Kurushimi

The ads on TV aren't meant to brainwash. They're meant to inform. They make it so their products stand out in your head the next time you decide to go shopping.

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The worst part is when sidewalk cracks are out-of-sync with your natural stride.
~ xkcd

GENERATION 4: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social experiment.

Madness

But your decision is based upon that influence. Not all influence is in your face and obvious y'know. If you say that you've never been influenced by the media, you're lying IMO.

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Kurushimi

But does that influence infringe on free will? It doesn't. We are the ones in control, we make the decisions. Media just try to convince us which decision is better.

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The worst part is when sidewalk cracks are out-of-sync with your natural stride.
~ xkcd

GENERATION 4: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social experiment.

Masked_Felix

That's why I didn't say that. Influence happens everywhere. It doesn't have to change you to it's point of view. Reverse Influence is when you react negatively and are actually influenced the opposite way in which was intended. No matter whether you are influenced or not, whether the information is correct or not, you are FREE to use the information in whatever manner you decide. You can't get around that. I'm not denying that things can affect people's decisions in planned ways, quite the contrary. It's just pretty evident that you have to choose what to do with that information, be it an attempt to sway you or not.

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Madness

That's not the point. You still have the free decision to choose. However, the influence changes how you think and therefore your ultimate choice.

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Vicdmx

Could be.

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Skrrp

I don't fear authority, I hate it.

My point being that there was only implied authority here. There is no authority. Doing something stupid (while ok, not actually harmful in any way) because some guy who looks like security tells you to is stupid.

If someone asked me to do that, my first question would be to get them to produce ID. I would only comply on threat of arrest.

(Note that in the experiments, if a subject is unwilling or asks questions, the psychologists have to come clean about what they were doing, rather than force compliance with authority.)

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http://skrrp.net/

GENERATION 16068: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 57 to the generation. Social experiment.

Masked_Felix

You have yet to explain how this voids you of having free choice.

In all honesty, coming to the conclusion that you are not free because newly acquired information, regardless of that information's validity, can change your decision on something has got to be one of the worst misses of connecting the dots I've ever seen.

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Madness

It doesn't. But your "free choice" from having been exposed to this influence is different from your free choice from before the influence. THEREFORE your free choice has been altered.

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Masked_Felix

Uh, so what?

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Tyrant

There is no such thing as free will. Everything in life is the reaction to an action. We are essentially robots with preset reactions.

TL;DR: You zig, therefore I zag.

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Masked_Felix

That's a retarded ideal. Because we react to things based on the information of the situation, we therefore are being controlled by the others that helped create that situation and have no free will. That's malarkey. The fact that you're on this message board is free will. Just because a situation may push you into a different set of actions than if the situation didn't occur doesn't mean that you are suddenly incapable of choosing what you want to do. It's irrelevant that information presented and gathered can alter the choice you make. The choice remains.

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Chuckles

Does everyone have a free mind?

Well I didn't pay for it...


But seriously, yes, everyone has a free mind. I can think of anything I want at anytime, nothing prevents me from that. I can think of Tacos one second then mud the next.

There are things that influence your thoughts....not control them.

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Madness

But the influence is control.

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Masked_Felix

No. It's not. It cannot rob you of choice. Only push at you to make a certain choice. You can always do what you want.

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