Now back when I was an edgy teen atheist, I convinced myself of hard determinism, right? Philosophical hard determinism. So what is that? It's the idea of course that well the world is it's all atoms, it's all matter. Therefore everything within the world is one giant chain reaction. It's a chemical reaction and it's been kind of set up and it's going in one direction. Okay, we don't know what that direction is, it's hard to tell what the direction is. But ultimately everything including the atoms in your brain and therefore you are all just part of this massive chain reaction. Ultimately there cannot be anything called free will. We have this illusion of free will but everything is you know it's all kind of predetermined. Okay. Now this is kind of an inevitable, I mean if you believe that there's nothing but matter, right? This is kind of an inevitable conclusion. There are some people out there, some copers who will you know claim to be compatibleists and stuff like that. But I think now of course there are difficulties and actually you know predicting the future because we have constraints on our measurement like you know uncertainty and stuff like that. But just in general like as to how the universe works, if you think it's nothing but matter it's kind of hard not to believe anything other than you know we ultimately don't have control over our own lives. Now when I was a kid I thought that was like big and red pilling right? So Normie's couldn't handle that truth right? That you actually woe bro you actually like don't even really like exist because you don't like actually have a free will over your own life. You're just like a robot dude. You're just a robot who's like there for the ride. You can perceive what's going on like you feel it but you're not really in control man. I thought that was like a Reggie, edgy red pill, Reggie, ed pill kind of thing. So you know I've come to change my tune for many different reasons. Firstly of course you know I think you know I don't believe in everything that everything is atoms and matter and stuff like that in the first place. But I think in reality looking back at that I realized that no actually the the idea that we have no free will that actually is a cope in itself. That actually is maybe maybe the biggest cope I've ever had and I can only now look back and realize like how obvious that was because you know the reality is if you if you want to look at yourself as being kind of an automaton that seems dehumanizing but it also justifies your own mediocrity right? Because if you can say something like well you know I don't really have free will. I don't really have control over my own behavior that obviously makes you in some way irresponsible for your own behavior. It doesn't actually matter. It doesn't actually write if the the whole world is a giant chemical reaction and you're just there along for the ride and ultimately your will is illusory and you can't control anything. Well that that very much justifies you just kind of being content to do nothing right? You I don't know not really have anything not accomplishing anything not making the hard moral decisions you need to make. Now I was reminded of this recently by someone in real life I have to highly anonymize this but I'll just say I had a I had a buddy okay? I had a buddy who was having a problem in his life and not exactly his life but in someone close to him and you know remember having this talk with him about it is like you know dude you got to get up you got to get out in front of this right? You got to do something about it and of course it was a it was an awkward situation it's one of those things where like he would have had to make like he would have had to do something like embarrassing and go out of his way to do it to solve the problem but I just remember telling him like dude you got to do something you got to get out in front of it I don't listen I'm not even sure like what you got to do but like you you do you do have the ability to solve this problem right? I'm highly anonymizing this it would be actually a juicy thing to talk about but it's someone in real life I can't I can't tell you everything either way I just remember him saying something like this that oh well you know well you know I don't know I just I just hope you know God you know God has like he's in control of this and I'm just gonna leave it in his hands and stuff like that now you know I didn't like explode on him at that point but I will just say that that is one of the that's a highly irresponsible thing to say now his attitude actually would have been highly correct and highly the right attitude to have that level of stoicism would be right in a domain that he had no control over that actually would be right yeah I don't have control over it I'll leave it in God's hands right his plans but you know that's just not how God works like God you know you like there's a reason that you have moral control over the things close to you you are responsible for them and like when you have we when you can easily fix a problem where you when you can easily do something about it who are you just gonna wait around for like divine intervention like who do you think I mean God sends angels to people God has you as an agent what you're just gonna use as an and him existing as an excuse for you not doing anything that's stupid it's stupid if you believe in God and it's stupid if you don't believe in God frankly it's stupid on both on both sides of it because if you have control over something saying oh I'm just gonna leave it to fate I'm gonna leave it to God I'm gonna leave it to like whatever that is just like beyond