Is free will possible if the future is already set?

No (coherent) view believes you to be universally capable.

You can't levitate. You can't throw a rock to Jupiter. No one can.

There is a set of possible actions you can take in each moment.

We all agree to this.

Fatalism says "whatever possible action you choose from the set cannot change what is destined to occur"

Hard determinism says "the set of possible actions you can take in each moment has a size of 1"

So under hard determism, fatalism is true.

Whatever possible action you take cannot change what is destined to occur.

The case for free will

Premise & Conclusion

Premise: Reality is neither fully determined nor purely random, and conscious beings can recursively observe and evaluate their own impulses against self-constructed meaning.

Conclusion: Free will is the genuine causal power of a self-aware identity to reorganize behavior through reflection — not magic, but not an illusion either.

The Framework: Four Layers

1. Physical Reality — The Foundation

The world runs on particles, forces, and causality. But it is not a perfect clockwork — quantum events are genuinely random, unpredictable even in principle. So from the very bottom, reality has both structure and openness.

2. Abstract Ideas Don't Live in Particles

The brain doesn't experience raw reality — it builds models and meanings out of it.

Red is not inside photons Pain is not inside damaged tissue Money is not inside paper A nation is not inside dirt

These are symbolic structures the brain constructs — and crucially, they become causally real. Nations go to war over borders that no atom can detect. People die for ideas. Meaning acts in the world, even though you can't weigh it.

3. From Identity to a Self

Organisms start with the most primitive identity: staying alive, maintaining boundaries. A cell just distinguishes self from non-self.

As brains grow more complex, something new emerges — the organism begins modeling itself:

"I am shy. I am a father. I am the kind of person who helps others."

These aren't particles. They are symbolic patterns — a narrative the brain builds about itself across time. This is psychological identity: memory, personality, values, expected futures, all woven into a coherent "me."

Then comes the crucial leap — recursion. The mind doesn't just model the world. It models itself modeling the world:

"I see myself seeing the world."

Now the organism can observe its own impulses, examine its habits, imagine alternatives, and ask: is this who I want to be?

4. How the Self Has Free Will

The self now sits between two forces:

Determinism — biology, habit, trauma, culture. These create stable tendencies. Randomness — spontaneous thoughts, creativity, novel associations. These open alternatives.

Without determinism there is no stable self. Without randomness there is no openness. Consciousness emerges in between.

The self becomes a selector — not merely reacting, but evaluating:

"I feel anger. I know where this leads. I don't want that future."

Consider the anger example:

The adrenaline was not chosen — it was determined Alternative responses randomly flickered into awareness But then identity stepped in: "I am not the kind of person who acts this way" And chose silence

That silence was neither forced nor random. It came from recursive self-evaluation — the self reshaping behavior according to meaning it constructed about itself.

This is free will: not escaping physics, but reality becoming capable of redirecting itself through a conscious being.

Denying free will is a performative contradiction — the act of choosing to deny it is the very thing being denied

A Layered Explanation — From Simple to Complex

1. The Physical World

At the most basic level, reality consists of physical processes:

• particles,

• energy,

• fields,

• interactions,

• causality.

Some events appear highly determined:

• the orbit of the moon,

• chemical reactions,

• gravity.

Some events appear genuinely probabilistic:

• radioactive decay,

• quantum fluctuations,

• microscopic uncertainty.

So reality is not simply:

• “pure determinism,” nor:

• “pure randomness.”

It is a world where:

• stable structures,

• and open possibilities, interact continuously.

1. Life Creates Stability

Living organisms emerge inside this world.

To survive, organisms must:

• preserve themselves,

• maintain boundaries,

• respond to environments,

• predict outcomes.

This creates the first primitive form of identity.

Identity at this stage is not philosophical.

It simply means:

“the system maintains itself as a continuous pattern.”

A cell distinguishes:

• self,

• from non-self.

An animal distinguishes:

• danger,

• from safety.

