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The Strong Free Will Theorem (2009) [pdf]

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Re: The Strong Free Will Theorem (2009) [pdf]

#11

Post by naasking »

simonh wrote: post #7

I really think this, along with much philosophical musing about free will, is entirely missing the point. Pre-determination is essential to free will. You literally cannot have free will without it. Random choice, or even non-predetermined correlated outcomes of entangled objects don't lead to free will, they lead to uncertain decisions and those are not the same thing. If my decisions are not a product of my prior s…

> I really think this, along with much philosophical musing about free will, is entirely missing the point.

Exactly! We don't hold babies or the insane responsible for their choices precisely because they don't make choices for well-founded reasons, they simply act somewhat randomly and so clearly don't have a well-founded, deterministic decision procedure. Holding people responsible is how we refine the deterministic decision procedure of a functional brain.

I think it's important people understand that the term "free will" as used in physics simply isn't the "free will" used in law, philosophy or by lay people. They're talking about a type of freedom which lets them set parameters of an experiment independently of the system they're measuring.

Re: The Strong Free Will Theorem (2009) [pdf]

#12

Post by naasking »

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #10
simonh wrote: post #7

I really think this, along with much philosophical musing about free will, is entirely missing the point. Pre-determination is essential to free will. You literally cannot have free will without it. Random choice, or even non-predetermined correlated outcomes of entangled objects don't lead to free will, they lead to uncertain decisions and those are not the same thing. If my decisions are not a product of my prior s…

> “If my decisions are unpredictable given complete knowledge of my prior state, and the ability to extrapolate it forward, then the decisions do not come from me.” I don’t see how that conclusion follows from that premise. In fact, the whole free will debate is uninteresting to me exactly because it seems like a dissolvable semantics question regarding what does “me” mean. Is it a totality of some prior physical sta…

You're better off thinking about the logical properties that entail moral responsibility. Consider that it makes no sense to hold a car engine morally responsible for malfunctioning and killing its passengers, but it does make sense to hold a driver responsible (and it might make sense to do the same for a general AI in the future). Why?

What distinguishes how we deal with one deterministic system over another? That's what free will is. The debate has progressed quite well over the past century, and most philosophers are Compatibilists like the OP for very good reasons.

Re: The Strong Free Will Theorem (2009) [pdf]

#13

Post by fjuerfilis »

simonh wrote: post #7

I really think this, along with much philosophical musing about free will, is entirely missing the point. Pre-determination is essential to free will. You literally cannot have free will without it. Random choice, or even non-predetermined correlated outcomes of entangled objects don't lead to free will, they lead to uncertain decisions and those are not the same thing. If my decisions are not a product of my prior s…

I had a similar reaction. Nondeterministic conceptions of free will similar to that of this paper are really more like an intoxicated state or something, where behavioral outcomes are totally unpredictable. It's the absence of free will, but due to complete randomness rather than complete control.

The prior state idea seems more accurate, but even that (at least in its extreme state) doesn't seem to me to encapsulate the idea of free will because it disallows the idea of a decision being undetermined and free to decide.

I personally think the notion of free will is fallacious because it's poorly defined, or even undefinable. I admit I could be totally wrong about that, but I think lack of predictability leads to an illusion of free will. It's the same illusion as the god illusion, injecting agency as an explanatory mechanism when there is none, either through chaotic processes, true randomness, or epistemological weaknesses.

Re: The Strong Free Will Theorem (2009) [pdf]

#14

Post by simonh »

all2 wrote: post #9
simonh wrote: post #7

I really think this, along with much philosophical musing about free will, is entirely missing the point. Pre-determination is essential to free will. You literally cannot have free will without it. Random choice, or even non-predetermined correlated outcomes of entangled objects don't lead to free will, they lead to uncertain decisions and those are not the same thing. If my decisions are not a product of my prior s…

> The definition of 'me' is my prior state. I don't think this is true. We know that thought and memory are constrained (accessed) at a physical level - at least to some extent. That is, damage to your physical brain can result in diminished or eliminated access to those things. Indeed, thought as we know it seems to be a physically mediated process (perhaps not completely defined by our physical bodies, but at least…

>I don't think this is true. We know that thought and memory are constrained (accessed) at a physical level - at least to some extent. That is, damage to your physical brain can result in diminished or eliminated access to those things.

Sure, the damage changes you. It becomes a new part of your state prior to making a decision.

>You remember, but unless you choose, you are nothing but memory.

