Stafford Betty, Free Will in the Moment |572|

[Alex]

Stafford Betty, Free Will in the Moment |572|
by Alex Tsakiris | Oct 4 | Near-Death Experience
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Dr. Stafford Betty, is professor of religious studies and popular author.

 

[J Randall Murphy]

I'm sure Stafford is one of the good guys, but once again, there's a lot of fuzzy thinking going on, starting with the notion of free will. If we define free will as the ability to make conscious decisions ( as Stafford seems to do ), then there's no such thing as free will. It's been scientifically proven that our decisions are fully formed before we ever become aware of them. Consequently, no "conscious decisions" are being made.

Then there are all the problems with typical notions of afterlives and reincarnation. That's not to say that people aren't having experiences that lead them to believe in such things, but that's just the data, what @Alex calls the "Level 1" discussion. If "Level 2" is "the deception", then the nature of the deception lies in the interpretation, and that's where I've made it my job to remove as much noise and fuzzy thinking as possible.

When Stafford says, "We can't determine whether or not we're going to survive the near death experience." he's either saying that we can't predict the future ( which applies to everything ), or that there's no way to determine if there is an afterlife. The former may be true, but the latter isn't — at least not the way most people seem to interpret it ( as a continuity of personhood following the death of the body ).

If we look at afterlives that way, the best that any "you" in an "afterlife" can be, is some sort of copy. There appears to be no way around that other than a couple of loopholes that end-up with us either not being what we think we are in the first place, or that we're already always copies, in which case the issue is moot. The show and the forum keeps on encountering these same issues over and over again without making any progress past them.

That's not to say that these discussions aren't worth having, because to my knowledge, nobody I'm aware of ( including me ) has made it past them either. But maybe — just maybe, if we keep on having these discussions, some way forward will become apparent. Or at least, maybe these discussions will inspire others to take-up the quest — so good show. Keep them coming !

 

[Hurmanetar]

If we define free will as the ability to make conscious decisions ( as Stafford seems to do ), then there's no such thing as free will. It's been scientifically proven that our decisions are fully formed before we ever become aware of them. Consequently, no "conscious decisions" are being made.

I still think this is a minor quibble... partly its the boundary around "you" as we already discussed and it also only looks at one decision in isolation whereas we make a long string of decisions in attempt to achieve a goal and your consciousness plays a role in modulating that feedback loop.

Your consciousness is watching the choices your semi-sub-conscious is making and continually guiding it as feedback comes in to direct it towards achieving a goal. You might think of it like riding a horse... the horse starts to sway one way or the other and then you become aware of it and give it a tug back the other direction. You and the horse are acting as a unit under your conscious control even though the horse's actions are not in your conscious awareness until a few milliseconds after the horse makes the choice and then you keep it in line. So if you got from point A to point B on the pony express can you really say that was all the horse's decision and you had no conscious choice about it? Of course not. Likewise it would be equally silly to say your subconscious is solely responsible for all of your decisions and therefore you have no free will.

 

[J Randall Murphy]

I still think this is a minor quibble... partly its the boundary around "you" as we already discussed and it also only looks at one decision in isolation whereas we make a long string of decisions in attempt to achieve a goal and your consciousness plays a role in modulating that feedback loop.

Whether it's one decision, or a long string of them, none of them are made consciously, therefore it's not a "minor quibble" — at least not if free will is viewed the way that Stafford does, and he's quite specific about it. However if we don't consider conscious decision making to have anything to with free will, and instead look at decisions as something made by us as independent agents with the ability to make decisions independent of external influences, then that's another story. Then it might be possible, but there's still a lot of variables that I would argue make the the notion of "free" decisions little more than a form of blissful ignorance.

I would also argue that the idea of independent agency without conscious decision making, is not the way that the majority of the world looks at the concept of free will. Most people look at it the way Stafford does, that you can decide what to say next. What he's not taking into account is that whatever that decision is, it was made before he ever became aware of it. Conscious decisions are an illusion — always.

Your consciousness is watching the choices your semi-sub-conscious is making and continually guiding it as feedback comes in to direct it towards achieving a goal.

Not exactly. Your conscious mind becomes aware of all choices after the fact, and the feedback from that situation doesn't "guide" anything. It simply causes another chain reaction that happens subconsciously, that you again become aware of after the fact.

You might think of it like riding a horse... the horse starts to sway one way or the other and then you become aware of it and give it a tug back the other direction. You and the horse are acting as a unit under your conscious control even though the horse's actions are not in your conscious awareness until a few milliseconds after the horse makes the choice and then you keep it in line. So if you got from point A to point B on the pony express can you really say that was all the horse's decision and you had no conscious choice about it? Of course not. Likewise it would be equally silly to say your subconscious is solely responsible for all of your decisions and therefore you have no free will.

In your horseback journey, at no point along the way are you aware of whatever decision you will make next. Either you or the horse could inexplicably veer left off a cliff. You simply don't know. The circumstance that you arrive safely at point B is not evidence that a conscious decision was made to get there at any point before or along the way. It's only evidence that decisions were made on an unconscious level to get there. There is no getting around this — as much as we might like to.

