Chance-Destiny Theory

Chance-Destiny Theory

Free Will is an illusion, destiny isn't predetermined.  Every choice you make is based on experiences you encountered by chance.  Everyone's brain is basically the same, therefore we all technically think the same way.  This means that people's different choices are based on people and events that motivated/inspired them.

Some things there is no debate we had no control over such as who our parents are, our ethnicity, the area we were born in, etc.  Even if choices were made due to people having a different brain, we had no choice over what brain frame we were given.  They say you can pick your friends, but you can't choose the people you encounter.  Not to mention the friends you do pick are based on the mind frame you developed from chance experiences.

Life to me is like dropping a marble through a board with pins in it.  The pins represent people and events you will encounter, and if some are removed the path may change dramatically.  The marble has no free will, but it's path wasn't predetermined.

A man sees an ad on TV for weight loss, and he makes the choice to get in shape.  The ad represents a pin, his choice was just the result of his life (the marble) colliding with it.  Had he not seen the ad, this "free will" to make a choice about his health wouldn't have existed.

Chance-Destiny Theory is more complex than just one chance event leading to another.  Maybe the man who saw the weight loss ad was in a good mood at the time.  Had he been depressed maybe he wouldn't have bothered, or maybe tried losing weight before and didn't get results.

We are all just marbles colliding with each other down an unknown everlasting path.  If there is a god, and he has given us destiny, then his decision makes him a puppet to CDT.  No choice you make is your fault, and punishment is just a utilitarian decision to halt the few of their desires to save the masses.  This is a theory of a nihilist.

-Greg "dratsab" Huffman

RELATED NOTE: God also can't have a mind frame can he? I mean, he just existed so all his knowledge was apparently already available to him, so how does that work? He just starts creating planets and galaxies with no experience. How does something create such complex, the most complex things possible, with no mind frame or former experience?

This is definitely a factor of a sentient god. God has to have some form of mind frame to create something, otherwise he's no more god than nature is god, and if natural law is god then it's basically atheism under the guise of deism.

ADDED DETAILS: What I'm basically saying is that we have two scenarios, either A) We share identical brain functions, thus our only influence is people around us, or B) We were born with different brain functions, thus we had no control over how we are going to react differently.

EXAMPLE: Everything is controlled by natural law (determinism), the best way to prove this is simple... if the universe was split into two, and the exact duplication of the universes led to all non-living matter to follow the same laws, would the universes be exactly identical? What is free will?  Free will is when certain neurons in your brain click. You make a choice, your brain makes a choice, now who/what made your brain?  god/nature did, therefore it manipulates it as it chooses.

Determinism Paradox (4/26/2008)
If we could re-create the starting conditions exactly of the creation of the universe and simulate them at any speed, you would create a paradox.  The simulation could see the full path of every event of the universe.  You would fast forward past the simulation machine being made in the recreation’s world and have the option of betraying that destiny, and so too would that world that all the simulations would have new paths.

“There is no free will, because every action you take is simply an automatic reaction your brain has formulated before you had time to think about it, and even those thoughts are just a reaction to what is present in your environment.” - 10/9/2010

OKCupid discussion (11/10/2011)
Hmm, I don't necessarily believe in destiny either. This is how I believe it works... man thinks he is separate from nature, that is how the distinction natural vs artificial is made, correct? Is a beaver dam more natural than a human building? Man thinks he is excluded from the rules of nature, he is mistaken. The laws of gravity, and the laws of motion hold true for man and the human brain. Chemicals in the brain are triggered through motion, of interaction with external objects, also on a pathway to their "destiny".

Only destiny doesn't mean any grand design, destiny is simply the only path the object of nature could take without defying the laws of nature, and thus becoming sorcery. Take, for instance, a rock. If you will it down a hill, is the path it travels destiny? Is it free will? I would say neither... every turn it takes is the interaction of wind and terrain and whatnot other external influences, that the human mind is too simple to calculate. But with enough knowledge, and with a strong enough calculator, any human's destiny can be mapped. Ironically though, if you present them with their destiny, does that not change it?

I suppose it is similar to a video game, in that if you have the opportunity to play again, you will make different choices given another play-through to see how things would have turned out. Sure, this option is available with new knowledge, but the map this machine carves out surely would be able to account for it's own influence, correct? It's kind of a paradox if you think about it.

