Ritalin Invitees on Nostr: I think animals and plants have free will too though. I'm not saying it counts for ...

I think animals and plants have free will too though. I'm not saying it counts for much. My free will is, as you say, largely constrained by all of the things you mention. But I'm still presented with choices.

But I completely understand why one might believe in the universe as a very complicated machine. Atoms gonna atom. Even if there's randomness involved, it can still be a machine that runs the way it'll run without allowing for any of its "gears" to make choices. I just... Don't see the point in life if that's all there is? That's not bleak. If life is a machine and nothing I do matters, why worry? Anything I do was predestined by the universe, so there's no morality, no happiness, no life really except as a cog. I'm no different from any other energy pattern in the universe, it's all either totally random or totally fixed, and at that point life loses interest to me.

So, as I said, I choose to believe that my life has meaning. If it doesn't, I lose nothing. Sort of Pascal's Wager but for free will? It's pure belief though. I can't prove it, and I won't argue that it's superior.