 

[J Randall Murphy]

I'm almost ready to release the Skeptiko drinking game ...

That should go over at least as well as Mansions of Madness

If we look at the "Hacking the Afterlife" folks they argue that each iteration we have here in "meat space" doesn't contain our entire consciousness but rather something to the area of 40% of our consciousness.

It's that kind of incoherent nonsense that definitely belongs in the drinking game version.

 

[Nelson]

there's a lot of fuzzy thinking going on, starting with the notion of free will.

I agree

 

[Nelson]

It's been scientifically proven that our decisions are fully formed before we ever become aware of them. Consequently, no "conscious decisions" are being made.

Source?

 

[Nelson]

The evidence I have for doubting most people have so much free will (or at least don't use it much), is e.g. looking at genetic influences on potentials and behaviour patterns. E.g. studies of identical twins separated shortly after birth. And e.g. looking at differences in male vs female participation and accomplishments in certain fields

 

[Nelson]

Re-posting this from what I wrote to Randall elsewhere:
I will now say something that might trigger people but might show something radical about the nature of reality:

Have you noticed how few women are contributing on the forum and in interviews about deep questions of existence, morality, etc. ... unless tendentially they're paid to do it as part of their career / hustle... and even then they tend not to be groundbreaking but weak, such as Patricia Churchland, Trish Macgregor, Martha Nussbaum, etc.

I see extremely little female participation. And with extremely few exceptions the contributions are weak, even absurd.

In general, I've found that unless a woman is influenced in that direction by a male role model, that the vast majority of women aren't even interested in the nature of reality or morality.

According to evolutionary psychology, women tend to be solopsistic in order to maximise their survival and reproductive strategy. Men, on the other hand, tend to be interested in what is true, because accurate information about the wider world tends to help us

In other words, how much of our striving after truth and the good is merely our evolutionary/genetic conditioning that's programmed us to be this way?.....

I.e. how much is a spiritual, multi-incarnation learning process vs merely our physiology.........

 

[Nelson]

The evidence I have for doubting most people have so much free will (or at least don't use it much), is e.g. looking at genetic influences on potentials and behaviour patterns. E.g. studies of identical twins separated shortly after birth.

Even though the studies show an almost overwhelming influence for most people genetically (i.e. seeming to show that the subjects have little free will or didn't use it, but rather perhaps operating on something like autopilot)... there is an individual I can cite who was born an identical twin, yet his life-story, interests and achievements are so in contrast to his genetic copy, that it undermines the notion that everyone is merely genetically programmed automatons: that man is...

Wim Hof.

 

[Nelson]

PS: I just looked up Wim Hof identical twin, and it seems his brother has recently been doing Wim Hof type activities too. But a few years ago when I was researching Wim Hof, I saw a documentary where the two brothers were joking about how different they are, even though they were born genetically the same

 

[Nelson]

Overall though, the evidence points towards at least some individuals having a significant degree of free will; whereas a great many people seem to have very little free will or don't choose to use it

 

[Nelson]

And this appears to be a pattern in general in the universe: there is nuance, differentiation, hierarchy.

 

[Kim]

I like Betty's honest acceptance that he's not heard much about MKUltra & so on. He also made a fine point about the afterlife or The Other Side being thrown out b/c of its association w/ religious dogma, which I'm beginning to see is exactly what I did in my early inquiries into out of body experiences & Moody's Life After Life. I wasn't consciously aware that I saw that as cool stuff, but blow it off b/c, after all, the idiot, hypocritical religious ppl are all over it.
As far as free will goes, I am at a loss why that's such an unpopular idea. This concept is the fly in the Vaseline. Oh, why, if the Ultimate Awareness loves us so much, does he/she/it toss us down in meat popsicles to flail around & then die? The key is free will. I'm still reluctantly aware of the soul's plan & purpose, but that's what makes the whole journey engaging. You are free to choose, to make good & bad decisions, as a way to make you ask, if you live long enough, the Big Questions.
Once you fully grasp the deeply core idea of the Golden Rule, for example, the reality of existence takes on a "complicated simplicity." No matter what situation I'm in, the Golden Rule dictates the best choice. Well, no, not if you wish to avoid pain, loss, grief & many other forms of suffering. But that pain & loss is another key idea: suffering is a gift, disease is a present that we have to learn to use to our advantage, not just simply haul ass away from it like a scalded ape. But, then again, what do I know, really?

 

[Nelson]

It's that kind of incoherent nonsense that definitely belongs in the drinking game version.

Jack seems to have deleted his original post. He made a blunder though. He assumed he knew why many of the guests don't talk about level 2 on the show. There are many possible reasons for this... You're intelligent enough, Randall, to come up with a few reasons why this might be......

 

[Nelson]

@Alex, I'm guessing that Stafford Betty has an overly simplified and pro-Zelensky view of Ukraine?

