At least here in the US, a person’s zip code of birth is a huge indicator of their success and life trajectory. That, to me, would seem to indicate that free will is bullshit.
Or in other words, “free will” is a macroscopic effect arising from the fundamental laws of the universe. Like most everything else we deal with.
Like… temperature doesn’t really exist, it’s really just an average of kinetic energy of particles. But that doesn’t stop it from being a useful concept!
Why are we better off behaving that way? Under that outlook, it seems like free will is a trap to hold people accountable for things they wouldn’t actually be responsible for.
It’s also very often used as an argument against rehabilitation in prisons:
If free will exists, then crime is a choice. If you choose crime, you are a bad person, and punishment is the only way forward.
If you commit the crime again, it’s because the punishment didn’t work, and/or because the person is simply bad, so a longer punishment is needed, and infinitum.
It’s also used to justify the death penalty, which would not make any sense in a deterministic universe.
My take is that there is no free will, but that this fact is irrelevant and we’re all better off just behaving as though we do.
At least here in the US, a person’s zip code of birth is a huge indicator of their success and life trajectory. That, to me, would seem to indicate that free will is bullshit.
Or in other words, “free will” is a macroscopic effect arising from the fundamental laws of the universe. Like most everything else we deal with.
Like… temperature doesn’t really exist, it’s really just an average of kinetic energy of particles. But that doesn’t stop it from being a useful concept!
Why are we better off behaving that way? Under that outlook, it seems like free will is a trap to hold people accountable for things they wouldn’t actually be responsible for.
It’s also very often used as an argument against rehabilitation in prisons:
If free will exists, then crime is a choice. If you choose crime, you are a bad person, and punishment is the only way forward.
If you commit the crime again, it’s because the punishment didn’t work, and/or because the person is simply bad, so a longer punishment is needed, and infinitum.
It’s also used to justify the death penalty, which would not make any sense in a deterministic universe.
Robert Sapolsky wrote a whole book on this based on this called Determined. I really enjoyed it and pretty much agree