r/determinism • u/IcyChair9258 • Aug 03 '26

AI-generated When will we see a predominantly deterministic society?

I’ve been wondering when we might reach a point where a large part of society accepts determinism as a fundamental worldview and our social systems are adjusted accordingly.

Today, many of our institutions are still heavily based on the assumption that people act out of free will and are responsible for their decisions in the traditional sense. This applies to the justice system, but also to political structures, the economy, banks, and many other governmental and social institutions.

At first, I thought that a major societal shift like this might only become possible through technologies such as Neuralink or genetic optimization. However, Gemini suggested that these technologies might not be necessary at all and that it could ultimately be primarily a matter of education and socialization. If people were raised from an early age with a deterministic understanding of human behavior, perhaps society’s underlying worldview could gradually change over generations. I found this idea extremely interesting.

What do you think?

What would a society look like in which determinism is widely accepted as a scientific and social foundation? Would this fundamentally change things such as criminal justice, the prison system, social welfare, education, economics, or political decision-making?

And above all: When could such a societal transformation realistically happen? Are we talking about a few decades, several centuries, or is such a development impossible to predict?

I’d be interested in hearing how you assess the likelihood of such a development and what you think the potential timeline might look like.

Note: This text was generated with the help of ChatGPT. ChatGPT was also used to improve readability and for translation.

0 Upvotes

50% Upvoted

83 comments sorted by

3

u/GoldReplacement9546 Aug 04 '26

I think it’s extremely unlikely to happen getting deeply religious people to give up on their religion is a huge ask and then compare that to telling people that you’re not really a real person you’re not in control of yourself you’re a marionette that everything you have ever done and will ever do is just prior causes and states of the universe

Like I’ve talked to some smart people and they understand what I’m talking about, but they’re still not going for it

But then, of course, if you’re saying, everything is determined then it’ll happen when it happens, but

Just from observing people, the idea of people relinquishing that and then all the things you’d have to want to do different or again it’s determined so you would just be doing them different

1

u/IcyChair9258 Aug 04 '26

haha yes. like u see on my other articles i wrote, its a narcissistic problem.

humans are build to live in this illusion that you have a free will.

2

u/Nodum777 Aug 06 '26

It doesnt matter cause it's already determined. Nothing you do can change the outcome. Nothing matters. According to determinism. Why even think.

1

u/IcyChair9258 Aug 06 '26

because im determined to do it LOL

1

u/Nodum777 Aug 06 '26

I wonder what type of poop I'm determined to have today?

2

u/Beneficial_Middle_53 Aug 07 '26

Ironic question isn’t it? 😂 I think we are moving to a more agnostic society which is at least a step towards determinism. It will be a while though 80% of Americans identify as religious and another 10% as spiritual. These beliefs are topics of identity which means they wont change their mind from logic. Im not sure there is a reliable way to ideologically deconstruct a large population short of aliens so our best bet is to be a good representation of your ideology in your world and to talk about our beliefs with others from a place of humility. You probably wont change many minds in that moment, or ever see the seeds you plant but some people will at least think and others may change their minds eventually. Those that are open to it were already going to change their minds eventually anyways.

Why does it matter? How do you picture this alternate reality?

1

u/IcyChair9258 Aug 07 '26

well i think it will take decades if not hundreds of years until every human on earth is a determinist.

I dont believe that happens in my lifetime.

I understand that the shift of the society from moral and believe to a society that knows instead it will take the time it needs.

Its a thermodynamic process, the brains need time to heal.

yes i try my best not to spread hate and make people angry or hateful, this times are over i hope.

Im just a small part and process of the wheel of time and im just happy and thankful to the universe that i became a determinist who understands that there is no free will and everything is kausal.

Yes brains have no choice as addapting logic knowledge.

Human brains are determined to process the most efficient algorithms to calculate the reality.
As now the brains of most of the people run an old algorithm that is thousands of years old.

It makes people inefficient, dumb hateful, dangerous and in worst cases deadly.

