General / Off-Topic So... Do we have free will? :)

Or anywhere else, really.
Political correctness is effectively a combination of threat and emotional blackmail. It's probably the worst offense to free speech and ultimately, free anything, really. It suppresses individualism and free thinking and encourages mob bullying and echo chambers.
An ultimate bane of western civilization, if you ask me (not that you did :))
I agree. I merely cited Canada because I have so many recent egregious examples to easily draw from, and it's further down that slippery slope than America is. Give us ten more years and the thought police will have the centers of education pretty much sewn up here in the States, too, for example.

I know that it's a bit of a deviation from the original premise, but of far FAR greater utility to all of us is the question of how much society under the guise of political correctness strives to rob us of what free will we do posses. This is a battle that is both blatant as well as creepily insidious, and it's being waged against us by a never ending tide who's sole aim is to either beat our free thinking and free will down, or failing that to crush us utterly in order to silence our voices. It's a very real battle, whilst the question of free will and whether we possess it or not is nothing but an abstraction of no practical utility to us whatsoever.
 
I agree. I merely cited Canada because I have so many recent egregious examples to easily draw from, and it's further down that slippery slope than America is. Give us ten more years and the thought police will have the centers of education pretty much sewn up here in the States, too, for example.

I know that it's a bit of a deviation from the original premise, but of far FAR greater utility to all of us is the question of how much society under the guise of political correctness strives to rob us of what free will we do posses. This is a battle that is both blatant as well as creepily insidious, and it's being waged against us by a never ending tide who's sole aim is to either beat our free thinking and free will down, or failing that to crush us utterly in order to silence our voices. It's a very real battle, whilst the question of free will and whether we possess it or not is nothing but an abstraction of no practical utility to us whatsoever.
OK.
 
Here's some meat to the topic. Quite disturbing stuff that questions a lot of what I'm used to believe, while at the same time seems to point into a direction of one of my more quixotic theories: that our brain might be an interface to our true consciousness rather than it's location. This would require consciousness made of a yet unknown matter - or no matter at all, something no serious scientist would sign of course.

But these are just my own (admittedly pretty esoteric) conjectures, while the stuff below is pure science:

Neuroscience of free will
Lobotomy, is know to suppress self awareness, possibly detaching consciousness. So logically; we are in there somewhere. A big bunch of neurons bouncing about.
 
I'm trying to decide whether your response is truly deep...or just a partial sentence that you forgot to complete before tapping "Post reply."
it was a test. The impression was that the thread was locked.

Ok, is just enough, to peek interest and guarantee a response. You took longer than I expected.
 
If you understand German, this one is quite interesting:
Das Rätsel unseres Bewusstseins

German, much overrated.



(reading)



Yes we Germans are really mean, we use our own language to hide all the good stuff from everyone else 😎





it was a test. The impression was that the thread was locked.

Ok, is just enough, to peek interest and guarantee a response. You took longer than I expected.

Yeah, the average post count per minute in here did receive a dent for a few minutes
 
I see, I see. This is the intellectual thread on the subject, so we get the heavy stuff here. While over in the 'other' tread, they get wikipedia.

I just spilled my drink.. thank you Arry..... I'll send the bill by email?
 
I suppose that depends on one's interpretation of "free will".

There seems some implication in us humans that it means limitless possibilities and modes of action... I tend to think that nothing is limitless; including the universe we live in.

I think "free will" has to be in some type of contextualised, ethical mind space.

Example: One may have free will to commit murder but is that a good thing? If the society catches you will you suffer because you have brought suffering on others? Doesn't sound like a fun way of having free will to me.........

.......... is what I just put in the other thread about "free will".
 
I see: We use the mass of our own Sun, as a base line to work out the mass of other objects in space. We learn new things every day. Thanks.

So how did they work out the mass of something like a black hole? I mean, technically we can't see them, only imagine how big they are etc.. Yes I know that they used multiple telescopes to get that image about a month ago, but that was 'generated'.

Err... Maybe we should start this up in the Astronomy threads.
In the case of Sag A* they measured the velocity of the orbiting 'S-Stars' to calculate the gravity and thus work out the mass.
The orbits are shown in this video;

 
Dark Matter would be the extra mass required to explain the orbital velocities of the outer stars.
Dark Energy is the acceleration of galaxies (outside our supergroup) away from us.
The two items aren't connected in any manner I'm aware of.
 
A somewhat heretic follow-up question would be how they can be so sure as all current physics don't seem to work anymore when it comes to calculating the outer regions of spiral galaxies (the're moving faster than they should in relation to the inner regions), which in the end led to such exotic auxiliary constructions like dark matter and dark energy.

Hm, i might have something that would react similarly. Give me half an hour i'll make a video of it quickly.
 
Dark Matter would be the extra mass required to explain the orbital velocities of the outer stars.
Dark Energy is the acceleration of galaxies (outside our supergroup) away from us.
The two items aren't connected in any manner I'm aware of.
It's the word "dark" that have people confused.
They should be named differently.

Dark matter should be named something like "Non-reactive matter", because it doesn't interact with normal matter in any other way but gravity itself.
Dark energy should be called "Negative pressure" or "Energy density of empty space".
But that would suggest scientists have an idea what's going on, so... "dark" it is. :LOL:
 
It's the word "dark" that have people confused.
They should be named differently.

Dark matter should be named something like "Non-reactive matter", because it doesn't interact with normal matter in any other way but gravity itself.
Dark energy should be called "Negative pressure" or "Energy density of empty space".
But that would suggest scientists have an idea what's going on, so... "dark" it is. :LOL:
Best explanation EVER! Seriously
 
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