Byron Dickens

Every single one of Tezza's examples he cites as evidence of "no free will " has numerous counterexamples. First off, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Children think that God is some kind of great meta-parent who doles out prizes to the good little boys and girls and spankings to the bad ones. Children think that freedom means being able to do anything they want, any time they want, without repercussion. Free will does not mean that no one else has anything to say about it. I may not be able to choose to be 6'9" tall, but I can choose to have a killer jump shot if that's what I want to spend my time on. Playing in the NBA? Well, see, there's a whole lot of other people involved in that decision (presumably exercising their free will) who might have other ideas. But I can play basketball. Somewhere. And I can choose how I think about it. Closer to Starise's examples, I knew several people in the Army who grew up in horrible circumstances, who joined precisely to get out so they didn't get sucked into the same trap that landed everyone around them in poverty, despair, crime, prison or a grave. Even more telling examples come from Attachment Theory in psychology, particularly in the area of intimate relationships. "Did you know the last fight with your spouse began long before you met?" reads the blurb on the back of one book. The way we were conditioned growing up leads us to be attracted to certain types of people in certain very predictable ways. And leads us each to react in very predictable ways to the very predictable ways in which our partners trigger us. However, we can react otherwise, contrary to that conditioning. I know I have, and I bet you have too. In fact, given enough effort, we can retrain our conditioned responses. I would argue that the very fact that we are programmed since birth to have conditioned responses to certain stimuli is itself evidence of free will. It means that we are a blank slate that can be programmed in the first place and that we could have been programmed differently. Additionally, free will does not mean that we have all choices open to us. The mere fact of having a mortal, corporeal existence necessarily limits what is available. But, among what is available, we may freely choose.

Maybe to a little snowflake.... There, THAT'S an insult. Feel better now?

Jesus H. Christ! Get a grip! 81% who get it have only mild symptoms. 5% of cases become critical. Mortality rate for those under 20 is. 0001% . Most people who get it are cured. SARS and the swine flu were both way worse. Should people take precautions? Of course. But there's no reason to hoard toilet paper and ammo like it is the zombie apocalypse coming. You are absolutely right. The economic damage is surreal. Get a grip, people!

Attacking someone's ideas is not a personal insult. But you can certainly freely choose to react as if it is....

You have a very childish idea of what free will entails.

Demo mode?

Does anybody know when the looting is scheduled to start? I don't want to be late and miss out on the good stuff.

It's a PANDEMIC, ? yet more people die in automobile accidents over a long holiday weekend than have died from coronavirus so far.

Well, they do already rule over the internet....

Back to Hume's point: the fact that 99.99% of people choose not to excersise it does not mean that free will does not exist. Neither does the fact that things happen which are beyond one's control. The existentialist position is summed up as "man's existence preceeds his esscence." My cat here is a predetermined being. He is a hunter and a carnivore. He can not choose otherwise. In fact, it would be harmful to him if he could. Despite the fact that he has a ready source of food available for the taking that he need do no work for, he still exhibits predatory behavior and will still hunt down and kill things. I, on the other hand, can be a hunter or a vegan. I can even be one thing one day and another the next. If a debilitating health condition forces me to abandon a long held career, I can allow it to devastate me emotionally and psychologically or I can view it as an opportunity to grow. If the cat (assuming his natural state without the human intervening to do the deed for him) can no longer hunt, he dies. That simple. Back to Neal Peart's point: even if you do not choose to exercise your free will, that in and of itself is a choice. We really have no choice but to choose. One way or another. As Sarte put it: "man is condemned to be free."

It is serious, but good God! People are panic buying and hoarding toilet paper and ammo. Fighting over cases of pasta. So far, about 6000 people have died from it. Meanwhile, over half a million people die from the regular ol' generic flu every year. 1 1/4 million in auto accidents.

I'm holding out for Shiner Virus myself.

Hume pointed out that just because you can predict a person's actions with uncanny accuracy does not mean that he does not freely choose them. Neal Peart also pointed out that "if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice. "

I've had Corona before. Tastes like ammonia cleaner, which is still better than the rancid watered down piss taste of Bud Lite & the like.

I was there first!

You don't "convert MIDI to audio." MIDI is a set of instructions that tell a synthesizer, sequencer or other music machine what to do. (i.e. "play a C3 now, at a velocity of 110)

Oh yeah. Definitely work with a copy! You also can often get much better results by doing only a little bit at a time in multiple passes.

Use triggers or a higher end electronic kit & your drum sample library of choice.

I try to hate GC too, so I can hang out at the same lunch table with the popular kids. But damn it, I keep getting good customer service from them every time I go in. Bastards!

I wouldn't bother replying.

There is no such thing.

SampleTank has such. East West has some stuff too. I like the Symphonic Choir.

Have you unchecked "remove DC offset during recording" yet?

I once lost the better part of a day trying to troubleshoot distortion on some tracks I was trying to record. Finally discovered that I had somehow accidentally clicked on "remove DC offset during recording" and that was the cause. So, to the OP: uncheck that.

Try raising the buffer.