I’ve always struggled to understand the appeal for mind altering substances. Whenever I tried it, it just felt like a dream where I wasn’t fully in control of my thoughts, and I never liked it. Why do humans want to escape their mind and avoid reality? How is it an advantage?

I understand your struggle, since yours is an atypical reaction to alcohol.

As to the advantage, while I can identify admittedly minor competitive advantages, it is my opinion and experience that the main advantage of alcohol consumption (especially when alcohol was invented) is personal, not competitive.

Critiquing "Western civilization" begs the question: as opposed to the alternative of... Eastern civilization?

"People are responsible for their actions"
— Tzeentch

Responsible to whom?

Depends on perspective.
Legally? To the state.
Morally? To yourself.
Ethically? To your "community" (depending on whose standard you are referring to).

Exactly, thus the desperate went outside the system (just like now).

Well the OP inquires about the "origin" of antisemitism, which predates Modern community behavior by millenia. Though kudos to you for not a bad review of some reasons for it's perpetuation.

In my opinion, the origin lies closer to the Jewish rules prohibiting usury (as was common in antiquity)... BUT only to others Jews, ie allowing (encouraging?) usury upon Gentiles.

Well since in Real Life here on planet Earth while physical systems are getting more and more complex, biological systems are rapidly becoming simpler and simpler. If current biological trends are extrapolated indefinitely, there will be a zoo, a corn field and an industrial feed lot.

It's erroneous on it's face.

Arguing about charitable giving loses sight of the fact that by definition it is voluntary, that is free of moral obligation. If it was obligatory it wouldn't be a charity, it would be a tax.

The tactics used by groups have more to do with the technology and infrastructure available to the warring parties than their moral superiority. Sure, Israel's job would be easier if Hamas fighters all wore uniforms, grouped up under flags, had military bases far away from civilian populations, and abandoned guerrilla tactics and fought "conventionally". But would anyone logically do that if you have little to no relative war resources? No doubt the pilot zooming by at 350 knots, feels morally "cleaner" than the ground fighter looking ther victims in the eye. But again, that's more due to resource availability than moral superiority.

Nah, much more likely to be:

L. Did you strike my client with your fist? Yes or no.
D. Well, he came at me with a tire iron...
L. I asked you YES or NO did you strike my client with your fist?
J. Please answer yes or no.

Exactly my point. Lawyers are almost universally understood to be a prime example of someone uninterested in the truth, and instead seek to manipulate others to give answers that serve the lawyer's best interest.

Though one can argue there's no such thing as an inherently "yes/no" question, just askers not interested in the whole truth, instead seeking to artificially constrain answerers with arbitrary "rules" predefining "acceptable" answers.

Fantastic song but it's describing 1958's outlook.

Uummm... I see a greater problem with the artificial constraint of the set of possible answers than I do with the questions, per sè.

Wow. Where to start?

First, the robots that beat humans at rock, paper, scissors 100% of the time essentially cheat (that is they don't have any "thinking" algorithm) since their camera sees the human hand start whichever motion their human opponent has chosen, then with superhuman speed, has their mechanical "hand" display the winning hand rapidly to end the motion simultaneously with the human, thus fooling the human into thinking the two "chose" at the same time.

As to robot vs robot, since there is no "data" to enter into the algorithm to truly predict what the other robot will choose, the programmer has used some other way to come up with a choice. If one knows what the algorithm is, one can reproduce it.

As to pondering leading to different choices with the same input, I agree with you that humans commonly use the same analysis based on memories, emotions, objective variables such as price etc, however the priotization of the numerous variables leading to different choices in essentially identical situations is a common human experience. Any lay person has experienced this countless times.

If what you imagine is going on in the Black Box of human decision making was actually true, when faced with a decision between two choices of equal merit, humans would be unable to make a choice, yet we do every day.

Well the programmer of the robot can predict with 100% accuracy what his robot is going to choose. Unless his program notes (accurately) that the three options are equally probable and therefore it chooses randomly.

As to the factor, lay persons call it "thinking" or "choosing". I'm not much into labels. If you want a scientific label, sorry, it lies within the Black Box of human decision making therefore no one has worked out the intricacies of that.

One can know the initial conditions perfectly and still not be able to predict the outcome

I’d love to hear the details of this trivial experiment.

If a Determinist can’t use his Determinism to predict outcomes, what is the practical value of this Determinism?

Got it.

