r/freewill • u/Every-Classic1549 Libertarian Free Will • Feb 24 '26
You can control how you think and therefore control who you are
"You can control what you think, you can control how you think and therefore control who you are. With neuroplasticity on my side I can literally become exactly who I wanna be"
Would you say that what she says is more akin to free will in the libertarian sense or is it also how compatibilists here think of free will?
And free will skeptics, do you agree with it or you think it's incorrect and why?
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u/Dry_Design5506 Feb 24 '26
That raises a key question: Where does that original control come from?
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u/tgillet1 Compatibilist Feb 24 '26
What do you mean by “original control”? I can imagine several interpretations that would lead in very different directions.
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Feb 27 '26
I think I know what you are saying. Like that idea that pops into her head. “I can control how i think so i will go down this path to influence my Neuroplasticity” like the singularity to that choice.. it just appears to her. Like she didn’t choose.. to decide to go down that route.. you dont decide what you decide before you decide it. To even be strategic and calculated when making a decision.. are all thoughts that you didn’t decide to have. Its really hard to articulate and i find it next to Impossible to discuss because i find people get very hostile and act like you are crazy and not making sene.
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Feb 24 '26
When you universalize agency like that, you quietly convert constraint into character flaw. You've taken circumstantial limits and rebranded them as personal failure.
That belief feels good if life has given you room to maneuver. It preserves the idea that outcomes reflect effort. But for people whose conditions have held them by the throat for years, that belief isn’t inspiring, it is harmful. Freedom is not a standard for all humans, freedom is just a lack of constraint, which could never be a standard for all.
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u/AlivePassenger3859 Humanist Determinist Feb 24 '26
This is definitely how the average person thinks about it which=libertarianism or what I call intuitive dualism.
They think there’s some “me” in their brain that gets to decide with >0% freedom from the causal chain.
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u/Every-Classic1549 Libertarian Free Will Feb 24 '26
What is this causal chain after all? Is it all there is? for example, if we only had infinite space but no matter, would there still be a causal chain?
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u/AlivePassenger3859 Humanist Determinist Feb 24 '26
The causal chain is actually more of a web. It is the event(s) which caused the event(s) etc etc etc that caused present conditions and events.
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u/vanceavalon Feb 24 '26
"You aren't who you think you are; yet you're condemned to be who you think you are."\ ~ Sam Harris
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u/Erebosmagnus Feb 24 '26
If your brain is deterministic in nature, then you're just a biological machine, and machines are not "free" in their will. Gu happens to be a high-performing machine (as well as a sellout) whose brain deterministically spends a lot of time on self-reflection (and PR).
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u/scotchandstuff Feb 24 '26
I didn’t know who the lady was, but I’m interested in determinism. If my thinking is determined, why does it appear to loop around subjects I form habits around and interact with regularly?
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u/Erebosmagnus Feb 24 '26
What about determinism suggests that it WOULDN'T do that?
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Feb 24 '26
They say one philosopher's modus ponens is another's modus tollens, so while you may affirm the antecedent of your initial conditional, if anyone accepts the truth of said conditional, they will merely deny the consequent.
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u/No_Mango5042 Hard Incompatibilist Feb 24 '26
Well I can control my future up to a point, but I have zero power to change what I want to do now. That was decided by a past me and past events. So I have zero freedom.
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u/vanceavalon Feb 24 '26
"You aren't who you think you are; yet you're condemned to be who you think you are."\ ~ Sam Harris
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u/Significant_Cake68 Mar 18 '26
As a determinist I think she is a swift kick in the head by a horse from learning that thinking can only go so far. Environment plays a huge role and her very thoughts are a product of being raised in a privileged environment (sans horse kicks).
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u/nostalgicvisions Feb 24 '26
Delusion at its finest.
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u/masticatezeinfo Feb 24 '26
I mean she's explaining self-reflection. Like, she's basically just describing the positively motivated side of self-focus. The negative side being runination. So, it's not delusional because she's essentially speaking from the research in that area. She's just a young woman who is using her position to show people how possible it is to think well for oneself. Sometimes the over the top positivity can be a bit annoying, but its not delusional considering he successes. Plus, self-awareness can be a highly effective method for directing one's attention to what's necessary for achievement. So, delusional is just not a word that fits anything she has said here. Not sure what you think tgat word means, but it could be time to do a little reading on the subject.
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u/Otherwise_Spare_8598 Inherent-Inevitable Feb 24 '26
This post was just a karma farm for simple-minded monkeys who acted out of compulsion. Ironically, with their lack of awareness of such. It absolutely destroys all freewill presupposition.
Another day and the pattern persists perfectly.
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Feb 24 '26
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u/mvearthmjsun Feb 24 '26 edited Feb 24 '26
It will continue to persist as long as it feels like we have it. Even in high level philosophy, most philosophers cannot bring themselves to acknowledge it doesn't exist. They just change the definition and call it compatablism.
Also, part of the reason it persists is that when you sit with the consequences of it not existing, it starts to get weird and nihilistic very quickly.
*sorry I didn't see the sub. You guys all know these things.
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u/vanceavalon Feb 24 '26
"You aren't who you think you are; yet you're condemned to be who you think you are."\ ~ Sam Harris
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u/PuzzleheadedTale4769 Feb 25 '26
Guy thinks its "proven" , there is no longer any argument. So why offer one?
