You are nothing but a program

The problem with your proposition is that it is not sufficient to account for the varieties of behavior that we witness in people.


Suppose you were correct and there is no 'ghost in the machine'. That would mean that the machine was actually knowable if we were able to build a computer that could monitor all of the chemicals and activity through nanodetectors or some such. We then ask you to choose which movie to watch out of a choice of three. Our system tells us that you are going to choose movie number 1, and you do. We do this hundreds of times with hundreds of people and are able to predict with 100% accuracy which movie they will select (assuming perfect knowledge of the 'computer')


Now suppose that after we have determined which movie you were going to select, we tell you what your choice was. Would you be able to simply choose another movie to spite the test? I think so.


I tend to think that your brain is a programable chemical and electrical computer, but that that computer has an operator which comes into being within it.

 

But what does that honestly change? You're simply adding one more variable into the equation, which may make predicting one's action much more difficult (impossible, even) but it doesn't really change the fact that all your choices are merely the result of events which precede it.

 

Because the factor I am referring cannot be part of the equation as it is capable of acting irrationally.


Saying that your choices are the result of events that precede them is a circular argument.


You are hardly the first to wrestle with this; modern science cannot give us an answer. There appears to be no falsifiable hypothesis that can account for the will of mankind through strict determinism.

 

There are two ways of looking at this issue. You guys are currently discussing one of them.

1st Scenario (Yours). OP has accurately described our make up, but then people's behavior was brought into consideration. If we consider them to be separate, then the current conversation happens. "just adds another variable..."

2nd Scenario (Mine) What if everything you said about our make up is 100% accurate but only 50% of the total equation? Just because we may have identified how our machinery operates, by no means have we the slightest idea what our endgame might be. No one has the slightest clue how deep this rabbit hole actually goes.

You can be an ill constructed biological life form, AND at the same time be on a path for godhood. We certainly have the potential.

 

Before Consciousness I was alive. After Death I was alive. In the mean time, I'll think about it.

 

Consciousness, to the level humans exhibit, is special. Nothing else in our known universe exhibits it to that level, so strictly from a rarity perspective it distinguishes itself from the world around it.

This is not to be confused with "We're conscious, therefore we are guaranteed success and prosperity". Awareness in the wrong circumstances can be brutal, hence the ever so popular phrase "Ignorance is bliss".

However, if one is to successfully create a microcosm for one's personal existence, it seems logical that an accurate sense of consciousness and awareness would be beneficial. You want to know what makes you tick, what your likes and dislikes are, before crafting a life for yourself, or your species. Operating on consciousness rather than mere instinct is the more prudent choice to any endeavor.


Godhood and endgame: I wouldn't presume to have the slightest idea on what the absolute end-all endgame for humanity is, but considering our technological advancements even over just the past 50 years, it seems blatantly obvious that we have the potential to do things that so far, in literature, have been attributed to gods. From saving lives, to prolonging them, to potentially achieving immortality itself one day, human progress on the medical front alone has been impressive and ever more intriguing.

Within the upcoming decade we are looking to put people on Mars. If we don't blow ourselves up first, who knows what other worlds we will be populating within the next century. As the tech continues to improve, humanity can become a force in teraforming new planets and creating entire ecosystems. Our work in the field of genetics already has us "playing god" here on Earth, right now, according to dissenters.


In short, unless we suffer an extinction level event, based on the advancement we have already put forth, there is no limit to how far we potentially could go.

 

Feels like free will vs determinism.. and I've never been an either or type person. To me, it is free will AND determinism.. so I see us as programs programmed with free will. My thoughts on consciousness and free will are that they are one in the same and a product of evolution.. and a primitive one at that.

Back when life was evolving.. along came the neuron. To me, this is when subconscious life evolved. Before that, with single celled organisms and plants, basically any life without a neural net or nervous system, would be unconscious life. Anyway, as neural systems evolved.. there needed to be a 3rd party neural system. Neurons responsible for taking in the information from all the subconscious systems and issuing an order for them to follow that doesn't interfere with one another. That, to me, is consciousness/free will. The ability to override subconscious processes in favor for the whole. Nothing special or unique about it.. pretty much any organism that has a central mass of neurons responsible for coordinating other neural systems has consciousness.. and with humans, it is just a complex mess on top of a very simple evolutionary mechanism. Without it, complex life wouldn't be able to live as there will always be subconscious processes that interfere or supersede other subconscious processes when an organism has more than like 2 or 3 neural responsibilities.

 

Privileged beings that we are alive and thinking, we humans can contemplate our own existence. That in itself gives rise to creation and hence, creations.

 

Control is a theory of dominance. At one point, subconscious behaviors controlled the rate of population growth. Now we curb said growth via systematic control. But does the system have the control, or do the operators control the system already established?


Time travel would work if we could erase our own existence and start over.

 

Not sure if not finished.. lol, but that is just my view on it all. I don't believe in much.. don't believe in a soul, religions, God, afterlife.. but freewill is there, to me. I know some people who lack belief as I do see freewill as a religious thing, but I see it as an evolutionary thing. It happens with other things too.. like the "mind" as in apart from the brain/nervous system. Religious people absorb a word, such as freewill, into their religion and then try to make a claim to it.. which can put off the non religious.

That's not saying that you are in control of everything.. the majority of your actions and even your thoughts are subconscious, and our consciousness/freewill accounts for very little, but it is there to shape our subconscious. Without it, we'd have way too many subconscious actions being enacted through a variety of determining factors that contradict and will probably result in no action.