It seems to me we use the term cause in two very different ways that are completely independent of each other, and that confusing these for each other results in a lot of problems.

Temporal causation
One way we use the term cause is in discussions about events causing other events. I push the button and this causes the engine to start. This is past event to future event causation. When we talk about causal determinism, this is what we are discussing. Here's a hopefully somewhat uncontroversial definition of determinism for the purpose of discussion.

Causal Determinism: The idea that the past state of the world at some time necessitates specific future states of the world at all later times, as transformed according to natural law.

I say causal determinism, to differentiate it from logical determinism or any other senses. Actually the broader point I'm making here isn't really to do with determinism versus indeterminism, but I'm using this to establish one sense in which we use the term cause. We use it the same way when we talk about indeterminism in relationships between temporal events though.

Hierarchical causation
Another way we talk about causation is in terms of bottom up or top down causation, basically something like reductionism and weak emergence, versus top down or strong emergence. The conclusion I've come to is that this is a completely different concept. I'm not even entirely sure it has any common features with the idea of causal determinism at all.

I came to this conclusion observing some people talking about the relationship between causal determinism and beliefs about the neurological basis of mental processes, such as making decisions. I realised that what seems to happen is people seem to rotate the concept of past-to-future causation into the hierarchical dimension, as though microphysical processes such as chemical reactions in the brain cause thoughts in the way that ball A hitting ball B causes ball B to hit ball C. I don't believe that's the way to think about emergence at all.

Emergence isn't a temporal process, it's a hierarchical or structural one. It's looking at the exact same activity happening at the same time at different degrees of detail. The temperature of a gas is the motion of the gas molecules, it's not something that is caused by their motion in the sense that a gas molecule hitting another causes the other one to be deflected. Likewise the temperature of the gas isn't something that causes the molecules to move a certain way. Viewed this way, causation in the event-to-event sense is a completely different concept. In fact confusing these is pernicious. Even talking about the relationship between the microphysical and macro descriptions in causal terms leads to fundamental misconceptions. I don't think we should be talking about what I'm calling hierarchical causation at all. We need other terms.

I won't go further into what I think those misconceptions are, or what I think about emergence now. Maybe another time. For now I'd be interested to see how others think about this. I'm coming to believe that the fact we use cause in both these senses is a significant problem.

https://preview.redd.it/v69gistg39kh1.png?width=1402&format=png&auto=webp&s=0b10135884a48a611ec46680e14fed7a7363b013

I’ve been thinking about a strange pattern in how civilization actually moves forward.

We like clean stories:

great founder → great decision → great company → great technology

But reality is rarely that clean.

The story surrounding Cami Clark, her relationship with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, and her reported connections within the technology and investment ecosystem made me think about something much bigger than the individuals involved.

I'm not interested in judging anyone involved.

I'm interested in the system effect.

A human relationship can create a connection.

A connection can create a conversation.

A conversation can create an introduction.

An introduction can unlock capital.

Capital can accelerate research.

Research can accelerate AI.

And AI can potentially reshape civilization.

Relationship
     ↓
Connection
     ↓
Conversation
     ↓
Capital
     ↓
Research
     ↓
AI
     ↓
Civilizational Impact

The weird part?

The first event may look completely insignificant compared with the final consequence.

That's the human butterfly effect.

Here's the question that bothers me

Modern AI is obsessed with optimization.

We train models to be:

• accurate
• safe
• rational
• efficient
• helpful

But humans aren't optimization functions.

We are contradictory.

We make irrational bets.

We fail.

We fall in love.

We change our minds.

We follow intuition.

We make unexpected connections.

We sometimes do things that make absolutely no sense at the time—and those actions occasionally open doors that didn't exist before.

So...

What if some of what we call "human noise" is actually information about innovation?

What if AI shouldn't only learn from:

success → success

but also:

failure → adaptation → unexpected connection → emergence → breakthrough

My hypothesis: Beneficial Imperfection

I'm not saying:

>

That's far too simplistic.

I'm proposing something different:

>

The imperfection remains.

The ambiguity remains.

But the causal chain continues.

And sometimes that chain creates something extraordinary.

This could become a new kind of AI

Imagine a Consequence Engine.

Instead of asking:

>

It asks:

>

Then maps:

Decision
   ├── Direct Consequence
   ├── Second-Order Effect
   ├── Third-Order Effect
   ├── Unexpected Opportunity
   ├── Negative Externality
   ├── Feedback Loop
   └── Long-Term Impact

That sounds less like traditional AI alignment and more like causal intelligence for civilization.