There are some things we know and others we don't. We know there are initial conditions before a "decision" is made (though don't know them in granular detail), we don't know the details of the process of decision making (it is thus essentially a Black Box) and we know that when faced with "choices", decisions of individuals can be predicted much better than random chance but nowhere near 100% of the time.

Obviously folks guess how the Black Box works. One possibility is that it's workings are predictable solely through physical laws, like neurology. Another acknowledges that physical laws play a role (perhaps a major role), but there are also factors that have not been demonstrated to be predictable solely by physical laws, like psychology.

I suspect that the impact of this factor is likely at the level of the prioritization of the various initial analyses (the pros and cons of various choices) to come up with the final decision.

This would explain why your memories of burritos and tacos would be the same, their prices would be the same etc, but sometimes you choose one over the other.

As a non professional in this field (you?), I don't follow the cutting edge of research but it is my prediction that this question will not be answered definitively in my lifetime.

I have a different definition of a free choice, one where it very much is a good thing

Okkaaayyy... You may be unimpressed with those who I have conversed with before (which is entirely reasonable) yet at least when they state a contrary opinion or fact those represent their beliefs. I guess I assumed too much in this exchange.

While I am happy to reply to your queries, could you please enlighten me with what you're referring to above. It is tedious having an exchange where one party's input is a set of opinions/understandings that they don't actually believe in.

This is pretty funny since by this definition, we have free will even in a deterministic world because antecedent brain state X does not always lead to the same decision being made since decisions are not solely a function of the brain state. The decision of when to cross the street depends far more on the traffic than it does the antecedent brain state

Well, since in your view, Determinism can have antecedent state X leading to many possible resultant states, that (as I stated previously as you quoted) is a "Determinism" that I can get behind.

I am somewhat amused that you're stumped as to what additional factors might be responsible for multiple resultant states that are not "randomness", yet you provided one yourself. Namely traffic patterns when deciding when to cross the street.

Bottom line, I have previously conversed with Determinists who do believe 1) it's all about the antecedent brain state, 2) what we subjectively experience as pondering is an illusion and 3) there is only a single possible resultant state. I apologize for assuming your brand of Determinism was similar. You've been clear, though that none of those 3 features of other's Determinism is part of your understanding of it. Like I said before, that's the kind of "Determinism" I can live with.

You don't know?

Whatever the absolute judgement on the Hiroshima bombing is, relatively speaking the firebombing of Dresden had similar casualties (to the Nagasaki bombing) but didn't shorten the war by 10 minutes, so is morally worse.

You seem to completely deny the concept of choice at all. Why? Are you trying to argue that you should be held responsible for any actions? That would be like putting your hand in the fire and subsequently complaining that it's not your fault that you no longer have a hand.

Huh? As a Free Will believer, I completely support the concept of (true) choice. In other words I believe that the conversation we each have in our minds where we go over the pros and cons, possible and probable outcomes, memories of similar incidents in the past, what have you, is where the choice is made, ie exactly as we perceive it in real time. I don't believe that the outcome is set before all of the aforementioned "pondering" by the physical and electrical brain state just before the act of "pondering". To my way of thinking this latter situation would amount to no True choice.

No one has been able to predict human decision making, no matter how detailed their knowledge of the antecedent state might be. If such predictions could be made, it would be concrete proof of Determinism and a solid refutation of Free Will.

Thus analysis of antecedent states and their respective resultant outcomes act, statistically as if, humans actually makes decisions through pondering various aspects of the subject matter at least partially separate from their antecedent brain state. Though while consistent with this, if falls short of proof of it.

As a non-expert in the history of leadership, but a close observer of leaders in the present day one aspect of why things are the way they are now is opaque to me, but another is crystal clear. I do not feel confident what exactly accounted for the ancient historical dominance of men in leadership. I don't personally find the tired, old, wornout tropes about testosterone or aggressiveness or physical strength very compelling. But it is clear to that once men were ensconced in power how that tradition was passed down so we currently live in a society that talks the talk on equal opportunity, yet doesn't walk that walk.

Why? Because the Modern religious live in a soviety that holds science and technology in high regard, therefore logic has more credibility that faith (even among the faithful) thus the draw towards proofs.

Their biology calls them to provide, just as they did hundreds of thousands of years ago in hunting parties

Your post hoc analysis suffers from a fundamental misunderstanding of statistics when trying to use biological and mostly psychological differences between men and women to rationalize what has happened and more importantly what should happen moving forward.

