this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2025
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[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

Could you decide that punching yourself in the face—hard—is enjoyable?

In the past, I have participated in auto mutilation, yes. At a certain point you want to feel anything.

The decision to change is always driven by discomfort with that emotional reaction, another stimulus.

You're right! And it's very scary, facing the thing that's causing the discomfort.

That's why I spend so much time trying to occupy my mind with puzzles, code, games, alcohol. Anything to distract me! Anything to direct that racing mind towards. But in the end I had to face the discomfort, walk inwards, towards it, to find where it came from.

It wasn't my body, it wasn't the calculating part of my mind.

In short, if we all react to the same stimulus in predictable ways, where's the free will?

Luckily we don't all react to the same stimulus in the same way. We can look back and learn from past mistakes.

We can share experiences, learn from eachother.

We can look eachother in the eyes.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I'm sorry that you've had such troubles in the past. Learning from past mistakes isn't an example of free will, though.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) (1 children)

Learning from past mistakes isn't an example of free will, though.

Doing so, or not doing so, either one is a choice out of free will. 😉 or is also the outside world that enforces that?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

If it's free will, why would somebody not do it if it would make their life better? All of the reasons that I can think of are either in-born traits (e.g. anxiety, ego, getting more pleasure out of drugs than other people), or external influences.

Anyway, LLMs can learn from past mistakes, too.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) (1 children)

why would somebody not do it if it would make their life better?

Because they don't want to get better :(

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Well, why would somebody not want to get better? Would somebody decide that of their own free will for no reason at all?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

In my case it was a combination of fear, and misery being comfortable. What's your reasoning?