How do I get my Daughter to Love Chess? Pt. 1

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

Kahlil Gibran

@Oxytocinblb
Are you sure we have choice in anything? It would be logical for everything to be like clockwork. You being just part of the system. But I have heard that there's randomness involved in those little atoms and such. For me it's hard to believe I could influence those small things. My thoughts are their thoughts.

@cr2015 wow dat shit is wise af

@wannabe2700

I was just waiting for you to say this. Of course at a neurological level you are absolutely correct. Of course it is clear that we can't also help what we are and what we think. I agree that many of the decisions we make are already made for us by processes we have absolutely no control over before we become conscious of it.

I think this is one of Sam Harris's key ideas.

It is clear that many of our choices are made for us even though we believe that we made these decisions ourselves.

But if we look at things from a conscious level rather than from a neurological perspective is it not possible to learn to make a different decision and to maybe just shake things up by introducing a higher level of randomness of our own.

But no, free will is a very difficult thing to justify given what neurologists tell us about our own neuronal complexity.

I believe Magnus Carlsen has even gone as far as saying that he often knows what moves he will make within a few seconds but spends a lot of time checking for oversights, errors of perception, etc. Maybe it's at this error checking stage that we can introduce choice. I can feel my belief in choice and free will disappearing quickly. Though, like all humans there appears to be a psychological need (delusion?) to believe we are exercising free will most of the time.

I knew you were going to bring this up. I wonder what the law would have to say about this idea.

@Oxytocinblb
I can see randomness avoided you and opened a clear path to see my future reply.
I'm not sure it's a delusion to believe in free will. Mind you I haven't studied this stuff, but isn't will just the result of analysis? I see it as millions of things bringing their own opinion to one place. Then calculation happens to find the optimal (average?) result. The end result of that calculation is your will.

Hey thanks for the poem, @cr2015. I might have seen this before, or maybe just something like it.