Decisions Bobicians Foficians

  More like fauxcisons, amiright?
Poor puns aside, at noon I started the coin flipping. I would have started this morning, but I was so damn tired I couldn't even bring myself to give up deciding things. Lazily going along with habits (or going along with the destiny, hmmmmm?!) is so much easier than trying to remember what you decided Heads meant.

2/14/11
12:00=> Heads eat, tails work => Heads => Heads pizza, tails pasta => Heads
Only problem with this is that is there are only two slices of pizza left, so inevitably I'll be eating the pasta, so I suppose all I've done is delay things a bit.

12:05 => Heads movie, tails surf web => caught coin, flipped it onto hand, fell off onto bed, tails (curses.)

12:57 => heads research, tails eat more => completely missed catching the coin, fell on bed, tails.

1:22 => heads movie, tails keep surfing => caught the coin, flipped it on my hand, heads. Huzzah!
So day one is pretty much done. It stops after 1:22 because I watched a 2 hour movie, surfed the web for an hour, and then fell asleep. Now I've eaten and have to get on to homework, which all must be done, free will to fight it or not.

2/15/11
My life is reeeeally dull.
1:15 => heads chicken sandwich, tails cheese sandwich => tails.
So then I got downstairs and they were serving regular chicken, so I was like, aaaw snap, I will be eating chicken anyway! But then it was jerked chicken, which is really spicy so I avoided it like tonight's homework.
I don't think I've made any other flips today because I've just been in my room for most of the afternoon.

2/16/11
  So I got into an interesting discussion after class with my philosophy teacher. I brought up the whole "predetermined" idea behind a coin flip. I asked her why there isn't a whole group of determinists out there who live by the flip of a coin or the roll of a die. Her answer was basically that it was already predetermined that I would flip the coin in the first place. If I was going to leave a coin flip to fate, I should technically flip a coin to see if fate thought I should flip the next coin and so on and so on until my brain shorts out. It lasted two days, and was actually kind of tedious. It was a bit fun to see my decisions made for me, but at times it was annoying because I had to surf the web for an hour before I could watch my movie, which while it doesn't sound terrible, it was just a bit boring.

Live by the Coin, Die by the Coin

  Because of my post about free will, I will be living this week by the toss of a coin. Obviously I'm not going to be stupid. "Sir, do you think you need an ambulance? You might have brain trauma!" *Pliiing* "Naw. Heads I don't need one."

NOOOOOOO!

 What I wear, eat, where I go after events, stuff like that, will be decided by a coin. Let's say I want to read a book but the coin says no, I have to wait half an hour until I can try again, and I can't try for the same event more than 3 times in one day. So every half hour I try to read this book and three times I get the wrong result, I can't read that book for the day. I'll be using a quarter in case anyone really cares. This probably won't effect much, but for the most part it will decide things like playing minecraft versus another game or because I have a paper, how long I can put it off for. I'll be keeping a record of the events on the blog, so if you're interested, check back every couple of hours. Anyway, it's 3 am and I have a class at 9. Nathan out!
Edit: The best way to put this would be that I'll be flipping a coin for wants and/or choices.

Free Will, Funny Hats

  Some of you may have read my story about disproving free will the other night. Some of you might have been disappointed by the ending, some of you may have not been. Unfortunately the survey size is under 100 so none of your opinions matter (that's Stats 101). Now, interestingly enough, we've moved into Free Will and Determinism in my philosophy class. I thought I might expand on my view on free will so that it doesn't seem like I just don't believe in free will.

  Imagine we have free will. Easy, right? You made the conscious decision to waste your time reading this blog when you have plenty of more interesting things to do with all that will.

Watch porn in a suit, for instance. Like the rest of us.

 Now imagine that you don't have free will. Easy too, right? All of a sudden you realize that there's a higher power out there pushing the incentive into your mind to read this blog. That doesn't really have any consequences except for missing out on all that sweet partying going on right now at 12:45 am on a Sunday.

 Where it starts to get a bit more confusing, though less important, is the ability to fight destiny, or against controlled will, what have you. I consider the two the same, will and fate. Let's say you're about to kill someone. If you know it's your destiny, but you cast the gun aside, you fought it. Well the way I see it is, what if that is your destiny? It's not that you fought your destiny, but your destiny was to challenge your belief in fate and so you didn't shoot the person. So you say to yourself, "Fine, I will fight my destiny by thinking about it and then shoot the guy! Ah ha!" But then again, what if that is your destiny? What if the whole thing is a back and forth of, "I know you know I know that you know that I know" over and over again until your brain explodes out desire for you to shut the fuck up?

What if your brain were made by ACME?

Of course then that would be your destiny too.

  As I tried to get across in the short story, even if we prove that no one has free will, it would just mean that all the bad choices in the past were meant to happen, whether to teach us a lesson, or get us to the point we're at today. It would also mean all of the "just" decisions were supposd to happen as well. If people had a problem with the death penalty, we could just prove that whoever is in control wanted them dead. There are some theories out there that say a higher up made the world and sat back, which if I'm not mistaken is Intelligent Design.

Does that look like someone who is ever wrong?

