That is, they think all of their decisions were preordained, and then use this to claim that they can’t be held responsible for anything they do.

  • Beemo Dinosaurierfuß@feddit.de
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    1 year ago

    First off, thank you for the detailed response.
    I recognize that you know more about this than me so I am happy to learn.

    There are a couple of points in your post though that I want to reply to.

    Determinism as used here means behavioral determinism.

    That is explicitly not what I want to talk about.
    I might have misworded my first post or misunderstood op but I understand determinism as the view that with perfect information over any system it can be predetermined what will happen in the future of this system. Wikipedia says: Determinism is the philosophical view that events are completely determined by previously existing causes.

    I thought that to be the case for a long time.
    If I could control all the variables I could roll a die to a 6 every time or at least tell the outcome as soon as it’s thrown if I know everything else there is to know.

    I also recognize that my understanding of modern physics is minimal at best.
    But a physicist friend of mine told me that there is stuff that is truly random, so in gross simplification if I throw the exact same die in the exact same way under the exact same conditions it could still show different results making it impossible to predetermine the result.

    If that is the case I don’t think this world is a system where it is possible to determine the future even with perfect information.

    And maybe you are right that my knowledge is just too superficial to hold a real opinion in the debate between determinism and indeterminism, but I also don’t really have a horse in this race.
    Just if you were to ask me as a layman I would think indeterminism to be more plausible given the (grossly simplified) information above.

    The OP that I replied to described himself as a determinist, so I was just curious of their response.
    But now I got a lot of other input to think about so I am happy either way.

    Again, none if this is meant to attack you and I realize to someone more informed this might just seem as random rambling, but I was just honestly interested so thank you again for the response.