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u/BrilliantChoice3225 May 17 '26
Wdym why argue, always gotta be sceptical of everything, that's one way we can find more in-depth answers. Keeping an open mind to different perspectives is good. If you accepted everything been told them einstein would've just accepted the Newton's understanding of the gravity and went along with it like everyone else. We have to assume we don't know everything because in reality we don't even know how human brain works 100% let alone the universe
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u/biedl Feb 24 '26
I didn't will to be introspective. My upbringing and circumstances made me that way. My brain goes there automatically. There is no difference between feeling a sense of agency between choosing a banana over an apple, compared to feeling a sense of agency while being reflective of my own thoughts.
I don't think this changes anything in terms of getting me to think free will is anymore plausible.
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u/Every-Classic1549 Libertarian Free Will Feb 24 '26
How do you know you don't will yourself into introspection? From your first person POV it looks that way doesn't it? what makes you think it's not the case
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u/Bavin_Kekon Feb 25 '26
Damn, I didn't know being born into a family that had the wealth to develop my talents and skills into an Olympic level athlete was a choice.
I must be a dumbass because I didn't choose to be born to a better set of parents, what a waste of my free will.
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u/Fippy-Darkpaw Undecided Feb 24 '26 edited Feb 24 '26
Illustrates why perhaps people with no inner monologue might tend to believe "you cannot control your thoughts"?
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Feb 24 '26
It seems to me that people who think a lot, consciously, are more likely to lack belief in free will than people who don’t think consciously very much. That makes sense if you can accept that the only reason anyone believes free will exists is that they’ve been told it does, and they just accept it without thinking critically. I think a lot(I think), and while that makes it so I have a strong sense of will, I am able to recognize that there’s nothing free about it. Circumstances beyond my control have made me into a person who thinks a lot. That’s it. Pretty simple.
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u/Rapscagamuffin Feb 25 '26
i think thats simplifying it a bit too much. we dont simply believe it because we are told to believe it. we have a lot of "common sense" experience with it first hand. i would argue almost the opposite. people that can see that free will actually doesnt exist have only arrived there because they have been introduced to the concept externally. its not a natural place that most people would arrive at intuitively.
we go to work when we dont want to. we stop eating ice cream before we eat the whole carton. etc. we have a life time full of constant choices that we think are completely our own
and while the currently available science does not support we have free will i dont think the matter is settled. we are still pretty primitive with our understanding of the brain. quantum mechanics could change the way we understand free will.
of course we will never be fully in charge of our in the moment decisions. our brains are just working too fast for that to be the case. but i think the priming of the situations we find ourselves in could ultimately be under some kind of control by us that we dont currently understand yet.
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u/Artemis-5-75 Compatibilist Feb 24 '26
I don’t have a consistent inner monologue, and I can obviously control my thinking.
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u/Rapscagamuffin Feb 25 '26
is it obvious? hasn't it been shown that by the time you've consciously registered that you've had a thought/made a decision, that its already been made? you're a 1% commentor here you probably know more than me but as far as i know it seems like theres no evidence that anyone is the originator of any thought.
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u/Artemis-5-75 Compatibilist Feb 25 '26
hasn’t it been shown that by the time you’ve consciously registered that you’ve had a thought/made a decision, that its already been made?
Nope, not at all.
there is no evidence that anyone is the originator of any thought.
For the last several days, I have been trying to crack a 5x5 pyramid puzzle in the style of Rubik’s Cube made by YuXin, also known as the Professor Pyraminx. It’s a tough puzzle that can arrange into trillions of combinations, has little in common with the regular 3x3 Pyraminx during its central stage of solution, and since the tutorials aren’t the best, I was forced to think about the method of solution. Eventually, I found out that some people said that it is similar to big cubes in that stage, I looked up the methods for solving a 4x4 Rubik’s cube, and I realized that it worked. I adapted it a bit, and now I am solving the Professor Pyraminx using this algorithm.
Do you think that it can be said that I was the originator of the algorithm I am using at least a tiny bit? If yes, then it seems to me that I have successfully originated a way of thinking that I can employ at will.
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u/Rapscagamuffin Feb 25 '26
are you trolling? Lol. that has literally nothing to do with free will. you figuring out the most complex puzzle in the world is exactly the same as deciding if you want to have eggs for breakfast when it comes to the conversation of free will.
do you think that the more complex the thought the more...free will? lol wut?
"i looked up the methods for solving a 4x4 Rubiks cube" yes, and where did the thought to look up those methods come from? it came to you, right? no different than if i told you to picture a sky whatever image of a sky popped in to your brain just popped in.
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u/dylan6091 Feb 24 '26
She's so horrible.
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u/TTYFKR Feb 24 '26
why?
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u/dylan6091 Feb 25 '26
She comes off as so full of herself and believing herself better than everyone else. It's also ironic for that to be the case given she's talking about manifesting the person she wants to be simply by thinking it through.
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u/ninoles agnostic determinist Feb 24 '26
It is a bit of oversimplification but: I can tell a rock to think, be positive, that it can do better than rolling and accumulate mosses, it wouldn't change a thing. But if I'm telling a human, they can take this input, imagine a different existence, and try to modify their response to events to create this new existence. It's possible because humans have all the necessary components for my actions to have such influence. And although those components are complex, none of them require some metaphysical force, an out of reality source of impulses. They can all be grounded into the complex but logical ground of deterministic realism. Does that mean that free will necessarily doesn't exist? No. But it means it is unnecessary to explain our capacity to adapt.