 

[Nelson]

PS: the Ukraine conflict is one of my litmus tests to judge to what degree others are thinking in a nuanced, independent way

 

[Kim]

I'm sure Stafford is one of the good guys, but once again, there's a lot of fuzzy thinking going on, starting with the notion of free will. If we define free will as the ability to make conscious decisions ( as Stafford seems to do ), then there's no such thing as free will. It's been scientifically proven that our decisions are fully formed before we ever become aware of them. Consequently, no "conscious decisions" are being made.

Then there are all the problems with typical notions of afterlives and reincarnation. That's not to say that people aren't having experiences that lead them to believe in such things, but that's just the data, what @Alex calls the "Level 1" discussion. If "Level 2" is "the deception", then the nature of the deception lies in the interpretation, and that's where I've made it my job to remove as much noise and fuzzy thinking as possible.

When Stafford says, "We can't determine whether or not we're going to survive the near death experience." he's either saying that we can't predict the future ( which applies to everything ), or that there's no way to determine if there is an afterlife. The former may be true, but the latter isn't — at least not the way most people seem to interpret it ( as a continuity of personhood following the death of the body ).

If we look at afterlives that way, the best that any "you" in an "afterlife" can be, is some sort of copy. There appears to be no way around that other than a couple of loopholes that end-up with us either not being what we think we are in the first place, or that we're already always copies, in which case the issue is moot. The show and the forum keeps on encountering these same issues over and over again without making any progress past them.

That's not to say that these discussions aren't worth having, because to my knowledge, nobody I'm aware of ( including me ) has made it past them either. But maybe — just maybe, if we keep on having these discussions, some way forward will become apparent. Or at least, maybe these discussions will inspire others to take-up the quest — so good show. Keep them coming !

Like Eben Alexander, M.D. casually said about the ppl who have been clinically dead or in comas, but report nothing but a black period of void, it's quite likely that they simply forgot what they experienced, like the way sleep researchers have established that reliably, if you wake someone up during REM sleep, they will report a dream.
So, when Stafford says, " We can't determine whether or not we're going to survive the NDE," he's making a simple situation unnecessarily complicated. If you return to "waking consciousness" & report a NDE, then you survived death, i.e., you didn't cross that invisible boundary that figures in so many NDEs. Otherwise, the monitor in your room or in the ER is flat lining.
Where such a direct circumstance gets intensely interesting is that now we have reason to believe, according to a varying percentage of the world's shaved apes, that there is an afterlife, a Great Love, & so much more. Not only that, there is the evidence of over 2,000 verified cases of rebirth from children, the massive proof of evidential mediumship, & the fact that Dr. Betty says so.
In the end, though, I take the advice of Alex's skeptical position of wisdom, & again, say, really, what do I know?

 

[Hurmanetar]

Re-posting this from what I wrote to Randall elsewhere:
I will now say something that might trigger people but might show something radical about the nature of reality:

Have you noticed how few women are contributing on the forum and in interviews about deep questions of existence, morality, etc. ... unless tendentially they're paid to do it as part of their career / hustle... and even then they tend not to be groundbreaking but weak, such as Patricia Churchland, Trish Macgregor, Martha Nussbaum, etc.

I see extremely little female participation. And with extremely few exceptions the contributions are weak, even absurd.

In general, I've found that unless a woman is influenced in that direction by a male role model, that the vast majority of women aren't even interested in the nature of reality or morality.

According to evolutionary psychology, women tend to be solopsistic in order to maximise their survival and reproductive strategy. Men, on the other hand, tend to be interested in what is true, because accurate information about the wider world tends to help us

In other words, how much of our striving after truth and the good is merely our evolutionary/genetic conditioning that's programmed us to be this way?.....

I.e. how much is a spiritual, multi-incarnation learning process vs merely our physiology.........

Eve still has a bitter taste in her mouth from that fruit of knowledge. Men are attracted to foul odors and tastes…

I think you’re right. Raising kids myself I can see it… If women had a natural proclivity to stare off into space pondering and mapping out the edges of known reality the kids right in front of her face would suffer. And if men didn’t ponder such things, the kids would starve or the tribe would be conquered.

 

[Kim]

Wow, Alex, Dr. Betty got into an area that has always fascinated me: the voices that schizophrenics complain about. I bought a CD from CBS News years ago that covered 3 really bizarre cases that smacked of the Other Side. One of the 3 was about a family that had 2 daughters that were often tormented by something outside themselves. The recorded moans & screams of these two girls made my blood run cold. If they had been coached, then whoever taught them to do that is a wasted talent. At any rate, the girls also had attempted to murder their parents & each other, & the parents had special locks & other arrangements so that they could rest in safety.
Besides Dr. Tom Zinser, there is the work of the late psychotherapist, Edith Fiore, who wrote "The Unquiet Dead" & other works about her efforts to help patients that found no relief elsewhere. I have little doubt that psychiatry, like virology, is mostly a load of BS.