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Amirtut

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    Ex-Muslim Atheist, British Pakistani, most of my time is split between the UK and Pakistan, not too uncommon for me to be in other places too. I'm dyslexic, so don't mind the typos. I'm also a student at university, I formerly attended a public school and lost interest in school, and lost a great deal of time blowing money on general shenanigans. Until my father stopped me having free reign of his bank accounts, and told me to find a job. So, I decided to go back to university and do that course I never finished 7 years ago, when I was last in Uni.
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  1. The burden of proof is not on me. If you say there is free-will then you have to show/define it. I can't show you an opposite of something which I believe to be an illusion, it would not make any sense. It would be like saying I think God is an illusion because I can disprove that a God exists (I am not called upon to prove a negative), that reasoning is fallacious. The burden of proof is on the person making the positive claim re: Russell's teapot. This is why I said from the start free-will is an illusion. By your argument we can say, three millennia of art, and culture is based on religion, therefore what does it really matter if a God exists or not? Or asking me the question how things would be different if we didn't have religion, these questions to me at least are pretty much meaningless from a purely philosophical view, I would go as far as to say they are red hearings. I don't think we're going to agree on this, free-will is one of the hardest problems in modern philosophy, as It has to deal with the issue of conciousness and qualia. Here is an interesting article to look into: http://time.com/3529770/neuroscience-free-will/ Now this isn't to say, that I don't live my life as if I do have free-will, I like to think I (as in having qualia sense) am making a decision out of free-will. I hate the idea of not having free-will, because that mean a lot of religious scriptural nonsense is correct to some degree in the sense of Qadar (fate) in Islam. But I am also a realist, and I have to accept the data which is pointing us towards the idea that free-will is an illusion, i.e. that we don't really have true autonomy, we just "feel" like we do.
  2. Hi, do you choose to defecate or do you have to does your body make your do it? Because this comes into the problem of uncertainty, at an anatomical level. Because there are always situations seemingly where you don't have free-will and situations seemingly were you do have free will. By the way, I'm a Compatibilist, but I still do believe free-will is an illusion. As pointed out by Stephen Hawking in the Grand Design, [https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=WnogjOIFY3oC&printsec=frontcover&dq=grand+design&hl=en&sa=X&ei=t_CfVP61No2raev5gTg&ved=0CCIQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=free%20will&f=false,(should be page 44) I don't know if you have the book, but if you do I recommend you read page 32 especially.
  3. That is perfectly understandable, I'm not a QM expert maybe someone can explain it better then me. What seems to be happening is a violation of special relativity namely that two particles are "communicating" with each other over space-time and distances that would mean that the communication or data is travailing faster than the speed of light, which we know is impossible in the standard model of physics. Einstein said something to the extent that an objects mass would increase proportionally as it reached closer and closer to the speed of light, eventually the objects massive would become infinite if it kept increasing in velocity to overtake the speed of light, so therefore nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, close to the speed of light yes, but not faster. This is the what Einstein called "action at a distance" although Einstein was later shown to be incorrect through bells experiment but there still was a problem with measurements, and there still is no clear explanation as to what is actually happening. Basically, QM isn't fitting into the standard model without breaking something in somewhere in the classic model which is well established, and all this comes down to measurement, and in QM there is no consensus. There are some very strange ideas coming out of QM. Like Parallel universes, String theory, Many-worlds interpretation, etc. For example, there is this crazy idea that there infinite universes, and somewhere in those universe there is an earth, there is you, and me. Actually some of those universes you could argue even a God exists because you have to accept every-possible outcome IS possible. I'm a King of the world somewhere in a parallel universe. If that isn't religious mumbo-jumbo being, replaced by "scientific" feel good, mumbo-jumbo then I don't know what is. We have people like Deepak Chopra selling bull-crap like "Quantum healing" and people take him seriously.