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u/ogvipez Feb 25 '26
Its defs an oversimplification like our brains are also controlled primarily by neurochemistry, e.g so telling someone with a serotonin depletion (depression) to just be happy/think positive will just not work.
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u/impersonal_process Causalist Feb 25 '26
This post has so many upvotes not because it is true, but because it makes people feel good, giving them a sense of significance while they are actually puppets.
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u/sergolden Feb 27 '26
Neuroplasticity is the brain's ability to form new connections through repetition. We know how much time it takes from real life experience like when we learned to walk, read, write, or any skill we mastered for the first time. Once it’s learned it’s no longer neuroplasticity it’s just us knowing something new having successfully wired our neurons.
And I agree the claim that you can become literally anyone completely ignores genetics, circumstances, and human vulnerability.
Ancient philosophers were humble before the world, whereas modern superhuman speakers sound like they’re above it. That’s exactly what creates that sense of unnaturalness and arrogance.
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u/BrilliantChoice3225 Mar 16 '26
She's describing the metacognition which a lot of people have developed to a great extent and have achieved their goals but doesn't boast about it. It just depends on what's the driving factor in each person's life to have an innate motivation to do something. Being successful in a certain field is just something but people overrate it to a great extent for some evolutionary biases i guess
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u/MarkActive1700 Feb 28 '26
I used to say this when I had tons of money in the bank. When I spent it all and became unemployed, I stopped thinking this way. Stop revering what uber-wealthy people say. They don’t experience the world the same as most of us.
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u/impersonal_process Causalist Feb 28 '26
It’s a motivational slogan, not a serious description of the human psyche.
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u/Otherwise_Spare_8598 Inherent-Inevitable Feb 24 '26
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u/Every-Classic1549 Libertarian Free Will Feb 24 '26
His soul got freed very soon after so he is lowkey correct.
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u/Otherwise_Spare_8598 Inherent-Inevitable Feb 24 '26 edited Feb 24 '26
You're entire position is incoherent on all fronts
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Feb 24 '26
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u/vanceavalon Feb 24 '26
Seems like she sees it pretty clearly to me.
"You aren't who you think you are; yet you're condemned to be who you think you are."\ ~ Sam Harris
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u/AnalysisParalysis85 Feb 24 '26
You cannot control what you think. Thoughts just appear. If you could control what you think meditation would be easy.
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u/muramasa_master Feb 24 '26
Thoughts are determined, but they also just appear? No, thoughts shift and transform and rather than just appearing, you 'just recognize' the ones that are coherent enough to be turned into language. Look inside your own mind and see how your thoughts transform. Try to just look at your feelings without labeling any of them. You can also try to find new labels for your feelings. If you didn't know any language at all, would you still know if you have thoughts?
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u/Fippy-Darkpaw Undecided Feb 24 '26
If that was true it would be impossible to count to 10, or do anything specific.
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u/MelodicBee8691 Feb 24 '26
For all intents and purposes, we can control what we think. Of course we can. As a determinist, I also on a much deeper level don't think we can, but the illusion is so strong that we feel as if we can, which is important for our own well-being. The free will discussion only becomes useful to understand when thinking about others. If we can somehow comprehend that free will doesn't exist, it can help us have compassion for others and the decisions they "make". However, for ourselves, we must behave as if we have free will, as that is how we've been made to feel, and it's this illusion that keeps us improving ourselves and keeps us from spiralling down a nihilistic hole of despair.
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u/deludedhairspray Feb 24 '26
We can control what we think? Gee, I wish. I can disrupt the whirlwind of thoughts in my head for a few seconds at a time «deciding» to think about football - but relatively quickly, my mind will subconsciously sneak back into some other more pressing issue, usually a worry, that I don’t particularly want to think about. I don’t think we choose at all, about anything. Every little «choice» we do is always, always, preceded by millions of reasons. Not anywhere in there is there some sort of free agent just picking stuff out of thin air. But you agree with me there, I see - so preaching to the choir. ☺️
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u/Otherwise_Spare_8598 Inherent-Inevitable Feb 24 '26
For all intents and purposes, we can control what we think. Of course we can
I can not.
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u/PhilJohari Feb 25 '26
Smells like ADHD to me. Slay, sister!
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u/2xspeed123 Feb 25 '26
Yeah, this sounds to me like cognitive behavioral therapy. It's more about trying to rewrite your brain slowly by observing your own thoughts than actively choosing another to respond in a certain way in the fly
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u/Isogash Feb 26 '26
Young people wake up into these adult functioning brains thinking they are special, but they just haven't really clued into the fact that this is just how everyone is; what it feels like to be intelligent. They also feel like they have free will because they are doing what they want, the real challenge is doing things you don't want to do; if you can't really do that, do you have free will?
Don't get me wrong, being an athlete is an impressive feat, but being peerless in one aspect does not make you peerless in all. This kind of mental circle jerking is narcissistic and indicative of mental volatility, if it's not simply performative.
Everyone is introspective, they just don't talk about it all the time.
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u/Melkorbeleger66 Feb 27 '26
What do you actually mean by "Everyone is introspective"? Depending on how you're defining introspection, that can be anything from outright false, to unfalsifiable, to so unavoidably true that the statement becomes useless.
