So what does everyone believe in after seeing the matrix?
Choice - Everything happens because thats what we choose
or
Causality - Cause and Effect (there is no choice)
Its kinda like that riddle, 'what came first? the chicken or the egg?'
Personally I am with Neo and believe we control our own destiny.
What does everyone else think?
Both. That's two sides of the same coin. Without one the other can't exist. Our choices cause ramifications that have effect on everything around us and these ramifications will cause us and others around us to have even more choices to make. It's an infinite cycle.
I'm in the cause camp. I guess its due to Postmodernism and the notion of indeterminism. I see things as a chain of events that we can add to and that add to us. I don't see myself making choices but rather do things based on what knowledged has acted on me to act according to certain things I only know about. As I learn I may do things differently. Choice is an illusion because we can not see the alternatives we don't know about. If we know only one way we will go that way. If we know more than one way then what we know will guide us one way.
If something taught me to hate people with blue ears and nothing else taught me to love people with blue ears I have no choice to make. I hate people with blue ears.
If something taught me to hate people with blue ears and then later someone taught me to love people with blue ears and I believed the latter then I love people with blue ears. I never really chose to believe them they just made knowledge that fit what I can understand.
but I could be completely wrong and I choose to ask someone to explain choice to me.
\Choice\ (chois), n. [OE. chois, OF. chois, F. choix, fr. choisir to choose; of German origin; cf. Goth. kausjan to examine, kiusan to choose, examine, G. kiesen. [root]46. Cf. Choose.] 1. Act of choosing; the voluntary act of selecting or separating from two or more things that which is preferred; the determination of the mind in preferring one thing to another; election.
Let me try to elaborate a little on what I said earlier. I make a choice to eat my steak with onions and mushrooms (choice, I could have eaten something else). I get bad gas and accidentally fart in an elevator full of people (causality, i ate onions that gave me gas hence the fart). The fart causes a bad smell. This fart causes the people around me to have more choices. One guy chooses to hold his nose, a woman pretends not to notice, another guy punches me in the face. These were all choices of people but their choices were based on causality. To try to seperate the two is philosophical nonsense to me. Causality is a constant, but that doesn't mean we have no choice. It means our choices are shaping that causality which in turn gives us more choices. The only exception to this are instances that don't involve the ability to choose. If two objects collide in space because of the rules of physics these objects could cause the destruction of one another. They bang into each other and than they blow up, cause and effect. If these objects had the ability to move themselves through will perhaps they would not hit each other, but they have no will. Humans do, and they will always have a choice to make based off of effects from causes that could have been the results of someone elses choice.
Well, then my question is raised: Why did you choose the steak with onions and mushrooms. The reality is that there were finite factors that lead to making that a better decision than the chiken ala king. Could be price, could be the fact that you feel you haven't tried something new for a while, could be the price or the company. But as random as you feel the decision you've made is, it is not. The difference between your gas in the elevator and the steak, onions, and mushrooms being placed as your order is immediacy. I can immediately say that you had gas because of what you ate. I cannot, however, immediately place why you picked your meal. Doesn't mean that the causes aren't ther, they're just not readily apparant. Whether genetic or learned, there is a reason (or millions) for every choice we make. It's just not as easy to draw a line from cause A to effect B when it comes to us.
Go hang a salami. I'm a lasagna hog.
.Goh angasal a m'I .imalas a gnah oG
thanks chez. I totally agree with you that causality is a constant but that we are controled by it. When we take action we draw upon only what we know. we travel down a path that leads us to a steak with onions rather than panseared tuna with asparagus tips (maybe because we don't like asparagus). The choice isn't at the very least free choice but in someway conditioned by what we've already experienced (our knowledge).
...lets examine "the woman who holds her nose" to illustrate my point/position.
As I see it she hasn't exercised a decision. Her parents may have told her she must not say or do anything when she smells a fart and throughout her life noone ever acted any differently. Her actions exhibit no choice because she hasn't been given anything to choose between because her knowledge is limited.
Another situation is she also knows that to hold her nose is another solution. But her parents also told her that public display of irritation is rude. By path of effects due to the knowledge she has she makes no acknowledgement of the fart. At the very least she chose long before the fart ever happened to do nothing. I don't agree here. She listen to her parents because she thinks they know what is best. their knowledge of how to handle a fart in public is passed on to her. at the time of the fart she acts in a prescribed way.
