Okay, I reread everything carefully, abandoned my previous beliefs, and you are right. Thank you.

I don’t believe you. You keep showing you don’t know what’s in the article. So you cannot have actually read it.

Try actually reading it. As in, understanding the words, and the sentences and paragraphs they form, and the arguments they develop, and the evidence they present. That’s what reading means.

Then show you actually know what those arguments are and what the evidence presented is, and that you can ask questions informed by that information.

Don’t just post comments 6hat never quote the article, and never mention any argument or fact presented in the article, even the arguments and facts already responding to your questions. Otherwise, you are just coming across as a liar, who doesn’t know how your questions are already answered in the article.

Show me you know how the article responds to everything you just said. And then question or respond to that.

Read the article you are commenting on. It is answering your question. That is literally its entire function.

I read the article and read the comments. And I also watched your videos. Okay, let’s agree that I’m the person who didn’t read the article, and I should be ashamed. If you want, I won’t ask you questions about this. I always admire your intelligence and love you, and all I understand from your argument is 1) That you’re confusing free will and desire. I would say free will is an outdated concept. It’s much better to simply say desire. 2) And although my actions are predetermined from the beginning of the universe, I want some of these actions. And supposedly this is freedom. That’s your argument. Okay, that’s how I understand it. But in fact, I believe that every action and thought of ours has a cause from the beginning of the universe. This beginning determines all further development of the universe. And now this may or may not correspond to our desires. Free will is an unnecessary concept from the realm of religion.

I’m trying to understand this, but I don’t get it! After all, everything has been predetermined since the Big Bang. Isn’t it? All my future actions. My whole life. After all, all my decisions originate from the Big Bang. Just like everything in the universe has a reason why it behaves this way. Where did this immaterial will come from? It is material. And physical. And therefore, it obeys the laws of physics, which predetermine the future. Isn’t it?! I don’t understand this at all. I want to understand you, but I can’t.

This is all false. See other comment.

You are committing a fallacy of conflating determinism with fatalism. Nothing was “programmed” ago. You are a machine that weighs evidence and makes decisions. It does not follow that someone (or some mysterious physical series of prehistoric events), having no idea what evidence would be your inputs, just decided in advance what your oputputs would be. Your outputs are still determined by your inputs. And those inputs are still causing your decision, not ancient sea slime or the formation of the solar system or the Big Bang. So there is still a decision being made. And “you” are the one making it.

Just as a thermostat makes a decision as to whether to turn the heater on or off. Remove that thermostat and none of that happens. So the thermostat is deciding. Determinism does not change that being the case, as if there was no difference between the thermostat being there and it not being there. And you, unlike a thermostat, are a much more sophisticated analytical computer: unlike it, you actually know what your inputs are and can actually test the process getting your outputs for error or invalidity or unsoundness, and are caused to do so by growing up in a society that taught you to. So you have no excuse. You were determined—you were programmed—to make rational, informed decisions. And you can’t make that go away by re-referencing the programming. It’s still a program to make rational, informed decisions. And no one, and no thing, is making those decisions for you—except when they are, and that’s when you lack free will.

You should know this, if you actually read the article you are commenting on. Which tells me you didn’t read it. You just rage-skimmed it, instead of listening to the facts and argument. And you know better. So I get to shame you for this.

If you don’t want to be ashamed of acting like this, you can (and will thereby be caused) to choose to stop acting like this and actually read the material you comment on before commenting on it from now on.

You are a witness, not an author. Your consciousness is a screen onto which the film “Your Life” is projected. You feel the effort, the doubts, and the joy of victory, but all of this is part of a script written by the laws of physics long before the solar system existed.

​Absence of guilt and pride. Hitler couldn’t help but become Hitler, and Mother Teresa couldn’t help but help the poor. One is a flawed mechanism, the other is tuned to altruism. Being proud of your achievements in this situation is like a car being proud of its speed. It’s simply how it’s assembled.

​The illusion of “I.” What you call “yourself” is the result of a biological computer. This computer makes a decision, and a split second later the thought pops into your consciousness: “Oh, I decided that!” The laws of physics and the events of the past existed before I was born. I cannot influence them. If my actions are a consequence of these laws and the past, I cannot influence them now. Therefore, I do not choose. For me, your definition is simply a reinterpretation of the word “freedom.” We cannot choose before we are born, therefore, we are eternally unfree, no matter how you define this word further. I read the article – and I do not agree in any case. And I never will. For me, compatibilism is just a play on words. Nonsense. I do not accept it, and I never will.

I don’t understand this. If my crimes were programmed before I was born, then I clearly didn’t choose anything. On the other hand, we must always punish criminals precisely because we have no better way out. If there were a better way out, we would change these reasons and give people more freedom. But as it is, we are doomed to everything from the start.

First, that will never happen (almost everyone’s data is lost; no future can revive them).

Second, even if somehow Putin is able to store his brain (and it isn’t burned up in a missile strike or blasted to bits by a bomb or simply smashed with a hammer—or melted into unrecoverable goo from neglect in storage), who would upload it anywhere?

Third, even if someone did decide to upload it somewhere (when there is a “there” to upload it to), who would let it be uploaded in their space? More likely Putin would only get to live in some prison hell of his own making, alone or in company with fellow vicious sociopaths.

Fourth, “they didn’t choose what to do” is not a conclusion that follows from “their decisions were entirely predetermined.” That is actually already settled law. But also philosophically secure in its conclusion. So no rational and informed person will ever think what you suggest (while everyone who does deserves what they then get).

Fifth, none of this has anything to do with “freedom depends on knowledge” in the context of the article you are commenting on. You seem to be confusing freedom with responsibility. A certain kind of freedom is needed for responsibility (you have to know what you are doing and select it anyway, thus demonstrating whether your character is safe or dangerous). But only that limited kind of freedom is necessary, and only that knowledge is pertinent to determining it.

And finally, if for some reason we set all those points aside (why would we set all those points aside?), your question is actually about how to prevent digital universes from becoming future hells, which is an important question we do need to take seriously. It’s just not a question about Putin (or free will). The actual question in that case is what I already covered in How Not to Live in Zardoz.