Completely agree, but we don't think really know much about the relationship between how we store memories and how we incorporate those into a decision making process. I may be wrong, I don't know much about neuroscience. My take is though that it doesn't matter. All of that is part of our self. Memories, decision making processes, neurochemistry, it's all part of our state and our decisions are only truly 'ours' to the extent that this state determines or influences them.

Re: The Strong Free Will Theorem (2009) [pdf]

#15

Post by dooglius »

> Another customarily tacit assumption is that experimenters are free to choose between possible experiments. To be precise, we mean that the choice an experimenter makes is not a function of the past

Garbage in, garbage out. It isn't clarified whether an experimenter in a nondegenerate superposition of states (will choose x, will choose y, will choose z) is considered to have "free will". If you call that free will, then the result that result that the particle can end up in a superposition of states is not novel. If you don't call that free will, then the assumption is false and the theorem vacuous.

Re: The Strong Free Will Theorem (2009) [pdf]

#16

Post by criddell »

all2 wrote: post #8
jatsign wrote: post #3

Can anyone dumb this down for me?

> It asserts, roughly, that if indeed we humans have free will, then elementary particles already have their own small share of this valuable commodity. More precisely, if the experimenter can freely choose the directions in which to orient his apparatus in a certain measurement, then the particle’s response (to be pedantic—the universe’s response near the particle) is not determined by the entire previous history of…

Is that basically saying that at some level, we should be able to see effects that have no cause? Is that what freewill boils down to?

Re: The Strong Free Will Theorem (2009) [pdf]

#17

Post by all2 »

simonh wrote: post #14
all2 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The definition of 'me' is my prior state. I don't think this is true. We know that thought and memory are constrained (accessed) at a physical level - at least to some extent. That is, damage to your physical brain can result in diminished or eliminated access to those things. Indeed, thought as we know it seems to be a physically mediated process (perhaps not completely defined by our physical bodies, but at least…

>I don't think this is true. We know that thought and memory are constrained (accessed) at a physical level - at least to some extent. That is, damage to your physical brain can result in diminished or eliminated access to those things. Sure, the damage changes you. It becomes a new part of your state prior to making a decision. >You remember, but unless you choose, you are nothing but memory. Completely agree, but w…

>it's all part of our state and our decisions are only truly 'ours' to the extent that this state determines or influences them.

I suppose the argument I was trying to make was about what is fundamentally 'you' or 'me' and what could be emergent properties.

I agree that our decisions rest on prior states. Even if we remember nothing of our past, that has an effect on what and how we choose.

Re: The Strong Free Will Theorem (2009) [pdf]

#18

Post by all2 »

criddell wrote: post #16
all2 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It asserts, roughly, that if indeed we humans have free will, then elementary particles already have their own small share of this valuable commodity. More precisely, if the experimenter can freely choose the directions in which to orient his apparatus in a certain measurement, then the particle’s response (to be pedantic—the universe’s response near the particle) is not determined by the entire previous history of…

Is that basically saying that at some level, we should be able to see effects that have no cause? Is that what freewill boils down to?

I don't know. "effects with no cause" makes me think of the 'quantum soup' at zero-point energy levels: things just appearing and disappearing in some random way. I don't know if that could be classified as 'causeless' though.

Re: The Strong Free Will Theorem (2009) [pdf]

#20

Post by simonh »

fjuerfilis wrote: post #13
simonh wrote: post #7

I really think this, along with much philosophical musing about free will, is entirely missing the point. Pre-determination is essential to free will. You literally cannot have free will without it. Random choice, or even non-predetermined correlated outcomes of entangled objects don't lead to free will, they lead to uncertain decisions and those are not the same thing. If my decisions are not a product of my prior s…

I had a similar reaction. Nondeterministic conceptions of free will similar to that of this paper are really more like an intoxicated state or something, where behavioral outcomes are totally unpredictable. It's the absence of free will, but due to complete randomness rather than complete control. The prior state idea seems more accurate, but even that (at least in its extreme state) doesn't seem to me to encapsulate…

>The prior state idea seems more accurate, but even that (at least in its extreme state) doesn't seem to me to encapsulate the idea of free will because it disallows the idea of a decision being undetermined and free to decide.

I certainly think randomness comes into play for sure, but conceptually my personal prior state might include a source of randomness. It could be just one factor, and I might make choices based on my memories and preferences to allow greater or lesser input from that randomness, or I might lack the mental tools to prevent that randomness from manifesting in my actions. At an extreme that might be a form of pathology and then we can talk about the limits of personal responsibility in various circumstances. The idea that my state leads to my decisions still holds though.

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