We have no control over who we are, and our success is based on random factors.

[IglooDame]

I believe everyone is capable of greatness, and I pity anyone who believes that they cannot rise above their circumstances - they are in a prison of their own making.

 

[FearlessLeader2]

People with absolutely no reason (ie random outside factors) to do so overcome adversity every day. You're full of crap, not to put too fine a point on it. (I'm not trolling, and I don't mean that in a mean way, I'm just saying that your statement is flawed.)

 

[betazed]

I believe everyone is capable of greatness, and I pity anyone who believes that they cannot rise above their circumstances - they are in a prison of their own making.

Don't you think that depends very much on the definition of "greatness" & "rise"? Yes, you can rise above your circumstances but by how much and in what way depends entirely on your circumstances and surroundings which are pretty much beyond your control. The same applied to "lowness" and "fall" too.

For example, however much a boy of a San Bushman tries he is not going to become a billionaire/Nobel prize winner thru his own effort. There are just no feasible path from those initial conditions.

 

[Mise]

I don't agree or disagree with it. It's a nice theory, but I don't see how it's relevant to our lives, or how it changes anything. *shrugs shoulders*

 

[betazed]

I don't agree or disagree with it. It's a nice theory, but I don't see how it's relevant to our lives, or how it changes anything. *shrugs shoulders*

It changes a lot actually.

if you can wisely determine what is possible and what is not possible for you given your circumstances, then you can channel your efforts more productively instead of chasing impossible dreams. Then as random factors happen you have to realign your goals instead of sticking to your guns.

 

[IglooDame]

Don't you think that depends very much on the definition of "greatness" & "rise"? Yes, you can rise above your circumstances but by how much and in what way depends entirely on your circumstances and surroundings which are pretty much beyond your control. The same applied to "lowness" and "fall" too.

For example, however much a boy of a San Bushman tries he is not going to become a billionaire/Nobel prize winner thru his own effort. There are just no feasible path from those initial conditions.

Stalin - born of Georgian peasants.
Hitler - son of an Austrian border customs agent

Of course someone from a well-to-do family is more likely to achieve national or world impact, but there are enough cases of zero-to-hero to indicate that it isn't absolute. It isn't just hard work, it is also taking risks, seizing the right opportunities, and making your own luck.

Could the San Bushman boy join the Army? That is frequently a fast-track to "greatness" because of the inherent wiping of the pre-uniformed past.

 

[betazed]

Stalin - born of Georgian peasants.
Hitler - son of an Austrian border customs agent

I can as well argue that Hitler was a product of the first world war and the political atmosphere at that time. So, if Hitler did not do what he did someone else would have done it. Hitler was not Hitler because he tried to become one but because it was inevitable that someone would become Hitler at that time. Today, however hard one tries one cannot become a Hitler (or any dictator) in Germany.

Of course someone from a well-to-do family is more likely to achieve national or world impact, but there are enough cases of zero-to-hero to indicate that it isn't absolute. It isn't just hard work, it is also taking risks, seizing the right opportunities, and making your own luck.

Its the last part that I do not agree with. How can you make your luck? Lcuk is by definition completely random. The best you can do is be prepared to take advantage of whatever oppurtunities that come your way. But the oppurtunities have to come by themselves. And what oppurtunities come by you depends largely on where you are and what you have.

 

[IglooDame]

I can as well argue that Hitler was a product of the first world war and the political atmosphere at that time. So, if Hitler did not do what he did someone else would have done it. Hitler was not Hitler because he tried to become one but because it was inevitable that someone would become Hitler at that time. Today, however hard one tries one cannot become a Hitler (or any dictator) in Germany.

How does one know? We've only got one timeline to look at, and we can only look at it from the present moment.

Its the last part that I do not agree with. How can you make your luck? Luck is by definition completely random. The best you can do is be prepared to take advantage of whatever oppurtunities that come your way. But the oppurtunities have to come by themselves. And what oppurtunities come by you depends largely on where you are and what you have.

That is true - "Making your own luck" is in the strict sense impossible. But, many times when you think of someone as lucky (on an ongoing basis, not just a single happenstance) it is because they are unusually well prepared to take advantage of opportunities and mitigate negatives.

