Vanza Setia - Comments

Free Will, Determinism, and Physicalism

Zero Contradictions — Fri, 02 May 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Some people are weird. Sorry. They choose to be weird. Sorry, again. They are destined to be weird. They have no choice.

Some people are confused because they believe they have no free will. The truth is that humans have free will. All people who reject it will always blame others or situations.

As a Christian, we believe that everyone has free will. This is why God commanded Adam to not eat a certain tree.

¹⁶ And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:
¹⁷ But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
—Genesis 2:16–17, King James Version

I found a funny article written by Zero Contradictions. The author is a confused person. How do I know that?

There is a section in the article tried to answer the following question:

Why should people be held accountable for their actions, if they could never truly choose their actions in the first place? Isn’t that unethical?

The question is smart. If we are programmed, why do we need to be responsible for what we are doing? We have no choice anyway.

If we read together the first sentence of the answer, we will see the following:

To the contrary, it’s precisely because people don’t have free will as to why people should be held accountable for their actions (if they knew what they were doing).

Can you notice the madness? I assume that the author is an atheist or a believer in a stupid religion.

Think about the logic behind the statement. A person does not have a free will. This person's life has been set up to do a crime. This person has no choice. But this person gets punished for doing a crime. Where is the justice behind this? That is a very evil statement from the author.

Then, the author states that punishments exist to discourage undesired behavior in the future. This is insanity. If humans do not have free will, how do they stop doing undesired behavior? They have been programmed. They have no choice. This means punishments do not work at all.

If there is no free will, why do we need to have a law anyway? The existence of the law proves that humans have free will. They can choose to do good things or bad things. People who choose to do bad things will get punished. But punishments do not stop people from doing evil actions. Why can that happen? The reason is people have free will. They can choose to keep evil actions regardless of the consequences.

Moreover, who does love to be punished anyway? If there is no free will, punishments will solve everything. This is the same as machine learning. If you train a machine to complete a game, you instruct the machine to avoid spikes. If they do not avoid them, you write a program that will reduce the score. This way the machine will learn that it needs to avoid the spikes to keep the score.

Can we do that to humans? No, we can not. Punishments can reduce criminal actions to a certain extent. But punishments can not stop people from committing crimes because people can still choose to commit crimes regardless of the consequences. This means humans are not programmed. Humans have free will.

If people truly had free will, then environmental factors wouldn’t influence them.

The author makes a stupid statement. How do people have free will without any challenges? If humans do not get influenced by their environment, humans do not have free will. For example, if everyone around us is a lazy person, we will feel tempted to be lazy too. But we can choose to be diligent.

If a person has been programmed to be unique, the person will not be influenced to wear the same clothes. A person will not feel awkward when this person notices that others wear the same clothes except this person. But why do most people become self-conscious when they are different? Do you know the answer? This is because humans want to be the same. That wish is the challenge. But humans can choose to ignore that wish.

People have free will. This means they have the power to decide. Environmental factors may influence their decisions. But people can choose to ignore all environmental factors. For example, Jane is hungry. Then, she notices a hamburger in front of her eyes. She feels more intense hunger. Her stomach growls. She can choose to eat it right away. But if she is on a diet, she can ignore the hamburger. She can put the hamburger into a refrigerator.

By the way, the article is hard for me to understand. This is because I do not have the free will. I have been programmed this way. I hope someone in the earth is programmed to help me.

Check it out.

Developer Fallacies

Heydon Pickering — Sun, 27 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMT

I have no problem with Heydon Pickering. He is a great web accessibility expert. I like most of his talks. Personally, I do not care about his life. But when someone makes false statements about the Bible, I feel the urge to rebuke them. I can not do nothing when someone insults my God.

I found his article "Developer Fallacies" when I was doing research about the hypocrisy of web developers. I read his article and right away, I found that this person wrote something wrong about the Bible.

He called the first fallacy "the gospel fallacy." He started with the following statement which has nothing wrong with itself:

I'm going to start on one you've probably heard of already, perhaps under a different name. This is the "we've always done it this way" fallacy.

In web development, this refers to web developers who justify their wrongdoings because they have been doing that for a long time. I have no problem with this. But the following statement is coming from a person who knows nothing about the Bible:

This fallacy is named in honour of The Holy Bible, which is treated as unquestionable by some fundamentalist Christians despite some seriously sketchy advice.

He is an atheist. I understand if he knows nothing about the Bible. He is a great web developer, in my opinion. But when it comes to the Bible, he is ignorant.

First, he named a fallacy in honor of The Holy Bible. This statement has a contradiction. Why did he write "The Holy Bible" and yet it was about fallacy? Was this person saying, "I am honoring this holy book by mocking it"? He did not honor the Bible. He insulted the Bible.

If you do not understand, I give you an example. Let's say you respect someone. This person can be your parents or yourself or anybody you honor. Can I use that person's name for a cockroach? Another example is if I say, "In the honor of your president, this porn actor looks like your president's face." Am I insulting or honoring your president?

Then, he continued writing that the Bible is treated as unquestionable by some fundamentalist Christians. This is false. First, fundamentalist Christians are people who follow the Bible thoroughly without any extra human-made rules. Second, there are no fundamentalist Christians, liberal Christians, or any other types of Christians. Those funny names do not exist in the Bible. A person is a Christian if he follows and worships God only. This means a Christian follows the Bible completely. If a Christian starts accepting LGBTQIA+, this person is not a Christian.

Additionally, we as a Christian learn the Bible with our brains. We can question the Bible. We as a human learn through questions. Then, the Bible has the answer for sure. We do not follow things without understanding.

Moreover, he continued by saying that the Bible has some seriously sketchy advice. He is an atheist. I do not blame him if he thinks some verses are sketchy. Heydon himself is a questionable person to talk about the Bible. He seriously knows nothing about the Bible. Yet he tried to tell people about Christianity. Do you see the hypocrisy?

