student on whatever they are supposed to be learning, not make them feel good about themselves.
The school should not be there to make the student feel 'good' or 'understood' (that's the family's job). School main purpose should be to make them smarter, which is something that demands practice and efforts, like anything.
Making them smarter means making them better equipped to deal with the real world, that is not a fairy tale kingdom filled with nice people and magical animals that will make them feel welcome and where they lived happily ever after.
Instead of lying to those kids, the school should help them prepare to become an adult person able to face a not-perfect world with a not perfect population, and teach them how to use their effing brains to solve any of the many problems they will face in their life (personal as well as professional)—and for that making them study their lessons, aka memorize stuff (even stupid shit one will never use again) and having to do their stupid homework, and get a failing grade when they don't, is still the best and the simplest way to develop.
Kids that are being told they're amazing perfect little creatures (they're not), and that they should never have to break a sweat in school (they should) are being lied to. Even more sadly for them, compared to those other kids that are still encouraged to face that they're aren't perfect angels and that they should put in the work, every single day, all year long, they're the ones being screwed up. Big.
Feel free to downvote as much as you want.
YES
and also stop calling kids "gifted" for a couple of good grades
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People who complain about multiple once-in-a-lifetime events happened in their lifetime really are snowflakes.
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It’s just yet another scam the drink makers have perpetrated to get people to buy the various liquid products they sell.
you know you can still drink water, right? you dont need dr pepper or airup or whatever scam is currently trending to be hydrated, just water
Yup. I drink water and odd fruit juice. The drink makers wish/hope otherwise and willing to advertise to do so.
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Could you decide that punching yourself in the face—hard—is enjoyable?
In the past, I have participated in auto mutilation, yes. At a certain point you want to feel anything.
The decision to change is always driven by discomfort with that emotional reaction, another stimulus.
You're right! And it's very scary, facing the thing that's causing the discomfort.
That's why I spend so much time trying to occupy my mind with puzzles, code, games, alcohol. Anything to distract me! Anything to direct that racing mind towards. But in the end I had to face the discomfort, walk inwards, towards it, to find where it came from.
It wasn't my body, it wasn't the calculating part of my mind.
In short, if we all react to the same stimulus in predictable ways, where's the free will?
Luckily we don't all react to the same stimulus in the same way. We can look back and learn from past mistakes.
We can share experiences, learn from eachother.
We can look eachother in the eyes.
I'm sorry that you've had such troubles in the past. Learning from past mistakes isn't an example of free will, though.
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thats also 300000 years of forced marriages where a gigantic pimple didn't matter and nobody cared about beauty
I have to say that I doubt that very much.