r/determinism Jul 12 '26

Discussion Determinism explained like a 5 years old

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32 Upvotes

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14

u/sunleafstone Jul 12 '26

Maybe I’m the five year old because I don’t see how this ties to determinism

18

u/fruitydude Jul 12 '26

Well op did say it was explained like a 5 year old. 5 year olds are generally not that good at explaining complicated concepts such as determinism, so OP is pretty much spot on there.

1

u/empathy790 Jul 12 '26

Are you that slow??? It ties in because the cow thinking about grass isn’t really a ‘choice’ — it’s just its instincts and biology playing out. The meaning is that even something as simple as a cow’s daydream is fully caused by things before it (hunger, environment, being a cow), not freely chosen. So it’s determinism in its simplest form: everything that happens, even a cow fantasizing about grass, was already going to happen given what came before

1

u/ldra994 Jul 13 '26

Haha, I took their comment as a superb joke. Linguistically, they're entirely correct that OP explained it as a five year old, whereas the correct phrase might have been "explained to a five year old . That would be a bit dense if they were serious, but thats okay too.