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On the dangers of seeing human minds as predictive machines

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Re: On the dangers of seeing human minds as predictive machines

#51

Post by Layke1123 »

pdonis wrote: post #40
abellerose wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The understanding of free will being an "illusion" opens a few doors for approaching life. One of them being how society is structured and regarding healthcare, housing, finances, education.. Anyway, people cast their votes by the beliefs as well and currently we're living in social systems designed from the belief of have free will. The idea of someone earned what they have, contrary to someone worse off and people…

> when you realize the foregoing about free will is untrue and you really take the time to adapt your thinking to the understanding of free will being illusion. I assume you become more compassionate You assume wrong. The most brutal totalitarian governments in history have been built on the same understanding of humans that you describe. So that understanding can go either way: it can make you more compassionate, or…

I fully believe my decisions and actions are largely determined long before I am fully aware of what is taking place.

This doesn't make me despair or not care to do anything, but makes me extremely resilient and adaptable to changing situations. I can acknowledge that no matter what I want to do, I cannot stop my leg from twitching when someone hits the nerve underneath my kneecap.

I also accept that if I make bad decisions because of an addiction or deficient reasoning process, I willingly would accept a mechanism to correct said process or improve my deficiency.

It's not that free will is necessary to understand reality. It's that free will is necessary for YOUR reality. Some of us get along just peachy without it.

Re: On the dangers of seeing human minds as predictive machines

#52

Post by Layke1123 »

pdonis wrote: post #46
abellerose wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feel free to email me for further discussion. I have the impression you don't understand my definition of free will compared to your own definition. I will express here that the idea of making a conclusion by the past in history isn't fair or even comparable to what I could argue against people doing under the belief that people have free will. Anyway I'm not convinced by what you've expressed against my views and wo…

> what I could argue against people doing under the belief that people have free will What sorts of terrible things do you think people do under the belief that people have free will?

Ignore human child trafficking and starvation.

Re: On the dangers of seeing human minds as predictive machines

#53

Post by abellerose »

pdonis wrote: post #45
abellerose wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feel free to email me for further discussion. I have the impression you don't understand my definition of free will compared to your own definition. I will express here that the idea of making a conclusion by the past in history isn't fair or even comparable to what I could argue against people doing under the belief that people have free will. Anyway I'm not convinced by what you've expressed against my views and wo…

> Feel free to email me for further discussion. Why not just have the discussion here? > I have the impression you don't understand my definition of free will compared to your own definition. I think you are trading on the ambiguity in the term "free will" to avoid having to confront the actual issues involved. That's why I used the less ambiguous term "making choices". If you don't think people can ever make choices…

The main reason for me of suggesting email is because I simply don't find writing responses on HackerNews as a great medium to have a conversation that likely will be lengthy. Basically, there's no good way to quote or even make a list with bullets and I prefer my macOS mail interface than a html textbox.

The phrase "making choices" is just semantics for the topic of free will being an illusion. There's no different outcome for how a person will live from start to end. That's the reality we live. Science hasn't proven otherwise and the current evidence from neuroscience suggests we don't have free will. Even logically it's impossible to imagine free will being possible when you're inside a system and every thought or act you perform is because of the system you're in. People are no different from water choosing to flow downstream.

Knowledge is power in society. Does it change your fate? The answer is no but generations do get better than the past because humans are progressing from knowledge. So the argument I think we truly are having is whether the norm of the populace should be deceived that they have free will or told the truth that there is no free will.

You already know what I believe the answer is for the foregoing. I have my own personal reasons as well. My life was fairly damaged by people that believed in free will because of religion and after many years of self reflection. I realized they were in fact acting mentally ill because of their belief that people make choices when regarding one's sexual orientation and gender identity.

I don't blame them or ever want to desire they had free will because I would've sought vengeance for the conversion therapy I suffered. Instead I'm glad fate had me realize they weren't to blame but how the universe unraveled and no individual had any power over how they came to be. I personally don't think that means people should be left scot free when they violate others. I think the social systems just need to change to a rehabilitation system like how the healthcare system treats people that get sick. It just happens in life and the systems are what make people behave the best and have the best life contrary to other systems.

Anyway I'm writing in a text box and if you want to have lengthy discussion about it. I really do enjoy email back & forth about it. I personally could probably chat about the topic in-person and never get bored about it.

Re: On the dangers of seeing human minds as predictive machines

#54

Post by Layke1123 »

pdonis wrote: post #45
abellerose wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feel free to email me for further discussion. I have the impression you don't understand my definition of free will compared to your own definition. I will express here that the idea of making a conclusion by the past in history isn't fair or even comparable to what I could argue against people doing under the belief that people have free will. Anyway I'm not convinced by what you've expressed against my views and wo…

> Feel free to email me for further discussion. Why not just have the discussion here? > I have the impression you don't understand my definition of free will compared to your own definition. I think you are trading on the ambiguity in the term "free will" to avoid having to confront the actual issues involved. That's why I used the less ambiguous term "making choices". If you don't think people can ever make choices…

Claiming a different definition of free will does not make you right about free will existing.

At the fundamental levels of reality, free will does not exist. It isn't even meaningful to talk about. Particles react to their environment. That's it.

You are just a giant collection of particles reacting to it's environment. You will never be able to be anything other than a giant collection of particles reacting to it's environment.

Moving this collection of particles from one area that is unpleasant, say a really cold environment, to one that is warm is not an exercise in free will. It is largely a predictable process based on a sequence of events occurring within the collection of particles.