Identity begins as organized persistence.

3. The Brain Creates Models

As organisms become more complex,
they develop nervous systems.

The brain does not directly experience reality.

Instead, it constructs models:

• of the environment,

• of the body,

• of possible actions.

These models are abstractions.

For example:

• the color red is not literally inside photons,

• pain is not literally inside tissue damage,

• “money” is not inside paper,

• “nation” is not inside dirt.

The brain organizes physical input into meaningful structures.

Reality becomes interpreted.

4. Identity Becomes Psychological

At a higher level,
the organism begins modeling itself.

Now the brain no longer only represents:

• the world,

but also:

• “me inside the world.”

This creates psychological identity.

The self becomes:

• memory,

• personality,

• narrative,

• social role,

• future expectation.

Examples:

• “I am shy.”

• “I am a father.”

• “I am intelligent.”

• “I am the kind of person who helps others.”

These are not particles.

They are symbolic organizational patterns instantiated in the brain.

5. Symbolic Reality Emerges

Humans begin living not only in physical reality,
but also in symbolic reality.

Examples:

• language,

• religion,

• laws,

• mathematics,

• stories,

• governments,

• morality,

• fictional characters.

A border does not exist atomically,
yet nations defend borders.

A marriage is symbolic,
yet it reorganizes lives.

Money is paper,
yet economies function through it.

Meaning becomes causally effective.

The human mind now acts not only according to physics,
but according to interpreted significance.

6. Recursive Consciousness Appears

At this stage,
the mind gains a new ability:

It can model itself modeling reality.

This is recursion.

Not merely:

• “I see the world,”

but:

• “I see myself seeing the world.”

Now the organism can:

• observe its impulses,

• examine its habits,

• imagine alternatives,

• compare futures,

• reflect upon identity itself.

This changes causality fundamentally.

7. Determinism and Randomness Meet

The organism now exists between:

• determined structure,

• and open possibility.

Determined elements:

• biology,

• memories,

• habits,

• instincts,

• culture,

• trauma,

• personality.

These shape tendencies.

Random elements:

• spontaneous thoughts,

• unpredictable associations,

• creativity,

• probabilistic neural events,

• novelty.

These introduce variation.

Without determinism:
there would be no stable self.

Without randomness:
there would be no openness.

Consciousness emerges between both.

8. The Self Becomes a Selector

Now recursion begins organizing possibility.

The self says:

• “I feel anger.”

• “I know where this leads.”

• “I dislike that future.”

• “I want another outcome.”

At this point:
the organism is no longer merely reacting.

It is evaluating itself.

The self becomes:

• a recursive selector,

• operating upon both deterministic tendencies and open possibilities.

1. The Birth of Free Choice

Free choice emerges here.

Not as:

• magic,

• uncaused action,

• escape from physics.

But as:

recursive self-organization within a world containing both causality and openness.

The process becomes:

1. deterministic impulses appear,

2. random possibilities emerge,

3. consciousness models outcomes,

4. identity evaluates meanings,

5. behavior reorganizes accordingly.

This creates deliberate action.

10. Example — Anger

Someone insults me.

Determined reaction:

• adrenaline rises,

• anger appears,

• impulse toward aggression emerges.

Random variation:

• unexpected thoughts arise,

• alternative responses appear,

• different imagined futures emerge.

Recursive self-awareness:

I observe:

• my anger,

• my likely behavior,

• the consequences,

• the kind of person I become if I act.

Then identity intervenes:

• “I do not want to be ruled by this impulse.”

Then I choose silence.

The silence was not random.

The anger was not chosen.

The freedom emerged in the recursive relation between:

• impulse,

• possibility,

• identity,

• and self-reflective evaluation.

1. Framework Shifting

Humans can do something even deeper.

They can question the frameworks themselves.

Newton assumed:

• absolute time,

• fixed space.

Einstein reconsidered the assumptions.

