Are there powerful arguments to counter fatalism?
How committed are you to countering fatalism with arguments?
For example, if it turned out that you could effectively reduce the temptation towards fatalism by means of a regular exercise program, a healthy diet, socializing more with friends, and/or making noticeable progress on projects you think are important... would that be acceptable, even if none of that provided you with arguments that you could articulate for why fatalism was false?
I wish I could upvote this comment more than once. This is something I've struggled with a lot over the past few months: I know that my opinions/decisions/feelings are probably influenced by these physiological/psychological things more than by my beliefs/worldview/rational arguments, and the best way to gain mental stability would be to do more yoga (since in my experience, this always works). Yet I've had trouble shaking my attachment to philosophical justifications. There's something rather terrifying about methods (yoga, narrative, etc.) that work on the subconscious, because it implies a frightening lack of control over our own lives (at least if one equates the self with the conscious mind). Particularly frightening to me has been the idea that doing yoga or meditation might change my goals, especially since the teachers of these techniques always seem to wrap the techniques in some worldview or other that I may dislike. Therefore, if I really believe in my goals, it is in my interest not to do these things, even though my current state of (lack of) mental health also prevents me from accomplishing my goals. But I do want to be mentally healthy, so I spent months trying...
Particularly frightening to me has been the idea that doing yoga or meditation might change my goals, especially since the teachers of these techniques always seem to wrap the techniques in some worldview or other that I may dislike.
Yesterday I was in a church, for a friend's wedding. I was listening to some readings from the Bible, about love (obviously 1 Cor 13) etc. I knew this was cherry-picking from a book that a few hundred pages sooner also describes how non-believers or people who violate some rule should be murdered. But still, the message was nice, and some of the people around me were my friends, so I felt good.
And this is what I thought: "The people who wrote these parts of the Bible were good people who tried their best at optimizing the world. They lived long before Science, they were ignorant and brainwashed about too many things, so of course many of their beliefs were wrong, and subsequently their followers did a lot of harm. But their intentions and emotions were similar to mine. Instead of thinking about them as my enemies, I should think about them as my predecessors; a homo sapiens neanderthalensis to homo sapiens sapiens. A few thousand years ago, they...
Ah, I see.
For my own part, I would agree that we are powerless to do anything other than what we are actually going to do.
So there are at least some versions of fatalism I think are true, and embrace.
But we are also ignorant of what that is going to be, and the process of considering alternatives and deciding what to do is part of the mechanism whereby we end up doing what we do.
As for what choices you have... we all experience lots of choices. Those experiences exist in our minds, just as the experiences of pleasure and pain and fear and love and etc. exist in our minds... there is nothing out there in the world outside our minds that is intrinsically lovable or frightening or painful or pleasurable or "choicey".
But that doesn't mean we don't have pleasure, pain, fear, love, or choice. We have all of those things. To say that my pleasure "isn't real" because it exists solely in my mind is to misunderstand the nature of pleasure; to say that my choices "aren't real" because they exist solely in my mind is to misunderstand the nature of choice.
I also accept that I am a physics
...I don't think you've fully accepted this, actually, because you also said:
Surely particles were going to do what they were going to do anyway regardless of whether I can determine the reason or not?
Yes, physics is everything. However, you are part of physics. You are those particles. So you should consider yourself as involved in the "decision" about what the future will be.
Take your naive intuitions about "souls" and about how they make decisions. Souls don't just do things randomly right? There is a method and reason to what they choose. They don't just think and feel things randomly - there is a rhyme and reason to it all. That's always been easy to naively accept, right?
The only thing to realize is that those methods and reasons of making decisions, and the feelings and thoughts, are constructed out of the same particles that construct the objects around you.
If it satisfies your dualist intuitions any, rest assured that there is one and a quarter inch of very sturdy bone separating your soul from the rest of physics. For the most part, decisions aren't particularly influenced by anything outside your head, other than useful information about the world around you. So the naive view of free will (regular decision making, only somehow separate from normal physics) is fine for all practical purposes, anyway
Does that make sense / help?
I have depressive tendencies and have noticed having pessimistic ideas about the universe has nothing to do with evidence. Fatalism and compatibilism are both different, I'd say emotional, interpretations of the same evidence, so does picking either one really have anything to do with arguments?
It's better to pick interpretations that make you happier, if you don't have evidence either way. If you want to be emotionally neutral, don't pick any interpretation. You don't need fatalism or compatibilism for anything, they're really not beliefs that do any useful ontological work.
If you're generally tired, you should see a doctor so that common physical causes can be ruled out.
No matter what, I try to get quality sleep. If I'm sleep deprived, I'm absolutely useless. This is easily the number one thing far above others.
