141–150 of 265 posts
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I'd define free will as used by the average person to mean the ability to make decisions that are based at least in part on something other than your makeup and environment.
I'll go poll the world and get back to you to see if you align ;)
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If that is so, then free will is a redundant concept (the outcome is actually determined without it), and the question becomes one of why do we feel we have, and are exercising, a choice between A and B. As it happens, I am pretty sure that I am not a coherent thing - or, at least, I would not rule out a putative explanation on the grounds that it would imply that I am not a coherent thing.
> and the question becomes one of why do we feel we have, and are exercising, a choice between A and B. Perhaps there's no choice, but there's an examination/consideration of the alternatives. We mistake this examination as a choice process, even though we only have one choice (the one we end up making).
Or perhaps you're mistaken that "choice" was ever anything else.
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> If the universe is deterministic, then we are just a bunch of atoms reacting predictably to external forces, making us not very different from rocks. No. This is very disingenuous. We are a beautifully ordered, continuously changing, unlikely set of atoms with history and the ability to affect / finely order huge amounts of other atoms. We're much better and more interesting than rocks! :) (No offense to anyone who…
I'm not talking about what's interesting or not in the universe. I'm saying that compatibilism basically says that rocks too have free will. Which makes the term meaningless. I mean, if you think about it, rocks too can suffer grinding due to their environment, having their shape, size or texture changed, which will affect what "choices" they'll make in the future and all rocks are unique in the universe due to their…
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AlphaZero made choices in chess, and learned from them. So did I get you right: it had a free-will because it is a necessity for this behavior according to you? Because mere "machines" can't make decisions, and can't learn from consequences.
> AlphaZero made choices in chess, and learned from them. So did I get you right: it had a free-will because it is a necessity for this behavior according to you? That's domain-specific learning, not general learning. If you could then take AlphaZero out for coffee to talk about a match and why it made certain choices, I'm fairly certain you'd be less confident that it wouldn't qualify. > Because mere "machines" can'…
Or do you say it's impossible to make such a program on deterministic computer, and will never be possible, no matter how far IT develops?
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>So people only claim to be incompatibilists when they confuse determinism with fatalism. Regardless, they tended to agree strongly with Compatibilist moral reasoning. I pretty strongly disagree with this statement. I am not a compatibilist, but I am fully aware of the differences between fatalism and determinism. If I believed in fatalism then I would believe that If am fated to recover or die from an illness, it wo…
To change this, we would need perfect knowledge of how basically everything works, have the ability to measure every necessary input in the system, and calculate the outcomes. If we are ever able to reach that point, I'm pretty sure it'll be so far into the future it's nothing worth worrying myself about. Its pretty easy to argue that this is impossible. To exploit determinism to 'predict the future' you'd have to si…
Yep! It is very likely that this is impossible.
>you would need a computer running a model of the world at the sub-atomic level and somehow running it faster than the world itself unfolds. I'm 100% sure that would be impossible.
I'm not 100% sure.
The universe? Sure. We know that's impossible because of our understanding of physics - we cannot store the amount of information in the universe in anything smaller than the universe, much less compute on that information. Every single state we compute would again require the entirety of the universe to be stored, plus any transitional states in between. But I can't say with 100% certainty we'll never be able to compute everything necessary to predict how humans behave.
It might be, at some point in the future.
But my point was less about the theoretical possibility of this and more of how the fact that it currently is not, and is unlikely to be so at any point that is particularly relevant.
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To change this, we would need perfect knowledge of how basically everything works, have the ability to measure every necessary input in the system, and calculate the outcomes. If we are ever able to reach that point, I'm pretty sure it'll be so far into the future it's nothing worth worrying myself about. Its pretty easy to argue that this is impossible. To exploit determinism to 'predict the future' you'd have to si…
>Its pretty easy to argue that this is impossible. Yep! It is very likely that this is impossible. >you would need a computer running a model of the world at the sub-atomic level and somehow running it faster than the world itself unfolds. I'm 100% sure that would be impossible. I'm not 100% sure. The universe? Sure. We know that's impossible because of our understanding of physics - we cannot store the amount of inf…
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I would completely agree. Our decisions are made based on previous stimuli. Our networks of neurons are altered by stimuli as we grow, this determines how we process later stimuli and the process repeats.
The thing is, this process is so complex it’s useless to talk about determinism of human actions.
> Of course, randomness isn’t the only thing necessary for free will Not only that, but randomness and determinism are equally against the (casual) idea of free will. Free will, as commonly understood, means there's an "extra layer of abstraction" between the universe (material objects and their relationships) and me. What people called "soul". It's not just that our decisions (will) are random instead of predetermin…
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>So people only claim to be incompatibilists when they confuse determinism with fatalism. Regardless, they tended to agree strongly with Compatibilist moral reasoning. I pretty strongly disagree with this statement. I am not a compatibilist, but I am fully aware of the differences between fatalism and determinism. If I believed in fatalism then I would believe that If am fated to recover or die from an illness, it wo…
I take the computational approach. Even if a system was computable in a finite time, if that time is too long, then effectively for all practical purposes the system is computationally intractable. I find even the idea that we could one day compute the human brain completely preposterous. We can't even compute water flowing in a pipe today (I'm saying this as an effective non-expert who has dabbled a bit in computati…
>So, if the philosophical basis is that "if we can deterministically compute something, it's deterministic" then human cognition at the moment is most indeterminate.
My belief, based on my understanding of physics, is that human cognition is deterministic, regardless of whether or not we can compute it.
But I do largely agree with your broader point that whether or not we have free will should have little impact on the inputs in our system. Even if I believe that everything is deterministic and we have no free will, I can't use that information in any practical way, and human cognition (or perhaps more accurately modern Westerner cognition) is slanted towards believing in something resembling what we call free will. No reason to worry about it for anything beyond philosophical discussions. I brought up the computation as a hypothetical point at which acting differently would matter.
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> AlphaZero made choices in chess, and learned from them. So did I get you right: it had a free-will because it is a necessity for this behavior according to you? That's domain-specific learning, not general learning. If you could then take AlphaZero out for coffee to talk about a match and why it made certain choices, I'm fairly certain you'd be less confident that it wouldn't qualify. > Because mere "machines" can'…
Am I getting you right? If Alpha Go was able to hold a conversation you'd assume it has a free will? Even if you know it's a program on a deterministic computer? Or do you say it's impossible to make such a program on deterministic computer, and will never be possible, no matter how far IT develops?
I have no doubt whatsoever that computer programs could have free will, even deterministic ones. The qualities that are relevant for free will simply have nothing to do with determinism.