And this is where I think Peter Thiel's worldview becomes interesting.

The valuable question isn't:

>

It's:

>

My candidate:

Human irrationality isn't always a bug in civilization.

Sometimes it's an innovation mechanism.

The uncomfortable question

Suppose one day an AI becomes extremely good at modeling second- and third-order consequences.

You ask:

>

And it says:

>

Would you trust it?

Or would you reject it because the decision doesn't make sense right now?

Maybe intelligence isn't simply the ability to find the optimal path.

Maybe intelligence is understanding when a non-optimal path can create a new landscape.

The Cami Clark Principle

So here's the idea I'm exploring:

>

Don't glorify the imperfection.

Don't automatically condemn it either.

Study it.

Because perhaps the next frontier of AI isn't teaching machines to behave like perfect humans.

Perhaps it's teaching machines to understand why imperfect humans sometimes create extraordinary futures.

That's what I'm calling:

The Cami Clark Principle

And maybe the real question isn't:

>

but:

>

Curious what you think.

Is human irrationality mostly noise—or could it be one of the hidden engines of innovation?

#AI #ArtificialIntelligence #MachineLearning #AGI #AIResearch #Innovation #CausalAI #ComplexSystems #Entrepreneurship #FutureOfAI #CrazyAI

I think this answers 90% of the questions that come up in here lol. Morality is no different in a deterministic universe as it is in a “free will” universe.

What if the human self as we experience it does not exist at all and free will is only an extremely convincing illusion. Let us assume every human being possesses a unified sovereign core that makes decisions of its own free will, so to speak, in my head I am. I receive information, think about it and then decide. But if at the same moment numerous processes such as emotions, memories, bodily sensations, automatic evaluations, drives, attention and language are running in parallel, where exactly among all these processes is the one who possesses them and decides independently about them? You can do what you want, but can you want what you want? Yesterday I was at the ice cream shop and had to decide between pistachio and chocolate, then I thought I’ll take pistachio and of course I acted according to my desire. But why did I actually want pistachio? I did not immediately beforehand choose that I would now create a desire for pistachio. So the desire appeared in my consciousness. This made a strange problem occur to me: I can act according to my desire. But I did not choose my desire. That would make me less the original author of my decision than the one who experiences my decision and then integrates it into my life story. Consequently, I had no free will to choose pistachio and consequently there is no free will. Let us briefly go back to the stable self. Everyone who reads this has experienced all of this before: “That hurts”, “I am afraid”, “That tastes good”, “I am someone who …”, “Back then I decided to do that because …”, “Actually I always wanted …”. This gives me the feeling of being a continuous person who is the same from childhood until today. But this story can be changed afterwards. What if, then, there is no coherent life story because of the stable self, but instead the feeling of a stable self arises through a constantly generated life story. Imagine you suddenly feel intense anger, which of course you did not consciously choose. Then the thought arises “I should apologize”. You did not consciously choose this thought either. Then a counterthought arises “No, that would be giving in”. This thought appears too. Afterwards you decide “Okay, I’m not apologizing.” And then your consciousness tells you “I decided not to apologize.” So what is this “I” in addition to all the competing thoughts and neuronal processes? If you now say “But my self decided” I can ask again “How did your self decide then?” Of course based on personality, fears and values. These in turn were shaped by genes, experiences and environment. Even if the self decided independently of all these causes, the decision would be without reason and random. And randomness is not freedom. Long story short: If our decisions are completely determined by previous causes, they are not free. If they are not determined by previous causes and arise randomly, they are not free. If we do not decide freely and do not have a stable self, who controls us humans, are we controlled at all and what then remains of a human being at all?

We often believe our choices are fully conscious and free. However, when we look closely at human behavior, we see how easily anger, fear, and base desires override logic. Are we truly exercising free will, or are we just creating rationalizations for the emotional drives that actually control us?

Ivan Kramskoy – Christ in the Wilderness (1872)

As a determinist, I've noticed that many moral values and perspectives we hold regarding people and society closely mirror the core teachings attributed to Jesus of Nazareth.

This leads me to an inevitable question: What if Jesus—once you strip away all the metaphysical religious dogma—was simply a sharp observer of human nature? Someone who intuitively understood that humans are not free in their thoughts and actions, but are completely shaped by their biology, conditioning, and environment?

Viewed this way, his self-designation as the "Son of God" takes on a whole new meaning. It wasn't narcissism or a claim to be the literal offspring of the Old Testament deity Yahweh. Instead, he was attempting to articulate his insights using the only conceptual vocabulary available in 1st-century Judea. Much like Baruch Spinoza would later formulate (Deus sive Natura), he saw the universe and nature itself as God. And if nature is everything, then every human is fundamentally connected to this overarching system.

