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

Re: Photons, Quasars and the Possibility of Free Will

#231

Post by outlace » Wed, Dec 05, 2018, 8:09 PM UTC

GuB-42 wrote: post #225

outlace wrote: post #223

The idea that randomness gives rise to free will is ludicrous. If my brain randomly chooses to eat an apple on Monday and randomly chooses to eat a Pear on Tuesday how is that giving me more free will than if my brain was predetermined to choose an Apple then a Pear. There is no way to even conceive of what free will could be, determined or not. Either the activity of your brain is causally determined by previous bra…

You may or may not have "true" free will with randomness, you definitely can't have it with determinism. Random just means unpredictable. It means that the information about whether your eat a pear or an apple is nowhere to be found in the universe. We can only see it after the fact. Something has been injected in the universe from outside. That something is undecidable by definition, therefore, it is outside the rea…

So if this metaphysical 'force' is deciding your actions, that still is not free will. You can posit anything as the ultimate cause of your activity but that isn't free will, it's just a higher-level cause. Either things are ultimately caused (at whatever level, metaphysical or not) or they're just acausally random or some combination. Pushing free will into the realm of souls and God doesn't help.

However, your point about unpredictability is right. There are some processes that are fundamentally unpredictable, but this unpredictability can and does occur in a completely deterministic setting.

A completely closed deterministic system will have processes that are unpredictable to agents acting within the closed system, this is the nature of computational irreducibility as elaborated by Stephen Wolfram and more recently Tim Palmer.

Personally, I certainly hope we live in a deterministic universe because a fundamentally random or a-causal universe would be nihilistic to me. If things just happened for no reason then that seems far more distressing than the universe following (possibly a few elegant) well-posed and deterministic rules, even if some aspects of its future evolution are unpredictable due to computational irreducibility.

Re: Photons, Quasars and the Possibility of Free Will

#232

Post by seekingcharlie » Wed, Dec 05, 2018, 8:16 PM UTC

cthalupa wrote: post #145

codeulike wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is called Laplace's Demon. It has been disproven by chaos theory.

Re: Photons, Quasars and the Possibility of Free Will

#233

Post by codeulike » Wed, Dec 05, 2018, 8:21 PM UTC

codeulike wrote: post #130

cthalupa wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

Oh and also your simulation would most likely be part of the region you were trying to simulate, meaning you'd have to simulate your simulation as well. Doubly impossible

Re: Photons, Quasars and the Possibility of Free Will

#234

Post by seekingcharlie » Wed, Dec 05, 2018, 8:26 PM UTC

ethn wrote: post #226

So many popular science articles have started to commit ontological fallacies like this. Free will obviously exists because we experience it. This question presumes a denial of experience and a claim that really the experience isn't real but instead this other thing that cannot ever be experienced is. What's even the motivation for that? The motivation seems to be to paint an awe-inspiring picture of mystery through…

How do "we experience" free will?

Re: Photons, Quasars and the Possibility of Free Will

#235

Post by simonh » Wed, Dec 05, 2018, 8:41 PM UTC

scotty79 wrote: post #227

nardi wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be saying that only explanations that rely solely on the physical world are valid or worthwhile. But when doing philosophy, it would be hasty to say that only empirical facts are knowable.

> But when doing philosophy, it would be hasty to say that only empirical facts are knowable. Only if you want to stay with reality not venture into phantasy.

I don't think it's fantasy. There are some reasonable arguments on that side. Even though I'm not entirely convinced on them I've got an open mind on that point. I just don't think it makes any difference to the question of free will though, at least I've not yet seen a coherent argument to that effect.

Re: Photons, Quasars and the Possibility of Free Will

#236

Post by naasking » Wed, Dec 05, 2018, 9:08 PM UTC

cthalupa wrote: post #219

naasking wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've specifically explained how it is a matter of making value judgments based on our past. This is not an explanation. In your approach, is the thief morally responsible for their actions in neither case, in one but not the other case, or in both cases? And why?

