Comment by spicyusername
10 hours ago
never blame anyone for anything
That's actually not quite true.
Assigning blame, via agency or otherwise, and the associated social or legal consequences are additional signals in the environment that influence and change behavior.
If the actions of an individual were involved in propagating some chain of events, then it's perfectly valid to respond to their involvement, via social stigma, punishment, etc, regardless of whether or not there is "agency". The knowledge and anticipation of a similar response changes future actor's behavior, with or without free will.
This discussion itself is exactly an example of this in practice. If there's no such thing as agency, then us talking about what someone should or shouldn't do, given whether there is free will, have any influence on anything, except that it does because interacting with these ideas themselves change behavior, with or without free will.
This is what people mean when they say we should just ignore the question of free will entirely, because it doesn't really factor into how we should design the social contract.
I agree with you, except for the blame part.
Of course people act accordingly to the system they're in. If they expect punishment for an action, or not, changes their behaviour. By defining what's punishable, we can change the course of action. But if you look at any action which already happened, you can't blame anyone for it, because it had to happen that way, given the circumstances.
That already happened is key to your idea and I think you'd have got a better response if you included it initially. It's actually quite a worthwhile concept. Blame can't change the past. The important reason we blame is to help our mind cope with the loss we suffered. But if you can succeed in coping by thinking the past is immutable, that's even better.