Specifically I am referring to the exaggeration of the differences between the psychological or biological averages of the genders while ignoring the much wider differences within each gender.

Thus, when describing populations, it makes more sense to divide them along the descriptors you are studying, say leadership or aggressiveness or nurturing and including those of both genders with those skills, than by gender. When viewed that way, it is easy to calculate that say women are underrepresented in powerful and wealth generating positions beyond what you would expect based on their innate skillset. That is accounted for by feminist scholars (logically) by the effect of power dynamics and gender bias.

Exactly. The physical realm is where proof and logic reside. The metaphysical is where belief and faith rule.

Thus why "proofs" of the existence (or nonexistence) of gods are nonsensical on their face.

While this is surely not the whole story I think, partly, there is value to disagreement. Agreement allows us to proceed, but philosophy doesn't proceed; Or when philosophy agrees it stops being philosophy and becomes something else. This doesn't accord well with philosophical traditions, which seem to have a sort of progress to them that's a mixture of agreement and disagreement, so it's definitely not the whole story. Only I think it worth highlighting that rational disagreement is valuable, and so the elusiveness of rational agreement isn't necessarily a fault against philosophy

Disagreement is, I agree, predictable and ultimately desirable. However, there should be agreement on the step up of the problem, that is what is known, what is unknown, what is opinion. Disagreement on what we theorize is the unknown is natural.

Basically, there are three temporal steps in what we label decision making: just before, during and the outcome. The outcome is completely observable, the brain state status before is grossly (but not finely) understood and what happens during is perceivable internally but essentially not understood externally. Determinists (that I commonly interact with) say that the brain state BEFORE Determines what happens DURING and therefore afterwards. Therefore the three are linked such that observed variation in conclusions are caused by variation in the brain state before (since no true variation occurs during). Believers in Free Will (that I know) believe that the brain state before influences (but does not determine) the process during decision making, such that at least some of the final outcome is created by the pondering or thinking step independent of the initial brain state.

None of us know the gradular details of human decision making,. That's why there is a logical debate between Determinists and those who believe in Free Will. Neither can disprove the other at the current state of knowledge. All we can do it observe what goes into and comes out of the Black Box that is what I called: "during" decision making.

Every single group of observational data ever collected is consistent with Free Will, though that is absolutely NOT proof that Free Will exists. Basically it comes down to what seems most logical/reasonable to you.

There are other choices available. There is still a choice being made, and it is Y. It being entirely deterministic or not seems to have nothing to do with the fact that a choice is being made, and by something capable of considering alternatives.

Your definition of 'choice' seems to be different than the usual one, which is a selection between multiple options. You apparently think the alternative options are not open to being chosen, rather than your processes having the option, but rejecting them.
Going to court and pleading 'not-guilty because physics made me do it' doesn't stand up. Your criteria for making the selection is what made you do it, and it is that criteria for which you are responsible

I am, in fact saying your use of the word "available" is nonstandard. If an "alternative" will never be selected, is it really available? I do not consider "possible" and "available" to be synonyms. It's really a matter of perspective. From the perspective of POSSIBLE conclusions, there are many. From the perspective of the purported decider, there was always going to be one conclusion. Identical to the situation where there is only one possible solution.

Kind of like two sports betting guys arguing whether the "better" pro team can ever lose, since some consider the outcome of the game as the definition of "better". Well, if you use that definition (the better team is the one thst beat it's opponent), then, no, the better team can never lose.

As to your last paragraph, some would label what you call: "your criteria" as Free Will.

That doesn't seem at all obvious to me. An agent who doesn't know what the future holds can still undergo a process of "decision making" even if that agent is fully deterministic and it will always make the same decision given the same starting state.

A deterministic chess program for example, which looks at a number of legal moves and decides which one it "likes" more based on some position-rating algorithm

True, from the "decider's" perspective, he's going through the motions we commonly associate with decision making, but to an outside observer who has true insight (in this example of Determinist universe), would see that as Determinists claim, the idea of choice (and thus a true decision) is an illusion.

In your example you're presenting as if the program and the algorithm are two separate entities akin to the man and his mind. In reality all there is is an algorithm, which is at it's core a glorified set of equations. Just as an algebraic equation doesn't "choose" between all possible answers, finally arriving at the one, true answer. It just has one true answer.