His refusal to hate and his call for radical forgiveness aren't lofty mystical commands—they are the direct, logical consequence of recognizing that people act out of causal necessity, not uncaused free will.

Here are a few quotes that support this perspective:

• Luke 23:34: "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing."
  • Systemic perspective: The breakdown of absolute metaphysical guilt. When people don't understand the underlying causes driving their actions, they act out of blind necessity. Retributive hatred becomes irrational.
• Matthew 26:41: "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak."
  • Systemic perspective: Acknowledgment of biological and physical determinism. Action is constrained by physical reality, not guided by an uncaused free will.
• John 15:16: "You did not choose me, but I chose you..."
  • Systemic perspective: Exposing the illusion of autonomous choice. Directional decisions are driven by the system acting upon the individual.
• John 8:34: "Everyone who sins is a slave to sin."
  • Systemic perspective: Destructive behavior isn't a free choice to do evil; it's being trapped in unconscious conditioning and causal constraints.
• Matthew 7:1–2: "Do not judge, or you too will be judged."
  • Systemic perspective: Rejecting retributive condemnation. Since no individual is the uncaused primary origin of their actions, moral judgment loses its rational foundation.

What are your thoughts on this historical and philosophical perspective?

Just made an observation. We are too hardwired in the it seems like zones that just clicks inside our brains. Like you can work for two hours to let's say make a mindset and it get completely be erased in just a certain circumstances. Circumstances triggers and are just so powerful and total that they override your previous mindset and change your mindset.

I think we are maybe disposable to god. Like for example how we eat chicken. Just for one meal we kill the chicken. Maybe that's the case with us too we are disposable beings for god for god knows what purpose. Cuz our design is not for freedom. We are slave to triggers, we are just slaves to our circumstances.

We are trash made animate.

You can try to change your life and "play your cards", but genes will eventually come back and bite you in the ass. There's really no escape. I spent my life trying to change my destiny, and worked on myself, and got a high-paying position, and I'm just so sad because now it's more evident than ever that the most important aspect of my life I can't change. I'll give everything for good genetics. I'd give years of my life and all my money for good genes. It was, in the end, the only thing that really mattered.

And I feel like a teenager writing this. I really thought that with years and studies and life experiences, my view on life would change, but it didn't. It's so much clearer now that genetics were the only thing I ever needed. And people who didn't work nearly as hard as I did have much happier lives just because they get to enjoy this world through their genes.

Your genes are your destiny. It's written for you the moment you are born. Even as a baby, before you even know it, you were already labeled to either suffer or to enjoy life.

(Mandatory apology for my english)

Am I right?

Can we judge Hitler as if he could have been nicer?

Does the universe even care?

All behaviors are determined and subjective, no?

So why bother following any moral standards? Just do whatever we feel like doing, right?

As long as we are prepared to accept the results of our actions.

Did deterministic maths make this question come into being when I was born, generations before I was born, did the maths know this question was coming?

I'm rooting for the devil, tbh. I hate maths.

I had the thought that the universe is a hologram.

I dont know, i mean everything bases on math... -.-

Im very interested in your thoughts and your knowledge.

For example, someone once physically hurt me, said very mean things to me and spread misinformations about me but I never felt any hatred against them, the average person (against a person who couldn't communicate things out) would've probably broken-down against everything I've been through, and start throwing hands or use violence or file a case against the person or hide a deep hatred within their heart but I'm not. Because I know nobody's at fault for anything

I know exactly how they misunderstood things, why they acted the way they were acting.. and it had always been consistent with their character to act like it. Okay try asking your crush who rejected you and see if he/she accepts you this time lmao, if he/she accepts you, he/she probably saw something different about you now, which made him/her feel the way he/she felt.

When I realized that there is no free will, supposed mean words or supposed insults don't get through to me anymore, because I know it didn't come out of their free will.. I know it was Fate saying those things to me, it made me gave no fucks about anything people say to me, and just understand why they are like that right now.. and I kept trying to communicate things out like a healthy adult as much as possible tho

(Although I kind of more like believe in solipsism now, it's a different kind of solipsism tho.. just because I cannot remember who I once were or where I came from because logic leads to you existing the same time as the universe or God even, but that's a whole different topic.. it's just I kind of think of people as "projections" like in the movie, inception until I remember the beginning of all of this)

The point is that.. they are acting like everyone being a determinist wouldn't do anything or just pointless because everyone would act like they are in a free will universe still which is dumb and utterly bs. If everyone is a determinist, hatred would be non-existent. If I acted like I'm in a free will universe still in the situations I've been through, someone other than me would've suffered.