He quoted only one verse and ignored the rest. Then, he made a stupid claim. He quoted 1 Peter 2:18 as one of the Bible's sketchy advice according to him:

Servants, be subject to your masters with all fear; not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward.
—1 Peter 2:18, King James Version

I am not surprised if an atheist thinks that the verse is sketchy. But Christians understand that this is not about allowing ourselves to be treated unjustly. This verse shows that we should not make the character of our leader to be an excuse to abandon our duties. In slavery era, a slave is a person who has no power and no money. The slave can not fight back. If the slave fights back by being lazy, the slave will be killed. If the slave suffers because the slave has done great work, this slave is a good person.

As an example for nowadays, if you work with a client who is a jerk, as long as the client has paid you, and you have no other choices, you have to do your work. You can still talk with your client to behave. But you can not ignore your duty because of your client's attitude. Another example, if you are a student and your teacher is lazy, your teacher's laziness does not become an excuse for you to be lazy too.

An atheist can not see the wisdom of God, as expected. That is why atheist people believe that they are animals that follow the laws. As long as the laws do not forbid an action, they have no reason for not doing that.

Heydon's words prove the following verse:

For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.
—1 Corinthians 1:18

For him, the Bible is a book with some foolishness, which is sketchy. For us, people who believe in God, the cross means the death and the resurrection of our Lord, Jesus. It is a sign of power. Only Jesus can resurrect Himself from the death. Through the Bible, we know God.

Heydon Pickering is a great web developer. He is an atheist. He is an animal. He insulted the Bible and as a Christian, I rebuke him. I do not know him personally. I do not care about him. But if someone insults the Bible, I will wipe the floor with the person.

Give your comments.

Check it out.

Denial

Jeremy Keith — Fri, 11 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMT

I use DuckDuckGo AI chat sometimes for brainstorming or paraphrasing. I do not copy-paste whatever it gives to me. But this tool helps me. Then, I learned Large Language Models (LLMs) have caused serious problems when they gather data. They have overloaded many websites. Are I and many other users of LLM part of the problem?

Denial is a denial that unethical LLM companies are the problem and the users do not necessarily support the negative effects. I would say the unethical LLM companies bear 99 percent of the responsibility, while the users bear one percent—or even less—responsibility.

Jeremy Keith wrote that the users of LLMs take part in making many great websites get overloaded.

If you’re using the products powered by these attacks, you’re part of the problem.

Jeremy Keith, do you eat meat? If that is the case, can I say that you are supporting the abuse of farm animals? If you are using cars, you are part of the cause of oil scarcity. Do you feel bad now?

Who are you blaming people? What is your business? Now this person is the wise one.

By the way, I do not know Jeremy Keith. I think he is a great web developer. He has written some incredible books. I just do not like this particular comment.

Don’t pretend it’s cute to ask ChatGPT for something.

Do not pretend that making something on the internet is cute. Those so-called Artificial Intelligence (AI) crawlers will eat those cute things. Do not pretend. Be real, my friend.

To my readers: "AI" is not intelligence. It is still very stupid when it comes to general knowledge. It can not even correctly answer "Do Muslims and Christians worship the same God?" (Spoiler: No, they do not)

If you’re going to use generative tools powered by large language models, don’t pretend you don’t know how your sausage is made.

Most people do not know. What do you mean by "pretending"?

As a side note, "how the sausage is made" is an idiom. It means "the practical and often unpleasant or messy aspects of a process that are usually not made public" according to Merriam Webster.

Here is my point: users of LLMs have no intention make those great services go down. If they are, has Jeremy Keith ever known a person using ChatGPT to make that happen?

I understand those "AI" crawlers have caused serious problems to some websites and services. The owners of those become frustrated. I understand. No problem. I also condemn those crawlers for making great public websites to be overloaded. But blaming "AI" users is also a problem to me.

Check it out.

Yes, Accessibility Is Also a Backend Concern

Eric Bailey — Fri, 11 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMT

I strongly agree with the following:

Accessibility is a holistic practice that touches every aspect of creating a digital experience.

All people who are involved directly in making a product need to pay attention to its accessibility, ideally. I would say, "Yes, accessibility is also everybody's concern ideally."

Check it out.

The Post-Psd Era

Brad Frost — Mon, 07 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMT

When I read the article's title, I did not understand "post-psd." I searched on the internet and found out that PSD is a native format of Adobe Photoshop. Then, I was sure that "post-psd" refers to a process after designing using Adobe Photoshop.

I agree with Brad Frost that we should not use a design tool to envision the final product which is a website. A design tool does not need to cover every situation. I think a mobile view, a desktop view, and a hovered state are enough.

Also, I think that before even designing the visual look of the website, all people—such as clients, developers, and designers—need to gather and discuss the content first. Content is the king. If a website looks good, but its content is bad, users will have a bad experience—such as struggling to understand the content.

In my humble opinion, a content-first design is preferable compared to other approaches. Last time, I improved this website significantly by making a priority guide first. Doing that allowed me to focus on the content. I could write without worrying about design or layout. No distractions. I was free to express my ideas.

Going back to the article, I strongly agree with the following statement:

Use what tools you’re comfortable with, but know when those tools stop making sense.

All tools have limitations. We should not use them more than what they can do. Also, we have limitations because we are just humans. We should not make ourselves do the impossible: making every state of a website with a design tool.

Notice that Brad Frost advised us to "use what tools you're comfortable with." Do not follow what most people use because we are unique. I have my own preferences for tools to make a website. You may have different preferences from me and the majority. That is fine. No need to debate.

Well, I like this awesome article. It is brief and great. Have you read it?

Check it out.