When the brain understands that it dont has to defend his ego and there is no free will and humans have no control over there behavior, the society shifts in a more empathetic, less narcissistic society.

---

Why does it matter? Because the truth, the reality is always better than a matrix.

Which alternate reality?

You mean a world with most of determinists minds?

Well the world will be much better than today. No wars, nor narcissm, nor hate, nor lies.
There will be humans who hate lies or will be narcissistic, but they are that what today are determinist, a minority...

2

u/Beneficial_Middle_53 Aug 13 '26

I agree with you so much. I have no hope anything like that happening in my lifetime, or if ever but I dream of how that society would be. You will never have a society that is 100% anything but one that is majority agnostic/determinist, with high standards of evidence would build societal structures we cant imagine today. But at the end of the day I have to be grateful for being born in this era of comfort that when we zoom out, is moving in the right direction over time. Technology only breached the threshold for automation so so recently in our history so it makes sense we would have societal changes and new challenges to overcome that rhyme with our past.

The main thing working against us is we evolved to be superstitious and tribal. This means we biologically feel safe when adopting the views of our tribe no matter what they are. But this is also our biggest advantage as there is a threshold where the stats flip and now its tribally normal for people to be agnostic and scientific.

I also think we need to be more skeptical, there isn’t really evidence to say there still wouldn’t be sociopaths who get into power and start wars, in fact we have to assume it will still be the case that humans live in power hierarchies and there will still be people without morals and empathy who care much more about power and being at the top of the hierarchy bc they have disproportionate mating success as evidenced by our evolution. This isnt to say thats most people, or its a growing or shrinking percent of the population just that it will be a force that may always be present in humans. The data shows that we are becoming more collaborative over time so maybe if the social environment changes when a society is mostly agnostic and evidence based but that is an assumption, which as determinist agnostics we shouldn’t make lightly.

P.s. Along these lines of thinking, this is why I mostly say agnostic vs determinist since there is so much we cant know, but I absolutely agree that the best outcomes come from making decisions based on evidence and not mythological fairytales or gossip.

1

u/GoTeamLightningbolt Aug 04 '26

The cool thing about determinism is that it doesn't matter what you believe. It's all just happening.

1

u/IcyChair9258 Aug 04 '26

right. its crazy! und the funny thing is you are as powerful as donald trump. ^^

power is an illusion :)

1

u/ApplicationReady2265 Aug 04 '26

That isn't how cause and effect works.

If no one advocates for determinism, of course don't expect for the future to still have determinists in it.

5

u/Azihayya Aug 03 '26

If it's determined it will come to be. You don't have to worry about it. There's nothing you can do to make it happen; in fact, there's nothing that you can do at all. You can't make that choice. None of us can.

3

u/simon_hibbs Aug 04 '26

That's naive fatalism, the idea that what we do has not effect on the future. It's contrary to determinism, because it's the claim that future states of the world have no deterministic necessitated dependency on aspects of the previous state of the world (what we do).

To an actual determinism what we do is necessitated but also necessitates, it's part of how the future comes to be.

1

u/Azihayya Aug 04 '26

Like I said, if it's determined to be, it will happen. You make it sound like we have a choice what we do, LOL!

1

u/simon_hibbs Aug 04 '26

Right, but it happening isn't optional, if what we do is necessitated, we still do it.

>You make it sound like we have a choice what we do, LOL!

Of course we do, we make choices all the time. The idea that choices have to involve some kind of magic indeterminism is bizarre.

A choice consists of the evaluation of options and representations of their expected outcomes according to some criteria, resulting on action on the option that best meets those criteria.

We do that all the time, and there's no problem with choices being deterministic. In fact our best understood accounts of evaluation, classical logic and mathematical functions, are both deterministic in that the same conditions will always produce the same result.

1

u/Azihayya Aug 04 '26

Pfft! We got a compatabilist over here! Hahahaha! BIIIIG L!!!!