 

[amadeus]

"Those of us that succeed do so only because of random things, such as genetics..."

Sounds a little Reich-ish, doesn't it?

People's success it not random. It's calculated. Success comes through hard work, there are very few surprises involved.

 

[betazed]

How does one know? We've only got one timeline to look at, and we can only look at it from the present moment.

The same way we study anything that has already happened. By comparing it to similar events that has happened before and looking for similarities or common themes .

So, if we look at histories leaders, despots, rules and conquerors how many do you think did it all by themselves? Whenever I read some historical incident (or even contemporary incidents) I see almost always that most people are where they are because they could not have been anywhere else. The rest hemmed and hawed and changed a bit here and changed a bit there but more or less left things unchanged.

That includes people like Alexander, Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Idi Amin, Gandhi, Nelson mandela or whoever you want.

As a more recent one, Take G.W. Bush as an example. Do you think he would have been the prez if he was not born in the Bush family?

Long time ago I came to the conclusion that for most of us, most things that we have control on are unimportant and most things that are important we do not have any control on.

 

[Mark1031]

Perhaps a better example is if you are born with downs syndrome. There is no path by which you will rise to make a great scientific contribution, lead a nation or corporation. Random event prior to conception determines limits on your rise. Why should we not believe that less drastic random events also limit or facilitate your "rise".

 

[Birdjaguar]

Perhaps a better example is if you are born with downs syndrome. There is no path by which you will rise to make a great scientific contribution, lead a nation or corporation. Random event prior to conception determines limits on your rise. Why should we not believe that less drastic random events also limit or facilitate your "rise".

In your extreme you are correct, but for most people, can they surpass their "natural" limits by making smart choices? Do we have free choice to not succeed? Can I choose to be an underachiever?

 

[Rhymes]

I disagree, Identical twins can lead very different lifes, even if they have the same genetic and the same family.
The events that happen in your life aren't what I would call random events, since you have the controle on what attitude you wish to have towards those events.
The work you do on yourslef to grow as an individual has little to do with random events, and I think its the most decisive part of life.

 

[Fifty]

I disagree, Identical twins can lead very different lifes, even if they have the same genetic and the same family.
The events that happen in your life aren't what I would call random events, since you have the controle on what attitude you wish to have towards those events.
The work you do on yourslef to grow as an individual has little to do with random events, and I think its the most decisive part of life.

@rhymes:
I always thought that identical twins were not genetic copies of eachother? Wouldn't that make them clones? Don't quote me on that though because I'm no scientist!

The question is whether you actually do have control of your attitude, or if your attitude is determined by your aptitudes, that is, your genetics.


@everyone:
I still maintain that if we use sims2789 quote, then there is no denying that within those parameters we have no control over our lives. sims basically stated a tautology: our entire lives dictate our entire lives. The only way you could feasibly argue against sims' definition is to invoke divine providence.

As to the question of whether or not we have free will, the answer depends on something that to me it seems can never be proven. Of course it would seem that we have free will within our genetic and circumstantial set of parameters, but one could argue that the choices that we exercise with that free will are also themselves determined by our genetic and circumstantial factors. The only thing we can do is admit that whether or not free will exists within our own given set of parameters is impossible to determine, so we might as well just stop right there, and declare it pointless to ponder upon since both the free-will and non-free will scenario brings about the exact same conclusion.

The only way I can imagine to determine if free will exists within our given set of parameters (the genetic and cicumstantial aspects of our life) is to raise two exact genetic copies in the exact same conditions, and I mean exact, because little tiny things can cause huge differences within us (the butterfly effect if I'm not mistaken). And this seems impossible at least at this point in technology, since computers cannot accurately and fully simulate life.

 

[Amenhotep7]

I must disagree. You control your own fate. Randomness may bring to you a situation, but it is, in the end, your own will power that decides the outcome of said situation. I forget the man's name, but he was a double-leg amputee and ended up climbing Mt. Everest. (Or some famous mountain, anyway. ) There couldn't have been more factors not in his favor, but due to the strength of human will power he prevailed.

 

[Akka]

I only half-agree with the initial post.

