u/SquashInformal7468

*context- this is part of the opening section of a full article exploring determinism, which does seem to provide a “solution” to the problem mentioned here, the article will be linked in the comments for those interested*

Determinism relies on the idea of a preceding cause for every occurrence, but what caused the first occurrence?
Every cause is in itself an occurence. If we go to the beginning of time, we are able to find a first event. Since this is the first thing to exist, it seems reasonable to state that nothing came before it. If nothing came before the first event,then there could be no cause. Meaning that should there be a beginning of time, there is also at least one event that has occurred without a cause. This falls outside the rules of determinism and seems to challenge the idea that every occurence has followed determinism’s laws.

*rest of article linked in comments *

I am aware these things are ultimately not what matter, but I want discussion surrounding what I write and to interact with like minded people which requires the audience.

-I started the page around a month ago but got banned within the first week by ai and have only just been unbanned

What I write about:
Philosophy in long form articles

Approach to distribution:
-upload snippets of articles with links to relevant subreddits
-post notes directly on Substack that promote my articles by summarising key points or posing the questions at hand, I’ve began attaching links to articles in the comments
-linking articles in chats of larger newsletters that occupy slightly related fields (on Substack)

Outcomes so far:

10 free subs and around 20 followers
Some rigorous engagement in comments (few and far between)
Lots of engagement all be it usually shallow and without a way or retaining readers here on Reddit

Does anyone have any advice?

I will link my page in the comments for those interested

Thanks to those who have read this far 😄

*context-this is a part of the opening segment to a full article, which in itself provides “solutions” to the problem at hand,the article will be linked in the comments for those interested*

Determinism relies on the idea of a preceding cause for every occurrence, but what caused the first occurrence?
Every cause is in itself an occurence. If we go to the beginning of time, we are able to find a first event. Since this is the first thing to exist, it seems reasonable to state that nothing came before it. If nothing came before the first event,then there could be no cause. Meaning that should there be a beginning of time, there is also at least one event that has occurred without a cause. This falls outside the rules of determinism and seems to challenge the idea that every occurence has followed determinism’s laws.

*full article in comments,eager for thoughts*

*context-this is a part of the opening segment of a much larger article which also seems to provide “solutions” to the problem at hand, it will be linked below for this Interested*

Determinism relies on the idea of a preceding cause for every occurrence, but what caused the first occurrence?
Every cause is in itself an occurence. If we go to the beginning of time, we are able to find a first event. Since this is the first thing to exist, it seems reasonable to state that nothing came before it. If nothing came before the first event,then there could be no cause. Meaning that should there be a beginning of time, there is also at least one event that has occurred without a cause. This falls outside the rules of determinism and seems to challenge the idea that every occurence has followed determinism’s laws.

*full article linked below*

*context-this is part of a larger article which seems to provide solutions to the question at hand,but ultimately the problem may still prevail*

Determinism relies on the idea of a preceding cause for every occurrence, but what caused the first occurrence?
Every cause is in itself an occurence. If we go to the beginning of time, we are able to find a first event. Since this is the first thing to exist, it seems reasonable to state that nothing came before it. If nothing came before the first event,then there could be no cause. Meaning that should there be a beginning of time, there is also at least one event that has occurred without a cause. This falls outside the rules of determinism and seems to challenge the idea that every occurence has followed determinism’s laws.

Obviously I’m aware that the numbers are not “important” but it’s through the numbers you get the interactions which are what I seek. For context I write about philosophy and publish relatively long form content. I’m also totally inexperienced in philosophy but😄

*context-this is an extract from an article I wrote exploring the problem as a whole, the extract serves to show the argument for how determinism could survive the regression problem, the full article will be linked in the comments*

This existence has always existed
Relative to our own existence, this is obviously true. However using the timeframe of our own existence as the only timeframe within the grand -scheme of things is seemingly limited.

Think of a computer program made within our world, once launched,the only time that has ever existed for that program is what has passed during its existence. Relative to itself, it has always existed.
However in our world, it has not, there was a time before it existed.

Now think of our world in a similar way to the computer world, if our reality originates from a different existence-perhaps a more “true” or “real” one, then time has likely existed before us.

If this parent reality was to “create” ours, then that creation would be the original cause, with our realities “laws” assigned during the process.
Effectively removing the need for the original cause to stem from our reality,whilst still existing. Meaning the time regression problem would no longer exist.

For us to exist, that was always going to happen, so the predetermination of the first cause (creation) is valid, it just stems from an existence beyond our own.

This means that determinism would be possible, with the caveat of accepting that this reality we occupy stems from another which is responsible for creating ours, and assigning its laws.

The issue with this is that it seems to only serve to move the “first cause” problem back into the parent existence. However this “problem” relies on the parent existence following the same laws as our own, and is also irrelevant when discussing the laws of our own universe as a closed system.