If they just steal a car: Responsible If they steal a car because someone has a gun to they or their spouse's head: Not responsible Why: Because the causal chain of events that have gotten us to modern humanity have resulted in our cognitive functions valuing human life over physical objects. These are the inputs to the system. These are all causal, products of evolution, etc, and deterministic. The output, the lack…

> If they just steal a car: Responsible > > If they steal a car because someone has a gun to they or their spouse's head: Not responsible > > Why: Because the causal chain of events that have gotten us to modern humanity have resulted in our cognitive functions valuing human life over physical objects

Our values have little to do with the question of free will. A value system determines what we consider to be good or bad, it does not determine who is responsible for a specific good or bad outcome.

So if the thief is not responsible for stealing the car in the hostage scenario, then I assume that you agree that the hostage taker is responsible. And the reason you reach this conclusion is because you assign moral agency to the thief when he's acting alone, and you acknowledge that he has no moral agency when he's being coerced. In other words, he's acting of his own free will in one circumstance, but not the other.

Simply saying "we value life over property" does not enable you to absolve the thief for his immoral act.

Re: Photons, Quasars and the Possibility of Free Will

#237

Post by naasking » Wed, Dec 05, 2018, 9:33 PM UTC

cthalupa wrote: post #217

naasking wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> From the very Wikipedia article you are attempting to use to say I'm using it incorrectly: I asked you specifically about how the null hypothesis applies to free will. Angular momentum has no bearing on this question. > Whether or not we have free will is 100% about how the universe works. And this is why you're confused. Because it's not. Some definitions of free will depend on physical or metaphysical assumptions…

Because the free will either exists or does not, and that existence requires it be compatible with the rules that govern how our universe exists. If it's not compatible with how the universe works, it doesn't exist. There is no such proof, and as such, the null hypothesis or null assumption is that free will doesn't exist, in the same way we assume the angular momentum of the universe is zero. I'm not arguing about w…

> Because the free will either exists or does not, and that existence requires it be compatible with the rules that govern how our universe exists. If it's not compatible with how the universe works, it doesn't exist.

Agreed.

> There is no such proof, and as such, the null hypothesis or null assumption is that free will doesn't exist

1. This is a misapplication of the null hypothesis. There are good reasons why angular momentum should be zero and that's why that would be the null hypothesis. If I were to accept that a null hypothesis is sensible in this scenario, then the opposite is the case here: we directly observe us making choices free from coercion and are good at inferring and understanding other people's choices with or without coercion; we use terms like "free will" and are able to communicate precisely what this means to others, and they easily understand our meaning. The null hypothesis is then that we do have free will and a test must be devised to disprove this (some might argue that something like the MRI tests that detect decisions before we're consciously aware of them would qualify).

2. Compatibilism doesn't require such low-level physics considerations. It depends only on intelligent agents acting on reasons, a category under which humans fall, and that is proof that Compatibilist free will exists. You can dispute whether this should qualify as "proper" free will, the type of free will that grounds moral responsibility and matches our moral language and moral reasoning, but you cannot deny that Compatibilist free will itself exists. I have further provided considerable evidence that Compatibilist free will does in fact explain our moral language and reasoning and does ground moral responsibility, therefore there is no reason not to accept Compatibilism as "proper" free will.

In both cases, your burden of proof has been met and exceeded.

> I'm not arguing about whether or not that's what Compatibilism believes, I'm arguing that Compatibilism is wrong because you cannot separate the way humans act and think from the physical laws of the universe.

Compatibilism doesn't require you to.

> and then does a philosophical shoulder shrug and says that free will exists anyway, because we have freedom to act, despite that not being nearly enough to encompass actual free will.

Physics says that day jobs don't actually exist. There is nowhere in the fundamental physics ontology for a location in spacetime where certain aggregates of matter must go for 8 hours a day from 9AM to 5PM on week days.

And yet, by and large we all have such a day job. Do you agree? Is it a philsophical shoulder shrug to say that day jobs don't exist, but then say day jobs kinda do exist because I quite clearly go to a day job every week day?

