patrick.net

I will share this one which is interesting, although not addressing the question of your argument. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/06/theres-no-such-thing-as-free-will/480750/ Harris' view is is included in the piece.

If one believes this thesis (that believing we have free will is beneficial), then it's not too big a leap from there to seeing the value of seeing ourselves as having some agency, perhaps something along the lines of a soul (but not requiring it's existence to outlive us in any form we might imagine).

marcus says

I have to admit I was more interested in reading the arguments philosophers and scientists have made, than in reading every back and forth between Dan and Heraclitusstudent.

The back and forth did go on way too long for such few actual points. A lot of repeating.

However, what philosophers say on free will doesn't matter. Just because they are famous, doesn't mean they are right. I'd go with modern science over philosophical diatribes any day. And what Sam Harris and other scientists have said or published is far more convincing.

marcus says

If one believes this thesis (that believing we have free will is beneficial

I would argue that the belief in free will has done considerable harm and no good. It's used as a justification for inflicting needless suffering on others because "they deserve it".

However, even if there were a net benefit to believing in a false idea, to advocate such a belief in something you know is false is to say that people should be manipulated and that honesty is not the best policy. I would disagree with that assessment. Ultimately lies are self-defeating. Any moral foundation based on lies can be corrupted by other lies. Only moral foundations based on truth can withstand any assault.

Dan8267 says

However, what philosophers say on free will doesn't matter. Just because they are famous, doesn't mean they are right

In many cases they are making rigorous logical arguments.

Dan8267 says

Ultimately lies are self-defeating. Any moral foundation based on lies can be corrupted by other lies.

This is true, but what if it's true that believing we have agency and free will, makes it true in some way ?

Also, what if believing we have no free will is truly damaging to many people not enlightened enough to not become fatalists becasue of the belief (see Atlantic article I linked a couple comments back).

And finally, since there is in fact no way to prove there is no free will, which even Harris seems to admit (he just wants to take it as an axiom). If we don't know, then it's not a lie. I believe that the reason that both you and Sam Harris insist that it's provable (actually Harris doesn't - he invokes his meditation experiences as proof - which is ironic) that we have no free will is linked to the fact that your bias of atheism disables you from being in the most honest possible - "I don't know" camp, when it comes to certain matters. And no, I'm not invoking super natural phenomena. I'm just embracing mysteries that are not yet understood, and the "I don't know" truth that I live by, when I in fact don't know.

Dan8267 says

I'd go with modern science

Modern science still knows very little about consciousness, human intelligence or how the complex sense of self we possess occurs.

Dan8267 says

Pointing out a contradiction in another person's argument is certainly not b.s.

You argue that a nervous system is a requirement for free will...

....for an ameba. Any 4 yrs old kid can understand why a living being requires a nervous a nervous system to think while a computer doesn't.
Dan could generate enough BS to fertilize the Sinai.

Dan8267 says

Free will, as talked about for thousands of years, cannot be throttled.

An assertion without any support is not an argument. I wasn't talking of your definition obviously but mine.

Dan8267 says

Organic molecules and digital gates do what they do precisely because they are following the same laws of the electromagnetic force. So if a computer can have free will, so can a single-celled organism.

A computer can have free will because it can contain a complex representation of a given universe, including a simplistic one like a chessboard.
A single celled organism cannot.
I think this is obvious and only an idiot would need to push the point more than we have already.

marcus says

Modern science still knows very little about consciousness, human intelligence or how the complex sense of self we possess occurs.

Yet it still knows vastly more than all of philosophy and religion. So once again, you're better off with the cutting edge of science than thousands of years of philosophy and religion. At least science is on the right track.

Dan8267 says

You then tried to argue that the knowledge contained in a high-level program, using chess as an example, makes free choices. However, the high-level program is not what is executed by the computer. Low-level machine language is executed by digital gates. If the chess playing program is making free choices then it is doing so with simple binary logic gates. The high-level language and the source code are not at play. They don't even have to exist on the computer running the chess program. So whatever choice is being made by the computer is being made mechanically and without the slightest deviation from blind obedience to causality as specified in the laws of nature. This is no different if you replace the binary logic gates with neurons, gears, or any other physical device.

What you say here is obvious and totally missed the point, which is that some concepts make sense only on certain layers.
The gates in the CPU are only looking at bits. They don't know and don't care that the bits part of a representations of a chess game (for example).
Yet if you needed to analyse what a chess program is doing would you focus on transistors in the CPU or would you focus on the high level code that describes what the program does it this case or that one?