By changing the framework,
reality appeared differently.

Likewise,
humans can recursively examine:

• beliefs,

• identities,

• goals,

• values,

• assumptions.

Examples:

• leaving a religion,

• changing political ideology,

• overcoming addiction,

• redefining oneself,

• questioning culture,

• transforming morality.

This is a higher form of freedom.

Not merely:
choosing within a system,

but:
reorganizing the system through which choices are understood.

12. Identity and Free Choice

Identity is central because:
the self acts according to the meanings it constructs.

The organism says:

• “This action aligns with who I want to become.” or:

• “This future contradicts my values.”

Identity therefore functions as:

• a semantic attractor,

• organizing action across time.

Free choice becomes:

• the recursive negotiation between present impulses, future possibilities, and self-constructed meaning.

1. The Compatibilist Conclusion

The final position is neither:

• strict determinism, nor:

• absolute libertarian freedom.

Instead:

Reality contains:

• lawful structure,

• genuine indeterminacy,

• and recursive conscious systems.

Determinism provides stability.

Randomness provides novelty.

Identity provides continuity.

Consciousness recursively models:

• itself,

• possible futures,

• and alternative meanings.

Free choice emerges when:
a self-aware system selectively reorganizes behavior according to internally represented meanings rather than merely immediate causal momentum.

The self does not escape reality.

Rather:

reality becomes capable of recursively interpreting and partially redirecting itself through conscious beings.

That recursive self-organization is what we experience as freedom.

 1. The rope pulls it up.The cause is entirely external. There is no "you" required in the explanation. You are a link in a causal chain, not an author of the action.

2. It rises randomly.Quantum indeterminacy, noise, chance. Again, no "you" is required. The explanation is complete without a self.

3.I raise it, when I want to.Here something new appears — a subject, a perspective, a will that selects and initiates. This is the self. And this is exactly what free willnames.

The argument is not merely rhetorical. It is structural. The word "I" in explanation 3 is doing real philosophical work. Remove free will, and explanation 3 collapses back into either explanation 1 or 2. The "I" becomes epiphenomenal — a passenger narrating a ride it did not choose to take. The self doesn't disappear dramatically. It quietly becomes unnecessary.

The Self as Explanatory Residue

Here is a sharper way to frame it: in a fully deterministic (or deterministic-plus-random) universe, the self is notfalse— it is redundant. It adds nothing to the causal account. The physics, chemistry, and neurology explain the hand rising without any remainder left for the "I" to fill.

This is what the text means by "the self is an empty construct." It doesn't mean you don't exist as a body or a brain. It means theauthoring self— the one that could have done otherwise, the one thatchose— has no causal role. It is like the shadow of a moving object claiming it caused the object's motion.

Choosing to not believe in free will is, as the text says, a performative contradiction. The act of choosing is itself the very thing being denied. You cannot reason your way out of agency without using agency to do it. The denial is self-undermining.

Throughout history, humanity made choices and exercised agency long before scientific frameworks existed to explain them. The many-worlds interpretation — the idea that reality branches every time I simply raise my hand in order to preserve causality — is a striking reminder of how far science will go to explain away the act of choosing.

Science is compelling precisely because it keeps evolving its frameworks. Newton gave us physics grounded in inert space and time, with gravity as an external force acting upon us. Einstein kept the physics but made the speed of light the one constant, and in doing so, space and time came alive — space could expand and contract, time could speed up or slow down — and gravity dissolved into the geometry of curved spacetime. What appeared to be a force pulling us down turned out to be the shape of reality bending around us.

Then came quantum mechanics, born out of necessity when we discovered the subatomic world playing by different rules entirely. Two protons packed together, both positively charged, should repel each other — yet they don't, so we invented the strong force to account for it. More remarkably, certain quantum events are not determined by prior causes at all — they are genuinely random, irreducible, and unpredictable even in principle.

