Everybody is formed by their experiences and genes and they act accordingly. There is no free will. If you realize that, you realize that you can never blame anyone for anything, because they had no choice to act differently. As a customer it's still hard to take, when someone who is clearly formed by years of professional deformation, treats you like shit.

▲ spicyusername 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

    never blame anyone for anything

That's actually not quite true.

Assigning blame, via agency or otherwise, and the associated social or legal consequences are additional signals in the environment that influence and change behavior.

If the actions of an individual were involved in propagating some chain of events, then it's perfectly valid to respond to their involvement, via social stigma, punishment, etc, regardless of whether or not there is "agency". The knowledge and anticipation of a similar response changes future actor's behavior, with or without free will.

This discussion itself is exactly an example of this in practice. If there's no such thing as agency, then us talking about what someone should or shouldn't do, given whether there is free will, have any influence on anything, except that it does because interacting with these ideas themselves change behavior, with or without free will.

This is what people mean when they say we should just ignore the question of free will entirely, because it doesn't really factor into how we should design the social contract.

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fainpul 8 hours ago | parent [-]

I agree with you, except for the blame part.

Of course people act accordingly to the system they're in. If they expect punishment for an action, or not, changes their behaviour. By defining what's punishable, we can change the course of action. But if you look at any action which already happened, you can't blame anyone for it, because it had to happen that way, given the circumstances.

	▲	foxglacier 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That already happened is key to your idea and I think you'd have got a better response if you included it initially. It's actually quite a worthwhile concept. Blame can't change the past. The important reason we blame is to help our mind cope with the loss we suffered. But if you can succeed in coping by thinking the past is immutable, that's even better.

▲ ramon156 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This. There's something about most cultures that I am slowly am realizing; we always know how to complain and shift the responsibility. And no, you're not immune to this. You're not immune to anything, really.

Medical departments aren't about helping you out anymore. When you work in a hospital, you do what your rule book says. If someone doesn't have their paperwork available, you cannot help them. That's your boss's fault, not yours. This makes it easy for you to not feel guilty, since your job is to follow da rulez.

How did we get here? Why can you not just give them their pills and charge them the real amount. Why do we need this bureaucratic hell and pretend we're here to help people. We're not. We're here to squeeze you until we cannot legally ask for more.

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renewiltord 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Why can you not just give them their pills and charge them the real amount. Why do we need this bureaucratic hell and pretend we're here to help people

I can get my drugs from people like this but you can’t because you prefer this system. Having chosen a system with heavy import controls and an overbearing government regulatory agency, all of which you are likely a huge fan of, there’s not much point to being upset that it yields high prices through an opaque system. The thing you want creates the thing you don’t want.

One might as well rage at getting wet when you stand under the shower and turn it on.

	▲	WarmWash 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		We could have great public systems, but their is a fundamental problem that perpetually keeps these systems unstable: The people who pay the most for these systems use them the least, and the people who pay the least for them use them the most. At best you can have a system where the people paying for it are respected for their contribution (and likewise feel good about it), and the people using it are ever grateful for what their receive (and can shamelessly feel good about it). But man, have you ever dealt with average humans?

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lotsofpulp 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Why can you not just give them their pills and charge them the real amount.

You can, you would just end up without income at best, or charged with a crime and imprisoned at worst.

Also, all these complexities in healthcare exist due to 90% not being able to afford it, so the complexities are to paper over politically unpopular subsidies from various groups of people to other groups of people, in varying amounts. The other part of it is the nebulous costs of liability, that potentially reach into the millions for each interaction.

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s5300 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[dead]

▲ justonceokay 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If you think there’s no free will then you won’t argue with me when I say I think there is.

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pavel_lishin 8 hours ago | parent [-]

But they will argue with you, for it was predestined.

	▲	scrollop 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Unless you have an Out of Body Experience and who the hell knows if physics continues to be at all having an effect in that realm and thus perform Free Will is a possibility.

▲ recursivedoubts 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

i don't believe that to be the case at all

but, of course, i don't have any choice in the matter, so what's the point of talking about it?

but, of course, we don't have any choice in that matter either, do we?

	▲	forshaper 8 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I don't need blame to hunt an animal for food or slam someone who's biting me. I don't need blame to swat a mosquito that's trying to live, to remove a cobra from my living room, or to quibble about fine print with someone in such an annoying way that I eventually get what I want.
	▲	fainpul 8 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		right