It's one thing for something to be true, but another to know it's true. I can believe I exist, and it may be objectively true, without actually consciously knowing it's true. I define knowledge as conscious mental awareness of truth. Objectively I may experience something, without knowing this experience is actually occurring (according to my definition). Epistemological skeptics believe humans cannot actually know anything, only believe things.

Many probably have landed at absolute truths, but they probably either cannot communicate them or separate them from non-absolutely-true beliefs.

There is something called Agrippa’s (or Münchhausen’s) trilemma which states that any justification of truth is endless unless you accept the circular, regressive or axiomatic argument. It basically describes the nature of proof. The axiomatic seems the penultimate solution, the only way to be justified in believing anything. So it appears that proof isn’t possible.

The sad thing is, nothing can be truly justified. All of our beliefs are essentially just a result of randomness. We may be objectively certain of our beliefs, but there's no way of guaranteeing certainty in beliefs. That is, we cannot verify our beliefs even though they may be objectively certain. The only way that was possible was if objective reality was constructed in such a way that you can only construct true beliefs.

The solution is to accept the foundational argument: an assumption that is accepted as true without proof. Nobody has come up with a compelling way to solve the trilemma otherwise.

Even if we make casuality-independent decisions, I feel we should not blame others for making bad decisions. Bad decisions happen, even though we have free will. Free will in itself doesn't teach us how to make good decisions. Personally I feel the question of free will is irrelevant. What matters is what we really do.

One can choose an evil path through life even though he/she possesses free will.

I believe we make decisions (not necessarily all ones) free from causation as well.

Just to confirm, you mean it influenced you partially, but not entirely? I.e. there are parts of your decision-making that are not a consequence of earlier decisions or experiences?

Was everything you’ve done in your life, up until now, a result of events that happened before it? Or is part of our decision-making free from the past? Have you made decisions that you could have made differently? Could you have chosen to become a doctor instead of what you chose to become?

Yes, people may act badly because they did not know better. The question merely is "Could we have done anything differently if we could somehow rewind our lives?"

How do I know that I know? I guess my doubt reaches the Munchausen trilemma.

That assumes that lie detectors are infallible.

Yes we may be influenced by external factors, but at the end of the day it's our own active choice. It’s your choice to be influenced by your environment.

But even that would be ultimately pointless, since existence itself is pointless.

Even if objective meaning existed, it would be pointless since we already had it. No matter how I look at it, I can only see one answer: All values are subjective. Even an eternal existence with objective meaning would be pointless. I subscribe to the subjective theory of value.

Don't be silly and go off-topic now.

You're so sensitive. If I say "objective truth", does that make you happier? What I'm saying is, we don't know for sure if objective truth exists or not, we only form opinions based on our experiences.

The truth is what we make it. We cannot verify if truth exists or not, what we perceive as truth is just our strong opinion.

Yes, I was. I was speaking merely conceptually about the nature of truth, not about the truth itself. Certainty ultimately boils down to assumptions.

Randomness and free will are different things. Freely willed actions are consciously chosen, so in theory you could choose the same every single time you're given the exact same situation. But you're not obliged to do that. Randomness cannot choose its outcome. And to be fair, TRNGs would generate an identical result if you willed absolutely identically since they rely on physical processes.

Those situations aren't absolutely identical down to atom level since they are different days, and on different days you have different levels of experiences and memories. Free will means that if you were to somehow revert the state of the universe back to last Saturday, before the beginning of that chess game, down to atom level, you could choose to open with D4. As I said, it's an absolutely identical situation. Literally.

What I'm saying is that given the same circumstances, a computer would always make the same choice. Free will is the idea that given an absolutely identical situation, two agents could choose differently.

Argue against or for free will all you want, but don't question my definitions. I'm just trying to make him understand what we're talking about. And no, computers are inherently deterministic machines, they produce the same output for the same input, so they cannot have free will.

Your idea that your starting point is unquestionable is, in itself, an assumption.

How do you know what constitutes certainty?

Determinism is an assumption as well. Likewise the assumption that death is the permanent end for a soul, or that consciousness ceases to exist upon biological death. But the universe is far more complex than that.

Free will is the idea that we have multiple options to choose from regarding the outcome of a particular situation. Thus, free will implies that freely willed actions could have been chosen differently. Free will implies that the world could have looked radically different if we had just exercised our free will differently.

In order to analyse truth you have to start somewhere. That starting point is inherently uncertain.

The free will debate is masturbation so people can feel security by believing their actions are beyond their control, freeing them from moral responsibility. On the other hand, by believing in free will you believe you have the power to steer your behavior in a positive direction, away from criminal abuse. If we don't have free will, we can never make any mistakes in our lives, since we could never have done anything any differently.

It's not religion. It's philosophy.

Things are genuinely created in the universe. The universe itself was created. It didn't "just happen".

Are all bachelors unmarried? Could there be a married bachelor? Can you be absolutely sure, without appealing to logic?

Law of identity. A=A. Lol.

Even if we happen to have mapped down an objective truth, we cannot be sure that we have actually mapped it down.

What we mean by "objective truth" depends on context. Objectively, objective truth is that which is true regardless of what we believe or want the truth to be. In real life, objective truth is that which follows either from definitions we've defined to be true (such as mathematics) or very strong opinions about the reality of our existences that seem reasonable at face value and which have shown to hold for a long time (for example, the world exists, sound exists, etc).

I firmly believe we possess free will. Determinism and randomness are our explanations of events, but only because they can be understood logically. This does not exclude the possibility of free-standing casuality, as in the case of free will. Just as a book has an author, thoughts are authored as well.

We can't know anything for certain. We make reasonable guesses based on our experiences and then we act on that. We can't have complete certainty about any of our beliefs. We reason from uncertain starting points, and uncertainty cannot generate certainty. Our knowledge can only be reasonably certain for the purposes of living life.

Objectively, objective truth is that which is true regardless of what we perceive the truth to be, want it to be or believe it to be.

Yourself. Does it matter if I go crazy in the next minute? Does it matter if I die in the next second? Does any fate we go through matter in the grand scheme?

Why does it matter if you die? You won't be here to have any feelings about it.