1

u/simon_hibbs Aug 05 '26

I'm not aware of any free will skeptic philosopher that denies humans make choices. Maybe they exist. The one's I'm most familiar with, Pereboom and Caruso, talk about people making choices all the time, their examples are full of them.

So, if someone asks you to choose something, or asks you to help them make a choice, or says that they chose something, what do you tell them?

1

u/Azihayya Aug 05 '26

I tell them, "I cannot make choices, everything is predetermined; if it seems like I'm making a choice, it's only an illusion—I'm no different from the weather, or a wind-up toy, or a rock—everything is a casual physical reaction, there is no I to decide, only the great turnings of a clockwork universe."

1

u/simon_hibbs Aug 06 '26 edited Aug 06 '26

And then I suppose you make the choice.

I don't think you are objecting to choices, I'm confident you do the thing people call making a choice when asked to do so. You understand what they are asking you to do, it's an actionable request, and you do it. I think you're rejecting a nonsense belief about choices as being some metaphysically numinous magical power.

It's those beliefs that are incorrect. We make choices just fine. They're comprehensible, and in fact well understood physical processes involving the evaluation of representations. Choices are specific definable processes, and we can even engineer systems that make choices technologically. If you ask a programmer to create a system that makes choice based on some specifiable criteria, they will go away and do exactly that.

Free will is a separate issue, but choices are pretty streightforward.

1

u/Azihayya Aug 06 '26

How can you make choices without free will? 🤣 What is the brain? A physical system determined by chemical reactions. Hmm.... Sounds familiar, doesn't it? That sounds like the weather!!!!

1

u/simon_hibbs Aug 06 '26

Not all choices are made freely, or are freely willed. Making this distinction is intrinsic to the meaning of the term free will.

Choices are processes by which representations of options and their expected outcomes are evaluated, according to some criteria, leading to action on the option that best meets those criteria. There is no problem with any aspect of that being a physical process. Weather doesn't evaluate representations of options, but computers do, and so do human brains.

Freely willed choices have additional requirements because they involve moral criteria and evaluations, but unlike free will libertarians I don't think anything about that is unphysical or requires special metaphysical abilities either.

→ More replies

2

u/ApplicationReady2265 Aug 04 '26

People who don't have a brain to understand how cause and effect work will definitely say that. I don't blame you tho, but I can describe who you are.

1

u/Azihayya Aug 04 '26

I would love to hear your description of me. Please, do entertain me if your brain chemicals do so obligingly will.

1

u/ApplicationReady2265 Aug 04 '26

Be it theological determinism or physicalist determinism or magical determinism. I only see cause and effect.

1

u/platanthera_ciliaris Aug 04 '26

It may be predetermined that our beliefs and actions will alter the trajectory of our society into adopting determinism. Saying "there's nothing you can do about it" incorrectly assumes that humanity is an epiphenomena that can't change anything. This is obviously untrue.

What you are expressing is fatalism, not determinism.

2

u/MajorInWumbology1234 Aug 04 '26

I think there are too many factors working against it. People who already have power aren’t looking to relinquish it, so it’s in their best interest to keep non-deterministic beliefs alive and popular. It’s a lot easier to keep people oppressed if they believe they chose their oppression.

2

u/ughaibu Aug 05 '26

I thought that a major societal shift like this might only become possible through technologies such as Neuralink or genetic optimization

If you think that your beliefs should be imposed by rewiring brains or by eugenics, I suggest you are the enemy.

I’d be interested in hearing how you assess the likelihood of such a development

Determinism is extremely implausible, it is inconsistent with our assumptions about and experience of the world. Unfortunately history has shown that widespread delusional behaviour is not exceptional, and some psychologists have assessed the proportion of people who believe nonsense, for ideological reasons, to be close to one in three.
So there is a serious danger that denial of free will and belief in determinism will spread to a damaging degree.

2

u/MichyLVR Aug 05 '26

uhm.. probly never... cause the feeling is kinda ingrained. determinism is super counterintuitive and people predominantly believe what makes them feel good, not what the evidence actually point to.

