Regarding the matter of the weights, that’s a bit difficult, because according to this theory, the collective has no freedom of choice. And it’s a bit strange that the individual would have freedom of choice but the collective made up of those individuals would not. In addition, in the Torah we see that there is collective responsibility, collective commands, and a communal sin-offering. That seems to indicate that the public does have choice.

The collective does have freedom of choice. But if it acts as an aggregate of individuals, then the average is determined by the law of large numbers (and the weights). But if the collective decides, as a single unit, to act differently, then of course it can. That is a choice of the collective as a collective.
It is similar to quantum phenomena that disappear at large scales because when every particle acts according to the quantum distribution, all their phases cancel one another out. But if there are long-range correlations, meaning all the particles act as a single unit, then quantum phenomena can also appear at large scales (these are the phenomena of superfluids and superconductors).
And indeed, communal offerings are not brought by a decision of all the individuals together (a vote), but by the institution appointed over that matter (the priests). That is a collective decision.

So why did you write above that “if we assume that the Holy One, blessed be He, does intervene, then one can argue that the involvement is only on the collective plane”? In what way is the collective plane different from the individual one?

What I meant was that He changes the weights, and that does not affect the individual’s choice, which remains free (though with different weights). It changes the collective outcome. I explained this in detail in The Sciences of Freedom.

But if the collective has freedom of choice, then He also does not affect the collective’s choice.

If the collective chooses not to choose (as a single unit), but instead leaves the arena to the actions of the individuals, then the weights operating on all the individuals will, on average, tilt the collective result.

I thought about your answer again, and apparently there’s a difficulty regarding a referendum. Suppose there were a referendum on whether to go to war or not—wouldn’t the people bear moral responsibility for the result of the vote?

Yes, they would. At least collective responsibility. Exactly as the minority in a religious court also bears responsibility for the decision.
I didn’t understand why this is a difficulty for anything I wrote.

You wrote above as follows:
“And indeed, communal offerings are not brought by a decision of all the individuals together (a vote), but by the institution appointed over that matter (the priests). That is a collective decision.”
Meaning, you made a distinction between decisions reached by a vote of individuals (a referendum) and decisions reached by an institution that represents the collective. You said there is no collective responsibility for decisions of individuals, contrary to what you just wrote now. Something here is not so clear.

That was brought only to sharpen the distinction between an action of the collective and an aggregate of actions by individuals. In principle, action by voting is something in between (each individual has influence, but the action is collective). But that wasn’t what I was discussing there; I brought voting as an example of an aggregate of independent actions by individuals that cancel one another out on the collective plane.

That’s exactly what I asked about. If a vote is an aggregate of actions by individuals that are supposed to cancel one another out statistically, then there’s no freedom of choice here; everything depends on the weights determined by the Holy One, blessed be He. And if so, why should there be responsibility for voting to go to war?

Strong question.

I don’t understand the question.
Even if the Holy One, blessed be He, shifts the weights, each person still has free choice in how to vote, and yet on average the result will probably go in the direction dictated from above. Though even that is not certain, of course. Therefore here too there is responsibility (perhaps reduced).

And of course, in a normal case He does not shift the weights, so only the vote determines the outcome. Then the responsibility is even greater.

Regarding the first part, the choice is not completely free, because in the background there are weights determined by the Holy One, blessed be He. And in fact those weights will always determine the results of the vote. Why is that not certain?

Regarding the second part, even if there is no shifting of the weights, at the end of the day there are still some weights in the background that were determined by the Holy One, blessed be He (even without shifting, there are still some weights, after all). The vote of the public is determined in a deterministic way by those weights.

Freedom is the absence of constraints. But it is not true that whenever there are constraints there is no freedom; rather, the degree of freedom is reduced. Does a person acting under constraints not give an accounting for his actions? Does a person raised with poor education not get punished? The weights he carries are different from those on an ordinary person, but he still has the choice to decide otherwise. In arguments about punishment, one can factor in the weights. When you set weights for an entire group, that does not deterministically fix the collective result. Only on average, when there are infinitely many people or infinitely many trials. Otherwise it is not deterministic, and each person has choice, and therefore so does the collective.

According to the law of large numbers, it’s pretty much deterministic. The chance that the collective will choose differently from what its weights incline it toward is negligible.

Unlike a die or a coin, where the weights determine the result deterministically in large numbers, human beings always have the possibility of choosing the good despite the weights. Therefore the responsibility is still on them. In arguments about punishment, of course, the weights are taken into account. If

With regard to an individual person that’s true, but with regard to the collective made up of a large number of individuals, the voting result will always be determined by the weights and not by the choices of the individuals. Unless you’re saying that the distribution of individual choices is not distributed according to the weights (and then what is the meaning of the weights?)

