I'll go over the recent stuff first. Lately I've been bludgeoning Animating Retard in the comments section of one of my videos, and he's gotten nowhere with his Chichoney-style word games. It's as clear as ever that he isn't trying to make his position understandable. That would be against his strategy as an obscurantist.
Time and time again, he has failed to answer simple questions like:
If control isn't just qualia, then what else is it?
What do you mean by responsibility?
Why does your model provide us with a stronger sense of responsibility than compatibilism?
What is the difference between non-causally making things happen and not making things happen?
What dictionary definition of control are you using? (He did eventually provide one, but he won't let me quote him on it, so I'm still waiting.)
As I said in one of my comments, what he's describing is really just a coin toss + qualia. He's talking about holding people morally accountable for good or bad luck just because they had a certain experience.
Response to "Ander Smith: Incompetent AND Dishonest":
1:18 [Animating Retard complains that he clearly explained his position and I didn't address.]
Here is why he needs to shut up:
1. He supposedly explained his position in a comment, which he deleted. But my video was written before he wrote these comments.
2. Why the fuck did he delete the thread? And no, he didn't explain his position. I know that because he still hasn't explained it. See the comments on my video "Idealists Fail Again". He tried and failed to explain his gibberish there.
3. Why did I need to add his shit to my video? It wasn't intended to be a response to him. I'm not obligated to do that.
3:35 [Animating Retard asks, "where did I literally say, 'therefore matter does not exist?'"]
He said it's incoherent and indistinguishable from nothing. That's just another way of saying it doesn't exist.
3:48 [Animating Retard says: "Matter can still exist even if our conception (or description) of it is incoherent."]
Ok, he just doesn't know what his own words mean, so I have to explain them to him.
Incoherent things cannot exist. Things that are indistinguishable from nothing cannot exist (they'd be nothing).
I didn't misinterpret him, he just misunderstood himself.
4:19 [Animating Rebel claims I don't understand the difference between inductive and deductive arguments, but doesn't show where I misunderstood this. He then shows a Facebook thread which he claims shows that his argument is inductive.]
On that thread and in many other places, he was trying to make a stupider version of Berkeley's master argument, which is a deductive argument from a tautology (it also happens to be the worst argument in the world, google it). And he doesn't seem to realize that saying matter is "pragmatically useless" is not the same as saying it is "incoherent and indistinguishable from nothing", which is another thing he actually said. So at best he contradicted himself.
And let's have a look at that Facebook thread:
He says:
"Take a ball. It can be red, round, bouncy, soft, and gives a peculiar smell. How would you define the ball as anything other than those properties I just mentioned and the experience it gives?"
Well, we can talk about properties that aren't sensations, like the ball's mass, spatial properties, chemistry, etc.
He then says:
"Since each of those properties are contingent on your perception and experience, it makes no sense to say anything objectively exists outside of our experience."
But he thinks information exists outside of experience.
Sam says: "I don't think you understand information theory. It doesn't entail the absence of the physical. It is just a model cast upon the physical in order to discern signals from noise. I've published in the area of bioinformatics which is the application of information systems and theory to understand biological phenomena."
Animating Retard says, "that's not the kind of information I was referring to."
That's right, because he's referring to the kind that doesn't mean anything. He just uses information as a computery-sounding filler word because his position is vacuous. He belongs to a group of people who think that you can describe the world by saying "being" and "isness" over and over again.
There is no version of his argument that makes sense. Yeah, we don't experience phenomenal properties when we don't experience phenomenal properties. To give a specific example, I don't have the sensation of tasting coffee when I'm not having the sensation of tasting coffee. How the fuck do you get from that to the claim that the coffee must be converted to some nonspatial information stuff when no one is experiencing it? Either way we're going to have to posit something that exists apart from observation. He posits information which is just a more mysterious version of matter.
5:40 [Animating Retard claims he has already proven in comments that matter cannot objectively have spatial extension.]
I already replied to those dumbass comments. And those comments appear to contradict his current position. In the quote I was just replying to, he seem to think its ok to define matter as having spatial extension. And his argument against matter having spatial extension is just pure shit. He says it is only meaningful based on perceptions and experience. I guess he means that it is impossible to understand the concept of space without experiencing it, but it doesn't follow from that that space doesn't exist when it's not being experienced.
His other arguments are also catastrophically bad. He says that matter cannot seen, heard, touched, smelled or tasted, because those require perceptions from a mind. Ok, they require a mind, but we fucking have minds, so where's the problem?
6:55 [Animating Rebel denies saying that my arguments have no consequences for free will, and says that they obviously show that we're limited to choosing between a set of thoughts and desires that occur to us.]
He previously said that libertarians already accept my arguments because they don't undermine libertarian free will. That's what I meant by saying that they have no consequences according to him. I don't see how he failed to understand this.
And the arguments absolutely do not show we are able to choose between a set of thoughts and desires. We're talking about arguments AGAINST being able to choose your thoughts and desires.
So what he's saying is that: "Showing you can't choose thoughts and desires shows that you can choose thoughts and desires!"
Contradictory fuck.
7:35 [Animating Rebel claims that free will doesn't require choosing thoughts or desires]
I already pointed out that on many definitions free will DOES entail that. If you think your choices are based on your thoughts and desires (as many people do for obvious reasons), then you would need to have control over your thoughts and desires, otherwise you are being determined by things you don't choose. This is basically Strawson's argument, I have just narrowed it down to thoughts and desires since those are the attributes people usually claim affect their choices.