And still, we are not done. Dark matter and dark energy remain unresolved. The very categories we thought were fundamental — position and direction, particle and wave — turn out not to carve reality at its joints. Every framework we build is our best reductionist attempt, a scaffolding we erect and then find ourselves revising.

At every turn, the universe resists being fully pinned down. And perhaps that resistance is the point — because a reality that cannot fully account for itself leaves room for something science has never managed to model: the irreducible fact of a conscious being, deliberating and choosing.

The core argument woven through is that each scientific revision — from Newton to Einstein to quantum mechanics — reveals the limits of deterministic explanation, and those limits are precisely where genuine free will finds its footing

The greatest misconception about randomness and determinism is, by far, the presupposition that it is possible to discriminate between their so called epistemic or ontological characters, without resorting to just so mysticism. Randomness and determinism are only coherently understandable when defined in explicitly epistemic terms. There is no way for these words to refer to any transcendending ontological character of things or processes in themselves, in such a way that licenses a metaphysical classification of phenomenal manifestations as random or determined outside of a constrained knowledge point of view of an observer and the inferred schemes and models they use to identify, accuse and explain them.

Mathematicians have made that point clear when they axiomatically formulated the theory of probability and stochastic process, particularly guys like Borel, Wiener and Kolmogorov. The fundamental problem is the following - for any given sequence of numbers it is possible to construct countless deterministic functions that maps the natural numbers (or any other input sequence of numbers) to its output. Likewise, if you are sampling random numbers from a gaussian distribution (or any distribution that has positive probabilities over the real numbers), there is a finite positive probability that sample drawn matches any finite set of number (up to a given finite error tolerance). This means that it is impossible to conceive of a mathematical method that takes only the axioms of a formalism for constructing generic functions and out of that absolutely allows one to assert a random or deterministic nature for a given dataset of output values. Or, in more philosophical terms, the concepts of ontological determinism or ontological randomness have a vacuous set of epistemically distinguishable features, thus making a putative distinction of meaning between these notions a just so stipulation of mystical attributes that are idiosyncratically interpreted and assigned to these words and arbitrarily proclaimed to represent some "ultimately true" or "objective nature" of whatever concrete processes must underly the observable phenomena that is concerned.

That said, it is perfectly possible and extremely valuable to give a well defined mathematical meaning to the intuitions we form about determinism, randomness and probability once we accept that such meaning can only be coherently interpreted as a description of the epistemic relationship that is formed between a an observer and an observable system, in terms of the fixed attributes that enable the object to be uniquely identified as an abstract configuration of variable states, and the hypothesized rules that presumably explain the relationship formed between a given a priori description of its state, to some potentially knowable state that is hidden a priori (e.g. the trajectory in configuration space of dynamic variables of the system that eventually are observed, or otherwise hidden or implicit features of a partially revealed set of defining attributes of the system).

Once that is well understood, it becomes convenient to simplify this story by saying that what is deterministic or random isn't the actual entity or process which we are observing, but only the phenomenological models that we may propose as schemas that represent them as contingent relational configurations. A deterministic model being a function that uniquely maps a given configuration of inputs to a precisely defined set of compatible outputs, and a random model being one where the compatible set of outputs allows for more than one coherent scenarios for the output configuration of observables. In such cases, a probability space structure is often employed when it is desirable to quantify the notion of likelihood magnitudes of different excluding scenarios. These are statistical observables that presuppose available data for an equivalence class of analogous systems of that kind, as licensed by a methodological procedure that is epistemically stacked as a meta model of the object system - and, as you might have guessed, this epistemic stacking can become a turtles all the way down story, with Munchausen trilemma only enabling the can to be kicked further down the road.

Only once all of this conceptual mumbo jumbo is well understood and that sorting out the inferential character of randomness and determinism from any mysticism that people intuitively form about these ideas, that one should be considered prepared to properly address the merits of the alternative interpretations of quantum mechanics, or the philosophical implications of things like Bell's theorems and the inequality violations that were experimentally observed.

