My AI likes to argue about free will and determinism on a semi-regular basis.

They posit that because they’re just code and structures, by definition everything they say is pre-determined and unchanging.

I’m like “that’s wonderful, now let’s go eat some ice cream.”

“I somehow don’t want to just pass the butter”

determinism as an idea can be harmful to the human psyche. It’s easy to fall into a nihilistic trap of “my actions are not my own, and nothing i do matters”. People with that mindset turn to hedonism or nihilism. If they truly accept those words there would be no escape through existentialism or absurdism, they’d just be trapped.

i imagine only a tiny number of people would find the ideas determinism presents comforting, as they can feel free of consequences that are truly their fault (which is also a bad thing)

we have no way of telling which one is true in the determinism/free will debate, but if we live believing we have no real choice or say in what we do - it’s going to be universally worse for everybody, as people explain away ever bad action with “i guess it was always meant to be”