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Warp wrote:
> There are only two possible conclusions we can make from this:
>
> 1) The human mind does not transcend beyond the physical world, which means
> that free choice does not exist. Everything the human mind comes up with is
> predetermined by deterministic events, sometimes garbled by random quantum
> effects. This is not free choice.
>
> 2) The human mind does transcend beyond the physical world as we know it,
> and is able to perform true choices which change deterministic chains of
> events in non-random ways. In other words, the human consciousness is more
> than just the electric impulses in our brain.
Actually, I've been thinking a lot about this lately, as I'm currently
reading "Godel, Escher, Bach." In particular, I'm in the section which
deals with how completely ordered, formal, & logical systems can serve
as a basis for (apparently) chaotic, fuzzy & random systems layered on
top of them.
I'm left thinking that, if "free will" does transcend mere chemistry
(ie, we are more than just moist robots), then I don't understand how it
works.
Alternatively, if "free will" is an illusion, then it is a useful one,
as it is the basis for many philosophies and, in fact, legal systems.
How's that for an answer? :)
...Chambers
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Chambers <Ben### [at] gmail com> wrote:
> Alternatively, if "free will" is an illusion, then it is a useful one,
> as it is the basis for many philosophies and, in fact, legal systems.
The main (highly) philosophical problem with there not being true free
will nor true free choice is that it basically nullifies the entire
concepts of sentience, independence and individuality. It's not you, a
sentient being, a thinking individual, who is making the choices. Not
really. Not at the most basic level. It's just a result of deterministic
cause and effect and completely random unpredictable quantum fluctuations.
You may be deluded into thinking that you are making choices, when in fact
you aren't.
--
- Warp
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"Warp" <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> a écrit dans le message de news:
4aad2d5d@news.povray.org...
> Chambers <Ben### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
>> Alternatively, if "free will" is an illusion, then it is a useful one,
>> as it is the basis for many philosophies and, in fact, legal systems.
>
> The main (highly) philosophical problem with there not being true free
> will nor true free choice is that it basically nullifies the entire
> concepts of sentience, independence and individuality.
The main philosophical problem is philosophy !
And what about intermediate responses?
May be it is a continuum between free choice and determinism.
A continuum between animals and our human sentience.
A continuum between predictible systems and chaotic systems.
Somebody who follows his instinct is closer to the deterministic side
The one who thinks hard and weights the consequences of his acts is closer
to the free choice side
Marc
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m_a_r_c wrote:
> Somebody who follows his instinct is closer to the deterministic side
> The one who thinks hard and weights the consequences of his acts is closer
> to the free choice side
Isn't that the other way 'round? If you think carefully and weigh all
consequences, you're using a system to precisely *determine* the
outcome. ;)
...whereas purely emotion-driven is (in theory) totally random, with no
real choice involved, either.
Uh-oh...
--
Tim Cook
http://empyrean.freesitespace.net
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Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
> Chambers <Ben### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> > Alternatively, if "free will" is an illusion, then it is a useful one,
> > as it is the basis for many philosophies and, in fact, legal systems.
>
> The main (highly) philosophical problem with there not being true free
> will nor true free choice is that it basically nullifies the entire
> concepts of sentience, independence and individuality. It's not you, a
> sentient being, a thinking individual, who is making the choices. Not
> really. Not at the most basic level. It's just a result of deterministic
> cause and effect and completely random unpredictable quantum fluctuations.
> You may be deluded into thinking that you are making choices, when in fact
> you aren't.
well, I'll choose to refrain from posting a reply!
oops...
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Warp wrote:
> In the physical world as we know it, at macroscopic levels, every action
> is deterministic:
Not really. For example, you cannot play billiards without feedback. Because
of the roundness of the balls, every tiny mistake is going to get amplified
and magnified. By the time you've taken 15 shots, the accumulated
uncertainty would be larger than the diameter of the cue ball. So if you
tried to program a robot to play pool by dead reckoning, you're doomed to fail.
> but the events
> are nevertheless deterministic and predetermined. In theory every single
> event can be perfectly predicted from earlier events all the way to infinity.
Nope. That's flaw #1. :-)
> This changes at atomic scales, where quantum effects can be truely
> non-deterministic and unpredictable, in other words, random. This is the
> exact opposite of determinism and predetermination: Here the outcome is
> purely random (in the absolute and ultimate sense) and there is no physical
> way of predicting it (as far as we know).
It can be predicted statistically with great precision, and differences, as
they add up, tend to cancel out instead of reinforce for arbitrarily chosen
starting conditions. Hence, things *look* deterministic on a large scale
because there's so many ways the same final situation could have come about
that it swamps the ways in which it could have happened exceptionally.
> Sometimes quantum effects can escalate to macroscopic scales, and thus
> affect macroscopic events.
Often. Perhaps even usually. Polarized sunglasses. Semiconductors. Glare
reflecting off a window. Lasers.
> (How often this happens, I have no idea, as I am no physicist.)
I think the question is unclear enough that it would be hard to give an
answer. Recalling that QED is statistically very reliable, would the result
of an atomic bomb going off be considered "completely random"? One certainly
cannot affect when a nucleus will decay, but neither do people overly worry
about a disarmed bomb randomly exploding.
Look at it like shuffling cards. Take a deck and shuffle it well, then
examine the order. What's the likelihood you got exactly that order of
cards? (1/52!) A terribly remote possibility. The same probability, indeed,
that you'd shuffle them right back into standard unshuffled order. The
difference is that there's so many "random" shufflings of the deck and very
few "exceptional" shufflings of the deck that one doesn't distinguish
different random situations.
If you look at the details of exactly where a pool ball comes to rest, there
are huge numbers of ways in which it could come to rest that are essentially
equivalent to our course senses. If the center is 0.01 degree hotter than
the edge, we'd not notice that, for example, even tho that would be a random
fluctuation as "important" as being 0.01% further to the left.
> Now we come to the philosophical concept of human free choice. By its
> very definition free choice is necessarily something which transcends both
> deterministic and random behavior. In other words, free choice can change
> a deterministic chain of events non-randomly. Thus it overrides both
> determinism at macroscopic levels and randomness at quantum levels.
If that's how you define it, yes. I think you've defined yourself into a
corner, tho.
> Thus if human free choice exists, it means that the human mind which is
> making this choice transcends both the deterministic macroscopic and the
> random quantum physics.
>
> There are only two possible conclusions we can make from this:
>
> 1) The human mind does not transcend beyond the physical world, which means
> that free choice does not exist. Everything the human mind comes up with is
> predetermined by deterministic events, sometimes garbled by random quantum
> effects. This is not free choice.
There's huge amounts of evidence that wanting to have an event happen has no
affect on whether the event happens, either at the quantum level or the
everyday level.
> 2) The human mind does transcend beyond the physical world as we know it,
> and is able to perform true choices which change deterministic chains of
> events in non-random ways. In other words, the human consciousness is more
> than just the electric impulses in our brain.
>
> The religious (and possibly agnostic) point of view chooses option number 2.
> The atheist point of view must therefore choose option number 1, unless an
> explanation of how the human mind can affect deterministic events in a
> non-random way is given. Free choice is just an illusion.
FWIW, I don't think this has anything to do with religion or atheism. It's a
question of (1) philosophy, namely "what do we mean by 'free will' or
'making a choice'" and (2) science, answering "does this actually happen?"
You don't need a deity to have free will, and you don't need to be an
atheist to think free choice isn't what you defined it to be. (I'm reluctant
to say "it's an illusion", because I think you've defined "free will" as
something other than what it is.)
(As an aside, I think the only reason this question is even involved in
religion at all is the "if god is good, why is there evil?" I don't think
those worshiping the Roman gods, for example, ever asked if they really had
free will, because the Roman gods weren't omnipotent and were far from being
omnibenevolent.)
I think the first problem comes from defining "free will" as being able to
make a choice that's neither deterministic nor random. (I'd say "not
deterministic but controllable" or something, perhaps.) This is a "mu" kind
of question, because you haven't said what it means to make a choice.
You obviously can't choose to breathe underwater or jump out of a window
without falling. So what does "making a choice" mean? There are several
possible ways you could behave, and you "decide" on one of them. What is the
process of the "decision"? Could you have decided on the other one? You
*think* you could have, but you can't really know. As far as we know,
there's no way to find out if you could have made the other decision. So, if
you like, by definition it's an illusion: the only place you're making the
decision is in your mind, and the only place the other decision ever played
out is in your imagination, as a hallucination of what would happen if you
made the other choice. (Rather a different definition of "free will", and
not what you meant, granted. Just pointing out there what the importance of
the definition of what you mean is.)
Penrose has hypothesized that since there are structures in the brain that
have quantum effects in them (as in, they appear to have evolved such that
their *purpose* is to have quantum effects affect them strongly),
deterministic computers can't "think" or "be aware". (At least, that's my
understanding. I never read "The Emperor's New Mind".) Unfortunately, he has
zero evidence and nobody who is actually a neurologist or anything actually
agrees with him.
