iNow

I acknowledge the possibility it won’t, while accepting the likelihood it will as a near certainty

It’s both. Stop being foolish and wasting time

Which animals? https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/smarter-you-think/202003/do-animals-plan-the-future#:~:text=In repeated trials%2C the apes,Bräuer %26 Call%2C 2015).

Thx for the link. Not to sound defeatist, but this is happening whether we slow down or not.

Apologies all for using IRL without explaining it meant in real life. My bad entirely.

I do, indeed. There’s literally decades of research supporting this topic and the conclusions are consistent. That said, they’re OT, mistermack wont read them, won’t change his stance as a result of them, nor will he offer counter examples showing them wrong (choosing instead to rely on his common sense folk wisdom outdated opinion) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228187332_The_Effectiveness_of_Correctional_Rehabilitation_A_Review_of_Systematic_Reviews

My understanding is that subjective and objective are a binary pair. If it’s not one then it’s the other by default. Am surely missing something obvious though, and trust you’re more than able to highlight for me where and how… though agree it’s OT. Mine is more plain, self-evident, and uncontrived.

Here it happened yet again https://www.scienceforums.net/topic/132850-what-are-the-benefits-of-understanding-our-free-will/page/9/#comment-1255975

Suggestions of geocentrism from local frame and heliocentrism from galaxy frame. Wasn’t that obvious

So it sounds wrong?

Some may say that the only viable occupation left for you after being admonished with such a label is the US Presidency. Impotent, indeed. Influence, nudge, and ring fence. Motivate, encourage, and restrict. Leverage, blackmail, and regulate. I could go on, but this is hardly math we’re doing here and I suspect that’s the type of precision you’d prefer. Alas, you won’t find it, as even when we use the same words their meaning differs from person to person and even within ourselves from yesterday to today.

By this logic, governments want cash to fail too, yet they’re the ones creating it so more likely your assertion is nonsequitur. It’s fungible. That’s the word to describe what you mean, but it can be “destroyed” in special circumstances.

You misspelled "ignorant"

That free will as a concept lacks utility and can be largely ignored IRL Ergo, it is “just subjective.”

Because my conclusion comes from the facts of how our minds work. I’ve been posting here on this topic for about a decade across scores of threads. I can’t fault you for not remembering my many contributions across so many of those threads, but please don’t accuse me of just making shit up and failing to support my stance. You know me better… at least I hope you do and you’re not learning to hate your neighbors like so many others across the planet these last years. The locations of the brain activities for these choices and decisions are activated well before the locations of our brain responsible for awareness, consciousness, and sense of self. Full stop. You can certainly form your own conclusions around what this means for the concepts of choice and decision making and free will, but my conclusion is that calling it a “choice” is a bit silly since we’re not even aware of it yet when it happens. My wife bitches at me about my tone sometimes, too. It doesn’t make me wrong. ✌🏼

I could, but it’s not worth the time. I’m glad you’re here, but not when you act like this.

Those better predictions also make it painfully simple to see where the ROI is on the expenditure of our tax revenues. As you well know, we can either spend hundreds of billions reparing towns and restoring infrastructure (over and over and over again) after the storms, or we can instead invest those same revenues on risk mitigation at much lower orders of magnitude and much higher returns. We're digging a hole and we can all agree that we need to stop digging, even if we disagree slightly on how much larger the hole will ultimately become if we continue unabated on our current path.

So you don't think our instinctive programming includes a desire to avoid ostracization from the group? I'd argue otherwise. Selection pressures tend to reinforce adherence to tribal and cultural norms, not abandon them. More to the point, I suggest the same chemistry driving our choices and behaviors also apply here. Through conditioning, the firing patterns and activation thresholds of those neurochemical events have been shaped to avoid triggering the other neurochemistries within us which express as shame and embarrassment and desire to escape the situation. Acknowledging that the impetus of our actions comes well before we previously realized in no way changes our day to day experience. The only difference is the explanation, not the outcome. IMO, it's a bit like learning that it wasn't gods in the sky arguing which caused lightning storms, but is instead explained by basic physics and electromagnetism. The lightning is still the same, as is our experience of it. It didn't alter just because we became more accurate in how our descriptions of how it functions.

Will you please provide an example or two of what "departing from our instinctive programming" means? Aren't we still subject to the same underlying neurochemistry and sequencing regardless of what actions we're engaging in?

And also to drive up recidivism wherever possible.

No, uncoerced works just fine, and has the added benefit of eliminating the confusing subjective baggage which these 92+ other threads we have active on the topic confirm accompany any attempts to focus instead on free will. If it is "not just subjective," this means it's also (at least in part) objective. To that end: What objective measures of utility do you propose are available to help us agree upon a better/best framing of the free will concept?

Which animals? Me, a week ago today:

A desire for revenge and retaliation is understandable, and arguments in favor of it as a method of prevention run contrary to the available evidence. Kids who are punished learn how not to get caught. They don’t learn how to be a better integrated more productive member of society. Adults are mostly just kids with larger clothes, bills, and related responsibilities. We’ll always have criminality, but we don’t have to stick to the discredited notion that fear of imprisonment is what stops people from engaging in it.

I didn’t agree with all of the conclusions in the OP, but how we treat crime can and probably should change. That’s true regardless of any conclusions we draw on the peripheral and independent topic of free will (though I suppose it depends on which definition). The goal is to minimize harm to society, to ensure the freedoms of one don’t infringe upon nor hinder the freedoms of another, and that’s better effectuated by rehabilitation than punishment IMO. A patient to be healed is a better framing than an evil devil to be locked away. Even if our actions are driven by chemicals before we ever become conscious of them, we still have a motivation of improving security and safety of each other in aggregate, and rehab simply provides a new input to adjust that chemistry. Much like the air we breathe and the food we eat and the sounds we hear can all change the operations of our minds, so too can our response to unwanted behaviors It’s okay not to punish people if, in fact, we find better methods of more effectively addressing behaviors we wish to extinguish, especially since the rapist is indeed acting on their own chemistry too. Several Scandinavian countries have already made great strides in this regard.

Which animals?