Two Cent Musings

I just found out how my tumblr actually looks like. My gosh is it bland. 

People that value animals over human life disappoint me. 

Some thing I never really understood about people was their need to be unique. The more I think about it the less meaningful it seems. I think I would rather be genuine than unique. I think when people strive to be unique, they just end up looking like everyone else.

Also, Cuban cigars in Japan. Awwww yeaaahhhh.

I can`t be alone here in Japan. Everywhere I go there are people, and it`s stressing me out. Three more weeks, gahhhhh.

$0.02 on The lack of our freewill.

A very common belief among people is that we as human being have freewill. Considering how we as human beings are confined to physical bodies, I do not see how we could have freewill. We are not exempt from laws of causation or the laws that we find to be consistent in the universe.

According to Merriam-Webster.

Definition of FREE WILL

1: voluntary choice or decision <I do this of my own free will>2: freedom of humans to make choices that are not determined by prior causes or by divine intervention

Definition of DETERMINISM

1a : a theory or doctrine that acts of the will, occurrences in nature, or social or psychological phenomena are causallydetermined by preceding events or natural laws b : a belief in predestination2: the quality or state of being determined

A voluntary choice would require that actions not be predetermined to happen due to prior events. When we as humans take an actions, for instance raising our hand, we perceive it to be an action of our freewill. We view the action as 1.) I decide to raise my hand 2.) My hand is raised, but it isn’t so simple. Whenever we decide to take an action, it begins with a nerve impulse in the brain that travels down through nerves until it reaches its destination and can trigger the desired muscle movements. Now, you could say that the original nerve impulse is sent because we will it to be, and thus we have freewill but closer examination would show us that, that is not the case. We would not have sent an initial nerve impulse for an action without prior stimuli, in this case perhaps a teacher asking a question to the class. This series of cause and effect can be seen with anything material, so to be exempt from the law of cause and effect, the substance must be immaterial. Here many people would point to the “soul” and say that it provides the necessary immaterial part for us to have freewill. The issue here is, if something is immaterial, how can it affect material things? If something is not made of material or say atoms, how would/could it have an affect on that material world? Note: Although some people point out that there was an experiment done in which dieing bodies were weighed before and after death with a 21gram difference, this does not support the idea of a soul because. 1.) It would mean the soul is material, thus subject to the same cause and effect principle. 2.) The experiment was done in 1907 by a doctor who used a homemade scale. The experiment was not viewed by anyone but him, and has not been done since. The evidence from this angle of argument has far too weak evidence to be considered valid. We also know that we are made up of atoms. All atoms occupy a place in spacetime and has a specific vibration. This would mean that technically, we would be able to predict the future of every atom if we had the technology to calculate it. On a bigger scale, we can look at a car. If we know the location and velocity of a car, for example: a car moves forward at 10 miles per hour for one hour, we can calculate where it would be after a given amount of time, in this case 10 miles from the initial point. Same thing can be applied to an atom, theoretically in that if we know its location and velocity(vibration), we can predict its movements for however long we wish.  

You could point toward quantum-mechanics and say that quarks defy the cause and effect principle, but this would not help in freewill. The movement of quarks are seemingly random, in that we do not see a reoccurring pattern in their behavior but that doesn’t mean we have freewill. Pointing to quarks as a source of freewill would only lead us to be literally the result of random chance.

Although we may not have freewill, this does not mean that we can sit around and events will occur of that we are not responsible for our actions. We do have some freedom in that we do not know our future. We can predict to our best ability the future, but that does not mean we know for sure what will occur. From our perspective we seem to have freewill, and every time we make a choice or decision it feels as if we had made that out of freewill.  Furthermore, events will not occur if one were to just sit around and wait for events to happen. One could not “wait” for an event to occur, because the waiting would have been the predestined event, as well as the boredom that comes with it.

Rushed toward the end.

$0.01 on Problems.

 This is written on a whim, and not very thought out. This post may very likely be altered later.

When people complain about how hard their life is, they seem to be criticized for their ignorance of the “Real Life” or “real world”. I do believe that certain problems that people from higher economic states face are indeed trivial and not worth complaining about, but I don’t think all of them are. Are problems such as “where can I get food” necessarily more “real” than problems such as “why am I here” or “Is this ethical”? Are issues regarding ones own health more important than existential problems? I think that the issue isn’t about people from higher economic classes complaining, but them complaining about issues that don’t matter.

Seriously people, why can’t you be asking questions like “is eating animals unethical” or “what is the morally correct choice in this situation” and complaining about how it is a hard decision to make, rather than complaining about something as trivial as your coffee? I think that these kinds of issues are at least on par with survival issues, if you take in to consideration that these are problems that only humans face. Worrying about food and water and shelter are all issues that animals face, but how many species contemplate if their existence is meaningful? I mean, if someone reaches the conclusion that life is meaningless, than there is a chance of them to voluntarily end their life. I think that if someone complains about these kinds of issues, than it is justified. 

I’m surprised at the amount of people whose identity is so contingent upon others suffering.