On the other hand, there's a great deal of scientific experimentation that
shows you actually make most "decisions" quite a long time after you've
acted on them. Stuff like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Libet (which
is admittedly open to dispute et al) and other more modern stuff which I've
read but which I can't track down online right now. This unauthoritative
blog post does give an idea of the level of detail that we already know, tho.
http://shamelesslyatheist.wordpress.com/2009/07/23/the-science-of-free-will-part-i/
My take is that the concept of free will applies only to those who are
self-aware. If you have a model in your mind of how you yourself think and
behave, then "free will" consists of running that model, seeing the
predicted results of behavior, and comparing the different sets of results
to "decide" which behavior to follow. And by "decide", of course, I mean
running the results thru some part of your brain that does that stuff, and
redirecting the results to cause the behavior to happen. In this case, free
will is *literally* the illusion that you tried out those different choices
and picked on. "Free will" in this definition is the ability to simulate the
future with you in it (while *not* carrying out that behavior, mind), and it
is thus quite literally an illusion or hallucination (except that we know it
is, so we're not disturbed by it). (This assumes, of course, that you're
talking about something long term, like which food store you'll drive to
this afternoon, rather than something like which hand to pick up the fork
with for the next bite of food.)
Hence, in my take, if everything *were* deterministic, but still to
complicated to predict what someone else might do, then that person has free
will. It's even possible that free will is an attribute of an association
between two beings, and not an attribute of a particular person. (Of course,
for the most part this is always true - the grass isn't green, but rather
you see green grass instead of some other color grass.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_semantics )
Also, in my take, it's not a binary question of "do I have free will?" It's
"how much free will do I have?" I'm not one to think that I can alter the
laws of physics just by wanting to really hard, so I don't go with the
supernatural explanation for free will myself. But I expect you could have
guessed that already. :-)
Here's a question to ponder: is what you do voluntarily and intentionally
but not consciously "free will"? If you wake up to find your house is on
fire, and you panic, and the next thing you know you're standing in the
front yard with the alarm clock in your hand, did you pick up the alarm
clock out of "free will"? Was it a "choice" to pick it up? If you were
once frightened by a snake as a child, is it "free will" to shy away from
snakes as an adult, even if your intelligence knows they're harmless? Do you
"choose" to behave according to that phobia? What if you're driving, and
something happens in front of you, and you stomp on the brakes to avoid an
accident. Was this "free will" if it happened so fast you relied on
practice/reflex/etc? You *could* have decided not to slow down, perhaps turn
instead, or perhaps get into the accident, if you had time, but your
experience and preparedness allowed you to react quickly and "without
thinking" about what the right decision would be. So was your decision to
hit the brakes a "free choice"?
I'm throwing out those ideas to think about, without trying to imply that
any particular answer is "right".
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".
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Warp wrote:
> There are only two possible conclusions we can make from this:
I think you are assuming a bit much to pick only two possible
conclusions. Time and, by connection, our progression through it which
we happen to call life may not be deterministic either.
>
> 1) The human mind does not transcend beyond the physical world, which means
> that free choice does not exist. Everything the human mind comes up with is
> predetermined by deterministic events, sometimes garbled by random quantum
> effects. This is not free choice.
>
> 2) The human mind does transcend beyond the physical world as we know it,
> and is able to perform true choices which change deterministic chains of
> events in non-random ways. In other words, the human consciousness is more
> than just the electric impulses in our brain.
>
> The religious (and possibly agnostic) point of view chooses option number 2.
> The atheist point of view must therefore choose option number 1, unless an
> explanation of how the human mind can affect deterministic events in a
> non-random way is given. Free choice is just an illusion.
>
Why must an atheist pick option one? Physics has not, as far as I know,
proven that the universe is a completely deterministic place. Nor do all
religions speak about a free will.
So, for the sake of argument, allow me to propose a way that a human
could prove some free will in the universe. Someone, anyone reading
this, type out several replies to Warp's statements. Some supporting,
some against, and some nonsensical if you wish. Then, using a
nondeterministic source of random numbers to pick one of the replies,
post it. Do not tell us that you are doing this, just take that stance
in the discussion.
If the rest of us are deterministic, you will have chanced the input and
chain of events, and therefor the future of this discussion. The chain
of events that this nondeterministic 'choice' sets off may add up to
something in the future, or it may get drowned out by other noise.
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Warp wrote:
> The main (highly) philosophical problem with there not being true free
> will nor true free choice is that it basically nullifies the entire
> concepts of sentience, independence and individuality.
If you agree there's a lack of "free will" in the dualistic sense, it of
course destroys the dualistic concepts of sentience, independence, and
individuality. I.e., if you define "free will" and "sentience" and
"individuality" as supernatural, saying "the supernatural cause of free will
is missing and thus the supernatural cause of sentience is also."
> It's not you, a sentient being, a thinking individual, who is making the choices.
Of course it is. I'm just not doing it through supernatural means.
> Not at the most basic level. It's just a result of deterministic
> cause and effect and completely random unpredictable quantum fluctuations.
Does a rock stop existing simply because its fall is a result of
determinsitic gravity effects?
> You may be deluded into thinking that you are making choices, when in fact
> you aren't.
Am I deluded into thinking that I'm thinking, then? I think, therefore I
am? Who is deluded into thinking I'm making choices? Why can't I make
choices deterministically?
When we launch Excel, have we deluded the computer into running a
spreadsheet program? Or is it really, actually running Excel?
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".
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"Tim Cook" <z99### [at] gmailcom> a écrit dans le message de news:
4aad3d0c$1@news.povray.org...
>
> ...whereas purely emotion-driven is (in theory) totally random, with no
> real choice involved, either.
>
Which theory? evolutionists think that most of our decisions even those we
think driven by pure reason are in fact biased by remnants of our
hunter-gatherer past.
Marc
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Can we choose an answer freely? :)
-Mike
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On 13 Sep 2009 10:37:19 -0400, Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
> Ok, time for some philosophical tought.
IMO it matters not a jot if we have free will or not. My stance is that we
should act as if we do have free will. The other way of living is a good excuse
for bad behaviour, again IMO.
Of course our will is constrained by the laws of physics and of society which is
a good thing, mostly.
--
Regards
Stephen
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I chose to reply to this post. Theoretically my choice to do so is a
deterministic consequence of everything that has ever happened in my
life, up to and including reading this post.
I don't think choice is an illusion. I chose to type these words. Is
*free* choice an illusion? Well, define "free", define "illusion", and
then I'll get back to you. ;-)
I think people sometimes confuse "deterministic" with "predictable". The
weather is deterministic, and well-understood. And yet, after millennia
of trying, nobody can predict the weather. There are even strong
theoretical reasons for why this should be; in principle a result can
depend on the initial conditions with arbitrary sensitivity (and it
doesn't even need to be an especially complicated system for this to be
the case). Since if nothing else the uncertainty principle limits what
can actually be measured, there can exist events which are physically
impossible to predict, because the necessary measurements can never be
obtained.
I've read some authors prematurely stating that in the next decade or so
we will have computers with more computational power then the human
brain, and then we will be able to simulate brains, and even determine
what a person will do before they do it. This is of course nonesense.
Modern science has only the vaguest clue how the brain works, and you
can't simulate something you don't understand.
Also... I have a sore throat today.
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Sabrina Kilian wrote:
> Physics has not, as far as I know,
> proven that the universe is a completely deterministic place.
Um... wouldn't that be a non-falsifiable hypothesis?
You cannot *prove* that the universe is deterministic, or that it is
non-deterministic. If the universe is non-deterministic, then cause and
effect are unrelated and the very notion of "proof" is invalid. QED.
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Darren New wrote:
> When we launch Excel, have we deluded the computer into running a
> spreadsheet program? Or is it really, actually running Excel?
The computer is running a series of instructions to give the appearance
of running Excel.
--
~Mike
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Invisible wrote:
> Sabrina Kilian wrote:
>
>> Physics has not, as far as I know,
>> proven that the universe is a completely deterministic place.
>
> Um... wouldn't that be a non-falsifiable hypothesis?
No.
> You cannot *prove* that the universe is deterministic, or that it is
> non-deterministic. If the universe is non-deterministic, then cause and
> effect are unrelated and the very notion of "proof" is invalid. QED.
Not really. It depends on the ways in which it's nondeterministic. You can
still have cause and effect yet have some effects with essentially no cause.
If *nothing* is caused, then yes, cause and effect are unrelated.
Someone pointed out that the idea that "time" is a forth dimension in which
everything is static would mean there's really no cause and effect and
there's no reason for something 5 seconds from now to look anything like it
does now, but that's not *quite* true either.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".
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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Warp wrote:
> > The main (highly) philosophical problem with there not being true free
> > will nor true free choice is that it basically nullifies the entire
> > concepts of sentience, independence and individuality.