We are, that's a fact, largely fabricated by our environment. Our family, the people we know, decisions of others, our genetics, and plenty of other factors that are somehow random and on which we have little to no control on.
As such, a big part of our success isn't in our control.

On the other hand, we DO have a margin of decision. We are perhaps shaped more or less by the exterior, but it's a general shaping, a general direction. There is a quite big "decision area", which can make a big, big difference. We are perhaps the products of our environment, and our free will is cerntainly limited by how we were shaped, but it's far to be inexistant and we are (usually) far to be totally powerless on our lives.

 

[anarres]

I'm a believer that free will is an illusion, but one that we can't function without believing in. So, even though I know there is no free will, I still think there is or life would seem meaningless.

There is very good evidence that people don't get to "choose" things as they think they do. Your subconcious makes the decision and your concious rationalises it for you.

For example - you have to decide between 2 universities to go to, and ultimately you decide to go to the best academic one (but this uni is known for being much more boring than the other one). Conciously you will say that you want to make the sacrifice to get a better career, and that you don't want to spend 3 years getting wasted, but subconciously (deep deep down) you may actually prefer to go to the quieter uni anyway. In this case your conciousness doesn't want to admit that you don't conform to society's ideas about what kids do at uni (this could be especially true, based on the society you come from). Your subconcious OTOH knows the truth and will always make the same decision, no matter how your conciousness decides to rationalise it.

I can't remember where I first heard this idea, but AFAIK it's nothing new in psychiatry. Your subconcious makes the rules, the concious just rationalises it.

Anyway, to get back on topic - 'free will' is just your concious making sense of your subconcious. You must believe that it is true or you would go crazy, and tbh I have trouble believing on a day-to-day basis that I am not controlling my life. In fact, I *have* to feel like I am controlling it or I would go mad, so that is what my conciousness tells me...

To anyone that thinks this is all pure BS - it may well be so, but please go read about the subconcious and then come back and explain to me why this is wrong.

 

[IglooDame]

The same way we study anything that has already happened. By comparing it to similar events that has happened before and looking for similarities or common themes .

So, if we look at histories leaders, despots, rules and conquerors how many do you think did it all by themselves? Whenever I read some historical incident (or even contemporary incidents) I see almost always that most people are where they are because they could not have been anywhere else. The rest hemmed and hawed and changed a bit here and changed a bit there but more or less left things unchanged.

That includes people like Alexander, Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Idi Amin, Gandhi, Nelson mandela or whoever you want.

As a more recent one, Take G.W. Bush as an example. Do you think he would have been the prez if he was not born in the Bush family?

Long time ago I came to the conclusion that for most of us, most things that we have control on are unimportant and most things that are important we do not have any control on.

One logical flaw with the "If Hitler didn't take power, someone else would have" argument is that we're looking at this on a micro, not macro, scale. From Hitler's point of view there would be the world of difference between his rise to power and (say) his retirement from the Austrian army as a senior sergeant in 1950.

I think Dubya could have been the prez under other circumstances, yes. Heck, Dan Quayle was Vice President, and I'm sure SeleucusNicator could give us examples of other unlikely presidents.

I don't think people can generally step back and say "if so-and-so had done this in response to that circumstance that would have set them on course for ____" with any reliability, and when they do it is generally in contemplation well after the fact in possession of the details of how everything worked out. How we handle endless minor circumstances generally positions us for the major events that can lead to "greatness". It would be phenomenally dumb of me to deny that there is an element of randomness, but I don't rule out the luck we make for ourselves.

 

[Mark1031]

There is very good evidence that people don't get to "choose" things as they think they do. Your subconcious makes the decision and your concious rationalises it for you.

I agree completely with your take on the subject . You obviously know some psyc. Have you ever read about the split brain studies? Patients with severed corpus calosum (big connection between the 2 ½s of the brain). Show an image to the non-language ½ of the brain like a glass of water. The language ½ says they are thirsty but has no idea why so starts making things up like its hot in here or something similar, very freaky.

 

[anarres]

Mark,

I wrote a reply but it was OT and out of place here, so I spun a thread off it. I doubt it will get (m)any replies, but it would have got modded in here it was so OT.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=2394789#post2394789