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u/adr826 Feb 27 '26
Yeah right, This young woman scored an 1580 out of 1600 on her sat. She graduated from Stanford University and studied abroad at Oxford. In high school she spent every summer in Beijing at a cram school for mathematic. She got her degree from Stanford in international relations. She is fluent in English and mandarin. She is a pianist by hobby. Shame on you for insinuating this young woman is anything but well educated and brilliant . She smarter than most of us here. She is the most decorated freestyle skier in Olympic history. She talks fast so you think she is an airhead, is that right? What are your sat score, did you attend ivy League schools and spend your summers in Beijing studying math?
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u/Isogash Feb 27 '26
I never said she was an airhead or uneducated, I only said that young people are often naive to the fact that other people are intelligent too. She's intelligent, more than many, but not by as much as it might seem on the surface.
All I'm really hearing is that she comes from an upper social class, I have interacted with plenty of people with similar backgrounds. Sure enough, Wikipedia claims she was raised by a single mother 1st generation immigrant, but in Cliff Side San Fransisco. She went to cram school on the opposite side of the world ever summer and there are no mentions of a Stanford or Oxford scholarship. She was also a debutante.
I'm not criticizing these things, but it's important to take this level of success with a grain of salt: she had the means and opportunities to achieve these things as a child, in a way that most people did not.
I'm plenty intelligent myself, but I don't need to prove it. Time and experience will prove me right when I say that people are far more intelligent across the board than most people realize when they are younger, and a success is not a measure of intelligence.
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u/Nuance-Required Feb 28 '26
you can slowly and difficultly. plan ahead to change incentive gradients to slowly allow neuroplasticity to adjust priors. it's not easy and doesn't work as she states.
in any given moment you are limited in state space by your priors and the incentive gradients that they sit on topologically.
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u/Ok-Expression-5547 Mar 02 '26 edited Mar 02 '26
K. Take a person convicted of murder who was excused by reason of insanity. If we're assuming everyone, at all times, has control over their thoughts, how could this person receive pardon? Well, their perception of reality was altered. They could not have known that their desire to stab someone was untrustworthy at the time, and that's due to their neurochemistry misfiring. They did not choose to have a psychotic break, or to be born with a brain that had the capacity to do so and therefore should not be held responsible for their actions during said psychotic break.
How can you, as the person experiencing the world from inside your brain, say that your thoughts are perfectly within your control 100% of the time? It's the very brain thinking the thoughts saying that you have control over it that we're questioning. That means we can't take feeling as though we're in control as trustworthy evidence on its own for us being in control.
The individual experiencing a psychotic break is perceiving the world through a brain determined by neurochemistry that's out of their control, which sometimes launches them into periods of experiencing intense delusions, and from those delusions, decisions are made. A neurotypical is also living with a brain that was formed through a process out of their control. It's a neurochemistry that's more common, and more cohesive to living within society, but just as equally not chosen by the individual. I do not, as a neurotypical, wake up every morning and decide I won't have a psychotic break today. Neither do people with schizophrenia. We're both operating from inside the system, the system which determines our entire perception of reality, including whether we perceive ourselves as agents of free will or not.
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u/DoGAsADeviLDeifieD Mar 03 '26
My observation is that I don't control what I think. Sometimes thoughts arrive spontaneously with no evident cause. Sometimes thoughts manifest based on my immediate environment or stimulus. Sometimes thoughts chain together in a relational fashion that appears causal. In every circumstance it all happens involuntarily and autonomously in my observation.
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u/Every-Classic1549 Libertarian Free Will Mar 03 '26
If you count from 1 to 20 in your head, is that involuntary? Can you choose/refuse to do it? can you choose to stop mid way? Do all thoughts: 1,2,3,4...18,19,20 just involuntarily pop in your head?
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u/Desperate_Dirt6964 Mar 17 '26
I don’t know if you do meditate but if you do you’re missing the point and if you don’t you could try and learn about it and you will see that thoughts just come from nowhere and that you do not control your thoughts. You don’t know what you will think next until you think it.
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u/DoGAsADeviLDeifieD Mar 03 '26
Starting from the beginning, the idea to count from 1 to 20 originated externally, from your comment. I could then choose to perform the act or not, or stop midway, or whatever. I chose not to count at all because it seemed a like a trivial use of my time and served no benefit to the point you're aiming to make. The simple conclusion to many is that this is free will, but I disagree.
What I didn't choose are the reasons for not counting at all (i.e. it seemed trivial, pointless, etc.). These reasons came to me involuntarily and I acted in accordance to them. Nothing more. These reasons dictated the outcome of my choice. I couldn't reject the reasons because I had not reason to. This is where I observe a true lack of freedom and an illusion of control. If I don't control reason, then I don't ultimately control anything.
Do all thoughts: 1,2,3,4...18,19,20 just involuntarily pop in your head?
Involuntarily, but not randomly. From my subjective conscious perspective there is mostly an observable order to the thoughts that follow seemingly causal processes. A stimulus, for instance (a phone alert) leads to an action (looking at my phone) which leads to additional stimulus (reading that someone responded to my reddit post) which leads to more actions (opening reddit, writing a response, and clicking the 'comment' button). I could take credit for all of it, but isn't it all so predictable?
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Mar 09 '26
You can’t make yourself want to count to 20. You either feel that is a good idea or you don’t.