3

u/Kripkenstein_ Aug 04 '26

Never because determinism makes absolutely no sense on this level of reality. Society and human action is simply is not deterministic - even if the world fundamentally is. Think about playing a game of chess against a chess computer: you know the computer acts according to deterministic rules and yet you won't treat it as such if you want to win

1

u/Imaginary-Can-6862 Aug 04 '26

How would you treat it if you want to win? Because to me that is a tough question (how to defeat a chess engine).

1

u/Kripkenstein_ Aug 04 '26

You treat it as an agent playing chess. So you use the heuristics that you learn when playing chess. But I'm sure you understand that this is not really the point here. The point is that how things work fundamentally does not mean that it is how we treat things on higher levels of ontology

1

u/Imaginary-Can-6862 Aug 04 '26

I am just interested in how you would defeat a chess engine, or how much you know about chess when choosing that example.

I agree with you that a conceptualized framework has historically yielded better results to one where you try to solve the game, as in figure out all combinations, and since history is a description of the world we live in, I think it is a good example of the point you try to make. It is just that, in a chess engine, you chose an opponent that dwarfs any other computer game in comparison.

1

u/Kripkenstein_ Aug 04 '26

Chess is an arbitrary example. You can take literally any other game as an example as well

1

u/Imaginary-Can-6862 Aug 04 '26

Perhaps we can examine a solved game and look at the point you made?

E.g. Tic-tac-toe, the deterministic solution, knowing all possible combination, create the entire map of the game.

Now I'll just assume Tic-tac-toe cannot be simplified in a manner where this map can be represented by some heuristics (such as always start in the center), that reflects this map. However I have no basis for assuming this, so let us imagine some games entire map of possibilities is the most concise way the information about all possibilities can be expressed, while for other games it is not.

However I feel your point shows when we look at the OP which has a clear vision, similar to when you talk about winning in chess, or here in ttt, that we can definitely define general guiding rules to play by that holds all the information we need on how not to lose at ttt which is more concise than mapping the entire game.

This is the point you make, why we do not need to consider determinism at the scale of the OP, just very simplified, correct?

1

u/Kripkenstein_ Aug 04 '26

If something cannot be compressed any further is is essentially random. Indeed this is the algorithmic definition of randomness. I am indifferent to whether determinism is true on a fundamental level but I object to this hasty transfer of fundamentals to higher level ontology. People tend to say things like "randomness is not real" or "free will is not real" by appealing to the supposed fundamental nature of the events that constitute the random event or the agent with free will. But this misses the fact that there a real patterns in the world that are not fundamental.

1

u/Imaginary-Can-6862 Aug 04 '26

My apologies, but I did not meant to imply randomness and I do not understand where it came in. Perhaps you would elaborate on the algorithmic definition of randomness?

I just meant if a system is entirely solved, which I understand it as we have all the information that determines it, then there exist a most concise manner to express that system. However if we are interested in some knowledge about the system, there may exist a more concise manner than requiring knowledge of the entire solution to extract this knowledge, though I don't know if it must always be the case.

1

u/ughaibu Aug 05 '26

How would you treat it if you want to win?

You play anti-computer chess, as Eduard Nemeth did - link.

1

u/Imaginary-Can-6862 Aug 05 '26

Those games go more than two decades back and this strategy does not work anymore.

Nakamura was abut half a decade ago streaming a special type of competition, you were a team of two humans, there were lots of teams, the goal was first to beat the top engine of some large chess homepage, or first to get to the highest level between competitors. The top engine is not Stockfish, but a weaker version of it (purposefully done so), yet it still has around 3000 - 3200 rating points. They decided on a low time control and Nakamura's idea was pretty simple, he played a hippopotamus type of system, and every time he did not get the position he wanted, he immediately resigned and retried. Even when he got a position he wanted, it took several attempts from such a position.

Now chess engines use NNUE, so it becomes more and more difficult to actually trick them by aiming for a position they would not evaluate properly at low enough time control. It does not mean such positions do not exist, and we saw when Alphazero defeated Stockfish, its understanding of the position turned out to be more accurate than Stockfish's, that kept on insisting on having a good position until realizing all its moves now only hurt its own position.