OKCupid discussion continued (11/19/2011)
Well, what constitutes a man's environment? Is not his brain also a part of the environment? What do you actually control? Your mind told you it wanted to move a body part of yours, and then it did, and you think you made that decision, but you didn't... your brain made that decision for you. It's no different than a reflex, it's like a delayed reflex... a reflex with less urgency, but you autonomously did it all the same. If you had put your hand on a slightly hot surface (or any surface that was slightly uncomfortable), would you (your brain) not, more slowly, come to the conclusion that the surface was not a great place for your hand and move it away all the same?

Only this time, you had time to let the uncomfortableness sink in before you moved it. Your brain would have compulsively moved it all the same though, as it looks for the ideal spot where your body should be. To fight this urge, would be an annoyance to your brain, and the only reason you would fight this urge is to appease a bigger picture... such as when you want to make as little movement as possible. But, when this happens, there is a chemical battle in your head... comfort vs necessity of the situation, and one chemical has to win, but it may take time for your brain to decide on a course of action, thus resulting in your false sense of having a choice.

POSTED ON GAMEFAQS: Philosophy & Ethics board (9/12/2013)
Topic: What is the difference between a voluntary action and an involuntary one?
I mean in regards to free will, and by involuntary I don't mean spasms necessarily, or movement that is unnatural. What I mean is, why do we say we have control over our movement? Is it because the image of us moving a certain body part pops up into our head before we see it move? Obviously we don't act on every move in our head though, as some may be absurd or potentially risky, but our brain finally settles on one it likes and then this is mimicked in reality. Of course, we also have reflexes... do those also count as free volition? And I don't just mean things like closing and opening your eye and moving your hand back from a hot surface, but also muscle memory when we train ourselves to go through a certain set of motions in certain scenarios.

Is our body just moving on its own and we don't have a problem with it? As long as the body moves toward its goal, do we claim it as our own? It seems as if nature whispers the answer to us and we are that guy that says "Yep, that was my idea, I came up with it all on myself." But what does it mean to choose to move? How do I know I'm moving a certain part of my body or if nature is telling me ahead of time that it is going to move my body? Maybe the illusion of free will is a deal nature makes with us so that our consciousness doesn't freak out when the body starts moving separately from what the consciousness is thinking about. Instead of nature first issuing the command in the body, it goes to a middleman... your consciousness.

(9/13/2013) BigRedRacer response:
Greg, you seem to be describing a mind body dualism. I describe this view as the self being a passenger sitting in a car of a rollercoaster. I don't buy this view.

I think that the mind is a material thing in the sense that if it was possible to see the physical changes if the brain in enough detail, you could literally read their mind. What this means is that this mental activity is a physical thing that is part of the chain of cause and effect. Your consciousness matters to how you move. But that doesn't mean that your brain's activity is completely dedicated to your consciousness. The programmed motions are also happening in your brain, but because they are reliable in that they produce expected results, your consciousness is never alerted. That way your consciousness is freer to engage other interests.

The cortex is a prediction and verification machine.

(9/16/2013) My Response:
Aren't we both then? I kind of meant for my topic to be associated with determinism. I don't really consider myself a dualist, though I do consider actions outside of our consciousness to be something we really shouldn't be held responsible for. However, I also think that our consciousness when it lines up with what we want our actions to be is an example of free action, but not free will. The whole point is that our consciousness is pre-determined. So for example, some people say it isn't guns that kill people, it is people that kill people. However, you could argue that the bullet killed the person, the gun killed the person, the person killed the person, the person that hired that person killed the person, or I might even say that that person died because the course of objects in movement were set in motion a long time ago that this person was bound to die in this exact same way and it couldn't be prevented in the same way that hitting the rewind button on a remote control won't stop the character from dying in a movie.

But what does it mean to be the roller coaster? Maybe we are the roller coaster, but a roller coaster isn't in control of itself, it is controlled by a person operating the system. However, we are also the passenger through our consciousness. So it seems like an argument from semantics. My body may be moving, but so does the blood in my veins, but no one would say I have conscious control over that. So, it seems the onus is on the consciousness, because we believe that is the one area where we have control. But if life is a rail that can't be deviated from... what does it matter whether we are the roller coaster or whether we are sitting in it?

(9/16/2013) BigRedRacer response:
The point of the roller-coaster example is that the car interacts with the track. if you removed the track, would the coaster still follow the same path? If you damaged the wheels of the coaster, would the coaster still interact with the track in the same way?

The way you explain your perspective, it seems as if you could remove the consciousness from the body and the body would still move through space in a predetermined way. You are dismissing the the consciousness' role in the chain of cause and effect.