> If you agree there's a lack of "free will" in the dualistic sense, it of
> course destroys the dualistic concepts of sentience, independence, and
> individuality. I.e., if you define "free will" and "sentience" and
> "individuality" as supernatural, saying "the supernatural cause of free will
> is missing and thus the supernatural cause of sentience is also."
I cannot see any other possible definition of "free choice" than something
which transcends the physical world, in other words, something which can
break determinism in a non-random way, which basically breaks physics.
If we take the materialistic view (which, note, I'm not saying is wrong!)
that the human mind is purely physical and doesn't transcend the laws of
physics, I can see no other conclusion than that free choice does not exist,
but every "choice" is just a consequence of something else (which is mostly
a combination of both determinism and pure randomness). Of course these are
not choices at all, just consequences.
> > It's not you, a sentient being, a thinking individual, who is making the choices.
> Of course it is. I'm just not doing it through supernatural means.
No, your "choices" are simply consequences of previous events and sometimes
randomness. At its core, you are not different from an inanimate object which
gets moved by physical phenomena. The object is not "choosing" anything.
> > Not at the most basic level. It's just a result of deterministic
> > cause and effect and completely random unpredictable quantum fluctuations.
> Does a rock stop existing simply because its fall is a result of
> determinsitic gravity effects?
Who said anyting about existence? I was talking about free choice. A rock
doesn't choose what it does. It simply reacts to events in deterministic
(and sometimes random) ways. There's no higher conscience moving it.
If the human mind is bound to the exact same physics as the rock, then
the human mind is no different from the rock. It's not really a sentient,
independent being, but an inanimate object. Extremely complex, yes, but at
its core no different from the rock.
> > You may be deluded into thinking that you are making choices, when in fact
> > you aren't.
> Am I deluded into thinking that I'm thinking, then? I think, therefore I
> am? Who is deluded into thinking I'm making choices? Why can't I make
> choices deterministically?
> When we launch Excel, have we deluded the computer into running a
> spreadsheet program? Or is it really, actually running Excel?
You are not deluded into thinking that something happened even though it
didn't. You are deluded into thinking that it happened because you chose
for it to happen, rather than it happening just as a consequence of previous
events. If it happened as a consequence, it's not a choice.
--
- Warp
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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Warp wrote:
> > In the physical world as we know it, at macroscopic levels, every action
> > is deterministic:
> Not really. For example, you cannot play billiards without feedback. Because
> of the roundness of the balls, every tiny mistake is going to get amplified
> and magnified. By the time you've taken 15 shots, the accumulated
> uncertainty would be larger than the diameter of the cue ball. So if you
> tried to program a robot to play pool by dead reckoning, you're doomed to fail.
Mass and energy is quantized, and thus there's only a finite number of
ways the balls can act. It doesn't matter how many possibilities there are,
they are still finite.
Of course if we start measuring their physical properties at atomic
accuracy, we may end up having random variation due to quantum phenomena,
but that's exactly what I was saying in my original post.
> > Now we come to the philosophical concept of human free choice. By its
> > very definition free choice is necessarily something which transcends both
> > deterministic and random behavior. In other words, free choice can change
> > a deterministic chain of events non-randomly. Thus it overrides both
> > determinism at macroscopic levels and randomness at quantum levels.
> If that's how you define it, yes. I think you've defined yourself into a
> corner, tho.
I define it that way because I don't consider events which are simply a
consequence of deterministic and random events to be "making a choice".
They are consequences, not choices.
> I think the first problem comes from defining "free will" as being able to
> make a choice that's neither deterministic nor random. (I'd say "not
> deterministic but controllable" or something, perhaps.) This is a "mu" kind
> of question, because you haven't said what it means to make a choice.
What do you mean? Of course I did, and in a rather simple way at that:
Making a choice is changing a deterministic chain of events in a non-random
way.
In other words, a deterministic chain of events is affected, broken,
changed, resulting in a completely new chain of events which wouldn't have
happened if this choice hadn't been made, but this change was not due to
quantum (or any other unpredictable) randomness, but rather because of the
will of a sentient, intelligent being. This choice was not simply a
consequence of earlier events or quantum randomness. In other words, a
sentient being is not completely bound by the laws of physics, but can
affect outcomes in ways which are not determined by these laws.
Free choice is what would make sentient beings different from inanimate
objects. If we are completely bound to physics, then we are, at its core,
just inanimate objects with no true free will. Everything we do is just a
direct consequence of past events and quantum randomness. The chains of
events may be really, really complicated, but nevertheless just physical
consequences, not choices.
Of course I'm not saying that there's an inherent problem with that.
If I'm happy even knowing that my choices are just consequences, then what
does it matter? It's not like this knowledge would change my life in any way.
> Hence, in my take, if everything *were* deterministic, but still to
> complicated to predict what someone else might do, then that person has free
> will.
I find it a rather odd definition. "If the consequences are too complicated
to be predicted by us, then it's free will acting there."
That means that what constitutes free will would change over time, as our
ability to predict physical events gets increased.
--
- Warp
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Stephen <mcavoysAT@aoldotcom> wrote:
> On 13 Sep 2009 10:37:19 -0400, Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
> > Ok, time for some philosophical tought.
> IMO it matters not a jot if we have free will or not. My stance is that we
> should act as if we do have free will. The other way of living is a good excuse
> for bad behaviour, again IMO.
Why would it be a good excuse? Regardless of whether you have free will or
not, you can still feel pain. If you make bad things, you are very probably
going to suffer some physical or mental pain as a consequence (eg. sent to
jail or whatever). It makes no sense to go to jail just because you think
you have no free will.
--
- Warp
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Mike Raiford wrote:
> The computer is running a series of instructions to give the appearance
> of running Excel.
Electricity is flowing through silicon to give the appearance of running a
series of instructions.
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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> I chose to reply to this post.
Maybe you didn't. Not at the most basic level. Maybe it was just a
consequence of physics, not a true choice.
> I think people sometimes confuse "deterministic" with "predictable".
I don't think so. The very definition of "deterministic" is predictability.
The very word itself is saying so. It's the opposite of "non-deterministic",
which is unpredictability.
A chain of events is deterministic if it happens in a certain way because
there's no other way it could have happened. If the exact same initial setup
can be replicated, then the chain of events will happen in the exact same
way again, completely predictably. That's the very definition of
deterministic.
> The
> weather is deterministic, and well-understood. And yet, after millennia
> of trying, nobody can predict the weather.
Just because something is extremely hard to predict doesn't mean it's
not deterministic and impossible to predict. It just means that we don't
have the computing power to predict it yet.
(But weather is probably affected also by quantum randomness, so in that
case it's really non-deterministic and impossible to predict with exact
accuracy. You can only make statistical approaches.)
Anyways, whether physical events are predictable or not, it doesn't
change the philosophical concept of "free choice" which I wrote about.
--
- Warp
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Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
>
> Electricity is flowing through silicon to give the appearance of running a
> series of instructions.
>
Indeed ... ;)
--
~Mike
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Warp wrote:
> I cannot see any other possible definition of "free choice" than something
> which transcends the physical world, in other words, something which can
> break determinism in a non-random way, which basically breaks physics.
Well, it's a good definition. The primary problem is that you've defined the
term in such a way as to be unknowable. I.e., it's a definition that
prevents you from determining the answer to any of the questions you might
ask about it.
Unfortunately, I think most definitions of "free choice" where you might ask
"do we have it" are going to either be by definition unanswerable or by
definition trivial. If you define "free choice" as "how humans make
choices", then yes, obviously we have it and nothing else does. If you
define "free choice" as "able to do anything conceivable" then obviously we
don't have that, or we'd be flapping our arms to fly to the moon.
Another possible definition would be "a selection made by a system from one
of multiple behaviors, where the selection of behavior is based on existing
circumstances, and the selection of which behavior before the selection is
made is impossible to predict by any system including the system making the
selection." I.e., it's free will if it's impossible to know what you're
going to pick before you pick it, even for you. At that point, does it
matter whether it's natural or supernatural?
In that definition, yes, we almost undoubtedly have free will, unless we're
all Sims or something, and there's someone "outside" who can predict what
we'll do by examining the state of the universe.
> If we take the materialistic view (which, note, I'm not saying is wrong!)
> that the human mind is purely physical and doesn't transcend the laws of
> physics, I can see no other conclusion than that free choice does not exist,
> but every "choice" is just a consequence of something else (which is mostly
> a combination of both determinism and pure randomness). Of course these are
> not choices at all, just consequences.
Sure. But you see what you're doing? You're defining "free choice" as
something supernatural, then saying "if there's nothing supernatural,
there's no free choice." You have basically trivialized your conclusion by
presupposing the mechanism by which free choice comes about, then asked what
happens if that mechanism isn't the basis of free choice.
I'd prefer to approach the subject by saying "Of course we have free choice.
It's unprovable, but we also know we have self-awareness, which can't be
proven to anyone else. But what is this free will that we have?" I.e., I
prefer to approach the topic by defining free will in a way that doesn't
address the mechanism, then ask if there are mechanisms that would cause
that to come about.
