Korean Job Discussion Forums

[pest2]

I think we have free will. Some people have better choices than others, though... depends on your circumstances.

[Grimalkin]

We have the illusion of free will but it's only an illusion.


This can be seen by the rather narrow range of motivations that unlie all human behaviour.

[venus]

Or are both free will and fate arbitary ideas on the opposite ends of a polarised spectrum created by humans but have no actual existence in the universe at all....?

Why does no-one ever ask that huh?

[mikowee]

I like to think that I have free will. But I also think it may be possible to calculate the future actions of an individual given complete knowledge of their genetics, experiences and the environmental conditions to which they will be subjected.

In other words, if you thoroughly know the individual and can control the inputs, the output can be predicted fairly accurately.

I think the question you have to ask is: if you were able to relive any period of your past any number of times, given the exact same circumstances each time, would you always repeat one path, or would there be instances of deviation? Kind of like the movie Groundhog Day sans the feeling of deja vu. I believe that somebody, anybody under those conditions would repeat the same path every time. In that sense, I believe in fate.

[trubadour]

As luck would have it for the OP, this passage from a masterpeice may hold the answer:




Had Napoleon not taken offense at the demand that he should withdraw beyond the Vistula, and not ordered his troops to advance, there would have been no war; but had all his sergeants objected to serving a second term then also there could have been no war. Nor could there have been a war had there been no English intrigues and no Duke of Oldenburg, and had Alexander not felt insulted, and had there not been an autocratic government in Russia, or a Revolution in France and a subsequent dictatorship and Empire, or all the things that produced the French Revolution, and so on. Without each of these causes nothing could have happened. So all these causes- myriads of causes- coincided to bring it about. And so there was no one cause for that occurrence, but it had to occur because it had to. Millions of men, renouncing their human feelings and reason, had to go from west to east to slay their fellows, just as some centuries previously hordes of men had come from the east to the west, slaying their fellows.

The actions of Napoleon and Alexander, on whose words the event seemed to hang, were as little voluntary as the actions of any soldier who was drawn into the campaign by lot or by conscription. This could not be otherwise, for in order that the will of Napoleon and Alexander (on whom the event seemed to depend) should be carried out, the concurrence of innumerable circumstances was needed without any one of which the event could not have taken place. It was necessary that millions of men in whose hands lay the real power- the soldiers who fired, or transported provisions and guns- should consent to carry out the will of these weak individuals, and should have been induced to do so by an infinite number of diverse and complex causes.

We are forced to fall back on fatalism as an explanation of irrational events (that is to say, events the reasonableness of which we do not understand). The more we try to explain such events in history reasonably, the more unreasonable and incomprehensible do they become to us.

Each man lives for himself, using his freedom to attain his personal aims, and feels with his whole being that he can now do or abstain from doing this or that action; but as soon as he has done it, that action performed at a certain moment in time becomes irrevocable and belongs to history, in which it has not a free but a predestined significance.

There are two sides to the life of every man, his individual life, which is the more free the more abstract its interests, and his elemental hive life in which he inevitably obeys laws laid down for him.

Man lives consciously for himself, but is an unconscious instrument in the attainment of the historic, universal, aims of humanity. A deed done is irrevocable, and its result coinciding in time with the actions of millions of other men assumes an historic significance. The higher a man stands on the social ladder, the more people he is connected with and the more power he has over others, the more evident is the predestination and inevitability of his every action.

"The king's heart is in the hands of the Lord."

A king is history's slave.

History, that is, the unconscious, general, hive life of mankind, uses every moment of the life of kings as a tool for its own purposes.

Though Napoleon at that time, in 1812, was more convinced than ever that it depended on him, verser (ou ne pas verser) le sang de ses peuples[ "to shed (or not to shed) the blood of his peoples"]- as Alexander expressed it in the last letter he wrote him- he had never been so much in the grip of inevitable laws, which compelled him, while thinking that he was acting on his own volition, to perform for the hive life- that is to say, for history- whatever had to be performed.[/b]





from War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy.

[CasperTheFriendlyGhost]

As far as I know, (newtonian and quantum) mechanics doesn't take into consideration consciousness. Without any serious combination of the two into one unified theory, the idea of fate or predestination, seems to be more or less vauge notions of religion and ingrained pessimism. My two cents anyway.

[Damulgun]

did you guys ever watch Matrix 2?

I think the frenchman said it all. Cause and effect happens.... but things do happen to us because of people with power and or money...

[ddeubel]

I have no choice but to say NO.

DD

[Qinella]

[Saxiif]

[SuperFly]

There is no such thing as destiny, only the choices we make.

Who wrote this?

"Be sure your sin will find you out."

[Qinella]

[arjuna]

...

[SuperFly]

[venus]

Actually - we just live. Even the experience of analysing our experience is experiential.

The question of fate vs free will is only a method of analyzing or evaluating life outside of experience (objectively.)

Thus it is irrelevant whether or not we have free will or everything is fated as all we (the ones experienceing, living the life) can do is make the decisions we want to make and experience them, which of course is where our choice lies...

And the ideas of fate or determinism are merely analytical windows or lenses if you like for looking at a life after it or from outside of it.

Remember, right now - you are IN IT! You are feeling it and calling the shots.