Sam Harris

We can’t create out of nothing. We can only respond to outside forces the only way we know how, so the need of a free will doesn’t enter the picture.

Word pictures of no free will—-

We are idling motors waiting for someone or something to put us in gear

We are shuttlecocks in a perpetual Badminton game with cause one side of the net and effect on the other side.

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What we think, or what we know, or what we believe is, in the end, of little consequence. The only consequence is WHAT WE DO.  John Ruskin (1819 - 1900)

> We can’t create out of nothing.

Right, we don’t create out of nothing. Every new idea we create uses ideas we already have.

> We can only respond to outside forces the only way we know how, so the need of a free will doesn’t enter the picture.

Wrong. We do create new ideas, which are ideas we didn’t know previously.

How else do you explain how Einstein created his theory of gravity?

Why must creativity require free will? You need to explain the connection. Maybe you can have one without the other, according to your understanding of each.

I should point out, as David Deutsch explains in The Beginning of Infinity, we humans do not yet understand creativity. If you do understand it, explain it to us all. Or else, relinquish your implicit claim that there is some sort of necessary connection to free will. Whatever you think that is.

I don’t see how one thing without an explanation - creativity - can be explained by something else without an explanation.

Remember, if you can explain it, you can simulate it. So when we have your computer program that does creative stuff, that will convince me.

Brett.