Wtf is free will even? We’re chemical systems, or a metaphysical soul, that makes statistically predictable decisions based on available information as well as uncountable minor factors. If you rewind time and do everything the same, either everyone comes to the same conclusions the same way, or free will requires an aspect of chaos… And at that point you’re at predetermination - seems to me the whole idea is outdated philosophy

But here’s the thing - statistically, people respond in predictable ways. If every time you do X, the majority will respond Y… That’s just math.

Turns out, humans are super complex, but very predictable. And by that I mean policy is extraordinarily effective.

Free will matters on a personal level, it disappears on a societal level

Missiles are super inefficient. You have to overcome gravity while fighting air resistance at the same time, which requires unreasonable energy density

If only there was some way to use air resistance to fight gravity, or better yet even some sort of metal road to push against to lower required acceleration to the minimum…

Maybe if we made a super slow missile on rails? Never mind, this sounds crazy now that I say it out loud

There’s always the ones where AI are always omnicidal and all digital tech is taboo, or the ones that predate the information age where you have very manual but powerful tech… Like sure, FTL is definitely sci-fi, but without automation (even human guided automation like ripperdocs) you end up with very unequal societies where magic tech exists, but only for the rich or large organizations

The first is a newer genre so I can’t think of anything well known, the second includes things like the time machine where the time machine is sci-fi, but technology regresses, and the last one could be things like dune. Or 1984, where we’ve surpassed the “futuristic” tech (and unfortunately was mostly used like a how-to guide in recent years)

Everyone can’t learn everything. When you watch the news, do you fly down to Maui to interview victims and analyze the state of power lines yourself?

You have to remember where you got something and learn to evaluate the bias of a source, but going on an active forum full of people with various levels of knowledge on the topic is the best way to get a complete picture in a reasonable time frame. They’ll call out inaccuracies in reporting, give background that might speak to problematic motivations or conflicts of interest, and argue bad takes.

Is it perfect? No. It’s DD though, more and more usernames are quoted in the news - hell, even in this video forum posts are referenced frequently

I forget the name of the bias/fallacy, but it’s something like “I love and support X. If X is bad, then I support something bad, then I’m bad. Since I’m a good person, and I support X, then X must be good or I wouldn’t support them”

It’s probably a quirk of how we make decisions - we don’t consciously make decisions. Instead, we might weigh out the options and that affects our choice, but in the moment we choose subconsciously. It might feel like we made a decision consciously, but sometimes at the last second we deviate from the course we chose (or upon choosing, realize that despite our thoughts we actually have already made up our mind otherwise)… Then we have to rationalize that choice, or start down a long and challenging road of constant introspection

You sure as hell do when you put 80% of it outside your borders, outside US borders no less

This kind of thing could spark a war in different circumstances - imagine the Mexican army goes to dismantle the buoys in their borders, and one of several possible groups from Texas confronts them and it leads to a skirmish

Mexico would be entirely within their rights - it’s on their property and it’s suspected to be leading to deaths