Just because some retard wants to make up some horseshit and call it free will to escape the arguments doesn't mean those arguments don't work for the types of free will they were meant to address.
8:40 [Animating Rebel plays a clip from one of my videos and claims I am saying something similar to what he is saying.]
The clip he plays is totally irrelevant. In it I say that being coerced at one point doesn't take away your free will during future decisions in which you're not being coerced.
Animating Rebel is talking about ending up in a situation in which you have to choose between a limited number of desires. Explain to me how the fuck that has anything to do with what I just said.
And again, if we're granting an argument that says you cannot choose your desires, then you aren't going to be able to choose between a limited number of desires you mentally impaired child.
9:11 [Animating Rebel says that his model is not a coin toss, and says I didn't explain why I think it is.]
He got me this time. He's right, his model is not a coin toss in that it doesn't actually involve real coins. But it's still fucking random. It's random by my definition, it's random by what philosophers in this field mean by random, it's even random by the definition he gave me of random (he said, "random means happened for no reason"). According to him, it is possible for you to act on either desire, and you act on one for no reason. It cannot get anymore random than that. Animating Rebel's only attempt to avoid this problem is to redefine randomness. He simply builds an inconsistency with "control" into the meaning of randomness for the sole purpose of making his model nonrandom.
But this word game doesn't do anything to solve the problem. His model is still like a coin toss in the relevant and damaging way: your choice just comes down to a 50/50 chance. So he's actually just accepting randomness while asserting that it gives you more control and accountability for no reason.
I already responded to his model and explained why it is a coin toss in my previous video. His distinction isn't even a real distinction, and has nothing to do with you having responsibility. He says that his model is not random because there is some sort of experience he has. Of course, whether or not he has such an experience, it is still random by the ordinary definition of "happening for no reason." It's not clear why on earth we should define randomness to exclude this experience he's talking about, except for to save his model.
Imagine that there is some perfectly random quantum event that could either result in X or Y. If X is the result, the agent will choose A. If Y is the result, the agent will choose B. There is no significant difference between this and Animating Rebel's model. There is no reason why you couldn't also have the same sort of experience under these circumstances.
10:31 [Animating Retard says he is not shifting the burden of proof, and says again that not all arguments are deductive.]
He cannot connect the claim that "all arguments are deductive" to anything I said. Shifting the burden of proof IS making a claim and saying that you're correct by default, which is exactly what he did.
10:50 [Animating Rebel claims that his burden of proof was already met because he asserted that free will is intuitive and that his experience confirms it.]
That's just a load of shit. It's intuitive TO HIM. His experiences are not acceptable evidence for someone else. I don't have experiences that confirm free will, so does that mean my burden is met? And what experience would confirm that it is metaphysically possible for you to do otherwise, and that your doing otherwise would not depend on randomness? Please tell me.
So no, he didn't meet his burden of proof. He's just claiming he's experienced something and saying everyone else ought to take his word for it.
11:24 [Animating Retard says that evidence for indeterminism is evidence for free will.]
He has to show why free will is more plausible than randomness ("because he feels like it" is not a convincing reason). He hasn't done that. Ignoring the fact that it's incoherent, sure, you could say that it's now more probable than before we knew determinism was false, but it wouldn't make for a convincing argument for free will because it's still equal footing with randomness (perhaps not quite because Ockham's razor favors randomness).
12:03 [Animating Rebel says he addressed the argument against free will.]
He "addressed" it by conceding it and then redefining everything so that he can still say he has control, it isn't random, and he's responsible. But the actual content of his model is still just a fucking coin toss, so he didn't do anything to escape the argument.
12:23 [Animating Rebel says his model "CLEARLY" isn't a randomness model.]
This is just ridiculous. He said our choices happen for no reason, but it "clearly" isn't random? I fail to see how it could be more obvious that it's random. Again, he has just changed the meaning of random so that it excludes his redefined "control".
12:34 [Animating Retard displays one of his horrific models of free will and claims he was just trolling.]
This is obviously a lie. And it's not like it was any worse than what he's currently doing. Everything he does is completely retarded. Just look at one of his previous arguments for free will:
13:33 [Animating Rebel claims I didn't argue against the paper IP cited, and I didn't show that it failed to support IP's position.]
What I did was point out that the paper mistakenly conflated free will with indeterminism. That is obviously a problem with that paper. The paper fails to support IP's position because it is consistent with randomness. Animating Rebel and IP both fail to provide a reason why free will is preferable to randomness. And again, Animating Rebel's experience does not count as a reason for anyone but himself.
15:18 [Animating Rebel says he wasn't asserting anything, he was just asking, "but wouldn't choice be a lot more reasonable a conclusion?"]
Yes, technically he was asking that, but obviously he thinks that is the case and apparently didn't care to offer reasons to think it is.
Animating Rebel once again asserts that his experience should be considered compelling evidence to everyone else. And again, I see no reason to think that experience could even possibly provide evidence for free will.
I already addressed the part of his video about Brembs. While it's true that Brembs was not saying that evolution is inconsistent with universal determinism, he's still an idiot for conflating determinism with predictability, and he still failed to provide evidence for free will because what he said is consistent with determinism and randomness.