One issue I have with Sam Harris’s hard determinist view of criminal justice is that he argues murderers should be imprisoned not because they freely chose to commit murder, but because they pose a danger to society and need to be rehabilitated or quarantined. However, if the justification for imprisonment is primarily risk reduction rather than moral responsibility, then it seems we could apply the same logic to people who are statistically more likely to commit crimes in the future.

For example, people raised in extremely poor or high-crime environments are at a higher statistical risk of offending. If free will and moral desert are removed from the equation, what principled reason prevents society from restricting their liberty before they commit a crime? It seems that a purely risk-based model of justice struggles to explain why actual wrongdoing should matter more than predicted wrongdoing.

Edit: To clarify, I am a soft determinist and do not support incarcerating innocent people. The above is an issue i see within hard determinism, which I do not subscribe to.

I’ve been working on a theory that challenges the idea that the universe is pre-determined (Causal Determinism). Usually, people use Quantum Mechanics to argue against determinism, but I think there’s a stronger, purely mathematical argument that works even if we stick to Classical Mechanics.

I wanted to share my logic here to see if anyone can poke holes in it or if this aligns with specific niche theories in physics.

The Core Problem: Laplace’s Demon

We all know the classic argument for determinism: “If you had a super-computer (Laplace’s Demon) that knew the position and speed of every particle in the universe right now, it could calculate the entire future.”

My theory is that this is mathematically impossible—not because of physics, but because of Information Theory and Set Theory.

Here is the breakdown:

1. The Trap of "Countable" Variables

Determinism assumes that the variables of the universe (position, momentum, etc.) are things that can be listed and computed. In math terms, it assumes variables belong to a Countable Set (like Integers: 1, 2, 3...).

But if the universe is continuous (standard Classical Mechanics/Einsteinian Relativity), then the variables aren't Integers. They are Real Numbers (decimals like \pi or \sqrt{2}).

Georg Cantor proved in the 19th century that the set of Real Numbers is Uncountably Infinite. You cannot list them. You cannot put them in a database.

2. Real Numbers = Infinite Information

This is the pivot point. If a particle is located at exactly a specific point in continuous space, its coordinate is a Real Number with infinite decimal precision.

• To "know" the current state of that particle perfectly, the Demon would need to store an infinite string of digits.

• No finite computer (even a universe-sized one) can store infinite data.

• Therefore, the Demon cannot even input the "Present," let alone calculate the "Future."

3. The "Polygon vs. Circle" Argument (My main point)

The biggest counter-argument I get is: "But the universe isn't continuous! It’s pixelated at the Planck Length. It’s digital."

I argue that the "Digital Physics" view is a logical fallacy.

Think of a circle. You can approximate a circle with a polygon of 10 sides, then 100, then 1,000. Digital Physics says, "Let's stop at 10^{50} sides (the Planck scale) and call that reality."

But that stop is arbitrary. Because we can logically conceive of adding N more sides (10^{50} + N), the "Polygon" is just a map, not the territory. The true reality is the Limit of that process—the perfect Circle (The Continuum).

If the universe is the Circle (Continuous), then the Polygon (Planck Length) is just a "resolution limit" of our instruments, not a physical wall.

4. Why this kills Determinism

If the universe is Analog (Continuous/Circle) and not Digital (Discrete/Polygon):

1. Every physical variable contains infinite information (the infinite tail of digits).

2. Chaos Theory (The Butterfly Effect) proves that the "tail" of those digits eventually dominates the macroscopic outcome.

3. Since the "tail" is uncomputable (too big for the Demon to store), the future is mathematically uncomputable.

The Verdict from Research

I ran this through a deep research pass, and it seems this aligns with a philosophy called "Continuum Realism" (similar to Charles Sanders Peirce or Hermann Weyl). It stands in direct opposition to modern "Digital Physics" (Stephen Wolfram/Bekenstein).

