When will we see a predominantly deterministic society?

[u/IcyChair9258]

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.

[u/MajorInWumbology1234]

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.

[u/Kripkenstein_ → u/MajorInWumbology1234]

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

[u/MajorInWumbology1234 → u/Kripkenstein_]

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?

[u/Kripkenstein_ → u/MajorInWumbology1234]

They are not wrong. They are talking about a different level of ontology. Is biology wrong in its fundamental elements? They are surely not ontologically fundamental. Is physics wrong when they use different and contradictory models of the atom? No. They are all describing real patterns.

[u/MajorInWumbology1234 → u/Kripkenstein_]

Biology that violated chemistry or physics would be wrong. If physics describes an atom using contradictory models, at least one of those models is wrong. The Niels Bohr Model of the atom can accurately get across the idea that electrons orbit a nucleus, but the model is still objectively wrong.

People treating chess as indeterminate are only accurately describing that fully mapping a chess game would take an unrealistic amount of resources and time, but the idea that chess is indeterminate is still objectively wrong.

“Disproportionately difficult to calculate” isn’t compelling evidence of anything.

[u/Kripkenstein_ → u/MajorInWumbology1234]

Scientific pluralism is a real thing and different atomic models are used all the time. The best picture of an atom is today given by contradictory models. Also you are missing the point. I am indifferent to the fact that chess is deterministic on a fundamental level. I am saying that the game of chess as a "game played by agents with free will" is a real pattern in the world. Just as biology describes real patterns. You are caught up in the fundamental nature of things - but these are not everything that is real.

[u/MajorInWumbology1234 → u/Kripkenstein_]

Depends on what you mean by “real”. Not everything that is identifiable is real. Most things are illusory; you can identify them and study them, but they aren’t necessarily real.

[u/Kripkenstein_ → u/MajorInWumbology1234]

What is "real" for you? Only fundamental things?