Heraclitusstudent says

Any 4 yrs old kid can understand why a living being requires a nervous a nervous system to think while a computer doesn't.

That's not what I asked.

Heraclitusstudent says

Dan8267 says

Free will, as talked about for thousands of years, cannot be throttled. I wasn't talking of your definition obviously but mine.

An assertion without any support is not an argument.

I've already presented plenty of evidence of what people mean by free will. You said you didn't have the attention span to view it. That doesn't mean the evidence isn't there.

And as for your definition of free will, who cares? It's not the subject of this thread, the subject of the video in the original post, or what anyone before you has meant when using that term. Again, define free will as "a smelly asshole" and plenty of people have it. But then when you say "free will exists" that doesn't mean anything to anyone else.

I'm not going to argue nomenclature anymore with you. Your entire argument can be summed up as

Of course free will doesn't exist. But I want people to go around saying it does, so I'll change the definition to something completely irrelevant. When people agree that something exists that I call free will, they will get confused and think everything written about free will by philosophers and holy books were right.

Drop it already.

Dan8267 says

A chess program's choices are still deterministic. It has no more ability to deviate from pre-ordained results than a shovel has.

If you throw a brick at a shovel, it won't react.
Except if you threaten its king, it will react.
The capacity to look at the future and make choices, and execute these choices means we have agency.
Thanks to this ability, we build houses to be warm in winter. We build farms, we built roads, we built an entire civilization because we can anticipate the future and make choices to enhance our well-being.
We have agency. We have a will. We have moral to regulate interactions.
You can say a posteriori all choices were deterministic. Fine. But this is extremely irrelevant for the people making choices everyday and changing the world thank to that capacity.

Heraclitusstudent says

A computer can have free will because it can contain a complex representation of a given universe, including a simplistic one like a chessboard.

Again, I don't give a shit about your meaningless redefining of free will. A complex representation of a given universe does not create free will as specified in every religious or philosophical text ever written in all of history. It is not the free will the fictional Christian god gave to man. It is not the free will judges believe in when they sentence defendants. It is not the free will that the torturer uses to justify his actions against the wicked.

Oh, and by the way, amoebas do have sophisticated knowledge of their environment in their DNA. They know how to build membranes to separate themselves from the outside world. They know how to digest sugars and proteins. They know how to build and repair organelles. They know how to trap, capture, and kill prey. There is a ton of knowledge in their genetic code.

Furthermore, all the parts of an amoeba function like the digital logic gates or gears or neurons when it comes to making choices. An amoeba has to choose where to move and what to attack. It's using logic implemented as physical constructs. So it is an information processing device acting on a model of its universe. You give it too little credit.

Heraclitusstudent says

Yet if you needed to analyse what a chess program is doing would you focus on transistors in the CPU or would you focus on the high level code that describes what the program does it this case or that one?

What I the programmer would do is irrelevant. The source code simply doesn't exist on the computer executing the program. Only the machine language code exists there. So any knowledge the computer has is in the machine language code alone.

Heraclitusstudent says

The capacity to look at the future and make choices, and execute these choices means we have agency.

Agency is not free will. If you want to argue that a person, animals with brains, and someday A.I. have will, then finally we are in agreement. Hell, I could have saved you the trouble and said that at the beginning of this thread. But will is not free. That is the entire point of this thread. Your will is not free to be anything except what is predetermined by the internal state of your brain and the inputs to it. You have unfree will. Other animals with brains have unfree will. Futuristic A.I.s will have unfree will. Hell, I'll even go as far as saying amoebas have unfree will and that will does not require a brain. Will can be implemented with other things. But none of these things, including you, has free will. Will is bounded to the laws of nature and the state of the physical mechanism that implements it.

Game, set, match.

I'll take a simple example: Joe walks to work nearby a shallow pond, and on that day he can see a toddler in the water struggling and drowning. He looks around: no one else is looking.

- Based on what Dan explained, Joe think: "I don't have free will. It doesn't matter what I think. It's all pre-ordained anyway. I don't want to get wet or be late for work. Therefore I'll go on. It's just my brain deciding and it's all deterministic, so nothing I can do, and no one can blame me."

