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merle_ August 30 2008, 11:39:14 UTC
I've always been a believer in getting my subconscious to do as much work as it seems capable of, being lazy by nature. ;-) Some things, like coding algorithms, it of course cannot do. But it does pretty well at a lot of financial things.

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oxymoronia August 31 2008, 01:43:30 UTC
You should become a high roller!

I suppose we should be grateful that our sub-conscious is looking out for us, but it whittles away even more at the idea that we aren't bound by determinism.

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merle_ August 31 2008, 02:19:01 UTC
Ah, the problem is that it's good at detecting patterns, but has horrible luck. I'll stick to the $2 tables, thank you.

Does it really mean we're deterministic? If you think about your subconscious, realize it's doing a great job, and try to find ways to use it, that could be considered an effect of will. Trusting something or someone who has not let you down (at least too much) doesn't mean you didn't have the choice of trusting or not trusting.

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oxymoronia August 31 2008, 04:41:58 UTC
True, although that raises the question of exactly what creates the frame-works that we use for the process of decision-making. I tend to think of it in terms similar to that of the nature vs nurture debate; nature sets the parameters, but nurture decides where it hits exactly.

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merle_ August 31 2008, 15:07:02 UTC
And there are too many completely unprovable unknowns once you get down to consciousness and original causes. I prefer the belief that people make their own decisions (but based on nature and nurture and learning) than that there is some cosmic puppetmaster controlling any of the variables.. but I do know it is an unprovable assumption.

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oxymoronia September 1 2008, 01:40:01 UTC
A lot of what appears to be external factors impinging on decisions could probably be attributed to the strength of the collective (which I think is often understated); if you look at some of what Sartre has written about existentialism, it encourages the consideration of the power of humans as a collective rather than just at an individual level.... which makes a lot of sense when the main factors that shape our lives (culture, communities, laws, whatnot) are human-created.

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merle_ September 1 2008, 14:18:19 UTC
Interesting; my take on Sartre was more that even though the collective believes something, it is important for an individual to act in a manner they think appropriate. Which, now that I type it, seems to imply that the collective does have great power and that striving against it is difficult. It has been many years, though, and I focussed mostly on his early fiction rather than treatises or later work.

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oxymoronia September 2 2008, 04:30:21 UTC
I've only read bits and pieces of his philosophical texts, but there's some variation because Sartre softened his stance in his later years. In Existentialism is a Humanism (which can be found on-line, and is only about fifteen pages long) he discusses the responsibility a person has to other human beings.

I was thinking it about in the context of a person being responsible (in part) for either the formulation or perpetuation of the values of a collective, since Sartre sees each individual as being a model of what they want others to do.

A group of discrete individuals isn't the same as a cohesive group, though, so I could be off the mark.

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