Do people actually think the system is all a choice?
this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2026
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Yeah.
Do you think systemic sexism is inherent and perpetuated without human compliance?
Why is everyone vague-posting in here? Just say directly what bothers you about the comic.
Why do you care?
As a species we tend to mask irrational feelings with stories our brain make up, connecting abstract social issues and ideas to make us feel like our irrational discomfort is somehow part of a bigger, more "rational" story, but it all leads back to something that makes us uncomfortable. The cure is sanitizing sunlight.
And because Lemmy is packed with incel-adjacent minded young guys and require some pushback on their bad ideas, because people no longer experience social pressure as long as they can retreat to like-minded online spaces, so I rather people are open about what they think so we can challenge it, support it or offer alternatives depending what the actual feeling is.
That's why I care.
Your turn.
I'm guessing you're at your most effective when people speak honestly and directly and you struggle when they don't?
Why should others risk your influence by meeting you where you are your strongest and maybe they aren't? Why would they give a random person direct access to their thoughts and feelings, to rummage through and manipulate, especially when there's a vibe of judgement, coercion or authoritarianism from the one asking, like you seem to have?
Whatever, slippery coward.
Yes. That's why some people make different choices from people who are 99.99% biological matches who were raised in similar conditions.
Nobody lives the same existence so any differences, especially over time, are products of those differences. Even identical twins in the same home don't experience the same existence and aren't the same person and make different choices.
I think you missed my point. The same conditions, even in physics, don't always produce the same result.
Then they aren't the same conditions.
Would you like to read a book? I could recommend several.
Go ahead, let's see if I've already read them.
I'd start with Uncertainty: Einstein, Heisenberg, Bohr, and the Struggle for the Soul of Science. You sound like you've probably read A Brief History of Time - but there are edits in later editions and we've learned more since Hawking's death.
Then: Rethinking Causality in Quantum Mechanics. And: Nothing, put out by New Scientist in 2013 — pretty cool, but doesn't really deal with causality. I just liked that one.
Anyway, you're arguing in favor of a deterministic universe, but as far as I know with my (limited) understanding, that's more of a philosophical question that can't be proved or disproved. We lack the ability to track every particle to its origin, and the inverse is a negative — and you can't prove something doesn't happen, only it's likelihood.
I will look into the ones I haven't read. Thank you.
Almost everything observed is deterministic. In the very few places that appear different, we know and can observe the least, so to conclude it isn't, in the face of almost universal causality, seems...odd?
It's odd to believe the universe is deterministic when physics experiments have observed particles that exist outside causality. Even the double slit experiment goes against causality, uncertainty goes against causality, even current particle experiments can't prove deterministic causality. The prevailing scientific and philosophical findings are that universal, deterministic causality can't be proved any more than the existence of god.
Physics experiments have observed causality almost everywhere, otherwise equations would not be reliable, but they are. We can observe unerring causality literally anywhere we look in the universe but uncertainty only is a, relatively, very small number of places.
Ever heard the phrase 1+1=3 for high values of 1? Equations "work" because numbers are abstract representations of value we assign.
We observe particles and forms of radiation we can't explain the origins of or name literally everywhere we look, which is an infinitesimally, incomprehensibly small mote of the universe.
Any system that can be predicted accurately, is a system of cause and effect. The abstract nature of maths to describe the universe is not incongruent with causality. Not having an explanation, or not being able to observe, or having too little information, is not evidence of a lack of cause and effect.
No, a lack of evidence for determinism is a lack of evidence for determinism.
Yet there's a mountain of evidence efor determinism? Magnitudes more than for...non-determanism.
You haven't shown me any.
If you drop something, it falls and will do so consistently if the context is similar enough. Every object that moves and can be accurately predicted, like all the planets and stars in the sky.
I'm not going to continue with someone who can't admit to the observable causation that governs the movement of their own body ffs.
I'm less enthusiastic about someone who can't cite peer reviewed sources. Your arguments are anecdotal at best.
Astrophysics on a macro scale can only be predicted within a margin of error. Particle and light physics are less predictable. Source: Already posted them.