'Trick Slattery's Blog, page 3

A REAL “Could Have Done Otherwise”

The cartoon on the above infographic was inspired by a facebook comment of a fellow free will skeptic (Stephen Lawrence) who used the analogy of a court judge:

“So imagine a man in court accused of a crime. The judge says “you could have done what you should have done”. The accused says “can you be clear about what that means for the jury”. The judge says ” yes, what it means is you could have done otherwise by virtue of the fact that if circumstances you did not choose had been appropriat...

The Online Debate Monster

Online debateshappen both intentionally and unintentionally. I’ve had my fair share of ’em, in fact I’ve had too many debates to keep track of. Many are on the free will topic, and many are on other topics. I still have them but only when I can find the time, something limited. They are a great toolto get feedback and to provoke other thoughts or ways to go about addressing a topic of concern. They can also be a great tool for spreading information to others.

Some of these debates can be plea...

The Problem with Compatibilist Qualifiers

It is interesting the hoops compatibilists will jump through in order to qualify their definition of free will in an attempt to make it coherent given any number of counter-points. These qualifiers almost always miss the point entirely.

If you are unfamiliar with the term compatibilist, it’s just someone who thinks “free will” is compatible with determinism. In other words, regardless if the universe is entirely deterministic, or has some indeterminism, free will is something that is entirely...

Imagining Yourself in Someone Else’s Shoes – Infographic

If you like this infographic, please share it (unaltered) around on social media, your website, or any other Internet location,with a link back to this page!

The above infographic is about imagining yourself in someone else’s shoes. When I say “someone” I mean anyone. Think of someone you truly cannot relate with. Your exact opposite. Someone you just do not get! Now imagine that you were them, atom for atom, environment for environment, moment for moment. All of those things that you just...

Bad Free Will Logic #1: “Responsibility Therefore Free Will”

I am going to start a “Bad Free Will Logic” series of articles, this first starting with a sort of “responsibility therefore free will” argument.

For each article I am going to point to either part of an argument that has been made by somefree will proponents, or an entire argument. A single “Bad Free Will Logic” post may only address one part and why it is illogical, or if the argument is condensed enough I may be able to complete the entire criticism in one post. There also may be different...

Why “Must Lead To” Causality is Logically Concluded

I’m a proponent for the logical case that if one is postulating a cause and effect relationship, without any non-caused event interaction, then what I call “must lead to” causality follows logically if the cause itself is not to hold a contradiction. “Must lead to” causality is, in formal language, called sufficient causality (a term I’m not fond of), which means that if a cause takes place, it must lead to a specific effect and no other effect instead. For an article that tries to clear the...

Compatibilist Free Will Machine – Fake Ad

Above is a fake ad created by me. Just another graphic poking a little harmless fun at some compatibilist definitions of free will.

The idea behind it was to build a “machine” that has most if not all of the qualities thatmanycompatibilists tend to associate with the term free will, yet make the machine obviously entirely forced to do what it does.

So what compatibilist “ingredients” does the above machine in the “fake ad” have? First, it has conscious thoughts and desires that the machine p...

Freedom from Free Will

There seems to be an irony that often occurswhen someone moves away from their free will belief. It’s often an unexpected irony that takes place after going through several phases of misinterpretation, denial, acceptance, and eventually a full-fledged understanding of why free will doesn’t exist and what that implies.

The irony isa feeling of freedom from a change to a lack of belief in free will. If you believe in free will, you might have a difficult time with accepting that one who thinks...

“Realist” Quantum Probability Cannot Grant Free Will

Warning, this article will assume some education on quantum mechanics. In fact it’s specifically for people who claim that quantum probability is both real and something that can help with a notion of “free will”. I expect those people to be familiar with some things, for example, the distinction between quantum mechanics and interpretations of quantum mechanics, what a wave function is, collapse of the wave function vs decoherence, and the like.If you aren’t at least somewhat familiar you c...

How Free Will Belief Justifies Wealth Inequality – INFOGRAPHIC

The belief in free will as define here, allows people to justify wealth inequality. It creates notions of blame and ideas about “deserve” that are irrational with the understanding that we couldn’t have, of our own accord, done otherwise. The above infographic just gives a quick snippet ofhow free will belief allows excessive wealth inequality rationalization.

Here is something I wrote a while back and just updated it with more recent numbers:

If I were to distribute all of my wealth to the...