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Free Choice and Voter Suppression
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Free will is the idea that you might be able to make a decision that is not determined by your genetics, biology and situation. Determinism is the idea that all decisions are determined by the current physical state of the body and therefore we don't have the freedom to decide things any way other than the way we decided (i.e. free will is an illusion).
Free Choice is the ability when you know what the right thing to do is to do the wrong thing anyway. But what is "right and wrong"? In this context it is instincts. Non-human animals seem to have a constraint on their collection of decisions that humans do not. Or, at least, humans have less of. We are still partly constrained by our instincts. Animals are simply far more so constrained.
Instinct governs three main areas of life: short term survival (from predation), long term survival (food/shelter behaviour), and procreation. When animals find excess time away from the first two of these, they devote more time and attention to the third. This is seen in situations where an abundance of rabbits in an area will lead to an abundance of foxes in the following season, for example. Think back to early humans, however. At some point we started making decisions to do things with our extra time other than merely making more babies. We started making art and (probably) music. The process of making the first real art was probably very time consuming. How did we come to make the choice to do that rather than making more babies with our spare time?
Voter Suppression is done by political engineers to try to win elections. It depends on highly refined demographics and an assumption that they know how people of certain demographics will decide when given certain information. We have the freedom to reject these attempts to influence our voting patterns.
Links
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Determinism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instinct
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_suppression_in_the_United_States
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Analytica
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jagmeet_Singh
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By SpencerSend us a text
Free will is the idea that you might be able to make a decision that is not determined by your genetics, biology and situation. Determinism is the idea that all decisions are determined by the current physical state of the body and therefore we don't have the freedom to decide things any way other than the way we decided (i.e. free will is an illusion).
Free Choice is the ability when you know what the right thing to do is to do the wrong thing anyway. But what is "right and wrong"? In this context it is instincts. Non-human animals seem to have a constraint on their collection of decisions that humans do not. Or, at least, humans have less of. We are still partly constrained by our instincts. Animals are simply far more so constrained.
Instinct governs three main areas of life: short term survival (from predation), long term survival (food/shelter behaviour), and procreation. When animals find excess time away from the first two of these, they devote more time and attention to the third. This is seen in situations where an abundance of rabbits in an area will lead to an abundance of foxes in the following season, for example. Think back to early humans, however. At some point we started making decisions to do things with our extra time other than merely making more babies. We started making art and (probably) music. The process of making the first real art was probably very time consuming. How did we come to make the choice to do that rather than making more babies with our spare time?
Voter Suppression is done by political engineers to try to win elections. It depends on highly refined demographics and an assumption that they know how people of certain demographics will decide when given certain information. We have the freedom to reject these attempts to influence our voting patterns.
Links
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Determinism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instinct
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_suppression_in_the_United_States
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Analytica
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jagmeet_Singh