These days working real hard, though I always felt lots of redundancy. The feeling of helplessness, and that nothing is productive.... that sucks.

Anyways, so went to a Philosophy Discussion group.

Glad to be there again, but as usual there is always some kind of dominant figure.

Had a 2nd round after the event and I thought it was so so much better with proper discussion.

The topic was "Free Will".

What I thought, was that we have 0 to maybe a little bit of Free Will, as most of us are influenced in our decision making with external factors such as culture, marketing, environment and induced emotions. Strip away the idea of influence then yet we always have a "Choice", but that's not Free Will.  But there's this lady for every perspective she would jump in a bite on the speaker's flaw to say that whatever points does not affect Free Will.  IRRITATING!

Actually, through the discussions, I saw many interesting views on Free Will. Some argued that there's a matrix of "Consciousness vs Unconsciousness". We think we are exercising Free Will but at the bigger picture we see just how little it is. Supporting cases included AI who could predict choices, and Business Marketing practices.

Some argued that everyone has a Free Will but it ties with the responsibilities or consequences that comes with it. So therefore none of us could do whatever we want lawlessly.

Some argued that the notion of "Free Will" is an act of "Egoistic Nature", because we start to associate with "I". Humans love to be in control, to feel that they are in control, to try to attach meanings to things. This is reinforced by the point that do we FIRST make choices, THEN justify why do we do it? So the intrinsic nature causes us to act, then we rationalize it?

So then on the wine table for 2nd round we went further. We went into Personality. There is actually a C.S Joseph type Grid based on Myers Briggs. It's interesting though about the order in which we make sense of things. I am a ENTP, so it was said that I listen and absorb everything, then sieve out only what is necessary based on my own world view.

Then we discussed about entity. How whatever we perceive, the tables, chairs, etc, are made out of atoms, but our mind uses senses to form images. That the idea of consciousness is like a brain trapped in the skull, using signals and organs to function and make sense of things.

We moved on to Hedonism and Narcissism, and eventually to meaning of life and happiness. The idea that Perfection is a goal for a process, and that it leads to boredom, and on one point we should have Existential Peace. About the idea of knowledge. Knowledge can be scary. Do we still pursue knowledge despite knowing Ignorant is Bliss, so we instead gets Anxiety of Knowledge? Then Escapism.

Woah, after a loooooong day of tours, meetings and philosophy, went to just chill and unwind with the kampong at Punggol Container Park. Got home at 4am, up by 9am due to work. Sigh.