Willpower

Mark Torres14 said:I can't get behind this. This idea you laid out in the link below is just one variation of a religious view of God. Except now God is the entire universe, science just observes the flow of information between different parts of this massive super-brain, and instead of Ten Commandments, you have the laws of physics. The "priesthood" isn't purely religious anymore—it's some weird hybrid of experimentation and faith.
But why does life even exist?
Personally, I'm interested in a "philosophical God." A God I can actually wrap my head around. If I can't understand it, it doesn't exist to me.
So, who gets it right? Me, the majority, or everyone?

Gravitons are closest to the quantum vacuum, and when they emerge from it, they have zero entropy. So, a "singularity" is just a graviton, which is basically the result of a single logical operation in four-valued logic. A black hole is nothing more than gravity. The asymmetry in natural laws comes from the direct link between gravitons and the quantum vacuum—the fact that "gravity comes from nothing," while other particles and quarks actually have to come from "something."😬

How does it come from nothing? 😕Gravity requires mass. Why does mass exist? The law of conservation of energy should apply to gravity too. If it doesn't, there better be proof of it acting outside this world, or evidence that the law is being broken. Do we have any actual proof?

The concept of "will" would then be most similar to the concept of "gravity" in nature. It’s the most elemental thing before total nothingness, dark energy (which, as we see, drives the expansion of the universe).

No. The question of "will" should be on the same level as asking "Why is everything in motion?"
That's more fundamental than gravitons as particles or gravity as spacetime curvature.

If one were to somehow stumble upon an "anthropic principle" embedded within the fundamental laws of nature—say, tucked away inside string theory—wouldn't that lend some weight to the idea of intelligent design? I suppose... when I use the term "life," especially regarding humans, I am really referring to intelligence. Life seems to be a manifestation of intelligence, which implies a purposeful selection of sorts, which would mean there is some kind of mind behind the emergence of life. And if there is a mind, then perhaps there is also a will. I wonder, though... can true will exist in the universe without a mind to anchor it? Will implies a goal of some kind. So, maybe the ultimate purpose for life arising in the universe—shaped by this overarching mind—could actually be the creation of more minds within the physical universe. Minds that possess their own wills, capable of processing information, storing it, and making decisions based on what they learn. It's a lot to consider, I guess.

I suppose we aren't really debating God here, per se... it feels more like we are discussing pure information and this "autopoietic" program that I am essentially programming within myself—which isn't such an unthinkable concept, I guess. At best, one might argue for a pantheistic God, but then you run into that whole messy issue of free will. If God equals the universe, then free will becomes a bit of a paradox because, well, everything would just be "Him." But maybe, if we look at it differently... perhaps information is what actually arises first, rather than matter. Modern physics tends to view the origin of the universe as this incredibly rapid surge of massive amounts of high energy and matter during the Big Bang, right? So, as the universe expands, the sheer volume of quantum information—qu-information, I think they call it—increases at a much faster rate than the total amount of information required to manage the physical universe itself. This surplus of information is tucked away in that vast number of "virtual" particles constantly popping in and out of the vacuum. What I am trying to get at—and I might be overthinking this—is that the amount of information available to "God" isn't the same as the information available to the universe or even our own minds. He probably operates on a much higher level of logic than we ever could.

How does anything even come from nothing? I mean... I guess it’s just one of those questions that stays with you, isn't it? It feels almost impossible to wrap your head around. Maybe there isn't a clear answer, but I find myself wondering about it quite often. It's all so strange. 😕Mass is what drives gravity, right? But then you have to ask... why does mass even exist in the first place? I mean, it’s a bit of a rabbit hole. It seems to me that the law of conservation of energy ought to apply to gravity as well. If it doesn't, then we should probably be looking for some kind of evidence showing its effects outside of our own universe, or perhaps we're looking at a fundamental violation of that law itself. I guess the real question is... do we actually have any proof of that? Maybe. Or maybe not. I'm just thinking out loud, really.

The graviton itself lacks mass, much like the photon does. It simply acts as an attractor for anything that possesses mass. Honestly, nobody really understands where this "dark energy" in the universe comes from. I suppose it’s somewhat analogous to gravitational waves. In any case, it feels like this whole thing disrupts the traditional idea of energy conservation, because it implies that energy could potentially emerge from a "quantum vacuum." That leads me to think—and I might be wrong here—that perhaps the universe is actually a computer. Maybe information is what truly governs everything, rather than those rigid "laws of energy conservation," which would imply the universe is just some sort of simple mechanical toy. If information is the driving force behind the universe and the generation of energy, then the universe can't strictly be a closed system, since the accumulation of information could theoretically go on forever. Now, I don't necessarily mean that the increase in energy or the expansion of the universe must also be infinite; it might just mean that after a certain threshold, the universe becomes significantly more complex. But if we consider the possibility that the universe is a computer—more specifically, a Turing machine—then there might eventually be a moment where the program responsible for creating the universe simply stops running.

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/TuringMachine.html
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/HaltingProblem.html

Maybe... a "halting condition" for God could be that specific moment when created minds finally acquire enough knowledge about the universe to master it themselves. I suppose, in that sense, "God" would just abdicate, handing over the universe to these created minds to manage however they see fit. And then, once some other certain conditions are met, their own program terminates too, and everything just collapses into a "quantum vacuum."

No. I think the question of will should probably be on par with asking "Why does anything move at all?"
It seems more fundamental than a graviton as a particle, or even gravity as the curvature of spacetime.

To be fair, that can only serve as a comparison, I guess. So, the universe expands because something is emerging from nothingness.😕 I'll admit, I'm not exactly crazy about that idea either. But, if we follow that assumption of the universe acting like a computer, perhaps "will" is just the process of movement striving toward one very specific "halting condition." It implies there might be an ultimate goal that all particular wills are moving toward, though they have to obey the laws of a "Turing machine" along the way.

An example 3-state, 2-color Turing machine... It has a total of 3×2=6 rules, which describe the machine behavior for all possible states. In general, an n-state, k-color Turing machine requires k×n rules to specify its behavior.

There isn't any algorithm that could actually solve the "halting problem" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_problem , so I suppose the only real solution is to just let the program run and see what happens. So, maybe the purpose of will is simply to witness when the conditions for the program to stop are finally met (if they ever are). The program for will might look something like this:

While "condition is not halting condition" is true: continue looking for the halting condition
If condition is halting condition: stop

So, there is a possibility that the will to keep moving just... ceases. That it reaches a stopping point.

dustyskipper3 said:If one were to somehow stumble upon an "anthropic principle" embedded within the fundamental laws of nature—say, tucked away inside string theory—wouldn't that lend some weight to the idea of intelligent design? I suppose... when I use the term "life," especially regarding humans, I am really referring to intelligence. Life seems to be a manifestation of intelligence, which implies a purposeful selection of sorts, which would mean there is some kind of mind behind the emergence of life. And if there is a mind, then perhaps there is also a will. I wonder, though... can true will exist in the universe without a mind to anchor it? Will implies a goal of some kind. So, maybe the ultimate purpose for life arising in the universe—shaped by this overarching mind—could actually be the creation of more minds within the physical universe. Minds that possess their own wills, capable of processing information, storing it, and making decisions based on what they learn. It's a lot to consider, I guess.

I suppose we aren't really debating God here, per se... it feels more like we are discussing pure information and this "autopoietic" program that I am essentially programming within myself—which isn't such an unthinkable concept, I guess. At best, one might argue for a pantheistic God, but then you run into that whole messy issue of free will. If God equals the universe, then free will becomes a bit of a paradox because, well, everything would just be "Him." But maybe, if we look at it differently... perhaps information is what actually arises first, rather than matter. Modern physics tends to view the origin of the universe as this incredibly rapid surge of massive amounts of high energy and matter during the Big Bang, right? So, as the universe expands, the sheer volume of quantum information—qu-information, I think they call it—increases at a much faster rate than the total amount of information required to manage the physical universe itself. This surplus of information is tucked away in that vast number of "virtual" particles constantly popping in and out of the vacuum. What I am trying to get at—and I might be overthinking this—is that the amount of information available to "God" isn't the same as the information available to the universe or even our own minds. He probably operates on a much higher level of logic than we ever could.

How does anything even come from nothing? I mean... I guess it’s just one of those questions that stays with you, isn't it? It feels almost impossible to wrap your head around. Maybe there isn't a clear answer, but I find myself wondering about it quite often. It's all so strange. 😕Mass is what drives gravity, right? But then you have to ask... why does mass even exist in the first place? I mean, it’s a bit of a rabbit hole. It seems to me that the law of conservation of energy ought to apply to gravity as well. If it doesn't, then we should probably be looking for some kind of evidence showing its effects outside of our own universe, or perhaps we're looking at a fundamental violation of that law itself. I guess the real question is... do we actually have any proof of that? Maybe. Or maybe not. I'm just thinking out loud, really.

The graviton itself lacks mass, much like the photon does. It simply acts as an attractor for anything that possesses mass. Honestly, nobody really understands where this "dark energy" in the universe comes from. I suppose it’s somewhat analogous to gravitational waves. In any case, it feels like this whole thing disrupts the traditional idea of energy conservation, because it implies that energy could potentially emerge from a "quantum vacuum." That leads me to think—and I might be wrong here—that perhaps the universe is actually a computer. Maybe information is what truly governs everything, rather than those rigid "laws of energy conservation," which would imply the universe is just some sort of simple mechanical toy. If information is the driving force behind the universe and the generation of energy, then the universe can't strictly be a closed system, since the accumulation of information could theoretically go on forever. Now, I don't necessarily mean that the increase in energy or the expansion of the universe must also be infinite; it might just mean that after a certain threshold, the universe becomes significantly more complex. But if we consider the possibility that the universe is a computer—more specifically, a Turing machine—then there might eventually be a moment where the program responsible for creating the universe simply stops running.