You would only feel hatred against people if you are still a free will believer, no you are not a determinist. You're like the kind of person who says "I am a marvel fan, but I think Batman will win this out against Spider-Man" but in reality the guy is lying and a DC fan.. you get what I am saying?

And a true determinist would be pro rehabilitation, just look at the statistics of repeat offender, rehabilitation literally outperforms pure punishment by a mile when the goal is for the offender to not repeat again what it had done

Literally every statistic says that rehabilitation vs punishment against recidivism, rehabilitation always has it beat..

If everyone is a determinist, everyone would be looking at the causes and start focusing on the root of the problems.. the problem with these fatalist people (in reality libertarians disguising themselves as determinists) is that they think in a predetermined way instead of "cause and effects that would lead to a lot of butterfly effects".. want people to not commit crimes? Give them stable jobs, educate them better about morality. Make Fate the biggest bad of them all to children at school, that Fate isn't something to be a slave about. Like how teachers taught that evil is bad.

How is it that Norway who have a luxury prison have less crime rate (54 per 100000 people) than the Philippines who got hell prisons (if you watch documentaries about it), the human rights aren't even present in any of those cells. (160 per 100000 people)

All I am saying is that if everyone is a determinist no one would've committed a crime in the first place. If there's anyone who knows more about cause and effects it would be those people who do not believe in free will. And that they know how consistent people would react as well. They already know full well how things would turn out.

If everyone was a hard incompatibilist, everyone would have understand each other.. essentially, a peaceful place.

In ancient Greece, many philosophers, namely the Stoics, believed in fate. They thought in terms of unbreakable causal chains. We could also call it predictability.

In 1687, Sir Isaac Newton published "The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy", which described and modeled so many phenomenon in nature that for many, it seemed that predictability was confirmed. For example, he was able to nearly perfectly model the motions of planets using a simple equation, F=Gm1m2/r^2.

However, beginning in the 1860s, cracks began to emerge in the idea of predictability. James Clerk Maxwell discovered the hyper-sensitivity to and importance of initial conditions in chaotic systems. The three-body problem is one example.

But this didn’t completely disprove predictability. Rather it showed that for any model, almost any lack of knowledge whatsoever of initial conditions would quickly and completely throw off it’s predictive power.

But what happened in 1927 did disprove predictability. Werner Heisenberg discovered a fundamental principle of quantum mechanics: uncertainty. He showed that, for example, at microscopic scales, the more accurately position is measured, the less accurately momentum can be known, and vice versa.

So now we know, the universe is not entirely predictable.

Unless you are arguing for the sake of it as an intellectual exercise or hobby (like debating, for example) there is rarely ever a point in arguing about anything, especially not with the goal of winning an argument or changing someone’s mind.

Every time you argue with someone, even over something objective that they are incorrect about, thinking that if only you showed them x proof, or asked them x question, or made x analogy, then they’d get it, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment.

You could be having an argument about the color of the sky and you still wouldn’t make any progress. Let alone any sort of moral/political/philosophical argument.

There are rare people who enjoy arguing, almost as a sport, and have the patience to listen to their opponent’s arguments with an open mind and genuinely be prepared to accept their error. But these people are indeed rare. There are people who essentially dedicate their lives to the unconditional pursuit of the truth, and people whose curiosity doesn’t extend further than their wingspan.

Most people don’t care about the truth. They don’t even care if you’re “objectively” correct about something. The human mind is incredibly good at fallacious, hypocritical, nonsensical, irrational thinking. Otherwise it would probably die from the unfiltered trauma and shock of reality hitting it all at once.

This applies to all of us on a spectrum. And wherever we are on that spectrum isn’t exactly something we choose or control. Our genes, our upbringing, our lived experiences all come together to shape us into a sort of theater character in the play of life. Of course if you believe in the existence of God that can further solidify the fact that this world is predetermined and scripted. Whatever you are, whatever you do, whatever you become you were always only ever going to be that.

Both compatibilists and incompatibilists frame the whole debate around one question: is free will compatible with determinism? But this framing is broken from the start, because there’s no way even in principle to tell whether we live in a deterministic or an indeterministic universe.