> No, your "choices" are simply consequences of previous events and sometimes
> randomness. At its core, you are not different from an inanimate object which
> gets moved by physical phenomena. The object is not "choosing" anything.
That's like saying I didn't choose to make a fist, because that's just
muscles contracting from electrical signals from my brain. You're mixing
levels here. You're looking at choice as something that happens at the
atomic level, and it's (probably) caused by some higher-level combination of
things. ("Probably" in the sense that maybe it is supernatural after all.)
I.e., something without self-awareness can't make a choice, right? Yet no
atoms of your brain "think". No neuron of your brain "thinks." It's the sum
total of the neurons in your brain which "think." To say "I can't think
because none of my atoms think" is like saying "I can't make a choice
because all of my atoms are deterministic."
I.e., "choice" is a pattern of thought, not a fundamental property of the
universe. You *know* you're making choices. You're looking for the mechanism
whereby those choice are made. You're defining that mechanism as something
supernatural, then asking "if there's nothing supernatural about it, why
does it feel like I'm making choices?" If you weren't making choices, you
wouldn't be asking the question in the first place. Nobody asks "Is doing
bluflert a result of determinism or randomness" because nobody is doing
bluflert.
>>> Not at the most basic level. It's just a result of deterministic
>>> cause and effect and completely random unpredictable quantum fluctuations.
>
>> Does a rock stop existing simply because its fall is a result of
>> determinsitic gravity effects?
>
> Who said anyting about existence? I was talking about free choice.
It was an analogy. We *are* talking about definitions. :-)
A rock doesn't exist anyway. It's just a bunch of individual atoms
interacting. We just *call* it a rock. The concept of "rock" is in your
head, not out there. :-)
> If the human mind is bound to the exact same physics as the rock, then
> the human mind is no different from the rock. It's not really a sentient,
> independent being, but an inanimate object. Extremely complex, yes, but at
> its core no different from the rock.
It's a sentient independent being, *and* an object. (Not inanimate,
technically, because that word means "doesn't move", but I know what you mean.)
No, humans are animate sentient independent beings made out of inanimate
objects.
(Oh, and it's not the human "mind" as such, but the human brain, that's just
an object. I expect the human "mind" is the pattern encoded in the brain.
Still subject to the same physics, but in a different way than the rock is.
For example, the human mind can completely disappear without a trace, while
the brain or the rock cannot.)
> If it happened as a consequence, it's not a choice.
By your definition, *perhaps*. I think it's possible to have free will *and*
be deterministic, because I don't equate free will with the supernatural. I
equate it with a type of processing that goes on inside sufficiently
intelligent minds.
Is it possible to be deterministic and intelligent? If so, what part of
intelligence is involved in free choice?
Is it possible to be self-aware and deterministic? Is there any reason to
believe you can't be self-aware and deterministic? That it would be
impossible to (say) write a computer program that would learn enough to
eventually understand its own workings and understand itself, becoming
self-aware?
[ I recently wrote a long screed on the question of "what is consciousness"
which I'll likely have a chance to organize later this week. It'll be fun
incorporating some of this stuff too. Then I'll let y'all rip up my
assumptions and bad logic here. ;-]
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".
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Warp wrote:
> Mass and energy is quantized, and thus there's only a finite number of
> ways the balls can act. It doesn't matter how many possibilities there are,
> they are still finite.
I'm not sure that position is quantitized. But even granted that, the number
of combinations is large enough that the possible sets of results are that
you can't tell after 15 collisions where any balls on the table are.
> Of course if we start measuring their physical properties at atomic
> accuracy, we may end up having random variation due to quantum phenomena,
That's what I was talking about, yes. I was just pointing out that quantum
randomness does indeed multiply into macroscopic results surprisingly
quickly. You don't need to do anything clever to make quantum effects
overwhelm deterministic effects, just like you don't need to do anything
highly magical and technical to witness quantum effects first hand - a few
pairs of polarized sunglasses will do the trick.
> but that's exactly what I was saying in my original post.
Yes. You just had something like "(I'm not sure how often this happens)" or
something that I was addressing with the billiards comment.
> I define it that way because I don't consider events which are simply a
> consequence of deterministic and random events to be "making a choice".
> They are consequences, not choices.
Then I think you've trivially answered your question by making it impossible
to determine the answer of whether or not we have free choice.
>> I think the first problem comes from defining "free will" as being able to
>> make a choice that's neither deterministic nor random. (I'd say "not
>> deterministic but controllable" or something, perhaps.) This is a "mu" kind
>> of question, because you haven't said what it means to make a choice.
>
> What do you mean? Of course I did, and in a rather simple way at that:
> Making a choice is changing a deterministic chain of events in a non-random
> way.
But we've already determined that deterministic chains of events don't
exist. And given that they're random, how would you know if you've changed them?
Doesn't *feeling* like you've made a choice come into the definition?
> In other words, a deterministic chain of events is affected, broken,
> changed, resulting in a completely new chain of events which wouldn't have
> happened if this choice hadn't been made, but this change was not due to
> quantum (or any other unpredictable) randomness, but rather because of the
> will of a sentient, intelligent being.
ANd here you're defining "will" as "non-deterministic". You're saying "the
series of events was affected by the will of a being in a way that is
supernatural", then asking "can this be the case?" How would you answer
that? You're saying "can the chain of events be changed in a way that's
impossible to detect with physcics?" Well, that's impossible to detect.
> This choice was not simply a
> consequence of earlier events or quantum randomness. In other words, a
> sentient being is not completely bound by the laws of physics, but can
> affect outcomes in ways which are not determined by these laws.
And that's why you've defined the question to be unanswerable. "Do we have
the ability to do things that are impossible to understand?" Um... :-)
> Free choice is what would make sentient beings different from inanimate
> objects. If we are completely bound to physics, then we are, at its core,
> just inanimate objects with no true free will. Everything we do is just a
> direct consequence of past events and quantum randomness. The chains of
> events may be really, really complicated, but nevertheless just physical
> consequences, not choices.
If we're not bound to physics, then how do our choices affect the world?
I mean, you're saying "how can we do something that's neither 100%
predictable, nor has unpredictable variations?" You've kind of eliminated
the entire realm of possibility, as far as I can see. Especially since
"choice" is unpredictable.
If you could predict it, it wouldn't be choice. If you couldn't predict it,
it's by definition random. However, there's a third possibility, which is
unpredictable determinism, which is indistinguishable from unpredictable
randomness by definition.
> I find it a rather odd definition. "If the consequences are too complicated
> to be predicted by us, then it's free will acting there."
More like "if even we can't predict what our own choice would be in advance,
then it's a free choice." The only way it would not be free is if the choice
is limited enough that we can predict it.
Indeed, that's even the layman kind of definition. If someone holds a gun up
to your head and demands your wallet, we don't say you gave the robber your
wallet of your own free choice. Why? Because we (and in particular the
robber) can predict your behavior with a high degree of accuracy.
> That means that what constitutes free will would change over time, as our
> ability to predict physical events gets increased.
Assuming there isn't irreducable quantum randomness involved, yes. If I
could write down in an envelope whatever you were going to say or do
tomorrow, and reliably and repeatedly to your satisfaction predict a day in
advance every "free" choice you made, would you think you still have free will?
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".
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Warp wrote:
> It makes no sense to go to jail just because you think
> you have no free will.
But you won't have a choice about it. You *will* do bad things if everything
is deterministic. :-) Plus, there's no reason to send you to jail for doing
bad things, because it's all deterministic.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".
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Warp wrote:
> I don't think so. The very definition of "deterministic" is predictability.
That's where we disagree. It's completely possible to be both deterministic
and unpredictable. Indeed, that's exactly what the halting problem is all about.
> The very word itself is saying so. It's the opposite of "non-deterministic",
> which is unpredictability.
Also not quite true. Non-deterministic turing machines are very predictable
in their behavior.
> A chain of events is deterministic if it happens in a certain way because
> there's no other way it could have happened. If the exact same initial setup
> can be replicated, then the chain of events will happen in the exact same
> way again, completely predictably. That's the very definition of
> deterministic.
Yet, oddly, NDTMs behave that way. ;-)
Yes, that's the basis of deterministic. That doesn't mean you can predict
the *future*. It just means that given sufficiently similar pasts, the same
future will unfold.
> Just because something is extremely hard to predict doesn't mean it's
> not deterministic and impossible to predict.
Here, have a turing machine. Tell me when it'll halt. :-)
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".
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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Another possible definition would be "a selection made by a system from one
> of multiple behaviors, where the selection of behavior is based on existing
> circumstances, and the selection of which behavior before the selection is
> made is impossible to predict by any system including the system making the
> selection." I.e., it's free will if it's impossible to know what you're
> going to pick before you pick it, even for you. At that point, does it
> matter whether it's natural or supernatural?