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/TuringMachine.html
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/HaltingProblem.html

Maybe... a "halting condition" for God could be that specific moment when created minds finally acquire enough knowledge about the universe to master it themselves. I suppose, in that sense, "God" would just abdicate, handing over the universe to these created minds to manage however they see fit. And then, once some other certain conditions are met, their own program terminates too, and everything just collapses into a "quantum vacuum."

No. I think the question of will should probably be on par with asking "Why does anything move at all?"
It seems more fundamental than a graviton as a particle, or even gravity as the curvature of spacetime.

To be fair, that can only serve as a comparison, I guess. So, the universe expands because something is emerging from nothingness.😕 I'll admit, I'm not exactly crazy about that idea either. But, if we follow that assumption of the universe acting like a computer, perhaps "will" is just the process of movement striving toward one very specific "halting condition." It implies there might be an ultimate goal that all particular wills are moving toward, though they have to obey the laws of a "Turing machine" along the way.

An example 3-state, 2-color Turing machine... It has a total of 3×2=6 rules, which describe the machine behavior for all possible states. In general, an n-state, k-color Turing machine requires k×n rules to specify its behavior.

There isn't any algorithm that could actually solve the "halting problem" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_problem , so I suppose the only real solution is to just let the program run and see what happens. So, maybe the purpose of will is simply to witness when the conditions for the program to stop are finally met (if they ever are). The program for will might look something like this:

While "condition is not halting condition" is true: continue looking for the halting condition
If condition is halting condition: stop

So, there is a possibility that the will to keep moving just... ceases. That it reaches a stopping point.

I mostly agree with you. But here’s my take: I don't equate "life" with intelligence. Intelligence is incredibly rare. If you look at history, most life out there is mindless—it doesn't show any traits we'd call intelligent. But every single one of those living things shares one thing: will. You don't have to be smart, rational, or conscious in the human sense to possess will. If we apply that logic to the universe, there's zero evidence that the universe itself is a conscious, intelligent entity. We're just following flawed logic by assuming that because humans are intelligent, we can't be anything more than a tiny part of the massive universe where we exist.
Look, I don't care about the universe, life, or even some potential God. What actually blows my mind is the human being. Based on every scientific or religious theory out there, we're basically just an unnecessary extra.
"Quote:"

Look, we aren't actually debating God here. We’re talking about raw information and that "autopoietic" programming we use to code our own existence—which isn't even an impossible concept. At best, you could argue for a pantheistic God, but then you hit the massive wall of free will. If God equals the universe, then free will is dead. Everything is just Him.

Look, don't take this personally, but here’s how I see your argument playing out:

Heraclitus said everything flows, and he was right—life and this entire world are constantly moving in some direction. Creation is a uniquely human trait. Aside from a few primitive instincts, animals don't create; they just adapt. Humans are the only ones who force the environment to bend to our will. If you take that logic a step further, you start to imagine that "someone" similar to us designed this whole setup. But let’s be real: a religious God feels way too anthropocentric. Trying to figure out His motives just leads straight into absurdity. From a scientific standpoint, God doesn't exist because He can't possibly fit into the hyper-specialized logical frameworks that modern science relies on. The absolute limit of our understanding is viewing the universe as either a massive computer or some deterministic clock that was wound up once and has been ticking ever since. In both scenarios, free will is a myth. It’s nothing more than an illusion.
Let’s start with a basic assumption: humans actually have free will. Even if we grant that, would we still need God? Would we still need to pretend the universe is some massive supercomputer or a multi-dimensional playground? I don't see how it works.
"Quote:"

Look, let's assume information comes first, not matter. Modern physics basically views the birth of the universe as this massive, instantaneous burst of high energy and matter during the Big Bang. As the universe expands, the sheer amount of quantum info—qu-information—skyrockets. It’s actually growing faster than the total amount of information needed to actually manage the physical universe. All that extra data is packed into a massive swarm of "virtual" particles constantly popping in and out of the vacuum. What I'm getting at is this: the amount of information available to God is way beyond what the universe or our own minds can handle. He operates on a higher level of logic than we ever could.

How can you even separate information from matter? If there's no matter, there's nothing—meaning zero information. It’s one thing to talk about an empty set mathematically, but it’s another thing entirely to have that empty set actually exist in reality. Information is a relationship. And if there’s no matter, there are no relationships.
I’ve never bought into this whole idea of "virtual particles" popping in and out of a vacuum. I'll admit, it's just a gut feeling because I don't have enough physics or philosophy training to break it down properly.
Logic is one thing. There isn't some "higher" logic. There's just levels of knowledge (information). In 99% of cases, we're using basically the same logic our ancestors used twenty thousand years ago. Einstein’s General Relativity isn't an example of a new logic; it's just a new perspective. The logic is old, but the results—the understanding—are mind-blowing.

A graviton itself has no mass, just like a photon. It simply pulls on things that *do* have mass. Nobody knows where the "dark energy" in the universe comes from. It’s similar to "gravitational waves." Either way, it seems to wreck the idea of energy conservation, since it implies energy can just emerge from the "quantum vacuum." That’s why it feels to me like the universe is a computer, governed by information rather than those "laws of energy conservation"—otherwise, it would just be some mechanical toy. If information drives the universe and the creation of energy, then the universe can't be a totally closed system, because the amount of information could theoretically go to infinity. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean energy increases or the expansion goes to infinity too, just that at some point, the universe becomes much more complex. But if the universe is actually a computer—specifically a Turing machine—then there might be a moment where the program for creating the universe just stops running.

You love playing with absolutes, just like I do.
That’s the deal: in General Relativity, spacetime (the background) is the absolute, while everything else is relative. You’re taking information as your absolute (and what even is information?), and based on its origin, you’re concluding the universe might be a computer. I take the human being as my absolute—not in some "Homo sapiens" or anthropocentric sense, but in terms of our sheer strangeness and how we don't belong in this world.
A Turing machine is just proof that you can't grasp the universe through logic and intelligence alone. So how do you do it? Maybe through poetry?

It’s possible that the "halting condition" for God is the moment created minds acquire enough knowledge about the universe to master it themselves. Basically, at one point, "God" abdicates and hands the universe over to created minds to run however they want. Then, once a few more conditions are met, their program also terminates, and everything collapses back into the "quantum vacuum."

But here we go again with the big question. Does everything need a reason to exist?

True, that’s just for comparison. So, the universe expands because something is coming from nothing.😕 I'll admit, I'm not crazy enough to buy that idea either. But based on that assumption of the universe as a computer, maybe "will" is a process moving toward fulfilling a specific "halting condition." This means there’s an ultimate goal all individual wills move toward, while still having to follow the rules of a "Turing machine."

Great.👍
But here we go again, back to Hegel’s unmoving mover. Where does the beginning actually start?

There isn't some magic algorithm to solve the "halting problem" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_problem . The only way out is to just run the program and see what happens. Basically, the goal of the will is to wait for the conditions that trigger the program to stop (if it ever does). Maybe the code for the will looks something like this:

While "condition is not halting condition" is true: continue looking for the halting condition
If condition is halting condition: stop

So yeah, there's a chance the will just runs out of steam and stops.

I find this fascinating. Cosmology is basically the crown jewel of science right now. Why is the universe accelerating its expansion again? What does it look like in, say, 100 billion years? Is the universe expanding because it has a will—meaning our own wills are just Platonic shadows of that universal drive—or is it just expanding randomly, pointlessly, and without any reason at all? I really hope it's not the latter. I believe there's a reason for things. Otherwise, everything becomes meaningless, including our own will and desire, no matter how massive they are.

Mark Torres14 said:I mostly agree with you. But here’s my take: I don't equate "life" with intelligence. Intelligence is incredibly rare. If you look at history, most life out there is mindless—it doesn't show any traits we'd call intelligent. But every single one of those living things shares one thing: will. You don't have to be smart, rational, or conscious in the human sense to possess will. If we apply that logic to the universe, there's zero evidence that the universe itself is a conscious, intelligent entity. We're just following flawed logic by assuming that because humans are intelligent, we can't be anything more than a tiny part of the massive universe where we exist.
Look, I don't care about the universe, life, or even some potential God. What actually blows my mind is the human being. Based on every scientific or religious theory out there, we're basically just an unnecessary extra.
"Quote:"

Look, we aren't actually debating God here. We’re talking about raw information and that "autopoietic" programming we use to code our own existence—which isn't even an impossible concept. At best, you could argue for a pantheistic God, but then you hit the massive wall of free will. If God equals the universe, then free will is dead. Everything is just Him.

Look, don't take this personally, but here’s how I see your argument playing out:

Heraclitus said everything flows, and he was right—life and this entire world are constantly moving in some direction. Creation is a uniquely human trait. Aside from a few primitive instincts, animals don't create; they just adapt. Humans are the only ones who force the environment to bend to our will. If you take that logic a step further, you start to imagine that "someone" similar to us designed this whole setup. But let’s be real: a religious God feels way too anthropocentric. Trying to figure out His motives just leads straight into absurdity. From a scientific standpoint, God doesn't exist because He can't possibly fit into the hyper-specialized logical frameworks that modern science relies on. The absolute limit of our understanding is viewing the universe as either a massive computer or some deterministic clock that was wound up once and has been ticking ever since. In both scenarios, free will is a myth. It’s nothing more than an illusion.
Let’s start with a basic assumption: humans actually have free will. Even if we grant that, would we still need God? Would we still need to pretend the universe is some massive supercomputer or a multi-dimensional playground? I don't see how it works.
"Quote:"

Look, let's assume information comes first, not matter. Modern physics basically views the birth of the universe as this massive, instantaneous burst of high energy and matter during the Big Bang. As the universe expands, the sheer amount of quantum info—qu-information—skyrockets. It’s actually growing faster than the total amount of information needed to actually manage the physical universe. All that extra data is packed into a massive swarm of "virtual" particles constantly popping in and out of the vacuum. What I'm getting at is this: the amount of information available to God is way beyond what the universe or our own minds can handle. He operates on a higher level of logic than we ever could.

