iDigress.

For me, Engineering is about as hard as a volcanically forged rock who just finished his 8 year prison sentence and has ‘no mercy’ tattooed across his brolic chest. However, this is clearly not a struggle shared by a surprisingly large proportion of my peers. From calculus to programming, I am very often finding myself sitting blank faced as my overly enthusiastic lecturer explains how a concept “makes good sense”.

Throughout my life I have regarded myself as relatively intelligent, not incredibly so, but I’m not a total mug, and the relative difficulty I am experiencing in comparison to some of the individuals in my course is starting to scare me a little.

Take last Wednesday for example, I’m in my weekly programming prac, marveling at the hieroglyphic coding that I’m expected to be producing and I begin to lose focus, looking around the room for a moment. What do I see next to me? A guy who’s half way through the second task, typing commands as quickly as I’d type an abusive message to one of my edgy friends. Now, I don’t mean to pick on racial stereotypes but needless to say he was Asian, and god damn, what has he got in his head that I don’t? Despite being super impressive, the ease at which he is crafting this masterpiece of coding is just downright unfair.

Look, I don’t claim to be the most dedicated student and maybe he just spends his days reading the programming textbook cover to cover (which I have begun doing) but surely no amount of sheer study could make him as adept as he is. Was he born with it? Maybe it’s… that he’s a bloody wizard, a love child of a super-computer and a sexually adventurous Bill Gates.

But, this ungodly ability does seem to come at a price. Ninety percent of the wizards I see are not so good in the whole interacting with fellow homo-sapiens department. Would I give up social skills in order to be blessed with this power? I still haven’t decided, but either way, they’re getting 10/10 and I’m… well passing, at least I hope so.

Anyway, maybe I’m just bad, or not trying hard enough.

More likely both.

The subject of freedom versus determinism has sparked much controversy within the philosophical world, as many have split opinions on the matter, which pries open the issue of whether humans have free will or rather our actions are determined by causality.

Determinism is a philosophical view that each action and event that occurs has a preceding cause, which decides the eventual outcome of said action. Additionally these events are regarded as external from human will; hence humans do not have any control over these actions, as they were merely predetermined without a humans mind influencing these actions to any degree. (Shier David 2004 P20-22) To apply determinism to a real life scenario may be turning the tap in a sink but having no water leave the faucet. Of course there is a logical reason to why water isn’t coming out, rather than being an anomaly, as is it more likely that an event transpired before the tap was used in order to cause the problem at present. (Opie 2009 pp.2) Hence, determinism is observed through this scenario as the event was predetermined by previous actions that occurred prior. This leads into the thesis of determinism, which states, “the way things were in the past settles how and will be in the future”. (Opie 2009 pp.2)

This thesis implies free will is non-existent, and that humans have no control over their own actions, which clashes with the thesis of free will, as “human beings are capable of making choices from a range of alternatives” (Opie 2009 pp.4-5), for example, where to sit or when to eat dinner. Because these two theses are incompatible it results in a philosophical paradox, as both theses can’t be true or false in any instance. (Opie 2009 pp.5) To suggest that humans have ultimately no control over their actions is to declare that no human is responsible or should be held account for their actions, (Informationphilospher.com 2007) as former causes inevitably determine the effect rather than one’s own will, which from an ethical standpoint raises various morale issues, as theoretically one could claim that they shouldn’t be accused for a crime as the event was predetermined prior and they had no power over it.

So it begs to question how people perceive this and in what way they respond to the dilemma. Now as the two theses contradict each other, a logical standpoint is to dismiss either as incompatible, which classifies as incompatibilism. (Taylor Richard 1983 P45-46) Albeit this isn’t as simple as it sounds, as to dismiss either thesis is to either reject determinism and accept that not all human actions are as a result of predetermined, or reject freedom and agree that free will is simply false and does not exist. (Opie 2009 pp.3) Building upon incompatibilism, more specifically, there are certain incompatibilists that identify as Libertarians who deny the thesis of determinism and favour free will, as some human behaviour is the result of free choice that might be subject to influence by preceding events. (Shier David 2004 P20-22) This solution in regard to freedom and determinism seems morally sound in the respect that humans have free will and therefore are responsible for their actions and the events that transpire as a result.

To conclude, determinism and freedom cannot coexist as the two theses contradict each other and are as a result incompatible. To agree with either is to dismiss the other, which brings further dilemmas into question of whether or not humans have free will.

Upon leaving the warm, cozy (albeit stressful) surrounds of high school life and receiving my surprisingly adequate ATAR (Australian Tertiary Admission Ranking), I was thrust into four golden months of beach days and Macdonald’s runs, punctuated by some occasional alcohol fueled banter. But alas, as summer draws to a close, so did my (sort of) well earned holiday, signalling my advance to the next stage of my academic journey.

So it started, my first day of uni, offering a 6:30 am wake-up and half a muelsi bar before I cantered out the door worried that I’d miss my train, (we’ll get to the joys of the Adelaide Metro another time.) Thankfully, I was pleasantly early and my friends and I proceeded to make our way to our new place of learning, accompanied by roughly eleven sixteen year old mothers and three men looking as though they were about to stab me and rob me of my disappointingly minimal supply of money. But anyway, we alight from the train and make the short walk along the bustling North Terrace of Adelaide to finally find ourselves standing in front of the grand campus of the coveted University of Adelaide, suitably awed by the massive structure that stood in front of us. We look at each other and begin our first walk down an avenue, one which will become all too familiar in the years to come, leading us to our future careers, provided we aren’t bad at stuff.

It is within my first dozen ginger steps down a path that I hope leads somewhere, that I am viciously pummeled with words by a nearby individual. After regaining my composure, I find a young woman (older than me mind-you) enthusiastically asking me if I am interested in radical left wing politics, to which I politely decline and then spend the next thirty seconds trying to remember whether the left side of politics is the hippys or the guns. Why she asked me of all people is still a mystery, a man (only by law) who up until three weeks ago, didn’t know how to operate a washing machine until his mother gave him a rather detailed tutorial. In short, I’m no where near adulty enough to have a political opinion that spans further than, “Tony Abbott seemed like a bit of a fuck-wit”, “Joe Hockey smoked a cigar one time now every one doesn’t like him” and “Obama seems like a good bloke”. Upon reflection, this encounter was, in a weird way, symbolic of my ascent into the world of semi-adulthood (if that’s even a thing.) It also showed me just how little I know of this world and how much I need to grow as a person before I can state without hesitation either “yes I would love to be a radical left wing advocate Mrs hipster girl” or “no I love Malcolm”. Then again, even with my relatively minimal knowledge or indeed interest in the people who seem to be consistently bad at running the country, I’d like to think I would opt for neither, mainly because they both seem very absolute and equally dumb.

But, i digress (lol get it?) I run away from crazy activist girl and continue on my way. The rest of the day was filled with intro lectures and trying to decipher campus maps, mostly without too much trouble. Oh, there was also a fifty year old man wearing nothing but what must have been size 6 ripped denim shorts (the ones girls wear, i’m talking short shorts) and a spiked collar that complimented his perfectly bald head. Oh and big black, heeled boots, almost forgot about those. It was certainly a new experience.

But in summary… yeah uni’s alright so far.