But we don't really know what or why all those other than you did what they did.
soo.......
my question is how did you come to "choose" to say you ate steak and onions rather than the many other things that could lead to a fart? do you not like split pea soup? did you once eat steak and onions and had horrible gas? is it really a choice when you know the outcome? can one choose when they know how that action will play out?
these things are all causes that lead you to saying steak and onions. you've never chose to say it. your conditioned by knowledge of steak and onions leading to farts to know to use it as a means to farting. Even if you said beans and franks it's still the same thing.
you already know what you will say....you just need to know why you will say it? that maybe an important thing the movie is trying to teach us. it's the why and how that matters not the "choice" or cause or what ever we want to call it. I always liked that the oracle said what would really confound neo was if she hadn't said anything about the vase would he have knocked it over. which leads me to think about all the things she says in the name of "profacy". would neo realy have been the one? would Morphoes really find the one? would trinity really love neo, afterall they barely spent anytime together for her to truly know. Did morpheos search harder? did trinity let down any reservations? would Neo really believe?
i think i make sense....but now i am more confused.......I think it might be due to this tiny window i am typing in.
Chez, I agree with you on the cycle idea, but I think it's deeper than what you imply. if there is a choice is was made long ago and we just spiral away into infinity.
i believe in choice. though there are some very good points in this thread supporting causality. for me, choice gives me more power to be optimistic.
chez: great illustration.
tanjian: "Do nine men interprite?" "Nine men," I nod
Aah, Dekka, but is it? I mean the only reason anyone would point at any of those stars is because you put them there and said something about it... That's a cause
Neo: What you been doing? You look great!
Architect: Eating Chicken... Ergo... Inexorably, Bla Biddy Blah... Try my extra crispy.
Well, then my question is raised: Why did you choose the steak with onions and mushrooms. The reality is that there were finite factors that lead to making that a better decision than the chiken ala king. Could be price, could be the fact that you feel you haven't tried something new for a while, could be the price or the company. But as random as you feel the decision you've made is, it is not. The difference between your gas in the elevator and the steak, onions, and mushrooms being placed as your order is immediacy. I can immediately say that you had gas because of what you ate. I cannot, however, immediately place why you picked your meal. Doesn't mean that the causes aren't ther, they're just not readily apparant. Whether genetic or learned, there is a reason (or millions) for every choice we make. It's just not as easy to draw a line from cause A to effect B when it comes to us. - Tanjian -
I never thought it was a random choice, it was always a conscious choice. That's my whole point. Just because factors contribute to making the choice doesn't eliminate that choice. Even a choice that is a result of effects leading to an obvious conclusion can have a unpredictable outcome. Similarly, if I come to a fork in the road I'm going to go one way or the other. I don't know where either path leads but I'm still going to make a choice. All my life experience won't help me in that circumstance. I choose to go left. Is there a traceable cause as to why my subconscious mind or instinct told me to go that way? No. It's not traceable because it is derived from will. Is there a reason my instinct said left, absolutely. I am the reason. It can't be explained tangibly but there was some determining factor that caused my choice. That's what will, human spirit or whatever you call it is all about. We are driven by a power that can't be explained or seen or predicted. Mathematics can give infinite outcomes for every facet of the universe but our choices shape which outcome becomes "reality". Both choice and causality exist at the same time and they intertwine. There are reasons for our choices as well as results of those choices. Causality leads to choice which leads back to causality.
Just to add another quick point, those programmed responses don't really matter because there will always be a person that does the opposite thing. If I am raised by a priest that tells me what's right and wrong and I go out and kill someone from extreme anger (the reason why is not important) everything he told me about how murder was wrong meant nothing. To bring it a step further let's say someone killed my child. I am filled with rage and go out looking for the person who did it. I find him and at that moment I think to myself it is wrong to hurt him but I want to anyway. That moment is what this whole thing is all about. Being raised by a priest, having a child, and than the child being murdered brought me to this point. I am unsure of what I will do, despite my backround. I have to make a choice. Causality has brought me to this moment but I still have to choose. I kill him. Causality, he killed my child and I am so angry/hurt I kill him. I call the police. Causality, I know it's wrong to kill because my father taught me so.
I hope I have illustrated my point about two sides of the same coin. I want to thank everbody in this thread because I haven't thought so deeply on a topic in here in a while. Keep the conversation up so we can dive deeper into it.
The world is an aggregate of mutually independent state of affairs. What we experience as links between events, the "causal nexus", is superstition.
Causality is not a law which nature obeys, but the form in which the propostions of science are cast.
There is no compulsion making on thing happen because another has happened. The only necessity that exists is logical necessity. The whole modern conception of the world is founded on the illusion that the so-called laws of nature are the explanations of natural phenomena. (Tractatus 6.37-.371)
In fact, ancient people who believed in the gods and in Fate were clearer than we moderns as they had a clear and acknowledged terminus, whearas we believe that EVERYTHING is explainable.
InsJustin5900: if I hadn't put the stars there no would have pointed at them, so the "cause" is me putting the stars there, the "effect" is you pointing at one of them, but which one is up to you. I presented the choice, yes. If I hadn't, no choice could have been made. But which star you chose is a matter of choice.
sorry if this post has been discussed already)
10-15-2003 11:24 AM