- Based on what I explained: Joe immediately goes and saves the toddler. He made this decision based on his appreciation of the importance of human life compared to mundane tasks like going to work. He understands the choice was made according to deterministic rules and doesn't give a shit.

Of course you can always look at such choices a posteriori, look at the material layer, and say Joe didn't have a choice.

But the question is: did it matter what Joe wanted? Did it matter what he thought he should do?
And the answer is a resounding YES. It changed the outcome.

Does it matter that choices are done in a deterministic fashion?
The answer is: for all practical purposes, absolutely NOT.

That's all there is to this question.

Dan8267 says

Agency is not free will

agency is the capacity of individuals to act independently and to make their own free choices

Heraclitusstudent says

- Based on what Dan explained, Joe think: "I don't have free will. It doesn't matter what I think. It's all pre-ordained anyway. I don't want to get wet or be late for work. Therefore I'll go on. It's just my brain deciding and it's all deterministic, so nothing I can do, and no one can blame me."

If you actually believe what you wrote, you have no clue as anything I have written means. This is a ludicrous straw man argument.

Of course Joe is going to save the toddler because his morality demands it. That morality came from evolution and is implemented in his brain by atoms that mindlessly follow QED. It is predestined that Joe would save the toddler. Joe would always have saved the toddler.

Free will does not imply morality, nor does morality imply free will.

Heraclitusstudent says

agency is the capacity of individuals to act independently and to make their own free choices

1. Wikipedia is a worthless piece of shit site. It is not an authority. Using it is lazy.
2. Even this definition does not imply that agency equals free will. At best it implies agency equals will. That will would not be free.

Dan8267 says

At least science is on the right track

Science has usually been on the right track. For example 110 years ago when Newtonian mechanics was the cutting edge of physics, it was on the right track. Nobody thinks we are done yet with physics, and everyone knows we are really far from understanding the human mind. So I'll stick for now with logic.

In the Atlantic article I linked (which does give some credence to Harris' view as a counterpoint to the thesis of the article), they cite experiments and surveys that show people behave differently when they believe they have free will than when they don't. I think those experiments should be followed up,, to verify the results. If this is true, is it not an indirect proof that free will exists ? Sam Harris would say that in those cases it's becasue those people become fatalists which is the wrong way to view not having free will. So ? It's still true that when they believed they didn't have free will, they were likely to behave differently.

Dan8267 says

nor does morality imply free will.

I agree, not in the absolute sense. But possibly in a relative sense to some degree ?

marcus says

. Nobody thinks we are done yet with physics, and everyone knows we are really far from understanding the human mind.

Which is what makes it a straw man. The scientific method just works. It's a self-correcting, accurate, and verifiable method for understanding the universe. No other methodology comes close to the performance of the scientific method. And it's not mutually exclusive with math and logic. Science uses math and logic to their fullest extent.

marcus says

they cite experiments and surveys that show people behave differently when they believe they have free will than when they don't.

Whether or not people believe in free will does not affect whether or not free real is real.

marcus says

Sam Harris would say that in those cases it's becasue those people become fatalists which is the wrong way to view not having free will. So ? It's still true that when they believed they didn't have free will, they were likely to behave differently.

The solution to not dealing with reality the right way isn't self-delusion but rather changing the way you deal with that reality. For example, drinking yourself into a stupor isn't the correct way to avoid the fact that you lost your job. The healthy thing to do is acknowledge your loss and find a new job. Self delusion is never the answer. If you cannot be honest with yourself, you aren't making the best decisions.

marcus says

I agree, not in the absolute sense. But possibly in a relative sense to some degree ?

I don't know what you mean.

Dan8267 says

I don't know what you mean.

It has more to do with believing in free will than having it. Believing in it seems to lead to taking more responsibility for your actions. That is according to experiments and surveys.

Dan8267 says

Whether or not people believe in free will does not affect whether or not free real is real.

But if the belief leads to different results, what does it tell you ?

You argue that delusion is wrong (let's suppose for a moment that I accept your truth (which I don't ).

What if both of these are true ?

1) We have no free will

2) Believing we have free will makes us a better person.

Without telling me why you don't want to believe #2, please, supposing both are true, how can you justify advocating that people believe we have no free will ?

I'm predicting that you will not answer the question, but rather claim that somehow both of these can not be true.

