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At 12/10/09 11:19 PM, faxmunky wrote: I recently read a thread on Newgrounds which struck me really deeply and lead me to believe something.

I believe there is no such thing as chance.

When you decided to click on this thread, it was not because you just decided to. You clicked on this thread because your brain found the title interesting for one reason or another. And YOU ARE NOT IN CONTROL of what you are interested in. Your genetics are in control

ok, now what does this have to do with chance again? Choice and Chance are two totally different things

:as well as your past experiences through what you have seen, heard, and felt. That is why you clicked on this thread. Similarly, a child has an interest in flying because his parent who is a pilot also had the same interest. The child was not in control - his mind was through genetics and past experiences.

I have so many interests that have nothing to do with my parents, this is just, I dunno, A gross over generalization of ungeneralized interests

Here is another thing to think about. Rolling a die does not involve any chance at all. The number that is rolled is determined by minute muscle movements, density and texture of the die and table/floor as well as the speed and distance from the table/floor and billions of other factors.

its not random chance that the wind moves the dice at the specific time? you dont really have a choice if youre going to throw the dice or not, thats really what you think? this just seems like an easy way to pass of your flaws as inevitability

This leads me to question the existence of the soul/spirit (I am atheist, but now I don't even believe I am actually in control). Perhaps the spirit is just an inanimate 'thing' (I don't know what word to use there) which perceives feelings generated by the mind.

I dont know if id call it a soul, but id say humans have some kind of drive and intrigue at the nature of existence, and mortality, id call that a soul, but thats me

Everything that has happened in this universe is a result of a chain reaction caused by the big bang. If there ever was an event governed by chance, it was the big bang itself.

I think everything in the universe is random chance, on a linear path of endless numbers, certain numbers will combine eventially by sheer mathematical probability, the big bang happened because all the other options had been played at that time, everything is random chance as far as Im concerned, only Human interactions and actions have any kind of control behind them, as small as it may be

If there was another universe with the EXACT SAME big bang

You mean parallel universes, or do you think like, there can be more than one "the Universe" on the same physical plane as our universe.

then it would be identical to ours, and all the people on the universe would be doing the exact same thing... Making the same decisions and rolling the same numbers.

I have a theory that there is infact life, real sentient life in our universe, but they are bound by the same physical laws we are, since the universe is so big, everything has to travel at the speed of light to get anywhere, and even then its a long trip, and since nothing can travel at the speed of light but light...any really smart alien is stuck on their rock, like we are stuck on ours, asking "what if" when the real question of the universe is "why" and there is no why, or no why that will give us comfort atleast

yup, thats about all I have to say

At 12/11/09 04:38 AM, XxRobJohnsonxX wrote:

At 12/11/09 04:24 AM, Bacchanalian wrote:

At 12/11/09 04:08 AM, XxRobJohnsonxX wrote: Everything I stated goes along with exactly what you said, yet you address my post as if it is invalid.

If you're saying the relationship is dealing-with-opposites (like the yin yang), then there isn't balance between fate and free will. The yin yang, as a balance between opposites, does not apply to the relationship between free will and fate.

(Did that read at all less pretentiously?)

I essentially stated that the division of belief into the "opposites" free will and predestination is not the way one should see the issue.

And I'm not saying you didn't.

Without it's counterpart, either view of the subject is invalid.

Only when both views, as opposites, are brought together and are examined in entirety, can one fully comprehend the issue.

Dichotomies are great analytical models but that's not what I'm arguing against and that's not what you were arguing for.

Many decisions are made because of existing factors.
Many of the existing factors exist because of decisions made.

There it is.

My objection may be that you are bracketing determinism in such a way to claim the two phenomena co-exist. Determinism however requires that the bracket extend to an initial condition. If you've got free will playing a part between now and the initial condition, then you no longer have determinism. If free will plays a part in any causal chain, than everything that follows the act of free will is no longer a deterministic chain. To cut the chain where free will ends, to claim co-existence, strikes me as circular.

..Someone trying to copy me?

I INVENTED determinism.

This is pretty old man. The concept of free will. I think there was a debate thread about it in the politics forum.

At 12/11/09 05:06 AM, Michaelas10 wrote: ..Someone trying to copy me?

I know I am [ What the fuck is he talking about? ]

At 12/11/09 05:08 AM, Michaelas10 wrote: I INVENTED determinism.

Ohhh, I see [ Someone wanna give rainman his meds or what? ]

ITT: the op confuses a personal opinion/belief with absolute truth/fact.