I think that the difference between our definitions is that you are
defining the concept of "choice" while I am trying to define the concept
of "free choice". There's a difference.
A computer makes choices based in its input. A conditional statement is
basically choice-making: Depending on the input, it chooses either one
execution branch or another.
That kind of choice is deterministic and predictable. If a computer is
reading a source of true randomness (such as sampling the noise produced
by a resistor) and making choices based on that input, then these choices
are non-deterministic and unpredictable.
However, neither case is "free choice". The computer is bound by the laws
of physics to act according to its input (be it deterministic or not). The
computer is not a sentient being which is making a choice according to what
it wants. It's mechanically making choices according to its input and to the
laws of physics. The computer is not "free" to make any choice it desires,
because it has no desires.
So if we pose my original question in another way: Are we intelligent
sentient beings capable of making free choices, or are we simply computers
acting according to laws of physics based on input?
If the latter case is the truth, then there is no free choice, even if
there is choice. It's "bound" choice, so to speak, not free choice. We are
simply biological machines with no true free will of their own.
Maybe free will cannot exist, and is just an invented, artificial and
ultimately false notion. An illusion.
--
- Warp
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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Then I think you've trivially answered your question by making it impossible
> to determine the answer of whether or not we have free choice.
That's why they call it philosophy and not science. ;)
> > I find it a rather odd definition. "If the consequences are too complicated
> > to be predicted by us, then it's free will acting there."
> More like "if even we can't predict what our own choice would be in advance,
> then it's a free choice."
I don't consider purely random events "making a choice" either.
--
- Warp
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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Warp wrote:
> > I don't think so. The very definition of "deterministic" is predictability.
> That's where we disagree. It's completely possible to be both deterministic
> and unpredictable. Indeed, that's exactly what the halting problem is all about.
But a deterministic program will always behave the same way. It doesn't
change its behavior from one execution to another. Thus it behaves predictably.
"It will do the same thing it did the last time."
> > The very word itself is saying so. It's the opposite of "non-deterministic",
> > which is unpredictability.
> Also not quite true. Non-deterministic turing machines are very predictable
> in their behavior.
If it's non-deterministic, you cannot say how it will behave the next time
it will be executed.
> > A chain of events is deterministic if it happens in a certain way because
> > there's no other way it could have happened. If the exact same initial setup
> > can be replicated, then the chain of events will happen in the exact same
> > way again, completely predictably. That's the very definition of
> > deterministic.
> Yet, oddly, NDTMs behave that way. ;-)
If it always behaves the same way, isn't it by definition deterministic?
--
- Warp
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Warp wrote:
> I think that the difference between our definitions is that you are
> defining the concept of "choice" while I am trying to define the concept
> of "free choice". There's a difference.
Hmmm... To some extent.
> A computer makes choices based in its input. A conditional statement is
> basically choice-making: Depending on the input, it chooses either one
> execution branch or another.
Agreed.
> That kind of choice is deterministic and predictable.
Predictable in the small. In the large, it's possible that the only way to
predict what the result of a program will be is to run the program and find
out. In other words, the only way to predict what the program will choose is
to let it choose and see what the result is.
> If a computer is
> reading a source of true randomness (such as sampling the noise produced
> by a resistor) and making choices based on that input, then these choices
> are non-deterministic and unpredictable.
Right.
> However, neither case is "free choice". The computer is bound by the laws
> of physics to act according to its input (be it deterministic or not). The
> computer is not a sentient being which is making a choice according to what
> it wants.
How complex can the computer get before you'd say it's a sentient being
making a choice based on what it wants? If we had SciFi levels of AI
around, would you claim they're not sentient, not really making choices?
> It's mechanically making choices according to its input and to the
> laws of physics. The computer is not "free" to make any choice it desires,
> because it has no desires.
What if it gets complex enough that you can't distinguish the computer's
desires from its programming? If it's too complex to understand why it made
a choice, even given everything you know about it? If it's so integrated
with its inputs that it's impossible to make it take the same path through
the program twice, even tho it is deterministic?
It's like asking whether computers can be intelligent, then declaring "No,
because intelligence requires soul, so even if a computer's behavior was
100% indistinguishable from a person, it still would only be pretending to
be intelligent."
> So if we pose my original question in another way: Are we intelligent
> sentient beings capable of making free choices, or are we simply computers
> acting according to laws of physics based on input?
I'm claiming those two aren't incompatible. You're claiming the only way to
have free choice is to disobey the laws of physics (by defining it that
way). I'm questioning whether that's a useful definition, intuitive as it
may be.
I'm also questioning whether it even makes sense to ask such a question,
given you're asking about whether the laws of physics apply to our own
physical behavior. I.e., how could our free will *not* be part of physics if
it results in physical results?
I'm also questioning whether you can rationally distinguish between
"intrinsically random" and "chosen by supernatural means".
> Maybe free will cannot exist, and is just an invented, artificial and
> ultimately false notion. An illusion.
Possibly, given the definition that it's supernatural. However, given the
definition that it's supernatural, you've just defined it as being
impossible to investigate. That's the way in which I'm saying it's not a
useful definition: you've defined it in a way that blocks further useful
inquiry into the subject.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".
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Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> Then I think you've trivially answered your question by making it impossible
>> to determine the answer of whether or not we have free choice.
>
> That's why they call it philosophy and not science. ;)
Yep. Don't get me wrong. It's a fun discussion.
>>> I find it a rather odd definition. "If the consequences are too complicated
>>> to be predicted by us, then it's free will acting there."
>
>> More like "if even we can't predict what our own choice would be in advance,
>> then it's a free choice."
>
> I don't consider purely random events "making a choice" either.
No, but a pile of random events with self-awareness might be making a
choice. :-)
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".
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Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> Warp wrote:
>>> I don't think so. The very definition of "deterministic" is predictability.
>
>> That's where we disagree. It's completely possible to be both deterministic
>> and unpredictable. Indeed, that's exactly what the halting problem is all about.
>
> But a deterministic program will always behave the same way. It doesn't
> change its behavior from one execution to another. Thus it behaves predictably.
> "It will do the same thing it did the last time."
Only if presented with the exact same input. And you have to run it at
least once to find out what that result is. And, in the real world, once
you've run it, its previous choice has become part of the input for the next
run. You cannot present a human with the same choice twice.
A turing machine you couldn't start in a known state would be both
deterministic and unpredictable.
Now, I guess you could investigate free will if you could travel in time and
see whether the same events lead to the same results, but that would require
there being no randomness either.
>>> The very word itself is saying so. It's the opposite of "non-deterministic",
>>> which is unpredictability.
>
>> Also not quite true. Non-deterministic turing machines are very predictable
>> in their behavior.
>
> If it's non-deterministic, you cannot say how it will behave the next time
> it will be executed.
You can if it has exactly the same input. (Assuming there's only one
shortest path to the halting state, of course.)
I'm just pointing out that "non-deterministic" doesn't technically mean it
behaves differently each time. It simply means it's unpredictable *before*
you run the program. With the same input, an NDTM will run the same steps
each time. You just can't tell what those steps are before you run it.
>>> A chain of events is deterministic if it happens in a certain way because
>>> there's no other way it could have happened. If the exact same initial setup
>>> can be replicated, then the chain of events will happen in the exact same
>>> way again, completely predictably. That's the very definition of
>>> deterministic.
>
>> Yet, oddly, NDTMs behave that way. ;-)
>
> If it always behaves the same way, isn't it by definition deterministic?
Nope.
An NDTM has instructions that could do either X or Y when they're in the
same state with the same input. That's the "nondeterministic" part. But the
machine is required to execute the X (or the Y, whichever) that will cause
it to halt in the fewest number of steps. Which will it follow? You can't
tell, because you can't solve the halting problem. If it *does* halt, and
you feed it the same input again, will it follow the same steps again? Yes.
(Unless there are two paths that each lead to halting in the same number of
steps, at which point you really don't *care*, by the definition of the
math.) I.e., an NDTM will factor the number 18372819 the same way every
time: it'll guess that number's factors, and print them to the tape. You
just can't tell by looking at the machine what it'll guess.
I don't think you can tell if something's deterministic or not if you can't
examine its inner workings and you can't feed it the same input twice. Both
of these are true for people.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".
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> Mass and energy is quantized, and thus there's only a finite number of
> ways the balls can act. It doesn't matter how many possibilities there
> are,
> they are still finite.
Down at that level of detail, when stuff collides there is some random noise
due to the unpredictability of where sub-atomic particles will be and at
what velocity. Unless you can predict that (currently I believe it is
thought to be impossible) then you have no chance of exactly predicting the
outcome of a collision between two balls. The best bet you have will be to
say that within a certain percentage confidence the ball will be in a
certain range of positions, and as there are more collisions and the game
goes on, the range of the expected position will grow exponentially. It
probably means that even with perfect knowledge of the starting positions,
after 10 shots with multiple collisions the best you could say is that
you're 99% sure the balls will be on the table :-)
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Warp wrote:
> You are not deluded into thinking that something happened even though it
> didn't. You are deluded into thinking that it happened because you chose
> for it to happen, rather than it happening just as a consequence of previous
> events. If it happened as a consequence, it's not a choice.