How can you even separate information from matter? If there's no matter, there's nothing—meaning zero information. It’s one thing to talk about an empty set mathematically, but it’s another thing entirely to have that empty set actually exist in reality. Information is a relationship. And if there’s no matter, there are no relationships.
I’ve never bought into this whole idea of "virtual particles" popping in and out of a vacuum. I'll admit, it's just a gut feeling because I don't have enough physics or philosophy training to break it down properly.
Logic is one thing. There isn't some "higher" logic. There's just levels of knowledge (information). In 99% of cases, we're using basically the same logic our ancestors used twenty thousand years ago. Einstein’s General Relativity isn't an example of a new logic; it's just a new perspective. The logic is old, but the results—the understanding—are mind-blowing.

A graviton itself has no mass, just like a photon. It simply pulls on things that *do* have mass. Nobody knows where the "dark energy" in the universe comes from. It’s similar to "gravitational waves." Either way, it seems to wreck the idea of energy conservation, since it implies energy can just emerge from the "quantum vacuum." That’s why it feels to me like the universe is a computer, governed by information rather than those "laws of energy conservation"—otherwise, it would just be some mechanical toy. If information drives the universe and the creation of energy, then the universe can't be a totally closed system, because the amount of information could theoretically go to infinity. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean energy increases or the expansion goes to infinity too, just that at some point, the universe becomes much more complex. But if the universe is actually a computer—specifically a Turing machine—then there might be a moment where the program for creating the universe just stops running.

You love playing with absolutes, just like I do.
That’s the deal: in General Relativity, spacetime (the background) is the absolute, while everything else is relative. You’re taking information as your absolute (and what even is information?), and based on its origin, you’re concluding the universe might be a computer. I take the human being as my absolute—not in some "Homo sapiens" or anthropocentric sense, but in terms of our sheer strangeness and how we don't belong in this world.
A Turing machine is just proof that you can't grasp the universe through logic and intelligence alone. So how do you do it? Maybe through poetry?

It’s possible that the "halting condition" for God is the moment created minds acquire enough knowledge about the universe to master it themselves. Basically, at one point, "God" abdicates and hands the universe over to created minds to run however they want. Then, once a few more conditions are met, their program also terminates, and everything collapses back into the "quantum vacuum."

But here we go again with the big question. Does everything need a reason to exist?

True, that’s just for comparison. So, the universe expands because something is coming from nothing.😕 I'll admit, I'm not crazy enough to buy that idea either. But based on that assumption of the universe as a computer, maybe "will" is a process moving toward fulfilling a specific "halting condition." This means there’s an ultimate goal all individual wills move toward, while still having to follow the rules of a "Turing machine."

Great.👍
But here we go again, back to Hegel’s unmoving mover. Where does the beginning actually start?

There isn't some magic algorithm to solve the "halting problem" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_problem . The only way out is to just run the program and see what happens. Basically, the goal of the will is to wait for the conditions that trigger the program to stop (if it ever does). Maybe the code for the will looks something like this:

While "condition is not halting condition" is true: continue looking for the halting condition
If condition is halting condition: stop

So yeah, there's a chance the will just runs out of steam and stops.

I find this fascinating. Cosmology is basically the crown jewel of science right now. Why is the universe accelerating its expansion again? What does it look like in, say, 100 billion years? Is the universe expanding because it has a will—meaning our own wills are just Platonic shadows of that universal drive—or is it just expanding randomly, pointlessly, and without any reason at all? I really hope it's not the latter. I believe there's a reason for things. Otherwise, everything becomes meaningless, including our own will and desire, no matter how massive they are.

I think I follow your line of reasoning. In that view, a human being isn't some cosmic mistake or an extra; rather, we are a possibility that just happened to manifest. It’s similar to how life itself was a potentiality that eventually came to be. I suppose the universe wasn't inherently intelligent or sentient at the very beginning, but its fundamental parameters contained the potential for those things, which eventually realized themselves. Early life was likely quite simple and barely intelligent—it might have been incredibly improbable that it would ever reach this level of cognitive complexity, but yet, here we are. What we really need to determine is whether this is truly an astronomical fluke. We have to ask if the anthropic principle within the universe is a wild, near-insane assumption, or if it's something reasonably probable, or perhaps even something inevitable that simply must occur. Your position seems to be the first one—that it's a freak occurrence. The religious perspective would be the last one, where it's certain. As for me, I land somewhere in the middle. I guess I'm a bit closer to your view, though perhaps only because I can't bring myself to believe I am so "exceptional" that the mere possibility of my existence had to be such a staggering improbability.

I hope you won't take offense, but I suppose... if I had to break down your perspective, I see it like this:

Heraclitus once said that everything flows, and I suppose you could say life and this whole world are constantly evolving toward some kind of direction. It seems to me that the act of creation is something uniquely human. Other living creatures—well, except maybe in extremely primitive circumstances—they don't really create; they just adapt. Only humans seem to take their environment and reshape it to suit themselves. If we were to take that logic and apply it to a higher plane, then maybe we could imagine that "someone" similar to a human being created this entire world. Of course, a religious God feels far too anthropomorphic, and if I try to dig into those specific motives, I feel like I'm stepping right into the realm of the absurd. From a purely scientific standpoint, I guess God doesn't exist, mostly because such a being couldn't possibly encompass the logical system of specialized disciplines that modern science is built upon. Science's absolute limit is perhaps imagining the universe as a massive computer, or maybe like some deterministic clock that was wound up at one single moment and has just been ticking away ever since. In either of those scenarios, I suspect we don't actually possess free will; it might all just be an illusion.
Maybe we should start by just... assuming that humans actually possess free will? I mean, if we take that as a given, would we even need God? Or perhaps the idea of the universe acting like some sort of massive, multidimensional supercomputer? It makes me wonder if all those complex theories about multi-dimensional realms would still be necessary if we truly had agency over our own choices. I guess it’s worth considering.

I find myself constantly dwelling on the idea that viewing a computer as a metaphor for the universe might just be a byproduct of our current cultural obsession with technology. It feels... I don't know, quite normal, actually. Every civilization seems to describe the universe and God based on its own fundamental settings and core characteristics. I suppose primitive tribes might see those patterns in lightning strikes or sudden storms. So, when you ask me this, you’re essentially asking if I am capable of stepping outside my own civilization to view things through the lens of some non-existent culture. I honestly don't know if I'm up to that. Maybe one would have to be God to truly achieve that kind of perspective. Even someone like Nostradamus—if his prophecies hold any water—had to interpret everything from the viewpoint of a medieval person. We can't truly grasp his meaning today because we can't fully inhabit his mind, or know exactly how much he knew versus what we know now. I suspect that simply trying to wrap one's head around what life was like for an ordinary person in a past era—say, Classical Rome, the Maya, or even any other non-Western society—would be enough to occupy the entire working life of a hyper-intelligent individual. Just to establish a boundary between "us" and "them," so we don't fall into the trap of viewing foreign cultures through a Western lens, but rather seeing them as they saw themselves. One would have to pore over their writings and study archaeological finds to get it right. And now, you're asking me to imagine some sort of archaeology of the future, stretching to the very end of time, to extract the essential elements of every single civilization and somehow conclude which one offers the most optimal picture of the universe? I... I'm not sure I can manage that. 😉🤷

But how can you even separate information from matter? If there isn't any matter present, then there’s nothing there—which means there's no information either. I mean, it's one thing mathematically to talk about an empty set, but it's quite another to actually have that empty set existing in reality. Information is a relationship. And if there is no matter, then there aren't any relationships (or connections) to speak of.
That whole concept regarding "virtual particles" popping in and out of a vacuum... I've never really liked it. I suppose I should admit that's just a gut feeling, since I don't think I have enough physical or philosophical training to truly explain why.

Well, look at it this way. To me, modern physics seems to be suggesting something entirely new about matter. Specifically, that matter isn't everything, and the vacuum isn't actually empty. There is this quantum vacuum where particles emerge in a sense, but those particles aren't quite "matter" yet. So, you have matter, you have nothingness, but then there's also this middle ground—a kind of "superposition" of matter and nothingness. It's like "some stuff" that isn't quite matter yet, but isn't strictly "nothing" anymore. Take the graviton, for instance; we can't detect it as a particle, so it isn't matter, but it certainly isn't nothing because it can exert a pull on matter. The existence of the graviton, or even dark matter, is definitely a form of information within the universe. In that light, I suspect the total amount of information in the universe is much greater than what is carried by matter itself. From that, I tend to conclude that information comes before matter; perhaps it somehow programs the matter, which then uses that matter to generate even more information. Though, I guess it's impossible to define exactly "what information is," since information is essentially the relationship between things. Therefore, information exists even when nothing else does, because that is the information regarding the relationship of that nothingness to the nothingness it resides in (or doesn't😁). That's why information is the absolute starting point; there can't be anything more fundamental than that. Is it God, then? Not exactly, but maybe it possesses a "will" to expand, or perhaps some kind of "self-awareness." 😬

Of course, all of this sounds very mystical, much like the idea of virtual particles, and a rational mind would naturally push back against it. A rational mind wants to find some tangible "stuff" that everything is made of—something solid to rely on. Personally, I lean more toward a Buddhist perspective where everything is essentially nothing, yet even that "nothingness" is actually something, because the fact that everything is nothing constitutes a piece of "information" in itself.

In my view, logic is one thing. There isn't some higher logic. There is only a level of knowledge (information) where, in 99% of cases, we are using almost the exact same logic our ancestors used twenty thousand years ago. Einstein's General Relativity isn't an example of new logic, but rather a new perspective. The logic remains old, even if the results (our understanding) are staggering.

See, if the brain were merely "matter," it wouldn't be able to be "filled" with such vast amounts of new information, unless information is the "stuff" that absolutely dominates over matter.