Just to be clear, the ANTECEDENT brain state is what I describe as the physical and electrical state of the brain. While pondering occurs (obviously) DURING decision making (assuming there is, in fact decision making). Thus they are different entities, but are not mutually exclusive.
— LuckyR
But the subsequent 'pondering' is also describable as physical and electrical state of the brain. They're just a little bit later. This is of course presuming that 'pondering' is a function of the brain, which plenty of people deny.

Long story shory, in Determinism antecedent state X always leads to resultant answer Y, never Z.

Given said determinism, agree. It doesn't mean that decision making is not going on, that choices are not being made. That would be fate, something different than determinism.

In Free Will antecedent state X can lead to resultant answer Y or Z depending on the decision making process which occurred.

There you go. That definition says that there can be no free will given deterministic physics, and it even goes so far as to imply that truly random acts are the only example of free will.

To my understanding your comments make no sense.

Firstly, if antecedent state X ALWAYS leads to resultant state Y, there can't be decision making going on since there are no other choices to choose between, it's always going to be Y. Thus the Determinists are right (decision making is an illusion) in that scenario. "Fate" is just a layman's label for the result they notice without a theory (which Determinists have) as to why.

Second, I am at a loss how you got your bolded conclusion from what I posted (and you quoted). Perhaps you're not getting that in a Free Will universe, Deterministic physics doesn't fully account for animal decision making, that is in addition to physics, there's a process called... you guessed it... Free Will (randomness not required).

This makes it sound like 'pondering' and 'physical and electrical state of the brain' are necessarily mutually exclusive, sort of like 'computing' and 'transistor switching' are similarly exclusive, instead of one consisting of the other.

Just to be clear, the ANTECEDENT brain state is what I describe as the physical and electrical state of the brain. While pondering occurs (obviously) DURING decision making (assuming there is, in fact decision making). Thus they are different entities, but are not mutually exclusive.

Long story short, in Determinism antecedent state X always leads to resultant answer Y, never Z. In Free Will antecedent state X can lead to resultant answer Y or Z depending on the decision making process which occurred.

Determinists state that decisions are an illusion (in favor of antecedent brain states instead). I happen to believe that while brain states can and do INFLUENCE decision making, that there is another factor beyond brain states that participate in TRUE decision making (just as we internally perceive every day). You can label this factor Free Will, or pondering or thinking or true decision making. It doesn't matter what you call it.

Thus if you walk up to an ice cream cone counter and have to choose a flavor, Determinism says that your brain state will Determine which flavor you will "choose" though that choice is an illusion, you were always going to "choose" vanilla because you were in a vanilla brain state when you walked up. All of the pondering you perceive in your thoughts did not determine vanilla, it was just window dressing before the Determined conclusion of vanilla was voiced.

I believe that the pondering we all perceive in our minds in fact do play a role (perhaps a smaller role than we assume) in the final outcome, such that if we had a different internal conversation on the various pros and cons of vanilla, we may have chosen chocolate, even with the identical antecedent brain state.

Well part of the problem is that Free Will is purported to explain animal decision making only (not simple physical systems), thus terms like "non-deterministic world" implies that somehow nothing causes anything.

As to what a Free Will world looks like, it looks like our world. Remember it is Determinism that tells us that what we perceive as decision making every single day is, in fact an illusion and that in reality "decisions" are not the product of pondering, rather are determined by the physical and electrical state of the brain before the supposed "decision" is made.

The problem with statistics, especially about "race" is that folks tend to accept and repeat stats that support their worldview and downplay or ignore those that challenge their worldview. Thus it is not only possible, but rather it is routine to be able to promote bias through using (cherry-picked) statistics. Or to put it another way, folks come up with subjective conclusions "supported" by objective data.

Well I don't know why it doesn't work for you, since you neatly summed up my point.

Activist scholarship is dog shit, in my opinion. Woke corporate racism, that Diversity, Equity, Inclusion mantra, flows straight from that rotten core. The Skokal and grievance studies affairs basically prove that they peddle in nonsense.

Sure, the pendulum is swinging off center in that particular direction. But not acknowledging that in the past the pendulum was swung in other directions equally, or more off center that many people labeled "normal" is being somewhere between naive and disingenuous.

Can't be? Not really. Won't be? Sure, lots of them. Basically look at any luxury brand now. They're all "natural", "organic" or "handmade". Just because you can automate a process doesn't mean you will.

CRT, like all theories, is open to legitimate criticism. However any intellectually honest review of it has to acknowledge that at this point both CRT and (especially) it's criticism have been co-opted by folks with political agendas to rile up their bases.