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You might not be as autonomous as you think. Behavior in this area is mostly driven by instinct and emotion. People just rationalize their actions later.



I'm not saying that I am or am not autonomous at a chemical level. I'm saying that the fact that someone is programmed to do something has no bearing on whether they ought to do it at a moral level. The only reason a person ought to "follow their programming" is that they want to. After all, if it really is their programming, they will follow it automatically. There is no point rationalizing: "I must be programmed this way, therefore I have to do it". No, if you were programmed to do it, you'd be doing it already.


Are you wiser than billions of years of evolution?


Is it possible that instinct and emotion drive some people to scale mountains, write software, start businesses, create great works of art, instead of having children?

The explore-exploit tradeoff is well known. Maybe my DNA isn't written to be happy with putting down roots and having kids?




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