JobseekersHave you gone down any rabbit holes that gave you an existential crisis?
Free will.
It's hard to accept, but free will is just not compatible with reality. It's like geocentrism. It seems obvious on its face because of our limited perspective, but nothing else in the universe makes sense if it's true. We live in a mechanistic universe and cause and effect doesn't suddenly stop when the atoms are part of a human.
I freaked out for about a week once I came to realize how much of our society is based on a scientific impossibility. Redesigning justice, ethics, healthcare, the very concept of blame, etc. to account for this is a daunting fucking task.
Here’s the thing, though: it’s doesn’t matter if free will is real or not.
WeirdmusicWell, it does if our entire justice system is based around the concept of free will.
That also does not matter. Spinozan Determinism can be summed up as:
“If it could have happened any other way, it would have.”
Yup. Determinism doesn’t actually change anything-- but it tricks people into thinking it does by giving them permission to remove all meaning from the world. You can accomplish the same thing by believing in nihilism.