Motivational wisdoms
When we encounter day to day problems, we often get told to make the best out of the situation. Even when we are facing brutal fates like diseases, abuse, traumas and much more, we have to make the best out of it. In every situation, even for your whole life you have to deal with what you’re given and try to make the best out of it. This wisdom, while it may be helpful in some situations, is misleading in a couple of ways and assumes things that we actually cannot know yet. To be specific, it assumes that “we” (we will have to look a bit deeper what that term means) can actually control how we deal with certain situations. I don’t necessarily disagree with this but I think that it is hard to make this plausible. I wanna look at the implications of this motivational wisdom.
Holy shit, can I just blame everyone else but me?
Yes - but so can everyone else :)
So the question I want to ask is: Do we actually have an influence on our thoughts, on our behaviour, on our actions and reactions?
This question is related to the the question “Do we have free will?” but I believe that question carries a bit too much emotional weight and I have seen this discussion going in the wrong direction before.
The most important definition is this question is really who we are.
I have seen this free will thingy go in the direction of “is everything deterministic?” very often and that question can be answered with a simple No.
Quantum Mechanics does not allow for a deterministic world (it might but it is not plausible, hence I will say it doesn’t)
Anyways, let’s look at what can be defined as “we”.
I’m just a fucking drooler
I like to look at humans like computer programs (because I’m a fucking Nerd)
Essentially, you have software which is running on some hardware.
The software is abstract in our brains (which resembles the cpu) and it controls our body (hardware), gives us an identity, self awareness.
Now, which one are we? Both of them? Neither? Well, what else is there than that?
If you just take this model, it seems very obvious that we do not actually control anything we do or think because we obviously didn’t create the hardware and a software cannot write itself, which means that both were given to us and neither is in our control.
However, this is where the twist comes in.
The software that is running on our hardware is not actually deterministic (Quantum Mechanics and shit)
Now if we consider this, we could actually define “us” as the random non deterministic quantum mechanical shenanigans that are going on in our head.
Even though this might seem a bit unintuitive at first and it looks like “we” are just a result of quantum mechanics doing its thing but this idea has grown on me.
In the end, what better model can you have without neglecting science?
The idea that our souls or identities or whatever are transcendent just isn’t very plausible to me (kind way of saying it’s fucking stupid)
This model actually perfectly fits into science and it gives us (the probabilistic wave function collapses in our head) actual control (it is questionable how much but let’s just say some).
We still have to deal with the fact that we are a result of those probabilistic quantum events in our head but that is actually totally plausible for me.
Because - and to sort of give an anecdote on Jordan Peterson (people give him a lot of shit, that he often deserves but sometimes he actually has decent ideas) - the question “Are we in control of our thoughts and actions?” begs the questions “What are we?” and “What do you mean by control?”.
For myself I have - for now - answered these questions by “We are a result of probabilistic quantum events in our heads” and “Control means we have as much control as Quantum events have on reality (AFAIK we are not sure but tendency is 100%)”
With these definitions I can gladly say “Yes, we are in control of our thoughts and actions and we also have free will”
I know that a lot here is still flawed but it is late and the Bourgeoisie requires my proletarian worker ass tomorrow to serve the capital - Marx is rolling in his grave