Besides, even Harris would probably admit that he can not prove there is no free will. He just believes it very deeply. I find this type of argument ironic coming from a hardcore atheist. He says his meditations make it especially clear to him. Can you see why I find that amusing ? We don't actually know we have no free will any more than we know with certainty that our experience of reality and of our self can totally be explained using our current understandings of our physical reality (and our brains). For all we know, there may be huge breakthroughs in science that will be required before we fully understand the role that consciousness plays in our experience and not to mention understanding in detail how physically our experience of mind/consciousness occurs.

marcus says

It has more to do with believing in free will than having it. Believing in it seems to lead to taking more responsibility for your actions.

1. It is also the case that belief in free will causes people to commit horrible acts on others who they believe "deserve it".
2. Encouraging a lie because you believe it will make people better is not only unethical and disrespectful to those people, but ultimately self-destructive. Foundations of lies can be corrupted, and when the lie is inevitably exposed, ticked off people will do the opposite of what you want anyway. It's better to promote moral and responsible behavior with the truth.
3. The truth is that the lack of free will does not absolve anyone of their legal, ethical, or moral responsibilities. Understanding this is more beneficial than any lie every could be.

marcus says

But if the belief leads to different results, what does it tell you ?

That people can be manipulated. However, that does not mean it is right to deceive people even if you have good intentions.

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marcus says

1) We have no free will

2) Believing we have free will makes us a better person.

Although studies may show that under some conditions #2 makes some people behave better, we can see empirical proof that it causes other people to behave much, much worse. It's quite questionable if the short-term net gain is positive. It's almost certain that the long-term net gain is negative.

It ultimately comes down to this. Do you believe that good or evil works better? Which results in a better quality of life? I believe good does. Evil is short-sighted and self-defeating. It often offers short-term gains in excess of good, which is why it is tempting. But it is evil precisely because in the long-run it is bad.

I would say that you should renounce the lie even if it's useful in the short term because practical reasons make it counter-productive in the long run. And even if a lie was net beneficial in the long run, you should still renounce it because it is morally wrong and unethical to promote the lie. Sure, there are some lies that should be told. If you are hiding a Jew and the Nazis ask you if any Jews are around, you should lie. However, there is no good lie that requires deceiving all of society for lifetimes or millennials. If there were the case, then evil would be superior to good, and dishonesty superior to honesty. I do not accept such a proposition. There is no evidence in the universe to support the assertion that evil outperforms good in the long run, and there is plenty of evidence that good ultimately provides better returns.

Well, give me the exact answer I expected. You did answer it though.

It changes in an important way, when you realize that we really don't know whether we have free will or not.

marcus says

I'm predicting that you will not answer the question, but rather claim that somehow both of these can not be true.

Well, your prediction was completely wrong, as usual. And I didn't read the above sentence before writing my responses above. I often take posts in piecemeal so as to address each point.

Tell me Marcus, are you ever going to admit that you don't have a grasp on what goes on in the internals of my mind? It's not that my reasoning is hard to follow or unpredictable, but you simply cannot predict behavior that doesn't fit your preconceived notions. You are completely lousy at predicting my behavior.

Dan8267 says

It's almost certain that the long-term net gain is negative.

I don't agree. Not even close.

Plus, if everyone is agreeing that bad behavior is punished, then it is sometimes going to prevent the psychopath from killing, out of self preservation. In the same way that North Korea is prevented from nuking anyone, regardless of how crazy their leader is.

Again,

marcus says

It changes in an important way, when you realize that we really don't know whether we have free will or not.

I get it that you and Sam Harris want it to be an axiom.

marcus says

We don't actually know we have no free will

There is no reason to accept this statement. People are capable of knowing things, and knowing that they know them. If this weren't the case, no one would ever get surgery or take a plane ride. We literally bet our lives on our knowledge.

marcus says

any more than we know with certainty that our experience of reality and of our self can totally be explained using our current understandings of our physical reality (and our brains).

No one has made such a claim. However, one does not have to know everything about the universe to know that we don't have free will. It is impossible given the laws of nature we do know, just like creating a perpetual motion machine is known to be impossible. You may not like that answer, but it's the truth. Hell, I may not like the answer either. It's not like I'm rooting for one side. The difference is that I am compelled to believe the truth based on evidence and reasoning rather than based on what I want to be true.

By the way, why do I always have to be the Scully to all you Mulders? It's time you applied some healthy skepticism to things.

marcus says

I'm predicting that you will not answer the question, but rather claim that somehow both of these can not be true.

marcus says

Well, give me the exact answer I expected. You did answer it though.

