RE: Why we don't have the controversial kind of free will, why it's okay, and why it's important - part 2 of 2
It takes courage to acknowledge the truth that humans are almost ...automatons with no free will. The only reason most humans can't comprehend it, is because the number of parameters to factor is so large that it's convenient to discard as chaotic.
Obviously, as you point out, the lack of free-will has extensions in politics, economy, justice etc. But to implement any form of change you'd have to ...convince the masses who still think there is free will!
On a more "positive" note, the possibility of free will exists if we go through the unification theory of simulation. However that free will would have to "originate" from outside our simulation - the level where this reality was programmed and the level where our "spirit"-self controls this avatar. At that level there is the potential to break the "closed-loop" of the avatar (our human self) and its environment feedback loop.
Thanks again for your thoughts @alexgr!
"Almost"?!
Yeah, it's an uphill battle - but so was abolitionism. "The philosophy of one century is the commonsense of the next."
Interesting thought ... but I don't see how that would work. It seems whatever's outside the simulation - the "spirit-self" - is subject to just this same trouble. As Peter van Inwagen argues, it seems impossible for even angels to have free will.
I say "almost" because there is a way to break the closed feedback loop of this reality's chain of stimuli and reactions.
It would work like this: All our thoughts and actions within this reality domain are 100% deterministic, as one triggers the other etc etc. At some point, if say, new stimuli originates from outside this reality domain, the deterministic results are upset because an "uncertainty" has been introduced.
This can be as simple as having an intuition or a prophetic dream which was communicated from our "higher" / "spirit" self, which then shifts our actions to new directions - which are still deterministic reactions to our stimuli. But in the act of even having that intuition, the chain of equations that was predicting behavior is then broken because the "anomaly" was introduced and suddenly the end result changed to something different.
It would be pretty difficult to ascertain what is the state of affairs in the higher-order reality beyond this virtual reality because we have no idea how it works and if it can likewise experience a similar intervention from above (if it is in itself another virtual reality within a virtual reality). We can speculate though.