We recognize that in order to be held responsible in the way we hold people responsible for their actions, that the person needs to have functioning consciousness of a certain degree. We recognize the role the consciousness plays in cause and effect. That is why we don't hold children and the mentally incapacitated to the same degree of responsibility as a well functioning adult.

We are justified in holding a well functioning adult responsible for their actions because their actions follow from the factors, which include predicting the consequences of their actions, they use to weigh their options. A well functioning adult can appreciate the factors and consequences as they weigh their options, and a child and a mentally incapacitated adult cannot.

Punishment is a factor that the consciousness can appreciate. If a person can appreciate that they could be punished for their choice, then I don't see why the punishment shouldn't be applied.

Punishment is like the rails of the coaster. if you take the rails away, why would you think that the car would follow the same path?

(9/17/2013) My Response:
Ahh yes, sorry, I've been discussing free will so long I sometimes skip over details that I shouldn't. What I am trying to say is that consciousness to me is completely impossible to deviate from. When I say that there is no free will, what I basically mean is the similar to those rails of the rollercoaster. There is no deviating from that track. There isn't an alternate dimension where you make (or could have made) a different decision, because the tracks stay the same. I do agree punishment works for your consciousness, but I don't think that means we are in control. However, talking about "control" seems confusing and open to interpretation, so I like to use the metaphor for deviation from the tracks. Whether I am controlling the roller coaster or not, it will still take the same path that it has to take.

However, my current ramblings are more concerned with why we even think we have free will. When I talk about consciousness, I don't mean a mind separate from the body, but rather that both consciousness and body are out of our control. I assume dualism means that we control only the consciousness (and thus that is how we escape determinism) however, I am saying that we do not control either the consciousness or the body. We feel consciousness like we feel our body. We have thoughts pop into our mind like we have pains that pop into our arms and joints. We feel these things, but we didn't put them there. We act on them, but we do it almost by reflex. We can't deviate from the laws of nature.

(4-13-2014) Differences in Choice based on Character
It seems that ultimately every decision one makes has to come back to a character that one was endowed with that was out of their internally generated control.  For example if a pedophile asks a “normal” person why it is that he chose to have sex with a child and the other person didn’t, the answer of the normal person might be that the pedophile was a deviant.  And the pedophile could answer “Yes, I am, but did I choose to be a deviant?” and then if that normal person responds that it is true that he did choose that path, then the pedophile could ask “Well, why would I choose such a path?” or “Well, why is it that I chose that path and you didn’t?”

Does the normal person have a choice to be so immoral or so devious?  Maybe they lack the will to act on it, but maybe they fantasize about being able to do so.  Maybe the deviant feels compelled to act, but wishes very avidly that he could avoid it at all costs and views it as a curse and a nightmare.  If the pedophile sees no advantage to choosing the path of a pedophile, then why would he choose it?  Does he do it because he likes to be rebellious and live against the current or does he do it because he has the compulsion to do it or feels that it is the only way he can get any form of pleasure out of life?  If the immoral person wishes he could switch out his strings, and change his character, isn’t there some morality to that?  And if the moral person wishes he could switch his strings, and become evil, and doesn’t lack the will or intent but only the nature necessary, isn’t there some immorality to that?  Compatibilism is the belief that if you like your strings then you freely choose to keep them, but what if you don’t?

(6/13/2014) What may we have Pride in?
I remember discussing white pride VS black pride on a forums before, and usually someone will always ask, “What is the point in having pride in something out of your control?”  This also goes for the individual who claims pride for an accomplishment of a family member, whether it is a father figure who did something with his life, or your kid winning a trophy.  And sometimes we are more proud of people who have to accomplish things by hard work rather than by gift of being a natural at a given activity.  This makes me wonder though, because as a determinist, I have to believe that the gift of diligence as a character trait is just as much as a gift as being a natural.  You are a natural… a natural at being diligent.  It wouldn’t make sense to say that a person worked hard to gain the characteristic of working hard.  Should the courageous be praised more than the fearless?  But wasn’t courage imbued into the person just as being fearless was?  What is it we are valuing?  It can’t just be that we praise whoever suffers the most, because if the person who suffers doesn’t make something of it, we call this person a fool.

So, how can we call the person who cares for aesthetic beauty in a person, over intelligence or good character, shallow?  All of these are gifted to the people who received them.  Can I have pride in writing these philosophical insights I get down, when they just popped into my mind?  I didn’t work hard to come up with them, and even if I did, that hard work in crafting my words would have also been a gift from nature, but maybe with a bit more suffering.  Either we can have pride in things out of our control, or pride can be had in nothing.