How can you expect me to not answer a question while also expecting me to give a specific answer? You're ability to believe two contradicting things simultaneously is one of the fundamental problems with your thinking processes.

Dan8267 says

People are capable of knowing things, and knowing that they know them.

Of course. But the free will question is still widely debated, and is not knowable unless you make several assumptions about the world being deterministic in a totally understood way. .

Good essay about what sometimescounts as knowing things today.
http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/4875283-155/george-f-will-an-excess-of

marcus says

Plus, if everyone is agreeing that bad behavior is punished, then it is sometimes going to prevent the psychopath from killing, out of self preservation.

No one has ever made the claim that the lack of free will means there should be a lack of legal accountability. In fact, all those who have stated that free will does not exist have also stated that we should still lock of prisoners for both public safety from repeat behavior and as deterrents for the criminal and others. The one difference in our legal system between accepting the false notion of free will and rejecting it, is that as long as free will is accepted it will continue to be used as a justification for inflicting pointless and needless suffering on people that has nothing to do with protecting the public or deterring crimes. There are countless examples of people being beaten, abused, tortured, killed, humiliated, or otherwise made to suffer because "they deserve it". At the heart of all this pseudo-morality is the false belief in free will.

Dan8267 says

At the heart of all this pseudo-morality is the false belief in free will.

There are plenty of good Christians (for example) who believe in free will and are opposed to the kind of abuse, and inflicted suffering you describe. Not saying that religion is never used in this way. Many fundamentalists do. But consider the pope for example or the dali Lama, or countless religous leaders who do not advocate cruelty but who do of course believe in free will

marcus says

But the free will question is still widely debated

Climate change is still widely debated precisely because one side refuses to acknowledge the truth and, in fact, does not care about the truth. If one side wants a falsehood to be accepted by society, as you suggest for free will, then that side will never acknowledge the truth. They may have religious, political, or financial reasons for advocating a falsehood, but they will not ever change. You cannot convince a man of a truth that threatens his livelihood.

Religion's power is largely based on the free will lie. Religious leaders are not going to admit it's all a lie.

marcus says

and is not knowable unless you make several assumptions about the world being the way you want it to be.

The only "assumptions" I make is that there are laws of nature. That's a pretty safe assumption considering we built all of modern society, not only on that assumption, but on a specific set of accepted laws of nature. You could not write in this forum if those laws were wrong.

marcus says

There are plenty of good Christians (for example) who believe in free will and are opposed to the kind of abuse, and inflicted suffering you describe.

Irrelevant. This does not contradict the fact that many people commit abuse because of the false belief in free will. Furthermore, those Christians would not suddenly become sadists if they stopped believing in free will. Is the belief in free will the only reason you don't rape your own children to death? I think not. So the belief in free will is not a net gain.

Dan8267 says

The only "assumptions" I make is that there are laws of nature.

Now we're getting somewhere. Yes. But you assume that you know way more of these laws than you (or anyone does). We have no idea how the laws of nature work that allow us to feel that we experience a conscious (decision making) self and that allow us to intelligently get closer to fully understanding these laws and ourselves.

marcus says

We have no idea how the laws of nature work that allow us to feel that we experience a conscious (decision making) self

Consciousness does not imply free will, and free will does not imply consciousness. We do not have to know anything about consciousness in order to rule out the possibility that will is free. Just think about what "free will" or "will that is free" actually means. Free from what? Free from being determined by the laws of nature. That's what free will means. Nothing caused in the universe is caused by anything but the laws of nature, by definition. Ergo, free will cannot exist. It's existence would be, by definition, a violation of the laws of nature, whatever those laws are. We don't have to know any of the laws of nature to know that free will does not exist because it would have to violate whatever natural laws did exist.

This is indisputable deductive reasoning. It flows directly from the definition. A priori logic is all that is required.

Dan8267 says

This does not contradict the fact that many people commit abuse because of the false belief in free will. Furthermore, those Christians would not suddenly become sadists if they stopped believing in free will. Is the belief in free will the only reason you don't rape your own children to death? I think not. So the belief in free will is not a net gain.

Do you think this is a good argument ? I only stated the obvious fact that you can not generalize that people that believe in free will are cruel. I don't see a compelling argument or even a slightly reasonable argument that belief in free will is a net negative. You have one example of how it can SOMETIMES can be negative.