No. What I am claiming is that the distribution will probably come out according to the weights, but there is still blame on the individuals, since they could have chosen otherwise. After all, if each one had done what was required of him, it would not have happened despite the weights. Think of a group of one hundred people debating whether to rob a bank. The Holy One, blessed be He, gave them weights that tilt them 70% in the direction of robbery. They held a vote, and there was a majority in favor of the robbery (say, a 60% majority). Clearly each one had an obligation to vote against, and therefore bears responsibility for how he voted. And therefore the group as a whole also bears responsibility for its vote. They could have overcome it and voted against the robbery, and they did not. Maybe that was harder than in a situation without such weights, and still.
You need to remember that the economic interest itself (there is profit in robbing a bank) is also a set of weights, and that too can cause people to vote in favor of the robbery. Does that exempt them from responsibility?

But for an individual person, he could have chosen otherwise, so it makes sense to impose responsibility on him. As for the collective, it has no freedom at all to choose differently from the weights dictated to it, so does it make sense to impose collective responsibility?

For example, suppose the German people had voted to go to war against some nation, and after 100 years all the individuals who participated in the vote had died. Could one still demand reparations from them as a collective for the damages of the war? Or because the responsibility is on the individuals and not on the collective, is there no basis for demanding reparations here?

The collective too can choose otherwise. It’s only statistics. As for reparations too, I tend to think yes. The responsibility is on the collective that chose evil.

According to the law of large numbers, the chance that the collective will choose otherwise is negligible. That also contradicts what you wrote above:
“And indeed, communal offerings are not brought by a decision of all the individuals together (a vote), but by the institution appointed over that matter (the priests).”

We’re repeating ourselves, and I’m not managing to understand what the problem is. I distinguished between an action of the collective as a single unit (communal offerings) and an aggregate of actions by individuals that statistically create a collective state. In the second case, the weights determine the average distribution (law of large numbers, the phases cancel out), but even then there is a possibility of deviating from it. We are talking about human decisions (as in the bank robbery example). Thus, for example, the Holy One, blessed be He, can predict that the Egyptians will enslave Israel despite the choice of each individual Egyptian, but if the Egyptians had nevertheless girded their loins and chosen the good, that prediction would have failed. This is the dispute between Maimonides and the Raavad in chapter 6 of the Laws of Repentance.

I’m claiming that there is no realistic possibility of deviating from it, because the chance of that is negligible. In other words, this is coercion of the collective to choose the option that the weights defined as the more probable one. For an individual, there is still a realistic chance to choose the less probable option (say 30%), but for the collective we’re talking about a negligible chance (say one in a billion). That isn’t real free choice.

I’ll try to make it clearer, and if we still don’t agree then we’ll leave it at that.
Suppose there are a thousand people debating whether to go out and commit genocide (Nazis). The Jews have made them extremely, extremely angry, to the point of terrible rage, and therefore they have an inclination to do it. That means their weights tilt them toward doing the act. Now a vote is held on whether to do it, and the majority supports it, and they all go out and do it. In your opinion, are they exempt from responsibility? Even if the weights make it very, very likely that the majority will support it, each person still has free choice and bears responsibility for his choice. Consequently, the collective as a whole also bears responsibility for its choice. Both because of the very possibility of not doing this act, and because if they had also acted on the collective plane and tried to persuade the public not to vote for such a proposal, perhaps they would have shifted the weights and chosen correctly. Bottom line: the public bears responsibility for its actions.
In the legal world too, where there is provocation, even very strong provocation, the person who acted violently bears responsibility for his actions. The provocation enters only into the considerations regarding punishment.
This can also be explained in a technical sense: punishment is imposed so that the punishment itself will balance the weights in the direction of not acting. But that is of course not relevant with respect to punishment from the Holy One, blessed be He. In my opinion there is real responsibility, not merely a technical one. As long as you had the possibility not to do it, even if the chance was small, you bear responsibility. The size of the chance affects only the punishment.
That’s it. I’ve repeated myself here, but that’s the best I can explain it.

Even in light of the theory of weights (whether for the collective or the individual) — how can this mode of divine influence actually work?

After all, even the most innocent and tiny action, chosen by free will against the weights, can cause enormous consequences and chaos over time (the cigarette that set the Carmel on fire, or even causing much bigger things in history like war between countries) — this is illustrated nicely in the movie “The Butterfly Effect.”

Does this also affect the status of prophecies — that is, the ability of the Holy One, blessed be He, to “commit” to a prophecy (even in a soft sense and not with certainty)?
How can one maintain that a prophecy will be fulfilled with so many free human decisions in the middle??
Decisions that will surely change the picture beyond recognition…

As I recall, I explained that this is the law of large numbers. If the Holy One, blessed be He, applies weights, that means He is involved. If you accept His involvement, then in any case there is no problem. But if not—I don’t see why the weights add or subtract anything in this discussion.