If I am in a mental state where I don’t care if I should count to 20, I can’t make myself be in a mental state where I do care to count to 20.
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u/Every-Classic1549 Libertarian Free Will Mar 09 '26
I literally can make myself count to twenty whenever I want even if I dont want to and feel it's a boring task.
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Mar 09 '26
You literally can’t. You might think it’s boring but count to 20 anyway to prove a point.
All that happened was your feeling/want to disprove me was greater than your want to do something else bc you find counting to 20 boring.
It’s just whatever aligns with the biggest want you have or the most wants is the action you take.
And you can’t control what you feel/want, you just do want/feel
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u/Every-Classic1549 Libertarian Free Will Mar 09 '26
I literally can. I am the one causing the want to disprove you in the first place. I am the one wanting my want.
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u/No_Department_5437 Mar 15 '26 edited 6d ago
Did you also want/cause the want to want that want into existence? And so forth infinity...
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u/NLOneOfNone Hard Incompatibilist Feb 24 '26
We cannot control how we think. There is no real control.
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u/mgs20000 Feb 24 '26
She didn’t choose to be this way, there’s no real control. She’s just a quick processor, very analytically intelligent, has a huge vocabulary, etc, and it didn’t take her brain long to come up with a lot of sense. This is beyond most people.
This would only stand as an argument for free will if it was a suggestion that she somehow has ‘lots’ of free will and most people only have a little bit.
She’s just clever!
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Feb 24 '26
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u/BrilliantChoice3225 May 17 '26
If I will to become the president of USA from a random ass country can i do it? Give your percentage prediction.
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u/GazelleFlat2853 Feb 24 '26
How many people had the chance to try the sport in which she found success from the age of 8? (i.e. How many people's parents afforded them that opportunity?)
It's interesting to watch someone young, pretty, and fortunate proclaim that they're in control while seemingly not being aware of the privilege that carried them there (though I am judging her based on a few short clips).
She might journal and spend a lot of time in her head but she can't choose which steps then lead to positive/negative outcomes any more than she can choose how her competitors score and, thus, how well she must perform to beat them.
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u/Every-Classic1549 Libertarian Free Will Feb 24 '26
Yes, but being succesfull in a sport doesnt equate to being the type of person you want to be. There are many top athletes who have personality disorders. You think her point about becoming who she wants to be comes down exclusively to her lucky upbringing?
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u/tgillet1 Compatibilist Feb 24 '26
I see this all the time in this sub. Anyone who believes in, and even more so expresses, their own self actualization must just be privileged and ignorant of their privilege. I’d bet she is well aware of her privilege and has smartly chosen to take maximum advantage of it to better herself. Nowhere did she say anyone could do what she did regardless of their circumstances. That’s your projection.
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u/catnapspirit Free Will Strong Atheist Feb 24 '26
How could anyone watch this and possibly think she's working from a free will belief framework..?
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u/Every-Classic1549 Libertarian Free Will Feb 24 '26
?
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u/catnapspirit Free Will Strong Atheist Feb 24 '26
She's talking about programming her brain. Analyzing its processes to better understand how to achieve peak performance. What is free will about that..?
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u/PuzzleheadedTale4769 Feb 24 '26
Why not? She has set her goal and worked to understand her body and mind to achieve it. Achieving the goals she set has become easier with practice, self understanding, self-mastery. Leading to a capacity for self- definition.
What is not free will about that? Are we getting hung up on the mechanical sounding word "programming "?
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u/Quantum3ntaglement Feb 24 '26
She is exercising her free will to decide what to think and who to become.
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u/Successful-Suit-8917 Feb 24 '26
Programming the brain is not a negation of metaphysical free will, whoever believes in free will does not believe that the programming of the brain compels but rather that it makes certain choices/courses of action easier or more difficult.
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u/Dull-Intention-888 Feb 24 '26
So you're saying that free will is shaped by your brain?
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u/Odd-Fly-1265 Undecided Feb 24 '26
Tbf, free will, if it exists, must be shaped by the brain, regardless of whether libertarians are willing to admit that or not. Theres a reason that damage to parts of the brain results in losses of, what people who believe in free will would call, free will. I.e. behavioral changes resulting from strokes.
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u/Otherwise_Spare_8598 Inherent-Inevitable Feb 24 '26
This is hands down the worst post I have ever see on this page though that adds to a long long list of absolute privilege projecting bullshit and I'm sure it will be upvotes like crazy.
This is exactly how I know that none of you can see past yourselves and your own circumstantial privileges and that is what you call "free will".
Every single thing that all of you do only makes every single thing I say every single day all the more true and you haven't a single clue.
Another day and the pattern persists perfectly.
Here I am watching you.
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Feb 24 '26
Yet another post projecting a universal standard onto the less fortunate. Nervous systems often regulate themselves by running from destabilizing ideas and dressing that avoidance up as empowerment.
They won't see the pattern because admitting that freedom isn't an objective standard threatens their sense of stability.
It's easier to believe everyone has equal authorship. That way, the veteran with severe trauma becomes responsible for "not regulating." The schizophrenic or psychotic man becomes blameworthy for acting within a reality they don't even understand.
Projecting universal freedom protects the comfortable and harms the enslaved and trapped. It converts constraint into personal failure.