cope okay that that ultimately is an excuse for like not you know again like like we we have responsibilities in our life and we I don't know we have to be responsible for them right now anyway all that is to say if you have this like I don't know this this kind of fatalistic Calvinistic view of of life it's just not very good it's not good because it's about to spit it's just like I don't like spitting on videos I just breeds a kind of apathy right it breeds this even if like you might say oh well you know I believe that humans have like free will in a sense blah blah blah but there it breeds this fatality where like you're not in control of your own life and you're constantly like kind of saying oh it'll be dealt with later like I don't actually actually have to do anything about this and you know I am I was very much in this position in my life in fact still I still am I'm still trying to like exercise the parts of my life where I still think about things like this this kind of fatality this kind of oh things will deal with themselves because the reality is if you have control over it like if you have responsibility over it like if you if you can do something about it there's no excuse for you not to right now there are sometimes where it's important not to intervene in things where you might make things worse obviously and you have to have some level of discernment with that but it just really annoys me like fatality really annoys me and of course it annoys me when I I have this this sense still right because ultimately right if if something is is in my purview I am responsible for it I'm not this kind of person you know even when it comes to other people when they're their decisions right you know if I am near someone and someone is gonna make like a bad decision like if I don't speak up right if I don't like make not even make a fuss I'm not not actually about like making a fuss about things that other people are primarily responsible for but listen everything near your life you have a say in I mean that's all I got to say and what it the thing is I think a lot of people have this idea it's not about being a strident person but oftentimes like having a subtle influence on people around you not not a strident influence but just like things get easier the more you stand up for yourself right I did the video a couple years ago right when people are talking about like back in the holocaust and all that kind of stuff where people were having to get shots and do funny things to keep working and stuff like that and the point I made is like it's it's not that hard just a it's not that hard to like stand up for yourself on something like that and be like a lot of times the people who you are afraid of they're very amenable to your suggestions like and it's actually easier to have an effect on people than you might expect right so that that's one thing that I and like the more you do it the more I don't know the easier it gets right so the worst case scenario like the worst place to be in is when you're constantly just taking life as if it is just like this giant chain reaction this chemical reaction where stuff is just happening and it just happens to you and you're just waiting for your your big shot you're just waiting for your golden opportunity you're just waiting for this that and the other to happen and no I mean that's just that's just not how it happens like even like a lot of times even if you have things easy in life it's because you've you've set them up you've made planning you've done stuff in an advance there have been so many times you know just when I've done stuff on the internet I've procre I've procrastinated things that I really regretted and once I finally did them I'm like oh wow this is actually great right actually even like having my YouTube channel right it's not too bad having it now but like I remember when I kind of had the idea of having it I put it off for a good bit didn't do anything in it and I realized actually it's easier than I expected I mean it did require a whole lot of work when I started out just to like get get to where I was but like so one of those like I don't know you just have a say over your life and you're gonna have a different perspective when you realize like how powerful your say is so anyway so the whole cope of like fatalism is ultimately you ultimately to rationalize you not doing anything I think that's really it and I've come to grips with that I've come to grips that like I was coping that entire time this is that this is not actually a video me talking about philosophical determinism and why I don't believe in it but it's really the social correlate or social correlaries in fact even if you do believe in hard determinism even if you believe in fatalism and you think you're all just you're just like a robot reacting to you know what people do around you well I guess I guess now you have to perceive that I am telling you you have to actually do things and have to actually be responsible and since you're a robot you have to do what I say because I'll bully you if you don't the the Luke Smith that exists in your head he's gonna bully you if you don't do the things that you know you need to do right so now now you're actually you actually have to do these things because if you think of yourself as just an automaton automaton's react to things so whatever anyway yeah God has a plan for the universe but the plan involves you okay like you exist for a reason but I don't know I don't know what people are thinking like they're just saying thing they're saying things that make things easy for them all right so that's it it's all you gotta say