The other lowest hanging fruit for me roughly in order are: avoiding alcohol and recreational drugs, work and other kinds of mental exercise, social interaction, SSRIs, basic breath meditation, physical exercise, eating healthy, some caffeine and low dose nicotine. Improving your life situation in various mundane ways should work too, like gjm pointed out.
I try to avoid free thinking and interaction when I'm tired, which is usually in the evening. That's when I'm the most vulnerable to being moody and confrontational and making the kinds of mistakes that haunt me afterwards, or getting racing thoughts on stupid shit that doesn't really matter. I probably have other useful habits I'm not even aware of that I've developed over the years.
I recommend you study and experiment with yourself and try to make a habit of the things that work and ditch the stuff that doesn't. Reaping the rewards can take some time, so try to be patient. You can't improve everything at once, but every good decision makes the next good decision easier.
Your future is completely controlled by the universe. Coincidentally, though, you are an important part of the universe. All the things that mystics might ascribe to souls and spirits - your ability to make decisions, your modeling and prediction of the outside world, your values and desires - are stored in physical patterns in the universe.
So when we say "your future is completely controlled by the universe," this can also be read as "your future is at least partly controlled by you."
However I can't seem to figure out a way of reconciling my current understanding of those ideas with the idea that I'm in control of my future.
What you do is part of what is determining the future. If you were otherwise, and thereby did otherwise, the outcome would be different. That's what freedom is - to have the future determined by who and what you are. What else could it be?
What does it mean when I say "I'm in control of my future"?
Here's a plausible translation: "Certain facts about my future depend on my present (and past) decisions and actions".
Let's try breaking this down further. What does it mean for a future fact to depend on my actions or decisions?
Well, I think it means that certain counterfactuals of the form "If I hadn't performed action X, then event Y would not have happened" are true. Example: If I hadn't applied to a Ph.D. program, I would not be writing my dissertation.
So now t...
Maybe you're not in control of your future, meaning you have real practical problems that you prefer not to address.
One formulation of the incoherency about free will is that physical laws are descriptive rather than normative. If the physics would suddenly behave diffrently (false vacuums or anything previously undiscovered) it's the law in error and there is no blaming the matter as being "naughty". In the same way when you are deciding how to act the law itself isn't working as a cause in it. They are not human laws. Your freedom is not reduced by any obression.
from wikipedia: "Determinists generally agree that human actions affect the future but that ...
Move something eye-catching into an odd place where you'll see it shortly after waking up in the morning. Whenever you see it say to yourself, "I put that there."
I have a question:
Let's suppose that you make the decision to improve yourself in some way (e.g. quit smoking, lose weight, get in shape, etc.) and by dint of careful study; planning; and effort you succeeded -- despite a lot of psychological obstacles. Let's suppose further that your success was a bit of a surprise to your friends, family, and even to yourself.
Would you take that as evidence that you have a good deal of control over your destiny? Or would you feel that even the high level internal process which guided your efforts were inevitable even if difficult for even you to foresee?
Fatalism would require eveything-is-physics + physics-is-deterministic. The latter is open to dispute.
The human mind is an incredibly powerful and really weird contraption. If it believes something to be true, then it almost bends reality to make it so. This is most easily demonstrated with the placebo effect -- which works, even if patients know it's a placebo. Buddhist monks can alter their body temperature through meditation. Athletes can train for years in order to achieve superhuman levels of strength.
Unfortunately, that power works both ways -- if you believe that you're incapable of something, you will fail, even if you're otherwise capable. Most p...
As an update, I've read the the Free Will Solution sequence. It doesn't seem like there is any punchline to the sequences, I'm found the area of timeless physics interesting but I'm not sure how it helps. I don't think I'm any better off intellectually from the sequences.
Dear LessWrongers
I've been struggling a bit with the idea of fatalism or at least I keep find myself slipping that direction.To be clear the only reason I use the word fatalism is because of it's dictionary definition. I have not allegiance to the concept. Are there powerful arguments to counter fatalism? I've read the sequence about dissolving the question about free will for example, i.e. I understand how the question itself(have I free will?) is incoherent. I.e. free from what?
I also accept that I am a physics and that my cognition and subjective experience are more than adequately accounted for by non mysterious understandings of the evolution of life. However I can't seem to figure out a way of reconciling my current understanding of those ideas with the idea that I'm in control of my future. Maybe I already have the answer and haven't got the corresponding affective/emotional state which is not an unprecedented problem for me.
My biggest fear is that for me to believe that my future is not set that I'm going to take on some irrational silly belief? Can anybody give some useful algo's for thinking about this in a coherent, detached from desire way?
One thing that I've heard is that physics is non-deterministic but I always thought that had to do with the observer. Surely particles were going to do what they were going to do anyway regardless of whether I can determine the reason or not?
Thanks for reading,
Laoch