You, much like myself, seem to enjoy playing with absolutes.
That's true; in General Relativity, spacetime (the background) is the absolute, while everything else is relative. Now, you are taking information as your absolute (though I wonder, what exactly *is* information?) and, based on the logic of its origin, concluding that the universe might be a computer. Meanwhile, I am taking the human being as my absolute—not in a biological or anthropocentric sense, but in terms of our sheer strangeness and our sense of not belonging to this world.
The Turing machine... I suppose it’s just proof that logic and intelligence alone can't quite grasp the entire universe. And if they can't, then what can? Maybe poetry?

Poetry feels like information about that "nothingness" from which everything emerged. It doesn't go looking for God; instead, it creates everything out of nothing and just marvels at that void. That's why I think poetry is essentially more fundamental than religion. People tend to attach all sorts of religious, scientific, or cultural baggage to it, turning it into this messy soup where the core essence gets lost. But in poetry, for it to truly be itself, that core—that emptiness—is actually the most vital part. It's like a poet standing on a gallows, much like Villon, just laughing and singing about the sheer absurdity of existence.

But we end up back at the same question again. Does there have to be a reason for everything to exist?

It doesn't necessarily have to, though maybe there is a will involved.

That sounds good, I guess.👍
Yet, we find ourselves facing Hegel's unmoving mover once more. What actually constitutes the beginning?

I suspect it's a paradox. Perhaps the universe never actually "began" in any real sense, and it won't ever truly vanish either. Maybe it's all just one big illusion; there is no start or finish, we are just limited beings whose minds insist that everything requires a beginning and an end.

Personally, I find this fascinating. Cosmology is really the crown jewel of science these days. Why is the universe accelerating its expansion? What happens, say, in 100 billion years? Is the universe expanding because it possesses a will—where our own wills are merely Platonic shadows of that universal will—or is it just expanding nonsensically, pointlessly, without any explanation? I hope it isn't the latter; I want to believe in a reason. Otherwise, everything becomes meaningless, including our own will and desires, even if they are just primal impulses.

So, suddenly, dark energy emerges from "nothing." There has to be some kind of will present; the universe has a will, but that doesn't mean it possesses reason. Because of that, I guess people, acting as elements of reason, ought to master the forces of the universe to lend a bit of rationality to that expansion. 😍

dustyskipper3 said:I think I follow your line of reasoning. In that view, a human being isn't some cosmic mistake or an extra; rather, we are a possibility that just happened to manifest. It’s similar to how life itself was a potentiality that eventually came to be. I suppose the universe wasn't inherently intelligent or sentient at the very beginning, but its fundamental parameters contained the potential for those things, which eventually realized themselves. Early life was likely quite simple and barely intelligent—it might have been incredibly improbable that it would ever reach this level of cognitive complexity, but yet, here we are. What we really need to determine is whether this is truly an astronomical fluke. We have to ask if the anthropic principle within the universe is a wild, near-insane assumption, or if it's something reasonably probable, or perhaps even something inevitable that simply must occur. Your position seems to be the first one—that it's a freak occurrence. The religious perspective would be the last one, where it's certain. As for me, I land somewhere in the middle. I guess I'm a bit closer to your view, though perhaps only because I can't bring myself to believe I am so "exceptional" that the mere possibility of my existence had to be such a staggering improbability.

I hope you won't take offense, but I suppose... if I had to break down your perspective, I see it like this:

Heraclitus once said that everything flows, and I suppose you could say life and this whole world are constantly evolving toward some kind of direction. It seems to me that the act of creation is something uniquely human. Other living creatures—well, except maybe in extremely primitive circumstances—they don't really create; they just adapt. Only humans seem to take their environment and reshape it to suit themselves. If we were to take that logic and apply it to a higher plane, then maybe we could imagine that "someone" similar to a human being created this entire world. Of course, a religious God feels far too anthropomorphic, and if I try to dig into those specific motives, I feel like I'm stepping right into the realm of the absurd. From a purely scientific standpoint, I guess God doesn't exist, mostly because such a being couldn't possibly encompass the logical system of specialized disciplines that modern science is built upon. Science's absolute limit is perhaps imagining the universe as a massive computer, or maybe like some deterministic clock that was wound up at one single moment and has just been ticking away ever since. In either of those scenarios, I suspect we don't actually possess free will; it might all just be an illusion.
Maybe we should start by just... assuming that humans actually possess free will? I mean, if we take that as a given, would we even need God? Or perhaps the idea of the universe acting like some sort of massive, multidimensional supercomputer? It makes me wonder if all those complex theories about multi-dimensional realms would still be necessary if we truly had agency over our own choices. I guess it’s worth considering.

I find myself constantly dwelling on the idea that viewing a computer as a metaphor for the universe might just be a byproduct of our current cultural obsession with technology. It feels... I don't know, quite normal, actually. Every civilization seems to describe the universe and God based on its own fundamental settings and core characteristics. I suppose primitive tribes might see those patterns in lightning strikes or sudden storms. So, when you ask me this, you’re essentially asking if I am capable of stepping outside my own civilization to view things through the lens of some non-existent culture. I honestly don't know if I'm up to that. Maybe one would have to be God to truly achieve that kind of perspective. Even someone like Nostradamus—if his prophecies hold any water—had to interpret everything from the viewpoint of a medieval person. We can't truly grasp his meaning today because we can't fully inhabit his mind, or know exactly how much he knew versus what we know now. I suspect that simply trying to wrap one's head around what life was like for an ordinary person in a past era—say, Classical Rome, the Maya, or even any other non-Western society—would be enough to occupy the entire working life of a hyper-intelligent individual. Just to establish a boundary between "us" and "them," so we don't fall into the trap of viewing foreign cultures through a Western lens, but rather seeing them as they saw themselves. One would have to pore over their writings and study archaeological finds to get it right. And now, you're asking me to imagine some sort of archaeology of the future, stretching to the very end of time, to extract the essential elements of every single civilization and somehow conclude which one offers the most optimal picture of the universe? I... I'm not sure I can manage that. 😉🤷

But how can you even separate information from matter? If there isn't any matter present, then there’s nothing there—which means there's no information either. I mean, it's one thing mathematically to talk about an empty set, but it's quite another to actually have that empty set existing in reality. Information is a relationship. And if there is no matter, then there aren't any relationships (or connections) to speak of.
That whole concept regarding "virtual particles" popping in and out of a vacuum... I've never really liked it. I suppose I should admit that's just a gut feeling, since I don't think I have enough physical or philosophical training to truly explain why.

Well, look at it this way. To me, modern physics seems to be suggesting something entirely new about matter. Specifically, that matter isn't everything, and the vacuum isn't actually empty. There is this quantum vacuum where particles emerge in a sense, but those particles aren't quite "matter" yet. So, you have matter, you have nothingness, but then there's also this middle ground—a kind of "superposition" of matter and nothingness. It's like "some stuff" that isn't quite matter yet, but isn't strictly "nothing" anymore. Take the graviton, for instance; we can't detect it as a particle, so it isn't matter, but it certainly isn't nothing because it can exert a pull on matter. The existence of the graviton, or even dark matter, is definitely a form of information within the universe. In that light, I suspect the total amount of information in the universe is much greater than what is carried by matter itself. From that, I tend to conclude that information comes before matter; perhaps it somehow programs the matter, which then uses that matter to generate even more information. Though, I guess it's impossible to define exactly "what information is," since information is essentially the relationship between things. Therefore, information exists even when nothing else does, because that is the information regarding the relationship of that nothingness to the nothingness it resides in (or doesn't😁). That's why information is the absolute starting point; there can't be anything more fundamental than that. Is it God, then? Not exactly, but maybe it possesses a "will" to expand, or perhaps some kind of "self-awareness." 😬

Of course, all of this sounds very mystical, much like the idea of virtual particles, and a rational mind would naturally push back against it. A rational mind wants to find some tangible "stuff" that everything is made of—something solid to rely on. Personally, I lean more toward a Buddhist perspective where everything is essentially nothing, yet even that "nothingness" is actually something, because the fact that everything is nothing constitutes a piece of "information" in itself.

In my view, logic is one thing. There isn't some higher logic. There is only a level of knowledge (information) where, in 99% of cases, we are using almost the exact same logic our ancestors used twenty thousand years ago. Einstein's General Relativity isn't an example of new logic, but rather a new perspective. The logic remains old, even if the results (our understanding) are staggering.

See, if the brain were merely "matter," it wouldn't be able to be "filled" with such vast amounts of new information, unless information is the "stuff" that absolutely dominates over matter.

You, much like myself, seem to enjoy playing with absolutes.
That's true; in General Relativity, spacetime (the background) is the absolute, while everything else is relative. Now, you are taking information as your absolute (though I wonder, what exactly *is* information?) and, based on the logic of its origin, concluding that the universe might be a computer. Meanwhile, I am taking the human being as my absolute—not in a biological or anthropocentric sense, but in terms of our sheer strangeness and our sense of not belonging to this world.
The Turing machine... I suppose it’s just proof that logic and intelligence alone can't quite grasp the entire universe. And if they can't, then what can? Maybe poetry?

Poetry feels like information about that "nothingness" from which everything emerged. It doesn't go looking for God; instead, it creates everything out of nothing and just marvels at that void. That's why I think poetry is essentially more fundamental than religion. People tend to attach all sorts of religious, scientific, or cultural baggage to it, turning it into this messy soup where the core essence gets lost. But in poetry, for it to truly be itself, that core—that emptiness—is actually the most vital part. It's like a poet standing on a gallows, much like Villon, just laughing and singing about the sheer absurdity of existence.

But we end up back at the same question again. Does there have to be a reason for everything to exist?

It doesn't necessarily have to, though maybe there is a will involved.

That sounds good, I guess.👍
Yet, we find ourselves facing Hegel's unmoving mover once more. What actually constitutes the beginning?

