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What You (Want to)* Want

paulgraham.com

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Re: What You (Want to)* Want

#31

Post by motohagiography »

Aspirational desires, like wishing you liked a band your cool friend did so that you could have that in common are real, but the object of desire (what is wanted) is not the band, it's the affection of the friend. You could say, "I wish all these things I had made me happier," but they haven't, and therefore do not.

However, is this just not the logical artifact of the phrase "want to," relating to its subject as a negative counterfactual? To desire to want something is like trying to be funny, where if you are, you aren't - hence to want-to-want, or wish you wanted, means you don't actually want it. Maybe the solution is for each thing I want, to say out loud, I do not want it, and hear which statements give you the most peace?

Re: What You (Want to)* Want

#32

Post by AlexandrB »

jagrsw wrote: post #20
sph wrote: post #10

I probably don't have much to contribute, but I wanted to share some thoughts on the concept of free will Paul seems to brush against. I found the concept of free will at odds with my opinion that the brain and physics are very deterministic. But one thing the "free will doesn't exist" people tend to forget, is that the brain rewires and changes itself. You are destined to do what your brain is wired to do, but doing…

> brain and physics are very deterministic Not to get too much into the 'quantum woo' territory, but my naive understanding is that the physics is only somewhat deterministic, b/c non-deterministic quantum events can have macroscopic effects? Say you decide for whether you'll eat a dinner, if a particle with half-time of 1 second will split within the next second. This you wouldn't be able to predict, even if you kne…

The problem is quantum effects are random. Even if they impact our behavior, RNG is not what most people think of when they say "free will".

In my opinion, any coherent definition of "free will" implies a supernatural force - since it must be non-random yet not bound by deterministic chemical and physical processes. At this point it becomes a matter of faith/religion whether we have free will or not.

Re: What You (Want to)* Want

#34

Post by Errancer »

Eh, this article touches on something important but 1. the material aspect of determinism is the most boring one, if everything is materially determined then so is our feeling of freedom therefore it doesn't really change anything. Strawson has a nice article about this called "Freedom and resentment" which shows that the thesis of determinism doesn't really change anything about our ethics. 2. the programming lingo seems to me to make the issue more obscure rather than clear but the problem he is mentioning is discussed under the name "second-order desires" and is quite important since it leads to much more interesting problem of determinism - the psychological determinism. Usually we believe we have certain freedom in choosing our beliefs through weighing and choosing our interpretations of what is happening. The issue of psychological determinism is threefold. First proposition is that our beliefs change due to some causes, they don't simply pop into our head. Second proposition is that our given beliefs will dictate what interpretations will make sense to us. Therefore every cause will make us believe what our current beliefs allow. Third proposition is that our actions are driven by combination of beliefs and desires. So ultimately we can't chose our actions since we can't choose our beliefs and the hope for "freedom" is lost. What is left is the will which is not free but driven by beliefs and desires that are outside "our" control.

Now I don't know if I believe in this formulation of the problem but among all formulations of determinism throughout history this one is in my opinion the only one worth arguing about. I learned about it by reading two texts by Bernard Williams and I would say that he should be named the author of this formulation even though he never used such name. The first text is his book "Ethics and the limits of philosophy" and the second is the essay "How free does the will need to be?". If someone is interested in this issue then I would recommend following the citation trail of the essay.

Re: What You (Want to)* Want

#35

Post by iLoveOncall »

distcs wrote: post #11

Why is PG writing these pseudo-scientific metaphysical posts? His last post on Alien Truth was a disaster. Now this? I normally enjoy PG's writings! His writings on Lisp had good influence on me. But these recent posts are embarrassing. How can someone who has had so much influence in tech communities bring themselves to write these pseudo-scientific posts so glibly?

A variant of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_disease probably.

Re: What You (Want to)* Want

#36

Post by wnkrshm »

sph wrote: post #10

I probably don't have much to contribute, but I wanted to share some thoughts on the concept of free will Paul seems to brush against. I found the concept of free will at odds with my opinion that the brain and physics are very deterministic. But one thing the "free will doesn't exist" people tend to forget, is that the brain rewires and changes itself. You are destined to do what your brain is wired to do, but doing…

Even without quantum effects, determinism doesn't enable us to do much with it, except statistical ensemble predictions. We can never know the initial state of a system to infinite precision, as is needed to predict its trajectory. [0]

[0] Light-ish reading on nonlinear dynamics: James Gleick - Chaos: Making a New Science

Re: What You (Want to)* Want

#37

Post by bjarneh »

sph wrote: post #10

I probably don't have much to contribute, but I wanted to share some thoughts on the concept of free will Paul seems to brush against. I found the concept of free will at odds with my opinion that the brain and physics are very deterministic. But one thing the "free will doesn't exist" people tend to forget, is that the brain rewires and changes itself. You are destined to do what your brain is wired to do, but doing…

> but I wanted to share

Are you sure?

Re: What You (Want to)* Want

#38

Post by seafoam »

distcs wrote: post #11

Why is PG writing these pseudo-scientific metaphysical posts? His last post on Alien Truth was a disaster. Now this? I normally enjoy PG's writings! His writings on Lisp had good influence on me. But these recent posts are embarrassing. How can someone who has had so much influence in tech communities bring themselves to write these pseudo-scientific posts so glibly?

It is simple.

In this case he is just trying to figure out how to write the macro the expansion of which is motivation.

Re: What You (Want to)* Want

#40

Post by slothtrop »

sph wrote: post #10

I probably don't have much to contribute, but I wanted to share some thoughts on the concept of free will Paul seems to brush against. I found the concept of free will at odds with my opinion that the brain and physics are very deterministic. But one thing the "free will doesn't exist" people tend to forget, is that the brain rewires and changes itself. You are destined to do what your brain is wired to do, but doing…

The weakness of the perfect determinism model is nothing would ever happen if it were true. The leap to bacteria to mitochondrion to humans was not pre-determined, randomness is part of the equation.

I could buy that will isn't free in an absolute sense, but neither is it entirely deterministic. The question is whether the confounding factor for the latter has anything to do with the individual, but you can't divorce it from nature. There's no meaningful difference between "you chose x" and "your brain chose x".

There's also a socio-cultural reason I dislike pure determinism which is that it's used as bludgeon to absolve one of responsibility, justify inaction, bad behavior, or Socialism.

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