Official Off-Topic Thread

[Helm]

if i am meant to end up a crack-whore then i will

W...what? I'll chalk it up to being 17, sorry.

[Feron]

ive never actually tried crack, i was just saying we all have our destiny and theres nothing we can do to change it.

[Helm]

And I'm saying that's a completely empty statement. I don't believe in free will, but since the illusion of free-will is an all-encompassing one, to tell another person 'hey, that's what is written for me' is just another way of saying 'I didn't feel like doing this different'.

So keep that in mind. If you end up a crack whore, it's because you didn't feel like doing things different. If that rings the same to you as 'that's what I was ment to be' then great, carry on.

[Feron]

but even if you consciously make the decision to do something differently, the act of you making the decision has already been written out for you.  so you may think you changed your life, when all along that was planned too.

[Helm]

Obviously, but at least you're not pretending to have profound philosophical positions (which are not very profound as the freewill issue has been on debate since the beginning of civilization) by being a lazy bum.

[Dusty]

I never got this whole, I have a destiny and I can't change that, whatever happens is my destiny... because if that's true, then in the end your life was your destiny, and every decision you made contributed to your already 'chosen destiny', so really, your destiny was just how your life played out, including your choices?
That confusing statement just shows you how much I understand the whole destiny thing.

On other note, I decided to try to play Zelda II: Adventure of Link, with cheats... because I have gotten as far as Death mountain without them and that's where I started getting frustrated with it. Not a bad game when you eliminate the ridiculous difficulty level. And also, it seems I get sick whenever I play the game, I think it's from too many flashy colors.

[Rox]

I think I've decided to believe in the whole destiny thing, on a large scale. But only because some things seem unexplainable without it. Like some people who end up in accident after accident, breaking every bone in their body but still surviving against all odds, time and time again causing medical experts to shrug and go "I dunno, must be a miracle", then end up dying by something really weak like... slipping in the shower. I HAVE to think "well, I guess it was supposed to be" when something like that happens.

However, that's it. Sometimes people seem like they're meant to die, or some seem like they're meant to be ridiculously lucky or wealthy. Only the destination, if anything, would be predetermined. And I don't think EVERYONE has a specified fate, either. Like I said, sometimes it just seems to happen. But usually it doesn't. The theory that everything you do is predetermined by some greater force is just... an excuse to not live, I think. When you run out of people to blame for how miserable you are, what's left to blame? Oh yeah, the universe itself. Hey, it's not my fault that I'm a worthless critter! The universe made me this way, I can't do anything about it! I never even wanted to be born!

Yeahh... doesn't it feel good to just rant about something for a while? It does.

Ohyeah, and no one's meant to end up a crack whore. Just considering the idea is really stupid. If you ask me, the "goal" of life is to make something of it. In a perfect world, everyone would be fighting toward a common goal, that ultimately makes life worth living. Everyone does it differently, some are revolutionary and rock the foundations of how things work, opening new paths. Some do politics and business, creating said foundations upon which we build our individual lives. Some save lives, help lives come into existance, prevent death. Some just make life a bit more fun, like artists, musicians, game designers and... um... clowns. To me, the least you can do is go with the flow and just ride along until you die. If nothing else, at least the people around you will have lead a more interesting life thanks to you. However, if you don't aim higher than to be a crack whore (or similar, just an example!), then you'd be making the world a WORSE place for everyone else. Don't do that. Get a haircut, tie your shoes and at least LIVE, if nothing else.

[Feron]

well if you were a crack whore, you would be providing a service satisfying people.  You would also be hlping the crack economy which helps people make a living and not stinge of the governemt and thus taxes.  so yeah they would make the world a better palce by you paying less tax and getting sucked off for a fair price...

i wanna do something with my life that people will remember me by, at least for a couple of generations or something...

[EyeCraft]

I was thinking about something similar to the 'no free will' concept a week or so ago. It went something like:

What is it that ties one's mind to the concept of 'time'? How do we recognise that time exists, has passed, and will pass? I stipulate that memory of past events, and constantly updating knowledge in conjunction with memorising new events gives rise to the concept of time. But imagine if actually time did not exist, that the universe is locked in a single, static state of energy. What you are experiencing now is an entire memory of your life. You are just a memory, wired into a static web of energy in the fabric of whatever it is that exists outside of this experience we have which we identify as reality.

So, if our life, that is, our experience of existing, is in fact purely a very long memory playing out, then everything in our life has already 'happened'; all knowledge, all thought, all decisions, are in fact just memories in a sequence. Following this, it could be said that all experience of these things is preordained, and in fact merely an illusion of free will.

Not that I really believe that, I was just mulling it over. Even if it is the case (whatever you explanation is), illusion or not, decision -> action -> consequence. This is true irrelevant of whether or not you believe your decision was really 'yours'. No matter what, its inevitable that you WILL make a decision, and you CAN think about that decision. Therefore, thinking about a decision will lead to an action that you thought about, and thus a consequence within your consideration. Tossing your arms up in the air and saying "there's no point thinking about it because it's all written in that stars" just means that its written in the stars that you won't think about anything. You CAN think about it, regardless of free-will existing or not.

[Xion]

I think all this predetermined destiny crap is a load of bullisht. Time is woven from the many threads of our decisions. We can choose to set fire to the hill of ants out back, or we can choose not to. But whatever I choose, it was indeed a choice of my own, not some prefabricated timeline from before time to eternity afterwards set in stone. The threads of times not lived burn away, but the threads of now and beyond diverge into infinites, and maybe sometime a thousand years from now, the thread that we live will converge with a time-thread that leads to the same moment. Time will not notice that single stone overturned. But I digress. It is our pasts that shape us, not our futures that predict us.

However.

Perhaps when our lives flash before our eyes it occurs in real-time, with all sensations in tact from the moment they were perceived, and time perceived as a normal flow rather than an instant. In such a case, I may die one millisecond from now, and the now that I currently seem to be experiencing is merely an excerpt from the life I've already lived. This is the only case in which my actions might possibly be predetermined, but it still remains that I already made my actions of my own accord in the years before this period of time I call life which may or may not be an instant, which may or may not be milliseconds before my death.