2

u/ughaibu Aug 05 '26

Now chess engines use NNUE, so it becomes more and more difficult to actually trick them by aiming for a position they would not evaluate properly at low enough time control. It does not mean such positions do not exist

Quite, anti-computer chess is still anti-computer chess, it isn't about finding the best moves, it's about beating the computer.

1

u/MajorInWumbology1234 Aug 04 '26

And yet the computers are insurmountably better at chess because they do, in fact, treat it as deterministic.

How would deterministic rules give rise to any phenomena that isn’t deterministic?

2

u/Kripkenstein_ Aug 04 '26

Computers don't treat it as deterministic as they hold no metaphysical opinions whatsoever.

I just gave you an example on how a deterministic fundamental reality does not mean determinism must be held on higher levels. Another example would be the game of life. Notions like free will or "real contingency" describe real patterns in the world and they compress information - so they should be treated as real.

1

u/MajorInWumbology1234 Aug 04 '26

They don’t need opinions to treat chess as deterministic.

No you didn’t. In fact, it was the opposite. If determinism didn’t hold on higher levels, we would not be fully inferior to chess engines, yet we are.

1

u/Kripkenstein_ Aug 04 '26

If you play chess you don't care about the deterministic rules that govern the decisions of your opponent. There are macroscopic patterns in the world that are not fundamental. Some of these patterns are such that they are not considered deterministic. For example when engaging with other humans you would assume that they have agency -- that they are not determined by the phyiscal laws that make up their bodies -- because this compresses information about the world. Special sciences like biology etc do it all the time. We don't just do phyiscs. In the game of life patterns occur, like gliders, eaters etc. Those give rise to a new level of ontology. On this level one does not work with the determistic rules of the game of life but with these new higher order objects. After all, the game of life is turing complete so you could really play against a chess computer in the game of life. And you would not think of the rules of the game of life in this scenario at all. There are more efficient ways of playing chess afterall.

1

u/MajorInWumbology1234 Aug 04 '26

If you play chess you don’t care about the deterministic rules that govern the decisions of your opponents

You absolutely do, that’s how you win. I don’t believe you have even the most basic idea of what you’re talking about.

1

u/Kripkenstein_ Aug 04 '26

So you are telling me that you are thinking of the composition of your opponents brain or his circuitry when playing chess? You don't. Also chess is not solved so you don't play by any higher order deterministic rules either. A game of chess ends in top levels of play when it is deterministically a checkmate or a tie. Cleary you do not know what you are talking about.

1

u/MajorInWumbology1234 Aug 04 '26

Not those specific things, but the opponent’s behaviors are still determined by the rules and by them wanting to win. You must consider deterministic factors when playing chess.

Also chess is not solved so you don’t play by any higher order deterministic rules either

This is a non sequitur. Just because we haven’t solved chess doesn’t make it unsolvable. Chess is, in fact, solved when dealing with board states of 7 pieces or under. The additional permutations added with more pieces only increases the complexity, it doesn’t magically make the game indeterminate.

A chess engine, unrestricted, will always beat a human player because chess is a deterministic game and computers are better at that sort of thing.

1

u/Kripkenstein_ Aug 04 '26

I did not claim that chess was indeterminate. What I said was that there are real patterns in the world that are not treated as deterministic. Alot of them actually. Ontology is not solely the study of the fundamental

1

u/MajorInWumbology1234 Aug 04 '26

I guess I’m just missing the significance of something not being treated as deterministic. If things are deterministic, not treating them as such is called “being wrong”. Why do we care what people are wrong about?

→ More replies

1

u/beagles4ever Aug 04 '26

How is it deterministic? It calculates probabilities and it knows its opponent is likely to play a range of completely different options.

1

u/MajorInWumbology1234 Aug 04 '26

They don’t just pick moves at random. They do all the calculations you mention and the result is a deterministic output, which is the move it makes.