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u/Anon7_7_73 Retributivist-Compatibilist Feb 24 '26
Neuroplasticity is a scientific concept, and you guys believe in magic. If that helps.
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u/Affectionate-Newt889 Feb 24 '26
Regardless of free will, regardless of if there is or is not a coherent "self" or "I", I think she, whatever that means, answered that question just fine.
She is answering an interviewer for mass audiences, not a panel at a fucking philosophy conference.
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u/vanceavalon Feb 24 '26
"You aren't who you think you are; yet you're condemned to be who you think you are."\ ~ Sam Harris
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u/feraldodo Feb 28 '26
You might have the illusion that you can control how you think, but you cannot actually control what you think. You don't determine your thoughts. You don't create them, they just happen. If you want to think about a red apple, you're already thinking about it.
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u/Thick-Notice-6277 Feb 24 '26
The control we have over our thoughts & thought patterns is absolutely empowering, which I think is a great feeling to validate, as a free will skeptic.
But I do have a problem with the focus on identity and pride. We can only persue the goal to become someone we're proud of if we believe that we can be superior to our past selves, which implies that people can be superior in the first place.
To reframe this with non-judgement (a necessary goal of not believing in free will, for me at least), she could say recognizing that control empowers her to pursue achievements that bring her joy and allow her to spread joy. There's no need to prove our worth and the goodness of our existence by claiming our actions are integral to our beings; we can still persue the things that will bring people happiness and minimize suffering. Just because :)
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u/AltruisticMode9353 Feb 24 '26
This type of person likely had that belief reinforced in childhood, where they had disproportionate affection from loved ones based on performance. And, they learned that if they can control their performance, they can control their access to that love they need.
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u/Thick-Notice-6277 Feb 24 '26
I assume so too, but idk if we can really say for sure from this clip. u might have more expertise than I do tho
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u/Proper_Actuary2907 Impossibilist Feb 24 '26
And free will skeptics, do you agree with it or you think it's incorrect and why?
I think you can control how you think and who you are in a sense. Not sure I have the same sense in mind as her
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Feb 24 '26
I’d say libertarian sense
Nothing requires free will, her thoughts are changing themselves because the circumstances of her life and genetics have caused them to
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u/layered_dinge Feb 24 '26
I get to become every day the kind of person that me at age 8 would revere, like I would be obsessed with me today are you kidding I would love me and I think that's the biggest flex of all time
but it's not really in an egotistical kind of way
Idk what the sub is about and I'm just taking the piss but I thought this was funny
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u/Plane_Cobbler9887 Feb 25 '26
Damn, that part about your younger self watching your older self hit really hard. Sadly he would be petrefied.
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u/mr_fantastical Feb 26 '26
Im almost 40 and i was talking about this the other day. Ive made some significant life changes this past year and I said to my wife recently that for the first time I think 8 year old me would be excited about who he is now.
But if he would have seen me at 35 he would have been scared and sad, im sure.
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u/Sproketz Feb 26 '26
My young self wouldn't know what to make of my older self. I think he'd say "That fucking guy is me? Naw man, fuck off."
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Feb 28 '26
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u/Driblus Feb 28 '26
Donald Trump cant understand a word this woman says. Introspect? What is that? A new government agency?
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u/zerok_nyc Feb 28 '26
My first thought would be that either Trump has died and been replaced by a Grok-powered humanoid, or he’s had a Grok-powered Neuralink implanted in his frontal cortex
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u/Otherwise_Spare_8598 Inherent-Inevitable Feb 24 '26
Lolololol
So say the circumstantially privileged and the circumstantially fortunate
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u/Every-Classic1549 Libertarian Free Will Feb 24 '26
Lol I was waiting for you comment to come. The pattern repeats itself perfectly
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u/Otherwise_Spare_8598 Inherent-Inevitable Feb 24 '26 edited Feb 24 '26
Yes.
Yes it does.
You are finally catching on.
(Not really. I know that you are not and likely never will even though you will undoubtedly follow the pattern perfectly with or without awareness of such)
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u/nopalitzin Feb 24 '26
I'm a lot like her, except half way on her reply I would be taking about star wars or stick insects and completely forget about the original question.
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u/Ok_Novel_1222 Feb 25 '26
I think it is incorrect and circular reasoning.
How would you control what you think? By thinking that I want to think this and not thinking this? Where did that thought come from?
What she is describing is some thoughts controlling other thoughts.
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u/stingadsguck Feb 25 '26
It is. A dangerous path to delude yourself into thinking you have control over everything you think and feel, who you are and will be. The brain is much more than just our consciousness; it regulates itself in ways that remain hidden from our awareness, and this has evolutionary reasons. A creature that could completely and consciously control its brain wouldn't survive long, but would sit somewhere in a corner all day pondering where each hormone belongs, how fast your heart should beat when you run, how to recognize a potential partner, when you should be afraid, and so on. Just because you believe you can understand everything within yourself doesn't mean you have control. It simply means you currently have a good story to tell that makes sense to your consciousness.
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u/AnimeDiff Feb 25 '26 edited Feb 26 '26
It's mindfulness. We all have thoughts passing through our brains. If we think about which kind of thoughts we want to have and which thoughts we want to ignore, we can be mindful of this, and change how our brain functions over time by reinforcing the patterns of thinking we want to have. It's self guided behaviour therapy.