Defining free will as "making choices", such as building a fire to warm your house because you are cold is not proving free will exists. It intentionally lies about the fundamental nature of reality that you don't have to. Yes we make choices as far as we can tell from our experience of reality. But that doesn't disconnect you from the underlying reality that it is not up to you what your particles do.

Re: On the dangers of seeing human minds as predictive machines

#55

Post by Layke1123 »

abellerose wrote: post #53
pdonis wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Feel free to email me for further discussion. Why not just have the discussion here? > I have the impression you don't understand my definition of free will compared to your own definition. I think you are trading on the ambiguity in the term "free will" to avoid having to confront the actual issues involved. That's why I used the less ambiguous term "making choices". If you don't think people can ever make choices…

The main reason for me of suggesting email is because I simply don't find writing responses on HackerNews as a great medium to have a conversation that likely will be lengthy. Basically, there's no good way to quote or even make a list with bullets and I prefer my macOS mail interface than a html textbox. The phrase "making choices" is just semantics for the topic of free will being an illusion. There's no different…

This was a very eye opening response that even made me think about things in a new light. Thank you for sharing your story.

Re: On the dangers of seeing human minds as predictive machines

#56

Post by yters »

Thiez wrote: post #50
yters wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Programming is one of the most obvious. Mathematics is another. Human success in both is easiest to explain if we are halting oracles of some variety, albeit not perfect, but still transfinite.

So you don't have any concrete examples, just broad topics that you have a vague feeling about? I guess I am not truly human because I can't solve the halting problem in the general case. I'm probably also subject to Gödel's incompleteness theorem.

Programming is concrete. Programmers have to reliably determine if their code will halt or not to make functioning software.

Mathematics is concrete and mathematicians have to reliably create new consistent axioms to expand our mathematical knowledge.

Notice that the fact you too are subject to Gödel's theorem does not entail you are a Turing machine. There is an oracle hierarchy where each level has its own halting problem and a higher level oracle. This does not cause the hierarchy to collapse. So even though humans have their own halting problem does not entail they are reducible to Turing machines.

It is a subtle point of logic, but one I see many people miss, even philosophers and computer scientists who attempt to refute oracle arguments.

Re: On the dangers of seeing human minds as predictive machines

#57

Post by Layke1123 »

Layke1123 wrote: post #49
meowkit wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You write dismissively of capitalism is my first note. Capitalism isn't the boogie man people make it out to be. It's the optimization criteria for increasing financial capital over other forms of capital (natural, labor, etc), and corporatocracy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatocracy

Is writing dismissively of capitalism not OK? Can you make the argument that capitalism was and is always a force of good in the world? Is plutocracy considered a good and righteous thing?

OK, continue to downvote rather than articulate any kind of intelligent response.

Re: On the dangers of seeing human minds as predictive machines

#58

Post by pdonis »

Layke1123 wrote: post #52
pdonis wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what I could argue against people doing under the belief that people have free will What sorts of terrible things do you think people do under the belief that people have free will?

Ignore human child trafficking and starvation.

How does that follow from a belief that people have free will? Is it somehow impossible for people who have free will to traffic in other human beings or force them into starvation? I don't see the logic.

Of course you are implicitly accusing those who "believe in free will" of saying that being trafficked or starving are the person's own fault; but I don't see the logic of that either. There is no requirement that believing in free will requires focusing on only one person's choices. The human traffickers and the corrupt leaders who allow their people to starve are making choices too--bad ones. And part of believing that people have free will is being willing to call a spade a spade when people make bad choices.

Re: On the dangers of seeing human minds as predictive machines

#59

Post by pdonis »

Layke1123 wrote: post #54
pdonis wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Feel free to email me for further discussion. Why not just have the discussion here? > I have the impression you don't understand my definition of free will compared to your own definition. I think you are trading on the ambiguity in the term "free will" to avoid having to confront the actual issues involved. That's why I used the less ambiguous term "making choices". If you don't think people can ever make choices…

Claiming a different definition of free will does not make you right about free will existing. At the fundamental levels of reality, free will does not exist. It isn't even meaningful to talk about. Particles react to their environment. That's it. You are just a giant collection of particles reacting to it's environment. You will never be able to be anything other than a giant collection of particles reacting to it's…

> Claiming a different definition of free will does not make you right about free will existing.

You are missing my point. I explicitly said that I used a different term, "making choices", instead of the term "free will", exactly because it allows one to avoid all the pointless arguing about whether free will "exists" or not.

> Defining free will as "making choices", such as building a fire to warm your house because you are cold is not proving free will exists.

Again, you are missing the point. Sure, you can say that "free will" doesn't exist because "particles react to their environment". And my response is, who cares? Sure, people are ultimately made of particles reacting to their environment. That doesn't mean they can't make choices, and it doesn't mean the choices they make don't make a difference, to themselves and to others. It doesn't mean that some people's bad choices don't cause other people to suffer. It is perfectly possible to both understand that, at a microphysical level, everything is "particles reacting to their environment", and that, at a personal level, people make choices and their choices have consequences. And if you focus solely on the former and ignore the latter, the result is worse consequences, not better ones.

Re: On the dangers of seeing human minds as predictive machines

#60

Post by Layke1123 »

pdonis wrote: post #58
Layke1123 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ignore human child trafficking and starvation.

How does that follow from a belief that people have free will? Is it somehow impossible for people who have free will to traffic in other human beings or force them into starvation? I don't see the logic. Of course you are implicitly accusing those who "believe in free will" of saying that being trafficked or starving are the person's own fault; but I don't see the logic of that either. There is no requirement that b…

Because believing in free will as commonly referred to means it's ok to choose not to do something about bad behavior happening in the world. It's not ok to stand by and let child trafficking happen.
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