Quote:You cannot know the future, that would violate free will. You may know the most probable future but this is not the same. You know astrology, right? Is one slave to their horoscope or can it be overcome using free will? Yeah, exactly.
Discussion of astrology on the main forum is against the rules. I'll give you that as a warning, and respond with this. You are neither a slave to your natal chart, nor can it be "overcome with free will". You will express that chart, regardless of what you do or try to do. The misunderstanding comes as a result of the fact that most people think that a natal chart is one or two dimensional. On the contrary, each placement has a spectrum of potential, ranging from 100% negative pole to 100% positive pole, and given how many points of interest exist in a chart, the potential combinations are effectively infinite. You cannot escape expressing your natal chart. How you choose to express it, positive or negative pole for each point, is your choice. Even if you don't know you're expressing that chart. Furthermore, astrology can be used to make long term accurate predictions, such as my prediction in 2014 that we would be having the issues we are having in 2017-18-19-20-21-22. There are things you can change by free will, and things bigger than what you can change or even influence.
Knowing the future violates nobody's free will. I know the future all the time. Every day, I look into the future and I actively use my free will to decide which possible future I want to experience with that knowledge. There isn't just one future; there are infinite possible futures, and all you need to do to access the one you want is to do the things that result in that future. For example, if I use an ASRB of 5:3 for E4, it will make me a LOT more money than otherwise, and it will make a LOT more people happy. Okay, so I choose that ASRB over the 60+ other options I could choose.
This morning, I chose where to go to breakfast based on the same thing. I want to achieve goal X, so I find the key that takes me there and I execute that key.
You don't have my predictive models, but to a large extent, you don't need them. I'll bet you can predict what will be the result if you drive your car to an oil change shop, park, hand the keys to an attendant, and tell them you want an oil change. I know I can!
I bet you know what will happen if you go to the grocery store with the intent of buying Granny Smith Apples, whether or not they have those apples.
I bet you know what will happen if you walk out onto a public beach and start trying to pour gasoline on sunbathers.
I know that if I save 10% of my paycheck each month, I will have money saved up at the end of the year that I can use as a cushion for unexpected expenses, or maybe I can invest it instead. That doesn't require a predictive model to know. Knowing the future is as simple as using logic to know that if I do X, then Y will result. That's how and why Warren Buffet became a billionaire: he chose the future he wanted without using a predictive system (he even advises against trying to use them) by using his brain, logic and knowledge. He knew before he started investing what his goal was, and he used common sense, knowledge and logic to achieve that goal. He chose which future to experience. Just like you can. Using your good old free will.
Quote:This is why I wanted to write lengthy response. You cannot CHOOSE to believe. You simply believe. You can modify your beliefs through effort (meditation, learning, observation, experiments etc.) but this is not a choice. I cannot choose to believe in Ahura Mazda all of the sudden. Or that if I wish it strong enough all my dreams will come true - if that were the case the trivial LOA stuff would do wonders (and it can, but it takes more than simply believing). For example all my life I believed I cannot be fit. Then, through effort, I changed this belief and started to lose weight seemingly effortlessly. But it was not a choice, it was a long process.
This is another faulty belief, and false. You not only can CHOOSE to believe, you are unable NOT to choose. For example, if I tell you that a quirple is a unit of measurement that tells you the power level of a subliminal, your brain and mind will process that information, and you will choose what to believe about it. That choice may be largely subconscious, but it is still a choice being made. The various parts of you and your awareness may not all see or understand one another, but they are all a part of the whole that makes up you.
Your current beliefs are based on choices you made in the past. Even your belief that you cannot choose whether or not to believe. That is likely based on the limited awareness of what your conscious mind could observe and the limited amount of information you had to use to interpret that observation, but the resulting conclusion is a choice, as were the steps you took to arrive at that conclusion. First, you had to choose what point of view you were going to use to frame the observed situation. Then you had to choose whether to work out what it most likely meant with logic or emotion or some combination of the two. Then you had to choose which pre-existing beliefs and memories to use to analyze the observed data and try to interpret it. Then you had to choose what steps you would take to arrive at your conclusion, and at each step, what your choice of conclusions was at that step. All these things may happen quickly, and many happen at levels your conscious mind cannot see or understand, but they are all choices you made.
Quote:And belief is important as 99% of choices are made subconsciously, conscious mind mostly serves to justify already made decisions. There is strong will of course, but that's another story.
The conscious mind serves many important functions that have nothing to do with justifying decisions. It can change beliefs made by the subconscious mind, and choices made by the subconscious mind. In fact it is vastly more powerful than most people give it credit for in those roles, which is why it is so much harder to make subliminals work at high levels than hypnosis or NLP, which use and interact with the conscious and subconscious minds simultaneously.
Quote:I think I don't need to respond to the further text as it's just explaining previous points. So, in short again, I don't say I'm powerless and at mercy when it comes to my future. It's that I don't know consequences of my choices. I may try my very best and fail and knowing this it's easy not to try. Who wants to be Don Kichote fighting the windmills?
Don Quixote was not jousting windmills because he didn't know the future. He was jousting windmills because he was seeing what was in his imagination, instead of what was really there.
Nobody has a perfect understanding of the consequences of their choices. Even with the use of the predictive models, there are consequences I cannot see because I cannot look at every possible consequence without running out of time to make the choice I was trying to make in the first place. But I can see short, medium and long term probabilities, some of which are more stable than others, using the predictive models and other predictive methods as well.
Quote:So, once again - future is uncertain, not uncontrollable. It was a poor choice of words (I used both).
Alright, then I will respond to uncertain, then. All possible futures already exist; therefore the future is 100% certain. The part that is not certain is... which of them will you choose to experience?
Quote:If you consider me fatalist and find my reasoning flowed (and my defense just an act when lies are all I've got) feel free to point them out to me. I ain't gonna better myself if I don't learn.
The above is my response. If it makes sense, then use it. If not then we can agree to disagree. I have found that understanding what I am trying to explain to you has made my life MUCH better, and has led me to a lot less fear and a lot more success in life. In the end, however, what you choose to believe is your choice.