Photons, Quasars and the Possibility of Free Will • Hacker News Board

Re: Photons, Quasars and the Possibility of Free Will

#151

Post by bad_user » Wed, Dec 05, 2018, 3:24 PM UTC

My view on "free will" is that it's a non-falsifiable notion.

The universe isn't deterministic due to randomness. In absence of determinism in the universe's laws, free will is at least possible. However talking about it is like talking about the existence of God.

The question is this: what observations can you make that, if they were true, would lead to the conclusion that "free will" doesn't exist? And the answer is, in the presence of randomness, there are no such observations.

Think about it like this: if you could observe and analyze two universes in parallel, almost identical except that in one people have free will and in the other people don't, what differences would you be able to see? And the answer is obvious.

N.B. I'm not talking about compatibilism, which is irrelevant.

Re: Photons, Quasars and the Possibility of Free Will

#152

Post by cthalupa » Wed, Dec 05, 2018, 3:28 PM UTC

naasking wrote: post #138

cthalupa wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of those things are true, and I don't need them to be untrue to assign the largest share of responsibility to the thief. Having laws (and the enforcement of laws) in place is something we believe to be the most effective input in causing the Bad Things to not happen. As such, having them and enforcing them is purely logical. We have decided that having someone "broken" in such a manner that these inputs are not e…

> All of those things are true, and I don't need them to be untrue to assign the largest share of responsibility to the thief. You actually do. The very process of assigning "share of responsibility" is precisely the question that depends upon free will. If the thief stole your car only because someone was holding his wife hostage, now where does the responsibility lie? The circumstances immediately surrounding the c…

>If the thief stole your car only because someone was holding his wife hostage, now where does the responsibility lie?

Still with the thief. He still has all of the other inputs into his system beyond just the fact that someone kidnapped his wife. Believing that causality ultimately determines every decision we make doesn't mean that I believe that it's a simple one to one mapping. He knows he can call the police - this isn't an action movie, and he's not the characters Jason Statham plays. If he is the characters Jason Statham plays, well, it doesn't really matter because he's not going to be caught anyway, and I'm left railing against the hypothetical thief that more often matches reality than your car getting stolen by the living embodiment of an action movie hero/anti-hero.

>The circumstances immediately surrounding the car theft are precisely the same, but now an influence further back in the causal chain is presumably responsible. How would you differentiate these two scenarios without free will?

By not believing that one changed input unrelated to all of the others somehow invalidates all of them.

>Free will is necessary to explain why you are morally blameworthy or praiseworthy for your choice of whether to go with your inclinations.

Free will is unnecessary to explain why I am morally blameworthy or praiseworthy for my choice of whether or not to go with my inclinations.

Both are assertions that do not stand alone.

Re: Photons, Quasars and the Possibility of Free Will

#153

Post by ajuc » Wed, Dec 05, 2018, 3:34 PM UTC

naasking wrote: post #138

cthalupa wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of those things are true, and I don't need them to be untrue to assign the largest share of responsibility to the thief. Having laws (and the enforcement of laws) in place is something we believe to be the most effective input in causing the Bad Things to not happen. As such, having them and enforcing them is purely logical. We have decided that having someone "broken" in such a manner that these inputs are not e…

> All of those things are true, and I don't need them to be untrue to assign the largest share of responsibility to the thief. You actually do. The very process of assigning "share of responsibility" is precisely the question that depends upon free will. If the thief stole your car only because someone was holding his wife hostage, now where does the responsibility lie? The circumstances immediately surrounding the c…

> How would you differentiate these two scenarios without free will?

Circumstances change the moral evaluation of actions, it doesn't matter if it was a blackmail, or a hurricane (which doesn't have a free will) - still people would be more lenient on the guy that stole a car to save his wife. And the guy still made a choice (or had the illusion of making a choice), just with different circumstances.

And still the existence of free will changes nothing in the situation. If the free will doesn't exist - people can still evaluate what is good and bad using the concept of free will. Some people use the concept of God to define morality after all, and it certainly possible (s)he doesn't exist.

Re: Photons, Quasars and the Possibility of Free Will

#154

Post by bad_user » Wed, Dec 05, 2018, 3:41 PM UTC

davemp wrote: post #143

bad_user wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's very frustrating to have discussions with deconstructionists. Rocks do not have cognition.

I'm just messing with you :-P

Re: Photons, Quasars and the Possibility of Free Will

#155

Post by cthalupa » Wed, Dec 05, 2018, 3:41 PM UTC

naasking wrote: post #131

cthalupa wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>but you haven't demonstrated why any of it precludes the existence of free will. Except I don't need to. Compatibilists haven't proven the existence of free will, so the null hypothesis still holds true, at least for now. Throughout the comments here you seem to continually rely on the fact that professional philosophers strongly agree with the idea of compatabilism, but from my point of view, it doesn't really matt…

> I don't see any real incompatibilities with moral reasoning between a universe where there is no free will and one where it is compatible with determinism, so saying that compatbilist moral reasoning is predictive of how we generally behave is not an argument for free will. Prove that "a universe without free will but behaviourally indistinguishable from one that features Compatibilism" is actually a coherent defin…

>Prove that "a universe without free will but behaviourally indistinguishable from one that features Compatibilism" is actually a coherent definition/non-empty set.

It being at all meaningful for me to do that relies Compatibilism having been proven to be correct. There's no evidence that this is the case.

>I honestly don't understand what confusion would lead you to make such a statement. Null hypotheses are simply not relevant to this sort of question. What populations are you comparing here exactly?