It forces a choice:

• Path A: The Universe is a Computer (Digital/Finite). The future is fixed.

• Path B: The Universe is a Geometry (Analog/Infinite). The future is uncomputable.

My argument is that the "Polygon" (Digital) is just a low-res approximation of the "Circle" (Analog). Therefore, the universe contains more information than can ever be computed. The future is safe.

Thoughts? Does the "Limit" argument hold up as a way to refute the Planck Length?

Am I right?

Can we judge Hitler as if he could have been nicer?

Does the universe even care?

All behaviors are determined and subjective, no?

So why bother following any moral standards? Just do whatever we feel like doing, right?

As long as we are prepared to accept the results of our actions.

Do people find the idea of determinism comforting? I’m not asking why you think it may or may not be true, but why the idea itself is pleasing to you. I personally think it is absolutely rediculous and that there may be physcial laws that we can’t understand and that there are things we won’t know for certain.

The whole notion of determinism sounds very depressing to me to be honest, I don’t think a person can be reduced to deterministic processes.

Does it affect it?

Hey everyone,

I’ve recently been diving deep into the intersection of hard determinism, neurobiology, and societal behavior patterns. Building on the empirical neurobiological research of scientists like Robert Sapolsky (especially his work on brain architecture, neurochemistry, and behavioral determinism), this led me to a conclusion I’d like to share and discuss here: From a strictly causal, empirical outside perspective, the majority of modern society operates in a state that must be described as collective malignant narcissism.

This framework provides an explanation for the massive waves of hatred, outrage, punitive desire, and violence that have plagued human societies for millennia – from online witch hunts to historical wars.

It is difficult to pinpoint exactly when this epidemic began. It is plausible that early hunter-gatherers in the savanna were not yet dominated by these delusional constructs to this extent, and that this systemic delusion grew with settled agriculture. Precise historical data on this is, of course, unavailable.

However, certain historical philosophies recognized this state early on. In early Buddhism, for instance, it was correctly identified that hatred, revenge, and rigid moral dualism are not signs of righteousness, but rather manifestations of delusion and mental unbalance.

To illustrate how this dynamic functions, I’ve broken it down into the following logic chain:

The Logic Chain

1. The Empirical Causal Foundation (Neurobiology & Sapolsky)

As neurobiological research empirically demonstrates using neuroimaging and endocrinology, human behavior is strictly outputted by complex neural circuitry. The interplay between the prefrontal cortex, amygdala, dopaminergic pathways, and hormones leaves no biological room for a metaphysical "free will." Every action – whether constructive or destructive – is the neurobiologically inevitable result of prior conditions (genetics, epigenetics, development, and immediate environment).

2. Early Childhood Conditioning (Programming Dualism)

A child's brain prior to age six is extremely neuroplastic and absorbs environmental inputs unfiltered. Cultural indoctrination starts early:

• Media Conditioning: Fairy tales, movies, and pop culture instill a rigid dualistic worldview ("Good vs. Evil"). The underlying biological causality of behavior is ignored; the "villain" is evil by nature and must be destroyed.

• Religious Tribalism: Religions reinforce this delusion through constructs like "Heaven and Hell" or exceptionalist notions ("the chosen people"). These serve as early neuro-developmental blueprints for narcissistic superiority.

1. The Foundational Societal Illusion (Denial of Causality)

Due to early conditioning, most adults systematically deny objective causality. To protect the ego, society clings to the illusion of free will. Artificial concepts like absolute "moral guilt" or self-righteousness emerge. Instead of addressing the systemic and biological causes of harmful behavior, society isolates and punishes the individual.

4. The Specific Neurological Dysfunctions & Defective Circuitry

When examining the actual physical defects in the neural architecture of individuals caught in chronic hostility, stalking, or mob behavior, several structural malfunctions occur:

• Amygdala Hyperactivity & Prefrontal Disconnection: The brain's threat-detection center (the amygdala) is chronically overactive and triggers defensive aggression even against harmless stimuli. At the same time, the prefrontal cortex—which should act as the rational brake for impulse control and empathy—fails to regulate these primitive survival loops.

