by EminemBase » Jun 2nd, '11, 10:41
Well, on a broad scale, there is no one answer.
There can't be one answer, even for one person let alone everybody. But, you already know that I know, given the phrasing of the question / context. But...
We grow up with different brains and therefore different decision making variables, in different surroundings, around different people - also with different X, Y Z etc.
All these many many variables and so much more factor into it. It's like one constant mix of factors so, as for myself... again, unless you'd literally recorded every decision that you'd ever made you couldn't begin to even hazard a sensible guess.
Even if you did that, there's the world around you making decisions affecting you in ways you have no idea of. There's always a causal chain, so, somebody's decision could mean you get stabbed in the neck later on walking down the street, even if you played no hand in that, didn't anger anybody and it took you totally by surprise. So if that then happened, you could end up in the hospital and eventually a slightly different person with a slightly different outlook and so on and so on...
A question like this is more-so academic and just for the sake of asking really, but yeah... logically, there is no way of beginning to answer it.
I suppose you could slightly re-phrase or re-think it as in...
Do our decisions alone shape our path...
Or, whatever, but, that kind of phrasing I think would be maybe slightly easier to think about in more rational terms. But, even though there is a causal chain and you could play no true hand in a position you end up in, you also do play every role in it and just don't realize that you do sometimes.
Then other times you consciously know what you're doing and do it, like for example if you want to follow a certain career path or something. But then, so many factors could mean that even if you did everything 'right' you could end up, by 'chance' in an originally undesired, very different but later much loved position that was totally unexpected but now appreciated.
I think it's unanswerable. It's not quite like but, is somewhat like asking "why is mountain" or something. Sometimes, we can ask questions but it doesn't mean they have an actual answer.
But, we can just muster up a question about pretty much anything but much like, I don't think that the human race will EVER be satisfied with the 'answer' of how the Universe truly began because... it's like when you try and comprehend what was 'before' the Big Bang.
Our minds can't process that, because technically there was nothing. But, even in my brain as I write this, that's, I can't comprehend it. Because that's the reality that 'before' (there was no before) it all began, there was nothing. But we still perceive nothing as something so, that's why I think some humans will always turn to God as a crutch / explanation to ease that confusion.
It's like Steven Pinker said, the human brain may not of been designed, in fact wasn't designed to solve these sorts of problems.
They were 'designed' by natural selection, overtime, to survive. Everything we do now is academic and stimulating but, we're always reaching beyond our limits and often achieving new heights and, our thought-waves may in fact be evolving because, there is infinite pathways that can be created in the brain. So who knows what we'll understand in 1,000 more years. Our brains are pretty incredible.
