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Comment by hsitz | Hacker News Reader

Maybe you're familiar with Yuval Noah Harari's position in the free will vs. determinism debate. He argues that, not only is the idea of free will a myth, it's harmful to society: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/sep/14/yuval-noah-har...

Also, it seems you're getting at an interesting idea: we can understand determinism, and we can understand chance, but free will seems to want to combine the two concepts in some incomprehensible/nonsensical way, which nobyd can understand.

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But he has no evidence of either case. I read more about technological fears and the perspective is interesting, but personally I am more optimistic.

If there is no free will there is certainly a mechanism that fools us on that fact for any practical purpose. We also strive for control, at least for or own lives, and there are certain elements in his perspective that shifts the topic to that instead towards the prevalence or absence of free will. The discussion around free will are ancient, so are discussion about ascension (mostly through unpopular topics if we are honest to ourselves) or elevation above others. I am used to it in engineering circles but am still able to see it. Could also be some coping for how often he sees others being manipulated.

Sounds critical now, but I believe he is a nice guy.

Combining them is easy. Lookup Compatibilism, which is the dominant view among philosophers.

Yes, so easy it doesn't really combine them. Compatibilism gives an explanation that essentially redefines what is meant by "free will". Compatibilism makes compatible a concept of determinism and a specific concept of "free will". Yes, it gives a coherent way of speaking about these two seemingly contradictory things; enabling us to avoid nonsense or self-contradiction. However, the compatibilist notion of "free will" is in fact incompatible with what most people mean (or think they mean) when they say they "have free will".

> However, the compatibilist notion of "free will" is in fact incompatible with what most people mean (or think they mean) when they say they "have free will".

I disagree, and the data seems to disagree as well: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/274892120_Why_Compa...

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