Copyright
Copyright© Mattanaw I., the author.
The Moral Rights of the Author are Hereby Asserted.
Abstract
This Book and Dissertation presents a new and compelling argument that one is better to assume physical determinism in the planning and execution of one’s conduct, or more generally, in one’s ethical life; and that, apart from that argument, one does and must assume it anyhow. A method of consilience is used to show too many diverse life domains and examples combine logically and coherently to explain life’s experience. In order to demonstrate this, arguments coming from many perspectives on different subject matters are discussed, and their relationships are made clear. Each of the argument domains is considered to be highly rich and compelling on their own, and arguably sufficient for persuasion regarding the rest of the system, nevertheless, each argument is made separately and their joining shows that even under the assumption that individually they are insufficient for persuasion, collectively the conclusion becomes irrefutable. The methods of argumentation are also of mixed format, some being more scientific, others more philosophical, and others more human in experience; and, having such a mixed approach of argument, shows that whichever method of inquiry used, there is a compellingness, showing agreement between highly personal ways of thinking and other more formal perspectives. These are the main perspectives that can be had, personal individual perspectives, and then philosophical-scientific perspectives. Occupational perspectives, thought still to fall under these three, indicate further consilience and agreement, and so we assume other perspectives of different areas of life that people find themselves working in, such as within the legal, law-enforcement, sales, marketing/advertising, consulting, software, technology, educational, and business professions. Examples provided, having different perspectives like these, are presented as independent essay chapters. Each essay shows how in one area of life or inquiry, determinism is assumed by the people involved who are successfully functioning because of the assumptions, and that additionally, arguments support theoretically that determinism really is applicable in the domain, but also applies more generally; it is shown how the theoretical matches the practical. Following these discussions, and interspersed throughout, the argument is presented that one must assume determinism not only for each of these domains of life, but for one’s life with one as the focus, and that one’s life brings these areas together. It is discussed what changes to morality are required by such a shift to a deterministic mentality, and it is shown how this work relates to upcoming additional works that will further explain a system of morality that takes this work to be factual. Finally a conclusion shows the linkages and relations of the different chapters to make clear after the reading has been completed, how each piece collectively explains the whole, and what the logic of that argument is.
Contents
- Academics and Peer Review
- Author
- Copyright
- Edit History
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- Introduction
- The Hunting of Animals and The Meaning For Humans
- Close Relationships And Increasing Knowledge Of Another
- Predictability Of The Larger Quantity Of Reality
- Becoming Aware of One’s Own Pattern And Growth Potential
- The Acting Profession and Understanding Ethics Interpersonal Differences
- Expectation of Learning And The Direction of Education
- Mattanaw’s Law And Simple Nervous Systems
- Constraint As The Defining Metric Of Freedom, And Non-Use of The Word Freedom
- Education To Determine Thinking Pathways
- Sales Approach To Direct People Against Their Inclinations To Purchases
- Marketing And Propaganda To Continue Educational Messaging For Alternative Goals
- Reliability of Science Regarding Laws and Mathematical Representations
- Reliability of Machines, Electronics, and Technologies
- Genetics As Fixed Instructions of Development
- Usability And Benefits of Business, Organizational, Military and Moral Processes
- Desirability of Predeterminations
- Analyzing The Causality Of Your Own Behavior For Moral Purposes
- Can’t Find Or Confirm Randomness, And Non-Utilities
- Human, Animal, And Elemental Shortcomings
- Understanding and Relacing The Concept Of Responsibility
- Avoiding Discussing Regret And Desired Alterations To History By Redirecting Imagination To Future
- The Universe And Human Life As Within A Preloaded Playing Video
- Conclusion
- Notes
Edit History
- 541 Wanattomians, Epoch 1769220468, Friday, January 23, 2026
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- Additions to Introduction
- 539 Wanattomians, Epoch 1769107275, Thursday, January 22, 2026
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- First Preface
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- 539 Wanattomians, Epoch 1769105090, Thursday, January 22, 2026
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- Initial content for introduction
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- 539 Wanattomians, Epoch 1769100956, Thursday, January 22, 2026
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- Initial content for the chapter on hunting of animals
- Expansion of relationships chapter
- Content item and heading for section on acting
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- 538 Wanattomians, Epoch 1769011852, Wednesday, January 21, 2026
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- Becoming Aware of One’s Own Pattern and Growth Potential
- Word count: 6872, characters: 46819.
- 538 Wanattomians, Epoch 1768991356, Wednesday, January 21, 2026
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- Close Relationships and Increasing Knowledge of Another initial write
- Abstract
- Acknowledgements
- After the last edit, adding the sections in the contents, and as headings, this is the first effort to fill sections in. This is the first day of actual content specific to this work.
- Word Count, using the unix command ‘wc -w’: 4357, and chars ‘wc -c’: 32471.
- 527 Wanattomians, Epoch 1768022573, Friday, January 09, 2026 22:22:53, United States of America
- 521 Wanattomians, Epoch 1767501603, Saturday, January 03, 2026
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- Expansion of the contents from the initial state, to include more than author, edit history, and introduction sections. Added 17 sections to write within.
- Created Monday, March 13th, 2023, at 3:33 PM Alaska Time
- Conceived ~23-25 years ago, with earlier ideas being relevant. Earlier handwritten writings to be referenced.
Acknowledgements
In the present work, as compared with others, there is very little indebtedness to others for the advancement of my understanding, and the forms of argumentation presented. The reader will find, if a comparison is made between this text on determinism, and others, that there are very different methods of explanation, and the subjects thought to be of interest, and related, are missed. This book presents a very novel total argument on behalf of a deterministic ethical worldview.
More generally there are people to thank, and for that purpose, I do have universal acknowledgements, which show appreciation not for support for this work in particular, but some earlier happenings that support other books I’d write as well. For this universal acknowledgements and for my earlier book “The Velocity of Significance and Ideation” there is a much longer list of thanks, but for here, in relation to this particular text, there aren’t any more to add.
The reason for this is partly as follows: my discussions of this subject matter with people I’ve known over the years, has received really no support and even opposition on this subject. People have either failed to understand the conversation, and my perspective, or have hindered the development of talks, interrupting with simple-minded “free-willist” viewpoints that they were indoctrinated into, being members of democratic societies that have forced people into thinking they have special ultimate freedom of mind. Before conversations could advance, again and again, it was shown that indoctrination was an obstacle to any understanding, and instead, opposition was too quickly brought to mind.
This is due not to my manner of conversing, but to the nature of the subject matter and the nature of the upbringing of people in our culture, and my having a specially gifted mind, and ability to independently arrive at all this book comprises, without external support in book form or from other thinkers.
Since almost all discussion about this subject with others was unhelpful, and actually blocking of my ability to self express, the result was of not ever being able to discuss it! So this work is of a private effort, without the aid or assistance of anyone. On social media, I can only recall one person, after seeing my writing, come to an agreement with it, and this was someone I was briefly friends with in person; but this person, apart from this agreement, did not more than superficially provide anything meriting written acknowledgement here.
I do not recall all the very earliest thoughts that came to me on this subject, but there are a few experiences that can place it on the timeline. One experience was had, while I was driving my car on Norbeck Road, on more than one occasion, in the State of Maryland, where I realized that aggressive driving behavior seemed to have no way of alteration, except with education, specialized training, or long term self-retraining, indicating mental-physical determinism. Around that time, or just prior, I was taking initial courses on philosophy, and psychology, at Montgomery College, where I may have been exposed to the idea conceptually; this may have been through a book on Ethics that was used in a course at the time, and a work I purchased, finding myself more interested, by Clifford Williams, which provided a simple introduction to the subject. These experiences started my initial independent thinking on the subject from which this book eventually emerged.
There were additional experiences too, as an undergraduate of Philosophy and Psychology at The University Of Maryland, where the topics relating to determinism would come up sporadically. Typically these did not advance far beyond the normal discussion the subject, which is a characteristic complaint about Philosophy, that it keeps using the same questions, but often shows little improvement or purpose. While an undergrad student at this time, I was so interested in Ethics, Logic, and Determinism, that I spent a very large amount of my time writing independently ans simply reading other works of tangential but connected interest. Still during this time period, all actual advancement on this subject came from myself. At one time, I did procure a two volume series on determinism by the author Ted Honderich, and an examination of each of these volumes, without much reading, prompted further thought. Like others who procure books, we buy what we don’t read, but that doesn’t mean what we purchased did not stimulate. So it was nice to see a serious effort from someone else on the same subject. Later I contemplated reading this work entirely, but decided that it would be creatively stifling, and risky, since the thoughts I was having, seemed to have a different pathway that was better left for its own development. And so I simply continued working on it independently.
The present work is the result of thinking about this subject over a span of about 30 years, and the primary acknowledgement, goes to myself. Being honest however, I wanted to provide the above information, because it does supply at least some acknowledgement to those who were involved in the genesis of this work, even if there was not enough for me to really provide thanks. It provides causality. The unfolding of this work is due to deterministic causality, and this section provides some insight as to what the contributions were, and they happened to be very few or detracting, compared to what I have done for myself.
I think this may seem a surprising discussion to appear in an acknowledgements section in a book, but as I say in the Universal Acknowledgements, the application of merits and credits, do not seem to be well done in authoring, and should if accurate, include some idea as to the obstacles faced, and specific demerits and “uncredits”. Acknowledgements, partly, is for providing the reader an idea as to how the work arose between the author’s efforts and the efforts of those around the author. Sometimes the author had a lot of support, and other times less support. In the case of this work, very little support regarding the contents was provided.
Preface
This book is organized for reading as one prefers, and without any need to read one section before the next, although it is true, the conclusion is probably better left for later. Reading the conclusion first, and then reading nothing else, will not permit one to know the contents of the earlier sections of the book, and while that may help, along with the abstract, of getting much that is needed, the other sections of the book are so rich with interesting material that one will simply not get those benefits without reading those sections.
Chapters I think are enjoyable as explorations into the deterministic nature of various parts of natural experience that inform greatly about those experience, and other experiences we have. I have for a very long time, been influenced by the deterministic nature of animals and humans as revealed by the possibility of hunting. Somewhat strange conclusions emerge from subjects which would not necessarily be thought to reveal such interesting and useful pieces of information. For example, many might not realize that salesmanship, and their experiences with salespeople or as salespeople, involves trying to control human thinking pathways towards pre-decided endpoints, like purchases. These and other chapters in the book are highly interesting and jointly important for appreciating and understanding the importance of the subject of determinism. As was said, these can be read in any order the reader likes, and one can even put the book aside a long time, and resume again, with another section, just to enjoy what else the book might say.
In keeping with the format of texts in The Book and Journal, while this text is an assortment of interconnected essays, it still retains the formal presentation requirements, of academic dissertations. The structure of books in the Journal are simply superior in planning to academic texts and dissertations, while from the viewpoint of an academic prescriptivist, the presentation cannot be better, if it doesn’t exactly match a standard. This is not the case in reality though, and there are better formats that include the purposes and objectives of other academic formats, while opening types of freedom of expression, and this Journal happens to have the planned presentation making this possible. This book in particular, having an essay format, already departs from the norm in some ways, but does so in a way that increases and doesn’t diminish effectiveness. This text contains and abstract, references, glossary, and structuring akin to what is expected by some other academic journals, and incorporates those standards while including more. This book constitutes an academic dissertation comparable to other dissertations of other writers obtaining their doctorates, however, it also resembles the texts of postdoctoral authors.
As for how this reading fits into the rest of the Book and Journal’s contents, much will be said in the Introduction. This text is foundational for the entire system of ethics shared by all the works together, and the other works, excepting the preliminaries, which are better read first, or at another time, cannot be fully and entirely appreciated without first understanding this one. For example, the book Procrastination is so heavily dependent on the idea of determinism, that without it, I don’t think the message can be heard entirely. Procrastination as a subject matter really will never be improved or advanced very far, until determinism is accepted. There is a similar importance of this text to each of the other books as well, and while this book should serve to persuade some readers into more seriously considering the Deterministic viewpoint, I think the other books provide additional persuasion, and in some way, are also about the same subject matter, even though they are about entirely different subjects! That this would be the case is explained by this books logical methodology, that explains that high quality theories that are foundational and paradigm-defining will pervasively causally explain other life domains. This is not unlike the theory of relativity’s effect, that the key papers on relativity may be adequate standing-alone to persuade of its truth, but the extensive explanatory power of the causality in diverse and distant areas of investigation show they are about relativity too, and that they need relativity to be fully understood. The other books explain determinism in other areas of inquiry, while the work on determinism itself, this book, can stand alone arguing its truth.
Introduction
“The demonstration of determinism eventually becomes a showing of an analysis of anything.” Determinism is a subject matter of profound importance for the future study of morality and planning of human behavior, to the extent that once it is adopted and understood, civilization will forever be altered and improved. Without an understanding of determinism, we will continue to live in a retributive system, one that doesn’t understand merits, allocation of praise and blame, or how to treat people with differences. Without a universal understanding of determinism across cultures, culture will still be eventually seen as primitive, perhaps even savage. Determinism provides the underlying expectation that science will be helpful, and that science really does provide an avenue for the continued progress of humanity, and without it, science remains at odds with morality, because current state morality still believes in a kind of freedom that is illusory, and moral ideas that are delusional given the assumption of excess freedom. This book is my attempt, after almost three decades of being a lone Determinist, of sharing my knowledge with hopes that this will stimulate or provide more substantiation for finally moving course to a rational and reasonable morality. This book is very important one for The Book and Journal Of Mattanaw, and the moral/ethical system espoused over many issues, because without a knowledge of determinism, many of the arguments found elsewhere will seem alien or too unusual to accept. After one has learned about determinism, much about life dramatically changes. One begins to see it differently, and if one takes one’s behavior and moral self seriously, one will act in new ways in accordance with a new vision. This vision makes the world appear so much more sensical and easy to understand, it is really amazing to think that one could have ever thought without knowing about it already.
This book issue comes after several others appearing in the Preliminaries of The Book and Journal. If one did not read the preliminaries, one may find some of what is written here perplexing. This is because much is at odds with social and societal norms, even while it improves upon moral thinking rather than taking away from it. The preliminaries section, I think may be too simplistic for some readers, who would already assume the contents. The Book and Journal is definitely more directed at the intelligent reader, but still has to address a variety of levels of preparation and personal background. Some readers may be younger, and some may come from cultures with greater degrees of difference. This text does not explain in detail that humans are animals, but young people coming from a religious background, or some from other cultural heritages, may find this idea offensive or at least somewhat new to take seriously. This issue exists even if these readers were exposed to public education where science was taught, because culture, parents and other institutions can teach contradictory information, which causes them to reject scientific teachings. If one questions the idea that one is an animal, this book could still be enjoyed, but it might make sense to read Humans Are Animals or consider that one is deterministically not going to understand or will just understand later. Some people really will be too prejudiced to understand this text. Other preliminaries cover the rejection of the notion of equality Abandoning Equality, which is obviously controversial, but supports finally seeing determinism too, Human Shortcomings, that provides a list of properties of human beings that constrains their behaviors, which also provides preparation for understanding determinism, and The Velocity of Significance and Ideation, which gives enough information about the author to understand his intellectual authority for discussing the subject matter. All of these could use some attention for having a better appreciation of this text, but one could read this text and omit those if one suspects it is easy enough to appreciate and understand.
Human freedom is something to be defined in terms of constraint, and not the other way around. If one thinks about what one is able to do, and not able to do, to think about or not, and so on, this always involves constraint. What blocks me from doing one thing or another, or what keeps me from being able to think in different ways. If everyone is honest about their lives, the freedoms they experienced were a matter of degree always, and related to the amount of constraint that was existing. If one was able to earn more money after some time, there were less financial constraints, and one experienced more spending freedom. If one eventually saved enough money, one could have time away from work, have freedom from feeling at risk of calamities, and this would be due to a decrease in constraints. Now if one has a health problem, one is better able to effort paying to resolve it. As one is educated, one eventually can think about more and imagine more than one was able to before. Everyone was highly constrained as children without realizing it. A small child, hardly knowing anything, can’t do much of anything! Imagine if a very small child, three years old, already knew what an adult did. This child would have the mental ability to think through a trip to another country and would be able to go, if not constrained by airlines, and expectations of others while trying to make the trip! The child would be able to drive a car, would be able to work at a job, and do anything that an adult could do very nearly. This is an absurd example, but it is an obvious one too. Later, as one is educated, one simply can think all these things adults think about which include abilities of decision, and one learns how to live life in a certain way, and include all sorts of activities one would like to be involved in, and one could not do these things, without having a sufficiently educated mind, to think about and imagine options. There are physical and mental constraints that determine what we are able to do, the extent that we can do these things, the extent that we are able to think about things, and this is what we call our level of freedom. This entirely covers our freedoms of thought and action.
To confirm this, one can simply try to measure the freedom one feels, using the concept of freedom itself. That is not an easy thing to do, is oddly ambiguous, and of course, is just incorrect. The correct approach is simply to think about what constraints exist that one would rather not have, and this level of unconstraint opens the amount of freedom that exists. It would be true that freedom is measurable too though, however, for the mind of the human living in the period of this writing, measuring freedom instead of thinking of levels of constraint is not something they are going to be able to do. I will later in this text, offer ways of doing it. One measure, for example, that is using freedom instead of constraint, is measuring intelligence, by seeing what the brain can do on tasks before arriving at what it cannot do. What it cannot do creates the boundary condition or constraint, and you could say, that intelligence is a measure of constraint, and what one can’t do. But most people conceive of this in terms of the level of what the brain is able to do. One can understand that I’d be especially expert in this domain by reading under Preliminaries, The Velocity of Significance and Ideation, which talks in depth about this subject matter. Intelligence involves ability and constraint that affect human freedom all of life, and unfortunately, democracies have marketed freedom as unlimited, as if the unintelligent all could think like the profoundly gifted. This of course is false. Education supports expansion of thinking considerably, but not the genetic brain hardware’s range of ability. The mind of the very smart is out of the freedom range of the mentally disabled, and again, while society fights this thinking, it’s obvious to everyone. The mind of a handicapped mentally retarded person is less free, and it simply scales by intelligence and other ability levels. Intelligence is still greatly aided by thinking about what the constraints are, and the constraints and areas outside of the constraints, demarcates the impossible for a person. Obviously, one cannot do the impossible, and is not free to do so. Freedom exists within the impossible. This is how helpful the focus on constraint is: it makes it very clear what freedoms exist, and their extent, by letting one find the boundaries that separate the impossible from the possible, and the improbable from the probable. Constraint is easy to work with, while level of freedom is more sophisticated.
Notice that humans at this time, have a hard time thinking that the subject of freedom can have anything to do with constraint, as if they are unrelated measures. This is how lost people are regarding human freedom.
Determinism impacts dramatically the view of what constraints exist, and this understanding of constraints provides a realistic and accurate picture, of what ones freedoms really are, their extent, and how they can be increased or reduced, causally in nature. It is not an exaggeration, to inform the reader of the unfortunate news, that because humans today do not accept determinism, and actively oppose it and combat it when they hear about it, they don’t even know what their freedom is. That is part of the importance of this book, but as shocking as that is, that is not the only area of incredible value offered by the deterministic viewpoint. Without determinism, there also cannot be knowledge in many ways! Without determinism, morality is forever incorrect and cannot be corrected!
This explains my initial and long term interest in this subject, and my long work to eventually explain it to other people, in this Book and Journal, that is intended to improve the morality of humankind. Without this view presented here on determinism, the rest of the books have less value and comprehensibility, and without the views in this book, humankind is simply amiss in its direction. I’m not stating that I’m required for the eventual understanding of determinism and moral ideas in this book, but that what it says is required for the right direction. There are others who have also worked on the subject of determinism although not in the way I’ve approached it and I strongly feel these people must feel at odds with the world, and strangely unable to influence it in the ways they deeply know it needs to be influenced. This book largely expects to be unpersuasive to audiences being to predisposed to contrary ways of thinking, that really are more primitive, but they can’t see it because they consider it modern, given indoctrinations of education, and it is the case, the other authors on determinism also have not been influential. Nevertheless, I persist in writing this work, because it is an important ingredient in my personal ethic, which relates directly to the total system presented in this Book and Journal.
The examination of the deterministic viewpoint, here is actually provided in very accessible ways in a set of individual essay-like chapters. Each is standalone, and touches on different parts of life and experience. As stated in the opening quote, a demonstration of determinism eventually can be seen as a plain but detailed analysis of anything existing, and these examples simply provide what I have found to be especially useful to explain it from a number of powerful angles. The angles converge into the same kind of deterministic analysis. There is a very large number of similar examples from life and the sciences that the reader could use to increase the number of examples here provided, and I’ll be providing more examples in the future myself. I think if one worked steadily on this, attempting to provide all examples that might indicate determinism, it simply becomes an explanation of everything that happens in reality. Each example is expected to provide insight into a universal explanation, and if indeed determinism is universal, then it really is exemplified by everything one can experience.
It is anticipated readers would enjoy like I do, finding additional determinisitic confirmations in everyday life, in new areas, making it very satisfying knowledge to have and build upon.
The Hunting of Animals and The Meaning For Humans
Animal behavior, while complex compared with other organisms, particularly those that have remained simple, or those that show less motion, like trees and plants, that do still show motion generally through growth, still have a simplicity that allows us to find really predictable patterns. When we look at plant life, there is already some agreement, and more agreement than there would be about animals, about our ability to know in advance, the course of their developments and movements. Plant “behavior” if it could be called that, would to the agriculturalist, be extremely highly deterministic process that can easily be predicted and controlled, such that large farms and plantations have plants that seem nearly copies of one another; and without this, the farmers would not be as able as they are, to harvest crops that are so incredibly close to each other as they are today. Historically, there was more variety, and there was less control of the agricultural process than today, but even then, much was well understood, and farmers could not be expected to not feel mastery over their work and work-products. Today, since there has been very great advancement, foods in grocery stores have become so consistent, that there has been political advocacy against the excess desire to make fruits and vegetables like factory created artificial objects. There is a feeling that they have become less natural with such a level of control. This level of control, that exists in the understanding of “plant behavior”, is less existing in the domain of animal behavior, but is very close in some ways, within the pharmaceutical industry. At present, however, we are not focused on animals in captivity, but animals as they live in nature, before we arrived at more total control of their behavior. In such a situation, the animal behavior, being free and unplanned from a human perspective, will seem initially, more uncertain to a person. Once a person learns more about an animal behaving in nature, they begin to see patterns, and with those patterns, the uncertainty decreases. As the uncertainty decreases, a human is enabled with a prediction power, that permits them the capacity to follow them, know where they will be and when, and to hunt them if they wanted to. Initially however, a child would not have hunting powers in relation to the animals. The child, to become a hunter, would have to learn from an adult hunter, or be interested enough in the animal, to gradually discover and learn its tendencies.
So plant behavior and the behavior of simple organisms, involves a simplicity that has allowed for an easy of predictability about their growth patterns and “behaviors”. Understanding how a palm tree or various grasses will grow, is not a difficult subject to superficially master, to have a very strong power of prediction regarding their outcomes. More complex plants, like olive trees, and others, are still easily mastered and eventually turn to near-mechanization. Animal behavior, while more complex, also really does trend towards control and mechanization too. What is of interest additionally, but will be covered later, and is why we are discussing it here, is if human animals, if understood and controlled extensively, would end up in, or could end up in, a state of near mechanization as well. Obviously all who are educated are aware that humans too are animals, and one can easily intuitively simply conclude without much need for reasoning, that humans really would be controllable in the same way animals would be in a laboratory, and that they could be hunted easily as well. While this may seem a dystopian consideration, because the control of humans could go very far, I don’t think the current state of the human situation is not already an exhibition of a very high level of self-domestication and self-mechanization. It’s just that within the human civilizations that exist today, there are resistances that still exist about admitting what levels of control and predictability really do exist, and that humans really are animals; and the inability to admit these things is a primary cause for my writing of this book. Even though it sounds like it may be disagreeable or disliked, that humans could be advancing on increases self-control, self-understanding, self-prediction, and so on, these are also things we consider to be important. Civilization, very largely is the improvement of these things so that we are not as uncontrolled as animals in nature, regarding their interanimal behaviors. Animals harm each other and do not like these harms. Civilization has helped humans emerge partially from the self harms that happen haphazardly as it still does in wild animal populations. Notice domesticated animals are often more moral in their behavior with each other.
Animals living in nature, do not show very great complexity, even though hunters do try to make it appear, that they have some skill that is especially laudable. A challenge with hunting animals, depends largely on how fast they are, how good they are at hiding, and how large their ranges are. If humans are fast enough, and can cover a wide enough territory, it is as if the large animal, has become more small. To simplify, we will focus on the small animal, but remember this detail, that what we learn about the small animal will apply to the larger animal too, if we can simply mentally reduce their speed and space. The smaller animal behaves in ways that are directly analagous to the larger animal, and we can include humans as larger animals, behaving still like both. It will be seen why shortly.
Consider a small rodent animal, like a rabbit. Rabbits, like other animals, have their ways of moving. The movement of the animal is primary for this conversation, because the movement of the animal is simply where they are at all points in their lives, and if we subtract their motion, they remain still. If we have reduced an animals behavior to stillness, we are very close in knowing that they are predetermined, and how. One may say it is nearly complete, just with that observation! Now I can envision too, that a human, with all its movements, is like a human staying in one place, simply operating as a biological entity, which medically, has inputs and outputs and homeostasis, totally predictable, like one is always laying in a hospital bed! Rabbits, if we take away all their movements, are like they are in cages. In a way, we can imagine, that rabbits and humans both, as they move around in the world, are in cages as they do so, and are stationary at all times, relative to their cages.
They are caged while they are maximally freely moving!
Let us continue to use this idea, but with more seriousness and kindness. Our rabbits, instead of being caged, will be instead well-treated, and will float around on little clouds in safety-bubbles. Rabbits, as they run around, or float round these clouds, really don’t have much complexity in where they go, the directions they take, and where they tend to remain. We chose to focus on them because they are smaller animals with smaller territories. Animals, as they move, even if they zig-zag erratically and wildly, would only be moving along linear paths. If they are out grazing and eating, or are playing with each other, may have movements that are more like small semicircles or circles, or other linear paths, that are in small spaces. When they traverse larger spaces, they take paths that are more direct and strait. The total collection of their paths, represents a linear map of where they have been their whole lives. Rabbit behavior shows the same kinds of patterns for every rabbit of a similar variety of Rabbit. These patterns are not hard to understand, and after a very short time studying their behaviors, one can easily hunt rabbits, only using this understanding.
After increased experience, however, the skilled tribal huntsman, would hardly do anything to hunt rabbits, and would have tricky approaches. They would leave traps where they know the rabbits will go, and routinely they get rabbits, without having to follow them. Also, they can do things like find their nests, and finding their nests, they can easily know where the mothers will appear, and can easily snatch and eat the young. Knowing that rabbits will centralize their behaviors around where they sleep, where they dwell, makes them incredibly easy to understand and after not too long, a scientist of rabbits would attain a very complete understanding of their behavior and movements. There isn’t anything a rabbit can do eventually, that could ever surprise a rabbit scientist in a highly significant way, regarding their macro behaviors and many of their micro behaviors. Since scientists still deny that rabbits have feelings worth caring about, one can expect they still have a lot to learn about rabbit mentality and experience, but for anything related to rabbit movement, for hunting rabbits, the scientist, the modern hunter, and the tribesman, will all have an extreme ability to predict rabbit behavior, such that the rabbit behavior, really appears simplistically predetermined. This is in the context also, of rabbits as being very complex organisms compared with other earthlings, and in comparison with inanimate life, one can see they are among the most complex existing things, with humans and other mammals too.
To add.
Close Relationships And Increasing Knowledge Of Another
Our experiences with close relationships gives us very clear information about the patterns and predictability of other people and much of the world around us. While many arguments in favor of a deterministic worldview may be more technical or scientific in nature, our personal relationships provide us with a simple and obvious location where we can see the actions of deterministic nature without special research or special examples. These examples are simply real-world examples all are familiar with. The conclusions we’ll have about relationships will still relate in clear ways to other examples that are more science oriented, and so we’ll see these regular experiences support science, but science also supports these experiences. The combination of these provides very strong substantiation for the view that determinism happens to be factual. In the course of this section it will be shown that people actually already do treat their social relationships as deterministic already, and so human life utilizes natural causality as an assumption that is required for normal interactions and more generally, to be able to exist and function in the world using social collaboration.
The main argument of this chapter, is that determinism is clarified by our increasing knowledge of other people, which is not possible without a great stability of causal forces leading towards people with identities, patterns of personality, and patterns of behavior. In fact, without causal determinism, it would not make sense that people would have identities at all, that they would be roughly unified “people”, who we can identify and learn increasingly more about. As with scientific investigation, we have endeavors to get to know each other, and start from only a limited amount of information and reasonable assumptions, to building knowledge, and arriving at a somewhat clear picture of who they are and how they typically and repetitively act and behave. Without a stability of behavioral, communicative, and thought pattern, we would not have someone we would repetitively witness “being the same person as they were”.
People, without knowing it, are conducting studies of other people in a way, and their minds, are system that use computational approaches that are statistical and science like. The regular learnings about other people using our minds creates a small example, or microcosm of experience, in which to understand larger science too; and of course we can use larger science as an example, to understand the experience of learnings of other people. Above it was said that another person cannot be really thought to have an identity, without having some stability, to act repeatedly in similar ways, that show a pattern. This pattern allows us to talk about who they are, and expect that later, the pattern will still exist for ourselves and others to observe again. Likewise, without a stability of many objects of the world around us, such that we can anticipate familiar patterned interactions with the objects, by seeing them, touching them, sensing them, or using them somehow, we would not have enough “object identity” to name things. Language then depends on having some deterministic expectation of stability of things around us. Likewise, if another person changed too often, or did not show a regular causal pattern in their life, that was highly predictable, naming them wouldn’t make as much sense. We relate the name of a person to their identity, and think their identity is about their pattern. If there were a “person” who we could imagine to be extremely changeable, and not existing similarly from day to day, in appearance, thought, or behavior, we would not even have an object that we could understand later, and naming this object would not be useful, and this would be a thing that we would not be able to build knowledge of easily. I don’t think this entity to be one that is actually possible, and instead suggest it as a convenient imaginative example for comparison, because the reality is nothing is like that! The world is really composed only of things that have stabilities, patterns, name-abilities, and so on, that indicate that not only are people things that would be predetermined, but that all things are predetermined. In any case, we will utilize this idea that people are predetermined, to further illuminate the idea that from this example, the example of such a complex object as a human, will give us a tremendous amount of information usable for much simpler objects.
So it is true apparently that a focus on people to reveal determinisms will be helpful for extending the argument about determinism perhaps to much else in nature if not all of it.
Close personal relationships as they progress from a state of relative ignorance to a state of high mutual understanding reveal to us just how predictable relationships can become. Some late-stage relationships can consist of very high levels of mutual frustration with inabilities to change, and can show patterns of boredom, decreased interest in communication because of excess repetition, and a strong ability for each to predict the behaviors of the other. Most relationships do follow this pattern even they do not culminate in maximum mutual knowledge–all relationships start with limited mutual knowledge and lead to an identification of patterns in the other that result in a degree of predictability. The most mature relationships show the greater levels of understanding and predictability. What this means is that across the human population, we can expect that, even though humans are complex animals, almost all relationships will proceed along the same direction. This assumption is not only tenable, but factual, because without assuming there is social learning in the process of relationship growth, the idea that relationship growth would exist becomes questionable; but it is not. The learning process, as we will also discuss in the chapter [Education To Determine Thinking Pathways], also includes a rich area of investigation for understanding determinism, and social learning is irrefutably part of getting to know one another.
Why does getting to know one another indicate that determinism may be true regarding human thinking and behavior? The reason relates to what knowledge is, why we want it, what it does for us, how we obtain it from other people, and what it means to us when we have it.
Becoming Aware of One’s Own Pattern And Growth Potential
What does it mean for a person to think they have an identity? A personality? To be someone who persists and not someone else?
As people grow up from early childhood into their teenage years, they may not be very good at articulating who it is they think they are. They wouldn’t be very good at telling you, using language, what their personality consists of, what it is that makes them “them”, and who they really are. If they were able to do this, it would mean at an age too young, they were able to state with accuracy the self-knowledge adults are still striving to have. Some would say that attaining full self-knowledge is not possible, and is something people are attempting to do for their entire lives, as they periodically or often think about it.
Early in life though, there are obvious things that seem to persist, and certain things can be expected with very good certainty from one day to the next. Also, some parts of identity are inferable from what is known about other people, and we do learn about ourselves, from study of other people and humankind. Even as children, we know we will look tomorrow like how we look today, and we don’t misidentify ourselves when we look in the mirror daily, and we learn from others that we will have changes as we grow. We also know that once we grow we will have a stability of appearance in our maturity. This is very consistent across humankind, and also, while we easily recognize ourselves from day to day, we see in others, that they do not seem to struggle to identify themselves either. There was a phrase in popularity for some time in the 90s and early 2000s called the “self-concept”, and one might say that people did have some mental equivalent of a self-conceptualization that allowed for comfort from day to day in expectation of self, and not have sudden surprises again and again, about who one was and what one looked like.
Children, I would surmise from my own experience, and infer from others, seem to have some comfort in their own mentality, that their mentality is still their mentality, and that they can recognize continuity in themselves, such that, like with their appearance, there are few major surprises, and many consistent expectations, about how they would think and feel, and recall, and mentally advance, from day to day. They can think the next day in a way that is resembling earlier days, and they are not suddenly someone else, with dramatically better or worse thinking, or thinking in another language, with education from other cultures, and so on. This shows the size of what remains from day to day is quite stable in individuals, in that they can expect, that very little at all will change, that it will have to be just like before in huge ways, and that they will definitely feel a familiarity from one day to the next, in mentality, just like they do with their appearance. So with their mind and their body, they have can rely on stabilities and stases, that permit them to be all they are for the most part from one day to the next.
Something to point out, is that this feeling of similarity, mostly has to exist on adjoining proximal days, but less as time goes backwards or forwards. This means that people, in the stability that exists surrounding their current state, have a feeling of identity of appearance and thinking, but that it does change in predictable ways (as I said, inferred from others and from the species, and from animals too), but these changes are more to be expected, more distally from a specific time. This means the continuity of identity is more felt between days and weeks that are close and not far away. Since a person is able to recall and think more into the future, and further into the past, when there are bigger differences, they can start to feel a little bit that their bodily and mental identities have shifted a bit, and that can cause some discomfort, but I would say nevertheless, internal states of feeling, bodily proportions, body composition from being a member of the species, genetic trait range potential or phenotype during changing conditions, brain storage state, including what languages can be thought and spoke, what is remembered, what cultural information is inside, what behavioral and motor skills are already existing, and so on, and much more, will amount to a very great similarity between time periods, such that still a person, unless there was severe brain damage or some other major change influencing many or all of these systems, will cause one to feel similar enough, to have an identity pattern over time. This would be supported by the fact that most people, think they are still them, in all states except pathological ones, and even during many pathological states too.
Returning back to the subject matter of children in particular, all of the above is still applicable and is still felt, although they would not be adept at saying what is the same exactly, or speak about themselves in a detail that would surface what their identity would be. Notice that what I’m saying above would be very unusual for almost anyone to say, and clearly such a framework approach to self understanding would not exist for other people, but notice also, that all the ingredients of the framework, still have a feel that goes with them, and if any change is made to any of the areas, the change would be perceptible. Also, it appears to be true that changes in these areas seldom occur unless there is pathology or injury. A child who was born speaking Chinese or Russian, does not suddenly lose their Chinese or Russian, and they may not really be aware of how important these languages are for their thinking and identity, even if we know that would be true (I find it unlikely they would think of it). Nevertheless, if one day they were unable to speak Chinese or Russian, and experienced dysfunction, or lost vocabulary, they would probably complain about it, and think there is something medically wrong, and this would be a kind of detection through feel that there is a change at an identity level that needs attention. Another way in which a child would quickly detect something identity related is different would be if they lost a limb, or if they very quickly grew in a really short time. Voice changes and so on in puberty would be felt to be big enough changes to be identity altering. These are rare, if one is observant about it. In adults some life events are enough to cause very big personal changes, but these are still usually slow enough, unless traumatic and injurious, to proximally to the day of the changes, emanate outwards with a stable identity nevertheless.
There is probably much the reader could find in disagreement with the prior paragraph, but want I am wanting to convey is a trend that exists, while admitting some details may be needed to be really precise to avoid any complaints, but I think it can be easily updated, to adapt to any ideas about specific life changes and consequences to identity. More importantly though, I am not spending too much time on this, because the objective is not really to have ultimate precision on these points, and instead move on to the main subject, to establish enough about personal self-growth to understand that we assume causal predetermination and that we also need to understand things in terms of causal predetermination, or Determinism in order to be more fully equipped to understand human life and human identity, and human self-growth.
A child as I said, and teenagers too, would not have the tools here discussed to understand their identities, and as ancients would say, life is full of learning about oneself, and one keeps learning as one experiences oneself in new ways, until death. There is a sense along the way, of self that is consistent, and predictable, or stable, using “plain feel”, which is like just knowing that all those framework ingredients of who one is, as a biological system, haven’t changed too much from present, looking backwards and forwards a somewhat short period of time. It also feels pretty similar if we look more distantly in either direction. Apart from this feel, there is the cognitive component of self-knowledge, which is built up of experience with oneself and one’s interactions with surroundings, and analyses of self internally, and learning to use what one can from culture to have even more detailed understanding about one’s identity. For example, if one as a teen started to learn about the nervous system, human behavior over the lifespan, and human anatomy and anatomical functions over the lifespan, one would incorporate this into observations about self, and would be able to think and explain more precisely, information about who they think they are and were, and will be.
Strangely, this kind of information, as we know, is not particularly satisfying. The reason I say this is because we don’t feel like any particular moment of learning of a subject matter, or learning for self application, or learning from a special moment, tells us all we need to know about ourselves, so that we can think it to ourselves and tell others, but instead, we know we need a lot more. So we seek more learning experiences, more education, and think further and further about situations we’re involved in, our reactions to them, how we problem solve about things, and about personal characteristics we’d like to have, noticing what we do and don’t have, and all of this doesn’t appear to have any end in sight. We have many good learnings we are happy with, and many insights and personal epiphanies, but we expect that we can enjoy learning more later.
Another way to make it clear that we do not have much even after learnings oftentimes is that if someone like myself was to put questions to someone about their identity and spent some time at it, say an hour or two, over a week, it might amount to a kind of torture session, in which one realizes, one has very little information in many ways. This is not entirely a terrible thing though, and the same can be done against me, by another similar questioner. What it means is that over time, self knowledge will improve, but very slowly and within a range of possibility, and much is impossible to attain.
So children will be seeking information about self and will do this even automatically and unreflectively not necessarily thinking that that is what they are doing, for most of their lives. Since this information is slow growing, it seems to follow that what they can think and say about their identities are slow growing. I think this is obvious if one looks at journal entries, and one can consider, that journal entries cannot show anything but slow growth.
What can we say that is positive about this growing self-knowledge. Firstly, it is helpful regarding what to expect from oneself, one starts to recognize what is slowly not changing, which I would say is a very big key in identifying who one is over time, and sees what is recurring in how one thinks. One improves how one thinks and recognizes how that development appears. Life takes a long time to show all the patterns that a person has in their own behaviors. One slowly starts to see how they really act in a variety of situations as they slowly recur in more punctuated fashion, and are able later, to piece together, the pattern of their cyclical recurring behaviors. The pattern that they see slowly, as they get older, becomes something they can increasingly talk about, and relent concerning. They know the extent of their ability to develop gradually, and see that there is a pattern that seems less changeable. The pattern of learning and development too becomes understood, so even where they can have differences is also in a stable pattern. So one slowly starts to see in more and more detail how they will be predictably in the future, and feel what can and cannot change about them and how.
This does result in an increasingly better picture of oneself as one ages from childhood into adulthood, and the quality of what is seen is ability related, but I do think that individuals for their various levels of mental abilities, unless they are too handicapped, do get some good self-knowledge about their patterns.
Here we have arrived at a second idea that we can add atop our first idea, that people have this complex of characteristics that have a sort of system framework in human biology that allows them to “feel who they are” as it exists in stability over time. This is that additionally they have learned to think more cognitively, and use better verbal, visual, and sensory reasoning, to think to themselves about what their stable patterns are, and tell others who they think they are in identity.
We can use this perspective to see how people sometimes fail to describe their identity, because sometimes instead of talking about their consistent stable patterns of their personality, behavior, thinking, biology, appearance, interactions with the world and so on, they’ll add ingredients that are superfluous, or seldom come to mind, like certain points of belief from various systems of thought.
Between the two parts of what I was discussing above, we blend ones more immediate feeling of one’s continuities and one’s knowledge about those continuities. Notice the knowledge becomes a continuity. Since the knowledge built up, can only be altered slowly too, that knowledge becomes, part of what seems to be a stasis in their life, something only slightly changed over time, and part of identity. This then becomes part of the first ingredient from the beginning: one from day to day, perceives that one’s knowledge or storage is roughly as it was yesterday and recently, and this is what allows one to not be too surprised as days progress, to feel like they are still the same, or similar enough, person they were just before.
Let us now change our manner of speaking and talking to think conventionally about what this would tell us usefully.
Firstly, as one gets older, notices more stabilities and patterns in behavior and thought, one comes to know more and be able to state more accurately what one’s personality is. Before, one could feel it a bit, and not be surprised day by day, but one couldn’t talk effectively about it. Later one can talk more effectively about it, and being able to talk more effectively about it, can categorize it better. This allows people to summarize their own personalities better, revealing what one might expect, that a personality is a pattern one has regarding one’s thought and behavior.
Secondly, one can tell a personal biography somewhat well, and could more clearly make out parallels with other similar life experiences. So if I were living in say, Vietnam, born in the 1960s, I could later, after a long period of self-learning, both tell a story about who I am and my personality, and relate it to similar personalities and life stories which would be, guess where? In Vietnam. So a life pattern became more known, which allows one to somewhat actively summarize, what one’s life biography consisted of, and this pattern would have pattern similarities, to others who are more nearby in time and place than those who are further away.
I do not think there is much in this writing that could be contentious beyond quibblings that would be easily overcome with explanations, question and answer, and further discussion to handle anticipated concerns. Even what might be unanticipated, I think is easily handled, and would not damage theses of this chapter. It appears we can easily transition from this portion of the conversation and take these points as assumptions entering into considerations about the theses.
For example, what does this pattern of learning about oneself, this idea that our identities relate to patterns that have stabilities over time, that there is greater similarity in our identities proximal in time than distally, and that comparisons between people show patterns of similarity increasing with closeness of time and space, say about determinism, and to what extent does it support the theory of determinism?
Expansion Upcoming.
The Acting Profession and Understanding Ethics Interpersonal Differences
All actors who are well known, have had a long history, of playing not a single character, but numerous characters, representing other people with very different backgrounds. These actors, in order to be successful at what they do, have to become compelling imitators of others, or build characters from what has been learned about them, in screenplays and so on, into people that seem real, even if they are only partially known or are entirely fictional. Acting, it can be seen, involves a few important ingredients, needed for success in the profession, and fame from audiences. Firstly, they have to represent another person accurately and portray a possible human personality; secondly, they have to be able to understand the histories of people, in how they build up who they are, so they can be more realistic, showing who people were in who they appear to be; thirdly, they can’t make their characters infinite in any way, and they have to know their limitations and constraints, and vulnerabilities, so that they portray them in the size they are, and do not enlargen them too much; fourthly, they have to make them causally human, which implies that actors really have to be determinists regarding human behavior and causality, depicting the flow of a normal person’s behavior and continuity with past and relationships to circumstance. Actors portray people who live in a particular time and place, and they must appear to be caused by their life situations. For example, if one is portraying a person from the 17th century in Japan, it really must appear totally causally determined by the combination of their humanity and time otherwise the character would be alien to Japan and their acting and character would be rejected.
I think it will be helpful to cover the last of these points first, and go in reverse order through the others.
While one may disagree, that one is very much caused by situation and circumstance, because of how they forsee the construction of their own persona and life, I think the use of the actor makes it very clear that whatever character they portray, that character will always be “themed” according to their life circumstances, their age in history, and their location and position in life. Using actors and characters can allow us to be less sensitive about the subject and its implications for our lives potentially (thinking about sensitive readers), and recall many of the movies we’ve seen in which the characters always fit into their places in history. We also cannot move characters from one story to another, unless the stories actually really do fit into the same time and place, and for those scenarios, sometimes we have rare crossover movies. Typically, however, we can’t put a slave from a movie about the slave trade, into a movie about American riches in the 20th century. Also, we can’t take samurai, and place them in a moie about ancient Rome or Greece. Looking at movies as they portray different historical situations, we see that the people, really do seem quite causally embedded in their small versions of the world, but that puts it too mildly. They look entirely caused and really stuck as part of the situations themselves. Like a story about Caesar and other characters in ancient Rome really is a story about a situation that is and includes Caesar. One could look at a painting of the period, that includes a statue of Caesar, and think “that statue doesn’t appear separate as much as simply a part of all of what’s there, like part of the landscape”. The people are “built into” their historical places, and the characters are blending in with the plays. The complex of causal interrelations that comprise and intelligeible historical segment of time includes all that’s in it, including the people, and they are fully caused too. Using acting as an example, it makes it clear all the characters are stuck in their roles and stuck in their prt of the world of the time.
Characters, played by the actors, cannot be infinite, and to play the characters well, an actor needs to feel clearly what they are, and what they are not. Very powerfully, they are not everything that does not include them! An actor has to be careful to portray them as who they are and not add in traits that don’t belong from other characters or properties that would only exist causally in other times and places. The actor has to know the boundaries of the character, to be “true to what is portrayed”, to be “authentic” and so on. To add in what does not belong, would alter the character in a way that would make them feel false to an audience, who would easily detect problems. A movie telling the story of a famous athlete would not benefit from an actor making the athlete have traits of other peoplewho are not athletes: they have to be very focused on what an athlete is, who they are like, and who they are not like. An actor isn’t free to make a boxer portrayed act like a doctor, or like a lawyer. They have to make them seem like boxers, because being boxers, they are really causally determined to be different from doctors and lawyers. Actors sometimes want to be free to show how a character is smart or could be just more than their part in society to convey larger talents of a person portrayed, but still, it is obvious, that if portraying a character who is a boxer, they must really not go very far in focusing on that. Instead they make them very much a boxer and not something else. While this may seem obvious enough, as a “thought experiment” it is important to consider, because the implication is that the character and the actor both are entrely caused by constraints that relate to what the true situation of the boxer is, and that includes a very big time commitment to boxing. It can’t be wildly different, and this has to be discussed. After discussing that it can’t be extremely different, we can get closer to the truth, that it can’t be anything different. Ultimately, the actor becomes the character, if the actor does it with very high precision, and doing it with high precision, went from “infinite options” about how to portray the character to “no options”. An actor has no options about how to portray a character if the actor wants to do it exactly. Doing it exactly means one has arrived at the total boundary of who someone is, and has acted inside that boundary and not outside it.
An actor may play a hundred characters, and none can be the others! They have to precisely be what they are. An actor, also plays themselves personally, in real life. This is the only character, that they play with exacting precision, such that they get it exactly correct! For some other actor, to portray them as well, they’d have to become like an identical twin, who does all the same things!
An actor has to study and practice to become a good representor of a character, and this involves learning about the personality of the character, details of how they act, and so on, and the history they have. If the character played is a fictional character, they can choose more about how to behave, although they still have to act correctly to the time period and societal role. If the character is a real one, then the biography has to be more understood, and behavior over time. The actor then will study this character, their history, and their behaviors, to imitate them, and get a feel for how their background flows into their behavior. If an actor is going to portray a famous Mexican figure, having better contextual understanding, which would require some historical knowledge, would aid in understanding what has produced the character, and will create a better understanding regarding why the character would behave as they would. To know how to portray a character, knowing how the others in the environment in which they live is needed, to know what kinds of social interactions they would have, to see how and why they would communicate as they do with others, and also to see that really they do behave just like other people in their region do. All the people in Mexico behave as they do, because of historical causes. Knowing a bit about their history really will inform about why they act the way they do and create a mentality in the actor that is closer to the character they wish to portray. Knowing their history of religion, their political history, and the indoctrinations and educations of their nation help to know what information they were exposed to, how Mexicans talk about such information, and provide something one can use to guess with, regarding what the character might say. Notice that playing a character may require changes to what is written, and it may be better, to naturally sometimes, say something more realistic than what the writer thought to record. If a Mexican character plays a character in a screenplay who is supposed to be Mexican, the actor might be better than the author of the screenplay, who may not have been Mexican. If that person was not Mexican, the actor, and not the writer, would do a better job with the portrayal; and likewise, if the actor is not Mexican, but has more cultural and historical information about Mexico, then they have the chance to fix and correct errors in the writing, and perform the character more naturally, because they are closer to being really Mexican, although they are not. Becoming more Mexian not just for an act but also for acting, requires learning what Mexicans themselves learned, and absorbing their cultural heritage.
From this third example, we have increasing understanding, that to become another person, we hae to follow the causes that created that person. An actor needs to understand what would likely have been in the person’s history” to start to become like that character. Some actors may be in the intelligence community, and may really have to impersonate. Impersonation does require learning historical information. Likewise, some peole supposedly “steal identities”, like intelligence community people, in entertainment or in real life, and to do that, one would need to have historical information, to know what to say and how to act*. To know how to act when pretending to be someone else, one has to know historical information. This is really learning what has causally determined that other person.
Arguably, if one has learned the historical context of Mexico, then made oneelf appear like the Mexican character (a real or fictional character), then one already is not acting Chinese, and more like the Character. The way to act more completely like the person, to become the person in a way, like stealing a person’s identity, or impersonating them, one would need more and more information until one is really like them, which is absorbing the causal information about the person. What would it be like to become another person, and not simply act them out or impersonate them? That is a question for sci-fi, but here we can still learn from trying to answer it. If you or I become someone else, gradually lets say, it would start from being unlike them, except for having, notice, the causal history shared by both, of being humans already of the same time on the planet. This caused significantly a huge amount of the behavior of both. Before doing anything, one already acts like the other person to a very large degree, and it could be argued, that an Alien visitor might not care about if you are you, or you are someone else, or you are who you act. You are more like a rodent of some kind, that acts like the others, but more than this, you act like them not only because you are a human, you are also loaded with cultural information of the time and state of the world, so you are extremely similar. Becoming more totally like the other person, is a trend towards becoming their identical twin, and then finally, their identical twin occupying their position at all times, behaving the same way. Wouldn’t it be interesting, if there are five of you in you? They simply travel along with you and do the same things. A philosophical conundrum may exist in this, to perplex: “How do you know there is only one you even if you appear to do only one set of things? How do we know there are not three of you doing the same things? Or nearly the same things?” To become more like the other person, requires all that was said above, about history and cultural information, and of the personal biography of the person, and then the detailed personality information about the person and their ways of behaving and their habits.
This brings us to our first point, that we have been working to in reverse order of points: to get to know a character one has to portray them as they really are, and realistically. Portraying them as they really are requires a detailed attention to how they behave regularly. This involves how they behave inescapably, in all the minute details. How can they not stop acting? This involves their history and contextual learnings as was said, but going all the way to the totality of the person, it involves the total constraint of their existence, in what they are specifically and how they are commposed, how they physiologically and medically are, what their brain is like, and how they talk, move, think, communicate, and so on. When we are able to see in detail how someone behaves in great detail, we see it is really inescapable for them, and they can only act those ways, until they learn new ways, but learning new ways takes a long time! People can only learn a few new ways over a prolonged period. For example, I have been attempting to lower my voice to a perceived natural voice, different than that voice I learned and practiced early in life. I have not been able to achieve it except for brief periods, and it has been about 5 years since I started. A person trying to play my character, shouldn’t use that voice, or another voice the actor comes up with, to get it right. They use my voice I cannot escape from, my actual voice. Learning the detail of voice, gestures, facial expressions, and mannerisms, reveals that the person one is acting like, really is causally determined fully and cannot be free hardly in any way to alter it. Even when they learn, they learn in a way characteristic to their biology, and still related causally to their history.
The acting profession, is one then that is really very interesting. We have been fascinated by acting, and by people who can imitate well, and when we try to immitate too, we enjoy the small successes we have, knowing it to be a real talent to be able to do it, and thinking it an accomplishment to learn to act like someone else. Also, learning to be with another culture, involves such accomplishments, and we can see again, that knowledge of surrounding context and cultural history, does determine how another person acts, and very importantly, that unless we do it when young, and even then, we are largely incapable of finally completing it really convincingly. Seeing young people who have been raised in the United States who were born there or arrived early, I see people who have done well to blend in, but really are forever beind and somewhat incompmlete in their ongoing work to being enculturated. They did well, but still did not do it compmletely. I would have trouble doing it myself, if I moved to another country, and notice, this is far more than mastering their language, and that already is hard. For the present discussion, the implication is that people are unable to have the causes that other people had, to become who they were, and that those causes had to be present, for them to become that way, and that when one tries to become like a person from another culture, one tries to act like all the people around and that person, to get closer to being like them, without ever being able to get close enough. That is just like the job of an actor! The actor uses the information from the person’s surroundings, the history of the region (notice that is really needed to become a citizen or appear a similar to people in another culture), and then tries to use all the details they can have about the behavior of the person in detail, to act as an identical. This involves utilizing thinking about all the causalities that exist in becoming a person totally constrained to be themselves inescapably. That is also supposed to surface the reality of the person they become in the act, to show their humanity and their vulnerabilities, their limits and their flaws, along with the strengths they have, that are also inescapable to them.
The determinism of a person is required for understanding how a person is who they are. Even with detailed causal information about a person, some science about who they are, medical history, history of their nation, contextual details, family history understanding, friend interaction information, and behavioral psychology, one cannot still become a precise enough actor, to be mistaken for them by those who know them, or those who see them only briefly. What is missing? Well to act like someone more closely, one has to be them obviously. One has to look just like them! If you look better than the person you are acting, then how can you get the dirty looks from others, that you’ll respond to like that person? You cannot really in all the details act like them, until the environment acts the way it acts, when they are around. Also, an actor has to fool others into thinking they are the character, or to make it close enough, that they can let themselves believe it, temporarily.
If someone was to act you, do you think they could do it all the way, without being you, and to be you would that not involve, having your entire history? That is because you are caused by your history.
Predictability Of The Larger Quantity Of Reality
Observing the world near and around us, we can clearly see that all that we think about consists of things or objects which have quantities and masses. There aren’t things we look at, that are no things; instead, what we look at and think about, and are mode of, are things, which really do physically exist, and physically existing, has mass and quantity. Everything we can see in space, too, we assume, simply consists of stuff. Historically methaphysics treated this material as “substance”, and even though for a while I considered with other philosophers that this is out of date, now I think it is really useful and obvious. When not attending to the full details of the composition of things I still fully expect that what I see and think about to be things, and not “nothings”. Everything we think about is substance and is measurable mass, with size, weight, and movement.
Talking about this first, starts us off well onto the conversation about what about the stuff that exists which is all of it is more predictable or less than other stuff. Determinism is about the subject of predictability and claims that all really is caused and predetermined, and that any inability to predict, is due to ignorance and degrees of uncertainty. An assumption I use, is that science works, and continues to get better, because it also makes the assumption that all is predetermined, and increases knowledge, decreases ignorance, and increases foreknowledge and predictability, as it erodes uncertainties. Slowly it makes it appear more and more that all is law-governed and we can increasingly use equations and good quality knowledge, to simply know things about the future, and not only guess.Anywhere we still need to guess, the guesses get better, showing the direction is towards not guessing ever, in a life of total predetermination.
Others are not convinced of this kind of assummption though and that is a cause of this book. In order to make it more clear that predetermination is true, and that one should accept that Determinism is the right perspective, I want to focus us on the gigantic mass of substances that all existence is, and see what about the gigantic mass is already totally predictable to us, and compare it with what is less predictable, but expected to be predictable later, then finally discuss, what kinds of things would remain unpredictable, because we will not attain perfect knowledge and cognition and computing. I am certain that this conversation will result in learnings that will benefit the reader, because it is somewhat life changing in what it can do for someone regarding perception of truth. Instead of the world feeling overcomposed of lies and deceit, it feels more composed of true information, and one can focus on this instead of the alternative.
Everyday, if I attend to the largest masses in my environment nearish to me, in comparison with other galaxies, I see the sun the moon and the earth all around. I would want the reader to immediately see and admit the sun is huge and obviously repetitive, and the moon is huge and obviously repetitive too, and the earth, is huge and always appears as an earth, with much almost totally unchanged, to the extent that elders say that it appears that nothing at all changes almost, even as people think they have improved the world. Religionists make such statements as this, that the through life it feels that progress is not so much progress as is suspected, and so much about human nature remains unchanged; but ignoring humans for now, just focusing on the earth itself, its mountains, oceans, streams, and interior space, especially eits interior space, nothing is really different for one’s entire life. Ancient people can stare at the same mountain and rockface as you might today. There are some mountains that would appear the same today as when the animals were extremely different in the past as now. Geology is about very very slow change, and astronomy even slower, in much of its subject matter. The interior space of the earth is really interesting, because like the moon, and the sun, it is totally repetitive and really boring and uninteresting. We don’t think of the interior of the earth much, because its changelessness implies that we cannot ever care about its effects on our lives. Earthquakes and voclcanisms are not really what I’m thinking about either, and even those are simply repeating and pattern-like; instead, what I’m thinking of, is all of the earth’s mass itself that makes it an earth that makes the surface, crust, volcanoes, and plate techtonics, fractional mass by comparison. Really not anything by comparison. The earth is really all the uninteresting interior. This uninteresting interior sets our gravity which means all our life, our movement in the gravity is perfectly predictable. Predictable using equations that precisely allow for military technologies to hit targets and send things flying with increasingly incredible accuracy, and of course to plan for sending things to space.
What are some implications of this observation? Well, the sun is hugely larger than the earth, and the moon is huge too, although smaller, and all the earth is, is what is not changing really, omitting the fractional part, the surface and slightly beneath, where we live. These things comprise most of existence in our solar system and our life system. Changes are slow, and there is a steadiness that exists. The steadiness that exists I refer to as a stasis, geostasis, or astrogeostasis. This steadiness of stasis, of all the mass that exists in our solar system, that is boring and not changing much at all, moving only very slowly, allows for life to exist at all, because that life has to rely on stabilities for it to continue to function. Humans simply could not live, if the earth suddenly changed size and mass and changed speed. The same is obviously true about the sun and moon and their effects, although less so for the moon. Saying it is less true for the moon is interesting, because it implies that we care less about less matter that has stasis in our system, although to some extent it depends on more specifics of the matter; however, knowing nothing else, we can expect that the sun will be something we care much more about than the moon. This is not true maybe as masses are more distant, like with the planets. However, those masses contributing too our system, do seem to contribute much based on their mass only.
All of this boring mass of the repetitive sun moon and earth with its identity being defined by its interior mostly, is not unpredictable. Life depends on its being stable. This is even if we do not look at the details of our experience. We simply do not exist, unless the earth is predictable and highly stable, and as I said, these three entities are in astrostasis. This is useful information though, for our personal experience, because if we want to focus on some things that are less false, or less volatile, we can start to think about the things that are more in stasis and stability, like all the mass of our system, and the behaviors of this mass. The sun, moon and earth, are what we can honestly expect to behave the same ways over and over all our lives, and this is interesting, because it means also if we talk about this subject, we always are stating truths, and we are not feeling uncertainty. This benefit grows as we go into the details of these and discuss less about the simple traits of the sun moon and earth and talk more specifically about what is predictable in our everyday life that relates. So the sun goes around, and that is not that interesting, and we have an earth that spins, and that too is somewhat boring. But what about whether or not you will be able to find your way to work tomorrow? Going more into the details of geostasis, it can be seen that, the earth’s crust too, undergoes very little change, and that you really do know, with great certainty, that the path to the workplace will not undergo major changes. Sometimes there will be obstacles in the path, and weather can get in the way, which contributes to some real uncertainties we have in our lives, but the rest of it is not uncertain at all. Every person is well able to get to work, and the economic system depends on it. The econoomic system assumes geostasis of getting to work, and you can state honestly and truthfully, statements that are not false, about your life as it pertains, to things that do not change like this. In moments we will see, that almost everything in our life is in geostasis.
Balls bounce, sporting events go as they do, and we gamble the events, expecting that they will happen as they always do, which means we expect the physics of our life to remain the same, the places and spaces to remain the same (the stadiums will be there), that balls will be manufactured, that they will bounce the same, that people will have arms and legs, will play hte same, and that they can see, which is the same, and that their interior biologies will remain in homeostasis, ensuring they are healthy and not sick mainly, and will be able to go on as usual. If we focus on this, as we talk, we say things that are true uniformly. The world seems less false to us, if we recognize that the astrogeostasis and stability of things results in our being able to exist and function at all, and that anything relating to our repeated functioning in life, whatsoever, forever, relates to stases in the world. There is nothing you can do that does not find itself within geostasis.
Life exists in a situation in which it is able to expect things to be the same all the time. Animals cannot live unless their expectations in their thinking and behavior is true about what will remain the same. Their food will be obtainable using their skills and senses, in places it comes from, and so on. We can use this reasoning for the animals, all of them, and like with the sporting events, we can do it for all parts of life we enjoy collectivvely and individually. This discussion goes on until everything we are doing has a very large amount of predictability about it, andvery little uncertainty. The reality is that we attend to uncertainties because they are important to us, but not because most or much of life is really uncertain or unpreditable. Instead, almost none of it is unpredictable.
What then is more unpredictable? It will be noticed that what is more unpredictable always relates to complexity and animal movements, where we are interested. Less often, there are uncertainties about weather, earthquakes, volcanoes, and meteors. These seem to be outside of the stases that exist as we discussed, but that is only because we were focusing on the most boring unchanging things. There are things we expect to be in our normal environment existing along a normal pattern of action, including earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, dangrous weather systems, and meteor impacts. Notice these things do not go away; they just happen in a way, that include too much information to deal with. This is the complexity we need to sometimes think about. But notice, this does not change that all the other subjects we talked about, of astrogeostasis, is the bulk of reality, and all else is fractional, and this is in simple predictability.
Resume.
Expectation of Learning And The Direction of Education
“Comfort in Determinism comes gradually but more completely after learning it; and so cultures will resist it until much later.” The nearly universal view of the value of education, or the value of education, involves a common assumption, that is especially dependent on natural determinism. People who value education, are aware about the significance of having it versus not having it. It is poigniantly known that if one does not have an eduation, quality of life can be severely negatively impacted, but if one has a good education, then one then can have a life, caused by this education, that is much better, very likely. In popular culture, people also hold the false opinion, that people are lilmitless, or have unlimited possibilities regardless of who they are, and that they are equal regardin gtheir possibilities. But the view also shared by the public about learning and education, clearly contradicts this other view, in that it states that, without education, few possibilities exist. If we side with the common perspective on education, also shared by everyone, we find we are consistent with the deterministic worldview, but not the worldview of limitless potential, complete freedom, and total equality, which is something to be totally rejected by honest intellectuals.
Learning itself includes the assumptioin that wherever a learning did not exist, there was no thinking that was about it, meaning people are in oblivion to learnings before they have them. And this scales from infancy through high learning, and beyond in the vastness of learnings that will happen later in civilization, which tells of our profound ignorance they would say. People commonly nod to scientists who promote this worldview; that we should be humble given the future and our own ignorance in comparison to total knowledge. I would not go that far; however, I would agree, that we are in a relative cultural infancy, when compared with what the future will provide for knowledge, and what future organisms will be able to learn and understand. We are also primmitive aniimals potentially compared with future animals Let’s consider each of these points separately, first the point about cultural infancy, and second the point about inifant babies, and why each agree with the deterministic worldview.
Cultural infancy, reveals the extreme constraint we are in as much as the ignorance we have compared with future learnings. Notice nothing of the future that is new to the future is possible for us. If all humans have better brains, then whatever became possible in those brains is impossible for our brains. This is also true, regarding brains as they exist today. It is true that my brain, and the brains of some readers, have thinking and abilities impossible to the rest of humanity. Humans collectively in cultural infancy, are really not very free at all to do what is impossible to them, and obviously, what happens in the future is impossible to us now very largely, and this is why some of us, many of us, do wish we could see into the future, because we know, that what we have in many ways is less than what they will have. Parents even feel this ini the shorter term, seeing what their children get from new technologies and cultural advancements they didn’t have, prompting jealousy, which does relate to the understanding, that the betterment of the current lives of youths was not existing in the past, and was impossible to be had. This is a small scale example comparison, amongst generations of people still living; but we can imagine comparisons with generations milllions of years apart, including the animals of the future, who do not wish to call themselves “human” any longer, for being too much more evolved past us.
Individual infants explain the importance of education and learning deterministically for each person separately, but also explains it for all culture taken collectively. All of living culture today existing in humans is in people who were infants. Everyone now was an infant, and we can imagine all are together infants now, to get a picture of the significance. We are in a sliver of time of current and former infants, and some would argue, adults still have the properties of many infants, and really regardin the knowledge they don’t have, they are nearly the same as infants. Regarding information of the future, all humans are infantlike in their having no learning about it. Infants, can be made to be members of any culture, depending on the circumstances in which they are placed. We would create a programme in which human infants, when born, are randomly relocated to live within other cultures, and the result of that would be, they would have the knowledge, behavior, and language, of those cultures, and would really be living exemplars of them. It is the case that we just don’t have this programme, so this is not what we do much; however, sometimes families do raise infants of other races and peoples in other locations for many reasons. There are many causes of relocation, and millions of people have been translocated to other places with the result that they become people of those cultures and not where they “originated”. It is funny to me how obvious this is, and it is even assumed by the well-meaning but incorrect view of equalitarianism. Anyone can live anywhere and grow up to be like the people there! This happens to be true and irrefutable, at least regarding knowledge and learning. What it also means, conversely, is that for any person who relocates, it is impossible they are results of any other culture that was excluded. Which means that the upbringing choice regarding where a person grows up, totally determines what culture they won’t be and will be. Learning createes a clean divide between ignorance and knowing. All that is left out from a learning person is really oblivion. It is impossible to them. This point was about place, but it is even more obviously true regarding time. All would admit that any baby today, is forever ignorant and in oblivion regarding much life on earth before they were born. Parents even insist that the value of the elderly and aged, consists permanently, in their having experiences, impossible to the youth. Go further back in time the point is much more clear.
We can use infant and cultural ignorance to absolutely demarcate possibility and impossiblity for all human animals existing at any time. Knowledge not had is brain tissue and organization not existing. One cannot act and use brain tissue that does not exist; that is what learning does for people, it allows for brain tissues corresponding to the learning and knowledge, that creates power of function in the world. We can also say that people are powerless regarding use of knowledge they don’t have, but do have powers relating to the knowledge they ydo have.
When we learn over time we enjoy the expansion of our powers and think to ourselves that we have self-improved, and sometimes, we think the self improvement is quite great. The minute improvements, and the group of them combined making for greater larger improvements, movements from impossibility to possibility which would enable us to definen what powers are. When one knows a subject only a small amount, powers are smaller, functions are less, the perception of self improvement is typically lower, but inflated, and one thinks one is somewhat better than one was. One will claim to feel a “different person” somewhat. One will claim to have progressively evolved. The progressive evolving is important to animal and human life, indicating that a global learning unlocking power from impossibility to possibility exists for humans too. It is less than when there is mastery, and people tend to think, that those who are advanced, and are elevated, have made special personal advancements increasing their power, and some believe these people to have a power worth admiration. When one has attained more mastery, one feels one very definitely has become a bit of a different person, with much more strength and functional capacities, competencies and discipline, and this is a movement from very large level of impossibility given the earlier complete lack of those abilities, to having them considerably.
A mature animal or adult animmal, is one that really is impossible for the younger animal. The younger animal cannot just be a mature one through pretending and acting. Visually one obviously sees the difference in size and traits, but apart from these traits is the learning from those traits, and the having a brain that is a different greatly impmroved brain, and relating behaviors that show survival skills that do not exist earlier; in fact, we say the youths have much more chance of dying, while the older animals and humans much more likelihood of continued living and thriving. Infants behaviorally and mentally in the human species are especially powerless and ignorant. From these points, it is clear that the transition from impossibility to possibility is irrefutable and does relate to learning and education and that learning and education result in different brains, more adapted behavior, better chance of survival and thriving, and an advancement that is thought of as an increase in personal power of function in the world.
The repeated use of “impossible” and “possible” is used to show that there is a clear delineation of freedom constraints related to knowledge acquisition and ignorance. If one has less knowledge, impossible things are things one is not free to do. If things are possible to be done, one has some freedome to do those things, but within other existing constraints that still exist. The evolving of a person decreases certain constraints and opens more possibilities. That this is a result of education is an assumption in our culture, and one is typically not allowed to dispute the value of learning; also, people don’t really do this, they dispute the value of specific approaches to education but not education itself, which is obviously needed, by all learning animals. Where there is no learning there is no freedom in what requires that learning, and where there is learning there is an increase of freedoms.
If it is agreed that where there was not learning in an individual, there was not freedoms, which were then made possible later, through specific learnings, making for practical power, it follows that whever that ignorance continues to exist, or better still, whever ignorance exists, related impossibilites exist, and therefore certain freedoms do not exist, due to definite definitive constraints. So now instead of thinking of infants, and cultural infancy, before growths, we just remember that all are still growing, and still ignorant, of whatever they did not learn or study yet. It is obviously true, that some babies that come into existence, never learn certain things others learned. Regarding those things, they remained forever not free, to do what required that knowledge. Now easily we can see that humans are shrouded in ignorance, and there is a chasm outside their knowledge space, that is oblivion and nothingness to their being and awareness. This means for what one does not learn all of one’s life, one is always powerless, ignorant, not knowledgeable, and unfree regarding those things.
One is constrained to not do anything one cannot think. Put this way it is obvious. Yesterday, all I did related to what I do and can think, and what I am able to do physically due to trainings from earlier thinking and practice. Obviously, what I did not do yesterday, was do what I did not and could not think about. That is a real impossibility for me. For what I do not think and can’t think, one can draw a line around my existence, and use it to describe what I was from what I wasn’t. From this we can see, that an object with the level of freedom pretended by the populations that none could be anything. One has to say what one has not done, by saying what they did do, to know what they did and were like. What they did not do was important. What they could not think and could not do was deterministically impossiblite.
Aside from being deterministically impossible to think what cannot be thought or do what cannot be done, this area of what cannot be thought and what cannot be done, also deterministically fences in or bounds what can be done. If I talk about everyting a person isn’t, what they are is more clear. Deterministically, what one was had to be within the deterministic impossible area, within the area of possibility.
The area of possbility however, is illusory according to determinism. The area of impossibility, related to ignorance, constrains all the way to every action you make and all thoughts, so that you are entirely bounded into what you are, with all impossibility outside that. When we consider the total life of a person, it is impossible they are anything outside of what they were, meaning the only thing that was possible was what they were.
This will be discussed more in other sections of this book; here we have to focus more on education and learning. But it is easily related to this specificially. One cannot think a language one did not learn; and it is only possible that one would think language that one did learn. So what is possible ends up being excusively ywhat people can think as a result of their own education and learning, and more still what they do think, which cannot be what they didn’t.
Without learning, one simply has no knowledge and few abilities, which means they haven’t attained freedoms yet, excepting those relating to innateness; and it is easy enough to imagine an infant, not having the freedoms of an adult, and if they are taught nothing, and kept in a room receiving no teachings at all, they would not have any freedoms related to doing anything that required any learning. Including potentially very basic uses of the legs hands and and other body parts. This is very different than being a highly educated king or aristocrat, largely maximizing their range and depth of experience.
The ranges of knowledge and freedom are correlated, but are also causal. If one has little knowledge, one has little freedom; and if one has much knowledge one has much more freedom. This is true even if one is imprisoned in each condition, because one has less mental freedom to think when alone if one does not have more knowledge, and of course, all are just in their skulls and bodies, smaller than any cage or space to be stuffed in. Learning is a cause of freedom within one’s highly limited space. One has more mental pathways to traverse if one has had much learning; and less if less. Brain development is directly causally related to learning. For anything that learning relates to then, learn plays a role in its causality. Thus learning is a primary consideration of basic deterministic causality.
“What brain tissue from your freedom did not result or relate to learning, QED?”
A subject like learning is so definitely in support of causal determinism, that one could examine this topic for quite a long time, from many different perspectives and angles and arrive at the same result. Oftentimes I try to be more comprehensive, but here I will consider it more obvious that this would be true, without going through the effort of trying to explain from too many points of view. Learning results in brain tissues that did not exis, brain tissues control what one can and can’t do and who one is, what brain did not exist relates to obvious impossibilities, and what brain tissue does exist, relates to very specific functions and powers, that do also by matter dictate what a person is, in what their body has in it. This affects all subjects relating to learning whatsover, and expansion of learning is expansion of being and existance on specific pathways.
In the next chapter, what will be discussed is related to this subject of learning in brain tissue, but is more broadly considered still than Education, but confirms and includes it using another pathway of reasoning. This conversation is about Mattanaw’s Law, which is important for recognizing that determinism is fundamentally required for understanding self and nature, and is all present and all pervasive in nature, and maybe is what “nature is” in many ways.
Mattanaw’s Law And Simple Nervous Systems
*Nature is the set of determinisms that exist, and this is equivalent to existence as a whole.”
Constraint As The Defining Metric Of Freedom, And Non-Use of The Word Freedom
“Narrowness of thinking cannot be escaped without a theory binding that thinking to what else is known. Without the binding, one is not thinking more wholly.”
-Mattanaw
People in the current age often, and in some cultures usually, think of freedom as a roughly binary thing, one either has freedom or one does not. It may depend on context whether or not thinking becomes or is more sophisticated than this, but it is true that in some contexts, thinking does trend towards binary on-off for this subject. Politically, some will simply believe that they “are free”, and are not “unfree”, and staunchly defend this viewpoint. “Freedom or nothing” is advocated in film and in conversation. Regarding the subject of personal freedom, there is a popular view, a nearly universal view, that personal freedom of decision is absolute. That there is a kernel level freedom of decision that exists that is entirely unconstrained. If one discusses determinism with these people, or reads about it from authors with this viewpoint, one is still seeing a binary viewpoint “I have this absolute freedom as a person” which is opposed entirely and categorically from “I am constrained fundamentally”, which is still a thought of the kind “I’m free” versus “I’m unfree”. This is a reason why philosophical development has been largely stagnated on this subject matter, because those who have a roughly binary viewpoint, or one that is nearly as unsophisticated, remain unpersuaded, spread their messaging, and continue to procreate.
For historical purposes, it must be mentioned that this way of thinking is nearly universal in our population at present in western style democracies, and that from the author’s perspective indicates one serious way in which humanity remains primitive and superstitious. I say superstitious, because the people who think they are “simply free” are those who are purporting to themselves something that does not exist, that would be supernatural; and therefore, their thinking is fanciful, although serious, and self-grants magical powers.
A vastly more sophisticated point of view, one that grows in sophistication with the details considered, and level of meticulousness of learning, is that animals are bounded and well-defined entities, that behave as they do, and having a way of behaving, have a pattern, distinguishable from the patterns of other naimals, organisms, and objects, and that they cannot be other than in this pattern. Fundamentally, humans cannot be zebras, galaxies, worms, or streams of water. They can’t be anything that is not human, or not themselves specifically, and that means they cannot be anything else that is not that singular thihng that they are. I am unable to behave like a professional athlete much larger than I am, or one much smaller. Being a thing entails that if one can describe and know that one is a thing at all, and that as a thing one has these particularly defining properties, one is already bounded and not other things, and is separated forever from what everything else is. This does not mean there are not interractions and important relations; it just means the discrete namable knowable thinking is constrained extremely into being what it is and not anything else, and only breifly for hte time that it exists.
Those who think to themselves that they have absolute freedom are really just expressing an indoctrinated viewpoint, that arises at the time the subject is brought up, sort of naively in ingorance and unawareness, that the above paragraph could be relevant or controlling for this kind of discussion. To have success in this domain of thinking, to have depth, to think further and further about it, one needs a viewpoint like this one.
As one gets increasingly meticulous about what things are, including what a person or people are, one goes into the minutia of the variety of interdisciplinary sciences, converging into making complex things function. Wanting to understand sea turtles, and their level of freedom, one seeks to know the details of what they are, where they live, what that is composed of and what those things are, and how all interrelates. Put that way, nature has a simplicity. It’s objects and relations, and total system understanding. The turtle might provide a good idea of what it is like to be one thing and not everything else, for people who cannot imagine otherwise. A turtle is strangely not a person. No animal or human would mistake a turtle in their environment for a human, or a turtle for anything else. A turtle, strangely, is a rock animal, being humorous, a bony container, a plastic box of an animal. I was going to explain futher the turtles appearance, to differentiate it from humans, but here I presume, it is very obvious the vastness of the differences. The details of what a turtle is surfaces its constraints that relate to its existence as a turtle, and the detailed examination of their living environment further explains additional constraints. Going into great detail, their total life is starting to come into view, and this total life is largely a story about constraint, and less a story about freedom.
I will argue that we are more in a system of total constraint, and within this system of total constraint, we experience as a kind of animal, a difference of feeling between when something is preventing or stopping us from doing something we otherwise could, and being able to do those things without any prevention. The difference between these states is what we call freedom or not largely, at a personal decision making level. Also, I will argue that within the totality of constraint, different animals have different levels of moveability, or motility, and that they have higher complexities of movements, greater amounts of considerations of where they could be externally stopped from doing what they want to do. They have larger ranges of wants regarding their behaviors, and they can tell that given their wants, many available actions can transpire. This differentiates smaller simpler animals from larger more complex ones, and explains how constraint can be used, to quantify levels of natural freedom existing in animals.
Humans believe themselves to be very free, when they live in a place, where there are not other humans, rules, or other obstructions, blocking them from doing what they prefer to be doing. But it may be they are not as free as some other animals; or at least, more thinking is needed to determine if they are or not without an immediate answer. For example, some have claimed that birds seem more free than humans, and it appears in many ways, that dolphins and whales are quite free in their movements.
As details about each animal are explored, more about what each animal is, and more is known about what is impossible for them. The size of impossibility for any animal or thing is much greater than the size of possibility. Analogously, people have accepted that ignorance appears greater than knowledge, and they assume this oftentimes to be true. Well likewise, impossibility and unfreedoms that relate are greater extremely than freedoms that exist. Learning about each animal is like learning about all that is impossible to them except what they are, and learning what is possible to what they are, we get a somewhat amazing picture as to what is impossible for everything else, or everything dissimilar to them. In this way, dolphins and other species of animals become unique and amazing, for having abilities and freedoms that other animals do not have. We see things impossible to all else.
As details about each animal are explored, more about what each animal is, and more is known about what is impossible for them. The size of impossibility for any animal or thing is much greater than the size of possibility. Analogously, people have accepted that ignorance appears greater than knowledge, and they assume this oftentimes to be true. Well likewise, impossibility and unfreedoms that relate are greater extremely than freedoms that exist. Learning about each animal is like learning about all that is impossible to them except what they are, and learning what is possible to what they are, we get a somewhat amazing picture as to what is impossible for everything else, or everything dissimilar to them. In this way, dolphins and other species of animals become unique and amazing, for having abilities and freedoms that other animals do not have. We see things impossible to all else.
As details about each animal are explored, more about what each animal is, and more is known about what is impossible for them. The size of impossibility for any animal or thing is much greater than the size of possibility. Analogously, people have accepted that ignorance appears greater than knowledge, and they assume this oftentimes to be true. Well likewise, impossibility and unfreedoms that relate are greater extremely than freedoms that exist. Learning about each animal is like learning about all that is impossible to them except what they are, and learning what is possible to what they are, we get a somewhat amazing picture as to what is impossible for everything else, or everything dissimilar to them. In this way, dolphins and other species of animals become unique and amazing, for having abilities and freedoms that other animals do not have. We see things impossible to all else.
As details about each animal are explored, more about what each animal is, and more is known about what is impossible for them. The size of impossibility for any animal or thing is much greater than the size of possibility. Analogously, people have accepted that ignorance appears greater than knowledge, and they assume this oftentimes to be true. Well likewise, impossibility and unfreedoms that relate are greater extremely than freedoms that exist. Learning about each animal is like learning about all that is impossible to them except what they are, and learning what is possible to what they are, we get a somewhat amazing picture as to what is impossible for everything else, or everything dissimilar to them. In this way, dolphins and other species of animals become unique and amazing, for having abilities and freedoms that other animals do not have. We see things impossible to all else.
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Animals, without a nervous system, are immobile and non-motile. Like objects that are not biological, they have an appearance, have chemical reactions happening within them, and do not make decisions. A human that is anencephalic, or a human that is comatose, or “brain dead”, has been likened to a vegetable. They have been called “human vegetables”, and some simply think they are unalive. They require support from outside to live, and left alone, they will die. Speaking about the constraints of their system is still meaningful, and medically important.
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Constraints scale. From simple animal to more complex animal, the level of constraint is greater with the smaller and simpler animal, than with the larger more complex animal, and future animals, if increasingly more complex, will show us the endpoint of evolution, showing maximal freedom, where at the beginning, was much less. They also scale by the degree of obstructiveness of an environment, as with a caged animal, versus one living in nature. Also, an earth that is much larger, would permit later humans, much greater travel freedom, and freedom of place to live; whereas now it is becoming apparent, earth will soon be boring and too easy to explore more completely. If humans evolve to be interplanetary travelers, their freedom of movement may grow extremely. Constraints are internal or external and relative to what is considered. Historically, when people have politically argued as to whether they were free or not, they would confuse if they were talking about their in-built animal level of freedom, and the oppressiveness of their political system. They would confuse whether the subject of their freedom, was about their internal nature, external objects, or both. Clearly it is about both. Those thinking they were “dying for freedom” didn’t think they were dying of an internal disease, but instead thought they were fighting external controllers to remove obstacles. But in doing so, they couldn’t see the internal disease of their unfreedom from ignorance about the subject and died of stupidity sometimes.
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The constraints related to what an animal is, and the scaling of constraints, for internal and external animals, increasingly provides, with more details, a picture of total constraint and pre-determination. Situational analyses of constraint provides a consilient pathway of argument to the conclusion of causal determinism, without discussing causes. The method of this book is to provide very different thinking pathways to the same conclusions, so the reader can see, that the conclusions must be true, else it is impossible that so many separate perspectives, would trend to the same viewpoint, using very different ways of talking and thinking. When a theory is especially powerful, one can expect impacts of the theory on thinking to be in many different directions. Likewise, it should illuminate thinkers with different backgrounds. Thinkers with different backgrounds, would have been thinking about things in ways, that are in agreement with what the theory illuminates, but before that theory, those thoughts would be more in isolation and would be less persuasive. Here, we are seeing that constraint, discussed by itself, allows us to have a very good understanding of much of nature, from one perspective, and that from that perspective, indicates that the theory of determinism is true. The theory of determinism, once known, would illuminate and confirm the thinking of someone who has explored constraints (if any exist), and thus people with this particular thought pathway and perspective will find satisfaction on having their thinking related to everything else.
Without the theory of determinism, their thinking cannot be linked to everything else.
Education To Determine Thinking Pathways
The role of education and learning in human development is an especially clear and lucid case of deterministic process which shows why it must exist and why it is beneficial. Since education is central to human cultural development and the rearing of children, if it is shown to be deterministic, will also be shown to be pervasively deterministic through all of human behavior, and all of human activity, wherever learning is involved. Fortunately it is easy to show why education and learning are good examples, which means we have yet another easy argument which confirms that determinism must be true, and must expand across all of human experience.
There are several main arguments relating to this subject matter. Firstly, the educational context involves the teaching of children who are receptive to any learning received, but the initial learning received is culture and location dependent, and this determines what adulthood will be like for people in different locations and different nations. Secondly, education sets clear pathways of development that cannot be changed once initiated and carried out for a long period of time–education creates inalterabilities. Thirdly, education is valued because it is perceived by those who speak about its value, that thinking opportunities, and societal opportunities, are expanded and come into existence only after the education is experienced–that is, without education, one cannot have a mind that could use the new information. Fourthly, as people age, they become aware, that education is needed to become the person they would like to be, and if there is not an opportunity for new learning, it is known that one simply will not be able to become that person envisioned, which is known to be a cause for some of regret.
The need of humans to learn certainly provides more arguments than these, but these arguments are powerful and comprehensive enough to be a satisfying set to demonstrate determinism. Consider that learning determines everything that one can ever think, which means anything that anyone can imagine, including possible decisions, has only been possible because of the learninge experienced. In these arguments we also can see, that information availability is regional, and one can only have information that one has been exposed to, so one will definitely be mentally predetermined by regional languages, schools, and information resources. Information exposure is largely permanent, meaning what is learned will simply remain in one’s mind for use later, is intermixed with new information, and therefore is involved for the remainder of life in one’s mentality; so what is learned before, is decisively influencing later thinking. Also, we will understand that people already know these things, which is why they value education as they do, and why they know the life prospects of someone with no education or education received in an undesirable region, is so much less valuable than a life with high quality learning.
This covers all information that will exist in the human mind, where it comes from, what we already believe its value is, and what its causal influences are already known to be. These each together provide a very strong and persuasive argument for the role of natural causal determinism in human existence.
This discussion is also not inapplicable to non-humans, and anything that learns at all, really is still influenced by these considerations. Animals in the wild that do not learn from their parents will very often die, and the quality of the parents will influence the strength of new offspring.
As was discussed in the introduction, individual examples such as this are alone very satisfying for explaining why determinism must be true without a reliance on all the others. One really could write a book or dissertation on subjects only on this particular subject matter, the predetermining characteristics of learning in zoology, for all learning animals, including humans. Since learning is so important, a really strong account of this subject would be extremely persuasive without a need to rely on other areas of experience to believe determinism has to be the explanation. So we have the fortune of having this particular example to rely on now to further understand determinism, for use to explain to others and use later, but also we still have all the other examples which serve to confirm again and again, in very different ways, that what we say here about education really is true, and that of course, determinism itself offers the best explanation of human causality.
Let us proceed to the first example, that of educational context.
Expansion Upcoming.
Marketing And Propaganda To Continue Educational Messaging For Alternative Goals
In another essay, we discussed education and learning as it relates to Determinism, and it will be clear to the reader, as we progress, that Marketing and Propaganda are not themselves unrelated to education, but instead are very closely related. On one perspective, Education is a special instance of marketing, advertising and propaganda, making education somewhat the same as these, dependent on these, or closely akin to them. On another perspective, Marketing and Propaganda are continuations of the education, or learning in parallel to education, in that culture outside of the school system, uses advertising and propaganda and messaging techniques through the media to spread more information that is expected or wanted to be learned. Education and Marketing can be reduced to learning about messages received, and can be thought of as the result of communication and its main purposes; and additionally, one might consider the world as a marketer or communicator or educator, that stimulates repeatedly to children, adults, animals, and other receptive learning organisms, so that they can advance their nervous systems to adapt to it for having stored assumptions from which to act on later. Even the world can be thought of as a marketer, advertiser, educator or communicator. These topics, from an academic perspective, are so interrelated that it is hard to think well about them without considerin gparts of the others. These topics to an interdisciplinarian student are clearly to be clustered together as strongly related given the subject matter covered, and the degree to which one depends on the other.
Marketing and advertising, are thought typically to include messages from businesses that are seeking to create desired behaviors, which typically would result in a large amount of purchases from people who are called “consumers”, although they could be called “students” who are wanted for at least some exploitation. Propaganda is something I consider to be nearly identical to marketing and advertising, and going forward, one can simply think that when I use the word “marketing” I mean all of these, but “propaganda” is typically more about producing political thoughts and behaviors that are desired, particularly by governments, leaders, political candidates, and other political groups. All of the marketing constitutes a kind of mental salesmanship, which is supposed to create “purchases” which can simply be “conversions”, and in marketing they do use the word “conversion”, as if they also intend to include religious salesmanship in their subject as well. If one thinks about the fact that propaganda and advertising relates to chunks of information received in “paid programming” and “promotional material” found in all kinds of print, radio, internet, and television media, it is easier to see how they must all relate. They all have to be paid for in the same way too, unless the media company must provide some free advertising to the government, which is something I am uncertain about. Either way, the ads and propaganda appear in the same places as each other. They can also appear, outside of it in the main contents too, if the producers of the content are getting paid to do that too, and in movies we see “product placement”, political cameos or appearances, and material that simply includes brand information in ways that make it seem more attractive.
While the education section focused on learning, notice it too also includes much of what is discussed above, so even within education, I could say many of the same things. For example, in education, the goal is still largely teachers, administrators, and polliticians, wanting to “sell” students on information, that does include political assumptions of the parent nation, meaning much is indoctrination, along with information favorable to the current regime. For example, a strong favoratism for democracy exists in the education of citizens of democratic nations. Also, even regarding basic information that is part of the main curriculum, students still have to come to be persuaded, or at least think the material tenable enough, to tolerate not becoming too inquisitive about alternatives, too challenging of instruction, or too frustrated to go on. So students are taught the material in a way that is expected to be palatable to them.
Additionally, in education, information is received to students in the only ways it can be received, through the senses, using similar approaches: in person speeches (lectures), or instruction (how parenting is like marketing and propaganda), like sermons to a group of seated people (like in religions), over videos and audio clips shared with classes, and with demonstrations (like what is done by sales people), and via textual reading, that includes “in-content” marketing-like messages that feed traditions and assumptions, many of which are untenable or at least can be challenged.
Notice also, that while propaganda is thought to include untruths, and it is also known that marketing and advertising also includes lies and manipulations, media and education provide information along the sensory pathways that also receive real honest and true learning, like learning from nature, and thus honest and true learning, teaching, education, marketing, and propaganda, are still all of these things, and not something different. Propaganda, considered negative, really does include the same subject matter as, and the same methods as, propagation of true information. Thus fundamentally, none of these subjects mean that for any specific learning, sale, persuasion, or communication, that it is true or false. We are concerned about when it is false, but truth is happening very obviously in these same areas.
Sadly, thinking about these subjects are unclear and muddled in the population, for not having an understanding that they do relate in these ways, and that they amount to one great subject of learning and teaching via communication. The teaching can be with positive intent, negative intent, or just with intent do produce thoughts and behaviors of certain kinds. What is immportant for this particular subject here, firstly, is to see that really they are all related, and what I said above, that they are used to create learning, in a purposeful way, to produce thoughts of the same kinds in others, and to create wanted behaviors. The sources of information conflict with each other and desire different things, and there are also some trends of themes and traditions, patterns within cultures, that show national interest in teaching the same information, whether positive or negative, or true or false to produce behaviors. The main objective really is to create thinking that results in kinds of behaviors, and this depends on what is heard, seen and learned, and converted into brain matter. The goal are brains that think and do things that one wants.
That all these different sources of information think that this will work is astonishing, and the reason why they all think and expect it will work, is because of course it does, and what does one think that implies for this discussion? It implies that marketing, education, advertising and propaganda determine behavior in a way that is causal, understood, often used and trusted, and spans all of learning and communication! Sources of information make huge investments, and have an industry of belief, that what they communicate to you, will make you have another brain! A brain that more often does what they want you to do then one that wouldn’t know about what they sayand show!
Stopping Point.
Reliability of Science Regarding Laws and Mathematical Representations
The subject matter of the reliability of mathematics in the sciences and applied technologies is now one that I see to be mature and at the point of excess repeittiousness, such that those wanting to speak of science and its importance tend to say the same things. Here I don’t want to repeat all the same things, althoguh some will be similar or consistent with what others have said, and some parts will also be what one has heard before. Instead I want to focus most of the conversation on what is new that might be said of the subject particularly as it is supportive to the various arguments I’ve been making regarding natture as a predetermined thing. I also want to make use of the fact that this subject is so repetitiously shared, to make it clear that really the public and scientists and education are already in support of my worldview, as it would be expected they would say things that would be what I here show indicates causal determinism. It’s so popular a worldview, that one hears of the subject perhaps too many times, and if one becomes a scientist oneself, one will find oneself, probably parroting the same kinds of praises of the work as the others. In the media, consistently, those astrophysics spokespeople, and spokespeople of other sciences, tend to say identical things regarding the trustworthiness of sciences, and since this has been spread in education and in the media, it is very clear, and does not require evidence or substantiation, because it is fresh in everyone’s memory, that all believe science is very accurately representing parts of nature, allows for making good quality predictions, allows for constructing useful technologies, and involves a level of precision that is so great it seems to be exacting regarding what is represented in nature.
Science itself is a discipline that assumes causal determinism although it is not really self-aware of this oftentimes. Public proponents about the value of science and mathematics tell us about the extreme exctitude and trustworthiness of science regarding nature, in one context, but in another, the same people will become spokespeople of common political viewpoints about ultimate freedom of decision, and will espouse religiously supportive perspectives that really do clash with their views on science. Here, I work to bring this subject to a conclusion, as I have already brought it to a conclusion for myself, that constraint and determinism is consistent with all that is said about science that that trust in that viewpoint really is deserved, and that the other views that people have that they have held somehow separately from scientific considerations are inconsistent and must be rejected, and in practice, I have found them easily rejectable. The scientific view is the one with greater veracity, and where it clashes with religious views, and with silly political contrivances, science is the better to side with.
An example where this would be the case, that I will dismiss with prejudice immediately, is that of miracles. Miracles according to science do not exist, and instead, any happenings whatsoever to be understood, have causes that are physical, and once examined thoroughly, it is seen there is no miracle and instead the explanation is simply like others. Human weaknesses and cognitive shortcomings are what causes them to think there are miracles. Instead there are none, and as with all else science strives to explain with precision with success, anything that is thought to be a miracle is simply explained scientifically. This is an example I will not go through thoroughly: Instead, with prejudice, I state it is stupid. It is a mistake to discuss such subject as miracles with superstitious simpletons and savages of religion. Instead instant rejection is better, and the need truly, is to side with education, to eradicate any viewpoint regarding explanations of events in terms of miracles. Any and all cases of explanation using the word “miracle” involves plain stupidities, foolishnesses, superstitions, poor ways of thinking, old religiosities, traditions, and people of low intelligence and intellectual trustworthiness, and of course liars and predators.
In the history of civilization, there has been a transition to pretending causes as to events very generally, to knowing what they are, and science is moving in the direction of knowing increasingly more why any particular event happens. If one uses statistical thinking in relation to scientific advances, it is certain that the probabilities of future explanations on scientific bases of what has not yet been explained will also have successful scientific explanations. We cannot now think “Science is doing really well, but soon, it will fail to explain.” It is true there are areas in which science faces challenges, but it is not to be expected that science would not be omniscient or have omnipotent explanatory power. Instead it is just expected that it would have predictable growth and success, and that we would see results of this success, and feel empowered in expansion of knowledge. There really isn’t any particular area of experience in which we do not think some scientific explanation will exist, even if we are uncertain what that explanation is at present. We simply continue to explain more and more until gaps are filled, and eventually there will be little or no gaps of interest. Already, on a personal level, I feel there are few gaps I’m really concerned about, and areas in which I want my own personal experience explained typically fall into the domain of neuroscience, and wherever there is something I don’t know, I do expect an answer to already exist or to exist soon. As a Psychologist myself, I’m aware that the field of psychology is a medical field, and a hard science in the domain of perception, and is a rigorous science regarding behavior and of neuropharmacology, and there is much that exists to explain even a very large amount of mental experience; where I am personally lacking, I would not fill it in with the miraculous, like a tribesman of some ancient primitive human group, but as a “modern” who really did learn what education taught, that I can expect science to explain it now or later, and that the explanation will involve exacting causal details. Not only will these exacting causal details explain particulars of my experience, the explanation will fall into a form, that is both mathematical and general enough, to explain it as “natural laws” in many cases and not a few.
Examples about the reliability of the sciences are so numerous that providing common classical examples now seems absurd and instead one should simply admit that the quantity of examples is so large and pervasive that none should be given and instead prejudicially one should just state “It’s done and proven”. This is where I’ve complained about repetitive scientists, talking about Newton, Einstein, and others, who have used equations to representnature. Obviously, the number of equations that exist at present, include more authors than just these, and utility exists in many corporations and governments to an incredible extent for technolgical innovation, and not without trustworthiness even where risk is great, like in the design of buildings, computers used in dangrous equipment and moving vehicles, aeuronautics, in missiles, controlled explosives, and many other areas. Risk related computations are also in place to show that risks can be managed due to the precision of designs that really do include exacting representations of physics. Thus I can expect some flying objects to come in contact with some things, but never other things, and I can expect a plane to remain in flight, and not suddenly drop, as long as mathematical rules and tolerances are covered in the plane’s construction and operation. Insurance and risk management around planes will include understandings about actual error-proneness of planes resulting from mathematics of their designs and statistics which show from data just how often planes fail. It is already expected from this kind of thinking that some planes will crash, and that such crashes will relate to risks, and that the causes of the crashes will be easy to explain in many ways, and will not include anything miraculous, or involve counter-miracles of any kind.
Some of this conversation has trended over to where mathematics blend together into complexes which are the technological innovations that exist. These technologies will be the subject of another chapter, but I mention that technologies involve complex objects that are a convergence of functional mathematics, or of functional insights about design which can and do eventually find substantiation in mathematical reasoning. In the sciences, when we think with astrophysicists in popular media, we are not typically thinking as much about complex technolgies that bring together many mathematical components, including engineering math, math of physics, and many other kinds of math and many equations, and instead the discussion is often about singular equations. This is the subject I want to focus on now, for the present, and it is important to do so, because without such a focus, it won’t be increasingly obvious that this perspective is true, when we consider further, the complexes of maths and physics that are technologies that work, and have clear complex causalities that are understood. Before that, we want to hear that individual equations have such effectiveness. It is useful though, to have mentioned complex technologies briefly first, to bolster the argument that singular equations would be extremely useful and obviously, if taken together they can result in complex and exact technical objects. Also, they can be expected to come together to explain complex technical natural objects, like a human brain and a person, and other animals! In order to build trust in the overall power of science to explain increasingly complex phenomena, science has gone through development from simple and focused equations and studies, to more sophisticated ones including earlier learnings. Today the group of individual learnings function as components into larger studies which do more to explain what exists in our experiences, and allows for making things that are very useful to us on a daily basis, like computer systems.
An issue here is “How do I proceed on this subject of individual findings without simply rediscussing with irritation the same foundational sciences covered so many times?” Moving to a non-technical mode of discussion that simply assumes much of this is known is helpful I think, and I have found it in some contexts to be more fruitful than expected and failry refreshing. Let us admit we’ve seen equations. Let us also admit we’ve seen the periodic table, that there are known molecules and chemicals, drugs, and that there are detailed understandings of materials and properties. Let us remember high school without going through it again as adults.
Specific equations have been presented to us many timees so we have some awareness as to their purposes, functions, and ways of being used. Typically, they represent some very focused class of phenomena, in which re-use is anticipated, making the equation a tool or instrument. This tool receives inputs in variables meant to be placeholders for specific measurements. These equations appear in all different fields, and so we have an argument from consilience, that all fields agree, as to the causal explanatory power of these equations and their instrumentality. In the remainder of this essay I want to focus on two areas of interst in which all know there has been considerable advancement, of knowledge of the automotive industry, and of combustion and thermodynamics. In the automootive industry, we have a complex business. The complex business relies upon the science of combustion partly to determine miscellaneous risks related to explosions and explosiveness of enginess and flammable liquids. Consumers do not feel they are at risk, and millions own vehicles they have spent much of their money on, with confidence that they will not be quickly eliminated in an accidental explosion. They are aware they may be killed in an impact, but they do not really expect that they will be killed in any kind of spontaneous fire or explosion, and that is partly because there is considerable understanding about the chemistry and physics of combustion, and simple equations are used to assess whether or not combusions are possible and under what circumstances whcih provide the inputs to the equations. The equations of combustion are really taken to be absolute, and are not really considered to involve miracles, countermiracles, random chance, and so on, and instead are considered to involve knowable physical causalities only. If an explosion does happen, and a loved one dies, it was not beecause a miracle happened, from a prayer of an enemy, that they die. Instead, it is assumed, that the explosion related to real causes and was simply a rarity relating to inputs that feed into the equations which explain why the explosion would happen. These explosions do not really happen often though, or really ever, without impact. This is because the design of the cars by engineers have taken into account these equations to ensure that risk conditions do not present that make it possible for inputs to these equations to result in combusion equalites or threshold inputs that trend towards combustion equalities. Once the combustion ingredients come together combusion will happen, and if it is close it is likely, and designs of cars have made it increasingly unlikely for the protection of consumers and organizations making the vehicles.
There does not appear to me to be a good reason to list out the equations, the inputs, or other specifics, since we have learned this, and know that they would exist. Otherwise, we proceed in an unnecessarily remedial way, as if we need to refresh in mind what we’ve seen so many times. We’ve learned this so really being technical is not required again, even for a discussion about determinism, regarding equations and even concerning natural laws and applications. This example shows that we trust the equations and the manufacturers of products do too, and that they have been useful and important and considered to be causally authoritative on a subject as important to us as the dangerous of fire and combustion. We can die if we are caught on fire, and before we have had manufacturers work on various safeguards around combustables, there were many more fire related events and many more explosions. When I think of vehicles, small engines, and other internal combustion engine related products, I do not imagine they are exploding really ever. This means the equations are well understood, that companies have used them to make very small risks, that they know in numbers, and these have been used in work with insurance companies, who care about the details of risks involved, and handle them numerically. Actuaries, financial analysts, engineers, and physicists are all really involved in interplay even with a simple combustion formula, and there are downstream mathematics therefore from manufacture of a combustion product. These further mathematicians trust the combustion equations, and take technical testing statistics to feed into their own equations about risk and financials. This then makes the business knowledgeable about the total situation surrounding their product which enables them to ensure continued operation.
Here I am not interested in all of these other areas of math; instead, I simply indicate, they all really asssume that the combustion equations are really incredibly reliable and even absolutely authoritative regardging combustion causality, and that there can be no causality of combustion that does not obey comustion laws represented by the equations.
What does that mean exaxtly? That means they are expected to be causally deterministic, and that there is no possible way, explosions or fires can result, unless those equations have inputs, that allow for combustion equalities. This means that in the engine industries, all are working on assumptions that they are aware of, or are part of their business processes, from earlier science and assumptions, that the combustion equations are one hundred percent authoritative, and that combustion as a subject matter is one hundred percent causal in nature, and involves predeterminations based on inputs.
This I believe is sufficient to make it clear and compelling that all think combustion does not happen by weird circumstances, but plainly well understood circumstances, in which gas mixtures, and combustive flammables, come together in such ways, that fire can happen; and that fire can happen, according to what is known in chemistry and physics, already well described, in combustion equations. This information is not only assumed in the automotive and engine related industries, but in any industry whatsoever involving combustion, also by fire departments, militaries and police forces, by those making any stoves, home heating applieances, and anything else related to fire, and that all know and trust, the consistency of the behavior of fire, and do not believe it to function outside of causality, represented well by existing equations; and all think that this perhaps compared with other sciences, is not really requiring much advancement. It really is done science on most of what we will ever need regarding fire.
What other sciences are like this where equations are in use? Many other examples of this are present. Is this again where examples are needed though, given all have been educated and exposed to equations and understand that all industries are really using math in relation to their products. It is really only the religious nutcase that continues to persist in believing that there are events that are not causally explained using knowledge obtained in science and that really all events are causally explicable, like the example of combustion. A religionist, historically, inserted into a growing industry, would not have supported a sophisticated understanding of the products and business, in any place where they thought it wasn’t the causality or equalitions involved that were determining events, but miracles and demons, or angels and other supernatural entitites. Instead, each separate industry, operates in a secular fashion, assuming naturalistic principles are true, and in each that causal predeterminism is the correct assumption, and that for any even that happens, a cause can be found that is physical. For example, with airplanes, if there is a crash, it is believed that there is malfunction, that would relate to inputs that feed into equations that relate to flight, and not miracles of those who pray a plane might crash, by someone from the ground.
The set of all industries using math to understand the causality and risk of products such that the equations reliably indicate determination of results shows that for anything that exists causal predetermination is expected, where manufacturing is happening. We would not only include manufacturing of machines, and tools, but manufacturing of pharmaceuticals to be used in nervous systems too, indicating a belief in the causality of nervous systems along causal principles the same as the rest of nature.
Individual equations used all over the sciences are increasingly explaining phenomena conjointly, to an extent that as a whole they are indicating further that all of nature is fully causal. In all circumstances it is thought, at least one equation exists, that would have inputs depending on prior outputs, that would cause next events. There cannot be combustion, for example, if in advance of a fire, there is not first the presence of oxygen, flammable material, and some potential for the introduction of heat. The ingredients come together first, the followed by the introduction of those ingredients, the combustion happens, according to the rules exhibited in the equations. This is the same not only for fires, but for anything that ever happens. For anything in particular to happen, that one might talk about, any event whatsoever, there must be a presence of those things in advance, that then move, to come together and form what is the event under consideration. This is causality. It is thought to be ever present, and is increasingly confirmed to be all pervasive. Importantly, we really assume this is the case too, we don’t really honestly question it; we just know that we want more scientific grounds to further substantiate that it is really true that all is caused, but it does appear from the range of sciences happening in all industries, that it has been proven, and nothing else needs to be demonstrated. Now, those who think it could be otherwise, those who are religionists and traditionalists, who hold that miracles must be true, are more looking like psychiatric cases, and there are fewer and fewer people who would want to protect these religious zealots from harsh criticism. Thinking causality is not really all pervasive is now an indicator of delusion or psychosis.
Here we have discussed the great trust that science and humanity has in equations in causality, and the specific example of the science of combustion, which reliably enables us to trust something as dangerous as flame. We have also discussed, that this one science is just one of many, that together comprise really what civilization is doing as a whole, and that each trust separately and together, individual equations, to the constent that like with combustion, oftentimes they assign one hundred percent authority to the math, to understand the causality of events.
If we were to move into the direction of talking about this subject as it has been discussed in popular culture by physicists and so on, we might start to talk about how all these equations come together to produce an elegant picture of reality and the “language of nature”. We might talk about how all these equations further produce for us the rules of how nature actually behaves and our way to understand how nature operates apart from basic observation, so we can more comprehensively and in more detail understand even to a level we cannot see and observe, and explain all things and not just some. I will not argue for all this again, but mention that physicists on television and in pop culture say these things to receptive audiences, who have not yet come to know about causal predetermination, but accept already, what it is about, while being forgetful of the subjects of religion, miracles, and ultimate freedom of mind and so on. These subjects are at odds with the idea of causal predetermination, and the views all find satisfying and entertaining from popular physicists are consistent with what has been written in this chapter, and that the correct view to be remembered is that causal predetermination explains all natural events, and not anything supernatural from other ideas which are relics of history, and gradually must be removed from our culture.
Reliability of Machines, Electronics, and Technologies
Many electronics and technologies have become so pervasive that they might be classified as market harvestable items, which exist as growths from nature. These electronics are gathered, foraged and shopped for, in order to use them for functions in which they are now considered indispensible. The technologies function well, and we do not oftentimes expect them to have manufacturer defects to an extent that we expect historically, and they are becoming increasingly more reliable. That they are necessities now, to have a normal life, shows that we trust them as much as we trust things like food, which also sometimes have defects. Natural and unnatural things alike, have a high degree of expected trustworthinesses and some small amount of exxpected error, and it may be the case that some manufactured lelectronics are giving us what we need more predictably than food items, or things that might be gathered and used from nature.
Technological devices, medical and scientific tools of high complexity, computers and smartphones and so on, rely on an extremely large amount of detailed electrical components that each must function in concert to systematically do what we want done. This is different, than say, buying a cluster of bananas or tomatoes, expecting them to taste good, or fit well enough in a recipe. Even a complex food recipe from a trustworthy restaurant, in terms of elements of the purchased menu item, is far less complex and reliable than electrical products. Restaurant menu items are inconsistent depending on the cook, and sometimes do not come out as expected, with defects and disappoint us. This is irrefutable, because people are disappointed often enough with food, to hear complaints extremely frequently in life, and we see them visibly in ratings of restaruants in socially shared software systems. We still trust foods with more difficult preparation and more food ingredients, and likewise, and more so, we expect electronics to work nowadays.
It happens to be necessary that physical determinism is true if the complex of manufactured ingredients consistently has the same results on a clear cause effect basis repeatedly and indefinitely. This is true for technolgoies and is true for natural things. This is increasingly expected to be true and not less expected over time, with a trajectory towards perfect pre-determinism. However complex, if each component has been designed according to pre-existing pre-created blueprints, each is manufactured right so all materials are made as expected, and all pass quality tests as to function, they will function for customers. They will even function without testing if made right: however, at very high precision, it is expected errors will be introduced. But these errors are bing reduced, and they are expected to be increasingly reduced by finding what causally causes the problems from less precise manufacturing, so the defects are no longer existing, and it is even an absolute that if there are no defects it works at a certain level. Given the correct blueprints and manufacturing of product, the outcome will deteerministically be working proucts. The causality of the working products is increasing in complexity and not decreasing, while expectation of correct operation is also increasing. The results are due to everyone’s joint belief that their work controls the outcome.
Everyone in technology, in aerospace manufacture, and anything where there is mission critical function, there is a belief, that the trustworthiness of the products relied on, is created by the work that goes into it. This is because they trust and believe, that they can make things, that will be causally predetermined, to do what they are supposed to do, with increasing guarantee. The staff and companies that create planes that people fly every day really have to convince the public and the public and airlines buying the planes that they believe cuasally the planes are predetermined to work and not crash.
Apart from everytime, all the time, expecting to be able to improve products, because one believes one can causally ensure they work better, and have better predetermination of results, we also expect, everytime and all the time, to discover that causes are natural causes, when things do not work. Software and hardware companies, and large technology manufacturers do not ask help from the supernatural or the miraculous, when there is an issue with a product. If there is an issue with the product, everyone does know firmly and with conviction, that the defect is really related to something that is a natural cause. Once the defect is found and correct, a better product results, and this process has been repeated millions of times by compmanies with large staffs, to create products that are predetermined to work, not having the defects any more. For some products there is an expected usable reliability of continuous operation. Some produccts need to be up and running continuously and not fail while operating. For some of these technologies, maintenance gets in the way slightly, but even maintenance is supposed to keep it running, but in cases in which I’ve been more exposed, in which maintenance requires shut down and restart, as with datacenter computing, the “uptime” is supposed to be well above 99.99%. This means we expect nearly total predetermination of function at all times for these technologies. This means we expect to be able to predect, on the basis of the quality of the technology and historical use, that the technology will be running every time we check, almost always, apart for maintenance in some cases, but always in other cases where maintenance can happen during operation. Predictability relates to predetermination, because for anything we think will have a causal outcome that is assured, and predetermined to happen, we predict that it will happen, and it does happen. For these technologies we have almost perfect expectation, that these will be working everytime we check always.
Technology here is not to dissimilar from human functioning and over time the difference between human creations and biologies will erode to make both appear naturally resulting technologies, some from nature without human work, some from nature with humans naturally doing the work. We expect that things in nature have a continuous uptime, or run time, or existence, during their life cycles, and we expect this with near perfect determination, and perfect determination, when we recognize interferences to also be causal in nature and predetermined. Consider that people, without cuasal medical problems, or causal injuries, are expected to causally exist, from working biology. Their bodies are simply great technology compared with many technologies humans have made, and they continue to run. It is really a good expectation that your friends and family will be alive tomorrow, and when you do predict this, along with the public, it’s at more than 99.99% probability, such that you think things like “I know I will be alive tomorrow”. We know this to not be perfect, because there are causes that interfere with function, but that interference is causal too! Medical reasons, which autopsy experts think they can find to explain the death, do exist. Doctors are in universal agreement that illnesses are causal and rersult in death and that they can do something about illnesses when something can actually alter and correct those causes, to make the “partially broken machine” fixed. Doctors do believe in predetermination although I am writing this book because I’m aware, they are inconsistent in their beliefs, and are sometimes supernaturalists too. But as a discipline, there is even supposed to be a commitment to the view that people are bot like animal bio entities, that have technology like functions, and that they can be fixed sometimes, and othertimes they cannot be fixed. They even mix technology with people to save them. This is a segue in our conversation though, and we are interested in all life, and not only doctors and medical science. The point is that humans and plants and animals all keep going easily, and in a predetermined way. We always expect that if there was not also some other causal influence, their bodies or parts and biologies will ensure they continue to operate. We predict again and again, “That tree will still be there tomorrow living” because it really is predetermined cuasally to be alive tomorrow.
Our ability to predict the future is better than people think, since deaths and alterations to what is stable are anomolies. If a family member dies suddenly we expect it to be an anomaly. Mostly, we predict correctly again and again, that their lives will continue according to the rules of biology. We exxpect computers that we need to work to continue to work globally, supporting financial systems and banking for everyone predictably, in a predetermined fashion. We expect email accounts to exist tomorrow. While we can’t know the details of the future, we can really know there will be people, and animals, and plants, and computers, and they will function as predictably as ever, according to rules of technology and biology.
We have not entered the subject here on the predictability of the existence of the earth, sun, sun, and nearby planets, and astrogeostases, but we can quickly say, that if we combine our expectations that the earth will largely be the same tomorrow, plants too, buildings also, technologies like cloud computing systems, human bodies, and so on, we have almost everything is in principle cusally predetermined to resume operation, unless a causal interference happens, which is also expected. The more compelling argument as to the totality of predetermination requires this further conversation about stases, but for now, it should be compelling enough in my estimation. Returning the concentration to technology, we have a very large world of technical products, that we rely on as a civilization, to the extent that it would be civilization destroying if they were not working in a predetermined way, causally. That they are so caused and predetermined, is why we trust that our entire civilization can now blend with technology, and this level of trust does show, that even if people are unreflective about predetermination, they really have adopted many assumptions about it. They are comfortable that technology will resume and that culture and humanity will exist tomorrow. The reliability and predetermination of technology is another example which seems to indicate along with the other essays here that clearly the world is predetermined.
Genetics As Fixed Instructions of Development
An advanced area of science in which causality is accepted to exist at the highest level of complexity known, taking it still as a separate subject, versus a study of everything which is most complex, is in conception and growth of a living organism. The alteration of the conception and growth of an organism, particularly in utero, is something humans have been ethically prohibited from doing, at least as said by the media and by political officials. Humans do not currently, we are told, intervene with the fundamental growth and development of humans excepting to provide surgical procedures and fixes to save babies and promote health. The actual work done, to grow the embry in utero, and mostly without intervention later in life too, is done by the biology of the organism itself using its genetic instructions. The growth of a human or other animal is a self-driven growth process in which the growing thing is self instructed by its own DNA, and to continue growing it only needs a normal hospitable pregnancy and nutrition before and after birth.
The entire causality of a human being, focusing on this process, at conception onward, is DNA, and work of the first cell. This example, is a very fantastic story exhibiting full causal determinism, in all that a human being becomes physically. The conjunction of all the subjects of this book claims further of course, that this subject here in this chapter, of the caused growth of a human animal, joins together with all the other subjects about the causality of nature, to the full causality of all of human and animal life, fully predetermined. This includes even the operations of the mind, in decision making and thinking, although that subject, of the causality of the nervous system, will be handled in another chapter. Here, we cover a related subject to this: that your brain, and its traits are fully predetermined, by your DNA. If you had an identical twin, its brain would be the same brain as yours, with differences that are only minor, and attributable, to small environmental developmental differences in growth, and of what is taught to the nervous system.
The opponent of causal determinism would have a struggle to argue regarding what of this natural arrangement is not naturally caused or predetermined. Perhaps it is among the most compelling arguments of human predetermination because it is already agreed, that the instructions of the human itself, are encoded and transmitted in advance of growth, and that all growth must come after, following the strict rules of the DNA. There is agreement in biology, that the form of the person, animal, plant, and other organisms, is due to the programming of nature. That there was a time, when this was disputed, seems pathetic and absurd, and more horrible, is that it is disputed now! By proponents of the concept of “free will” that I not myself use. It is clear, that DNA forms the entire you that you are, apart from what is learned from experience which is still causal predecided on the outside, a subject discussed plenty in other chapters, and that being so formed, one’s mind operates as it does not freely. You are not free to be another person, thinking as they do, formed as their genetic instructions formed them. You are not free to think and be a horse, an absurd thing to say, but that is what the effect of genetic instructions are. It composes the bio robot, with natural plans, resulting in the automata that people are.
Even those who think they have arguments in favor of a kind of separation of parts of the human mind itself from predetermination, such that it is not causally predetermined too, are now in a quandry in which all that exists of their person has been proven demonstrably to pre-exist, and now only some small miniscule portion remains, that is not predetermed also. Proponents of this view, would have to explain, why others would not simply see their view as silly desire, that they want it to be true that they are not predetermined, and that this seems to be the case, given that the quantity of complex matter that comprises all animal lives, and human lives, are shown already to be predetermined, and what remains, as a ratio to what has been agreed to be predetermined, is really nearly nothing. The ratio of mass of interest, of the mental portion that is thought to be predetermined, compared with what is in the animal, excluding all from outside, which is everything feeding experience causally, amounts to a fraction of nothing, equal to zero. Computationally, the decimal would include so many zero places, before a digit present, that it would seem almost infinite digits, and there is no computer that would reveal that there is anything numerically that is that quantity; our only way to see that there is such a quantity, is to know that we do think as animals, and that being thinkign things, there are brains and small amounts of brain tissue contributing to experience. Compellingly though, 99.9999 with unending nines is what is predetermined, and we cannot say where the nines end, where there is something that is not. This is very compelling, and should create pressure in a person, to think they perhaps have a delusive desire, to have a nonsensical non-predetermination. They want it is clear, but numerically they are horribly amiss it appears.
Now let us attend to the brain breifly, however. Is that where people think non-predetermination exists? Within the same argument though, we have that genetics includes the code as to the entire brain formation, and that we see in utero, that from a zygote onwards, a fetus develops, with a head that grows, into a baby with increasing size head, and then finally a baby is born with a head filled with a brain, that has as its organization, what it must be for a living surviving animal, and that what distinguishes this brain from others, very definitely are human characteristics, such that we know, whoever it is, it will be a human computer like thing, and we know this to be predetermined without question. From this it can be seen the argument that a person is not predetermined is just false only. Furthermore, we do have to explain how from just knowing it will be a human, we know also, that it will be specific people. I don’t want to yet admit there are specific people however. I grant it as true, but I want to proceed along another argument which makes this individuality less compellingly, in a way that is immediately seen to be true. What time and age do the babies arrive in, and what clothese do they wear while they perform acts of the time? Everything of the plays of their lives is of the times of their lives, such that, later in the future, we look back on history, and see people who are not really that individual, and look more like a theme forced on them from outside, and indeed, this is what learning is. Learning forces from outside into an animal what the world around it is; and culturally what a humans behavior is, what a human will look like, and know, and very importantly what it will know, is from the time and place. Humans from 0 B.C. have nothing at all of the modern learnings that are clearly not arising until later. This means their brains simply cannot have the information within that later will exist in people las new information emerges, and people after that will only at that time have that strata of information. Finally we see there is the accretional strata of information that human are inside, and buried with in a way, like the strata of earth that other animals in paleontological times find themselves in. Who a person is, is really silly in a way, very much characterized by their informational strata. Also, when humans die and are burried, they will have a theme of appearance, if they could be humorously fossilized with their clothes on and their possessions around, so that they really do not seem very individual on their own choosing. Instead they did not have a choice and fit the themes of the period.
From this there is less room to see any human as an individual. It is not denied animals have their uniquenesses, but it is less than some would want. What is the domain of personal non-predetermination one has in this context, being decided in body and brain by DNA, then entirely by outside conditions of earth. There is only really, the decisive powers created by the DNA arising in a mind that interacts as it does with the environment it happens to have. This produces different people; different DNA code, means different computers. Different computers means different individuals. Finally, we have the beautiful and elegant proof of identical twins, which are really the same hardware, from the same code, thinking alike extremely. Why are these individuals not more different? Why is not one identical twin, as different as you are from everyone else, compared to the twin? Their DNA made this person’s brain exactly the same as their identical twin’s and your DNA just differs more from their’s and from everyone else’s because of different family lineages. If we compare you with genetic similars, similar mental propensities and behaviors are shown to be likely and they do exist.
The existence of identical twins, I will proclaim actually, more than others would want to proclaim, simply proves humans as predetermined code. It proves it and no other argument is every needed; it is only the mentally feeble and needy that think it unfinished at this point. It is helpful that identical twins exist for our study of psychology, because powerfully, it proves many things irrefutably. Strangely identical twin studies have been thought to be used briefly for useful insights into various subjects, and in my education in psychology, the subject came up repeatedly, but again each time only briefly, for insights into each subject it touched upon. It’s absolute decisiveness is omitted; and I would say, it is just uncomfortable to people to consider further, because of their weaknesses. I from here on actively plan to use twin studies to abuse the subject in a way, as it needs to be abused, to repeatedly show that it applies in all places it applies as absolutely as it does! Which is why it sounds like abuse! It really does absolutely apply in some cases definitively and in a fact-totalitarian way. I cannot even now say all the ways it applies. It just has to be remembered and used even more than one wants to use it!
Consider the subject of equality, that I discuss in Abandoning Equality. Twin studies show absolutely there is no equality whatsoever, even in identical twins, except near perfect equality is almost achieved in identical twins, and no place else. Meaning people are really incredibly unequal and as we move from the comparison of identical twins to other cases, with larger separations in lineages, we have greater and greater inequalities, until we are comparing differing animal branches. To claim an African woman and Asian man are equal is to claim they are identical twins at the zygote stage and no other time, even removing spatial differences in utero from consideration! Men and women can never be identical twins, and so are never at any time in nature anywhere close to equal, like identical twins are. Fraternal twins, male and female, between the sexes, give us example of the closest equality between a male and a female, but they will quickly be shown to be incredibly different. How different are the sexes then, by comparison to what is possible, for members of the same sex? Well, members of the same sex can be identical twins.
Two people identically generated from code acting the same way show definitively there is only predetermination. It is beautiful we have such an example as this to support the argument. It should have been easy without it, simpmly looking at the uncontrolled self-growth of animals on their own from their own internal code and mechanisms of growth, which their brains don’t know about. Their brains don’t know about it, so cannot be freely controlling the growth! More than this though, for those who disagree because they have some strong want in the absurd, we have identical twins, and with that, there is no room for disagreement any longer, and what remains in the classroom of civilization, being presented such arguments, is only fools, unintelligent people, stubborn traditionalists, and people with problems who disagree. The facts are really totalitarian here, and one must simply acknowledge the factitude of genetic predetermination.
We could conclude this discussion here, and I will say, I think the argument of the book is largely completed again, by a single section. However, I think a couple things can be said to further this argument to make it more obvious. We have all these other arguments in this book, about how life and nature proceed in a causal and predetermined way all around us, and in our other experiences, apart from what is discussed here about growth in biology and genetic code. All that is helpful about all of nature apart from this subject and is helpful for the overall argument. But let us think about, if we are actually from code predetermined to be an animal that computes with a nervous system in a certain way, then do we need any other argument of this text? I think the answer is definitely “No”. All that we are even concerned about in wondering about whether or not all is predetermined, at least in the context of dispute as to mental individual power of decision, where people sometimes say “free will”, is whether or not really our brains do have such capacity, and whether or not what we are and who we become and what we do is under a non-predetermined influence. Identical twin studies definitively and alone answer “No” to this. This section of genetic code determining what the human brain will do encompasses personality and decision making, and how it computes going forward, with the computer it has, given circumstances it has, and what it is forced to learn in its time and place. This section alone is sufficient to close the topic of predetermination where people are interested, and if we wanted to use this example, to argue that the rest of nature is predetermined too, without looking closely, we’d have something compelling immediately. Determinism is about the all-pervasiveness of sequence of events and of causality roughly as peole imagine it as happening in one direction in time. As we said, the genetic instructions of a person exist in advance in order to support total causal construction of a person, and as was also said, it is self-growing, without support from outside. While self-growing, the growing being cannot actually influence its own main robotics and biological form, and this is most obvious where decision making and behavioral training has not and cannot yet happen, when one is a small child and when one is a baby. Even the one, confused by the ability to make decisions, into thinking there is some form of ultimate mental freedom, must admit, that until some stage in childhood, no decision making around self-generation really seems existing. It is obvious there is no point in which it is unlocked, and really the ability to decide is expanded upon later. For now, we focus on the baby, and early child, that simply grew under the influence of its DNA instructions and internal self-growth, which doesn’t care about what its created brain thinks. It makes the brain as it ignores it in maturity. To convince that this continues all one’s life, consider further, for now, that puberty is the same. Mindset that results is not of one’s choosing. All the growth is not of any self-programming, like you plug in your laptop and design your you and your future. Your self influence is much lesss than that and is not able to decide its own brain and main constitution. All that is predecided by existing code. ## Usability And Benefits of Business, Organizational, Military and Moral Processes
Processes have perhaps in history received too little attention at the individual level while receiving considerably more attention at the organizational level, often times not to the benefit of the people. Here we will focus on the relationship of processes at the individual level to determinism, using the example provided by organizations and militaries and their processes, and other kinds of processes, showing that individuals can only behave according to processes and that there isn’t a way to refute that they aren’t necessary and causally pre-determining.
The reason for choosing this as a subject is of course to further the thesis of the text, that human life and all life is predetermined, while also giving some information about how a thinker such as myself would arrive at such a conclusion and why it is compelling. Some may find it offensive to claim that a viewpoint is an irrefutable one; however, there are times in which it is apparet, and to me it is very apparent in this conversation. The argument here relies on a methodology that is very simple for showing that something is irrefutable. Firstly, it shows that all humans rely on process, not only individually, but collectively, and cannot every stop using process, even if they wanted to; it also argues, that humans already believe this to be true at the organizational level, and that those who have had control over society, have known this, assume it also, used it to their benefit, and that this is evident all over society in how human behavior in aggregates works, showing that power and all people together have adopted it; thirdly, that process as a physico-mathematical conception applies to all activity that occurs in a sequence for all life forms, and that it arguably extends into inanimate living. That all have adopted it and used it, that it is powerful, and that science mustic include it to describe all behavioral phenomena, is enough to make it irrefutable. Finally, saying that something is irrefutable in my mind is closer to saying, “you already believe this too much”, and that really, the persuasion is more about helping someone’s mind see itself where it thinks at other times and places, to apply it more holistically, than to change the mind entirely. A person cannot reasonably refute this idea because what they would use to refute it is also not available. They can’t appeal to people, organizations, authority of power, or mathematics or science. Instead to use it implies it is true.
Similar statements to this could be made in other sections, and this argument could have been presented in the introduction, where this section itself is only one arguement among others working together to make determinism more compelling to people, who really do already believe it already sometimes and in some ways. The entire argument of the book I believe is irrefutable, and this section contributes to that irrefutability, but for now, I will focus on the present discussion, of the meaningfulness and importance of human processes, as it relates to life, behavior, and physical predetermination.
What is a process? A process can be defined more rigorously and abstractly in mathematics than I will be able to do right now, and I’m not sure if process has a complete and exhaustive definition regarding all it concerns in the sciences at present. Here, we do not need such rigor, however, because we have powerful ways to explain it using diverse areas of life we are familiar with each providing a pragmatic style of rigorous thinking. Process involves sequential behavior ultimately. Sequential cause-effect activity of any entity is undergoing some process. A moving planet in space, like earth, is according to this undergoing a very basic process which is very rudicmentary, of a sequentially eventing body exhibiting motion along what we think of as a line. Here I’m more interested in animal and human processes, so we will simply move on to people in motion. A person in motion is also in a process that is human that is sometimes in a straight line, but for a human it involves a biological process underlying it, which provides the energy required and bodily organ system and arrantements which convert the energy to kinetic motion. This is process, but oftentimes we omit thinking about this, because it is less interesting to us, and instead of thinking about the biological and physical processes of movement, we turn our attention to other processes, that are actually easier to understand and more simmple, involving goal oriented behavior and decision making, in which we have regular choices. We can say now, we want to walk down the street to go to a convenience store. We have a learned process for this. It involves walking down the road perhaps with a shopping bag, if we’ve trained ourselve by that process, and while walking, we avoid obstacles, robotically according to a human process learned in youth. Animals have similar processes learned. Senses detect objects in the way, and we go around those objects. We have social processes which allow us to know to provide space to other people, and to show the right social signals indicating some acknowledgement and provisioning of safe and comfortable space. Lefts and rights are part of the movement which is part of the simple procedure of map traversal to get to a destination. Many processes come together to make this total process but the process itself is a sequence of activities which begin with simple sequences to more complex sequences that include decisions of a nervous system or organization.
Resume.
Desirability of Predeterminations
It is easy to make a case for the need to switch to a viewpoint of predetermination, because without the viewpoint, moral and religious positions in life turn out to be false. Part of the resistance to taking the Determinist’s perspective is that it is thought to clash with various traditionalisms and religious and moral viewpoints, and while it is correct that this is true, it is correct also that the these viewpoints are falsified. Since falsified, it isn’t really optional to eventually take the determinists perspective, because it is factual and involves more true ideas about what the Earth and life are really like. Why would one want to persist with moral and legal rules, and religious ideas, that are determined to be false! An understanding of predetermination provides the starting point for fixing ethics and morality, and viewpoints about the level of human freedom, and related laws, so that they are correct now. People, complaining of incorrectness of rules, and nonsensical moral, religious, and governmental ideas, can switch over to ideas that are more fact based and more correct than those existing previously. Morality, being about what to do with one’s behavior, and how to act generally, can only be better understood, once predetermination is considered factual.
In the chapter covering responsibilty, we discussed this partly, showing that responsibility cannot be completely one’s own, if one is living a predetermined life. This is obvious if we consider, that a person cannot be blamed, for the body and brain they have fundamentally, as based on their genetics. One cannot be blamed for their unchangeable properties. Some people, who commit crimes, do so, because they have genetic defects, or are struggling with low intelligence and traits that involve less ability. Likewise, people like myself, cannot take full responsibility, in the form of credit, for everything done well, because I have genetics that resulted in a brain that was able to do most things well. Not only this, I am propelled forwards with interest and motivation to do things that are harder and more difficult and to find solutions to things naturlly, such that solution finding is part of who I am. Like a natural athlete feels they must continue to do athletic feats to feel like they are being who they are. Less responsibilty for these outcomes are existing because people who are endowed well simply will do well and largely cannot stop.
Predetermination takes into account one’s history to explain why one is who one is, and does what one does. One is caused by the past. Being caused by the past, one is not fully repsonible for what one does.
Making sense of responsibility and continuing to use the term does not turn out to be the best way forward in the long term, for correcting moral, legal, and governmental rules, among others. The concept has to be replaced completely. However, it is understood conceptual replacement cannot be immediate, and since it cannot be immediate, adjustment to the concepts are beneficial. “Responsbility” can be understood as an instrumental and useful concept, used to correct behavior, and to identify where possible change points exist. For example, in order to solve particular types of crim, we have to identify the locuses of change, and one such locus, is to identify that a person, whatever their history, has the causes which require alteration, if possible, with education and behavioral correction. Assigning responsiblity, is about being effective abou tmaking changes in people who were really more causal in situations requiring future change. Responsiblity also needs to be correctly allocated if it is to be distributed amongst people and things in siituations. Things can have responsibiiity in a sense in this system, since things like automonmous vehicles may crash due to their programming, and then downstream there may be responsibiltiy in the company where changes can happen for updating programming. Oftentimes, we are aware, that it is unrealistic to control all events, and so companies doing the programming, may not be allocated too much blame and responsiblity, but instrumentally, are epected to make corrections.
Punishment is another area requiring definite change using the idea of predetermination. If it appears someone did something accidental, and it was predetermined to happen as it did, it is extremely nonsensical to excessively punish the person. Rather one is more interested in fixing sictuations and ensuring that less of such events happen in the future, and that would involve making corrections to situations to people and situations where accurately the corrections will be effective.
Here I am not writing about the specifics of the changes to be made as a result of determinism, since that is the point of the entire work in the Book and Journal. The entire work is about correcting ethics and morality and what is needed is an overhaul and replacement of large parts of what exists. The goal is that humans have a new and improved moral perspective. The new perspective, assumes predetermination to be true, and so this work, Constraint and Determinism, is required, for first convering that predetermination is real, to create a foundation for discussion of the rest of the subject. People don’t at present believe in predetermination, and apart from a small quantity of other books, almost nothing is said about predetermination in the public. Being a determinist myself, I have not met any others. This book was originally conceived to be a persuasive piece directed towards people I know as the audience and others who are similar to them, which is really mostly everyone. Later it became a required work, to ensure clarity existed for readers, to understand that the rest of the work, entirely assumes determinism is true.
For myself, the beneifts of determinism has been extensive life clarity, particularly life clarity about how to self alter in a reasonable way, over a long period of time. Determinism, since it assumes that life is predetermined, and caused, and that people are greatly constrained, is interested in knowing the extent of the constraint, to have realistic and not unrealistic expecations about how humans can grow. The non-determinist perspective, thinking people have unlimited power of decision and motivation, think that they can suddenly self alter, making huge changes from many huge decisions, advancing rapidly and not slowly. Sometimes people do communicate, that they believe themselves to be devloping at a rate, and that they have to take “small steps”, and grow reasonably. In education too, slow progress is expected. However, “freedom of the will” is thereby limited. People who talk about “freedom of the will” are extremely confused, thinking they have vast decision powers at any moment. Well if they have such powers at any moment, then they have it at all moments. This would mean they could have extraordinary and inhuman advancement “If they only wanted to.” No one has such advancement. Instead, this is to be understood in terms of human shortcomings and constraints to know just how much one can change in a period of time, to grow to some desired level of excellence later. I think old people in retrospect, would often argue, that they do not feel there was that much growth. In many ways there “was and is growth” and then a high point or plateau is reached, then there is aging. Development of mind continues but is slow. There is no inhuman growth, and the human type creates the limit of what is possible. Nothing a human does appears superhuman, and appears merely excellent for human, when done well. For what one does well, usually there are others doing that, so differentiation is hard, indicating also, advancemetn is expected to be regularish advancement. The greatest of a sport, are not that much faster than people who are good at hte sport arguably, considering it from the perspective of knowing nothing at all and being another animal, to being a human doing the sport. A human who is good at say, soccer or basketball, is really phenomenal compared to all else that exists, and isn’t very different from the very best. Measurably and quantifiably. A squirrel that is especially athletic is not particularly more athletic than a regular squirrel, when compared to all else that exists. We just see both as squirrels doing feats that only squirrels can do! This is due to constraints. No human has any kind of freedom that allows for perfect decision making unto superhuman development. Instead is is a predetermined species of human development, where humans show few differences from each other, taking a zoological perspective. Yet within one’s own constraints, including constriants of will (think of procrastination, covered in my book Procrastination), constraints of thinking, decision, and so on, one can advance as a human can advance. People simply do not have any non-deterministic will that can be used for perpectual growth. Here then we have another argument for determinism and not free-willism, which is that free-will would imply an incorrect and nonsensical human growth perspective. This would impact morality, as people would be unreasonably expected to advance in ways they cannot.
Determinism allows one to be realistic about one’s own growth, but also to understand with better detail why, and self-assign praise and blame more correctly. If history was not the cause of one’s future, assuming history contains everything prior, including the state of the Earth and of one’s physiology, then one would have to more fully allocate blame to oneself in an unreasonable way. The reality is there is almost nothing in one’s own life for which one is blameworthy. This is because the vast contents of history, including all situation and physiology, includes one’s entire constitution and life context. This is discussed effectively in the other essays, in other words, and it is clear that one’s self-praise and blame can only be allocated partly and in a smaller measure than people typically self apply it. Understanding precisely how one’s life is caused largely not by oneself, it is possible to see more clearly how little control one has over one’s prospects, and correctly see one’s own value and the value of others more clearly.
The deterministic viewpoint makes it clear that the way that one has arrived at one’s current life situation and any other life situation from earlier causes. Relying on earlier causes, is what makes it possible, to see that one is a descendant of earlier non-human animal ancestors, and that one has arisen from early Earth and its origin and causal developmetns. This allows one to correctly ascertain why one exists. To the know why one exists, one simply looks backwards to see how it happened that one was born, and the details of this causality provide accurate and true information. Thus if I explain that the reasons why I exist are because of the causes that resulted in me, which are roughly known by scientists, then I am conveying true information I have, that is increasing in clarity. It is increasingly confirmed, and information we have now is much better than what was had when people did not know that they descended from earlier animals, but instead thought there was a more recent supernatural origin. This later view, is only false, while the earlier view, is true and increasing in quality of storyline.We can tell the story of animal life on Earth more easily as the story of the Earth itself. Some people, thinking that “why” is supposed to involve thinking at an origin, like the cause is from a mind, are incorrectly using their questioning to lead to an answer they want which is that a mind created everything. This thinking is part of the lineage of the religious traditions that falsely claim there is a known supernatural cause, without detailed information. Science instead provides true and detailed information. The religous “why” is a leading question expecting an answer that a mind related answer can be the only explanation. If I am looking for a reason why a particular tree exists, it wouldn’t make sense to imagine a supernatural person with a mind making a blueprint. Instead, it is better to know it came from a particular planted seed on a certain date, that the tree has a particular lineage and type, and the relationship between that tree and other trees in genetic code is known, and that all fit into an ancestry of tree life confirmably extending back into time, as shown by a fossil record. That explains why a tree exists. People wanting to know more about why something exists than the history covers, are only concerned if they arehonest, to know more details than they have. I would like to know more myself, because the information is incomplete. Like what is the earlier history of life on Earth that is apparently lost to us. I want the increased story of history that is called pre-history. I want to be able to see earlier humans in action and doing things. I would like to see earlier non-human ancestors to see more about why our traits perpetuated as they did, and changed as they did. I’d like to see the actual origin of the Earth myself before it was identifiably the continents and water we see today, and I’d like to know the origins of the universe, and the origins of those origins. This information increasingly explains why we are here. If there is some pre-existing life that played a role, in group or alone, once or many times as different groups, then I’d want to know about that too. This is how one honestly questions about why we are here and it is an entirely deterministic perspective. We expect the earlier story, to explain the latter story, because it caused the later story.
As a determinist, one becomes comfortable not having a false story. If I have to talk about my history into the past, the best I can do is tell facts I know, about my life’s timeline, and the timeline of the Earth up until that begins This would include family backgrouns as far as I know and can confirm. My story about why I exist, happens to have departed from every religion. My story is a true story very definitely, whereas tribalist stories, and religious stories, included myth and fictions, easily recognizable as such. The religious to make sense of their world, still have to rely on science and actual written history to try to get things right. And isn’t that interesting? They feel they want my kind of history that is true only. They need it because the other is weak and lying. There is only one true deterministic story of Earth and that is the one to go by and not any other story provided from the other religions.
It provides a clear power position to the Atheist, or naturalist, as I prefer to call it, that cannot be overcome. To know more, they have to know more about what I care to know. Not vice versa. Moreover, they have to explain to themselves, why they pass over the other religions for serious consideration, or why they select only one, or why they violently kill and genocide others. In my view, it is much easier, there is only one deterministic history and any tribal story is false, and each and every religion does have a false view as to the history of the earth. The deterministic view is needed by all these various types of lying humans, bu the determinist does not need the stories fabricated by these other groups of people.
With determinism, one does not need religious fictions. One is free to use a moral system founded on naturalism. In the current day, morality and religion are too false, and must be rejected and gradually overhauled. The purpose of the Book and Journal is to supply a system of ethics which is a superior ethic. This superior ethic is naturalistic in foundation and relies on causal determinism, like science does, and it relies on scientific styles of thinking. It also relies on good quality philosophical thinking that blends with science. Using sound logic, mathematics, good information from psychology, and other disciplines. This allows for a much better ethical-moral system that is founded only on truth and a true history and not on any lies. Religions rely on lies, and are afraid of determinism, while they pretend to be scientific on the sideof their normal activities.
Determinism allows students to be resistant to cults. Since a student will keep wanting true information and true morality, objectively, they will be resistant to false promises of religious groups and will be less likely to adopt the opinions of singular leaders who want something from them. Children who are believers in science, are smarter and stronger than religious children of history, who believed in religous explanation over scientific explanation. Children who are determinists would undertand that the way to come to explain things is not to look into supernaturalisms, but to look at physical causes. Consistently, they will identify what is factual and true and be better at really explaining things as compared to children who will say “the causes were related to ghosts or dieties”.
Causal determinism, would benefit society as a whole, by making it possible, to have a truth based public. Determinism is in alignment with education, to continue to spread true and not false information, about human psychology. Areas in which humans have not been able to develop, like on sexual education, would improve because people would finally be more willling to identify themselves as more than “part time animals”. Humans are entirely animal, and instead of teaching sexuality as if one cannot speak and one is embarassed, one can teach everything about it in detail, like a medical determinist would. Everyone is predetermined to want and desire to behave animalistic sexually. Religionists are often in denial, thinking they are instead, ethereal entities, pure partly, and impure during sex time. Determinism would not explain sex as something that is impure, as something that defiles, or something that surfaces that one is bad. Christianity has treated sexuality as an in-built badness. Science and medical practice does not take such a view, when the practitioners are not also confusedly religious also. As determinist in viewpoint largely, they would understand that the cause is that humans happen to be animals, and they exhibit the same kinds of behaviors animals do, and in the same way that we don’t think badly about animals having sex, we see that we are the same. Sexuality is an area in which human society is crippled and this causes its inability to progress in diverse ways. To progress a determinist perspective needs to be adopted. This perspective is in alignment with public education in many nations, because in those countries, science is supposed to be about explaining things in terms of cause and effect, knowingly accepting that earlier causes do in a predetermined way have the effects.
Determinism enhances self-help not only regarding sexuality for removing any embarrassments, but by providing a perspective in which any cause related to one’s behavior is better understood and expected to be involved in planning about what to do next. No ultimate flexibility of decision making is considered true, and instead the constraints are sought, for realistic self-improvement. If I’m an addict, and have some behavior I’m not wanting to have, I have no false interactions with dieties to try to self assist. Instead I look into what actually deterministically has has results. Most people, being unaware of psychology, are not very knowledgeable about what it takes specifically to self improve when confronted with many sorts of personal habit issues. People even argue that “people do not change”. That is a very pessimistic viewpoint concerning the use of traditional or religious information for self-improvement. It says no one ever has improved! This is a common view, but I am of the opinion that typically, habits are hard to alter all at once, and hard to alter in great degree one habit at a time. Changes in habit are very slow. Regressions happen. The way to arrive at how to make changes is not supernaturalism, but detailed information about what works and what doesn’t work causally, assuming not “total flexibility of choice”, but “difficulties and constraints in choice”. This is a definitive disproof that free-will could ever exist, to be deterministically stuck in habit and addiction, extending to causes that go back into one’s history and situation. Regarding personal change, one can be realistic, understand limitations, and be self-forgiving if that’s needed, and better udnerstand others facing the same things. Habit is actually also related to every human behavior. It’s not a topic that is about isolated behaviors, it is about all behaviores. Just ask yourself how much changes from day to day in your life and being. Small changes happen, which mean everything really remained unchanged. Any action taken in the unchange, including any motion, is habit. Habit is about all behavior. Determinism would aid in understanding all behavior.
Determinism helps for understanding the behavior of family, friends, and everyone else encnountered. This is because expectations become more realistic, and why someone is the way they are, is known for certain to be due to earlier causes. Most causes that exist for who one happens to be is not in the persons control, and it is very important that, their constraints of improvement and thinking, are also caused by things like their genetics. The personality a person has is largely an outcome of genetics and early upbringing. We don’t typically blame people for their genetics and upbringing, which is outside their control. Oddly, humans quickly change postions, to actively blame others, pretending, again, they have ultimate flexibility of decision, and that it is always in their power, to be someone different, and act differently, than they really do. Determinists hold the view that they really are fixed in position having a particular mood, history, and personality, and thinking ability, and thinking stratgy, by the time a decision happens. The decisions are rule governed, and characteristic of the decider. Being characteristic of the decider, there is a pattern that cannot be escaped. As a determinist myself, I cannot think that people around me are as blameworthy as others would think for certain actions that would be considered unwanted. In my married life, friendships, and with my family, I’ve been very tolerant, without their knowing or understanding why, not really being determinists too, and without their knowing how to use such information. Instead, they are traditional morally, not being able to well argue moral positions they have. My view as to their behavior, was that they were caused, were stuck who they were largely, and that they had highly constrained decision making ability and ability to change. When there was unwanted behavior, I knew I couldn’t expect too much more really, and if the behavior continued, I knew eventually I’d have to disconnect rather than change them. Changing them wasn’t often an objective, and when there was a desire for change, change was not happening. If there was someone who was persisting in a behavior that was not wanted I simply disconnected from them rather than engaging in blame or any kind of retribution.
Determinism is much more understanding about actual diversities that exist understanding including those relating to sex and gender, but also including any other difference people have. Determinists would be more inclusive in disposition thinking that causality is fully explanatory for the differences people have, and would be more antagonistic to perspectives that are more discriminatory. Discriminatory practices are typically less understanding about causalities in human life, and want to allocate blame to people for having differences, rather than understanding that the differences are not in their control. People who are less intelligent, for example, are actively discriminated against, fundamentally, for employement or social benefits, because they are thought to be less deserving of a good life, and deserving of income from employment. A determinist would be much more understanding that people are coming into the world permanently with less prospects for a good life, and that it is actually necessary to ensure their well being. Parents learn about this, when contrary to their wishes, their children are less intelligent or have disabilities. At that time, a more determinist slant enters into their analysis of their situation, finally knowing that the children they would have, is not within their control. They really could have disabled children, children who are unattractive to others, or those who are not as smart. The needs to provide care for them, do not disappear, because the children were less than they would want. They understand they were not in control of the outcome, and that their history of not thinkng about parental planning effectively caused along with sexual desire the children they had. That this is the case it is true for all other people, that the children they have, is outside their control. It follows that societally, we would expect, in aggregate, a large number of people, harder to employee and harder to take care of. The less intelligent people, look like everyone else and make up the majority, as compared with the intelligent. The less intelligent is the group of people that all expect low paying jobs to exist for, without knowing exactly how to ensure the jobs exist. A determinist would be more understanding that better plans need to exist for better treatment of a very large portion of the population.
A spread of the Determinist perspective would help to encourage society to adopt more science based conclusions in general. Scientifically minded people have to combat religious and traditional perspectives that are luddite, and no longer have credibility. Large scale desirable system changes are needed, to eventually incorporate, the scientific perspective, into governmental structure and change. In education science was taught, but it was not taught what influence science truly had. Science is insufficiently and transparently incorprated into government process, and government process itself was not formed from a scientific foundation. Government antedates science and scientific practice. No governmental comparison and testing has occured, to decide any particular governmental form. Instead, slow and discontinuous but sometimes steady progress, involving warefare, resulted in change. Governmental form selection, is done oftentimes at nation origination-time, after warfare was conducted and many were killed. That’s not science. Furthermore the governmental forms chosen, were those deterministically thought of, being those that could be thought of, having existed from antiquity to provide examples. In my view, Democracy means very little. It is one kind of government from thousands of viable mathematically guided governmental forms. It was simply used from before, as being a “better one”, by comparison with almost no alternatives. Science would consider many alternatives, history almost none. It’s very uncreative, but has a huge following! The followers were not determinists in perspective in the formation of governments, but were supernaturalists typically. One of the larger reasons for this text, is for the overhaul of morality. Morality does actually relate to government and law. If I am saying that morality needs overhaul, government needs overhaul. Morality needs to be more scientific, and so does government. I don’t think this text would provide the clear avenue for making the changes to government. Instead, the goal of this text, is to support the remaining Book and Journal’s efforts, to change morality to a new system, that has learned from new system communicated. Determinism won’t make government scientific, but it makes it more possible that it can become scientific.
The fundamental offering that determinism provides is a new and honest viewpoint regarding morality, which would have implications for all human behavior. This change is not a change that is not required for advancement, and by not having it, advancement is blocked in crucial ways. Humanity has not universally acknowledged the cause of itself is fully cause based, which means superstition is rampant, and is used in arguments that result in harms to people. Determinism is superstition eliminating, meaning no supersitions would survive. A very large list of ideas that humans consider to be true are decided to be false, like the existence of aliens as they have been imagined, any dieties, ghosts, spirits, afterlives, hells and heavens, supernatural animals, and so on. The list is quite large, and these ideas persist in people’s minds, even though they are educated. In this way, much of humanity is very poorly educated. Everything must have a physical causality according the determinism, and scientific evidence is required to build out a true story. It is a very different world, if everyone knows and understands, spirits, dieties, afterlives, and aliens are not existing! It would mean people are better at identifying truths, and the population will be able to live more true existences that are more meaningful. When beliefs are falsified with supernaturalisms, minds are attending to things that do not exist and do not have meaning. One wants ones mind to be about existing things and truths and not false things. The more people’s thinking is filled with true thinking the better quality one’s life will be.
Another major offering, which is related to mroality in general, is the ability to identify truths in the stases discussed earlier. Most of life is slow and in stasis with few changes. As stated in prior paragraphs, human change is slow too, and one can expect one to be similar to how one is today, tomorrow and in the near future. Stability of persona over time is what enables one to have a knowable identity. The stabilities existing in self and other, and in the environment, implies that everything is in stasis. There are changes happening, but represented as a fraction to unchange, they are none really. Fractionally few to be more accurate, but by mass, almost everything is in stasis. This is helpful to us. It enables one to quickly detect true facts as easily as one can detect stases. Some people are fearful of falsity, and having a life with too many lies, and few truths to speak of, but if everything is in stasis one has a huge amount of truth available. These truths were existing before, are current, and exist in the future, so one has truths that extend far into the past and far into the future. Science and math are rewarding for proving seemingly “eternal truths”, which we can regard as being mostly unchanging or sometimes wholly unchanging stases. Falsities are few and relate to human motions. These human motions concern thought, speech, and recordings, including nonexistences. They involve lies, confusions, and superstitions. Eliminating these from our own thinking, and focusing on the stases, which are everything (except the fractionally few changes, which are strictly stases too, but seem less stable, so are fractionally negligible), we have almost only true things to think of. Determinism provides the opportunity to have almost only true things to think about, and a pathway for more elimination of falsity. One can identify that falsity is existing in human communications primarily, and simply separate from that thinking. Doing this one has a much more honest and truthful life, and one’s brain is a better representation of reality. One would be a more moral person, and if the public adopted it they would be more moral too.
Analyzing The Causality Of Your Own Behavior For Moral Purposes
One might wonder how one would analyze and uhnderstand one’s own behavior and the behavior of others without believing they are caused.Some religious viewpoints, seem to be resistant to scientific advancements, which have repeatedly indicated, that causal understanding is eventually found, for areas in which it is expected to be analyzable and observable. Human behavior is observable by people, and when they do try to understand each other, they do use causal analysis, although some religious people appear to be somewhat unreflective about the ramifications of this. If all people are really using and relying on causal analysis to understand the behavior and lives of self and others, it is confirmed as useful de-facto, before any scientific advancement. Scientific advancement is not strictly necessary, to show that this causal analysis for understanding is needed. It is already irrefutable really. But when we put atop this the history of science and scientific advancement, we know for certain that causal analysis is really required for knowledge of self and other, and there are not really instances in which we think that we will not be able to use the same kind of reasoning, expecting causal forces to explain our behavior.
Psychology, Sociology, Economics, and the Biological Sciences, among other disciplines, are those that pursue this subject matter and have repeatedly confirmed it. The diversity of individuals within the disciplines though, have not uniformly committed to cuasal determinism as their worldviews, because causal determinism, as stated in numerous places in this book, conflicts with religious and national indoctrinations, and these are some of the same areas of conflict, in which science cannot well influence politics. Education is seeking to create greater uniformity of opinion on this matter indirectly and often unreflectively, in its commitment to secular and naturalistic teaching, with religious conversation redirected to happen elsewhere. The real objective is to increase scientific understanding, and to decrease open religiosity and superstition. Education is eventually supposed to result in people more committed to causal explanation. This makes sense because those who understand cuasal explanation are the same as people with real knowledge, and the goal of education is knowledge.
Self-knowlege and self improvement are the areas in which one is extending one’s education of self and attempting to self-train on new learnings. These learnings often have a moral component, and as one improves, one does feel one has gained knowledge about oneself, useful in the form of advice to others. You’ll feel as you self-educate, some ability to mentor, and would be and have been more aware of where people are lacking. Self education comes with awareness of where people do not have the same education, which creates a perceived social value, in which one can be a teacher sometimes. The process was a typical human or animal learning process of causal discovery, and self adjustment, of self-education, with the result of real knowledge, when causal explanation has been achieved. Self knowledge when one gains it seems to consistently be related to understanding the causal ingredients that come into explaining situations and influencing outcomes. Personal power is increased in the ability to help self, help others, and simply have a more excellent life with better experiences and results.
Moral excellences, ability to teach, and advancement as a person, is related to learning of the various natural predeterminations that exist and the relationships of these predeterminations to behavior. Wisdom, when it is actually real, is supposed to be this too. While somewhat annoying to hear about now, wisdom is supposed to be good quality knowlege, that is founded on learning of deterministic causality, so it can be transmitted in the form of traditions and old writings. New wisdom is the same as old wisdom, and when one is learning, one is aware of the feeling of becoming more wise, even when one is learning as a kid. Children and young people are really becoming more wise as they learn and increase their powers of behavior in the world.
In one’s life, in addition to trying to self improve, one experiences the need and desire sometimes to explain current situations. If one has adversity, or something happens that is unexpected and negative, due to the behavior of someone else, or because of something medical, whatever it is, the process of understanding it, is cuasal analysis about what predetermined it. Here we have the old idea that historical investigation over time starts to create clarity about one’s life, where one has realizations about what has happened before that one did not notice oftentimes. As one grows, family life history, and personal history, surfaces patterns that seem to explain one’s own life in unexpected and unanticipated ways, connecting the events to form a more complete story. The story of a person’s life utilizes puzzlepieces with many missing. As missing puzzlepieces are introduced, the picture becomes more clear. And it also becomes clear, that there really is a causally complete picture, that one has not finished seeing, that explains everything that has happened. The complete explanation of everything that has happened would be consistent with the complete analysis of the causal predetermination of life.
When one has understood one’s own history, one is understanding that earlier things cause later things. There is a feeling of increasing understanding of why things had to be the way they are and whey they were not optional. History really generated the future. Why things happened and why people made decision become more clearly and obviously predetermined. A person had a particular personality which has the results it has, and your personality has the rersults yours has. Understanding personalities, events, and surrounding historical happpenings in one’s life finally increases the vividness of the train of one’s existence. It becomes a meaningful story in that one’s life really is not a chaos, and is not simply happening by random chance and unexplicable happenings; instead it is fully explicable and even predetermined, and this is evident as the clarity of the history is increased while being ascertained.
When people are not being successful in analyzing their own behavior and life causally we can expect their thinking to trend closer to the absence of this happening in religious tribalism, when medical self-knowledge was not possible, knowledge of neuroscience and psychology was not possible, knowledge of human history and human anthropology was not existing. This is an important question, to consider, what life is like in the absence of an understanding of predetermination and the need of causal explanations. Today we still live in this world! But it has been partly overhauled in our education system’s more global attempt to teach people scientific causality universally. But today, we still have people who rely on methods of explanation, like the use of ghosts, ghostly visitations, demons, demonic possession, of magical animals and creatures, of supernatural influence in life, from dieties or dead relatives, and of miracles. Miracles very specifically explain the inexplicable for people. Myths, folklore, and the stories shared by tribespeople are characteristic of ignorance, and of not using causal analysis to find answers, and of not admitting they haven’t done it when they use the explanations they think they have. For example, a religious person has not done any causal analysis in finding the beginning of the universe, yet religion’s keep inserting false information in the place of real information, to claim this is something they know about. This behavior, of the religious people of the popular religions, traces back to tribal ignorance, and serves as its continuation.
Read, edit, complete, conclude.
Can’t Find Or Confirm Randomness, And Non-Utilities
Some argue, that randomness is somehow supportive in conveying that humans have a flexibility in decision making that goes beyond the apparent constraints that appear to define what a human happens to be. That despite a human animal, being what it is, there is special freedom to be allocated to the species, and not other species typically, and that this relates to randomness.
Before progressing, I think it is worth considreing, that we do not anticipate any randomness to affect our calendar. While the calendar is hard to compute at very high precision, we are expecting and anticipating, that for many thousands and millions of years, the earth’s rotation around the sun, and the earth’s daily rotation, will have the same or very similar metrical values. Since the year will be the same each year, we are expecting the earth to have the same path around the sun. That’s a long journey, for a very large object, expected to be precisely the same, without an expectation of random influence. Likewise, the length of days is expected to remain the same, so we do not expect that randomness will influence our utilization of our clocks, or that animals will have to change their internal clocks established by bioevelotion to calibrate to adjust for changes due to randomnesses. For the entire earth, we are anticipating profound huge similarities to high exactitude without anticipating random influences to change our expectations.
Why do some, when they consider their own lives, think themselves somehow distinct from this kind of predictability, given it appplies to the whole. We really do expect, like this geostases, even astrostases, in which stellar objects are extremely predictable in total, such that they can be treated as unchanging. Why do some think, that if we transition from astronomy, where we think there is mathematical predictability and predetermination, to human life, there will suddenly be flexibilities of decision unlocked, by being influenced by randomnesses? It may be safe to assume, that if all of the larger objects are predetermined, the smaller ones within them are too, being the composition of the larger objects.
In our other chapter on hunting, it was covered why animals are expected to be highly predictable. At present, people do not and have not taken issue with this, and even think they can assume that animals do not have absolute decision flexbility. In arguments of humans advocating that humans have special powers of decision, they have used statements such as “this is what separates us from animals”. The worldview of people using such popular expressions was from a perspective of religiosity in which humans are totally distinct from animals, and are not animals. I have another book in progress, called “Humans Are Animals”, that discusses how it is a current issue, and not a historical one, that people refuse their own animality, even thought teachings of how humans fit in with nature is extensively taught in biology. It seems most of the population, if not a very large majority, still holds opinions, if sometimes ambivalent ones, that humans are not animals. The religious history of creating a separation between humans and animals has created an assumption that animals, not being humans, do not have the special properties of ultimately flexibile decision making, and instead that they are even dumb automata, existing as unfeeling machines. This is a cause of the world’s industrialized eating of animals without any remorse or willingness to change. They have made arguments, to support their behavior, that animals are simply not people and have no feelings, even though it is obvious to see in witnessing screaming, shrieking, uncomfortable or tormented animals. I mention all of this not to call for a change to that, although I personally am a vegetarian and vegan because I dislike this insdusty. The reason for bringing it up here is to make it clear that it is certain that people are and have been willing to think of animals as being highly predictable machine like thoughtless entities.
The hunting chapter goes on to discuss just how easy they are to predict, given knowledge of their behavior in their environment, and how it appears as others assume, that they exist as bio robots, with relatively inflexible decision making. The inflexibility is related to the species type they are, and obviously one species behaves like its species does, and not like how another species behaves. Animals, being these highly determinate things, are clearly predetermined, since their behavior always presents as it has, and the predetermination is used by hunters to know where they have to be later, like when they use traps on them, and hunt them from their shelters.
Since we see that animals are predetermined, highly causal animals, and we already do think that plants and inanimate materials are predtermined, what else remains of the earth for randomness to be invovled so as to unlock the special powers of choice agility? Are humans the one’s who have these, while everything else does not? Notice that in discussion of the subject of “free will”, this property is not attributed to anything but humans who are non-dysfunctional. This means that it has not been attributed to anything else on earth and anything else in the known solar system or universe. It has only been speculatively attributed or hypothesized of aliens that are unknown at a very great distance. Other then entities not know to exist only imagined, only humans have been thought to have this property.
It is clear though and difinitive that humans were just more complex animals, and have evolved only recently to appear decorated and adorned to seem less animal like. The tribal groups of aboriginals, are definitively more animal in appearance because they are animals, and as we move backwards in time, people seem more and more animal like, until they are jsut as tribal as present day aboriginals. Going further though, humans before tribal humans were obviously blended with other animals. Humans have had things they have created to create a guise of distinctness from ecology, separating them from other animals, but they were naked creatures like the others all along, just with more clothing. Being animals for certain, how does one justify attributing to humans only, what they did not attribute to animals, the power of ultimate “free will”? One cannot is the answer! One can only attribute to humans, less constraint around decision making, due to the complexity of their behavior relating to their brain evolutions. The commplexity is not great as many surmise either, because as was discussed in the hunting section, humans are easily hunted, and really have simplistic lives. Human creations, cities, technolgoies and so on, simply confuse the picture, and what is being discussed is not the guise of commplexity, but what people as animals are doing, and every person really exhibits basic behavior. Humans are easily managed for the most part, and their behavior is well understood. Humans, compared to many other species, are less constrained in how they make decisions though, and by comparison with the other animals, do largely exhibit more complex behavior. When compared with whales and smart oceanic animals, the complexity seems to be less dramatically different. They are more comparable. Likewise, human complexity of thought is more comparable to the primate thinking.
From these considerations, it does not appear that twe have any place to magically insert a benefit of randomness into nature, such that some few animals will have an ultimately unconstrained flexibility of decision making. At all levels there is no such randomness to add, and if we did add it to humans somehow, to attain some magical abilties, we can’t justify not attributing it to other animals.
In my estimation, the credulity of the argument from randomness in the discussion of constraint and predetermination is very low, requires very little serious consideration, and isn’t a good hypothesis to be an impmortant cause of human quality decision making. In position above, instead of admitting randomness is a useful for understanding this subject, I have denied it is applicable.
Despite being inapplicable in my view, I will continue along to discuss it somewhat more seriously as it relates to the nervous system, while retaining an awareness, that I think “randomness unlocks special decision making” to be an implausible hypothesis. Instead of assuming randomness would contribute so much to only one animal’s thinking, I will instead ask “What would randomness contribute to a nervous system, that would improve flexibility of decision making, and to what extent?” Also I would ask “Does it seem more obvious that nervous system size and complexity of tissue is more explanatory regarding increased complexity of decision making?” The second question seems more fruitful, because the second question is more scientific and more about the entire brain, instead of one supposed property of randomness. We look at the nervous sytem, how it functions in all the ways it does, and see how there is a multicausal scaling of nervous system that makes for more complex life, and not only would it explain why life of humans is more complex, but it would explain decision making abilities of other animals, with smaller or less complex nervous systems. This is preferred to wondering how randomness alone would influence nervous system function. Let’s go down the path of considering, however, how randomness would or could open up decision making flexibilty in the nervous system.
What is the randomness of interest, and where does it go into the humans-only nervous system?
Initially, I would like to discuss the second question, before moving on to the first, and direct the discussion to those who would defend ultimate decision flexibility on the basis of randomness, to ask them, where does it go into the human system? Not why, or what it is, but first, where would we find it. If someone supposes there to be some special organ in the nervous system not yet discovered, before going on to get the specific details of the organ, I might want some idea as to where to find it, and where it would be situated within the total system of the brain. For those who are somewhat familiar with conversations about this subject that have existed in conversations that are antagonistic to determinism, it would be clear that those opposing the deterministic worldview advancing randomness as a counterargument never state where randomness “goes” in the system. This would serve to indicate that they do not actually have knowledge that there is such randomness involved, but rather that they have contrived a view that they think will save their position, to continue to believe that there is an unconstrained freedom that exists in human decision making, that doesn’t exist in any other animal or entity on earth.
If someone were to continue to inquire about randomness as they would inquire about a “special organ” in the brain, they would find they can inquire in many different ways first, indirectly, like a detective, to see if a person is lying about the existence of the organ, before going directly to try to analyze the organ itself. For those who advance unlimited freedom of choice on the basis of randomness, I would argue like a detective first that they are lying that there is such a thing, asking many different questions surrounding the subject, that would allow indirectly to know the proponent is lying. A good additional question to ask, in addition to “where would I find it” is “Introspectively, how do you experience it and confirm it.”
We can also ask, why do not other people talkabout having this experience? It seems that people only raise randomness as a possibility, is when they want to counter determinism, with a lie as to having a plausible hyptothesis. Having nothing actual to argue against the determinstic viewpoint, they advance any argument they can that they’ve heard, including the one that randomness is the cause of ultimate freedom and flexibility of decision making. Since they advance this only at the time that they are challenged by determinism, they use an argument involving something no one experiences. This is the explanation as to why people are not simply claimming that they feel randomnesses that empower their decisiveness, or that underlies their decisiveness. Instead, the routine thinking about decision making, is that there are methods and resons which are repeatedly used making decision making a familiar process, that as a rule, is explained as a non-random deliberate approach to selection. Furthermore, if it is not commonly experienced, it is certianly not introspectively a strong feeling. If not a strong feeling, is it an infrequent or weak feelilng, the one that is relevant to supporting enhanced powers of decision making, internally in the brain. The answer to this is clear too, that there is no such experience, and not that there is a little of it.
Going question by question about randomness in the brain, it turns out they are using a lie as to the tenability of a hypothesis of randomness, to support their view. They do not really even believe that randomness is supportive, not knowing where it goes in the brain, how it is experienced introspectively, or why others don’t seem to already know that randomness has some feeling in experience. The detective examining would conclude that the person is even an obvious liar, and wouldn’t go forward to consider them a trustworthy person more generally, and certainly with regard to the convesation as to randomness as a cause of ultimate human freedom of decision.
Now, in addition to having a seemingly decisive position of thinking that if everything else is rule governed and predtermined at all scales, that humans would be like animals and would be included to, we have the view that a detective questioning an opponent of determinism would decide they are lying. Being a liar, they are worthless as to the subject. That may seem a strong claim, but if indeed they are lying about their belief that they have a plausible hypothesis, and it is really inapplicable, they even have negative value as to the conversation, being obstructionist agains the detectives work, of finding the truth. If it were an actual detective, the person may actually be found to be obstructing his work, just like police officers claim of peple who are blocking their ability to find truth. It is my view that “free willists” are really like negatively valued obstructionists to science and advancement of ethics.
What would be the reason to go further in considering randomness if advocates would seem liars and to fit humans in with nature, it seems obvious we have to say humans must be predetermined too. There is at least one reason to continue talking about it, but I believe it to be outside the scope of the discussion because it is really not useful as any premise leading to a counterclaim against determinism. It’s the question about whether or not randomness exists at all, has a mathematical foundation, or had any influence whatsoever anyplace in nature and experience, and whether or not it is law governed (which would likely contradict). I hold some views about this subject, but the consideration of this is separate from the consideration about whether or not randomness does support unlimited decision making, so I consider that subject elsewhere, in technical conversation, and not here, where it is not applicable. The conclusion of this essay, is that randomness simply isn’t anything useful for defending the viewppoint that human life is not deterministic.
Many arguing with the determinists viewpoint defending unlimited freedom of decision instead tend to admit that life has many regularities well explained by natural laws, but try to use randomness nevertheless to try to create doubt that freedom of the will therefore doesn’t exist, preserving their religiosity. Randomness is not used to propose the way in which it influences the nervous system and human thinking, but to get out of the conclusions that the regularities of nature really do indicate that humans cannot have the level of freedom of decision that was once thought to be had, and instead, constraints around human thinking more clearly define how people do and can think, and not any kind of unlimited freedom of decision. Randomness as used, is really an escape from unwanted conclusions thought to damage a traditional viewpoint on thinking freedom, and or religious views.
Since determinism is true, but much of morality and religion has a history in which people were unaware of it, much of it is false and has to be replaced. Religionists are aware that determinism does challenge their conclusions about morality and their religious ideas themselves, apart from any view on “freedom of the will”, but they are not willing to entertain that they are incorrect, and use “randomness” however they can to create questions and doubts which seem sufficient to make it possible to resume and continue their religiosity or personal viewpoint without having to make a change. They use it to quickly fight off an enemy without really taking it too seriously, or presenting a well-defined position about what randomness really does.
There are two ways I can see randomness fitting into a physical explanation about the function of the human mind, which are reasonable. Firstly, it could be true that there is at least a pseudorandomness or quasi-randomness existing in prevalent or nearly universal low-level phenomena such that the brain itself is influence by its input. This is like the idea that quantum indeterminacy provides a randomness that influences brain behavior. Whether true randomeness or not, the apparent randomness, may have some influence on the human system, influencing the outcomes of their thinking. And of course, the human brain, for its full explanation, does reguire a detailed explanaation of the lowest level physics which relates to brain composition. The story of brain composition isn’t finished until the physics is done and agreed upon. Notice this does not state that psudorandomness or randomness changes that human behavior is still predictable as it is, and that human thinking isn’t defined by the constraints it has, which make it clear that human thinking is what it happens to be, a discernable well-defined thing. This is something opponents of determinism do not counter, using explanations about how “randomness” is supposed to fit into the functioning of the nervous system, such that special unlimited decision making results. Even if they cannot do this, it does still happen to be true, that a full explanation of the nervous sytem does have to account for how physics causes system function. The medical viewpoint is that the system can be explained adequately without the involvement of a physicist because the system components operating arising in the actual thinking and decision making is present, and with what is already observable biologically, rules of human thinking can be explained. This is related to the psychopharmacological view point too, and views about nervous system dysfunction, and brain damage. The brain is quickly altered determinisitcaly by medications and drugs, which is why an anaesthesiologist is trusted by customers of all religions, patients, to get surgery. They trust the doctors this much, to let them drug them, to alter their brain functioning predictably, which does control how their nervous sytem functions reliably, and does change the patients thinking predictably. A physicist is not at all required and would be unwanted to input in the context of the medical professions actual practice, but is more relevant, as the medical doctor become more a physicist and a physicist becomes more a medical doctor, to more totally and thoroughly, explain everything, including what is irrelevant to coming to a conclusion about the determinism of human thinking.
The second way in which pseudo-randomness, quasi-randomness or randomness could influence human thinking is if experiential and sensory input from the environment included them and they influenced the nervous system in a non-deterministic way. This is the view that much that is happening in the world is chaotic and random, and this chaotic randomness is entering the nervous system via human sensory organs, that this causes humans then to have unlimited freedom of choice. If it is true that quantum indeterminacy includes true randomness, pseudo randomness or quasi-randomness, then a full explanation of external happenings, everywhere in the world, where sensory systems can be exposed, would be needed as well to have a full understanding of nervous function. The total functioning of the brain is constitutional and contextual, it involves its own composition, and the composition of the rest of the world. While I do not hold the view that this is entirely relevant to seeing easily and understanding the world is so patterned and organized to be clearly entirely causally predetermined, I think this does fit in for a more total explanation of how everythign really does work, to fully understand brain and nature. A person can have powerful and conclusive reasons for taking a viewpoint such as the deterministic one, without knowing entirely all of the details of physics and nature. No human is functioning at any time in their life in any way without that information, and yet they easily function. They function easily because there is much that is true and obvious and patterned in their world, that they can learn about, and behave regarding, repetitively. Their functioning actually depends on determinism. Humans will function, and the deterministic view point can be proven, both without knowing entirely, the full details of the lowest level physics.
An understanding of randomness is just needed to understand nature all the way. Religionists and traditional advocates against determinism are not typically advancing “how the universe works using randomness” to show that human thinking has more flexible decision making, but it is still needed to know the ways any kind of apparent randomness or actual randomness works in the universe.
Since it is well understood the human brain is orderly as is human behavior, and the world is too, given all the other chapters in this volume, one might wonder “If there is randomness, then what exactly is it doing, that would justify our considering it regarding thought flexibility.”. Randomness, psuedorandomness, and quasi-randomness, seem to have properties that are not suited to any claim that they create less constrained thinking. These are not properties that make a sensical contribution to human thinking, if those properties are preserved, making decision making itself have properties of randomness instead of orderliness. Rationality, instead, is a much more orderly way of thinking, and highly flexible decision making existing in an intelligent person seems to indicate patterns of “good quality decision making”, which are not judged too be “random”. If the properties of randomness were existing in deicions, the thinker would appear more erratic, more like a child or teenager, acting in a less obviously organized way. However, we are aware that they are still not acting randomly, but are acting in a patterned way, it just looks less predictable to us. The level of uncertainty and the increased erraticness of their behavior creates a decreased ability to predict what they are going to do at times, but randomness is not “somewhat random looking” but totally what it is “random”. Are there levels of randomness? This could be worth exploring, but for our conversation, it must be noticed that for anything that is thought to be random, a pattern is not found. Scientists are seeking to find causes of things and patterns for explanation, and if patterns are found, those areas in which the patterns exist, are thought to be not random. What is expected of random seems to really be “perfect randomness”, and that is how it is defined to be, a phenomena not exhibiting a pattern that involves total unpredictability of effect. This kind of randomness would not explain the behavior of children or adolescents. For it to be exhibited, it has to be what it is, entirely unpredictable events, such that patterns aren’t seen, but this is not characteristic of human behavior. Instead we see patterns with erratic behavior and uncertainty about what they will do which looks more inexplicable sometimes, but not that its random, and certainly not totally random. It seems a contradictioin to try to think about what truly random thinking or behavior would be exactly. It appears to be more of a contradiction, or a discussion of nonsense, because for human behavior to have an appearance, as something human, it can’t be random, and even if we look more precisely at decision making, “random decision” doesn’t appear to have any example. Not only is it not easy to imagine, I think it is impossible because it is really nonsense.
Randomness as a preserved thing existing in human decision and shown in decision-making behavior seems nonsensical, contrary to what can be imagined, and not suited to what decision making is. Randomness does not appear to be a property of decision making.
Does it make sense to go into how randomess could influence the system at a low physical level? I think not, because we have already seen its properties are nonsensical for increasing freedom of decision making. If its properties are preserved from low physics to appear as properties of decision making itself, it doesn’t create the freedom non-determinists would be looking for.
Since the properties of randomness appear nonsensical as properties of decision making too, when thinking about how randomness may exist in low level physics, our expectaiton is still that, its results are not random. Randomness, pseudorandomness, or quasi-randomness, could be properties of physics in some way, inputting into the total system, such that the results are still entirely causal in a patterned way, meaning there is a way to input randomness such that the outputs are not random. This would be like admitting true randomness exists in quantum indeterminacy, but the way the indeterminacy works is not to preserve that property, but to vanish into orderliness. This is actually how science is functioning, assuming that there is a location in which something appearing to be random is happening, but expecting causal determinacy to exist nevertheless, as this randomness is exhibited in the system in one place but not in the others.
Where do we look for randomness, and where not, might better be thought of like “where do we see the color green, and where do we see the color pink?” We see them in different places, or maybe sometimes near each other, but they remain separate. Likewise, randomness, to be randomness is not pattern, and not being pattern is separable, so we expect to see randomnesses in one place and not others. When we look at the behavior of people, we are not seeing randomness, and that may because we are not looking where it is! In that case again, randomness doesn’t seem to fit into the explanation of human thinking and decision making.
What does randomness do when I discover it? If it were discovered, like it is thought to be discovered in quantum indeterminacy, I think it is more like “That’s where it is!” versus “Now it is everywhere”, even if it means it is microscopically pervasive. When I look to find a person, I do not look into atoms, but instead, I walk down the street, and look around for a bit, until one appears, in a car or doing a jog. For decision making, it appears just as silly: I just look at humans deciding, not at subatomic particles. Even if they are everywehre. It’s inappropriate to state a human’s brain has the trait of the electron’s behavior. Instead, the human behaves as it does, and not like an electron. This is another way in which the introduction of randomness to explain that human behavior is not deterministic is nonsensicle and not really supportive.
I think we can rid of the other claim as well, that as chaotic input from nature, it makes human behavior more free. That is plainly nonsensical. We cannot function in nature without the orderliness we see, and our understanding of its orderliness increases, with more knowledge, and with more intelligence. Explanations become present everywhere, and our learning is useful later. The properties of randomness are not exhibited in the world around us. Instead it is contradictory. To look for randomness, like looking for pink, we don’t look everywhere. Instead we look for isolated pink things, and for what might appear to be truly random. We wouldn’t do a randomness hunt for everything, which is like an admission that randomness is almost nowhere, if it is anywhere. Even in the domain of physics, it does not appear entirely conclusive, that randomnes is presenting and not pseudorandomness. In computer science, it is already understood, that random number generators, while being really unpredictable, are not random. They are only “pseudo random”. They also can input into systems that are orderly everywhere, except for at that input (but the input is still not truly random). It is possible that quantum indeterminacy is more like this, than true randomness, but even if true randomness, it may input in the system in the same way, which is why we look for it where it is, in the subatomic places, and not everywehre. However, it does not appear to me definite, that randomness exists anywhere, since what is being exhibited still may be pseudorandomness, similar to that created by a computer. Notice finding that something appears random doesn’t explain its randomness yet.
If nature around us was filled with randomness, entered our nervous systems, and resulted in decison making thinking interaction, I think it is clear it could not result in unconstrained choice.
If pseudorandomness or quasirandomness were used in the place of randomness in the above argumetns, they would still be true. “What looks like randomness but isn’t” is still obviously not what decision making looks like. Interestingly, even if we claim there is no randomness, but what looks like it is random, it still follows that “what looks like that” is where it is, and not where it is not. One can advance the argument that there is nothing confirmed to be random, but all that is known is that “it looks like it is”, and so is indistinguishable from pseudorandomness and quasirandomness, before more is confirmed.
Making the existence of randomness a discussion for someplace else, does not imply there is an escapist attempt to avoid implications. Making it a conversation for physics is more like saying “it isn’t needed here at all since it is superfluous”. Randomness as something that can bolster an argument for unconstrained totally free decision making is absurd, even if the subject is important actually elsewhere. That is what happens when someone introduces an irrelevance into a discussion. That irrelevance may be worth discussing, but only someplace else, where it is relevant, and not where it is not.
It also appears that whever there is pseudorandomness, true randomness would not alter behavior. For example, suppose we introduced a truly random number generator in computing. It would work just like a normal pseudorandom number generator. Programs using pseudorandomly generated numbers would simply take random numeric inputs, and then use those. One might wonder, if pseudorandom components can be used to replace truly random ones. In this case, that would be true! Since the truly random one already just substituted for the pseudorandom one, the pseudorandom one and use the random one. Would this be true for quantum indeterminacy? It appears it may also be true, that whatever randomness is seen can simply be output by a component that is pseudorandom. On this basis, it is obvious that natural randomness must be hypothesized to be nonrandom as well. In fact, since all things that appear to be random are shown to be pseudorandom, it apears there might be few or no cases of randomness, even if pervasive.
Where would randomness create decisions? Well, we can see that randomness would not create decision making on its own, like in plants, or in the crust of the earth, or in the sun. Randomness, does not create decisions in animals. Likewise randomness does not create choice in humans. This is because decision making is not having the properties of randomness and is arising from nervous tissue. Both humans and animals have the tissues and plants do not. This is what causes the decision making as we experience it an not anything from “randomness”. Notice we did not attribute greater decision making abilities to animals of any kind, from the simplest to the most complex non-humans, because they too, have the randomness of nature composing their brains. The use of the randomness argument would have to apply to animals too, making them have unlimited decision making? So the property of randomness would not provide the scaling of decision making abilities in the animals, the causes are due to scaling of nervous system. In conclusion, my view is that we have sufficient information to think randomness does not fit into the discussion of whether or not determinism is true regarding human decisions. We also appear to have sufficient information, to conclude that humans, being part of Earth, are subject to its predictability at its scale in our scale. It also appears that the orderliness in nature, and among the plants and animals, is requisite among people too, and that people cannot be an anomalous expemtion from orderliness; it applies to them too. Since the common view really is that everyone but humans are orderly and predictable, it is nonsensical to suggest, that humans would have a trait of randomness, which would make possible entirely free decision making, while animals do not have the trait. We do not see randomly behaving plants either, although we would not expect them to exhibit decision making, but if the randomness exists at a physical level, and exist in plants too, we’d have to explain why that did not result in any kind of decison making ability; instead, it appears that is due entirely to nervous system, and we expect to find deciders where nervous systems exist, apart from anything about randomness. “Randomness for free decision making” would be an interactionist hypothesis about how physical randomness interacts with nervous systems, including animal nervous systems, and it would have to be admitted, that finding randomness, has not seemed to be related to finding deciders, and so it would have to be explained, how randomness and its intereaction produces in a nervous system more flexible decision making. This has been shown to be false above, in that randomness cannot be distinguished from pseudorandomness, that randomness seems to exist “where we would look for that and not everyplace” including decision making, and that randomness does not contribute its properties to decision making, meaning decisions have not become random. Even if the properties of randomness were contributed to decision making, decison making itself that is free is not random, clearly is not identified as such by anyone, and if it were identified as such, would not be free, but random. Randomness appears contradictory and irrelevant to highly flexible decision making.
For these reaons it seems conclusive and definitive to me, that “randomness” cannot be used as an argument against predetermination and constraint of decision making and human thinking and behavior. Rather, it is used as lie. Those using randomness as an argument are trying to preserve a traditional viewpoint, a religious or cultural one, so that they can feel they can continue thinking as they do, unpersuaded. They use it as a false defense, and do not seriously consider their hypothesis, such that they provide any new theory regarding how randomness contributes to flexible thinking, instead they use it as a way to fend off determinists to persist in a “free willist” obstinacy of viewpoint.
Human, Animal, And Elemental Shortcomings
The constraints of any object whatsoever that exists, indicates what supposed “freedoms” it might have, and looking at these constraints, we can clearly demarcate, what is possible for those objects, and what is impossible. Very large objects in our solar system, like Jupiter, Saturn, our Moon, Mars, the Sun, all show to us the same appearance, and are unable to suddenly, or for very long periods of time, assume many other appearances, and mostly must look stuck as they are, boring unchanging sphereical objects. They cannot escape their sphericities. Notice for much of the universe this applies too, since objects routinely appear circular, and not as any other geometric objects we see or make on Earth. The boringness and fixity of these objects should receive special attention, because it appears they are doing nearly nothing too, and make paths in space that are uninterestingly repetitive. They follow curves and from some angles, follow plain elliptical paths. Even as complexity is added, and more about these paths are understood, they do not appear in any way free to divert from their directions.
Fascinatingly, they follow very narrow paths we imagine, like they are traveling around on the thinnest cables or strings, or minimal mathematically “linear” pathways, which means they are constrained to almost no path, compared with possible space to travel, like they have no freedom at all. And we do think of them as fully predetermined in their movements.
These constraints apply to the Earth even with everything still on it. Earth follows a tiny path, the tiniest compared to what other paths exist in space, the path is largely known in advance, and it cannot divert course, no matter what any human chooses to do. It is unconcerned that there are humans or any animals, and they are part of the Earth’s mass, helping to predetermine it on its course.
used this example because it shows at the largest level constraints obviously indicate level of freedom, and it contains everything that exists. The methodical approach, of looking at constraints, to see what things cannot do, or be, to know their freedoms, appears to apply to the largest things in the universe to, and it is obvious, it applies to the smallest things too. Using science to determine the mathematical rules of atoms and subatomic particls and so on, indicate what the atoms and particls can and can’t do. The “laws of nature” are what some have said they arrived at, finding mathematical formulae that allow for nearly perfect prediction of behavior of small things, especially in areas like chemistry. Atoms have identities, and identical twins, which all can behave only in the ways they can, given the “laws of nature” which are “laws of constraints” one might also say, or just “constraints of deterministic movement and behavior.” We could change the phrase “laws of nature” which few seem to be trying to change, to use other words. We can really just say a law is a constraint. We could also say it is a predetermination. This even indicates how constraint and determinism are near synonyms, which might not be expected at first, and even I didn’t expect it until writing it here now, although I knew of the relationship, obviously choosing the two words for my title. This even helps to show why “freedom” is not the fundamental concept of interest. We could also say that these natural laws are freedoms of the atoms and particles, but doesn’t that mean we are using freedom to talk about what it can only do! Its’ freedom is to go that way if it is flying, or combine with a nearby chemical, if it is of one type, and the other another. We specify rules for what they can do, but it is very minimallly what it can do, as if it can do nothing else we can ever think of. Compared to all that happens, an atom can do nothing. It can only fulfill its tiny role. It doesn’t have any freedom really in a meaningful way relating it to how humans often confound the word, to include all the “decisions” it could make. We are saying it is predetermined and is fully constrained to act like a chemical according to fixed rules.
All of the largest objects, and the smallest objects simply follow the rules. We do really expect them to be predetermined. As covered in the chapter on technology, we expect sophisticated commplex things with many smaller parts that use electronics and understanding of chemistry and physics, to all at once, ,together, due to the rules of the smaller thihngs, working together in the larger things, behave as we expect. The technology does what we predetermine it to do, knowing and using the rules of nature in our own plans and blueprints for manufacture. I will not reexplain all that here, since the chapter on this subject discusses it further, and the same subject appears in other chapters. The point I want to convey is that it is well substantiated that large complex objects are expected to behave predictably according to constraints, and now we have something between the largest and smallest objects for consideration. We are aiming at seeing how the method of constraints is helpful for lal things, and we started with the largest, went to the smallest, and now we need to see more concerning everything in between, and everythign between are the complex objects of nature, including what humans make.
t does not appear abstractly, in math or in language, on in programming, that there will be any object whatsoever, that such a consideration of constraints would not apply to. Thus this way of speaking, in our method of finding constraints, whether we are using natural language, programming, logic and mathematics, art, or other representation, will not fail to apply. It appears there is nothing that exists for which this will not apply.
It is obvious too it applies to animals. We covered this well in the chapter on hunting, showing that animal behavior is constrained to their type of behavior exhibited by their species. We easily hunt and capture them, because they keep acting the same way. They have to act in ways caused by their genetics too, which is covered in our chapter in genetics. Instead of going through all the ways animals are constrained, lets remember, they simpmly are those animals and not everything else. They are stuck as those things. Like a gold atom is a gold atom, and a computer phone is a computer phone, a rabbit is genetically a rabit, and can only act like rabbits act. They cannot suddenly be a solar system, a galaxy, a building, a lion, or a blue whale. It is important to say this, because they cannot every be anything other than the small thing they are which is narrrowly defined. A rabbit is very small, and is like min bio robot, that keeps showing up with the same appearance. All its parts are routinely and always the same parts. If someone made a rabbit robot, and made lots of copies, the situation would be similar to real life robo rabbits.
When we own a technology, we seem to feel they are really constrained. We notice they simpmly cannot do a lot of different things that they obviously cannot do, and sometimes we think of ways the products could be better. If we owned rabbit robots, we would probably find them boring like basic carpet cleaning bots. Being more complex though, they wouldn’t be quite so boring, but clearly we would start to think maybe some other robot types would be fun and interesting instead of our rabbit bots.
The same is true for pets. Unfortunately owners discard pets. They get a pet, get bored with the pet, decide it doesn’t do enough or isn’t interesting enough, or is too much to care for, and will get rid of the pet, kill it, having it euthanized, and so on. As a vegetarian and vegan, this is detestable to me. Others would find it disgusting. But being simple predictable things, people care less about them like they are unliving robots of nature with no feelings. Historically and presently, people eat the animals, cage them without cares, and medically test them. While I find this saddening, these facts do help to support the point I’m making, and it appears, everyone is largely commplicit, and being complicit, would be forced eventually to admitting they treat them as simple objects.
So humans already think of rabbits largely as boring bio bots, that act predictably for hunting and farming and eating, and for predicatable process oriented use in animal testing.Rabbits are easy to manage, which is a reason for the choice, and they are even subject of the discussion about how “manageable” things become when domesticated, like rats. The manageability ans simplicity relate to their constraints of being what they are. They are rabbit bots, that have to act like rabbit bots from their genetic code, like robotic code, and their manufacturing plans (still genetic code), and because of rules related to their post-growth physical forms. So as a result of their genetics, they have a size, have fur, have mouths that can eat certain food types, have systems expecting water, and have bodies that enable fast running (and running at all), adn jumping and leaping. Overall rabbits though are easy to understand and people do get bored with them, and use them because they are manageable because they are predictable and constrainted as they are.
There is no animal that is not constrained like the rabbit, and each animal has a physicality that permits its specific behaviors and movements. Interestingly, simply knowing that an animal is something, relates to its being constrained to be the way it is. You could not identify any animal if it was not stuck being that kind of thing and is unable to be anything else. In a way, it is funny to think that all animals are just behaving as they have to, goofily as it relates to how they look. So Rhinos do silly hino things, and girrraffes do silly girraffe things. The are hilariously stuck doing their goofy things! Like if there is a funny kind of animal, it will not ever stop making the same jokes! You ucan occasionally visit that animal in anture or in the zoo, and they will still show the same fun predictable behaviors related to identifying that they even are what they are.
This information about animals is applicable to human animals as well: it is important that knowing what a person is includes knowledge of what their constraints happen to be. Knowing what a human is, includes knowing that they’ll be human and not everything else. Humans are clearly demarcated objects that are visibly of a type, with expected characteristics. Once we know that something is a human, we know there are clear behavioral constraints, and that they must act like a human whatever they do. If we wanted to consider what freedoms a person has, we would want to know about these constraints and predeterminations that relate to what a human species member is and does. A “free” human does what humans can only do, and not what is impossible to them. Their freedom is contained within the boundaries of what a human is and can be. I like to imagine this visually, simply thinking of any person, and knowing that they can only look, move, act, and be a person, like a dog can only look, act, and be a dog. Humans are stuck being human. They are constrained by what a human is in every way that they are and can be, and they are predetermined to remain human. We know in advance for any person that they will be people later, and not cars, cows, or buildings.
Human freedom is about what humans can do. It is obvious they can’t morph into other objects and animals and do what they do instead. While I enjoy running, and can achieve moderate speed, I am limited by what humans can do, and my free motion will never be that of a cheetah. My free motion is human free motion. A human’s motion is defined narrowly by the constraints of what a human is where it relates to motion, by the legs and arms and spine they have, their stuckness in being bipedal and not quadrapedal, and so on for all their actions and traits. There is nothing I can do that is not in the human biopod that I travel within and am.
There is another book I have in progress that discusses further the constraints that are a part of human existence, called Human Shortcomings. Humans are complex, and we are interested in more than just that we are constrained in to being humans in total, and are very concerned about expanding on specific abilities and freedoms we have. In that text I cover many different human shortcomings and how they relate to human self-development and morality. I mention this so the reader is aware that I know there are many specific freedoms and constraints to discuss, but for the purpose of this chapter, putting all of those constraints together is all that is needed for now, to convey that as a whole humans are compelled totally to be what they are with all those constraints coming together to define humanity.
The freedom that people have, as with objects and technologies, is better understood in terms of their total constraint. Taking myself as an example, I am free only to be a human doing things I can do. Furthermore, I cannot act in ways that are not really “who I am” as a specific and separate person, and I can only have my specific body and mind. My athleticism and thinking is limited due to this, and so is my decision making, which can only be made in “characterisitically me” kinds of ways. My personality and history and education, that I specifically have, constrain me to do what I can do. Thinking about it this way, it seems I am only able to do simple things that I can do, which is to be distinguish from waht is possible to other life forms and inanimate objects like atoms and planets. I am not permitted to scrunch myself to be a tiny atom, and I am unable to grow into a sphere that floats around like a human ball in space. While absurd, again it is important to mention these absurdities, so it is very clearly seen, that humans do very specific human type actions, that their actions relate to their appearance which is also stuck as it is, and that they can only have a certain size. Humans, in a way, move about and do things with a narrow scope that is so narrow, it really resembles the example above about a planet stuck on a path moving along, as if it does nothing by comparison with all else that can happen. Humans really do very little compared with all else that other things can do, and once one has seen clearly just how narrow human behavior is, and that it relates to their suckness being a human thing and not another animal, such that their freedom is exactly related to their causal constraints and predeterminations.
When people want to discuss whether or not humans are predetermined or not in philosophy, they typically want to talk about decision making flexibility, and how this flexibility arises from nervous system functioning. I think that is important, and it is true that the nervous system is clearly determining human bheavior in my estimation, but I don’t think this level of complexity is really needed, given the above simple considerations. Those who are interested in arguing that there is some absolute kind of freedom are already unable to counter arguments of the sort above without going into nervous sytem function, because it is so obviously true that for objects large, and small, and any composite objects having some complexity in between these, like humans, plants, and animals, they are really entirely understood to be defined by their types, that their type is understood by constraints, and that their ways of behaving and moving is narrowly describable by these constraints. These constraints go into the every detail making up a human being as a medical biological animal, meaning everywhere we loook we find more constraints that further define what an individual specimen is, which will definitely dictate the futre actions they will have.
There is a discipline of philsoophy called humanism, that has as part of its origin the recognition that humans are starkly and visibly easily separable from other things and easily defined, and that nothing they ever do is not human. They make as a philosophy a foundation for an ethic that humans should focus on what a human is in considering how to behave in further being what they are. Likewise, it seems straightforward that simply understanding that human is a member of a particular species is enough to understand they really are causally predetermined to act inflexibly as the thing they are. It has been considered that just examining the human object as a whole separate thing that must act human is adequate already to understand it is really predetermined to remain a human in all the smaller details too, and that one does not have to be too meticulous to recognize this as true.
Here the objective is not to be too meticulous, while recognizing that being very meticulous to understand total human causality is important. I do expect it to be possible to fully medically define a human all its constraints in the somewhat near future, but think that way already on consideration of the constraints of the species’s type.
Concluding, in this chapter, we covered the scale of objects as they exist in the nearby universe, including those at planetary and solar scale, and those at atomic and atomic particle scale. We also considered all object in between these scales, showing that everything in between, has constraints that are identifiable, and these constraints help us recognize what they are, and how they can behave, in a conception of freedom that relates to knowing what the objects really do, as constrasted with what they never do and cannot do. This method employed was seen to be an abstractly appicable approach usable for all objects of any kind, including inanimate objects, plants, animals, and humans as well. This implies we have resulted in a conceptual object oriented method of knowing the ways in which objects are causally predetermined and constrained to behave according to the rules of their behavior which is connected with identifying them as being what they are. For an object to be an object, it must be constrained, and the constraints reveal the boundary of what makes them separate objects. We fully expect and anticipate, that objects at all scales will behave in expected ways related to what they are. This means we already have an idea as to their predeterminations and causalities simply by thinking of them as being separately existing things, that are what they are. It appears this universally applicable approach is also applicable as expected to animals like dogs, cows, kanagroos that can hilariously do silly kangaroo things, and humans, which can only do human things. Humans appear to be discernably separate objects that we name and think of as such because they are predetermined to do human things. It seems to follow that on the whole we are really anticipating that humans are predetermined entities. While some will want to wait for more information before being persuaded, already humanists are persuaded, expecting the details to just further reveal, that those details show more about how humans and other things are predetermined. Finally the ingredients that make up humans and complex technologies, like atoms and particls at small scale, are subjects of the same conceptual object oriented method too, and we fully expect these objects to also be predetermined, and jointly to explain more fully the predetermination of complex objects we already expect to be predetermined too using the same method. At all levels we expect computers to be predtermined and we expect the same for humans too.
Understanding and Relacing The Concept Of Responsibility
One area in which philosophers have wondered as to the effects of the viewpoint of determinism is personal responsibility. Whether or not determinism if true clashes with responsibility has been an annoyingly repetitive and poorly discused subject within philosophy. It is simply true that the subject of determinism extremely damages traditional conceptions of moral and legal responsibility, found largely now to have been false, and the edifices of civilization which assume responsbility in the traditional sense to be true, have to be demolished and replaced. I do not know how this will happen, and how really it should occur in a way that does not result in human harm using realistic dismantling and development, but eventually it will have to happen. Human responsibility forever is not what it seems to be once the truth of determinism is known, and I had to personally self-alter extremely since learning its truth in my late teens and early twenties. Some ways of talking have to be abandoned, and new ways of talking, cannot be understood by others. To put it short, fixing responsibility results in an alien mindset using a new way of speaking, abandoning some concepts, using others instead, and making some thought approaches afresh. Teaching it to others requires time. So if one is alone like I was, one finds others will never know. That is a reason for this writing in fact. Morality changes forever with the insight that responsibility is not making sense in any culture once causal predeterminiation is understood. This means people are predetermined to be good. It means they are predetermined to be bad, and even evil. This entail forever it was incorrect to harm people who did not behave well; they were simply causally predetermined to go that pathway. our ideas about our own personal merits must change, since we have good brains, if we had good genetic code. We behave well, if we have brains that allow for that. I personally think very highly of myself, so one might be surprised to find that foundationally, I do not credit myself even with myself. My brain simply thinks as it has, developed as it has, due to my genetic growth, which resulted in the brain I have, that computes and interacts with the environment forced upon me. This really means I am not ultimately meritorious or responsible for good things I do, or that I can deserve anything in the way people traditionally think.
Some reading such information might think that the view of determinism is then damaging to civilization somehow, and maybe it is not something to be purusued, requiring changes to morality we don’t want. Some really argue this way. But what the effect of determinism is is to make sense of everything. Morality doesn’t remain ambiguous or optional or relative once one uses the truths of determinism to alter it, instead it is fixed. Morality fixed is a life fixed, since human rules then begin to make sense, and one is not living in ambiguity and untruth so much. That seems a large claim, and I’ll have to use the rest of this corpurs of work on morality, to make use of this books thesis about determinism, to apply it further. Here though, we will continue on this pathway, to a reasonable extent to argue further the truth of determinism itself, to talk about moral responsibility, and maybe a bit about “deservingness”.
Before determinism is accepted as true, in the future and now not now, history will be shown to be confused and perplexed and even lost, and this includes the present time, up until that day in the future.
While the reader has likely read other sections of this text discussing determination, and have some ideas about why responsibility would interfere with determinism, I will take some time here to explain why the idea of responsibility must be replaced, and why it will not simply remain as it is, once determinism has been accepted. Determinism, as has been explained a number of time, claims that humans develop and become who they are on the basis of physical causes and their history. Who they are in the beginning, middle, and end of their lives, is shaped and determined by an interplay of genetics and environmental circumstances. A person’s education, location of birth, place of residence, and so on come together, to determine who one is and how one will behave. One acts in a way expected by time and nation, and one thinks with a language one has been trained to use, and one’s mind, is the result of the brain that was generated during growth by genetics, and is altered to its actual state experienced by history. One is inside one’s genetics, inside one’s naturally generated body and brain, and one’s history. And of course, one is an Earthling, from this planet and galaxy, and really not free at all, to behave as if, not an earthling, and of some other place, with causes and situations entirely unexperienced and unknown.
Being so determined, one’s behavior is simply not in one’s own control to the extent that others imagine it to be. Already they admit this, in special circumtances, when they are forced to acknowledge parts of life they would rather ignore, like brain damage, and growth and development in dangrous or toxic circumstances. People who are born into poverty, into situations of great victimization, and with lesser mental endowment due to lower quality genetics, will be exculpated to some extent by those who are able to see that this has really formed both their situations and their inabilities to handle their situations. I will suggest, a subject which might seem unrelated to this, of war and killing during warfare. We find killing and murder to be reprehensible, but when considering history, we quickly absolve the people we are learning about, who were participants in the warfare, because we think they are part of circumstances, forces, and ways of thinking, that are not like our own. Likewise, if outside of warface, people lived in hard situations, and came from less money, resources, and education, we are more understanding of their behaviors, that we think to be of lower quality. What this tells is that for much of what humans experience, and mcuh human behavior, responsibility has been judged to be less about what the people do, and more about the situations and circumstances of determinism discussed, that generate the behaviors that we think are unwanted. So people in wars are murderers, and sometimes people in poor conditions are misbehaving, and committing crimes to earn money and survive. Since poverty and warfare has been a huge portion of human history, we have already decided, that for much of history, we are going to lessen the responsibility of the participants, or remove it, and place the responsibility on the earth itself nearly, in its creation of situations that these people unfortunately found themselves in. Considered this way, it is not easy to see also, seeing the size of the subject, to know it doesn’t stop at those boundaries, of war and poverty, and instead, all human situations including those in which people do good things, is also included, in what people are less able than they would like, to have full responsibility. People who live in richer nations, in periods without warfare, with good access to education and jobs, are able to have successes and live lives, that seem better, more moral, and more meritorious than the other lives, but the decisive factors really did involve preconditions and contemporaneous conditions generated, that simply create an overall situation more preferable to other situations.
Upon writing explanations as large as that about determinism and responsibility, I’m tempted to stop there, because really it is clear that everything is predetermined, all situations that people fall within were outside their own control, and so what they do is less of their own personal responsibility than it would seem to be based on what traditions teach. People feel this acutely too, when they reflect on their own history, and know, they could not have very different lives than they did have, and upon even more reflection, any other life than they did have. This really is adequate enough, showing the totality to be involved in the specifics of every situation, and the causes of all action, to show that responsibility is not making sense, as it has been transmitted to us.
However, people will not be convinved of this, soon after having this conversation, eventually having conflicts between people, in which one has to decide what to do next, and not having mental resources associated with this new ay of thinking, will immediately switch to what has been conveyed via tradition, and will begin thinking about who is responsible for what, and our feeling for how one knows how to decide this exactly. People being known to be fallable, and not really having a good method at doing this, end up in opposition, and need of defense or prosecution, and the work gets transferred to the legal system, where they think they have it under control and covered. Fundamentally though, the legal system has it entirely misunderstood, and it is not an understatement to say, that in the future, given the advancement of science, to come to a realization of determinism, and to more fully explain its meanings in diverse areas of life, the legal system will clash with it and will be found too old and in need of overhaul and replacement. This happens to be known already by legal professionals, given other ways in which the legal system is too old, where fundamental concepts are not really defensible any longer, but they do not yet have avenues for making the changes they want. Other changes will have to be made, once determinism is understood to be true.
I transitioned us to focus on the fact that people will have to rely on their earlier ways of thinking in resolving conflicts and finding ways to lay blame and determine responsibility. Here my objective is not to offer a complete suggestion for the final replacement of responsibility for some other concept or new variant which is consistent with determinism, but instead I want to show firstly that it does continue to need to be changed even though people will often feel they have to use the old term, and also to give some direction as to the way in general the situation is improved upoon and how society will benefit by making a change to responsibility using the concept of determinism. Additionally, I want to use the subject matter, and this chapter, to further the main thesis, that consiliently, there are convergent arguments, from too many areas of life, showing that determinism itself must be true, and to further that effort here, I want to show that we understand the world better when we see that responsibility was mistaken, and that the way it was mistaken seems obviously related to the history of life and complex causes of each person’s behavior, and taking this new perspective, we can see that there is no other way in which this subject will be advanced. That this would be the case, it must be true that determinism here also is the explanation for the advancement, it is based on the fact that it better explains ideas related to “responsibilities”, and because it explains it better than the current system, and there do not seem to be other candidates of explanation that are better, we have yet another argument in yet another chapter which simply points to the veracity of determinism, in which it seems the argument is complete, all life covering, and definitive for the subject on its own.
Resume.
Avoiding Discussing Regret And Desired Alterations To History By Redirecting Imagination To Future
An understanding of determinism is especially supportive for those who may face some regrets in life, and it is helpful to know about this subject long in advance of aging, so that one can take the mental steps necessary to pervasively self-alter. Extensive changes to how one thinks is necessary to combat regretful thinking using predetermination and it is better to know how while young, so much of one’s brain has been trained, rather than feeling a if training is too difficult later in life. The reason for the need of extensive self training is that one may think about one’s past and history in too many different ways for simply knowing about predetermination to be enough to correct the issue. Simply knowing about something means one has started on the pathway of self updating to use the information, and seldom is one finished at the start from learning a new fact.
Regret relates as one knows to thoughts that one could have done things differently than one did, or that things that happened to oneself would have been better to have never happened. People seem to regret how their lives turned out whether or not they were the causes of certain decisions, and may simply regret that they were who they are, had the parents and relatives they had, had the start that they had, or that they could not ever have traits and a life that would be possible for another person. Regrets are most often backwards looking, and the subject of regret easily brings to mind older people or the elderly, since at that stage in life, there are fewer changes that are possible or even no changes. Looking back on one’s history, nothing of the past could be changed, and if one only has a few months to live in a deteriorated condition in which one can do little and think little, it isn’t possible to add more to do that one would like to add. The expectation as one gets older that timee will run out before one can do things also makes it clear that there are impossiblities regarding what one can do in the future, and this may total to a life, with what has happened in the past, to something comparatively less socially.
That predetermination would be true should make it clear to anyone who learns about it that they are highly constrained in their existence such that their “free action” coincides and is the same as the imaginations they have and the actions they take. At an obvious level, one is better off if one is aware, that one is a human and not other things, and that as a human, lives in the contstraints that define what that animal is. This is discussed thoroughly in the chapter on Humans, Animals, and Elements. We are already very restricted in what we can do and we are animal organisms that can only be of the type we are and we live on a trajectory similar to other people and to animals. We live lives of exercise, work, education, and entertainment and enjoyment.We would like our lives to be filled with these things so we are not perhaps jealous or envious of people who have done the most and have done well (for those who do get envious or jealous), and may want to imagine that their life is amazing for being so rich with experience. But looking at what a human is, and what an average human life consists of, we ought not expect we deviate too far from the averae necessarily, and in the least see the boundaries of what human experience is like. Human lives look very similar to each other, and their experiences are bounded to be of some maximum quantity, some average quantity and some low quantity, and since humans are reproducing and want more life, it may be surmised, that they do like some baseline level of experience and enjoyment, without striving to make themselves the greatest at how to live.
Understanding that life is so constrained, that one must live a human life, and that one’s human life is predetermined, enables one to see that it can’t be different than how it is and turns out. People are aware, that they cannot change their histories, but have not taken it seriously collectively, to understand that means that it is unalterable, such that desire for changes to it are irrational. Furthermore, given the discussions in other chapters in this book, about predetermination of genetics, of the time and location one must live, and of financial and familial circumstances, it should be clear that one’s life will be scoped and predtermined completely and not only partially. We discussed how at all scales of life, we expect mathematical, physical, chemical, biological, and astronomical laws to be invovled in explaining the causality of all things, so knowing that all is caused, one should antipate, that future actions are all tethered to past ones, including ones that one was not invlved in, before one was born. If one is predetermined utterly, then what is the role of regret any longer really? The view of determinism, once extensively utilized in one’s thinking, does eradicate regrets. Ther may be individual differences in how extensively predetermination can be learned and applied to remove regret, but I thihnk it is not particularly difficult given how obvious it is and as long as one learns it early enough perhaps.
Suppose for example that I fully understand that my personal history really is predetermined and I have a good enough memory to build a causal picture as to where I am right now. It doesn’t have to be exactly accurate or contain all information, just enough to be really aware, that the past really determines what happens after, and that one’s history really does explain one’s current and past situations. If I have this information, then why would I continue to believe that things I didn’t do were things I could do? Why would I continue to think that the things I did were things I could stop myself from doing? Why would I think that my situation could be other than it was where it was not caused by me? It is really obvious that one should not be having regrets about these things any longer.
People who are regretful are certainly those who are not determinists, and likely imagine they “had the abiblity to do otherwise in the past”. Or they might be irritated and angry with reality in some way, that it could be a different one than it is, placing anger on supernatual entities or on nature or the world itself, that could have been other than it is. Regardless of this, it is true that such thinking is ineffective at altering reality, and that one has an erroneous idea, that it could be changed or that it could be different than what it is. Whatever the causes or origins of the solar system and universe happens to be, it does not follow that we get anything different. In our lives it is really clear and obvious that we dont’ get another universe! This too at a macro scale is supportive against forms of regret like this. People who are not determinists are thinking more strangely regarding flexibilities that exist in nature and in their lives, and make the mistake to think that because they can imagine alternatives, those alternatives are possible, and by comparison, with those alternatives, one feels less happy and satisfied, and regretful, for not taking some action, to make it realized. The level of constraint on a human life does not permit the flexibilities that regretful people are thinking exist, like changing history, having an alternative existence, doing what is not possible to be done, and that one is not narrowly constrained to be who they are and do what they do.
There are many forms of thinking in which regret can arise, relating to our use of language. Certain sentences we habituatlly say, invlve a non-commitment to predetermination, and isntead a commitment to the inferior traditional ideas, about having greater flexibility of freedom. For example, anytime someone thinks “I should have done this instead of that”, they are thinking a sentence that easily arises to mind that is connected with thinking one has powers of decision flexibility in the past they did not have, and it is stated in a way that is trending towards regretful thinking, if it doesn’t already such feelings. If we think about when people think “I shouldn’t have done (some thing)!” they do seem to be expressing regrets. Simply using the sentence that one has been trained to use, can lead to regretful feelings.
Sentences like these appear extensively in the languages. This means that one has to retrain oneself in how one talks. This is why I said it is beneficial to know about predetermination earlier in life, to avoid using foolish sentences elders taught that are basically teaching one how to express regret and be regretful!
An important thing to know, clearly, is that our elders educated us to be regretful and to become regretful later. How else would we know what it is, that people are regretful, and that we should even use such phrases and sentences such as the one above. We really were taught ways of talking, that lead to ways of thinking, that lead to regretful thinking. And of course, we are predetermined to get out of this way of of thinking or not, and some readers would still probably be regretful despite seeing what I’ve said here. Because it takes time to train one’s way out of the predicament of having an incorrect education. A dog that has been trained poorly or has not been trained will need extensive retraining, and likewise, being educated without an understanding of predetermination and with false ideas of freedom, imply for certain, that in many ways, a human will need to self train.
When I think to myself, I do not use these forms of speech. Sometimes such forms of speech do still pop up, and when they do I quickly cancel them. This continues the self training, and fixes the incorrectness. That the thinking still pops up, despite decades of work on this, indicates to me that it is definitely true, that extensive relearning is needed and it takes time. However, there are very good quick results simply knowing about predetermination and how it relates to regret. Instead of using the form of speech of “I should have done X”, I think “In the future, I can do Y”. This involves a simple admission, that I can do nothing in the past, and that I should reorient my mentality, not to what happened, to learning, and to trying to do differently later. I repeat this as many times as is necessary or feasible, until I make a change. If I cannot make a change, then I know again, that that was infeasible to me, which means it was predetermined I would not do it.
Improvement of personal habits is a good example for this discussion. Personal habits indicate that even if one wants to change, one finds that one cannot, because the behavior has been largely automated. This indicates that predetermination is true for simply existing. Anything that one does repeatedly becomes a habit, and if one is reflective, one is simply the experience of all of one’s habits with a modicum of decision making possible while experiencing habitual trained behavior. Everyone who wants to change a habit will experience repeating the behavior and prefering that one could do otherwise, such that one’s history starts to appear like a repetition of undesirable actions. When trying to replace habits, instead of being angry with myself, or feeling regretful, knowledgeable about the field of Psychology, and of predetermination, that eventually what changes the habit, is forward looking planning and tricks and methods at trying to make upcoming behavior different, while analyziing past behavior to an extent, but without any belief that one could have done differently. This requires a change of how one thinks linguistically, from using language like “I should have done X” to “In the future, if I do this list of things, I will achieve Y”.
Resume. Need to add specific techniques for using predetermination to elimminate regret.
The Universe And Human Life As Within A Preloaded Playing Video
Among analogies for discussion of predetermination, one I’ve found especially useful is that of a video or film that is watched, along with the information contained inside the video. There are a number of ways this analogy is well-suited to explaining determinism, and I think it provides a clear and relatable illustration to see how predetermination is convincing.
What would happen if you could have an increasingly high quality video of both you and all your situations you experience while on earth? Imagine it contains all views of you, with with all levels of detail and survey. You can see up close and from a distance and from all angles, and all interactions you ever have, and all places you ever go. It is the video biography of your life that is exactly a recording of your life. It is also the scientific datum that could be used to understand how humans like yourself behaved, and could be used to understand more about life on earth, particularly human life. It could be used in the legal courts, to explain whether or not you were guilty or innocent of certain actions, and would provide the complete evidence. It would also explain what your merits were, the extent to which you and your dna were more the cause of goals accomplished, and could be used by a workplace to determine the amount you really worked and contributed. It could also be used by governments to know your whereabouts at all times, and to have a conclusive record about your life history, like a complete book of your life, which could be in a national archive. Your video of your life would also be a personal log and book of sorts, which would record without any effort from you, all that you would want to record. If we went further to say it included information about your brain activity in the video too, it would include your thoughts. All in slow motion such that there is no motion at all not captured in the video.
There is so much to discuss from this simple analogy about the complete video of life, and I think even thinking about it briefly, it seems more evident, that life must be more predictable and predetermined. The earlier video would show the reasons for later parts of the video! It would explain why people said their history explained, in an orderly way, one event afer another, on the basis of preceding events. If you wanted to know why something happened, you would check the video, and just see what the cause-effect was. Particularly if the video was for the whole earth, and surrounding solar system, and not only for you, so nothing is missing from the video and it is entirely complete. Questions about whether or not the evidence was complete to show why some event happened involves the expectation that it is predetermined, because if the information exists completely, it will explain it. Without anything supernatural or religious too!
Complete video evidence is expected by all parties to be usable for proving that certain causes had certain results conclusively if conclusive, for court systems. The court system accepts this, and being somewhat subservient to courts and legalism, having to be compliant, businesses, governments, and organizations, would also hold the opinions, that their cases are satisfactory if they had the kind of evidence discussed, for explaining what needs to be explained, for whatever case they would have. You also would agree, it could be shown easily, that if you had such evidence for your true defense, for anything in which you may need defense or explanation, that it would do that for you. It follows from this that the entire population does believe that something such as this would be adequate, for explaining events on in a cause effect way, with the assumption, that all effects, were related to and resulting from, the causes. The video is about everything, which is why it explains everything, and being able to explain everything, indicates predetermination of life is true.
Is it possible to watch a video, not only this kind of video, and not think that, it is a random chaos, or that often or with high frequence things that are happen are happening without earlier causes, as if things happen disconnected from earlier motions occuring and earlier events relating? The video plays through in a way that is predictable, and the way it plays through is related to causality as we view it, and when we watch the video, it is not seeming to be glitching, or randoming along, but instead it moves along as life does in an orderly way. You expect the video to really be showing cause and effect, without ever ceasing to do so, at any time. If there was a time in which it was happening, it would seem more like a technical issue with the video, like it is broken, like when videos really do have technical issues or are corrupted or show the frames the wrong way or edits were existing, and so on. When it is an edited movie, then we see that it is not appearing as cause and effect because of abrupt switches in locales. This is about showing all locales, if it is a video of the whole solar system, or earth, and all locations related to you, if about you, in a way that does not have jumps in time, or gaps. We do not, when watching a complete video, expect jumps in time. The way we watch video and expect it to represent life in a cuase effect way, with correct physics, indicates we are believing, that for whatever a video represents it will show predetermination. What can videos represent? Well everything in complex life we are interested in, so we can say, “really almost everything”, and this means that in our video watching behavior, is another indicator that we are determinists without awareness of it.
The smoothness in which a video plays is desired in gaming, where physics porgramming is inadequate to represent nature. Videos of games, would not show precisely the same qualities as other events on earth, although they too are predetermined by programming. The problems with the game, are related we know, to incomplete development, of physics programming, and of hardware that must handle a large amount of information, to show something that is supposed to be life-like. The gameplace is becoming increasingly more convincing and if it became totally convincing, it would have the smoothness of a video showing real life. A video of the output of the gameplay on the screen would be less jumpy, less glitchy, and less full of strange movements, at the time in which the causality in the game is appreaching an extremely high level of quality simulation of real world events. Once the video is smooth, the test is human perception, which would expect it to be as good as, regular video. The gameplay has to be exactly and perpetually a cause-effect game exactly on the rules of nature. We expect the game to be right, when it is looking like cause-effect predetermination without flaws, and jerks, and visible errors. If there are no visible errors we are starting to think there are no underlying errors. In nature we are really thinking there are no underlying errors.
So even games serve as a great example, which has similar or better analogical power, to explain and show how life is predermined.
Games and videos, also have to be “loaded”. If we watch a video on a computer, we wait fo rhte network or the local hardware, to load what is needed to allow us to partially or fully, use the video or game. A game can load with a lower fidelity mode or work at a lower network speed, and the video controls can show a totally loaded video that you can start in the beginning or at any later point you want. Focusing on the video, the loaded video, up to the position watched so far, assuming one is resuming, is analagous to a “loaded earth” which is here, ready for playing. It appears, the part of the video unwatched, that has been loaded, is like what happens next in the world. The earlier video serves the causes into the present, and is required, so that you can know, in memory, that what is happening, relates to before. The loaded video that is before the starting point is the memory of all that happened, creating the continuity we experience. Earlier it played. Real life is more like a video that didn’t stop however.
The qualities of the data underlying the video, are expected to have the same fidelity, playback options, and data, as the earlier video, like if it is a single file. Likewise, the earth and solar system play like in a single file. The data is stuck in being one kindn and amount of data, and it keeps going. The earth and solar system have a fixed data amount. The upcoming parts of the video, when played don’t increase or decrease in resolution! Likewise, in your life, what can be seen doesn’t increase or decrease in resolution. If you had worse eyesight, both the video and real life would be impacted, not the video itself, or real life itself. The world in history had the same amoutn of video file as now! The video data loaded in history, is the same size approximately as upcoming future. Data does not appear to be added or removed in any way we can see, or any quantity not insignificant for this discussion, that would make it so that there is not a conservation happening, of everything before and after. This means we expect, all of the information present, to continue, into the future, and joining this with the smoothness of video expected with cause and effect, we expect a very exacting flow of video over time, at the astronomical scale. The earth is present now, and it is present later. It is loaded. What is loaded is still there, and is smoothly caused from earlier earth.
In a predetermined way, we expect all the “stuff of the world” to be existing later. It doesn’t go away. This is a predetermination of everything. It relates to convservations expressed in laws of physics, that energies and masses will remain present, and any loss have a clear explanation, also in the video.
Who has ever expected a video to not be predetermined? If the video is of a single thing, without any editing, like a video of an athletic match, then we would really expect what is shown in the video, to have the same properties as the video. If we watched again, what happens in the game has a clear causality. What happened earlier caused what happened later in the sporting match. You can replay the history in the video, and it never changes. Likewise, you look back in time, memory if accurate, doesn’t change, unless corrupted or altered by nervous system. It was just not as good as a video recording is what you expect! If you forget what happened, that happened once, that you earlier could play back in your mind, you use a video, and the video again and again can be replayed, to show the history, that would be the same as in your mind.
When you predict how something will happen when it is simple enough to predict, the upcoming life shows what you predicted. Prediction, seeing in advance, is your loading of the video in advance, using what you know about how it must transpire, given what you know about the physics of the world, that connects earlier with later. You really can and do predict physics frequently without knowing. If you are walking down the road, you can see yourself reaching the next location, and each time that happens, it is because your nervous system has learned physics. You are automated with this physics after the brain statistically learned the environment and its own body. This knowledge of physics conncects before with after. When you are seeing things happen before they happen, you are using your physics understanding, as it is built into your mind, but obviously without doing any math. If you examine your life, most of it is like that, particularly regarding short durations of time. This means most people in the world, powerfully see many kinds of upcoming things happening before they happen and experience them happening just after. Thus it plays like a game that has high quality physics programming, and like a video that has it already actually loaded perfectly, and not partially loaded. Your ability to see the future happenings is like a partially loaded video.
As you live, you see inevitibilities in gitantic quantity such that it is almost the same quantity as life. You can’t functionally do anything without seeing that you can move into positions, and then move into those posiitions. Most of your movements into positions are predicted in advance, even if you became automated about most of them. You are mostly auutomated. You do things while thinking and deliberating about very little. You walk around, do routine activities, without considering how your body does it, because your brain and mind and body together as a system predict in advance and do those things. If you attend to this a little, you start ot see that most things feel inevitable. You can’t change your habits of motion much, and you are aware it is predetermined on history, experience, and your bodies characteristics. Considered in total, your system, and the systems of others, are involved in predicting and doing what happens, in the larger portion of what happens, and not the smaller portion, and that this is akin to, all the humans and animamls automamously doing what was partly loaded in their minds, over shorter durations. But for every duration! When you watch a video for the first time, you can only anticipate a short duration of what’s upcoming. Also life only plays briefly along they way, it doesn’t play chunks of large amounts of time at once. It’s almost like, it plays almost nothing at a time, considering the very smallest durations, and likewise the mind only predicts very briefly in the future.
Here I want to again revisit the topic of geostasis considered in one or more of the other chapters, but in better detail, because here we have prepared well the way, using the analogy of the video. Stasis as discussed elsehere, in the context of astrogeostasis, is the tendency of most of the system remain the existing state given slowness of change. For example, the Sun remains existing, of the same mass, with similar energy output, and behaves similarly from day to day as if unchanged. We can treat things in stasis as unchanged when we make predictions while we are alive. The moon is also in stasis, and the moon was the same for us our entire lives. Earth, its size, constitution/composition, its movement, its shape, and so on are in stasis. We do not really expect the Earth to become different much at any time in our lives, where what we are talking about, is not what’s living on it, but everything else that it is. These are the things that are obviously in stasis, that obviously go unhanged mostly, and are incredibly predictable, and are even within our other predictions that we make about life. If we think we are going to be alive doing work or things we like to do tomorrow, most things about the Earth, Sun, and Moon will have to be unchanged.
Predetermination is obvious for these astrogeostases. The calendar predicts where the earth will be in relation to the sun, and the timem will continue to predict the earth’s rotation. These are things that are really irrefutable, and we can use physical laws in science to very acccurately see the predetermination. We can know the future easily on the basis of stasis, and laws of physics.
Most other things in life are also unchanging without our noticing, or they are things that seldom change. Mountains, buildings, roads, and so on change very little. They have little motion. For the things that have little motion in our experience, like old living trees, we predict accurately and confidently, that they will be present in upcoming days, and this is predetermined. We can largely think that the things that are not in motion are the more obvious things in stasis.
Videos where there is not motion show unchange. These parts of the video, if we used methods of compression, could be removed, so that only the parts that are moving, are stored in the video. In a way, it is like data is unchanging about the unmoving things in stasis and there isn’t even a reason to show more in videos as compared with all else with action happening. For example, if against a background of a mountainous landscape and a clear blue sky, and you do some activity on camera for an hour, the video result would be the same, if you took an earlier days footage of the background, and used that as the background instead of the background of the current video. The video would be the same video. If you actively go outside, and look at the things in stasis, it is as though, they have always been there, and are already loaded all the time, and are not as much of interest compared with all that is moving around.
Reducing the size of the video by removing redundancies of colors accross frames is really used for video compression. This enables videos to play only what is new in each frame, rather than storing repeatedly, in thousands of frames, what is already present in every frame. The data of the earth is not interesting in these frames.
Using this way of thinking, we trend towards what is more in motion and more in change, but what we find in what is in motion and in more change, are patterns which present stases even in motion. Even in the patterns where we experience change, the change is typically low, and the change is usually according to patterns, and these patterns relate to discernable causes and effects. On this subject, I could get too far into the details, trying to convey again, that cause and effect, predictability, and laws of the sciences, are involved in determining what happens before and after. The detailis of all of what we are interested in, regarding motions of people and animals and vehicles, and generally what happens in life, especially what is new in life, when in the video, based on the earlier part of the conversation, is still expected to “play out” according to expecations largely, and even if not, still as a result of what happened before. The video as evidence was the example that already showed we would expect this. Again, if we had a perfect video of everything you did including every situation and all angles and levels of detail, we would see all of the unmoving things in stasis that are obviously never changing, and then we’d see you moving around doing things, and we’d assume that both are resulting from what happened earlier in the video.
The reason for my introduction of this idea of stasis is to make it really obvious that almost everything is entirely predictable, and to show that in a video, it can be subtracted as being of interest, because it will be there, and to delete it, results in the same video. This means we expect and see in the video perfect predictability, such that precisely the computer, testing the colors in the frames, sees all the colors as the same, and simply removes them, showing that it is pefectly accurate, earlier in the video, to expect exactly the same to exist, for the subtacted portions of later frames. We even saw that earlier days can be used in later days, where the environment is the same. When we plan for the future, including our simple day to day plans, we actually do insert from our memories the world before into the world later, in our imaginations.
If we attend to stases around us as we live, our powers of prediction seem to increase extremely until nothing is changing except very small things on a day to day basis, and then using simple analytical thinking, we see the smaller changes happening as a result of cause and effect. The important thing, is that we can skip caring about most of the environment and treat it as fully predicted because it is almost fully predicted. Using this perspective of stasis, you do not fail to predict almost everytime regarding the entire environment, and even the entire sun and moon. The moon and sun, predicted tomorrow in aggregate, is a very large aggregate to predict about. The same is true regarding the Earth. Then all is predicted but the small moving things, and for this though, we still expect to use static laws of nature, and patterns we see . It is my view that the static laws of nature and patterns allow us to perform functions reliably in the world. Our ability to perform functions like walking are in stasis. We go on like this until like scientists, we see all is realy in stasis including moving things, and all is predetermined and not just most. If the larger things are in stasis it one would have a hard time arguing that the component parts are not also in stasis and are predictable.
The analogy of the video is very supportive for arguing that we already largely believe this to be true in our anticipatino that more perfect evidence when arrived at really proves that everything happened as a result of what happened prior, to explain it in a legal setting, and all other settings in which the legal setting is needed. This is really everything in our lives and thus it appears conclusive we already believe in predetermination in these areas, we just have not had the insights required to extend it to all areas. With the above arguments in this chapter alone, again, I think we have something compelling enough, to take determinism very seriously if not understand it quickly to be true, but if something more is needed, each additional chapter, from other angles of observation do far more than what is needed to compellingly argue that determinism is the correct viewpoint.
Conclusion
A naturalistic viewpoint of the world, that understands that all that has antedated the present and future creates the present and future is a superior viewpoint to alternatives that are poorly defined. It is hard to imagine, what a formidable alternative would be, to the perspective of determinism.
Early in the text, I stated that determinism eventually has as its demonstration an analysis of anything. This is consistent with the above view, that all that exists and is experienced, is naturally completely caused. This implies, that whatever subject we consider there will be good deterministic points to make that will illuminate and explain. This is not controversial as many would expect, because we expect science to do the same. Science and determinism fit together nicely and one needs the other. Science can be said to be deterministic and include determinism, and determinism can be said to be scientific and include science. Eventually they are the same, or else one just says science includes an assumption that determinism is true. Both being about all that exists and is experienced, we have scientific and deterministic proofs and evidence that science and determinism are involved in everything.
That an analysis of anything we choose to analyze would provide more reasons to think science and determinism are true because of their utility and explanatory power, indicates we could write essays for all these things, put them all together, and have a large and commpelling argument. That was part of the method for planning and writing this text. I could really have chosen to discuss any subject I wanted, and talked about what is deterministic and scientific about it. Doing that without being too choosy about the subject matter, I would arrive at a total argument, that is very compelling. If I could write an unlimited quantity, I think I would arrive however, at the “verbalsphere”, which is a word I created to mean the verbal, language-equivalent, of the actual sensed world. If I wrote all that all is, I would have a determinsitic verbalsphere and not only a determistic earthosphere.
I had many years to think about writing this text, however, and was much more selective in what I wanted to write about. I chose topics that are especially significant to show that determinism must be true everywhere and not only in isolation. I wanted greater coverage of life for each subject, so that more of life is explained as deterministic. The method of argument I employ is of consilience of disparate arguments, that converge to jointly prove that the total argument can only be true. “If too many important parts of life are shown to be deterministic all of it is deterministic” was the goal. I am certain I have provided enough for readers who are rational to consider seriously that determinism is factual”.
Although I think I succeeded in this effort for this book, I am much more effective at this effort in real life, where I can actively analyze everything determinsitically! Hundreds and thousands of different essays could easily be written to expand this book to be overwhelmingly complete enough, to demonstrate determinism is true, and there isn’t anything i can think of that I cannot treat from a deterministic viewpoint, such that I understand it better afterwards.
Science, being an ally to determinism, assuming it without awarenesss (excepting some unknown number of like minded scientists), are doing the job themselves of growing this work. All scientists are advancing with great visible progress, explanations for things. Explanations for things are really just deterministic too! Anyplace science and technology and any other discipline is doing causal explanatory work such that it is expected that “they know the causes and know the results” are expanding the deterministic viewpoint to cover all of life. What part of life is not under the exmaination and analysis of some scientist or other for causal explanation?! If it is understood that explanation when real is causal and deterministic explanation it turns out anyone doing that kind of thinking has contributed something that adds to the arguments jointly being made, now by everyone, for physical determinisim, and natural predetermination. It may be that determinism provides a way to create mutual appreciation and enjoyable commonality, understanding that everyone’s true explanation of real things actually does jointly converge to explain the Earth’s predetermination!
Science has some promise to do similarly, but it has to be extended to everyone and not just professional scientists. Someone who really understands what they do for a living to the extent that they really do understand the causalities involved really did do something scientific as well, even if they are not knowing precisely how. The human brain, as a statistical machine, is doing in build science, as it experiences the world, such that the human machine functions in it, using in-built conclusions that are deterministic. Any person who functions has a scientific brain allowing them to do something interesting, physically. When they do more, in the course of their work, to perform their work functions, they do have embedded in their behavior, brain-science generated truths, that are scientific, even if they did not intend that to be true. At a basic level people can be incorporated into the scientific effort, which is an arrival of more truths, having explanatory power, and ability to predict due to predeterministic understanding.
Going further, human brains have data within them about the truth of their functional experience even if they never explain anything. Humans themselves, make up the datum, of scientific brains, statistically examinging the world, to be able to do anything, which requires determinism and predetermination as we saw earlier. If people are unable to express their causal understanding of things effectively, it is still true, that wherever there actual behavior is knowledgeable, and where they can speak truthfully, there is corresponding “science brain” that relates. Each person has vastly more scientific thinking underneath their thinking than they are able to convey adeptly using verbal intelligence. This includes even those people who are most analytical and adept at explaining with speech and writing.
IT appears all generations of people without knowing have internal AIs separately and with cooperation and collaboration scientifically arriving at true information that is deterministic and incorporated into brain and behavior. In the current day, the behaviors include more deliberate scientific thinking, apart from what the brain does on its own, to also speak and think more symbolically, about scientific cause and effect. Today even if almost everyone is not a determinist, they are still operating in a joint enterprise to build culture and new minds through education that has more deterministic assumptions and better deterministic understanding.
The method of consilience in this work was not only a method which indicates convergence of argument that is persuasive for readers, but analagous arguments, that are very powerful, including that human brains and civilization are jointly behaving and thinking in such a way, that consiliently determinism is demonstrated also! Everyone is thinking about things and doing things in ways that really do artgue for the position that all converges to a deterministic explanation.
Apart from the method of arguing from a number of perspectives towards a single explanation, are the methods of covering all that can be experienced at different scales, to show that the smallest and largest things must be predetermined, along with everything in between. Since scaling, spectra, gradients, and so on, are used everywhere quantification and measurements are used, such a style of argument, pairs well with the argument from consilience. It states that “for all these subjects, determinism is the best explanation at all scales.” Between these two explanations, everything is covered, independently and again together.
It was also argued, being somewhat less expansive, that certain specifics of experience imply that all else must be determinstic too. For example, that natural laws would exist and exist pervasively, with extreme trustworthiness of prediction and utility, seem to indicate, that all is explicable. This argument requires the supporting argument about the trends of science, the growth and support of other added laws, and trajetory of trust. Wherever we look we keep seeing these specific laws. Many of these laws are actively involved in every cause. Since they are shown to be as useful as they are, to predict and show predetermination of cause and effect, it is just expected that the subjects will have full explanation intuitively.
Much of this has been explained in the text and there were more arguments than these, but it is perhaps too repetitive to state everythig again in the conclusion. The argument seems more than is required to give assent to the deterministic viewpoint or at least for those who remain unpersuaded, something serious to consider for altering their point of view.
This book’s purpose was to provide a foundation in the subject of determinism and create some degree of crediblity of it in the readers mind, to make an opportunity for development of the larger structure of the Book and Journal, which is about a new moral philosophy and ethic. The new moral philosophy and ethic asumes determinism to be true, and has much greater power and utility than traditional morality and religion due to moving forward with determinism as fact. The subject of determinism needed to be known and understood before the other subject matter could be discussed, becausee the language used for the discussion is too strange a compared with normal communciation about ethics without it. Fortunately everyone is partly a determinist, although they are unwilling typically to let it alter their viewpoints on subjectss which really would be altered.
Following this text, determinism is assumed. Books appearing later in the main contents either treat of other prerequesites to developing the ethics, or develop the ethics itself, with awareness concerning physical predetermination.
Notes
- While I use quotations here, to support the quality of my text, I am not fond of quotations, particularly if they come from others, and for a variety of reasons I’ll share. That is why all the quotations here are my own, and obviously, they are of equivalent quality to other quotations, people think are of good quality, at least in the capacities of others for estimation. Quotations are used to pretend to have the wisdom of the writer or speaker one quotes from; also, quotations are used to pretend one has read the authors quoted, while oftentimmes writers have not, probably as a rule they have not; quoted authors have not endorsed writers for being able to speak their words or speak for them in any way, bringing in their quotes at irrelevant times, without comprehension, said with the same words without the same meaning! Using a quote or speaking it, usually would not be understanding it the same way an author does. Quotations are used to pretend one has eminence and smarts, when one is really trying to posture, and pretend to have those qualities, signal that one does (sometimes people do, but not often if the person quoted is really eminent), and pretends to be “with the autho” as part of their circle. Quotations are also short expressions, which are usually false, partly because they are short, and partly because their form is vaunted. There is a goal to make them huge and they tend to use words like “always, nothing, evertime, never”. These quickly falsify their statemnts and sometimes indicate that the “profound thought” was “just false” and that the “amazing thinker”, will be someone “who keeps saying false stuff like that from a false mentality.” For these reaons, I’ll in a more honest way, simply use my own words, but fit a format I do enjoy, and create quotes that do have some good quality, with it being known that I don’t like quotes and see limitations, and well, wouldn’t want to be known by “terse succinct expressions”, but by “what says more”.

I am a retired executive, software architect, and consultant, with professional/academic experience in the fields of Moral Philosophy and Ethics, Computer Science, Psychology, Philosophy, and more recently, Economics. I am a Pandisciplinarian, and Lifetime Member of the High Intelligence Community.
Articles on this site are eclectic, and draw from content prepared between 1980 and 2024. Topics touch on all of life's categories, and blend them with logical rationality and my own particular system of ethics. The common theme connecting all articles is moral philosophy, even if that is not immediately apparent. Any of my articles that touch on "the good and virtuous life" will be published here. These articles interrelate with my incipient theory of ethics, two decades in preparation. This Book and Journal is the gradual unfolding of that ethic, and my living autobiography, in a collection of individual books that fit into groups of book collections.
This Book and Journal is already one of the largest private websites and writings ever prepared, at nearly 1 million words, greater than 50,000 images and videos, and nearly one terabyte of space utilized. The entire software architecture is of my creation. Issues of the book for sale can be found under featured. These texts are handmade by myself, and are of excellent quality, and constitute the normal issues of my journal that can also be subscribed to. The entire work is a transparent work in progress. Not all is complete, and it will remain in an incomplete state until death.
I welcome and appreciate constructive feedback and conversation with readers. You can reach me at mattanaw@mattanaw.com (site related), cmcavanaugh@g.harvard.edu (academic related), or christopher.matthew.cavanaugh@member.mensa.org (intelligence related), or via the other social media channels listed at the bottom of the site.
