51–60 of 248 posts
If there's a loot box with a 50% chance of a cat in it, no game developer in their right mind would bother determining if there actually is a cat or not until someone checks.
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Physics is based on what can be measured objectively. In other words the probability could be an approximate description of a real (and perhaps knowable) yet un-objectively-measurable process. The idea "everything that is natural can only be everything we can objectively measure" should be problematic right? Of course whatever out there that is unmeasurable is rife with confusion, messiness, lies etc but that shouldn…
Yes you can never rule out the unknown, even the supernatural is in this category. Nevertheless it is just speculation until some evidence that it exists comes about. That being said, even if what I said is true, it does not really effect anything since we still live as if free will exists and I don't think we have the ability to choose differently :)
Regarding speculation, that assumes there isn't steps to knowledge about other things which physicists do not take. Any scientist will easily change their mind with the right evidence. The only issue is that the evidence takes place in one's subjective experience. It may take place specifically in contexts where it cannot be convincingly demonstrated to the general population.
It sounds silly, but if that's the nature of the object of investigation, it's necessary.
Randomly found a link to this video on super determinism from his blog and found it super interesting. 100% agree, what is 'free will' anyways? A concept with no scientific definition. Why is it even used to explain anything in quantum mechanics? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytyjgIyegDI
He also had this theorem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will_theorem
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"moral responsibility, essential no, it cannot exist again unless supernatural is involved for the same reasons outlined above, there is no "you" making a decision, just a process." This view is based on a misunderstanding of what moral responsibility is. Moral responsibility is essentially credit assignment [1]. It exists as a concept not because it matters whether or not you actually could have done differently bef…
> When you make a bad decision, according to the other machines surrounding you (society) or your own brain's reward system, you are assigned blame or feel guilty because you should avoid making the same decision again in a similar situation. But if free will does not exist then other machines (humans) aren't making these decisions either... it's turtles all the way down so to speak. You could go on to say that the e…
It becomes a similar question as asking: if god or "something" created the universe, what created that something. Its turtles all the way down yes.
>"it is part of the natural system we find our selves in". Like exactly everything else that surrounds us :)
Randomly found a link to this video on super determinism from his blog and found it super interesting. 100% agree, what is 'free will' anyways? A concept with no scientific definition. Why is it even used to explain anything in quantum mechanics? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytyjgIyegDI
If there's a loot box with a 50% chance of a cat in it, no game developer in their right mind would bother determining if there actually is a cat or not until someone checks.
Q: Because consciousness is all there is.
Q2: Because you need consciousness to observe the universe as classical.
Q3: Way over my head.
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It's not satisfying that it would be considered free will if the outcome is based on the result of a probabilistic random number generator but perhaps that's what they mean... As for moral responsibility, essential no, it cannot exist again unless supernatural is involved for the same reasons outlined above, there is no "you" making a decision, just a process. As for whether you should feel guilty... well again I am…
"moral responsibility, essential no, it cannot exist again unless supernatural is involved for the same reasons outlined above, there is no "you" making a decision, just a process." This view is based on a misunderstanding of what moral responsibility is. Moral responsibility is essentially credit assignment [1]. It exists as a concept not because it matters whether or not you actually could have done differently bef…
If there's a loot box with a 50% chance of a cat in it, no game developer in their right mind would bother determining if there actually is a cat or not until someone checks.
So some kind of efficiency principle at work? The universe does seem optimized in certain ways that make it mathematical.
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I wondered that for a long time myself and recently stumbled on what I believe is (or at least is a good candidate for) the correct answer: planetary orbits are stable in three dimensions, but not any other dimensions. The anthropic principle therefore selects for three-dimensional slices/subsets of the wave function.
They're really not stable in two dimensions? Hmm [1], and another answer [2] (mentioned by Hawking apparently) but that's less convincing since there could be a 2D universe with intelligent organisms that just have their digestive systems on the outside... 1. https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/q8fmo/what_woul... 2. http://ion.uwinnipeg.ca/~vincent/4500.6-001/Cosmology/2-D_Di...
Stable is not really the right word. "Well behaved" is better. In 2D all orbits are stable in the sense that escape velocity is infinite, but a consequence of that is that you don't naturally get nice (nearly) circular orbits that keep planets in habitable zones. That only happens in 3D.