I suspect it's a paradox. Perhaps the universe never actually "began" in any real sense, and it won't ever truly vanish either. Maybe it's all just one big illusion; there is no start or finish, we are just limited beings whose minds insist that everything requires a beginning and an end.

Personally, I find this fascinating. Cosmology is really the crown jewel of science these days. Why is the universe accelerating its expansion? What happens, say, in 100 billion years? Is the universe expanding because it possesses a will—where our own wills are merely Platonic shadows of that universal will—or is it just expanding nonsensically, pointlessly, without any explanation? I hope it isn't the latter; I want to believe in a reason. Otherwise, everything becomes meaningless, including our own will and desires, even if they are just primal impulses.

So, suddenly, dark energy emerges from "nothing." There has to be some kind of will present; the universe has a will, but that doesn't mean it possesses reason. Because of that, I guess people, acting as elements of reason, ought to master the forces of the universe to lend a bit of rationality to that expansion. 😍

Entropy is a trip. We have exactly one ordered state (the anthropic principle) and an infinite number of disordered ones. Our world exists only within that one ordered state, while all the others are just potential possibilities hanging out in a limbo of non-realization. Physicists try to sell us on the idea that our world is just one wild chance where "a bunch of monkeys randomly typing on typewriters" happens to crank out everything by Shakespeare, all while hiding behind entropy. They do this because explaining any other scenario would require them to admit there might be a specific purpose behind it all. Personally, the idea of such massive coincidences creeps me out. I'm much more comfortable with the idea of a multiverse where endless worlds exist side-by-side, or that our universe is just a single bubble in a boiling soup constantly churning out new universes.

Sorry. Got an urgent meeting.🙂
I'll pick this back up tonight or tomorrow.

Will 😁

A sign that there's a need for something?

Honestly, there’s nothing more annoying than people constantly trying to rename the exact same thing just to feel special... though maybe the opposite is even worse—calling totally different things by the same label. You’ve got the mystics on one side (because let’s face it, not every desire is created equal, right?) and then the materialists on the other (who think everything is just some big pile of physical drive).

But look, one thing is super clear: we know exactly what we’re doing when we call something "will." The real kicker is... why do we actually do it? Like, what’s the point of anything?

Why does a guy who's had a few too many at a dive bar suddenly feel way braver than someone stone-cold sober...
Or why does someone struggling with depression have thoughts that just hit differently...

It basically all boils down to that same massive question: "why anything at all?"
When we pointed that question at the universe, we cooked up God—basically a convenient noun to fix the problem.
When we turned that question toward our own actions, we invented "will" to solve it.

But hey, one thing is for sure: we sure do act crazy. Take me, for example—I'm sitting here typing this while I've got a hundred other things on my plate. Where does the energy to type this out come from? Why this specific post? And why this length? Why don't I just stop right now? Where does all this drive even come from... and why does it feel like this... 🤔

... because you want to be the big brother type...
... or...
... because you take care of the neighborhood... (... since you do... quite a few things... out of love for Zippy...)

dustyskipper3 said:I think I follow your line of reasoning. In that view, a human being isn't some cosmic mistake or an extra; rather, we are a possibility that just happened to manifest. It’s similar to how life itself was a potentiality that eventually came to be. I suppose the universe wasn't inherently intelligent or sentient at the very beginning, but its fundamental parameters contained the potential for those things, which eventually realized themselves. Early life was likely quite simple and barely intelligent—it might have been incredibly improbable that it would ever reach this level of cognitive complexity, but yet, here we are. What we really need to determine is whether this is truly an astronomical fluke. We have to ask if the anthropic principle within the universe is a wild, near-insane assumption, or if it's something reasonably probable, or perhaps even something inevitable that simply must occur. Your position seems to be the first one—that it's a freak occurrence. The religious perspective would be the last one, where it's certain. As for me, I land somewhere in the middle. I guess I'm a bit closer to your view, though perhaps only because I can't bring myself to believe I am so "exceptional" that the mere possibility of my existence had to be such a staggering improbability.

I hope you won't take offense, but I suppose... if I had to break down your perspective, I see it like this:

Heraclitus once said that everything flows, and I suppose you could say life and this whole world are constantly evolving toward some kind of direction. It seems to me that the act of creation is something uniquely human. Other living creatures—well, except maybe in extremely primitive circumstances—they don't really create; they just adapt. Only humans seem to take their environment and reshape it to suit themselves. If we were to take that logic and apply it to a higher plane, then maybe we could imagine that "someone" similar to a human being created this entire world. Of course, a religious God feels far too anthropomorphic, and if I try to dig into those specific motives, I feel like I'm stepping right into the realm of the absurd. From a purely scientific standpoint, I guess God doesn't exist, mostly because such a being couldn't possibly encompass the logical system of specialized disciplines that modern science is built upon. Science's absolute limit is perhaps imagining the universe as a massive computer, or maybe like some deterministic clock that was wound up at one single moment and has just been ticking away ever since. In either of those scenarios, I suspect we don't actually possess free will; it might all just be an illusion.
Maybe we should start by just... assuming that humans actually possess free will? I mean, if we take that as a given, would we even need God? Or perhaps the idea of the universe acting like some sort of massive, multidimensional supercomputer? It makes me wonder if all those complex theories about multi-dimensional realms would still be necessary if we truly had agency over our own choices. I guess it’s worth considering.

I find myself constantly dwelling on the idea that viewing a computer as a metaphor for the universe might just be a byproduct of our current cultural obsession with technology. It feels... I don't know, quite normal, actually. Every civilization seems to describe the universe and God based on its own fundamental settings and core characteristics. I suppose primitive tribes might see those patterns in lightning strikes or sudden storms. So, when you ask me this, you’re essentially asking if I am capable of stepping outside my own civilization to view things through the lens of some non-existent culture. I honestly don't know if I'm up to that. Maybe one would have to be God to truly achieve that kind of perspective. Even someone like Nostradamus—if his prophecies hold any water—had to interpret everything from the viewpoint of a medieval person. We can't truly grasp his meaning today because we can't fully inhabit his mind, or know exactly how much he knew versus what we know now. I suspect that simply trying to wrap one's head around what life was like for an ordinary person in a past era—say, Classical Rome, the Maya, or even any other non-Western society—would be enough to occupy the entire working life of a hyper-intelligent individual. Just to establish a boundary between "us" and "them," so we don't fall into the trap of viewing foreign cultures through a Western lens, but rather seeing them as they saw themselves. One would have to pore over their writings and study archaeological finds to get it right. And now, you're asking me to imagine some sort of archaeology of the future, stretching to the very end of time, to extract the essential elements of every single civilization and somehow conclude which one offers the most optimal picture of the universe? I... I'm not sure I can manage that. 😉🤷

But how can you even separate information from matter? If there isn't any matter present, then there’s nothing there—which means there's no information either. I mean, it's one thing mathematically to talk about an empty set, but it's quite another to actually have that empty set existing in reality. Information is a relationship. And if there is no matter, then there aren't any relationships (or connections) to speak of.
That whole concept regarding "virtual particles" popping in and out of a vacuum... I've never really liked it. I suppose I should admit that's just a gut feeling, since I don't think I have enough physical or philosophical training to truly explain why.

Well, look at it this way. To me, modern physics seems to be suggesting something entirely new about matter. Specifically, that matter isn't everything, and the vacuum isn't actually empty. There is this quantum vacuum where particles emerge in a sense, but those particles aren't quite "matter" yet. So, you have matter, you have nothingness, but then there's also this middle ground—a kind of "superposition" of matter and nothingness. It's like "some stuff" that isn't quite matter yet, but isn't strictly "nothing" anymore. Take the graviton, for instance; we can't detect it as a particle, so it isn't matter, but it certainly isn't nothing because it can exert a pull on matter. The existence of the graviton, or even dark matter, is definitely a form of information within the universe. In that light, I suspect the total amount of information in the universe is much greater than what is carried by matter itself. From that, I tend to conclude that information comes before matter; perhaps it somehow programs the matter, which then uses that matter to generate even more information. Though, I guess it's impossible to define exactly "what information is," since information is essentially the relationship between things. Therefore, information exists even when nothing else does, because that is the information regarding the relationship of that nothingness to the nothingness it resides in (or doesn't😁). That's why information is the absolute starting point; there can't be anything more fundamental than that. Is it God, then? Not exactly, but maybe it possesses a "will" to expand, or perhaps some kind of "self-awareness." 😬

Of course, all of this sounds very mystical, much like the idea of virtual particles, and a rational mind would naturally push back against it. A rational mind wants to find some tangible "stuff" that everything is made of—something solid to rely on. Personally, I lean more toward a Buddhist perspective where everything is essentially nothing, yet even that "nothingness" is actually something, because the fact that everything is nothing constitutes a piece of "information" in itself.

In my view, logic is one thing. There isn't some higher logic. There is only a level of knowledge (information) where, in 99% of cases, we are using almost the exact same logic our ancestors used twenty thousand years ago. Einstein's General Relativity isn't an example of new logic, but rather a new perspective. The logic remains old, even if the results (our understanding) are staggering.

See, if the brain were merely "matter," it wouldn't be able to be "filled" with such vast amounts of new information, unless information is the "stuff" that absolutely dominates over matter.

You, much like myself, seem to enjoy playing with absolutes.
That's true; in General Relativity, spacetime (the background) is the absolute, while everything else is relative. Now, you are taking information as your absolute (though I wonder, what exactly *is* information?) and, based on the logic of its origin, concluding that the universe might be a computer. Meanwhile, I am taking the human being as my absolute—not in a biological or anthropocentric sense, but in terms of our sheer strangeness and our sense of not belonging to this world.
The Turing machine... I suppose it’s just proof that logic and intelligence alone can't quite grasp the entire universe. And if they can't, then what can? Maybe poetry?