Any observation we could make is consistent with both. A “random” quantum outcome and a hidden-variable deterministic outcome produce the same observable statistics. No experiment settles it, and no experiment could. So determinism isn’t a discoverable fact about the world; it’s a metaphysical posit we can’t cash out.

If that’s right, then organizing the entire free will debate around compatibility with determinism is a mistake. We’re arguing about whether X is compatible with Y when we can’t even establish whether Y obtains, or ever could. Both “camps” inherit the same bad assumption: that determinism is the relevant variable.

The useful questions are the ones that don’t route through that undetectable posit — what capacities agents actually have, how deliberation and control function, when it makes sense to hold people responsible. Those we can investigate. Whether the universe is “really” deterministic we can’t, so it shouldn’t be load-bearing

The subject was communicating with Archangel Gabriel and we started asking about fate and free will. Like... if we plan our lives before birth, then what exactly are we choosing here? Are we just following some script we already wrote?

Gabriel explained it with roads, and tbh I liked this explanation much more than the usual “everything is predetermined” vs “you create absolutely everything every second.”

He said there are forks in the road.

funny timing because this came up literally today in a Quantum Healing session.

When you arrive at the fork, there can be several directions and this is where free will is very real. You choose which road you take.

But once you take the road... well, now you're on that road 😅

Certain things are there. Certain experiences, people, consequences, lessons, challenges. You still decide how you react to them of course, but you cant stand in middle of road every 5 minutes demanding completely different road.

You walk it.

You experience what is there.

You learn whatever you can learn from it.

And eventually another fork appears.

Then you choose again.

This actually made a lot of sense to me because sometimes in life I definitely feel I am choosing very freely, and other times it feels like events have their own momentum. One thing leads to another, then another, and you almost have to go through whole chapter before things open again.

So then I asked who actually creates these roads.

Gabriel said nobody outside of us is sitting somewhere writing our fate for us.

Before birth we as soul plan the incarnation ourselves, together with help/guidance. We choose a lot of important conditions very carefully.

Family. Certain relationships. Challenges. Abilities. Limitations. Things we want to understand. Things we want to experience. Sometimes things we want to heal or overcome.

Not every tiny stupid detail obviously 😂

I dont think anyone is planning “at 3:42pm on Thursday I will lose my keys.”

More like the important structure.

He described it almost like preparing an exam for yourself before coming here.

And this is where it gets interesting when ppl ask why one person is born into loving wealthy family and somebody else is born into absolute chaos.

From human point of view it can look extremely unfair. Sometimes horribly unfair.

But if we existed before the body and chose the larger setup ourselves, then maybe these circumstances are not rewards and punishments.

Different lives may simply contain different things we wanted to learn from inside the experience.

And I really dont like the idea that somebody suffering now must have been “bad in past life” and deserves it. I think thats a horrible simplification.

Choosing difficult experience would not mean punishment.

Maybe we as soul wanted to understand courage. Loss. Independence. Forgiveness. Boundaries. Love. Power. Helplessness. Compassion. Or something we can't even fully understand while inside human personality.

I have seen this many times in deep trance sessions. Somebody comes asking “why the hell did this happen to me?” and the answer from their Higher Self is sometimes completely different from what conscious mind expected.

Sometimes there was planning.

Sometimes there was simply a choice made earlier that opened certain road.

Sometimes another person used their own free will and that changed everything.

And sometimes the lesson was not about preventing the experience at all, but what the person would become through it.

Gabriel's road explanation tied these things together nicely for me.

There can be a plan without everything being fixed.

There can be free will without every second being infinitely changeable.

Maybe before birth we design the map, including some major destinations and possible roads.

Then as human we keep reaching crossroads.

We choose.

And after the choice, that road has its own reality for a while.

Until the next fork.

I'm curious if anyone else feels this in their own life... like some moments were clearly crossroads where one decision changed everything, while other chapters felt almost impossible to avoid once you had entered them.

Every human who isn't a determinist lives in a kind of fantasy world.

They are a bit like children who are dreaming or aren't fully aware of the reality they live in.

What I've found is that most adult humans are not capable of integrating determinism with all its causal and logical consequences.

Some may understand that their feelings of anger and hate are not rational, but they don't understand how ill they actually are.

Do you have your hate and anger under control?

I sometimes feel anger and hate, but after a few minutes I'm stable again.

How about you?

If superdeterminism entails that every belief, inference, and experimental choice is fixed by the universe’s initial conditions, on what basis can we distinguish a rationally justified belief from one that is merely causally inevitable? Does the concept of epistemic justification survive under superdeterminism, or does it require a notion of intellectual freedom that superdeterminism ultimately dissolves?