But yeah, free will... it's a pretty funny thing.

There's no choice. Any "choice" we make is the result of this huge pile of experiences that are built upon experiences that are built upon experiences that's in our head.

I'm not sure I follow.

We could choose Pepsi over Coke for no other reason than that we threw up one time when we were a baby.

Or you could acknowledge your reasoning and go against it for that very reason.

But even then, that's also built upon the same set of experiences.

Choosing to rebel comes from a different path of experiences.

It's all predicated upon layers upon layers of things that happened to us before that "decision".

Accepting a path and rebelling against it are both parts of the same machine.

Just perhaps different mechanisms.

I don't think your own justification makes it not free will.

In fact, that's all that does make it free will.

Because the paths are predetermined.

Not because of what comes after, but because of what came before it.

The entire arrangement of the universe as it currently stands is the way it is because of which way a bunch of particles burst forth from the Big Bang.

No way.

It's not predestined what path I'll take home.

Sure it is. You're basing your decision on SOMEthing that came before that decision, whether it was simply visual aesthetic or "wanting to change things up a bit" or whatever else.

But I make that decision in the moment.

Right, but moments don't exist in vacuums.

They don't exist the way they are without all the moments that came before them.

I'd say those experiences inform every decision you make, but they don't predetermine them.

I mean... everything is predestined in retrospect. But that's cheating.

But there's one factor or another that tips it in one direction or another.

But you can't figure out what that'll be ahead of time, most of the time. And there's no governing force or logic behind any of this.

And experiences sure aren't objective.

Whether you choose to reject or accept a particular path is based upon this huge bundle of connected neural pathways that have formed throughout your lifetime, with weird and unexpected things getting wired together.

You take two people -- identical twins, even, and give them the exact same experiences. They'll still interpret them differently.

Right, because you can never have identical experiences.

Let's say for argument's sake you can, down to the molecules of air you breathe.

Whether a person is standing on your left or your right could have ramifications years or decades later.

There's still the brain itself, which forms differently in the womb.

Twins don't necessarily have the EXACT same brain.

To start out with.

Right.

Hm.

Well, it sounds like what you're saying is if you take exact atomic clones and give them the exact same set of circumstances, they'll make the exact same choices as each other.

Within a given margin of error. Though, at the first deviation, it's going to start to differ exponentially beyond that point.

So even in the perfect petri dish, there's a margin of error.

I'd say that rules out predestination.

Er, well, sorry, I was still thinking about "well, they could've gotten bombarded by slightly more sunlight".

Haha.

But you're talking about identical to the subatom.

To the very string.

Which, if you start out with two absolutely identical humans that are atomically identical and they have atomically identical experiences, they will make the same choices every time.

But we've moving further and further away from anything resembling a real-world scenario.

So in this mythical world, sure, but why not just call it God in that case.

Maybe. We can't really test that.

Though it'd be fucking fascinating.

Heh, of course.

And, I mean, even if you attempt it...

You still have very early deviations that will have exponential effects decades later in that individual's life.

It really would.

If I were God, that's what I'd do.

One of the many things.

But in the world in which we live in (heh), I don't think you can say there's anything resembling predestination.

Predictability, absolutely.

But yeah, even with twins, a fraction of a second with, say, a caretaker rushing to them when they fall could mean the difference between their choosing to trust a person or not trust a person twenty years later.

Simply because of whatever "turning point" in wirings of neurons.

Right.

Understood and agreed, of course.

One pathway is formed versus another... that child would wait no longer to make the judgment about the person who was supposed to care about them.

Kinds of things.

And even if I were to say "fuck it" right now and inexplicably quit my job (just after getting hired full-time) and sell or abandon all my shit and hop a flight to Haiti to rape orphaned children, there's some sort of neural circuit that's been building to lead to that decision.

Over the course of my lifetime.

So... SEE YOU IN HAITI is what I'm saying.

Hahaaha.

Welp!

JUST CHOSE A WALLPAPER FOR MY COMPUTER IN PART BECAUSE OF THE WAY MY DAD SMELLED WHEN I WAS A KID

It would be pretty amazing if you could trace that kind of shit, though.

Yeah, for real.

Depressing, too.

Haha, yeah.

"So. Why'd you just dump that girl?" * scanning * "It was because of the fourth porn you jerked off to, which changed the type of woman you were physically attracted to, to a very slight degree, but enough that from that point onward, you sought out women who more resembled her, which sort of snowballed into a complete alteration of the kind of woman you're ultimately attracted to. Also, your mother fed you too quickly once when you were three years and four months old, which altered the path of your expectations from women."

Oh. Well, guess I can't blame you!

"Also, that one time you stubbed your toe."

Nobody would care about anything!

I think the fascinating and fucking absolutely horrifying thing is that there are certain experiences you can "implant" in a person that will alter their behavior years later.

And I think that happens a lot.

I.e.?

Or rather

E.g.?

We're steered in such a delicate and subtle way that we believe that we're making certain decisions ourselves when they're really just because of some commercial we saw when we were twelve.

Combined with other shit.

The best trick is making us think the ideas originated from within.

Hah.

ALL PRAISE NOOK-NOOK, THE ONLY HUMAN TO EVER HAVE AN ORIGINAL THOUGHT

Haha. But even then, it was just the result of stumbling down a hill and then a few years later burning his hand on a hot rock.

Or her.

At least he was the first.

Or her.

Yeah...

I mean, but even then, you can possibly trace it back to the way particles exploded from the Big Bang, if you had the technology. Nook-Nook only fell down the hill because when the particles that eventually would come to form the Earth came together, one of them landed slightly more to the edge than another, which resulted in that hill even being there in the first place.

And another clump of particles allowed for life to form.

My brain seeks to reject these ideas as a form of self-defense.

Yeah, once you start buying into it, everything seems really horrific and vast and meaningless and lonely. And it's even worse if it already felt that way to begin with.

And it's like... once you're there, you can't not be there.

Because, I mean, there's no real other explanation for it. The current subatomic particular state of the universe can be traced back to whichever way those particles were flung out of the Big Bang.

But at least no entity set all this shit in motion, or knows the components, or the end result.

Right, of course.

Though, if we had the technology to measure even a given set of particles and trace them back to their origins, we could make some interesting projections.

Damn.

Probably really accurate ones, too.

Yeah. We could see all of time flattened out before us.

Sometimes I try to imagine it and it just... breaks my brain.

Just the potentials of it.

Seriously. It's literally maddening.

Heh, in a way:

I think becoming more aware of the process is one of those "experiences along the path" that affects the way you think from that point onward, only it's sort of a "meta" one. Once you start to think about why you're making certain decisions... what factors from past experience go into every choice you make... you can sort of control it more. But that control is only there because of the awareness you attained from becoming aware of the process.

If that makes any sense at all.

It does.

And in real-world application, it makes you a better "decision-maker."

The key, of course, is to avoid using it as an excuse for your actions. "Oh, that's just the way my brain functions." or whatever.

Still accept responsibility.

Indeed.

You can't blame your parents for being born when you rape someone or whatever.

"Hey, if I wasn't here, you'd never have been raped! Blame THEM!"