Bet you thought you'd escaped the psychological digging

[mooninthewater]

Hi! I have some questions! Feel free to pick and choose what you want to answer!!

What do you define as "free will"?
What makes you "you"?
If you had the ability to rapidly adapt to your situation or surroundings, what do you think would be different about you?
Does death give life meaning, or does your actions in your life give it meaning?
If you were perfectly copied, would the copy be "you" or an entirely new person?
Do you think people are born good, born evil, or born neither?
Do you think suffering has value?
Is it ever morally wrong to be happy?
What do you think it takes to make a person "change"?

Comments

[meirryme]

oh, these are hard. ummm

are you really sure you want these answered?

[mooninthewater]

I do! But you don't have to feel like you have to answer! I know this is a public space after all.

[meirryme]

just making sure...! i'll answer a couple...

"does death give life meaning, or does your actions in your life give it meaning?": i think it's the latter! but someone's death, especially when they know it's coming, might influence HOW they act. maybe someone who is afraid of leaving this world will try really hard to make it better...or maybe not! but i really believe it's what you do that matters a lot. especially if you're trying to leave behind something good for others.

"is it ever morally wrong to be happy?": maybe! but maybe morality isn't as important sometimes as just...being happy

i tried my best for you, i hope it's okay :3

guy who doesn't know

[taintedsorrow]

[Oh he hates like half of these questions actually.]

what are ya, some kind of shrink?

[mooninthewater]

Oh, apologies! I guess there's new people here! I'm Mizuki! I run the therapy building! ⸜( ´ ꒳ ` )⸝

[taintedsorrow]

... well that answers that.

did you have to be so damn pointed about the questions, though?

[allthebrutalities]

Don't want to answer them, do you?

[taintedsorrow]

Do you?

[allthebrutalities]

I found my answers to these long ago. I'll spare these pages the bulk of it, though.

[taintedsorrow]

i'll share mine if you share yours.

[allthebrutalities]

Well...before we do our fun little reveals...

I wonder if your thoughts have changed much since the last time we touched on some of these questions together?

[taintedsorrow]

... some have.

guess we'll have to see, right?

[There's a long period of "silence," interrupted only by what looks to be a tapping pen. Chuuya mulls over whether or not to answer right away, before finally setting his pen to the page. Waiting any longer could just as easily wear away at his nerve, after all.]

1. free will means acting for myself, outside of what someone predicts i'll do. to be honest, i don't think i've had free will for about seven years now. someone always seems to know what i'm gonna do before i do it.
   
2. my experiences, i guess. a body can be copied. maybe a soul can too. but how that vessel reacts once it's outside of the test chamber changes it. you could put five different clones into the world, and they'd all come out different
   
3. nothin'. i already do that. part of the job.
   
4. actions. death is just motivation to keep takin' steps forward. what you actually do is where that meaning comes from.
   
5. ... new person. mostly. they'd be the same for roughly one second. then as shit starts happenin' to them, they'd start to change.
   
6. neither. the environment they're put into is what shapes them.
   
7. sure hope so. otherwise what the hell has the point been?
   
8. if you're gettin' off on someone else's suffering, yeah.
   
9. motivation. circumstance. willingness.

[love_swan]

Considering these make my head hurt...

[mooninthewater]

Haha, sorry! I wasn't trying to cause headaches. I was just hoping to have a discussion~

[love_swan]

There's only one I think I have an answer for... but I think generally speaking, people are born good? It's stuff later that sways them bad, but most kids aren't bad unless situations make them bad.

guy who is the clone brother of guy who doesn't know

[allthebrutalities]

I'll answer one:

If I were perfectly, impossibly copied, down to every number and sequence in the strands of my DNA, they would be "me". A new "me". So I suppose the answer is both. That does dovetail nicely into "what makes you 'you'", though, doesn't it?

[fullymetal]

Are these just thought exercises for the hell of it?

1. I think free will is hard to define, and ultimately trying to define it ends up in more of an argument of semantics because of how individual the definition tends to be. If I had to take a crack at it, myself, I'd argue that free will is our ability to make individual decisions outside of the sway of some kind of divined predestination. That even the concept of fate can be changed a hundred times over if a person has the drive or the will to do so, because nothing is ever set in stone.
   
2. Our consciousness, our soul, and our memories. The form the body takes is secondary.
   
3. It would depend on the specific situation or surroundings, so it's hard to come up with a concise answer. People learn as a result of their circumstances, which can change a hundred different things: how they approach similar situations in the future, what steps they might take to either avoid that situation or encounter it again, what they might want to change about themselves after the fact.
   
4. Your actions in life.
   
5. I'd ask the copy his (their?) perspective, but my initial opinion would be an entirely new person.
   
6. I think we all start off on neutral ground.
   
7. Yes.
   
8. Yes.
   
9. Again, hard one to answer. Do they want to change? Why do they want to change? What do they want to change? There's too many variables.

[chickenchoicejudy]

Wow, these are kind of a lot!

[Ryan kind of skips around in order of what feels easier to answer. As he nears the end they get more blunt and closed off.]

Free will is being able to live the life you want on your terms and nobody else's.

I think most of us have to rapidly adapt to stuck all the time? So I guess it might make things easier for people who suck at that.

I don't really know? I think we're just born people and have to kinda figure it out from there.

It can definitely be morally wrong to be happy if the thing that makes you happy is something wrong, you know? Like if you really like, I don't know, killing people and it makes you happy...you still probably shouldn't be killing people! Something like that.

I guess our thoughts and actions make us us? What we think and what we do.

A copy's a new person.

Suffering is just a thing that happens to you that hurts you.

I don't think death gives life anything. It just ends it.

Short answer for change is trying and talking things out.

[He doesn't give the long answer.]

[souninind]

[Mizuki... What's the angle here, bb? There's no finding out without answering, sooooo--

(Also putting down the glitter pens and using just. Normal ink. For something like anonymity.)]

1. "Free will" is the ability to make decisions for yourself, regardless of external input, even under duress.
2. Experience, thought, memory... but also how you're perceived and your ability.
3. I do. We all do, or should, so not much would be different.
4. Your actions in life do. It's all over once you die.
5. They'd be an entirely new person. We'd start out the same, but would probably end up pretty different.
6. Could be either. Depends on the person.
7. It can. Not always... not often, but it can.
8. Yes.
9. The nice answer is the will to change and someone else to believe in the person they will become. Fuckton of other shit can happen that can change someone for better and worse, though.

[beloved_one]

♡ The ability to make my own choices.
♡ No matter what form I take or what I may or may not remember, my soul is the same, and so I will always be me.
♡ I maybe already can? I am a pretty quick thinker.
♡ I think a poignant death can cause as many if not more ripples of cause and effect than a lifetime of continuous actions.
♡ It would still be me.
♡ Neither.
♡ Suffering has to mean something in the end, has to achieve something, or else what was the point?
♡ Yes, if you make a choice to prioritize your happiness over others'.
♡ A million little choices.