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Do you believe in free will? Why/why not?
determinated chemical behaviour does not necessarily need to come from the big bang.
I believe in free will, and I dont believe in destiny "set in stone". In my opinion, all people choose their own destiny throughout their lifes, depending on what they do etc etc.
Even tho you could say the brain is basically a chemistry laboratory, people have free choice(you can chose to scratch or not to scratch your butt right now as you read this).
Thats the same like normal computers. They have a finite number of states, but the number of states, and complexness of their architectures makes them effectivelly nondeterministic. If you add the fact that you have nondeterministic external events going into your computer(like inserting USB, receiving data at your networking card, keyboard and mouse events), they all just fuel the nondeterminism of the overall system.
This same can be applied into humans. There is only finite number of states your brain's neurons can be in, the number of states is so huge you cant really say it is determinstic anymore. And you also have external nondeterministic events going on. And this time its not as silly as receiving few bytes of data on your networking card, but rather having data from all 5 of your senses.
Notice: Obviously all that I wrote is my own opinion, and in no way I am trying to necessarily disprove/convert anyone else's opinion. Im just stating mine, and backing it up with what seems logical for me.
Of course we're all influenced by external factors, but what I meant was that do we have any self governance, or is everything predetermined. I.e. are we all just following chemical reactions in our brain that were determined at the moment of big bang etc.
I think that's Newtonian (Mechanical) vs Quantum physics argument. With newtonian model you could predict the future with enough variables and a supercomputer, but with quantum physics it's impossible (because of Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle).So imagine you have an infinitely powerful computer that could measure all the particles and energy in this universe at this instant. Could that computer calculate the reactions and events that would happen in the future based on that snapshot?
I think that's Newtonian (Mechanical) vs Quantum physics argument. With newtonian model you could predict the future with enough variables and a supercomputer, but with quantum physics it's impossible (because of Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle).