Sunday, October 11, 2015

Animating Rebel Brutally Pwned

This is a complete refutation of Animating Retard's abysmal word fuckery regarding free will. 

Animating Retard "addresses" the standard argument against free will by saying our choices are random, which is entirely consistent with what the standard argument says. The standard argument doesn't say randomness is incoherent, it says you will have to posit randomness if you want alternative possibilities. 

Animating Retard is supposed to show how we're responsible for our choices in any significant way if they are just based on luck. He doesn't do this, he just asserts that we're responsible since we wouldn't be responsible if we were doing something for a reason. But even if you aren't responsible while doing something for a reason, that doesn't mean you are responsible while acting for no reason. 

Animating Retard also redefines three crucial terms:
1. Control - He has yet to show me an already existing definition of control that does not require causality, so he uses a made-up, nonsensical definition that bears no resemblance to the word's original meaning: "control is the feeling you have while making a choice."
In other words, control has nothing to do with which outcome happens, yet it somehow makes you blameable for the outcome. You don't "control" A to happen over B. You just feel a certain way while one happens for no reason.
2. Randomness - Ordinarily, randomness means happening for no reason, but that would entail that Animating Retard's model is one of randomness, so he has redefined it to mean "happening for no reason and without a certain experience AR labels control." 
3. Responsibility - To Animating Retard you are responsible for something if you did it while experiencing his "control".

AR's model of free will is like saying you're responsible while being determined by prior causes because you're wearing an orange shirt. He just concedes the dilemma presented in the standard argument, and comes up with totally arbitrary and unheard of criteria for being responsible. Nothing about wearing an orange shirt implies that one ought to be punished/rewarded or seen as a good/bad person. Likewise, nothing about having certain qualia implies one ought to be punished/rewarded or seen as a good/bad person. (Perhaps one could say that feeling strong delight while watching an innocent person suffer makes you a bad person, but that isn't the sort of feeling he's talking about, and this still wouldn't even matter because it is an example of blaming someone for who they are. You don't get to choose your qualia.)

AR's model entails that everyone has the same 50/50 ratio when making moral choices (except for the occasional choices like choosing between 2 good options and 1 evil option, etc. Of course, everyone would still have the same ratio in such circumstances, but it wouldn't be 50/50). This is obviously empirically false, as some people overwhelmingly choose good over evil and vice versa. Pointing this out clearly shows how ridiculous his model is. He's saying that no matter who you are, you have the same chance as picking the good option as anyone else would given your options. 

Now I'm going to get rid of all AR's redefined words and show you what his position actually boils down to: All of our "free choices" are purely luck-based and we happen to have a certain feeling during them for some reason. 

Some problems: 

An experience couldn't even inform you that you have the power to do otherwise. AR just mistakenly infers that from the fact that he can think about other things and isn't aware of anything causally determining him. But this sort of experience is consistent with determinism. 

He also fails to realize that his own experience cannot be persuasive evidence for anyone but himself. 

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