What? The null hypothesis is 100% relevant to this sort of question. The scientific null assumption is that something doesn't exist. If you are claiming it does, you're the one that needs to prove it.

>Because most people don't have the requisite knowledge to evaluate possibilities that require profound domain knowledge. Would you be similarly derisive if I referenced the medical consensus when wading through a health debate?

Philosophers do not have profound domain knowledge in determining how the universe actually works. Physicists do. The medical consensus question makes no sense because that is a false equivalency.

Re: Photons, Quasars and the Possibility of Free Will

#156

Post by axilmar » Wed, Dec 05, 2018, 3:42 PM UTC

To me, articles like these are littered with logical fallacies. I truly wonder if the quoted scientists really meant what the article says.

For example:

"And if our measurements are random, there is no way for the photons to know ahead of time which orientation will be measured. So, there can’t be any hidden variable to determine the outcome. Whether we get the left or right shoe, or the left or right glove, the result is truly random."

The above assumes that the actual properties that lead to the specific measurements have to be communicated between particles. But there has been no research in finding out if these properties are truly encoded into the particles themselves. Maybe there are no hidden variables, and maybe there is no communication, but these properties are simply encoded into the light particles, by the way they are created.

"It’s spooky because entangled objects have a quantum connection, even if they are light-years apart."

Or maybe they don't, and the appropriate properties are encoded into the particles themselves.

"Of course, randomness isn’t the only thing necessary for free will."

Free will means the power to determine one's fate through a set of thoughts (logical or not). If there is actual randomness in the Universe, then there is random will, not free will.

Re: Photons, Quasars and the Possibility of Free Will

#157

Post by ajuc » Wed, Dec 05, 2018, 3:46 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #106

ajuc wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If there's no free will obviously not -- since any crime decision is predetermined upon the earlier states of the universe (even before we appeared on Earth), and any drop in crime in correlation with a "commitment to punish certain behavior" is just correlation itself, and not causation (both things being caused by those earlier states). An asteroid hitting Earth is predetermined by early stages of universe too. I…

> An asteroid hitting Earth is predetermined by early stages of universe too. Is the collision just correlated with dinosaurs extinction, or was it the cause? It was the cause but it was predetermined itself. Note that the free will of the dinosaurs or the asteroid doesn't enter the picture at all here. Similarly, and this is the argument, in the drop-in-crime case, our "commitment to punish certain behavior" is not…

> So those measures can't be said to have dropped crime (since it could never be anything else).

That's redefining words to the extreme.

A rock has dropped because of gravity and lack of support. It doesn't matter that in this universe with the starting conditions as they are - the rock had to drop. It still dropped.

Homo sapiens (or whatever ancestor it was when it happened) - evolved to punish crimes. It lowered the crime, or had other beneficial effects on the population, that's why it was preserved by the evolution. It doesn't matter that it couldn't evolve in any different way given the starting conditions of the universe. It still happened.

Re: Photons, Quasars and the Possibility of Free Will

#158

Post by loup-vaillant » Wed, Dec 05, 2018, 3:47 PM UTC

I thought this experiment was explained just as well by decoherence? Under the many world interpretation, there's no instant communication, or hidden variable, we just happen to learn in which world we are by performing the measurement.

The laws of physics are still deterministic as far as I can tell.

Re: Photons, Quasars and the Possibility of Free Will

#159

Post by ajuc » Wed, Dec 05, 2018, 3:51 PM UTC

naasking wrote: post #150

ajuc wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

If a computer is able to hold a conversation about any topic, was able to understand and learn from its choices and explain its thought process leading up to a choice, then yes, it has free will. 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.

You seem to define free will in a very strange way. It seems to me the words you are defining is consciousness and intelligence, and not free will?

If I predict what you will ask and record the responses on a tape perfectly timed to your future questions, and then press play and leave it playing as you are asking questions - does this tape player have a free will? It seems to learn because it answers as if it learnt.

Re: Photons, Quasars and the Possibility of Free Will

#160

Post by coldtea » Wed, Dec 05, 2018, 3:57 PM UTC

ajuc wrote: post #157

coldtea wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> An asteroid hitting Earth is predetermined by early stages of universe too. Is the collision just correlated with dinosaurs extinction, or was it the cause? It was the cause but it was predetermined itself. Note that the free will of the dinosaurs or the asteroid doesn't enter the picture at all here. Similarly, and this is the argument, in the drop-in-crime case, our "commitment to punish certain behavior" is not…

> So those measures can't be said to have dropped crime (since it could never be anything else). That's redefining words to the extreme. A rock has dropped because of gravity and lack of support. It doesn't matter that in this universe with the starting conditions as they are - the rock had to drop. It still dropped. Homo sapiens (or whatever ancestor it was when it happened) - evolved to punish crimes. It lowered th…

>That's redefining words to the extreme.

The fact that crime can't drop or rise depending on prior decisions, and will always be what it's predetermined to be at any point in the future is pretty non-controversial if you accept determinism.

And requires not "redefining" at all.

When we say "we've dropped crime" we don't just describe a casual relationship, but that we achieved something that otherwise would not be. We understand it as if free will is given, if you like.

>It lowered the crime, or had other beneficial effects on the population, that's why it was preserved by the evolution. It doesn't matter that it couldn't evolve in any different way given the starting conditions of the universe. It still happened.

Only, "that's why it was preserved" has no meaning anymore. It wasn't preserved because of any beneficial effects (which weren't a concern at all). It was preserved because initial conditions were so and so.