>
Snort. Tell me something I don't know. Its not like I, at least, am not
perfectly aware that studies on how the brain thinks have shown
"awareness" as a post hock attempt to invent justification for an
action, which was already beginning, even before we became consciously
aware of it. Sentience is a deterministic machine, basing its actions on
thousands of independent *processes*, all which take place before
awareness, lying to itself about why it did something. Its a useful lie,
since sometimes the more integrated "conscious" mind can filter multiple
alternate paths, which might have been chosen, and ignored data, and
tell the action, which is already in progress, to halt, on the basis of
higher level reasoning, including recognition that the action in
progress is dangerous, or unwanted. The fiction is necessary, to make
sure that false actions, which can harm the individual, or things it
values, do not cause the harm, which was not directly perceptible on the
*simpler* levels. Duh!
--
void main () {
If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
if version = "Vista" {
call slow_by_half();
call DRM_everything();
}
call functional_code();
}
else
call crash_windows();
}
<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models,
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Patrick Elliott wrote:
> perfectly aware that studies on how the brain thinks have shown
> "awareness" as a post hock attempt to invent justification for an
> action,
Which isn't at odds with the supposition that there's something supernatural
involved in helping people make "free will" choices. Perhaps the
supernatural part is what starts the chain of events.
> Sentience is a deterministic machine,
I don't think you know that either. :-) Certainly there's room for quantum
effects, even if you leave out the supernatural.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".
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scott wrote:
> collisions and the game goes on, the range of the expected position will
> grow exponentially.
In particular, it's caused to a great extent by the balls being convex,
thereby amplifying any difference between predicted and actual.
> It probably means that even with perfect knowledge
> of the starting positions, after 10 shots with multiple collisions the
> best you could say is that you're 99% sure the balls will be on the
> table :-)
The calculation I remember was after 15 shots you can't tell if any are on
the table. :-)
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".
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Warp wrote:
> Maybe free will cannot exist, and is just an invented, artificial and
> ultimately false notion. An illusion.
Actually, I had a bit of an insight while food shopping this morning.
You're defining free will as something supernatural, and asking whether
that's an illusion.
I prefer to define free will as the illusion, and then asserting "of course
we have free will."
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".
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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> How complex can the computer get before you'd say it's a sentient being
> making a choice based on what it wants? If we had SciFi levels of AI
> around, would you claim they're not sentient, not really making choices?
One (maybe not completely physical) possibility would be if the
computer/brain is able to make decision as a closed system. In other
words, it's capable of processing and changing information, and making
decisions without those decisions being the direct and inevitable
consequence of external input or quantum randomness. The decisions may
be *based* on the external input, but they are not the inevitable and
deterministic consequence of it. The computer/brain might be able to
use its own internal logic to make choices based on the input, but in a
way that from the outside it's impossible to predict which choises will
be made.
Can such closed system exist in the physical world? Could that idea break
some laws of physics (eg. something along the lines that new information
cannot be generated in a closed system or something)?
--
- Warp
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On 14 Sep 2009 15:03:06 -0400, Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
>
>> IMO it matters not a jot if we have free will or not. My stance is that we
>> should act as if we do have free will. The other way of living is a good excuse
>> for bad behaviour, again IMO.
>
> Why would it be a good excuse? Regardless of whether you have free will or
>not, you can still feel pain. If you make bad things, you are very probably
>going to suffer some physical or mental pain as a consequence (eg. sent to
>jail or whatever). It makes no sense to go to jail just because you think
>you have no free will.
Now I was thinking about certain religious sects who believed that they were the
"chosen ones" and would go to heaven no mater what they did. It was predestined.
But to answer your post. Not all people would feel bad because they did bad
things. If they could justify their actions by saying that, that was the way
they were then it was OK. Sad but not their fault.
You may not have met people like that but, unfortunately I have.
--
Regards
Stephen
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Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> How complex can the computer get before you'd say it's a sentient being
>> making a choice based on what it wants? If we had SciFi levels of AI
>> around, would you claim they're not sentient, not really making choices?
>
> One (maybe not completely physical) possibility would be if the
> computer/brain is able to make decision as a closed system. In other
> words, it's capable of processing and changing information, and making
> decisions without those decisions being the direct and inevitable
> consequence of external input or quantum randomness.
I understand what you're saying. I'm not seeing how that addresses any of
those questions I asked.
Basically, I was trying to investigate what might be the cause of the
(assumed) presence of this non-physical mechanism that's present in humans
but not in rocks.
> The decisions may
> be *based* on the external input, but they are not the inevitable and
> deterministic consequence of it. The computer/brain might be able to
> use its own internal logic to make choices based on the input, but in a
> way that from the outside it's impossible to predict which choises will
> be made.
Sure. But for it to meet your definition, not just "impossible to predict"
but "supernatural." I.e., not arising from physical processes, right? I
mean, "based on quantum randomness" is also impossible to predict, but you
don't want to take that into account.
So you want basically for the mind to be able to react to something
unassociated with the brain. So those questions about an AI are
investigating what you mean by "mind" in the case it's not necessarily a
human or advanced animal.
> Can such closed system exist in the physical world? Could that idea break
> some laws of physics (eg. something along the lines that new information
> cannot be generated in a closed system or something)?
Normally a "closed system" means something different than what you're
talking about - in particular, you wouldn't be able to observe the behavior
of a person that's a "closed system", whereas the result of the person
making the choice is obvious to people outside. If I choose to go to the
store today, the other shoppers are going to know that, so I'm no longer a
closed system. Unless I'm misunderstanding what you're trying to express.
Also, yes, I *think* the amount of information in a closed system can
neither go up nor down, hence the people worrying about the quantum effects
of black holes, holographic universes, and stuff like that. But that's
really beyond my understandings of QM.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".
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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> > One (maybe not completely physical) possibility would be if the
> > computer/brain is able to make decision as a closed system. In other
> > words, it's capable of processing and changing information, and making
> > decisions without those decisions being the direct and inevitable
> > consequence of external input or quantum randomness.
> I understand what you're saying. I'm not seeing how that addresses any of
> those questions I asked.
> Basically, I was trying to investigate what might be the cause of the
> (assumed) presence of this non-physical mechanism that's present in humans
> but not in rocks.
If the decisions made by a sentient being are
1) not random (in the quantum-mechanical sense), and
2) not a result of external influences, ie. not predictable
because the decisions are being made in a closed system rather than as a
consequence of the entire universe, then one could consider that sentient
being as having a will of its own, with choices which are not just a direct
consequence of external events, and this without necessarily having to
ascend above physics. (But, as I said, I'm not sure if this would break
some laws of physics regarding closed systems and what they can do.)
Of course if we examine the decisions from *inside* this closed system,
then we might find out that it is still completely bound to deterministic
and random consequences. However, from the *outside* it may be exactly as
if it was a being having true unbounded free will. (In other words, from
the outside it's impossible say whether the decisions are being done by
supernatural or natural means.)
This would make the sentient being different from a rock, which does
not have such an internal closed decision-making system.
This might be somewhat similar to what you already wrote in some of your
replies, and maybe this is just your point sinking in.
> > The decisions may
> > be *based* on the external input, but they are not the inevitable and
> > deterministic consequence of it. The computer/brain might be able to
> > use its own internal logic to make choices based on the input, but in a
> > way that from the outside it's impossible to predict which choises will
> > be made.
> Sure. But for it to meet your definition, not just "impossible to predict"
> but "supernatural."
I didn't really require for free choice to be supernatural. I only required
that it must not be bound to previous events nor randomness (else it wouldn't
really be free choice at all).
If a closed system I described is physically possible, then (I think) it
would perfectly *emulate* supernatural free will, even if it isn't really.
> > Can such closed system exist in the physical world? Could that idea break
> > some laws of physics (eg. something along the lines that new information
> > cannot be generated in a closed system or something)?
> Normally a "closed system" means something different than what you're
> talking about - in particular, you wouldn't be able to observe the behavior
> of a person that's a "closed system", whereas the result of the person
> making the choice is obvious to people outside. If I choose to go to the
> store today, the other shoppers are going to know that, so I'm no longer a
> closed system. Unless I'm misunderstanding what you're trying to express.
Wouldn't it be a closed system if the internal decision process is
impossible to observe from the outside, no matter what kind of stimulus
is being applied? In other words, the responses are completely unpredictable,
without necessarily being random (in the quantum-mechanical sense).
--
- Warp
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Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>>> One (maybe not completely physical) possibility would be if the
>>> computer/brain is able to make decision as a closed system. In other
>>> words, it's capable of processing and changing information, and making
>>> decisions without those decisions being the direct and inevitable
>>> consequence of external input or quantum randomness.
>
>> I understand what you're saying. I'm not seeing how that addresses any of
>> those questions I asked.