Poetry feels like information about that "nothingness" from which everything emerged. It doesn't go looking for God; instead, it creates everything out of nothing and just marvels at that void. That's why I think poetry is essentially more fundamental than religion. People tend to attach all sorts of religious, scientific, or cultural baggage to it, turning it into this messy soup where the core essence gets lost. But in poetry, for it to truly be itself, that core—that emptiness—is actually the most vital part. It's like a poet standing on a gallows, much like Villon, just laughing and singing about the sheer absurdity of existence.

But we end up back at the same question again. Does there have to be a reason for everything to exist?

It doesn't necessarily have to, though maybe there is a will involved.

That sounds good, I guess.👍
Yet, we find ourselves facing Hegel's unmoving mover once more. What actually constitutes the beginning?

I suspect it's a paradox. Perhaps the universe never actually "began" in any real sense, and it won't ever truly vanish either. Maybe it's all just one big illusion; there is no start or finish, we are just limited beings whose minds insist that everything requires a beginning and an end.

Personally, I find this fascinating. Cosmology is really the crown jewel of science these days. Why is the universe accelerating its expansion? What happens, say, in 100 billion years? Is the universe expanding because it possesses a will—where our own wills are merely Platonic shadows of that universal will—or is it just expanding nonsensically, pointlessly, without any explanation? I hope it isn't the latter; I want to believe in a reason. Otherwise, everything becomes meaningless, including our own will and desires, even if they are just primal impulses.

So, suddenly, dark energy emerges from "nothing." There has to be some kind of will present; the universe has a will, but that doesn't mean it possesses reason. Because of that, I guess people, acting as elements of reason, ought to master the forces of the universe to lend a bit of rationality to that expansion. 😍

Let me keep going.
You're spot on. You can only use metaphors—or any way of passing info along—based on actual experience. Think about it: an individual could try to describe the entire universe in their own private language, but that's completely worthless because it never reaches the status of actual information. For something to count as information, it has to have shared meaning or value. If there isn’t a receiver capable of reading and understanding it, then the information simply doesn't exist. Period.
Mark Torres14 said:

Are you actually asking if I’m capable of stepping outside my own civilization to view things through the lens of some non-existent society? I don't know if I am. Maybe I'd need to be a god to pull that off. Even Nostradamus had to interpret his "quatrains" from the perspective of a medieval man. We can't even fully grasp them today because we don't truly understand how a person from the Middle Ages thought—what they knew versus what we know now.

To truly understand anything, you need two things: subjective and objective distance from reality. We all get the subjective part—it’s the lens we personally build. But the objective side? That’s much harder. It’s supposed to be the intersection where all those individual biases cancel each other out. So here’s the real question: Can science actually capture the objectivity of the past when tackling a problem? Or is every "objective" scientific finding just stained by the subjectivity of the person holding the microscope? In short: Is it even possible for a person today to fully recreate the past, rather than just a hollow sequence of events?
Maybe "willpower" is just a fancy word for wanting to be objective.
Mark Torres14 said:

I honestly think you could spend an entire lifetime—a whole career for a genius, really—just trying to wrap your head around what daily life felt like for an average person in ancient civilizations. Think Greco-Roman, the Maya, or any non-Western culture out there. That alone is enough work. The goal is to draw a hard line between "us" and "them." You have to stop looking at history through a narrow, Western lens and actually try to see these worlds exactly how the people living in them saw them. You do that by digging through their own writings and studying the archaeology they left behind. But now, I’m being asked to play some kind of futuristic archaeologist? To scan every civilization from the beginning of time to the end of the world, strip everything down to its core elements, and somehow conclude which one provides the most "optimal" view of the universe? Give me a break. 😉🤷

I think I already laid out my take on how you—and I—interpret the "archaeology" of the past in that question above. You don't even need to look toward the future to see it.
Look, I know this is purely subjective, but I can't help it. At some deep level, every single person has their own private language that our standard way of speaking can only crudely approximate. It’s like there's this thing in my head, but I just don't have the words to get it out. And honestly, to satisfy my own curiosity—if you can even call it that—I need to have willpower. But curiosity itself is tied to perception and the senses. So what does that leave us with?😕
Quincy:

Here's how I see it. Modern physics is telling us something entirely new about matter. Basically, matter isn't everything, and a vacuum isn't truly empty. There’s this quantum vacuum where particles emerge, but those particles aren't quite "matter" yet. So, you've got matter, you've got nothingness, and then there's this middle ground—a sort of "superposition" of matter and nothing. Just "some stuff" that hasn't become matter but isn't "nothing" anymore. Take the graviton, for example. We can't detect it as a particle, so it isn't matter, but it certainly isn't nothing since it can pull on actual matter.

But what actually *is* matter?
As far as we know, it stops at the atomic level. Everything else is just a mathematical construct—they definitely exist, sure, but you wouldn't call them matter. A graviton is just a description of spacetime curvature. If it isn't matter, then what is it?
Maybe we're just looking at one side of Janus's face, while the rest stays hidden forever?
Let's go back to scholasticism. If there is a Prime Mover, or an Unmoved Mover, does the very act of movement imply an act of will?
Quincy:

The appearance of the graviton or "dark matter" is clearly some kind of information within the universe. Because of that, I think the total amount of information in the cosmos is way greater than what's carried by physical matter itself. My conclusion? Information comes before matter. It somehow programs the matter, which then uses that matter to generate even more information. But you can't really define "what information is," because information is just the relationship between things. Therefore, information exists even when nothing else does, because it's the information regarding the relationship of that nothingness to the nothingness it resides in (or doesn't😁). That makes information the absolute starting point; nothing can be more fundamental. Is it God? No. But maybe it has a "will" to expand, or even a kind of "self-awareness." 😬

Personally, these concepts of dark matter and dark energy feel incredibly weird and mysterious to me. They make up 75% of the universe, and we haven't a clue what they are. Meanwhile, we're out here trying to build a "Theory of Everything" using string theory. Fine, dark energy could be Einstein's cosmological constant, but what on earth is dark matter?
I'm having a hard time connecting those two ideas to the concept of "will" we're debating.
Quincy:

Of course, all of this sounds mystical, just like virtual particles, and a rational mind is going to push back against it. A logical mind wants solid "stuff"—actual matter it can rely on. Personally, I lean toward the Buddhist view: everything is essentially nothing, yet it isn't nothing, because the fact that everything is "nothing" is already a piece of "information."

But why would rationality be a limitation? I still don't see what else could possibly take its place if we're trying to understand the world objectively. Of course there's a mystical side to it.
Mysticism is a miracle, and miracles aren't symmetrical.

See, if the brain were just "matter," it wouldn't be able to "absorb" this much new information. That's only possible if information isn't just "stuff"—it has to dominate matter.

Can matter actually *be* information? Like, an electron doesn't even exist until we measure it.

Poetry is information about that "nothingness" everything came from. It doesn't hunt for God; it creates everything out of nothing and marvels at the void. That makes poetry more elemental than religion. Religion just tries to glue religious, scientific, and cultural baggage onto it until you get this messy soup where the core essence is stripped away. But for poetry to work, that core—the idea that everything is nothing—is exactly what matters. Think of a poet like Villon on the gallows, laughing and singing at the sheer absurdity of it all.

In my reality, God can only be a poet. A being that refuses to fit into reality. Do you think Vergil’s "waves" could ever crash against Borges' Aleph?

I think it's a paradox. Maybe the universe never actually "started" in any real sense, and it will never end. It's all an illusion. There is no beginning or end; we're just limited beings whose brains insist everything needs a start and a finish.

On the flip side, you have the idea that everything has a definite beginning and end, yet we are beings without limits.😁

To me, willpower is just an affirmation of freedom.

Mark Torres14 said:Let me keep going.
You're spot on. You can only use metaphors—or any way of passing info along—based on actual experience. Think about it: an individual could try to describe the entire universe in their own private language, but that's completely worthless because it never reaches the status of actual information. For something to count as information, it has to have shared meaning or value. If there isn’t a receiver capable of reading and understanding it, then the information simply doesn't exist. Period.
Mark Torres14 said:

Are you actually asking if I’m capable of stepping outside my own civilization to view things through the lens of some non-existent society? I don't know if I am. Maybe I'd need to be a god to pull that off. Even Nostradamus had to interpret his "quatrains" from the perspective of a medieval man. We can't even fully grasp them today because we don't truly understand how a person from the Middle Ages thought—what they knew versus what we know now.

To truly understand anything, you need two things: subjective and objective distance from reality. We all get the subjective part—it’s the lens we personally build. But the objective side? That’s much harder. It’s supposed to be the intersection where all those individual biases cancel each other out. So here’s the real question: Can science actually capture the objectivity of the past when tackling a problem? Or is every "objective" scientific finding just stained by the subjectivity of the person holding the microscope? In short: Is it even possible for a person today to fully recreate the past, rather than just a hollow sequence of events?
Maybe "willpower" is just a fancy word for wanting to be objective.
Mark Torres14 said:

I honestly think you could spend an entire lifetime—a whole career for a genius, really—just trying to wrap your head around what daily life felt like for an average person in ancient civilizations. Think Greco-Roman, the Maya, or any non-Western culture out there. That alone is enough work. The goal is to draw a hard line between "us" and "them." You have to stop looking at history through a narrow, Western lens and actually try to see these worlds exactly how the people living in them saw them. You do that by digging through their own writings and studying the archaeology they left behind. But now, I’m being asked to play some kind of futuristic archaeologist? To scan every civilization from the beginning of time to the end of the world, strip everything down to its core elements, and somehow conclude which one provides the most "optimal" view of the universe? Give me a break. 😉🤷

I think I already laid out my take on how you—and I—interpret the "archaeology" of the past in that question above. You don't even need to look toward the future to see it.
Look, I know this is purely subjective, but I can't help it. At some deep level, every single person has their own private language that our standard way of speaking can only crudely approximate. It’s like there's this thing in my head, but I just don't have the words to get it out. And honestly, to satisfy my own curiosity—if you can even call it that—I need to have willpower. But curiosity itself is tied to perception and the senses. So what does that leave us with?😕
Quincy:

Here's how I see it. Modern physics is telling us something entirely new about matter. Basically, matter isn't everything, and a vacuum isn't truly empty. There’s this quantum vacuum where particles emerge, but those particles aren't quite "matter" yet. So, you've got matter, you've got nothingness, and then there's this middle ground—a sort of "superposition" of matter and nothing. Just "some stuff" that hasn't become matter but isn't "nothing" anymore. Take the graviton, for example. We can't detect it as a particle, so it isn't matter, but it certainly isn't nothing since it can pull on actual matter.