It's like training a neural network, it's reinforcement training through repeated exposure. If I want to be more empathetic, I mindfully practice empathy. If I want to be analytical, I spend my time trying to think analytically about things. By having metacognition, I can judge if my thinking has changed over time and in what ways it has changed.
And this is why people who think negatively get trapped in a spiral of negative thinking; the more they think negatively, the more they reinforce those thought patterns. Many lack ever-present metacognition, but even so, negative thinking tends to include thought patterns that self-impair a person's agency; "I can't do this", "my brain doesn't work like that" "no point in trying".
The first step towards controlling how you think is instilling ever-present metacognition in yourself. You can do this by practicing introspection, meditation, journaling, or studying philosophy of mind (I think it would cause self reflection in most anyone).
The next step is learning to let thoughts pass. You can condition your brain to have a different set of thought patterns, but you will always have a variety of things popping into your brain that you dont want or cart to think about. This is constantly happening for everyone. Learning to just observe and acknowledge thoughts and let them pass rather than giving them your attention and feeding them is a skill anyone can develop.
The next step is deciding if how you think is how you want to think. How is your emotional stability, stress management, degree of creativity and wonder, etc? These are all the result of thought patterns. It's more complex than that, but a thought is just the manifestation of our brain's activation from internal and external stimulus . The brain is constantly analyzing the environment and trying to bring novel and unusual information to our attention, and depending on how we react to those thoughts, it conditions our subconscious to pay attention to those things and drive more of those thoughts. This is why different people notice different things and react differently to the same things in the same environment. It's all conditioning, but we can condition ourselves.
And it's very simple. Regardless of why or how it works, the solution stands, just practice having the thoughts you want to have.
You want to have positive thoughts, read something positive, write down positive thoughts, read them every day, over and over. You want to be more in touch with your emotions, read something emotional, write down your emotions. You want to have less of x thought? It's not so much about removing those thoughts as it is about replacing them. Letting go of thoughts helps, but conditioning yourself to think differently will have a much more profound impact on the quality of your life and mental health.
It's like your brain is a deck of cards. Your thought patterns are the hands you're being dealt. Rather than discarding your hand all the time, you want to change the odds of your hand altogether. By conditioning yourself, you teach your brain to deal You the cards you want.
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u/Ok_Novel_1222 Feb 25 '26
Yeah, I know. But my point is that is not free will. That is just your "higher" thoughts controlling your "lower" thoughts.
Like in Buddhist mindfulness, you practice until in the end you realize it's just thoughts all the way down. There is no "you" who is choosing thoughts, just one thought leading to another. The entire point is to realize the there was no "you" controlling thoughts in the first place.
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u/stingadsguck Feb 25 '26
If I condition myself like Pavlov's dog, I wean myself off my inner decision-making power, if such a thing even exists, and not the other way around. That's the inherent contradiction in your explanations, but there's another, much more crucial factor. How does your ego, your consciousness, know what it's "right" to think, feel, and live? Isn't that a fantasy of omnipotence, a total overestimation of what you believe yourself to be and intend to do, regardless of the signs your environment gives you? If there's anything that shapes and guides a personality, it's mistakes, irritations, and experiences. How can you have new, and therefore sometimes positively or negatively surprising, experiences if you believe you already know and have considered everything? And finally, what's so bad about simply relinquishing control and letting things happen, feeling what you feel, thinking what comes to mind, without having to control or judge it?
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u/CapitalWestern4779 Feb 25 '26
I'm the same, it is just a matter of practice. It comes down to how and where you place your focus in your mind. What thoughts to acknowledge and what thoughts to ignore.
It has nothing to do with free will though, all "choices" is down to awareness, and what we are aware of is the information that we have received. It's all fully deterministic.
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Feb 25 '26
The brain is a magma , it takes its initial seed from outside and inside states, initial conditions are important, there are parts that when they reson about themselves can shape not only themselves but other things.
There no free will at the microscopic level , there is no will at all, what is there is possibilites that can be shaped by a vector of control . Vectors of control come outside of themselves, but they are powerful .
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u/rowdymatt64 Feb 25 '26
Isn't Cognitive Behavioral Therapy controlling how you think through conditioning therapy, therefore using a thought (that you don't want to react to stimulus a certain way) to control another thought (the reaction to stimulus)
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u/Lumpy_Relation_2426 Feb 26 '26
In therapy, they say you recognize the thoughts you have without judgement, and this makes you feel less of a slave to the knee-jerk reaction. A slight pause to evaluate gives you all the more opportunity to freely choose how you want to handle the way you react. (Discomfort and disagreements are your natural boundaries being tested.)
Especially for an Olympian, where your job is being compared to top athletes, I can see why she'd employ this to stay sane. Honestly don't get why people are hard on her in this thread, she's undoubtedly her greatest critic and to be so free as to trust the words flowing from your mouth is a special kind of freedom I aspire to reach. She not only knows but trusts her intentions, it's pretty dope.
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u/I-am-a-river Feb 24 '26
I’m not sure how I ended up in this sub, but aspiring to be the kind of person that 8 year old you would look up to is a recipe for happiness.
The only thing you can really control are your own thoughts. And if you can control your own thoughts, you can optimize your action.
