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June 3, 2016 11:08 AM   Subscribe

Let these chipper YouTube science vids fill you with existential terror. Popular YouTube education channels CGP Grey and Kurzgesagt teamed up to produce a pair of videos designed to cause you to question everything about your existence.
posted by Johnny Wallflower (24 comments total) 25 users marked this as a favorite
 
From the split-brain video:

A behavior which does rather cast doubt onto the notion of free will (but that's a story for another time)

NO, WE SHOULD TALK ABOUT THAT RIGHT NOW.
posted by numaner at 11:23 AM on June 3, 2016


CGP Grey is already on the record as not believing in free will. You can hear him fight with Brady Haran about it on their podcast, episode 42 and 43 I think though I don't know the timestamps.

Of course Grey is also a robot so he would think that about free will...
posted by Wretch729 at 12:04 PM on June 3, 2016 [3 favorites]


I take childlike glee from the dismantling of the artifact of I-ness. These are fun!
posted by sandettie light vessel automatic at 12:04 PM on June 3, 2016


You can hear him fight with Brady Haran about it on their podcast, episode 42 and 43 I think though I don't know the timestamps.

Seems to start at 1:16:00 on podcast #42
posted by mrnutty at 12:26 PM on June 3, 2016


It is fun, however it really doesn't matter. Regardless of our beliefs we still must walk around acting as if we have a choice.
posted by psycho-alchemy at 12:32 PM on June 3, 2016 [10 favorites]


* walks around acting as if he has a choice *
posted by sandettie light vessel automatic at 12:37 PM on June 3, 2016 [4 favorites]


Must we?
posted by notyou at 12:51 PM on June 3, 2016 [3 favorites]


Not you.
posted by sandettie light vessel automatic at 12:51 PM on June 3, 2016 [10 favorites]


I choose to believe... what I was programmed to believe!
posted by sp160n at 12:59 PM on June 3, 2016


I'm going to hack myself and give myself free will!

Wait, what if that's what I'm programmed to do?

!
posted by numaner at 1:03 PM on June 3, 2016 [1 favorite]


It's sort of interesting how most people's first objection to determinism is, how are we going to judge people?
posted by thelonius at 1:26 PM on June 3, 2016 [3 favorites]


I agree that the unitary self and free will are illusions. Okay, so what do I do now?
posted by officer_fred at 1:49 PM on June 3, 2016 [3 favorites]


whatever you were already going to do
posted by sineater at 2:13 PM on June 3, 2016


Okay, so what do I do now?

According to my brain, you should read Stanisław Lem's Peace on Earth. At least that's what it told me to do now.
posted by effbot at 2:33 PM on June 3, 2016


I would argue that philosophy has no business ruining perfectly useful words. It follows that it simply isn't possible to not believe in free will.

Regarding the videos, which IMO are more about the boundaries of self than free will. I am fond of the notion that your self might extend a bit to friends and loved ones; you allow them to influence your behavior, when a very close friend is gone you feel like a bit of yourself is gone, you probably have a pretty good model in your head of how a close friend might behave, and vice versa. Occasionally you will have conversations where a friend says something like "that's not you," and you might agree and change your course.
posted by surlyben at 2:44 PM on June 3, 2016 [3 favorites]


ITS NOT ABOUT THE FREE WILL

ITS ABOUT THE VOICELESS DEMON IN YOUR RIGHT BRAIN


R̛̗̟͚̥͓͓̦̟̆͑̿̃I͉͕̥̞͎̞̜̲̥̒̓Gͬ͋̓ͤ҉̶͇̬͇̀H͙͉̉ͫ̓̉͞T͇̗ͨͭ͋̋̄̀͟ ̵̝̤͈̖̳̣͚͈͈̔̏̐ͤͪ̀B̷̤ͣͪ̃̾͐̿̏R͉̘̗̈́͂̚͢͟͢Â̊ͦ҉̱̣̤͕̪̠I̟̙͚̦̥̯̬͕͛́̃̑N̻̟̤̳͔̯̬̆ͥ͋̇̀̏̚N̴̫̗͓͙̳͉̪̑͝
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 2:56 PM on June 3, 2016 [2 favorites]


I am the only person with free will, and all of you are just robots here to see how I respond to them.
posted by SansPoint at 3:34 PM on June 3, 2016


I am the only person with free will, and all of you are just robots here to see how I respond to them.

If you take another dose of up'n'at'm, you'll find that what you think are robots are actually people who are convinced they are robots.
posted by effbot at 4:02 PM on June 3, 2016


Sounds like every book Douglas Hofstadter ever wrote.
posted by rikschell at 4:47 PM on June 3, 2016


The only rational response to this mind boggling thing, is to go Godwin, and watch Look whos back on Netflix again.
posted by MikeWarot at 6:15 PM on June 3, 2016


From the first link:

It's nice that developments in science can accelerate our existential dread.

It's nice that clickbait writers and editors are finally becoming aware of scientific results FROM 71 YEARS AGO!
posted by sammyo at 7:06 AM on June 4, 2016


Some time ago, probably coming out of a weekend of PK Dick, JG Ballard, acid and angst, I realised that the question of free will vs determinism was undecidable, because there are philosophical problems with either stance and neither is testable.

So it's probably the wrong question to be asking. In this, as in so many ways, I must defer to Douglas Adams and say the answer is 42 and let's move on.

I would, however, love to slap a protocol analyser on the corpus callosum. You could probably build a data logger and wireless transmitter that'd fit into the cerebral fissue.
posted by Devonian at 8:03 AM on June 4, 2016


But then you would wake up and come to find that you were deferring to Scott Adams all along.
posted by y2karl at 4:41 PM on June 4, 2016


These are the cutest cells I've ever seen.
posted by nom de poop at 10:21 PM on June 4, 2016


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