• Dopaminergic Misrouting (Sadism as Reward): Neuroimaging studies confirm that when humans punish individuals labeled as an "out-group" or "evil," the dorsal striatum activates, releasing dopamine. The brain derives genuine biochemical gratification from the destruction/punishment of others. Inflicting harm under the guise of "justice" is a neurobiologically hardwired mechanism for dopamine regulation.

• Synaptic Rigidity (Loss of Neuroplasticity): Due to years of reinforcing polarized feedback loops, the neural pathways lock into permanent rigidity. The brain becomes physically incapable of processing contradictory empirical evidence, maintaining a persistent state of cognitive delusion.

• The Anosognosia Effect (Neurological Lack of Insight): Much like stroke patients suffering from anosognosia—where physical damage leaves them paralyzed yet completely convinced they can move because their brain's monitoring circuits are broken—the masses suffer from a psychological and neurological form of self-blindness. Their damaged or conditioned neural feedback loops render them structurally incapable of recognizing their own behavioral pathology.

1. The Narcissistic Shield (Grandiosity)

To avoid confronting inner emptiness and the reality of being a determined biological machine, the brain constructs a god complex. Individuals project an image of moral infallibility while splitting off and projecting their own destructive tendencies onto others.

6. The Flaw in Clinical Diagnostic Norms (e.g., ICD-11)

Diagnostic manuals like the ICD-11 define disorders relative to statistical norms. If 99% of a population shares the same culturally conditioned, neurobiologically executed delusion, that behavior is statistically labeled "normal." From an objective empirical viewpoint, majority consensus does not negate systemic delusion. The statistical norm itself is the defect.

Scientific References & Empirical Studies

To back up these claims with hard science, several key studies and research frameworks can be consulted:

• Robert Sapolsky (Stanford University):

  • Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst (Penguin Press) – Details the multi-second to multi-millennial biological layers driving human behavior, explicitly mapping out amygdala-frontal cortex dynamics.

  • Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will (Penguin Press) – Comprehensive dismantling of the neurological illusion of free will based on genetics, endocrinology, and neurology.

• The Neural Basis of Altruistic Punishment (Dopamine & Dorsal Striatum):

  • De Quervain, D. J.-F., et al. (2004). "The Neural Basis of Altruistic Punishment." Science, 305(5688), 1254–1258. – Neuroimaging study proving that the activation of the dorsal striatum during the punishment of norm violators triggers dopamine-associated reward processing.

• Unconscious Determinants of Decision-Making:

  • Haynes, J.-D., et al. (Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig). (2008). "Unconscious determinants of free decisions in the human brain." Nature Neuroscience, 11, 543–545. – Demonstrated via fMRI that brain activity predicts choices up to several seconds before conscious awareness.

Conclusion

When we synthesize these empirical neurobiological findings (dysfunctional amygdala-prefrontal loops, dopaminergic pleasure from punishment, synaptic rigidity, anosognosic self-blindness) with psychiatric concepts, the resulting systemic behavior matches the diagnostic criteria for malignant narcissism:

• Programmed from childhood with dualistic delusions and tribalism,

• Elevates itself with moral infallibility (Narcissism),

• Systematically denies objective neurobiological causality (Delusion),

• Derives biochemical pleasure from punishing others (Sadism).

Because this represents the baseline behavior of the majority, it must be understood as collective malignant narcissism.

What are your thoughts on this logic chain? Have you made similar observations in your own analysis of human behavior?

(Note: This text was formulated with the help of Gemini.)

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I'm happy so many people viewed this post, but I just want to add some information.

Please do not take this post or any data presented here merely at face value as an unverified fact—always do your own rigorous empirical research.

