^you're the one who brought up interventions in the first place.....i don't know why you did, so i cant answer that question

and yes, you can have a choice between jail and rehab, if you quit the rehab early, you will go to jail.

Massive amounts of peer pressure (something that genetics tells us we should comply with because popularity=power when you're living off a group caught hunt if you're unpopular you don't get much. Or laid.), realisation or fear of economic struggles (blowing your money on blow hinders outside lifestyle, eg unable to buy food/provide a roof over your head), realisation or fear of health related problems (really a no brainer), realisation or fear of an inability to function within modern society to an adequate level (ties in with the others, if you don't provide for yourself other people are unlikely to do so ...).

Note: I'm with Kerkovian and Swim in that I don't believe in the possibility of free will (neither genetic nor deistically bestowed), but I was too lazy to say so earlier.

See, I think anyone who believs that everything in our lives is out of our control, that we are entirely subject to being pushed and pulled in directions according to what happens around us is just saying it as a cop-out to avoid taking responsibility in their life. It's quite convenient, if everything you do in your life is the consequence of an outside force, and you have no control of that action, then it'd be quite easy to go with the philosphy that you're not leading life, life is leading you, and just give up all responsibility for the way it turns out.

plus, I see all those factors that you gave Fal as an evidence of free will. A drug addict will evaluate those factors, which had been thee since the begining of his addiction, and at some point, make the choice to actually listen to them and go in another direction.

Very few people actually think that way, and those who do, usually are mentally ill.

But if they still pay attention to those factors it's not free will. It's not a pure choice because factors bias it. In no way would I suggest that a lack of free will in any way justifies murder etc, nor that committers of offences should be let off easy as a result. It's an acceptance that a combination of situation and DNA are what affects my situation rather than clinging to some idea that we can always choose what to do. If a plane is going to crash into my house, I'm not going to go to the kitchen and have a biscuit just to prove that I have free will and can do what I wish (and even then it wouldn't be free will because I'd only be doing it to prove that we have free will; an attempt to vindicate my point and thus biasing the decision), likewise if I'm hungry I'm not going to throw myself under a car just to prove that I can.

If a plane is going to crash into your house, pull a Donnie Darko, because then you get to be the first person to time travel, with the negative of you will die in how many days, hours, minutes, and seconds the crazed rabbit tells you.

Ignore that, i'm just being rambley and irrelevant

That statement kind of reminds me when whatshisface said that "everything that can be invented has been invented". The fact that we haven't managed to create something yet is not concrete proof that it isn't possible. Not at all. Obviously, it means its less likely than things which already have been achieved, but it doesn't mean its not possible for us to do.

Is it not more the case that we can always choose what we intend to do but that your choice in the first place is entirely directed by our DNA, previous experiences and the present situation (the situation provides the stimulus for your thoughts) and that the outcome of this choice similarly depends upon the same factors? Its just the "we can always choose what to do" phrase that seems a bit innacurate, as in a sense lack of free will doesn't mean people don't choose, it means their choices are directed and could probably be said to be predetermined.

I agree that a lack of free will, as far as that means your individual thoughts and actions being essentially inevitable, doesn't release you from holding responsibility for your actions. Why would it? If somebody is a criminal due to their DNA and their life experiences... they are still a criminal.

Thought I'd make a new post for this question.

Does anybody else, like I do, believe in fate/destiny, or whatever you want to call it?

My opinion is that in any situation there can only ever be one possible outcome. We don't know what this outcome will be when we are performing the actions which lead us to the outcome, but when you look back on them you see that they were the only choices that ever would have been made and the current situation is the only one which could possibly exist.*

This ties in strongly with the idea of free will, so it seems suitable to open it up on this thread.

Anybody else agree? Who disagrees?


*To that extent, although I loved Back to the Future, I think the whole time-travel idea is complete bullshit (as opposed to most other science fiction, which is just shit). Unless you count travelling forwards in time at the rate of one second per second, which I do all the time.

I agree. In my defence for not being clearer earlier, I'm rarely a pinnacle of eloquence at 3 am ;)

However I do not believe in fate or destiny. We do what we do not out of freewill, but neither would I argue that there's some overriding, supernatural power deciding our actions.

I think you could argue that there might be 'overriding powers' deciding our actions, but that there's nothing supernatural about them. That is, there are a whole load of natural powers that are pushing you and everything around you and are the base cause of everything that you and everybody and everything else ever does. Science goes some way to explaining it but of course it's far too complicated for us to be able to fully grasp.

What I mean by destiny is not that you can go to a fortune teller, have a vision or even intelligently guess where you where you will be in 20 years time. What I mean is that in 20 years time, you will be in a certain place, doing something with your life (or not) and that will be the only place and the only thing you could have been doing at that point in time.

When you look forward in time it looks like there are many options and paths you could take, which result in different outcomes. When you look backwards in time, there is only one route you took, there was only one path and the idea that you could have ended up somewhere else, doing something else is a fallacy.

At the same time, the idea that people can know anybody is "destined" to do something, before they have done it, is bull****. After they have done it, well... then they were destined to do it.