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Why it is important to define the term "free will" before arguing whether we
have it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6S9OidmNZM
For the zinger, start five minutes in. :-) But it's worth watching the whole
thing. Creepy.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Forget "focus follows mouse." When do
I get "focus follows gaze"?
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On 26-1-2010 19:34, Darren New wrote:
> Why it is important to define the term "free will" before arguing
> whether we have it:
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6S9OidmNZM
>
> For the zinger, start five minutes in. :-) But it's worth watching the
> whole thing. Creepy.
Do you happen to read alt.fan.douglas-adams?
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Darren New wrote:
> Why it is important to define the term "free will" before arguing
> whether we have it:
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6S9OidmNZM
>
> For the zinger, start five minutes in. :-) But it's worth watching the
> whole thing. Creepy.
>
For all the talk about determinism, they managed to avoid mentioning why
they can pinpoint a decision 6 seconds ahead of time instead of a whole
minute or more. They reduce the 'I' into the combination of conscious
and subconscious, and then wave off free-will as the subconscious.
Which means that 'I' still has free-will.
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andrel wrote:
> Do you happen to read alt.fan.douglas-adams?
No. My ISP stopped carrying newsgroups a while ago, and all the web
interfaces to them are too painful to be worth trying to use.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Forget "focus follows mouse." When do
I get "focus follows gaze"?
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Sabrina Kilian wrote:
> Which means that 'I' still has free-will.
I don't think they waved anything off at all. That's why I said you have to
ask what the words "free will" mean before you can discuss whether you have
it. I would think there are people who would say that the ability to predict
what choice you're going to make before you yourself even know what that
choice is indicates a lack of free will. *I* don't agree with that stance,
but that's because that isn't how I define free will.
I thought the idea that someone else knows your decision significantly
sooner than you do is a pretty strange idea.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Forget "focus follows mouse." When do
I get "focus follows gaze"?
Post a reply to this message
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On 26-1-2010 22:07, Darren New wrote:
> andrel wrote:
>> Do you happen to read alt.fan.douglas-adams?
>
> No. My ISP stopped carrying newsgroups a while ago, and all the web
> interfaces to them are too painful to be worth trying to use.
>
I asked because in that newsgroup there was yesterday this message:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
The Eighth Douglas Adams Memorial Lecture: Professor Marcus du Sautoy:
“42: the answer to life, the universe and prime numbers”
The Royal Geographical Society, London, SW7 2AR
Thursday 11 March 2010
7.30pm (doors open 6.30pm)
We are very pleased to announce that Professor Marcus du Sautoy will
be giving the Eighth Douglas Adams Memorial Lecture. He will be giving
a talk on a very Douglas themed number - the number 42!
Marcus du Sautoy is the Charles Simonyi Professor for the Public
Understanding of Science and Professor of Mathematics at the
University of Oxford and a Fellow of New College. He has been named by
the Independent on Sunday as one of the UK's leading scientists. In
2001 he won the prestigious Berwick Prize of the London Mathematical
Society awarded every two years to reward the best mathematical
research made by a mathematician under 40. In 2004 Esquire Magazine
chose him as one of the 100 most influential people under 40 in
Britain and in 2008 he was included in the prestigious directory Who’s
Who.
Comedy writer and television & radio presenter, Clive Anderson has
provisionally agreed to MC the Eighth Douglas Adams Memorial lecture.
Tickets: £15
Available from: www.savetherhino.org or call 020 7357 7474
----------------------------------------------------------------------
I had never heard of this guy and twice within 24 hours made me suspicious.
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andrel wrote:
> I had never heard of this guy and twice within 24 hours made me suspicious.
Oh, no. I just got the link off a social site, so maybe someone else was
interested because of that.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Forget "focus follows mouse." When do
I get "focus follows gaze"?
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Darren New wrote:
> Why it is important to define the term "free will" before arguing
> whether we have it:
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6S9OidmNZM
>
> For the zinger, start five minutes in. :-) But it's worth watching the
> whole thing. Creepy.
>
I have noticed that when I walk to and from a destination on a city grid
I always take a different route to and from because each time I take the
route that arcs a little to the right of the destination.
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Darren New wrote:
> I thought the idea that someone else knows your decision significantly
> sooner than you do is a pretty strange idea.
>
Then you have to define 'when you know' and, even stranger, 'you'. The
brain, obviously, 'knows' at the time that the firings show up on the
FMRI or PET which ever they are using. Perhaps it knows even before
that, and we just do not know what to look for. From a biological point
of view with out the possibility for an outside 'self', you 'know' when
the neurons start firing. That there is a delay may be nothing more than
the filtering that the brain does with vision prediction. [1]
Alternatively, allowing for a possible outside 'self', the firing of
neurons may just be the initial 'handshake' between the self and the body.
Define free will how you like, that is only the middle step of the whole
problem.
[1]http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1081006/84-cent-tennis-points-wrong-umpires-tricked-optical-illusion--reveals-study.html
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"Darren New" <dne### [at] san rrcom> wrote in message
news:4b5f5a71$1@news.povray.org...
> Sabrina Kilian wrote:
> > Which means that 'I' still has free-will.
>
> I don't think they waved anything off at all. That's why I said you have
to
> ask what the words "free will" mean before you can discuss whether you
have
> it. I would think there are people who would say that the ability to
predict
> what choice you're going to make before you yourself even know what that
> choice is indicates a lack of free will. *I* don't agree with that
stance,
> but that's because that isn't how I define free will.
>
> I thought the idea that someone else knows your decision significantly
> sooner than you do is a pretty strange idea.
Depends on what you mean by "know", but it's pretty common to predict other
people's decisions and reactions. The closer you are to a person and the
more you study him, the better you can predict his decisions, which means
his decision making process is complex, but understandable/predictable in
principle. But even that's small potatoes, people can actually *affect*
other's decisions and behaviour by giving them chemicals/drugs. Even before
trying to define "free will", which will be hopeless, we should define what
"I" is. Am I something completely isolated from my environment? If I drink
coffee or alcohol that will likely affect my decision making, do they become
part of me?
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