No, it's not. Your personality is shaped by your experiences and everything else that's ever impinged on you. You have no control over it. You don't get to choose what your personality is like. If you think you're making an effort to change or control your personality, then that attempt is itself a product of your experiences and every other factor that's ever affected you. You never actually chose to make it.Originally Posted by no_brains_no_worries
Right, he's not saying that there actually could be someone who's identical to you in every way somewhere in the world; obviously that's not the case. It's hypothetical. What he's saying is that if there was someone in circumstances identical to yours in every way, they would always make the exact same "choices" as you, because your "choices" are products of your circumstances, not of some decision that you make one way or the other.Originally Posted by no_brains_no_worries
You already live in a place where people are forced to act in a certain way without any choice in the matter. That place is called the universe, and since everything in it is made of interacting specks of matter, and since everything that happens is determined by the interactions of those specks, and since the outcome of every interaction is determined by the outcome of the preceding interaction all the way back to the big bang, you don't choose anything; you feel like you do, but you don't. There's quantum randomness, but that hardly gives you free will.Originally Posted by no_brains_no_worries
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