The Philosophy of Chatroulette and Freedom: The Impossibility of Free Will

Have you ever been really bored--I mean REALLY bored--and jumped on Chatroulette (link to Wiki)? You know the nights I'm talking about: Facebook Chat is empty, your significant other is asleep and you've gone and drank 6 cups of coffee, thoughtlessly---And, done so just an hour before your obviously optional bedtime? Think about who you chose to spend time chatting with on Chatroulette (link to Chatroulette.com). Did you actually choose them? Did you sit and think: "this is what I want, this is the specific trait I'm looking for in a conversation, and I'll apply all this in the split second before I or the other person hits 'NEXT'"?  I know I don't.

You click "Start", some oddness draws you in, you realize what it is you're looking at---and quickly click "Next". Despite your permanent trauma, you're onto another oddity, and then another and another. Finally, you settle on a lonely girl from China, or some Wiccan  trying to charge his badly drawn sigils. You didn't think about this; It just happend. So consider this moment of ambiguity in your the moment of decision. Did you chose this? 

In some sense, you could say you chose this little moment of Chatroulette-voyeurism/conversation because it was you who acted.  But, where was your Free Will? Did you choose the reasons out of which you chose that specific person? Did you choose your voyeuristic tendencies, your addiction to coffee or your manic need for company? I didn't. I don't. So what's what my point? 

In other situations, any other situation, there is always this constitutive/necessary element of your choice---that thing that determines what you choose and chose---that  you did not choose.  Just like on Chatroulette, you cannot choose the reason out of which you choose. It's just more obvious on Chatroulette. Free will implies a choice of what causes you to choose. It implies that you are conscious of and constantly in control of everything that determines how you choose. This is impossible.

]This is the Chatroulette paradox: you cannot choose the  reasons out of which you choose or it would lead to infinite regress. Either your choice is completely random (which also implies reasons (for another conversation)), or you have something driving the choice. There's always something driving the choice. You need to bottom out in some reason for acting. And, if a reason for acting is the necessary condition for you having chosen anything at all, then you couldn't have chosen those reasons. 

Chatroulette provides an intuitive "bottoming out". (This is a  double entendre (get it, Rock bottom?)). It provides a bottoming out because you didn't choose the reasons you acted: you simply acted. So next time you're on Chatroulette, consider the choices you make. You can't have free will, but realizing that might make you get introspective. 

Resources on Choice and Free Will: 
wikipedia.org Free Will
Stanford Encyclopedia of philosophy Free Will
Wikipedia.org Choice

Happiness and How to Prevent Suicide: Finding Happiness While Exploring Suicide.

I've often wondered what the remedy is for  the unhappiness that seems ubiquitous to our culture. I mean, what does the average person need to be happy? What is the core of happiness for most people? Hell, what would make me happy! The answer came to me while preforming a literature search for a lab that studies ostracism. I realized  that If I want to know what makes a person happy,  I need to find out what they can't live without. Or, in other words, find out what--if taken away--would make them want to kill themselves.  

The general answer is the group. If you take away the groups, then you take away the will to life. The two major issues that create the wish to commit suicide are simply social. The first is the a feeling of belonging. If a person feels like they don't belong to a group that they value, then they are likely to have suicidal ideations.

 They're going to be miserable. In fact, a person cannot avoid feeling the pain of not belonging if they are ostracized. Recent studies have shown that regardless of how confident you are, you're going to feel pain, actual pain, at being ostracized. Our brains are wired to be hyper-sensitive to being ostracized in any way. and even something as simple as a diverted eye gaze can stimulate the pain response. 

You may say, "I don't have pain when I'm rejected". The quick answer to this is that the way this that you probably just let it go when the brain activates the pain response. You don't attend to and so you forget about it. However, some people whether through biology, bad relationships or both cannot let this go, and reflect on it well after the fact. 

Each act of ostracism or rejection makes them feel more and more like they don't belong and causes them to develop an expectancy, where they look for signs of rejection everywhere, and do so automatically. They find it everywhere because they have a  confirmation bias. So they become sensitized to everything, perceiving more and more, everyday, as a sign that they don't belong. 

The second issue that adds to the sense of not belonging to create the perfect storm of suicide a feeling of being a burden. The key feeling here is "I'm a hindrance to everyone around me" or "the group would be better off without me".  This is the best predictor of the violence of the method of suicide. Varying on this trait is the difference between the suicide attempter popping a bottle of aspirin or a bullet. The more they feel burdensome to their family, friends and others, they more likely they are to use a more permanent method of attempting suicide. This is the single best predictor of a person moving from  attempter to an actual corpse.

 Feeling like you just don't belong, or  worse, like you are a burden to those around you is tightly connected to the will to live. It's reasonable to believe that if this is so connected feeling unhappy, that turning the dial the other direction can increase the will to live and happiness. My revelations is that everyone just needs to feel valued and accepted. That's the key to happiness.

So I've made some rules for myself:

1) When in doubt, be warm and friendly--it fosters friendship and intimacy and keeps me from making someone else feel like they don't belong.

2) Look at myself and everyone else through the eyes of "What they're good at" rather than from the critical perspective. So, to use a cliche: See the good in everyone, including myself.

3) Constantly make attempts at building new relationships. This means taking chances.

4) Divert my focus from memories of rejection and feelings of failure to:

5) Constantly remind myself of the healthy relationships that I have, as well as how I can, and do, contribute to those relationships in healthy ways.

Descartes And Cogito Ergo Sum: The Cartesian Mistake.

You think therefore you are---right? You can't deny that when you think that you exist as something, even if that is some unknowable being. Perception, even the perception of your own thoughts, is a guarantee of existence because to perceive something is the analytic a priori guarantee of being a perceiver. But, it isn't the thought, the content, that determines your existence; instead, it is sensation. Perception always starts with sensation. It is the very foundation---it is perception without form.

This is where Descarte went wrong with his idea of Clear and Distinct Ideas. He thought that if something was clear and distinct, it was  as we see it.  After all, our thoughts are clear and distinct, and what more can guarantee that something is true than similarity to what is sure. Some people think that he is caught in a form of circular reasoning with Clear and Distinct ideas---The Cartesian circle--however, he's not saying that God stamps his stamp of authority on clear and distinct ideas. Clear and Distinct Ideas are sure because the clearness and distinctness of our thoughts is what makes our existence sure. 

However, this is just a missing distinction that probably resulted as a result of lacking the right language. He failed to make the distinction between the form of feeling (thought) and feeling (qualia, presentness, pure consciousness). There can be sensation without thought; but, there cannot be thought without sensation. Sensation is a priori necessary for thought. So feeling, qualia, presentness is always first and formost, metaphysically and epistemically primary. 

He blended simple consciousness and the form of consciousness (thought) into one into a single word or concept and built the rest of his theory on that. The use of that one ambiguous word, Cogito or Thought, that one failed distinction, brought his entire theoretical structure crumbling down.

I think therefore I am should be I feel therefore I am; I think therefore I am should be about qualitativness and not form found as thought; I think therefore I am is a reflection of the form of thought on the qualia. I think therefore I am is a reflection and is the a statement about the reflexive recognition of the qualitative nature. I think therefore I am is simply the the recognition of the presentness of consciousness.

Helpful articles:  
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia/
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness-representational/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes-works/
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes-ontological/