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Time manipulation is often necessary, but even those measures are often insufficient.
Can't quite control the uncontrollables you'd need. I'm surprised you have any results at all.
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Roland
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Can't quite control the uncontrollables you'd need. I'm surprised you have any results at all.
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It's an open question. In empirical tests, isolated, identical conditions with sapient lifeforms have not produced consistent results. However, whether those results can be explained by hidden variables in initial conditions or unpredictable influence is currently unclear.
It does seem like something very difficult to test.
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I hold a different motivation, but not necessarily a different opinion.
May I ask what it is?
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And I fully accept that stance as a motivation. The practical implications are reasonably more important to you.
And obviously you rest on some other opinion, given your direct experience with it.
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I see. A bit ethereal for my taste, but I respect that answer.
If it weren't true, that would imply everyone was just a big cog in a machine with either no real purpose or something beyond us. But neither of those are as fun as belief in agency.
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Ah, but is that willpower controlled by deterministic processes built into our bodies?
Not at all. Decisions are molded by experience, which then molds personality, which then molds character, which then molds decisions, which then molds personality… Everyone starts from somewhere, sure, but everything stems from yourself. And that’s not even getting into the semantics of whether the outside force of destiny exists internally… Short answer, no. Nothing internal is deterministic like that.
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Hmm, I think I’ll push back the same way. That sounds like it avoids the question.
Fair play. It doesn’t really run much deeper than that, though. Unless you have extraordinary circumstances, destiny is the weakest influence on your life and can be easily manipulated by anyone with a modicum of willpower... Which I guess does technically mean that I do believe in destiny, but not in the grandiose image it has fostered in the minds of many.
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Ah, and on a finer scale? Do you consider us all subject to the same determinism that one might find in a lab, or do we hold a greater influence over reality than fluids and stones?
We hold as much an influence as we desire to.
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How about yourself? Are you a proponent of destiny?
Not at all. Things are what people make them to be themselves, simple as that.
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Perhaps assignment would be a fitting term.
Semantics, really. But as long as it isn't a problem for you, then it's no issue at all.
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