>
>> Basically, I was trying to investigate what might be the cause of the
>> (assumed) presence of this non-physical mechanism that's present in humans
>> but not in rocks.
>
> If the decisions made by a sentient being are
>
> 1) not random (in the quantum-mechanical sense), and
> 2) not a result of external influences, ie. not predictable
>
> because the decisions are being made in a closed system rather than as a
> consequence of the entire universe, then one could consider that sentient
> being as having a will of its own, with choices which are not just a direct
> consequence of external events, and this without necessarily having to
> ascend above physics. (But, as I said, I'm not sure if this would break
> some laws of physics regarding closed systems and what they can do.)
Right. That's the part I understand you're saying (altho "closed" I don't
think is the right term there). What I was asking is whether you think a
sufficiently complex deterministic system can ever show evidence of this
free choice? Or whether any sufficiently complex deterministic+quantum
system can show evidence of free choice? Would you attribute free choice to
a sufficiently complex computer program that is good enough to (say) pass
the turing test indefinitely?
> Of course if we examine the decisions from *inside* this closed system,
> then we might find out that it is still completely bound to deterministic
> and random consequences. However, from the *outside* it may be exactly as
> if it was a being having true unbounded free will. (In other words, from
> the outside it's impossible say whether the decisions are being done by
> supernatural or natural means.)
I see. You're using "closed" to mean "opaque" sort of. Impossible to examine
in detail. "Closed system" means something else in scientific theories.
> This would make the sentient being different from a rock, which does
> not have such an internal closed decision-making system.
>
> This might be somewhat similar to what you already wrote in some of your
> replies, and maybe this is just your point sinking in.
Yes, it's part of what I was saying, but then I asked if it was sensible to
ask whether a "closed" system that makes "free choices" can be distinguished
from a "closed" system that is affected by QM randomness.
>> Sure. But for it to meet your definition, not just "impossible to predict"
>> but "supernatural."
>
> I didn't really require for free choice to be supernatural. I only required
> that it must not be bound to previous events nor randomness (else it wouldn't
> really be free choice at all).
"Supernatural" as in "not driven by the laws of physics." Because you
either have something that's deterministic, or something that's driven by
randomness inherent in the laws of physics, or you have "supernatural", yes?
If you discount the random parts of physics and the deterministic parts of
physics, what else is there?
> If a closed system I described is physically possible, then (I think) it
> would perfectly *emulate* supernatural free will, even if it isn't really.
Right. And would it emulate free will so precisely that it's
indistinguishable from actual free will? It's like asking whether a
calculator is doing arithmetic, or only simulating doing arithmetic.
> Wouldn't it be a closed system if the internal decision process is
> impossible to observe from the outside, no matter what kind of stimulus
> is being applied? In other words, the responses are completely unpredictable,
> without necessarily being random (in the quantum-mechanical sense).
I'd call that "opaque." Normally "closed" means "not interacting with
something outside itself." So the second law of thermodynamics says a
closed system can never become more ordered. By "closed" there, they mean a
system with nothing entering or leaving.
Now that I understand what you meant by the word "closed", yes, I agree with
what you were saying. "Opaque" might be a better word in other
conversations, tho. It interacts, but you can't see inside.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".
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> In particular, it's caused to a great extent by the balls being convex,
> thereby amplifying any difference between predicted and actual.
Yes, I remember some small "puzzle" where there is a perfect sphere of
radius 0.2 (or similar) at every integer grid point in 3D space. You then
fire another sphere somewhere and try to predict the position after a few
seconds :-)
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Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
> Ok, time for some philosophical tought.
>
> 1) The human mind does not transcend beyond the physical world, which means
> that free choice does not exist. Everything the human mind comes up with is
> predetermined by deterministic events, sometimes garbled by random quantum
> effects. This is not free choice.
>
> 2) The human mind does transcend beyond the physical world as we know it,
> and is able to perform true choices which change deterministic chains of
> events in non-random ways. In other words, the human consciousness is more
> than just the electric impulses in our brain.
>
> The religious (and possibly agnostic) point of view ...
>
> --
> - Warp
Master to a group of students: "Who amongst you has transcended the self?"
Particularly ungifted student(waving arms): "Me! Me! Me! Me!"
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
I'd like to discuss what are, for me, some key terminology in option 2) from the
"agnostic" point of view as the term was originally coined by T. H. Huxley.
(This is the point of view that asserts that one should not claim to know what
one can not prove.) It is entirely possible that the human mind could
"transcend beyond the physical world AS WE KNOW IT" without implying the
existence of the supernatural because there is quite a bit about the universe
that we simply don't know. There's nothing irrational or supernatural about one
saying: "My experience of the universe is such that it seems to me that free
choice does exist, but I can not prove this and must refrain from treating the
existence of free choice as an objective fact when dealing with the rights and
claims of others." It's very nice to have objective facts when we can get them
and wise to act in deference to those facts when they are relevant, BUT... There
is so much about the universe that we have yet to learn that it is entirely
impractical for us to say nothing and do nothing when we are confronted with
issues that we do not presently have the objective knowledge to resolve on such
a basis.
Best Regards,
Mike C.
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Mike the Elder wrote:
> Master to a group of students: "Who amongst you has transcended the self?"
>
> Particularly ungifted student(waving arms): "Me! Me! Me! Me!"
http://dananau.com/wabe/humor/monkgloats.pdf
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".
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Darren New wrote:
> Patrick Elliott wrote:
>> perfectly aware that studies on how the brain thinks have shown
>> "awareness" as a post hock attempt to invent justification for an action,
>
> Which isn't at odds with the supposition that there's something
> supernatural involved in helping people make "free will" choices.
> Perhaps the supernatural part is what starts the chain of events.
>
Uh.. I have a razor, if you want to shave that beard... Seriously, that
makes no bloody sense. Why have a supernatural event that does nothing
but push a button, which sends data through a million separate machines,
and multiple levels of filters, all so the end machine can tell itself,
"I picked an apple, instead of an orange, because I haven't had one in a
while", when the real explanation was, "it was closer", or worse, as at
least one experiment showed was possible, "even though I absolutely
despise apples, I decided to try them again, because some guy tricked me
into thinking I **had** ordered one, and the only logical explanation I
could come up with for doing that was my personal choice." They did that
one for real. People, who flat out stated they didn't like certain
things, rearranged their own perception of events, to justify having
ordered them anyway, because they where presented with "apparent"
evidence that they had ordered the item. And, even more crazy, their new
expectation that they had done in intentionally colored their reaction
to eating the thing **positively**.
In any case. What would be the point of such a supernatural button
pusher? It doesn't guide the decisions, it can't prevent the machine
from being intentionally derailed by someone else, and it doesn't have
any way to predict what the final, post hock, resolution of all the
steps are going to be. It would be like playing a video game, where 10
billion things happen, as you watch, without you being able to control
*any* of them, every time you clicked 'enter'. The supernatural world
must be damned boring... lol
>> Sentience is a deterministic machine,
>
> I don't think you know that either. :-) Certainly there's room for
> quantum effects, even if you leave out the supernatural.
>
I think the later can be discounted pretty well. The former.. is a bit
iffy, and some people take it in completely ridiculous directions.
--
void main () {
If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
if version = "Vista" {
call slow_by_half();
call DRM_everything();
}
call functional_code();
}
else
call crash_windows();
}
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3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>
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Patrick Elliott wrote:
> Darren New wrote:
>> Patrick Elliott wrote:
>>> perfectly aware that studies on how the brain thinks have shown
>>> "awareness" as a post hock attempt to invent justification for an
>>> action,
>>
>> Which isn't at odds with the supposition that there's something
>> supernatural involved in helping people make "free will" choices.
>> Perhaps the supernatural part is what starts the chain of events.
>>
> Uh.. I have a razor, if you want to shave that beard... Seriously, that
> makes no bloody sense.
I didn't say it did. I just said you couldn't draw the conclusion that there
is no supernatural event simply because the actual knowledge of the decision
you make comes *after* the supernatural cause of that decision.
> Why have a supernatural event that does nothing
> but push a button, which sends data through a million separate machines,
> and multiple levels of filters, all so the end machine can tell itself,
> "I picked an apple, instead of an orange, because I haven't had one in a
> while",
The supernatural event would be the decision to pick the apple. Then it goes
through your brain to make your brain *aware* of it.
Not unlike how when you burn yourself and jerk your hand back, you then know
you've jerked your hand back. Just because it's "reflex" doesn't mean you
don't know about it after the fact. Just because the decision happens
before you're aware of it doesn't mean you didn't make a decision.
> In any case. What would be the point of such a supernatural button
> pusher? It doesn't guide the decisions,
It would be guiding the decisions. That's the point. It's not an external
button pusher. It's the source of you deciding you want one thing over another.
> it can't prevent the machine
> from being intentionally derailed by someone else, and it doesn't have
> any way to predict what the final, post hock, resolution of all the
> steps are going to be.