Do some actions justify society forever seeing someone as “bad” even if they have completely changed? How do we actually interpret people’s character as a society? Do we look at people as their overall net actions, or just more recently? Are any of these more justified than the others?

Do some actions justify society forever seeing someone as “bad” even if they have completely changed? How do we actually interpret people’s character as a society? Do we look at people as their overall net actions, or just more recently? Are any of these more justified than the others?

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As a reader, when writing responses to what you have read you will always be biased. Imagine you read a piece of writing and at the very beginning you find out that the writer is 6 years old. How likely are you to take them seriously? It seems irrefutable that most readers will naturally be less likely to accept, agree, or interact with the 6 year old’s ideas. However now imagine that the very same idea was written by a well known, highly regarded philosopher. Automatically, there will be people who side with whatever has been written just because of who wrote it. Similarly, the writing is likely to be found more agreeable and valuable, than what the six year old wrote, despite the two pieces literally being the same.

To an extent,people seem to decide what they think of something before even reading.

This “bias” also applies to viewpoints.
For example, if a piece is labelled as being in support of determinism, or even just written by a determinist, people who believe in determinism will go into reading it with a mindset of wanting to agree, and therefore be more likely to agree, despite the possibility of the idea not aligning with what they actually believe in. Similarly, people who do not believe in determinism will be rushing to find a weak point in the writing, craving the idea of being able to counter the points made. This mindset already makes these readers drastically less likely to agree with what is said.

By assuming positions within philosophy or anything , we numb ourselves to the possible validity of other arguments, meaning we bias ourselves.

With these problems in mind, it seems reasonable to claim that a solution would be to provide no context of the writer.

However in doing this, a piece is much less likely to yield any engagement as it targets nobody. Much less people want to read it as it provides less opportunity for debate promoting the readers beliefs. Also, people have no reason to assume anything good about the writer, so assume they are average and “just another piece”.

The image I paint can not be a full explanation.
If it were to be, how would there become new highly regarded writers, and views? What am I missing?

I hear notes are the play, but even those get no push. Even if they did, is there a strategy for converting note viewership/interactions to the same with long form content

If morality is created by humans, and subjective. How can we know it is valid if it is inherently flawed in the sense that it is designed by us, to suit us. Also what makes any idea or morals/ethics more valid than any other? Perhaps the volume of people that align with them. This feels wrong, if the majority of the world believed mass murder if Innocent lives with no other purpose but to kill was morally acceptable, I feel like that still wouldn’t make it such

If morality is created by humans, and subjective. How can we know it is valid if it is inherently flawed in the sense that it is designed by us, to suit us. Also what makes any idea or morals/ethics more valid than any other? Perhaps the volume of people that align with them. This feels wrong, if the majority of the world believed mass murder if Innocent lives with no other purpose but to kill was morally acceptable, I feel like that still wouldn’t make it such.

//This is an extract of a larger piece of writing, which I have linked in the comments

Imagine this; there are two rooms-know them as room A and room B. Each room contains a living being. Outside of each room is a button,there is also a choosing being, and an informat-who always speaks truth . The choosing being must decide on which of the two beings to kill. To kill their chosen being, the choosing being must simply press the corresponding button. The informat serves to give information to the choosing being, but nothing more. Asides from this the situation is isolated.

The following conditions of such experiment seem to provide information on human ethics,bias, and most notably how we determine the “value” of a life. It is important to imagine the choosing being is competent and unbiased(this concept uses emotions as bias-I have written another piece on this), unless the condition requires them to be otherwise. It may also be useful to imagine the choosing being as being superior to humans.Similarly it is crucial to treat the conditions as isolated, and only being what they are described to be.

Condition 1:
The choosing being is told that room A contains a brain dead human, and room B contains another human who is exactly the same as the being in room A, but is not brain dead. This is the only information the choosing being is given.It seems reasonable to suggest that the choosing being will almost always choose to kill the brain dead individual in room A. This condition repeats in the following scenario with the same ideas behind it, and may be more useful to grasp the potential experience equating to value concept; an insect in room A, and a bird in room B.So why is this? To answer this question we must consider the differences between the two boxed beings. There is only one; the being in room A has no capacity to think/process information, and therefore no ability to experience. This suggests that the value of a life is related to a beings ability to process information and therefore experience.

The two are directly correlated. Imagine a blind person, they are unable to process sight, and therefore unable to experience it. You are only able to experience what you can process. Similarly imagine someone with near perfect processing ability in terms of vision, they “experience more vision”, which aids us in concluding that more processing power equates to more experience.With this is mind, we can gather that a being with a greater processing capacity having a positive experience experiences more positivity than one with less.It is also important to note that , you can not experience things outside of yourself. Your external experience is just your internal experience projected onto an external world. With this in mind it seems reasonable to say that a beings experience is purely internal, and so when considering its potential to experience, we only need to consider the being itself. By this point we have established that a life’s value is related to the beings ability to experience, as shown by the first condition of the thought experiment