But what actually *is* matter?
As far as we know, it stops at the atomic level. Everything else is just a mathematical construct—they definitely exist, sure, but you wouldn't call them matter. A graviton is just a description of spacetime curvature. If it isn't matter, then what is it?
Maybe we're just looking at one side of Janus's face, while the rest stays hidden forever?
Let's go back to scholasticism. If there is a Prime Mover, or an Unmoved Mover, does the very act of movement imply an act of will?
Quincy:

The appearance of the graviton or "dark matter" is clearly some kind of information within the universe. Because of that, I think the total amount of information in the cosmos is way greater than what's carried by physical matter itself. My conclusion? Information comes before matter. It somehow programs the matter, which then uses that matter to generate even more information. But you can't really define "what information is," because information is just the relationship between things. Therefore, information exists even when nothing else does, because it's the information regarding the relationship of that nothingness to the nothingness it resides in (or doesn't😁). That makes information the absolute starting point; nothing can be more fundamental. Is it God? No. But maybe it has a "will" to expand, or even a kind of "self-awareness." 😬

Personally, these concepts of dark matter and dark energy feel incredibly weird and mysterious to me. They make up 75% of the universe, and we haven't a clue what they are. Meanwhile, we're out here trying to build a "Theory of Everything" using string theory. Fine, dark energy could be Einstein's cosmological constant, but what on earth is dark matter?
I'm having a hard time connecting those two ideas to the concept of "will" we're debating.
Quincy:

Of course, all of this sounds mystical, just like virtual particles, and a rational mind is going to push back against it. A logical mind wants solid "stuff"—actual matter it can rely on. Personally, I lean toward the Buddhist view: everything is essentially nothing, yet it isn't nothing, because the fact that everything is "nothing" is already a piece of "information."

But why would rationality be a limitation? I still don't see what else could possibly take its place if we're trying to understand the world objectively. Of course there's a mystical side to it.
Mysticism is a miracle, and miracles aren't symmetrical.

See, if the brain were just "matter," it wouldn't be able to "absorb" this much new information. That's only possible if information isn't just "stuff"—it has to dominate matter.

Can matter actually *be* information? Like, an electron doesn't even exist until we measure it.

Poetry is information about that "nothingness" everything came from. It doesn't hunt for God; it creates everything out of nothing and marvels at the void. That makes poetry more elemental than religion. Religion just tries to glue religious, scientific, and cultural baggage onto it until you get this messy soup where the core essence is stripped away. But for poetry to work, that core—the idea that everything is nothing—is exactly what matters. Think of a poet like Villon on the gallows, laughing and singing at the sheer absurdity of it all.

In my reality, God can only be a poet. A being that refuses to fit into reality. Do you think Vergil’s "waves" could ever crash against Borges' Aleph?

I think it's a paradox. Maybe the universe never actually "started" in any real sense, and it will never end. It's all an illusion. There is no beginning or end; we're just limited beings whose brains insist everything needs a start and a finish.

On the flip side, you have the idea that everything has a definite beginning and end, yet we are beings without limits.😁

There isn't really a shared frame of reference that works for both the sender and the receiver. But we are talking about realized information here. For instance, if you have 20 GB on a hard drive, you technically possess that amount of potential information, even if it hasn't been fully utilized—and even if it has, the question remains whether it was ever actually transmitted or if anyone will even be able to make sense of it a few thousand years from now. It's like hieroglyphics; those texts inside the pyramids were messages waiting to be read, but before Champollion cracked the code, we just didn't know. Theoretically, maybe the information regarding the entire universe is already written down and we could read it if we managed to decode a universal cipher (kind of like genetic code), but I suppose we don't even have the theoretical time required to read it all. The lifespan of the universe is shorter than what would be needed to transmit all its data, especially since the universe is constantly expanding and the sheer volume of information keeps growing. So, we might potentially have access to all that data, but in reality, we're mostly just guessing.😉

That’s why we rely so heavily on simplifications and metaphors; we simply don't have the time to convey the full scope of information. And honestly, a human being—or the mind, specifically—can't even grasp the complete information about itself, though maybe some sort of superior intellect could. These kinds of informational paradoxes... I guess they make the whole thing feel a bit mystical.

To truly perceive something, you need both a subjective and an objective distance from reality. The subjective part is easy to grasp since each of us creates our own. The objective part is much more complicated; it's supposed to represent the intersection of all those subjective distances. So, the question is: is science actually capable of transmitting the objectivity of the past when examining a problem, or is every scientific "objective" view colored by the subjectivity of the person using it? In short, can a modern person truly reproduce the past in its entirety, rather than just a sequence of events?

Well, I suppose that comes down to how much a person understands themselves and their own subjectivity. In that case, one could treat themselves like a flawed measuring instrument and try to "calibrate" themselves to be more objective. It's a bit like aiming a rifle at a target; if you see you're hitting low, you adjust your aim upward. Similarly, a person might realize they have a tendency toward being overly optimistic or exaggerating things, so they correct their subjective assessment by a certain factor to reach something closer to the truth. It’s a shame people don't know themselves better; there would probably be a lot less nonsense and conflict in the world.😉😁

Maybe will is just a drive toward objectivity?

It’s difficult, I guess, because it’s usually tied up in ego perception. But maybe—and this is just a thought—if a person manages to rise above the egoic perception that keeps them from a total psychological breakdown and actually achieves that Jungian "self," where they are fully integrated with the universe, then their will could become a need for objectivity. You know, a drive for understanding, for grasping truth, for the essence of things. Since the universe doesn't have an ego, and God probably doesn't either—because God wouldn't need an ego to protect a fragile mind from reality when He *is* that reality—then it follows that the will of the universe and the will of a human in an ego-perceptive state are essentially at odds. A person lives in an illusion of duality, whereas the universe does not. Humans need distance to perceive things (subject vs. object), but the universe or God doesn't. So, this question of will is quite interesting, really. It sets us apart from nature, and maybe that's where the need for religion comes from—as a will to return to nature by transcending basic ego perception and building that "self." But that's more like the second topic you brought up.

I think I was referring to your (and my) understanding of the "archaeology" of the past earlier. You don't necessarily have to look toward the future.
I realize my way of thinking is strictly subjectivist, but, honestly, I just can't seem to step outside of it. It means that, on some deeper level, every individual possesses their own private language that our so-called consensus language can only crudely approximate. There are things I have in my head, but I simply lack the words to express them. However, in a human sense, to satisfy my curiosity (well, what even is curiosity?), I have to possess will. And curiosity is tied back to perception and the senses. What is the end result of all that?😕

Curiosity also seems to stem from this illusion of being separate from nature; it feels like a function of the left hemisphere, the rational side, while imagination belongs to the right.

But what exactly is matter?
As far as we can tell, it stops at the level of atoms. All those other particles are just pure mathematical constructs that undoubtedly exist, yet they can't really be called "matter." For instance, a graviton is just a description of the curvature of spacetime. If it isn't matter, then what is it?
Maybe it's just a consequence of us only seeing one face of the god Janus, while the other remains forever hidden from us?
To go back to Scholasticism: if there exists a Prime Mover or an Unmoved Mover, does the very act of motion represent an act of will?

Whatever leaves a trace in a bubble chamber certainly exists, unless we're talking about ghosts. 😬 But the issue is that it doesn't always exist as a particle. Sometimes it's a wave. Or a superposition. This idea about Janus seems right to me; if we could see the full picture, the whole world might look deterministically "lifeless"—we could describe it entirely—but because of quantum effects, a piece of the information always escapes us at the microscopic level. We're left with nothing but statistics. Does the act of motion represent an act of will... hmm... 🤷 theoretically speaking, without dimensions, there is no motion. Perhaps the emergence of something from nothing is an act of will, though to me, it feels more like an act of self-recognition, a desire for life, and will comes later. So, will cannot exist without a mover. Maybe original self-awareness is the Prime Mover that creates matter and the information upon that matter, but motion would imply converting potential energy into kinetic energy, which requires that potential energy exists first, born from that initial self-awareness.

I find these concepts of dark matter and dark energy to be quite strange... perhaps even a bit mysterious, if I'm being honest. It’s somewhat unsettling to think that they account for about 75% of the entire universe, yet we don't actually have any idea what they truly are. We seem to be grasping at straws. At the same time, there is this intense drive to formulate a "Theory of Everything," like string theory, which feels almost ambitious given our current gaps in knowledge. Maybe dark energy could just be Einstein's cosmological constant, but as for dark matter... I guess we're still largely in the dark on that one too.
I guess I'm having a bit of a hard time... seeing how those two concepts actually tie back to the whole idea of will that we've been discussing. It's a little difficult to bridge the gap there, maybe.

Perhaps there is some sort of latent potential energy—some undefined cosmic self-awareness, I suppose—that wants to act as the driver instead of that original prime mover. Right now, it seems to be working against the prime mover's will, since it’s accelerating the expansion of the universe and just increasing entropy... though I guess the prime mover's will would likely lean toward creating order within the cosmos. Dark energy doesn't strike me as a creative force; it feels more like something destructive, moving us toward this "Big Rip" scenario where the universe just tears itself apart through infinite expansion. But, maybe that won't actually happen. Perhaps the universe will eventually stabilize at some level, and maybe even we, as intelligent beings possessing our own agency, could somehow contribute to bringing order to the universe.

