Suicide?
When one thinks of a blog written by an adolescent, hyperemotional, mood-swinging, suicide-contemplating rants typically come to mind. If you have read much more than a sentence of this blog, you probably know that I'm not a very, shall we say, emotional person. Now, however, the suicide-contemplation has come to at least a modest fruition. I just applied to the University of California Berkeley, and it was highly stressful--reminiscent of when I applied to the last three institutions. An interesting thought occurred to me though. When one sends off one's applications to the Office of Rejections at whatever college, one has really signed away one's entire fate and $60-$70. These people have my money (or rather my parents' money) and major control over the outcome of the next four years of my life, which inevitably will predict my fate for much of the rest of my life. If there ever existed such a thing as free will (which I, by the way, fiercely maintain that there is not), then it is simply hijacked in the college rejection process along with enough money for Jonathan and I to buy six dinners at the Chaat House. SIX DINNERS. Think of all the paneer, curry, and mango lassies... Anyway, enough of that nonsense. It's time for me to be productive again.
Adam, I think you take this whole process waaaay too seriously. You'll probably get in to most of the places you apply to. There's plenty of places out there where you would get a very good education. When you are admitted to a college (as will surely happen to you many times), you still have to choose whether or not you actually want to attend that college more than other colleges which have accepted you. You are not just competing for spots at colleges, colleges are indeed competing for you, to a certain extent. And I'm sure just about any college in the country would love to have you as a student. Colleges cannot force you to attend their institution. In that case, the decision-making is still on our side.
Also, I'm curious about your no-free-will theory, which at the moment I disagree with.
And likewise Colin, I think you take me waaaay too seriously. What you must remember is that like Leeor, the majority of what I say it actually complete garbage that I mention only for the sake of argument or its effect on the listener. I'm very much like Leeor in that respect, except unlike Leeor, I'm better at getting people to believe me.
Free will is merely a byproduct of a complicated series of chemical reactions. The closest thing to free will is the Heisenberg uncertainty priciple.
Mmmmm, tasty! That reminds me. My mom hasn't made lasse for a while. You can get some from me, in which case you'll have to find something else to replace that dreadful oppurtunity cost with.
Oh. Okay. Oops. So what do you really believe about the process?
Anyways, I know that pretty much everything we know is the by-product of chemical reactions, I just prefer to think on a macro scale, in which case we do (at least to me) have free will.
My mom tells me Chaat House burned down or something like that. Like, she drove by and the entire thing was charred and the windows were blown out. I didn't get the chance to look myself, hopefully it's not true!