At 12/11/09 12:08 AM, boatwest wrote: well i am not a machine, so chance works on me.

neither am I

Well DUH everything HAS a physical explanation A.K.A reason.

At 12/11/09 09:43 AM, Jamoke wrote: ITT: the op confuses a personal opinion/belief with absolute truth/fact.

lmao.

My brain hurts and my mind is blown. Good job OP, I'll probably be pondering this idea all day now. >:C

At 12/11/09 10:54 AM, XxRobJohnsonxX wrote: Lol... you cannot simply attempt to say I'm wrong, because you analyze both opposites apart from eachother.

I'm pretty sure I was analyzing the ramifications one opposite has on the other. I get the impression that if I bother to distinguish between them to any extent you'll claim I'm isolating them.

"You are wrong because part 1 says part 2 cannot exist and vice versa"

There is a direct relationship between the two....

Are you talking about the perceptual or syntactic relationship now?

Whether an atom will decay at a given moment is totally up to chance.

At 12/11/09 11:27 AM, XxRobJohnsonxX wrote: Have a nice day.

"Only when both views, as opposites, are brought together and are examined in entirety, can one fully comprehend the issue."

This is one kind of relationship.

"Many decisions are made because of existing factors.
Many of the existing factors exist because of decisions made."

This is another.

All I wanted to know was which one you were talking about.

At 12/10/09 11:28 PM, Synnxile wrote: you're exactly right faux.

Btw, the spirit is real..and it's pretty much trapped inside our body. Our body is our own prison. You can thank the Annunakai. They're the fallen angels who came during the Sumerian times and altered our genetic code. We used more than 10% of our brain before this happened. More people are starting to open their eyes to things and be more open minded. Nice of you to join the group.

Haha, chuckles. If your not trolling, your an idiot. The 10% thing is a myth. Normal, functional people use right around 100% consistently. The ten percent thing is only used by fake psychics to explain fake abilities.

I'm sick of all you arrogant 16 year olds that act like you've got everything figured out. This argument has been debated for centuries, and you think you're going to convince anyone of anything by posting a few paragraphs on it?

it's funny cuz i'm 16 LOLOloLoLoLolOlolO

At 12/11/09 12:08 AM, boatwest wrote: well i am not a machine, so chance works on me.

.....

So you're saying machines that can roll dies and successfully manipulate the roll to make it land on a specific side do exist?

Therefore you are saying you are wrong, because rolling the die ISN'T chance.

Rolling the die is a bad analogy, chance still exists, it's just that dies don't depend on chance, they depend on advanced physics(don't say mathematical probability, although that theory is valid, it's 3rd grade math. :| Advanced physics can tell you what the outcome of a roll will be if you plug in all the factors(like he said, how smooth the die is, how flat the table is, is the table really balanced in a way so that it's not leaning on a side? Is the house that the table is standing on really horizontal? If not, even if it may be slanting to the left by .00006 millimeters, that small slant does make a difference in the outcome.))

However,something like what they had said, taking a chance on the girl and hoping she isn't a homicidal maniac, that isn't chance either.(Not saying chance doesn't exist, I'll get to that later). Experiences in your life determine how trusting you are, as well as how paranoid you are about meeting a random person and that person may be a homicidal maniac. Most people are on the trusting end or non-paranoid side of this.

You call the president, and there are a billion possible secretaries that will pick up the phone and greet you(I know, there aren't a billion secretaries working for the president, it's just hypothetical.).
Now a math problem would be something along the lines of: "Every secretary has an equal chance of picking up the phone to greet you. Therefore if you take a guess which secretary it will be that picks up the phone, there is a 1 in billion chance you will be right."
However, when you apply reality into the problem, you'd realize that this may be impossible. Every person is uniquely different from one another, and in this problem, reaction time matters most. If we entered all the information of their life into an algorithm, we can determine who will be first to pick up every time. (More on algorithms, here's a story from creepypaste(IT'S SO AWESOME, I KNOW) that explains that not everything is chance, given the right tools, everything is pre-determined. Life is largely predetermined, nature is the playground/test field, and your brain receives all the information that can be used by the algorithm, which is the part of the brain that makes decisions: http://www.creepypasta.com/the-algorithm / ).
Now that was only half of the analogy, there's still why you picked that certain secretary. I can explain: Again, many factors determine your guesses. Whether it be you like names that start with x more or you like long names, w/e. Now let's say your guess was unbiased, so we can kick out all the super-obvious information on what you favor to determine your guess(If your guess was biased, it'd be tenfold easier to predict.). There are several ways to guess, and depending on which one you chose, I'll have a different way to present my argument. I will only be showing you 2 ways of guessing though, if you want to me to get more guessing methods to dismantle, then tell me the guessing method, I don't know all of them. Only rule for this is that it can't be done with a computer(Computers are already pre-determined, nothing, not even random name generators, are random, they follow a specific set of binary code rules, or else there'd be chaos, and the computer malfunctions.).