  4. In a physical sense non at all. A psychological change maybe but this is only an opinion let me explain why. It comes down to the interpretation of quantum mechanics, Einstein and Niels Bohr argued this for years, Einstein pretty much said we leaved in a deterministic universe, and ridiculed Bohr's arguments, saying that what Bohr is arguing for is something spooky, that atoms are communication with each other through space-time no matter the distance and they would have to do this faster than the speed of light which would be impossible due to Einstein's equations of mass–energy equivalence, i.e. that somehow atoms have conciousness and were doing spooky (magical) things, and Einstein dismissed this and said that it was actually Entanglement which was causing this, which was convincing at the time, but eventually even Einstein was at a loss, because it seems Bohr was right (it seems like something spooky is going on), and this was like 10 years or so of debates they had on this subject. And we're still not any closer to explaining what is actually going on. It's a problem for both physicists and philosophers.
  5. I agree with you, and as a law student, I decided to close my twitter account down. Everything will be deleted. I just can't risk my personal safety/anonymity online, because someone might find my tweets "distressing" and a causing "anxiety" ironic isn't that I feel more free an comfortable using the internet in Pakistan than I do when I am in the UK. It is silly and the Tories are pushing more legislation through which makes it easier for them to have the police on your back for saying something pretty much non-offensive. They're trying to shut down criticism, they want a society, no not a society they want an echo chamber. No dissent. I'm going to be switching to using Tor and other forms of privacy protection.
  6. It's getting ridiculously out of control. So what if you offend someone, that should not be a crime. I mean I am an Ex-Muslim and I have to pretty much censor my own tweets on twitter, in case I say something might be misconstrued as inciting hate. And this to when you're trying to argue with a Muslim whose quoting the Qu'ran at you and telling you how you're going to burn in fire, and that their religion is perfect, and that I'm offensive. This new story has just made me even more disillusioned. As an Ex-Muslim and coming out as an Ex-Muslim could mean me facing the death-penalty from the country which my parents are originally from. I have to be careful, I don't want my name in the papers Ex-Muslim (Amir tut) of so, and so street, has been arrested for saying Islam is X and Muslims found it offensive and reported him to the police. Just madness, individuals need protection from the mob, not the other way around.
  7. When I made my post I was thinking against the religious sense (idea) that there is an omniscient entity, that has given humans free will. No then free-will is an illusion. I should have made that clear. Also there isn't a real consensus in quantum physics that determinism is inaccurate or true. So, I'm going to scratch the bit where I said we do live a deterministic universe, because that wouldn't be accurate.
  8. Hi there, it's pretty much a coin toss between Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. I did read them along time ago, so I'm going to have another read of her novels just to refresh my memory.
  9. To answer the OP, I would not put too much emphasis on IQ test, every test has a methodology of data collection, some argue IQ tests are flawed a good example would be doing an IQ test on a non-English speaker or someone who does not have English as a first language. I scored poorly on them as I was dyslexic, and the condition wasn't that well known at the time, which baffled the teachers, since I was in the top tier in every-single academic subject apart from English and Math. In science I was attaining the highest possible results. At one point they thought I was cheating. In any case, I now have a certified stanford binet IQ which puts me in the 'gifted' category. My brother incidentally, has a much higher score than me, I think he is somewhere in the 160s he works in the defence industry designing weapons go figure. With regards to develop a higher IQ that isn't possible you either have it or you don't. Now that does not mean one can't be intelligent through knowledge retention or learning but that is something different to an IQ test. Humans are complex and the brain is susceptible to delusion, so no matter how intelligent you're you can still be deluded. And therefore I don't necessarily agree everything with what Ayn said. I would go as far as to say I was conflicted at times with her views, to the point of even entertaining the idea of whether or not she is a Russian agent, or that she has taken Marxism removed socialism from it, and added capitalism to it. After reading Prof. Richard Dawkins books I was sure that I don't want to live in a ultra "non-altruistic" world. Not to mention she pretty much had a crusade against Kantianism. And actually that tit-for-tat form of cooperation is the optimal strategy, in game theory. You lose less in a tit-for-tat strategy then you do in an always selfish strategy, i.e. attempting to maximum your own benefits every-single time. But I sure agreed with her on a lot of other things.
  10. I would argue free-will is an illusion, strictly speaking. If we accept that we live in a deterministic universe which we do.
  11. Hi there everyone, I pretty much covered what I am willing to share online with strangers in my profile bio if anyone is interested. So I have been a fan of Ayn Rand for sometime now I kind of lost interest, I was too busy having fun in the real world I suppose. If anyone has any questions for me don't hesitate to ask.
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