So either the distinction you're making exists but doesn't matter, or it doesn't exist and you're simply making a category error, confusing two phenomena which have no direct relation to each other.

Re: Photons, Quasars and the Possibility of Free Will

#238

Post by coldtea » Wed, Dec 05, 2018, 9:35 PM UTC

cthalupa wrote: post #183

coldtea wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. It's only logical assuming free willing agents making logical choices. Else, it's only automatic and predetermined, like everything else. > Either you have negative stimuli to it from something more direct, such…

The lack of free will doesn't eliminate consciousness and intelligence. We're veering into deconstructionism here. Yes, everything is largely deterministic (quantum effects have impact, and may or may not be deterministic, but that impact is still bound by the laws of physics), and the universe will someday reach maximum entropy. On the scale of the universe and its lifespan, morality obviously doesn't exist. I've be…

>The fact that it is predetermined and automatic doesn't change the causality

It doesn't change the causality (and I concur to that -- as I wrote "both are events destined to do by the initial state of the universe in the big bang"), but it changes the cause of the event. The cause is not someone deciding as a free agent (picking X or Y, or able to go either way), but someone that cannot but do but X, because of events outside their own control and personality.

What I say is that predetermination it removes any personal agency from the creation of the laws and from the people doing less crimes.

>You don't remove the cause-effect of everything in the middle of the chain just because the end was known from the start.

No, but you don't attribute any particular significance to a mere step in the chain, be it moral or whatever, when it was inevitable due to earlier steps.

Re: Photons, Quasars and the Possibility of Free Will

#239

Post by coldtea » Wed, Dec 05, 2018, 9:37 PM UTC

cthalupa wrote: post #175

naasking wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. You're evading…

>You're evading the question. The point of moral dilemmas is to highlight the qualities that meaningfully affect the outcome. We have here two scenarios, one in which the thief would be held responsible, and one in which he would not. Free will easily distinguishes these two scenarios, and since you claim we don't need free will to make such judgments, let's hear how you distinguish these. Someone kidnapped my wife s…

>Someone kidnapped my wife so I stole a car is not a valid legal defense, nor would I argue it is a valid moral defense

Actually it's a very valid legal defense, and if someone stole a car under such situations, and could prove it (that they were blackmailed etc), they would either have been let go, or given a much smaller sentence.

>* As I stated from the get go, I would hold the thief responsible in both situations.*

That's bizarro though. No judge would do that.

Re: Photons, Quasars and the Possibility of Free Will

#240

Post by loup-vaillant » Wed, Dec 05, 2018, 9:42 PM UTC

furgooswft13 wrote: post #170

loup-vaillant wrote: post #158

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.

This just pushes back the point of non-determinism. Instead of the measurement, or wave function collapse, or decoherence or whatever you want to call it being not deterministic, the "world" you end up in is. If even that point is to be considered deterministic then there has to be some previous state of something to lead to it, and we're back to non-local hidden variables. This is one of the many reasons I dislike t…

Many Worlds is popular for a reason: it's one of the simplest interpretation that fits the facts. The scientist in you might dislike that it came about later than the Copenhagen interpretation without any experiment to distinguish them. The Bayesian in me just applies Occam's razor.

Just realize that a collapse interpretation is the same as a many worlds, with the additional assumption that the blob of amplitude you don't live in is somehow flattened to zero. The "it's just maths" interpretation isn't much better: the maths tell us that we have two worlds worth of amplitudes, yet for some reason the one we don't observe isn't real. This is as ridiculous as believing that stuff you send outside the observable universe ceases to exist once it crosses the boundary.

As for how far it pushes non-determinism… I'd say quite far. Under the MWI, the universe is entirely deterministic. What is not is just our subjective experience. What was originally a Physics problem is now an *anthropic" problem, similar to what you would get if you were to copy & paste humans, or do mind uploading. The more interesting mystery in my opinion is more about why the Born statistics are the way they are, instead whatever else we could imagine them to be.