Like:
Bad thing happened = The universe made it happen, not your fault
Forgetting to do something = Well there’s nothing I can do, my brain chemicals are dictated by the laws of physics
Like if I don’t keep using Determism as an explantion, my brain just 🤯💀…
It’s not weird at all. We all do this.
But…
If you do it ALL the time, you’re not accepting any responsibility for your own actions. You’ll never learn from your mistakes or improve your behavior. Your brain chemicals may have let you down, but what are YOU going to do to prevent that in the future? What action of YOURS caused those brain chemicals to fail?
Yeah, expanding on this and to use one of OP’s examples: Sure, your brain isn’t an all remembering book, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take active measures to improve on deficiencies. If you are forgetful, take better notes and refer to them when appropriate.
You don’t need determinism for that. Our brains are absolutely fallible, no need and it doesn’t help to punk yourself over that, with or without determinism.
But just as determinism for you can explain bad things happening, so can nondeterminism. We know statistically how fast radioactive matter decay. But it’s impossible to know for a single atom, it could be within seconds, or it could be in a thousand years. We have no way of telling before it actually happens.
Some things are impossible to predict, and some things just happen by accident. Whether the universe made it happen one way or the other, doesn’t really matter.What matters is that you have a large degree of free will, and you can choose to cope the way that suits you best.
But your own actions are your responsibility.A Quantum Dice Roll is not what I consider free will…
Free will can exist because consciousness is an abstraction created by the brain similar to a virtual reality on a computer, where the laws of physics is what the brain builds upon, consciousness is a function of the brain, and SELF consciousness is a layer above that, constructed by the functionality of the brain, that far exceed normal physical causality. While the brain is dependent on physics, the “simulation” is not.
There’s a reason we have a feeling of free will, if free will didn’t exist, a sense of it would serve no purpose. So Occam’s razor indicates that we shouldn’t have that sense without also having free will.
We can imagine a future far removed from our current state, fantasy and SciFi books are clear examples of that. How would that be possible without free will?
Yes. imo determinism is… kind of a useless idea? Like, you can say something is caused deterministically, but that doesn’t actually affect things like fault or intention. “But my brain chemicals made me do it.” My brother in Christ you ARE the brain chemicals
Invoking determinism is fine, just be aware it rarely solves the problem you think it does.
Saying ‘some bad thing happened - the universe made it happen, it’s not my fault’ - what are you really wanting to achieve with that? If it was beyond your ability to do otherwise, then you probably want to process this some other way (mindfulness / therapy / talking it out with someone) until your emotions align with the facts. Because you don’t have a “responsibility” problem you have a “thinking it was my responsibility when it wasn’t” problem. And appealing to determinism isn’t going to change your habit of doing that.
On the other hand, if you actually could have made a difference / prevented it but knowingly didn’t (or were sufficiently careless that your culpability is real) then appealing to fate might be a short term plaster but it’s a bad long term fix.
And this is because rather than dealing with a feeling of guilt or dealing with how you make choices you are masking these things by making yourself out to be a passive object that life happens to. Again, as a short term cope that can be fine, but do you see how making a habit of that just undermines your ability to believe you can grow and be better?
At its extreme appealing to determinism can remove your perception of everyone’s responsibility. “Everything’s inevitable”… “We’re all just biological machines”… “I couldn’t help it”… And while, from a certain point of view, physics can lend evidence to determinism. It doesn’t actually affect how life works because even if we are all biological machines, we still need to ascribe what we call ‘responsibility’ to the biological machine through which something undesirable came. People will still want to avoid people who hurt them. The law will still have to segregate the wrongdoer. Even if everything is now “deterministic”. (The Amazon warehouse sorting robots will isolate a misbehaving robot even if that robot has not one jot of control over its programming - if you see what I mean).
So all I’m saying is belief in “fate” has an illusory power. Where it makes us feel less bad about something. But taken to its extreme it makes us not feel responsible for anything, while life carries on as normal and inevitably penalises us for that.
So it’s better for you to expose yourself to the pain of “yes it was my fault” (if indeed it was). But then in that pain not to give way to hopelessness, but rather realise pain (if based on truth) is a fuel by which to change yourself. Get other’s help if necessary. But don’t give up the opportunity to grow. The pain is actually a sign you care, don’t deaden that. It’s the stuff of life.
“My application is broken, but what can I do? Bits on & off are dictated by laws of physics… If only I was the developer…Wait, I am?!”
Exactly how it reads