  That's not necessarily what I'm considering, but I thought it was important to cover a few of the major ideas. I feel that history would be a lot different if we didn't have free will. If things were supposed to get done, they would have gotten done. Things that didn't, weren't supposed to. I had a choice of two photos for that last one. I went back and forth thinking about which I liked better, but did I have a choice? For all any of you know, I changed the picture already and you never saw the first one. In fact, I did. Was that fate? Maybe. Maybe I was supposed to go with the first and then fought off my destiny by choosing this one. If it wasn't fate, then maybe I just liked this picture better. The point is, no one knows, and does it matter? Even I don't have the free will to choose what picture I wanted, I can't change it, so why should I worry about it? I'm going to go on doing what I do, either because it's my fate, or because that's what I want to do. Is there really any difference? If I throw a plate at the wall to prove I can, great. Now I have one less plate (existential discussion about if I really lost that plate, or now just have pieces of a plate aside please...). What does that get me? A mess to clean up, and someone probably mad at me for a broken plate. And I suppose that it does get into the blame issue, as to who do we blame for breaking the plate? Would it really matter? Do you really thing that who ever decides what you do is going to replace your plate? It might, in some strange way like a present, but if you did it of your own volition, you'd be getting that new plate anyway. I guess it gets more complicated with the death penalty and stuff like that, but shouldn't you then just leave it up to your decision maker up there and say that whatever you decide is what it wants, and that's good enough for the rest of us? If we disprove free will, that technically would a perfectly just way to deal with issues.

Yes, I am advocating this as the judge, jury, but not really the executioner. Unless you swallow it. In which case you kinda deserve it. No, I won't get into the discussion of children and free will. Don't swallow stupid things. And watch your damn kid.

   I think that just about covers it. Feel free to comment, I always feel like I'm on a soapbox when people don't respond.
Also, have a comic, totally Safe for Work.

End of the World as We Know, I Feel Fine

  Maurice sat down at his desk very slowly, knees sore from age, or experience as his wife used to called it. Selecting his favorite fountain pen and a fresh sheet of paper, he began to write. Nothing profound, but he had had a slow day and felt that writing might liven things up. Besides, his grandson, Henry, always enjoyed the stories he sent home with him after an afternoon visit.

Just as he was about to start writing, the doorbell rang.

  “I’ll get it!” Margo, the housekeeper, called. Outside his office, Maurice could hear a frantic discussion and a thlunk as the umbrella stand was knocked over. The guest was obviously in too much of a hurry to see him. But who would be rushing around this time of night? The old house did not see that much excitement except for when Henry was here, and it was far past his bedtime by now.

  “Maurice! Thank God you’re here!” the figure exclaimed, stepping quickly into the room.

“Where else would I be Laurence?” Maurice looked quizzically at his friend of many years.

“Have you not heard the news? It’s on every radio and television station in the world!”
“Oh, no. To be honest, I haven’t tuned in for quite some time now, I don’t enjoy most of the new music, and the oldies are a reminder of days long gone.”
“But-Maurice! They’ve finally disproved free will! The people are rioting! Every storefront downtown has been smashed and looted! I don’t even want to think about what it’s like in the bigger cities!”
“Oh, probably much, much worse.”

“How can you be calm at a moment like this? This is life changing! The very fabric of society has been torn asunder by this announcement! Nothing matters anymore; consequences are meaningless! I could kill you where you sit right now and no court would even think to hold me responsible!”
“Then why haven’t you?” Maurice looked up at Laurence through his thick-framed glasses. He needed new lenses, his eyes had gotten worse in the past year. Maurice hoped that no one was trying to loot the office; he had an appointment on Tuesday.

“I…I don’t know. I suppose I’m not meant to kill you."
"Mm. That is probably true."

"I-buh-uh...What are you doing anyway?"
"Oh, just writing a story for Henry. It's not late enough to go to bed, but not early enough to do much of anything else."
"And you have no desire to go out and do anything you want?"

"Well technically it wouldn't be what I wanted, would it? It would be this manipulating force that they've just discovered. Did they say what it was? Some sort of god or something?"

"Erm... I suppose not. But you feel no push to run out and join the riot or anything like that? And no, I don't recall what they said it was..."
"Well, considering that this 'force' has not pushed me to do anything like that before, even when I was physically capable of doing such things, no. No, Laurence, I think I'm going to sit here and finish my story, get a cup of hot cocoa, start a book, and fall asleep with the light on, like I do almost every night."
"What about all those people running around? Aren't you afraid?"

Maurice looked out the window above his desk. He could see people running around with flashlights and improvised clubs, and even heard the occasional gunshot. He pursed his lips and furrowed his brow, considering the implications of fear.

"Margo just let you in without question?"

"Yes... She knows who I am," Laurence said slowly.

"Irrelevant," Maurice said, waving the idea away with his hand. "And you say you are not here to kill me?"
"Of course not! Are we not friends?"
"Again, irrelevant," Maurice said, standing up. "No, Laurence, I don't think I shall be afraid tonight. If this 'manipulator of fate' wanted me dead, you would have done it long before, and if not then, now, before even alerting me of your presence," Maurice mused, clapping Laurence on the shoulder. "But if you feel afraid, you are perfectly welcome to wait the riots out here, Margo will make up the guest room."
"Um... No, thank you old friend. I suppose I shall be going..." Laurence fixed his coat and hat and turned to leave. Maurice walked Laurence to the door, who glanced around furtively before running to his car. 

"What a dull discovery." Maurice walked back to his office, sat down, and finished his story.