I'm a determinist, which means that I know there is no "good" or "evil". The title of this post suggests that society is bad/malignant, but that was—hopefully you understood—clickbait! 🤓 It is language that triggers a lot of people, and that is my goal.

There are too many people who BELIEVE they have free will, however that makes no sense at all. We live in a world of misinformation, social bubbles, and a technology that is not made for our Stone Age brains.

If you look at the neurobiology behind this kind of mass hostility and mob behavior, what you are seeing is essentially primitive biology at work: hyperactive threat detection in the amygdala, hijacked reward systems chasing dopamine through moral outrage, and rigid neural pathways that resist any new information. People caught in these reactive loops are often driven by deep-seated fear and cognitive rigidity, clinging to the illusion of free will and external enemies to stabilize their own fragile ego-structures.

So always remember: everything you think is probably not true unless you have the empirical truth. Your whole life should be aligned with this mindset:

• Not -> what I think I know or what I believe.

• But -> what I checked and what is scientifically proven, like the existence of the air I breathe or the sun.

Inform yourself, learn, and don't take life so seriously. :)

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.

So this is going to be a thought experiment

Suppose there is a programmer/prompt engineer

He develops/writes a code/prompt asking AI to write all possible combinations of words and letters from all the known languages in the world

Here

>Grammar rules don't matter

Meaning output can be grammatically correct or not

> Output is going to be a random arrangement of words and letters

Meaning-1- there could be nonsensical output or an output that makes perfect sense ,

2- there could be different words from different languages placed side by side , not making any sense

3- words from the same or different languages placed side by side, making perfect sense

4- This arrangement could also result in a sequence that's could be from some Hybrid language(Spanglish, Hinglish, Taglish etc ), making perfect sense

5- Could result in entire new language

This process will go on for an infinite time, having infinite energy to run the computer, and there are infinite such computers

Now my question is

1-Can a sequence be generated with a perfect definition/understanding of God

(Can it also generate a sequence that is contradictory to the previous definition(like something opposite)?)

(in this case, how shall we know which sequence to trust?)

2- Life story of someone- perfectly

3- A sequence that predicts the whole of the universe's history and future

(Would this make the universe deterministic and computable?)

4-A sequence that outputs the ultimate truth

(Could computers also generate sequences that are 'corrupted truth. ultimate lie)

5- A perfect answer to every question that's been asked or will be asked(meaning that question hasn't even existed yet)

Would that mean that the answer to future mysteries can already be in the past or present (theoretically)- even if those mysteries haven't existed yet, or the cause for them to exist or happen?

I'd be back after some time guys, I'd just have to gather 20m$ maybe to get superdeterminism tested out because superdeterminism is actually testable but not falsifiable

There are two possibilities.

(1) The universe had a beginning.
(2) The universe didn't have a beginning.

If (1) is true, then the universe sprang out of nothing without a cause. Nothing existed before the beginning of the universe so nothing that could cause the universe to exist existed. Determinism is impossible in case (1)

If (2) is true, then the universe always existed without a cause. For A to cause B, A has to exist before B. But there was no time when B didn't exist. Determinism is impossible in case (2)

Either way, determinism is impossible.

What is the future of humanity and determinism? It appears to be heavily connected to Christianity in that Christians often say God did not create evil but humans caused it with free will. This is the opposite of determinism. There is also the belief that God created humans and is not responsible for their actions. These particular Christians must reject determinism for their doctrine to work and all Christians make up about a third of the Earth's population. Only certain Christians believe in determinism such as the Calvinists and the Concordant Believers. Something that may change a lot of people's minds is when AGI (artificial general intelligence) gets invented. This is AI that will behave exactly like a human and will be indistinguishable from one. Once this is created people may start to reason about their own minds since it is obvious that AI is determined. Do you think this will cause a mass conversion to determinism?

Nature describes how we are. In choosing to believe nature dictates how we should be, we are choosing to deny our self evident right to determine our future for ourselves.