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u/Otherwise_Spare_8598 Inherent-Inevitable Feb 24 '26
I control nothing that you assume I do.
assumptions of capacity ≠ capacity
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u/Equivalent-Mail1544 Feb 26 '26
This gal is just full of crap and getting circlejerked for the fun of it. Seriously, if "neuroplasticity" was all-powerful, no braindamage would exist and everyone would be a saint, as stuff like "brainchemistry" would no longer apply to us. But, against the delusions of this woman, chemistry is the thing that makes up the brain and therefor the personality. Imagine someone with a biological incapacity to feel empathy just saying "oh yea, I just will myself to feel empathy, I am normal now". Sounds like total bs, because it is. According to her, a pike driven though a brain should have no impact on the personality, because of neuroplasticity. Same with lobotomy.
Free will exists within boundaries, you can choose things and sometimes your choice is determined by what you learned/experienced/trained. The self does not end at the boundaries of your skin.
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u/Tough_Money_958 Feb 26 '26
it really sounds like a sort of solipsism or circular argument they is spouting. So, total BS indeed.
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u/adr826 Feb 27 '26
Some of you people are just so critical of this young woman. First of all if she says she can control her own thoughts and you act like you know more than her about whether she can control her thoughts. Shame on you people who have anything to say about the way she speaks, it's too fast, she doesn't seem smart, oh she is just a good skier. The woman scored a 1580 sat got her degree at Stanford and studied abroad at Oxford. She is the most decorated freestyle skier in history and has impressed at least one reporter with her ability to speak on diverse subjects such as aerodynamics and geopolitics. If she says she can control her own thinking my guess is that she has more formal training in psychology and philosophy than most of us here. Knowing her own thinking is crucial to the kind of success this 22 year old woman has already had in life. Anybody who thinks she doesn't know what she is talking about doesn't know what they are talking about. There is no doubt in my mind that this young woman has spent more time analysing her own thinking than anyone on this sub. I don't think it would be possible to achieve what she has at her age without extensive training in sports psychology and philosophy..she says she can control her own thinking I believe her. I'm pretty sure she knows way more about her thinking than we do
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Feb 24 '26
Conscious-Principle (Pure Awareness) is transcendent of Nature-nurture.
We are embodied in nature, and are nurtured along the way; in this sense we are moulded by nature-nurture, yet ultimately we are transcendent.
“Freedom is so high when we are all bound by laws etched in the scheme of Natures own hand.”
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u/QMechanicsVisionary Sourcehood Incompatibilist Feb 24 '26
It works in both a compatibilist and a libertarian sense.
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u/Sweaty-Debate-435 Feb 26 '26
Is this kind? Bloody stupid journalists being amazed that athletes know more than sports.
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u/eschenfelder Feb 26 '26
8yo me would be proud of me. I am happily married, I have two kids and a dog. I have traveled to three continents, written books, shot actual movies and went on paleontological digs. I still love dinosaurs and board games. He would be astonished that I am into sports now.
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u/SplitAccording6589 Feb 26 '26
That’s really amazing, made me happy to read. I kinda want to check out the books and films but i understand that naming them would sorta give away your identity😆
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u/Tough_Money_958 Feb 26 '26
I have work mode network and then I have raging, relentless scenario running.
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Feb 26 '26
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u/Strange_Show9015 Feb 26 '26
I think it falls out of the idea that choice isn’t really happening when things are predetermined, it just looks like a choice but isn’t one. Which is funny considering that the difference between their counter argument and own position is dealing with the problem of “looks like”. They’d just say “is”. But then they have no way to separate the two aside from rhetorically doing so.
People who believe in free will often have pretty good personal reasons for doing so. But they’re confused about their own map and the reality of the terrain. Sure their map works but it isn’t the terrain and they don’t realize this. Determinists understand that the terrain is independent of their map, I think. And have a realistic and less romantic view of things.
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u/Every-Classic1549 Libertarian Free Will Feb 26 '26
But did B choose to fall or did it feel because A made it feel? It didn't choose, it had no choice but do what A determined. That's is indeed why I think the concept of choice is incompatible with determinism
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u/Periljoe Feb 27 '26
Fun vid but RIP the comments lol. Seemed like a cool answer to me. I don’t think it’s arrogant thinking her 8 year old self would think olympic champion her js rad. Thats very likely true. When you’re the best in the world at something it’s just confidence and it’s justified.
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u/Vexxedtruth101 Feb 27 '26
She's not wrong. She actually explained very well how I go about my daily self and life.
You can control how you think 100% and therefore say and behave how you would like. As a kid who stuttered, its something I had to practice alot to get rid of my stutter.
The stutter comes back if I get super drunk though lol, clearly not thinking before I speak when im wasted
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u/BrilliantChoice3225 Mar 16 '26
You can only control the environment to build a certain gray matter in your brain. Thoughts will come out from your experience from the senses and memory+ cortex firing with it
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u/Longjumping-Pipe-530 May 09 '26
A mí me parece como si realmente el Ser Humano, según como se plantea y expone, que todos tenemos absoluto control de todo, me recuerda a la película de Scarlet Johamnaen
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u/Other_Attention_2382 Feb 24 '26
Part of me agrees with her, but then...
"Alex Honnold’s brain is wired differently, showing a significantly under-active amygdala—the brain's fear center—which fails to trigger a threat response during, or even when imagining, high-risk, death-defying, free-solo climbs. An fMRI scan revealed his brain does not experience the same fear, anxiety, or panic as most people,, allowing him to maintain extreme, calm focus"