CAPTAIN'S BLOG
Evil to me is someone who could do good (or neutral) but instead chooses to be cruel. Very, very few people like that exist. The cruel people I've come across in my personal life are the victim of their genetics and their traumas.
My claim that evil does not exist does not invalidate the reality of love in any way. Things that exist "only in the mind" are still very real - it's just that evil doesn't exist in the mind. No one is waking up and deciding "I'm gonna do evil stuff today. Gosh, I just cant wait to hurt someone who cares about me or to injure an innocent." As an aside, love and all emotions don't exist "only in the mind" - there is plenty of physical evidence for the existence of these emotions. If everyone on the planet experiences something, that also suggests that it is real. A slavish adherence to the definition of "truth" serves no one. Knowledge is represented in Confidence Intervals, and although the Confidence Interval of our current discussion is lower than that of the reality of gravity or global warming, it is up there. Interviews done with people who do Bad Things like rapists, murderers and more shows a very, very high rate of resistance and desire to change. Very few of them love what they do and want to continue forever. "is every action and interaction that goes on in your mind perfectly predictable if we have all the information needed to predict it," Yes, that is called Determinism, and that is the way the universe works. Maxwell's Demon would absolutely be able to predict the future perfectly, or if we could create a quantum computer that could perfectly simulate every particle interaction, we would be able to do the same. "or is there some degree of randomness that occurs, perhaps through a quantum effect, that ensures that the system will never be fully predictable. " No. There is no evidence of this claim. Perhaps some evidence will come, but I think our current evidence leaves very little room for quantum mechanics to allow for free will. And even if quantum mechanics gave a level of randomness, it would still not give us Free Will - our brains are based in the physical world, and however they work, they clearly do not offer us Free Will in the sense that people expect. Quantum mechanics offers no hope for free will, because our testing of free will has shown it to be an illusion. Our subconscious makes decisions and passes those decisions up to our conscious mind in ways that we cannot control (hence, no thought crime). Keep in mind that Illusion is being used very purposefully here. We do have choice - it's just an illusion of choice. We can only choose from that which occurs to us. Take this story: There was a man in his 40's who was happily married and loved his kids. Over the course of a few months, he started to get angry feelings towards his family. He would randomly fantasize about murdering them violently. He ended up covering his office with post it note reminders, saying things like how much he loved his family and wife and kids and so on. After a few months of this, he went to a doctor and got a brain scan, and discovered a tumor growing and pressing into his amygdala, the part of the brain responsible for aggression. They removed the tumor and the behaviour disappeared. To me, this is an authoritative demonstration of the illusion of free will. Quantum mechanics did not help this man - but I think the fact that he had a previously healthy brain meant that he was able to notice the difference, that there was a problem, and thus was able to fix it. Because of his previously healthy brain, he was able to realize that his brain was no longer healthy. But what of someone born with an unhealthy brain? They would have no frame of reference for what healthy decisions look like, especially if they were raised in an unhealthy family like your average serial killer or narcissistic ex lover so often was. It is here that the illusion of free will is laid bare. There is more, but this has gone on quite long, and I worry about length. I recommend reading Sam Harris's books on these topics - namely his books on Free Will and The Moral Landscape. I hope I didn't sound mean or anything. These are topics that I have spent a lot of time researching and I find them quite fascinating. The certain truth of it all still remains to be seen, but the preliminary evidence definitely leans one way - towards free will being an illusion at best.
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AuthorChristina Hitchens is a trans female writer living in BC, Canada. She loves computers, animals, and a good argument. Archives
March 2022
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