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Well, yeah, that's essentially what he said. There's no meaning to life apart from what we meaning we give it. Some people find that depressing. Some, like myself, do not. Let's just have a bit of craic!>> ^shinyblurry:

You'll notice he never actually gave a reason why one particular version of reality should be preferred to another. He gave an example of choosing to support gay marriage to create a fair and just society, which of course are value judgments about the ideal way to live. There is no reasoning as to why we should make those judgments in the first place. All he said was, if you realize that we are the final arbiters of right and wrong (which isn't true, but for the sake of argument I'll concede this), "chances are" that you would be more apt to choose gay marriage than not. That is simply another unsubstantiated value judgment, and does not provide a foundation of reasoning to support the conclusion; namely, that we can derive meaning and purpose from telling stories about molecules in motion. That this idea of extracting meaning from cold, dead matter will ever be anything more than a morass of personal preferences arbitrarily defined by a group consensus, the definition being subject to change at any time according to the whims of its members. I advance that if meaning itself is subject to our whims, then there is no actual meaning to anything after all, and the only solution left is nihilism.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'Atheism, Science, Religion, Naturalism' to 'Atheism, Science, Religion, Naturalism, sean carroll' - edited by kulpims

That feeling of unboundedness we have with regards to our choices is I think what Carroll was trying to get to. And it's not just a feeling either -- it's difficult to describe in words, but there is a qualitative difference, beyond it just being convenient to talk about humans that way. Babies have a different (reduced?) set of factors guiding their behaviour. We identify them as missing the ability to consciously choose what they do. They act on impulse only. We adults have the conscious choice of what we do, at least in comparison to babies, and that's what we call "free will".

Our free wills are indeed not randomizers, because then they would be free, but lack will. Rather, they follow laws, which could bring about a direction, but remove freedom. Either way, we clearly have more internal influence on our decisions than babies. Perhaps what we adults uniquely have is self-awareness, including the awareness that we can choose our behaviour. Other creatures don't know that. How does that sit as a definition of what we call "free will"?

Accepting this puts "free will" in the category of social constructs, like friendship, jobs, and personal property. Does anybody argue that friendship, jobs and personal property don't exist? No, as a social construct, something we can talk about and identify with surely exists. Whether we really have any control over what we do outside of determinism is a different question, and IMO the answer can only be "No".

As for Compatibilism, the beginning of the Wikipedia article says it well: "Compatibilism is the belief that free will and determinism are compatible ideas, and that it is possible to believe both without being logically inconsistent. It may, however, be more accurate to say that compatibilists define "free will" in a way that allows it to co-exist with determinism (in the same way that incompatibilists define "free will" such that it cannot)". Inasmuch as we know the general human concept of free will, it exists, and is compatible with determinism. Inasmuch as our will and actions are 100% determined by conditions and physical laws, they are not free, thus it cannot exist.>> ^GeeSussFreeK:

One of my favorite quotes on this is from Schopenhauer
"We can do as we will, but we cannot will as we will"
I have never heard a good explanation for free will ever. Properly defined to the strength we all mean it by, it makes no sense, and try and change it into something we can make sense of, it is no longer the thing which we meant by free will. Let me expand on that.
What we all want to mean when we first set out on talking about free will is the notion that we (our consciousness) are self determining demigods in a sense. That our consciousness somehow is able to transcend all conditions, and make unbound and almost other worldly interjections on our behalf. I am not a materialist, so this isn't a problem for me on the onset. However, even if our brains contains some otherworldly processing engine, the data which populates it for most all decisions in life are from this existence. And those "things" all seem to behave in a way that is bound by predetermined rules. In fact, it is impossible to think of a realty that is not bound by conditions and rules. All reality that we can understand comes from reason and associations. In a world where something could exist by not existing, or where circles are also squares...would make no sense to us. The only world we can understand is a world where things change in a way reason can map to. This undermines the entire notion of a transcendent, boundless "free will", for even the will itself would have a set of rules and conditions it was playing by, or else just be a random number generator of sorts. And when we talk about free will, random number generation isn't what comes to mind, but it is the only thing that can remain if you take away reason, and determinism.
However, I do submit that our choices "feel" unbounded. There is a "feeling" of free will that defies an ability to define it well. But that is typically how feelings operate, outside of ways to completely explain them. But that doesn't make what they appear to represent any more real, only the feeling is real. I can have a feeling that contradictions exist, for example, but be bound by the laws of how I think to not be able to resolve that in reality (IE, if I believe conditions exist, I could still not preform one, like draw a circular square).
That is why many philosophers turns to certain forms of Compatibilism, while others changed what free will meant in their Compatibilism. I think the latter is cheating, and the former is how we as humans experience "free will". Ultimately, if the universe doesn't exist on causality, then my argument will be undermine, and indeed, some form of Occasionalism might be the true nature of reality. Even so, even Occasionalism can't account for free will, only random number generation can, and that isn't what we mean by freedom, or willing.

I missed the Bolton match. Sad stuff, reminded me of Marc Vivien Foe. You're right that Spurs have overachieved, that's more accurate.

I have liked Carrol at times but I can only hope for his sake he's going to come good like Drogba who I knew could be awesome but just needed time to settle. Both are big, physical guys that should intimidate defenders. But only one has in his career. Guess Carroll is just too green.