1. Taking out a list and randomly placing your finger on a name.

So this entire argument on it not being chance is basically explaining the physics of where it lands, so expect a lot of physics to follow up on: Depending on how enthusiastic you are about guessing, and many other things that I can determine if I had your entire life and what your brain thought of every second in a computer, I can determine how much effort you are going to put into raising your arm and whether your finger will be outstretched, completely erect(this can be based on how you usually point at things, with a crooked finger or erect.). If you would point your finger to the left or the right, top right, etc., this can be determined simply by examining your pattern of thought from the past and what commands you give yourself when guessing. Do you use reverse psychology and try pick the option opposite of what you guessed, do you go eenie minie mo(in that case, it's merely a matter of counting to determine what you'll pick), do you say the first one that comes to mind, say the first one your eyes landed on, or maybe even the second. All these techniques, when discovered to be used, can be used against you, and once I figure out your method of guessing, I can tell you what you will guess every time with the help of a little bit of physics and psychology, as well as physiology and biology.

2. Sort of a slot machine, where the list is basically repeating for eternity(I know that's impossible, but in order for the slot machine analogy to work by using your hands, this must be done. If you really want to be more realistic, we could say this list extends so far that it reaches the other side of Earth, and comes back around, connecting with the end of the old list, you use one hand to slide the paper forward and keep the names moving while your other hand stays in place as a marker.). Say you get bored of moving your hand, tugging the paper along and decide to stop, or maybe you stop when your arms get tired, perhaps you'll tell yourself to stop moving after 2 seconds, through process of elimination, I can eliminate most of the names that come up later, since 2 seconds isn't going to get you far, I can also eliminate the first several names, since 2 seconds lets your finger travel up the list far enough. Then I can take the speed per second your hand was traveliing at(Again from the 1st analogy, I can pre-determine how much effort you will put in your guesses, etc. just by examining your thought process.) and determine approximately where you will end up.

Now you may be telling yourself that just because all my past actions and patterns affect my daily decisions, it doesn't mean I'm under anyone's control, or that all my random decisions aren't based on chance, well you're not under ANYONE'S control, but rather you are controlling yourself by giving yourself restrictions on what to do and what not to do, how to dress, how to think, how to talk, etc.

These past patterns affect you on a suconscious level that will affect your judgment whether you like it or not. You have to actually use effort if you want free will and not be under your own control.

Now for an example where chance TRULY exists, would be this example:

You approach Starbucks, and decide to order randomly. You place your left hand over your eyes, and just out your right arm at a random spot into the menu. However, you then decide to choose something where you'd normally won't go to. For example, say you usually lean to the right, but this time, you lean to the far left. This time, it's completely up to chance, you just beat the algorithm.

You have to do something totally new every time in order to be considered "free".

Whew, that was a long essay @-@

Hope that cleared things up between you two.

Btw, for further clarification, I'm not on either side, I'm a third side to your little debate. Chance normally doesn't exist, but in rare situations ,they do.

Well ya but what about the chances of heredity?
That's a chance.
And that chance can vary

no argument required

its called the chaos theory. it states the we exist infinitely inside ourselves. our universe is smaller than an atom to some other possible universe and so on. I may have typed this infinite times in infinite universes.

Really chance is just an term of expression any way. Of coarse there is an indefinte cause or series of causes to every event and outcome, but the ones we do not know the nature of, or understand we lable as chance.

For instance, the movement of air, muscle movements, gravity variability etc. on the coinflip.
The movement of electrons in a computer for the random number or code genorator.

There is a definite cause for everything, but unless we fully understand its nature, why not label it as chance and let people that do place thier bets accordingly.

You have a point, but:

1. Ehhh who the hell cares anyway...

2. For future reference, you might want to avoid starting a philosophy thread with "I recently read a thread on Newgrounds which struck me really deeply and lead me to believe something."