I believe that the vast majority of people are effectively mechanical. Very few people notice and remember themselves. Maybe one in 10^6 or fewer.

There's a old Buddhist story, you're in a small boat on a lake in a thick fog, you can barely see beyond your boat. Out of the fog comes another boat that crashes into yours, and you start to yell at the other boater to be careful, but a break in the fog reveals that no one is in the boat. You've been yelling at nothing.

For me, either the other person is present, and therefore harmless, or they are absent, and therefore blameless. In any event, it's wrong to get upset or angry. However, one should take steps to prevent damage to boats.

Two things: it's been shown that, by the time you consciously decide to act, your neurons have already been increasing in activity for ~100ms. In other words, it's been scientifically shown that our conscious experience of "free will" is preceded by unconscious nervous activity. Make of that what you will. ;-) Pun intended.

Second, when you observe a person while remembering yourself it affects them. I've seen burly lads transform into scared little boys under a mindful gaze. When you're present people don't punch you.

If I punch you, will you blame me?

That depends. Do you suffer from schizophrenia? Did I provoke you? Was it an accident? There are a lot of circumstances under which I would not blame you.

If you punched me without provocation, with no evidence of mental illness, and did it "deliberately" [1] then I will "blame" you because that's the only way I know of to defend myself against future attacks.

[1] Note that "deliberately" in a world without free will just means "as a result of unknown causes inside your brain". The more we learn about how the brain works, the fewer pathological behaviors can be labeled "deliberate". "Free will" is a sort of "god-of-the-gaps" if neuroscience.

I don't blame you because you had a choice. I blame you to discourage future punches.

That seems absurd.

How so? You don't need free will to adapt to feedback.

So if you believed I punched you deliberately, but also believed no action of yours would keep me from punching you again, does that mean you would do nothing?

Even if I called you a coward?

Then do it you wont unless your DNA thinks the reward you get for validating your assumptions is greater then the consequences of your actions. Likewise for the person your debating. That's why internet debates are so much worse than in person way less consequence for your actions.

If you look at people who are actually in that unlikely position (e.g. prisoners, slaves) then typically they do in fact do nothing.

Indeed i will, but now you move the goalpost to the definition of "blame". Even if both of us are deterministic zombies who just care for our self-preservation, i would create a mental note ("blame") for me to find ways to discourage your behavior. Somewhere along those lines the concept of blame is born, but one could claim that it is a deterministic mental variable. Indeed i would blame anything that hits me as if it had agency, if i can't see it. Like xerxes lashing the waves, i could be angry at a rock for falling on my face (and indeed anger follows pain), it's just that i know that fighting back at the rock is no benefit to me.

Of course. I have no choice, remember?

So you are implicitly presuming free will, based on your behavior.

Why? If I have a free will then I blame you because I choose to.

If I don't have a free will then I blame you because that's how my brain is programmed (which is BTW most probably caused by optimization of social behavior by evolution - it's better for our genes if we punish violent behavior, so that's how our brains are constructed). There's no need to assume free will.

There's no difference in behavior that depends on existence of free will.

> There's no difference in behavior that depends on existence of free will.

Ah, but you are forgetting a major part of how brain works. Brain models both our own and others behavior. If your brain knows you don't have free will and I don't have free will, it will not fault me for not having a thing I am supposed to not be having.

If it doesn't have free will, brain can assign a response, but not blame. You can't have the notion of blame if you don't have a concept of free will. Same way you can't express certain colors, if you lack the words for it.

Fun fact, when people read about not having free will, they are more likely to lie/cheat on a test. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/06/theres-...

> If your brain knows you don't have free will and I don't have free will, it will not fault me for not having a thing I am supposed to not be having.

Punishment decreases the odds of repeated offence. It doesn't matter if it's because you have free will, or simply because you learnt not to do that because your internal neural network were taught not to do that or it hurts.

I'm pretty sure I can make a simulation with agents punishing each other. Doesn't mean they have a free will.

> You can't have the notion of blame if you don't have a concept of free will

I have a notion of free will. I just don't believe it's true. I can model beliefs of Muslims without believing in Allah.

> Same way you can't express certain colors, if you lack the words for it.

Bad example. I can express any color I can see with 3 real numbers. There's infinitely many of them and my vocabulary is finite.

> Fun fact, when people read about not having free will, they are more likely to lie/cheat on a test.

And when they drink they are more likely to do stuff they later regret. Environment influences the brain in many ways. Doesn't mean there is a free will.

> Punishment decreases the odds of repeated offence.

So does running away. However, the issue here is existence of blame.

> I can model beliefs of Muslims without believing in Allah.

Yeah, but you can't model belief without knowing what believing in something entails. Same thing with my example. You model behavior of others based on your experience. You think others have free will because you believe you do. Or not.

My own position is that while free will might or might not be illusion, it's a useful one. Like justice, mercy or love - that sort of thing.