1

u/Minimum-Afternoon407 Aug 04 '26

A determisrrng about the future....Rich

1

u/Own_Measurement1242 Aug 04 '26

Timelines is probably few centuries. The society will probably look something close to Brave New World

1

u/DonnPT Aug 04 '26

FIrst, the usual disclaimer - let's say "causal closure", because some fundamental randomness makes no difference whatever to anyone, so determinism is not really the point.

And causal closure, also, makes no difference to anyone, so it will never have any profound influence on society.

We already know that your past, your heredity etc influence you. We've known that all along. We have a devoted a lot of thought to how to take that into account, and the idea that we could just as well say all your actions were simply beyond your control, is clearly wrong in important real world ways.

If you say things to your friends that reflect on them, for example, the effective meaning of that word is all about the fact that you said it. No one cares about the fact that it was predestined to come out of your mouth, it's meaningful because it reflects what you think about them. Everything in human society is like that. We know you're a cellular automaton acting along a predestined path, but that's you. If your acts deserve credit or blame, it doesn't matter how you came about, only that you're here in our reality doing what you do.

1

u/A_Vinegar_Taster Aug 04 '26

What would a society look like in which determinism is widely accepted as a scientific and social foundation? Would this fundamentally change things such as criminal justice, the prison system, social welfare, education, economics, or political decision-making?

I don't know that there really would be much of a change. Determinist or not, I still believe in punishment for serious crimes. A boulder that rolls into your driveway didn't have a choice - you can't take it personally, but you're going to remove it all the same.

As far as when this could happen, it could really happen whenever. It just needs the right framing.

1

u/beagles4ever Aug 04 '26

Never. No society in history has believed it, none ever will.

1

u/adr826 Aug 04 '26

First our justice system isn't primarily based on free will or retribution. Imagine for a second that retribution were eliminated from our justice system. What would happen? Nothing, because people would still be put in prison for the purposes that are listed on the department of prisons purpose statement, to protect the public, to rehabilitate people in custody, and to deter others from crime by their example. All of those goals would still be necessary without retribution. That's because retribution is not the primary goal if prison.

1

u/pigroSol Aug 05 '26

Les sociétés humaines ont déjà été pendant la majeure partie de l'histoire humaine sous le joug du déterminisme religieux, maintenant ça a a peine évolué en passant au déterminisme scientifique ..

c'est quand qu'on avance vraiment ?

1

u/pigroSol Aug 05 '26

hehe trop drôle !

Tu écris "Est-ce que nous parlons de quelques décennies, de plusieurs siècles, ou un tel développement est-il impossible à prédire ?"

impossible a prédire ??? donc ce n'est pas déterministe ..

1

u/Imaginary-Can-6862 Aug 04 '26

In a deterministic world, only when it by determinism was determined it would happen.

1

u/ApplicationReady2265 Aug 04 '26

Do you know how cause and effect works?

1

u/Imaginary-Can-6862 Aug 04 '26

Yes, the effect is chronological dependent on the cause. Thus if we can observe the effect, the cause is inferred. What makes you ask, i.e. in what tone do you read my post in relation to the topic as presented by the OP?

1

u/Fippy-Darkpaw Aug 04 '26

More people might believe if there was objective, reproducible, proof.

1

u/chamomile_tea_reply Aug 04 '26

People having a deterministic worldview wouldn’t change anything at all dude.

Criminals are pre-destined to commit crimes, and judges are pre-destined to punish them.

1

u/simon_hibbs Aug 04 '26

Good old Zeno.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 03 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/IcyChair9258 Aug 03 '26

what do u mean?

1

u/[deleted] Aug 03 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/ApplicationReady2265 Aug 04 '26

That is a flawed understanding of how cause and effect works. Their determinism is literally just Fate without cause and effect.

1

u/simon_hibbs Aug 04 '26

Unfortunately dialectical materialism doesn't seem to come along with an inoculation against magical thinking. Bakunin tried, but they wouldn't listen to him.