Presumedly it does, or we wouldn't be saying it's the thing making the
decision.
>>> Sentience is a deterministic machine,
>>
>> I don't think you know that either. :-) Certainly there's room for
>> quantum effects, even if you leave out the supernatural.
>>
> I think the later can be discounted pretty well.
Why? By definition, you can't discount the supernatural, *especially* in
something you don't understand the details for.
> The former.. is a bit iffy,
In what way?
> and some people take it in completely ridiculous directions.
That's true.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".
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Darren New wrote:
>> it can't prevent the machine from being intentionally derailed by
>> someone else, and it doesn't have any way to predict what the final,
>> post hock, resolution of all the steps are going to be.
>
> Presumedly it does, or we wouldn't be saying it's the thing making the
> decision.
>
If not for the fact that you can map the decisions process pretty well,
if not exactly, and there isn't any evidence of some "trigger" event..
Nor does there seem to be any feasible reason you need such a thing at
all. See, the problem here is, people looking for supernatural
explanations are trying to find "souls", pretty much by definition. We
can make "simple" brains now, like fly intelligence, which *act*
deterministic, *act* like they think, and *act* exactly how one of these
"ensouled" things would, if a supernatural watzit was pushing the
buttons, yet.. the implications if the supernatural did exist, would be
that simply "building" something that allowed it to act like a mind
would "attract" the supernatural, and without it, the thing would just
sit their and do nothing. This contradicts everything we know, and
learned, and predict, about brains, minds, thinking, and how/why any of
it works.
Its an unnecessary addition, and it contradicts "existing" simple
examples that we *have* replicated.
>>> I don't think you know that either. :-) Certainly there's room for
>>> quantum effects, even if you leave out the supernatural.
>>>
>> I think the later can be discounted pretty well.
>
> Why? By definition, you can't discount the supernatural, *especially* in
> something you don't understand the details for.
>
I would argue that, in fact, we have a clear enough picture at this
point that the odds of the supernatural being involve is... slim to
none. I would even go so far as to say that people *researching* the
matter would state it even more strongly, based on everything I have
read on behavioral and the "physical" mechanics of modern neuroscience.
>> The former.. is a bit iffy,
>
> In what way?
>
Answered in the other part, about ridiculous directions. But, in
reality, at this point, it simply doesn't rise above "hypothesis". There
being only slightly more evidence to support the assertion than their is
for the supernatural, and then only due to there being pretty much no
support for the supernatural, other than the persistence of people to
insist it exists, and invent new ways to misunderstand things like
emeters, photography, noise analysis, and random patterns on toast, to
really support it. Hell, most of the BS people call "supernatural" is
**known** to have been made up by con artists in the early 18th century,
during the rise of the "spiritualist" movement. What wasn't, is a mish
mash of re-editing of things invented by the same people that built
"flying chariots", "doors that open on their own" and other contrivances
for their temples to various mythological figures, which they knew damn
well where engineered, not magicked.
As someone put it in a thread somewhere else recently, its all about the
inane concept of "sheep and shepards". Sheep are raised to be fleeces,
bred, so you can fleece more of them, and/or eaten. One may make up
ghosts and spirits to fill in things one doesn't know how to explain,
but in the end, the people that "promote them" as the best answer for
something tend to have shears stuck in their back pockets, or are just
some shearer's head sheep. Before you suggest the supernatural as a
plausible explanation for *anything* you first have to show that the
supernatural itself is at all *plausible*. Otherwise, you might as well
suggest alien's playing video games, or Santa Claus.
So, sure, quantum effects, to explain free will, never mind having
failed to prove you need to explain what you can't prove exists in the
first place, is more likely, but only because Santa Claus is "still" a
poor explanation for how presents got under your tree, even if no one in
the family remembers putting them there. lol
--
void main () {
If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
if version = "Vista" {
call slow_by_half();
call DRM_everything();
}
call functional_code();
}
else
call crash_windows();
}
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Patrick Elliott wrote:
> Darren New wrote:
>>> it can't prevent the machine from being intentionally derailed by
>>> someone else, and it doesn't have any way to predict what the final,
>>> post hock, resolution of all the steps are going to be.
>>
>> Presumedly it does, or we wouldn't be saying it's the thing making the
>> decision.
>>
> If not for the fact that you can map the decisions process pretty well,
> if not exactly, and there isn't any evidence of some "trigger" event..
Now you're talking about science. That's exactly *not* the point.
We're not arguing whether such a supernatural bit exists or not. We're
speculating on what it "means" to people if it exists or not, regardless of
the truth of the proposition.
It's like Larry Niven talking about all the cool things that would happen
with society if cheap instant teleportation was available, and then you're
complaining "but physics says you can't do that."
> Nor does there seem to be any feasible reason you need such a thing at
> all.
Sure there is.
> See, the problem here is, people looking for supernatural
> explanations are trying to find "souls", pretty much by definition.
Sort of, I suppose.
> This contradicts everything we know, and
> learned, and predict, about brains, minds, thinking, and how/why any of
> it works.
Well, that's why I described it as supernatural, rather than just "neither
deterministic nor random." :-)
> Its an unnecessary addition, and it contradicts "existing" simple
> examples that we *have* replicated.
You're arguing that it doesn't exist, but that isn't the point of the
discussion.
>> Why? By definition, you can't discount the supernatural, *especially*
>> in something you don't understand the details for.
>>
> I would argue that, in fact, we have a clear enough picture at this
> point that the odds of the supernatural being involve is... slim to
> none.
I would disagree that it's possible to know such a thing, by definition of
the word "supernatural." By definition, research into the supernatural will
never show you the existence of the supernatural. Otherwise, it would be
natural.
> Answered in the other part, about ridiculous directions. But, in
> reality, at this point, it simply doesn't rise above "hypothesis".
Sure. But we're discussing the consequences of what the hypothesis being
true or false would be, not whether it's true or false.
We're arguing over whether Luke Skywalker *would* have done X, and how the
future of the Empire would have changed had he done so. The fact that it's
all fictional doesn't detract from the discussion.
> Before you suggest the supernatural as a
> plausible explanation for *anything*
Show me where I did that.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".
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Free choice is a believable illusion until you can predict the future.
> In the physical world as we know it, at macroscopic levels, every action
> is deterministic: Every event is just a deterministic consequence of some
> earlier events.
One you can predict the future (maybe by working out the result of all the
deterministic events) then things get funkier because your deterministic
events can have inputs from the future (maybe you'll see the lotto numbers
from next week and buy a ticket). But it's still totally predictable, (if
you look you will also see yourself buying the ticket and winning). And
then you'll see that everything is totally predictable and you can't change
anything (even if you try really hard not to, you will be forced to go and
buy that ticket exactly as you had already seen). Then there really is no
free choice.
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Darren New wrote:
>> I would argue that, in fact, we have a clear enough picture at this
>> point that the odds of the supernatural being involve is... slim to none.
>
> I would disagree that it's possible to know such a thing, by definition
> of the word "supernatural." By definition, research into the
> supernatural will never show you the existence of the supernatural.
> Otherwise, it would be natural.
>
Tell that to the idiots running around doing Blair Witch every week on
Syfy (or how ever they are spelling it now), who claim to be ghost
hunters.. lol
>> Answered in the other part, about ridiculous directions. But, in
>> reality, at this point, it simply doesn't rise above "hypothesis".
>
> Sure. But we're discussing the consequences of what the hypothesis being
> true or false would be, not whether it's true or false.
>
Ok, so what.. We are arguing with the intent of writing a novel, or
something? lol Seriously, we could have a much more productive, and
interesting, discussion of the consequences that the sky where green, or
Simpson's yellow, instead of blue, since at least we have the tools
here to "show" what that would be. The thing that annoys me, I suppose,
about the supernatural is that while we, onces its established we are
talking about pure hypotheticals, are not seriously examining something
that, by any measure or standard we apply to things, doesn't exist, this
doesn't alter the fact that there are in indeterminate number of wackos
around that will quote mine any serious attempts to discuss it, as
though it where true, as evidence that someone, someplace *thinks* its true.
Besides, you never the less have a problem, in that its hard to escape
what you *do* know, to talk about such hypotheticals, without wandering
into areas that are, if anything, more absurd than what other people
have already come up with. Witness what the ID people have done to both
theology *and* science, by trying to cram mythology into biology. Its
incoherent gibberish, supported by nothing by careful cherry picking of
any tiny scrap of information that appears, superficially, since looking
too hard tends to derail things, to support their position.
I guess I just have an easier time applying my imagination to "what
ifs", when the universe they are being applied to already defies the
laws of physics, so beating more of them to death with the arm you
ripped off the corpse of logic, to come up with such a universe, isn't
quite so irritating. lol
--
void main () {
If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
if version = "Vista" {
call slow_by_half();
call DRM_everything();
}
call functional_code();
}
else
call crash_windows();
}
<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models,
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>
Post a reply to this message
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