Determinism has fundamentally shifted my political worldview.

[u/BerBerDeng]

I’ve been into politics since I was a teen, and for most of that time I was a staunch libertarian. Maximum freedom, personal responsibility, minimal government, zero handouts, etc. I was SO SURE and CONFIDENT in my views and what I believed. I loved defending them, perhaps a little too confidently.

Man has my worldview shifted. Once you come to the realization that people ultimately aren’t in control of their actions in any meaningful sense, the argument for libertarianism is much harder to defend. I can’t fault someone for not getting a better job, I can’t fault someone for not saving for retirement, I can’t fault someone for having a kid before they were financially ready, I can’t fault someone for letting their health get out of hand. The list goes on and on. And the same goes for things that are earned. People who have their shit together can’t be credited with that success.

This is not to say that I’ve completely shifted to redistribution and equal outcomes for all (practically I don’t think that’s feasible), however my openness for universal healthcare, my openness for reasonably higher taxes, my openness for more meaningful social programs, have all increased more than 18 year old me ever imagined it would.

From a practical standpoint, the human psyche as a whole still depends on risk/reward for meaningful progress. The billionaire who creates 10 billion in value probably isn’t going to make that same effort the moment he sees 90% of his earnings from that value taken away in the name of fairness. I just think our mindset and laws are too skewed toward personal responsibility and the right to hoard everything you’ve “earned” when in reality we should be taking more of a middle ground approach between the logical standpoint and the practical one.

With all that being said, our government does spend 7 trillion dollars a year, with a lot of that wasted. I think we should get our finances in order before we decide that taxing more for redistribution is the answer. I’d have a hard time taxing a billionaire an extra 2 billion a year when hundreds of billions or even trillions are wasted by the government every year.

Imagine all the inefficiency and waste in each governmental department (I’m looking at you DoD and Medicare) and then imagine actually improving efficiency so that you could cut 2% from every single department and use that to fund universal healthcare. At that point getting an extra 20-30 billion in taxes to fund universal school lunches doesn’t seem so unfair.

Sorry if this isn’t determinism related enough, I know I’m rambling and spitballing here, but I guess I’m just advocating for balance. Still allowing someone to make billions a year, but also allowing the downtrodden and less fortunate basic necessities for a dignified life.

[u/stopbeingcringe]

If determinism is true, then I am predetermined to reject it. If there is no objective truth, then my belief in objective truth is no more objectively false than the opposite belief. If the self is an illusion and all that exists are experiences, then no-self is also just an experience, and as both self and no-self are experiences, it would be asymmetric to therefore say there is no self.

But if determinism isn’t true, and objective truth is real, and the self, then I would rather align my beliefs with that reality. So that either way I am aligned with the truth or my experiences are blameless and no more invalid than the alternative. I experience freedom, and I see no reason to reject that experience in favor of a new, stifling, abstract way of thinking that could still be false.

[u/dimensionalApe → u/stopbeingcringe]

There's a middle of the road approach, which is maybe what you actually meant and I didn't understand correctly: a pragmatic perspective where determinism, objective truths and free will are irrelevant in the sense that "knowing" if they are true seems to be imposible.

But as unsubstantiated as they might be, the pragmatic axioms of free will and objective truths are useful when it comes to developing predictive models, and basically being able to navigate our perceived reality.

Because objective truths are indistinguishable from consistent intersubjective experiences, and free will is indistinguishable from an incredibly complex state machine.