Also, on a somewhat unrelated note, there are theories out there that sometimes being vindictive towards those that do us harm is actually part of our genetic programming. This was discussed on an NPR program yesterday. This would presumably be independent of belief in free will.

Dan8267 says

Consciousness does not imply free will, and free will does not imply consciousness

Correct. But consciousness is a part of the laws of nature that you assume can be parameterized to make us such a deterministic machine. We don't know that when we reflect on a decision and bring all the rational thought, emotion, ego, and various other factors into consideration, that this conscious and self conscious process happens as you see it as strictly a function of all physical, historical, and environmental inputs. Possibly there are laws that even involve factors outside of the 3 dimensional reality we usually confine our analysis to, that we do not understand at all. We just don't know what we don't know. Clearly of the many things we don't know, some of these pertain to consciousness.

I'll admit that not having your definition of free will seems likely. But I still know that we don't know.

marcus says

Do you think this is a good argument ?

I think it thoroughly disproves your implication that the false belief in free will does not have a downside.

marcus says

I only stated the obvious fact that you can not generalize that people that believe in free will are cruel.

It is obvious that I did not say anything that remotely implies that all or even most people who believe in free will are cruel. This is a straw man argument.

What I said was that free will causes many people to do cruel things because they believe their victims deserve it. This is empirically true. I could spend the next four hours listing example after example. Do you really want to try to refute this?

marcus says

You have one example of how it can SOMETIMES can be negative.

It's not a rare example. Every second of every day millions of people around the world are victimized by this negative. That's not trivial.

Right now, as we are having this conversation, countless people are being raped by prison guards because "they deserve it". And yes, I mean rape.

marcus says

Also, on a somewhat unrelated note, there are theories out there that sometimes being vindictive towards those that do us harm is actually part of our genetic programming.

Of course it is. It was a strategy that worked in the Stone Age, when you could benefit your genetic code by killing off rivals, sexual or otherwise. It doesn't work in the modern age. The entire problem with conservatives is that they still use a Stone Age mindset. Don't be like them.

[stupid comment limit]

marcus says

This would presumably be independent of belief in free will.

Of course it is, but this is irrelevant. The rationalize argument that bad people deserve to suffer is the problem I mentioned so many times, and that is related to the false belief in free will.

marcus says

Possibly there are laws that even involve factors outside of the 3 dimensional reality we usually confine our analysis to, that we do not understand at all.

Whether we know any, nonetheless all, of the laws of nature are irrelevant. We still know that free will would require a violation of the laws of nature, by definition, and therefore cannot exist.

Dan8267 says

It's not a rare example. Every second of every day millions of people around the world are victimized by this negative. That's not trivial.

The flaw in this argument is that you assume that somehow cruel vindictive assholes become enlightened kind and compassionate once they understand we have no free will. That's absurd. We have plenty of available knowledge that have nothing to do with whether you believe in free will, that could just as easily help these assholes become more compassionate, kinder, more understanding, and less hateful and violent.

You don't have to believe there is zero free will in order to to understand that many circumstances outside of ones control lead them to be who they are. The issue here is compassion, which is also independent of free will, but apparently dependent (to some degree) on whether we believe we have free will.

Dan8267 says

Of course Joe is going to save the toddler because his morality demands it. That morality came from evolution and is implemented in his brain by atoms that mindlessly follow QED. It is predestined that Joe would save the toddler. Joe would always have saved the toddler.

Free will does not imply morality, nor does morality imply free will.

Harris himself in one podcast says "morality is the question of what to do next". If you cannot make a choice, if everything will happen regardless of what you want, then this question doesn't arise because you won't choose what to do next: You're just an automaton reacting to stimuli. Nothing you do is a moral choice. It's all a chain of cause-effects. You can never change anything, nor be blamed for anything because you have not changed anything.

This defeats utterly the very definition of moral.

Heraclitusstudent says

But the question is: did it matter what Joe wanted? Did it matter what he thought he should do?

And the answer is a resounding YES. It changed the outcome.

Does it matter that choices are done in a deterministic fashion?

The answer is: for all practical purposes, absolutely NOT.

That's all there is to this question.

You are not answering these points: Does it matter what we want? What we think we should do?
Why would it matter to us the manner in which we make choices? Deterministic or not.