Our condeming nature, or is it religion that's brought it out of us?

[Physics Guy]

If Albert Einstein had had to grow up and make his way through pervasive antisemitism worse than he actually faced, he might nevertheless eventually have been able to win a respectable position as a high school physics teacher somewhere. That was and is a pretty high-status job in the German-speaking world.

Einstein might well then have said, Hey, don’t tell me that antisemitism holds down talented Jewish people. It was tough but I made it.

Somebody else would have had to discover relativity. How many decades would science have lost?

[dastardly stem]

If Albert Einstein had had to grow up and make his way through pervasive antisemitism worse than he actually faced, he might nevertheless eventually have been able to win a respectable position as a high school physics teacher somewhere. That was and is a pretty high-status job in the German-speaking world.

Einstein might well then have said, Hey, don’t tell me that antisemitism holds down talented Jewish people. It was tough but I made it.

Somebody else would have had to discover relativity. How many decades would science have lost?

that is the thing. Maybe there was an Einstein before Einstein, but that Einstein happened to come in a time and place where he was nothing but held back from reaching a potential. His physics oriented mind was stuck in slave labor, or grueling survival struggles, drowned around millions of others suffering, while fighting to stay alive. Perhaps there wasn't just one such Einstein but 100. Perhaps our 1 in a billion Einstein could really have been 10 in a billion if everyone had the type of tools and opportunity he did.

Einstein is a good example to explain though. We individually are built on that material fed to us throughout our lives coupled with our brain capacity, or gene behavior, our hormones....all of it. Each action we take is but a culmination of everything provided us from before. We are inevitably and helplessly doing whatever it is we do each moment. Not only, for instance, is the activity in our brains happening outside our own consciousness for the most part, but when we think we're settling on a decision, as that decision appears in our consciousness its already been made. Tests have born this out. We think we're the ones deciding but what is deciding, as Harrari put it earlier in the thread, it's our genes, hormones and synapses just as it is for all other animals.

[Physics Guy]

We think we're the ones deciding but what is deciding but what is deciding ... is our genes, hormones and synapses just as it is for all other animals.

Right, except that I wouldn't say "but". We are the ones who are deciding, because we are our genes, hormones, and synapses. As I was supposed to have heard last week in the Ash Wednesday liturgy, "Remember that you are dust and that to dust you shall return." Dust can do some cool things.

[dastardly stem]

We think we're the ones deciding but what is deciding but what is deciding ... is our genes, hormones and synapses just as it is for all other animals.

Right, except that I wouldn't say "but". We are the ones who are deciding, because we are our genes, hormones, and synapses. As I was supposed to have heard last week in the Ash Wednesday liturgy, "Remember that you are dust and that to dust you shall return." Dust can do some cool things.

I'm not saying it's not us. I would just add that is the explanation of determinism, or a critical aspect of it--because all that we do or decide is built into us dependent on all the factors, parameters, elements etc that made us, we inevitable and helplessly choose that which we end up choosing.

[Physics Guy]

"Helplessly" suggests that we at least might want to choose otherwise than we do, but somehow we can't because we are trapped in our circumstances. But it seems to me that this doesn't really make sense, if there is no "we" besides the circumstances.

I'm not saying this as a counterargument. It strikes me as a paradox that I can't seem to resolve. People often wish they were different people from who they currently are, but if what we wish is ultimately just part of who we are, then how can that even make sense? The only resolution I can see is to deny that a person is only one person. In some sense we are little collections of multiple people, who may want different things. The problem of freedom seems to shade into the problem of unity. How do we agree what we collectively want?

[dastardly stem]

how does a want win out in the mess of competing wants?

"I want to punch Jacob in the forehead."

"But I don't want to look barbaric and mean."

"But everyone would want me to, and I'd be celebrated. I kinda want that."

"He does deserve it. I'd like to see that."

"But, if I do, I might hurt my own hand. I don't know how to punch. And I don't want his retaliation."

stupid example, but I'm leaving it for posterity. I see it as we each have all these competing desires vying for our ultimate attention. Somehow one of them, often at the last second, just pops up as the winner. It's as if, given another moment in our life, out of nowhere we end up doing that which we normally wouldn't do all because of some sort of cosmic force hitting us just right and some hidden want emerges, after having sat dormant for years.

POW!

"That didn't feel as good as I had hoped."