In reply to this comment by Quboid:
In reply to this comment by Deano:
In reply to this comment by Quboid:
Are you a Liverpool fan? Charlie Adam has been awful lately, we miss Lucas so much. I thought I was the only knowledgeable football man here!


Nah, Spurs fan here. It's been rather frustrating to see how overrated we've been this season. This period of losses has been absolutely predictable. I think Redknapp played Modric on the left against Everton which is mind-blowingly stupid but beyond that we just don't have enough good players.

Charlie Adam is astonishing though. I wasn't sure about him either way when Liverpool bought him. I knew Downing would fail as he's always been mediocre. Looks like Adam should have stayed at the Blackpool level. And don't get me started on Carroll...


I have faith in Carroll and Henderson, I think they will come good. The money splunked on them was ridiculous and they'll never justify that but they can be good players. Downing is out of his depth and Adam, well, he's been awful and we play so much better without him. One season wonder.

Spurs are good, and they're well run. I wouldn't say they are overrated, but that they overachieved. You're not good enough for a title challenge, but you deserve top 4 a lot more than Liverpool :

I take it you saw the Spurs - Bolton match? I've never seen anything quite like that and I hope I never do again.

In reply to this comment by Deano:
In reply to this comment by Quboid:
Are you a Liverpool fan? Charlie Adam has been awful lately, we miss Lucas so much. I thought I was the only knowledgeable football man here!


Nah, Spurs fan here. It's been rather frustrating to see how overrated we've been this season. This period of losses has been absolutely predictable. I think Redknapp played Modric on the left against Everton which is mind-blowingly stupid but beyond that we just don't have enough good players.

Charlie Adam is astonishing though. I wasn't sure about him either way when Liverpool bought him. I knew Downing would fail as he's always been mediocre. Looks like Adam should have stayed at the Blackpool level. And don't get me started on Carroll...


I have faith in Carroll and Henderson, I think they will come good. The money splunked on them was ridiculous and they'll never justify that but they can be good players. Downing is out of his depth and Adam, well, he's been awful and we play so much better without him. One season wonder.

Spurs are good, and they're well run. I wouldn't say they are overrated, but that they overachieved. You're not good enough for a title challenge, but you deserve top 4 a lot more than Liverpool

I take it you saw the Spurs - Bolton match? I've never seen anything quite like that and I hope I never do again.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'cosmology, science, yearlykos, Sean Carroll' to 'cosmology, science, yearlykos, Sean Carroll, physics' - edited by kulpims

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In reply to this comment by Quboid:
Are you a Liverpool fan? Charlie Adam has been awful lately, we miss Lucas so much. I thought I was the only knowledgeable football man here!


Nah, Spurs fan here. It's been rather frustrating to see how overrated we've been this season. This period of losses has been absolutely predictable. I think Redknapp played Modric on the left against Everton which is mind-blowingly stupid but beyond that we just don't have enough good players.

Charlie Adam is astonishing though. I wasn't sure about him either way when Liverpool bought him. I knew Downing would fail as he's always been mediocre. Looks like Adam should have stayed at the Blackpool level. And don't get me started on Carroll...

From Cosmic Variance
Predictions for 2012
by Sean Carroll

So you don’t enter the new year completely unprepared, here are my most secure predictions for 2012. Unlike other prognostication websites, these predictions are based on Science!

1. Freely-falling objects will accelerate toward the ground at an approximately constant rate, up to corrections due to air resistance.
2. Of all the Radium-226 nuclei on the Earth today, 0.04% will decay by the end of the year.
3. A line drawn between any planet (or even dwarf planet) and the Sun will sweep out equal areas in equal times.
4. Hurricanes in the Northern hemisphere will rotate counterclockwise as seen from above.
5. The pressure of a gas squeezed in a piston will rise inversely with the change in volume.
6. Electric charges in motion will give rise to magnetic fields.
7. The energy of an object at rest whose mass decreases will also decrease, by the change in mass times the speed of light squared.
8. The content of the world’s genomes will gradually evolve in ways determined by fitness in a given environment, sexual selection, and random chance.
9. The entropy of closed systems will increase.
10. People will do many stupid things, and some surprisingly smart ones.

Happy New Year, everyone.

nonsense worthy of Lewis Carrol author of alice in wonderland

Thanks for the quality!

In reply to this comment by Boise_Lib:
Sean Carroll a senior research associate in the Department of Physics at the California Institute of Technology has a blog on the Discover Magazine website--Cosmic Variance--this is his take on this.
Brutality

Includes links to petitions and open letters for the resignation of Chancellor Katehi. As well as eyewitness accounts.
Did you know that chancellors make almost $500,000 a year--and are calling for increased tuition on the students they are there to educate?
*quality

Sean Carroll a senior research associate in the Department of Physics at the California Institute of Technology has a blog on the Discover Magazine website--Cosmic Variance--this is his take on this.
Brutality

Includes links to petitions and open letters for the resignation of Chancellor Katehi. As well as eyewitness accounts.
Did you know that chancellors make almost $500,000 a year--and are calling for increased tuition on the students they are there to educate?
*quality