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.

Prose Edda: Introductions

  Hello there! Yes, you, sitting in front of your computer reading this! Do you know anything about Thor? Forget about what you know about the comic book character, because the Thor that Thor is based on is even cooler. It's like... Well it's like a movie being based on a book. Obviously the original Thor and the comic book Thor are technically both "book" Thors, but I'm talking about an older book. It's called the Prose Edda, which is a manuscript written by one Snorri Sturlson, who also happens to the be author of the Poetic Edda (yes, that Poetic Edda, I was excited too!). There's a lot of speculation as to who the hell Snorri was (can I call him Snorri? It's a bit informal, but do I really have to call someone 800 years dead "sir"?). Some say that he was an adventuring priest who got shit done. The other version is that he was a priest, but also the son of a politician. It's also been speculated that through some shady dealings, Snorri's father was assassinated, and Snorri was behind it. Now, personally, I can't condemn a man named Snorri, which is probably why they don't ask me back for jury duty. I like to go with the badass priest story. I'm sure he was a politician (well Wikipedia says it at least, and that's a reliable source), but I'm hoping he was one of those cool guys who decided to travel around because he was the son of a very powerful man and could do that sort of thing over spring break while everyone else is in Florida.

  Snorri was alive during the Christianization of Iceland and the other Scandinavian countries, which sucks, but what can you do about it? I guess at some point he decided that he wanted the dying mythology to be recorded, and because of that, I present to you, The Prose Edda; Interpreted by Me. Man, that really needs a picture drawn in crayon...

Not crayon, but aaaaw yeeeeaaah.

  Anyway, like everything else I do, I don't have much of a "true" background, meaning a degree or formal study, but for about a year I studied the Norse language and spent half a year reading the entire Prose Edda and about 75% of the Poetic Edda. At the beginning of this school year, I reread most of the Gylfaginning, the first, and best known, part of the Prose. So my senior year of high school I used to regale my friends with tales from the Eddas. But of course I'm not going to be able to memorize Norse poetry, that's ridiculous. Here's a sample from the actual poems:

1. "Sawest thou Sigrlin, | Svafnir's daughter,
The fairest maid | in her home-land found?
Though Hjorvath's wives | by men are held
Goodly to see | in Glasir's wood."


So for their sake and mine, I paraphrased. They seemed to enjoy it, and I think you will too. So without further ado, to you and you and you, The Gylfaginning.

All texts here and following are taken from Sacred Texts and is considered Public Domain. For the Prose to see what the hell I'm talking about, click here. For the crazy/wordy Poetic Edda coming much later, click here!