Comment on Those books are different from how I remembered…

• UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  You are either saying that you can predict where a fly is going to go when you set it free or you are saying that a fly has internal agency.

  If the fly lacks agency, you would be able to predict its movement given a sufficiently accurate set of information.

  If it has agency, you could not.

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  • merc@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    It’s difficult to predict the path of a leaf floating in the wind, but I don’t think anybody would say a leaf has agency.

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    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      It’s difficult to predict the path of a leaf floating in the wind

      Orders of magnitude less difficult, as the leaf can’t glean your intent and respond accordingly.

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      • merc@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Can you prove that?

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  • brrt@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    You missed the point while drawing your circular argument.

    Take what you said and replace fly with human. Wait here I’ll do it for you:

    If a human lacks agency, you would be able to predict its movement given a sufficiently accurate set of information.

    If it has agency, you could not.

    Now tell me how you will acquire a sufficiently accurate set of information about a human and its environment to test your hypothesis.

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    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Now tell me how you will acquire a sufficiently accurate set of information about a human and its environment to test your hypothesis.

      You can’t. That’s a significant problem of identifying the existence or absence of “Free Will”.

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