But, I guess... why would rationality be considered a limitation? I still don't quite see what could possibly take its place if we're actually trying to grasp the world objectively. It seems... well, it’s only natural that things feel mystical.

Mystery is a marvel, I suppose... though miracles rarely seem to follow any kind of symmetry.

Ugh, you should really tell that to the people posting all about sacred geometry over on those magic and mysticism forums.😍 I suppose I actually have a bit of a theory regarding the rationality behind the various PDFs being circulated on this forum, though I think I’ll hold off on sharing it for now. I wouldn't want anyone to take offense or feel targeted by my observations, I guess. 😁 If we look at this through the lens of calibration theory, mysticism essentially assumes that humans are inherently irrational beings. Because of that, any subjective conclusion someone tries to turn into an objective fact has to be calibrated against their own level of irrationality. But... I guess there’s a bit of a paradox there. How can an irrational subject actually calibrate their own irrationality? It seems like the distortion of reality could just end up getting even worse, right? Maybe that’s why mystical self-perception puts the individual right at the center, calibrating everything around themselves instead of calibrating themselves against the world. If someone doesn't like that approach, they can just walk away, I suppose. Or, if they enjoy being a follower, they can join the ranks of those following a guru. In the end, it all feels quite asymmetrical. Even the information shared is asymmetrical—the guru holds all the data and the key to decoding it, while the followers are left with nothing. They exist in completely separate reference frames, and I think they can only ever meet through some kind of mystical union.

Can matter actually be considered information? I mean, just a thought... like, maybe an electron isn't even a "real" thing until we actually go out and measure it. I guess it's possible that what we call matter is really just data being processed. It's a bit of a heavy concept, I suppose. Maybe.

It’s only a possibility, I suppose. But then again, even information sitting on a computer isn't really actual until you actually open the program. And who knows, maybe the whole thing just freezes up mid-way through... you can never really tell.

In my own version of reality, I suppose God could only ever be a poet. It would mean being fundamentally out of sync with existence, I guess. Do you think it’s possible that Virginia Woolf's "waves" might actually wash against the shores of Borges's Aleph?

Well, I suppose I mentioned Virginia as an example, mostly because I tend to view God as a being entirely devoid of an ego-driven perspective. It’s more like a pure stream of consciousness, which, at its absolute best, might only be expressed through something like "I am that which I am." So, I guess there are significant hurdles regarding any concept of an "I" or a localized sense of self. On the other hand, perhaps that divinity incarnates within us, allowing itself to be viewed through our own limited ego-lens—almost like a single drop in a vast ocean, just one tiny part of a grander Aleph being washed over by the waves of an immense, divine existence.

There’s this idea, I suppose, that everything follows a cycle—that there is always a beginning and an end—yet at the same time, we are beings without any real limits.😁

Maybe the start and the finish are actually the exact same thing... kind of like a palindrome that reads just the same whether you go forward or backward.😉

Willpower is essentially the psychological readiness of an individual to commit specific personal resources—namely energy, effort, and time—toward achieving a particular objective.
Something along those lines.
But if the goal is clearly defined, why does willpower fluctuate so inconsistently?
Is it a conflict between competing objectives, or simply following the path of least resistance?

slymaker9 said:Willpower is essentially the psychological readiness of an individual to commit specific personal resources—namely energy, effort, and time—toward achieving a particular objective.
Something along those lines.
But if the goal is clearly defined, why does willpower fluctuate so inconsistently?
Is it a conflict between competing objectives, or simply following the path of least resistance?

But what about those moments when you do something without any will at all, or maybe even against your own will?

silentcyclist3 said:But what about those moments when you do something without any will at all, or maybe even against your own will?

If a person acts against their will, it implies some form of external coercion or an outside threat.
Beyond that, action doesn't seem to require conscious intent; one can also act simply to satisfy an impulse without any external pressure involved.

slymaker9 said:If a person acts against their will, it implies some form of external coercion or an outside threat.
Beyond that, action doesn't seem to require conscious intent; one can also act simply to satisfy an impulse without any external pressure involved.

Your definition of will seems to include all the same elements present when someone is acting against their own volition.

I think impulses actually drive the will. 🙂 Maybe I got that wrong.😁

silentcyclist3 said:Your definition of will seems to include all the same elements present when someone is acting against their own volition.

I think impulses actually drive the will. 🙂 Maybe I got that wrong.😁

My view is that when a person acts against their will, they lack the psychological readiness to commit their resources.

Which impulse, for example?

slymaker9 said:My view is that when a person acts against their will, they lack the psychological readiness to commit their resources.

Which impulse, for example?

Well, if we are going to look at this through a psychological lens, I guess you could view the human subject as being composed of the id (the pleasure principle), the ego (the reality principle), and the superego (representing laws, morality, and so on). The ego sort of balances things out within reality by trying to mediate those extremes... so, depending on that balance, I guess one might have more or less willpower.

However, what we are attempting to do here is examine the concept of will from a somewhat more metaphysical or philosophical perspective—something that perhaps includes the will of the universe, or a first mover, and things of that nature.

slymaker9 said:My view is that when a person acts against their will, they lack the psychological readiness to commit their resources.

Which impulse, for example?

The mind has to find a way to make the goal happen.

Sexual drive. Like, if a stranger catches your eye. Usually, you're much more willing to put effort into talking to someone like that than to people you aren't attracted to.

The conclusion staring us in the face is simple and radical: the moralist fundamentalists and the tolerant multiculturalists are just two sides of the same coin.
In the moralist crowd, this obsession shows up as an envious hatred of the Other’s excessive joy. Meanwhile, multicultural tolerance toward the Other is just as warped as people think—it’s driven by a hidden desire for the Other to stay "Other" (much like my pets)😁, never actually becoming anything like us. Unlike those two stances, the only truly tolerant way to view the Other belongs to the authentic, radical fundamentalists. That’s the first lesson we Americans can take from the tragic history of Tibet; the second, perhaps even more vital one, is that Christianity introduces a radical break from pagan and Gnostic ideas about the illusory nature of reality.
Anyway, guys, that's all I've got for now, assuming I didn't miss the mark.
Cheers!

😍So, are we treating will as a voluntary component of an act, or what?
Once an action is taken, it just sinks into this deep, unreachable void and gains its permanence. Same goes for will. Once you set it in motion and take it out for a walk 😂, it has to slip straight into the subconscious. That’s the only way to get a real beginning—one that actually stays a beginning, an eternal one. A true start can't be self-aware. Once a willful act is done, it's finished forever. If a decision were ever brought back into conscious thought, it would basically mean it was revoked. Anyone who thinks they have the right to drag a decision back into the light of day via sheer willpower will never truly experience a beginning.

N/A

dustyskipper3 said:Well, if we are going to look at this through a psychological lens, I guess you could view the human subject as being composed of the id (the pleasure principle), the ego (the reality principle), and the superego (representing laws, morality, and so on). The ego sort of balances things out within reality by trying to mediate those extremes... so, depending on that balance, I guess one might have more or less willpower.

However, what we are attempting to do here is examine the concept of will from a somewhat more metaphysical or philosophical perspective—something that perhaps includes the will of the universe, or a first mover, and things of that nature.

Freud viewed it that way, and while it was certainly one of the more developed theories of its era—quite groundbreaking at the time—it’s clear by today's standards that it falls significantly short.
The idea that willpower is merely a tug-of-war between the id and the superego doesn't hold water for me. Based on my own observations of people in the real world, that theory simply doesn't align with reality.

N/A

dustyskipper3 said:Well, if we are going to look at this through a psychological lens, I guess you could view the human subject as being composed of the id (the pleasure principle), the ego (the reality principle), and the superego (representing laws, morality, and so on). The ego sort of balances things out within reality by trying to mediate those extremes... so, depending on that balance, I guess one might have more or less willpower.

However, what we are attempting to do here is examine the concept of will from a somewhat more metaphysical or philosophical perspective—something that perhaps includes the will of the universe, or a first mover, and things of that nature.

Look, you could easily read this as: You think you're such a big shot, but maybe you should go take a little stroll over to psychology.🤣
You can't be serious about wanting to kill me. Willpower. What are your thoughts on participating in philosophy debates?🤣
What should I get myself?🙈 And what about Chicago?🙂

If you take a look at this thread, you'll see that other members have been contributing alongside you and Cervantes. Besides, forum etiquette dictates that if you aren't replying directly to someone in the middle of a conversation, you address the original post. These discussions are public across all subforums, and anyone is free to jump in whenever they like. I didn't specifically intend to follow your or Cervantes' particular line of reasoning just so I could quote one of you and track your specific flow. To be honest, I didn't even have the patience or the inclination to read through it all. So, please, spare me the patronizing—or should I say, the "guidance." 😕
I personally favor a philosophy centered on the relentless pursuit of truth—a constant effort to uncover facts and calculate the reality of any given situation. To me, that is what true philosophy is all about.
In every direction. I understand it quite well—it’s light, flexible, and completely unburdened. If you want to put it simply, it's straightforward.😉

Look at that. Just look at how much I’ve overindulged, and what it's doing to my ego.🤣🤣🤣

silentcyclist3 said:The mind has to find a way to make the goal happen.

Sexual drive. Like, if a stranger catches your eye. Usually, you're much more willing to put effort into talking to someone like that than to people you aren't attracted to.

Exactly. That involves a conscious investment of personal resources. Essentially, you are investing energy, because everything ultimately boils down to energy—whether that’s labor, effort, or anything else.
It works like this: you have a drive, you want to satisfy it, and that's where willpower enters the equation.
But look, I have sexual drives, and I can satisfy them through either easy or difficult means, involving varying levels of energy expenditure. Why would I choose the harder path? Why would I invest more energy when the most natural thing to do is act economically and follow the path of least resistance?
I feel like there's a missing link here.
Where does the motivation come from to consciously pursue a more attractive goal at a higher energy cost? Because that is what true willpower actually looks like.🤷