I don't think the universe is deterministic. Why would you think such a thing? So, if you start from a wrong assumption, the rest that comes is not that interesting.
What You (Want to)* Want
41–50 of 189 posts
Re: What You (Want to)* Want
#42I don't think this is a very productive direction because it seems like unfalsifiable speculation. Placing the hidden determinism enough "wants" away seems to make it obscure enough that you can think "sure, that's where the magic happens" and it's impossible to be proven wrong.
IMO, the perception of free will comes from our observation of our deliberations and our actions. We observe that we often have choices and uncertainty about what to do, but something always breaks the impasse, because we always continue making choices and going on living. That "something" is what we call free will, and isn't entirely transparent to us.
If you tried to crack open the black box, I think you'd see wants and want-to-wants driving things in there, but I don't think you'd see a clean system of n-th removed want-to-wants determining everything.
Re: What You (Want to)* Want
#43Like many others, I've also thought about few will. By best answer at this point is, we have limited free will but we don't always know how to use it. It's like surfing. You can't do everything you want to do, but you can position yourself to make choices that better leverage the waves of your subconscious.
Re: What You (Want to)* Want
#44Why 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?
After a while the speed at which a fan turns in a circle in order to move heated air off a CPU stops being interesting and larger questions that aren't as falsifiable start to seem interesting since they have so many implications to the practical questions that do matter.
For example, "does God exist?" has huge influence on how we think of why wars are caused.
The trouble is that much of philosophy is castles built on sand. The first principles are accepted and then built upon with potentially faulty links from layer to layer until it all starts getting weird. Marxism, Objectivism, Spinozism, etc.
Re: What You (Want to)* Want
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
AFAIK hidden variable models have been ruled out in many quantum scenarios. It really does appear that the universe is not deterministic.
It opens itself up to interesting interpretations ;). god(s) aka the simulation developer(s) playing with outcomes of quantum events in order to manipulate your/my behavior, punish the bad, reward the good, make the bushes burn etc. Since quantum events can have macroscopic outcomes, this should be possible? :)
It's probably due to artefacts and signal noise coming from the outer-system that contains our universe and/or the machine running our simulation, rather than God.
Re: What You (Want to)* Want
#46I 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…
While I don't think the universe is deterministic, the existence of evolution isn't proof of this. It's possible that what we perceive as "randomness" is actually just the result of variables and things happening that we're not able to perceive.
Take rolling a dice: which number comes up is determined by the starting conditions, the force you throw it with, what it lands on and any external forces acting during the throw. It's not random at all, just hard to predict.
Re: What You (Want to)* Want
#47When I was two I started wondered how I could reconsile my qualia with determinism. But when I was three I read Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant and laid the matter to rest.
Re: What You (Want to)* Want
#48Why 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?
He writes whatever he wants to write about.
And he would argue, he can't control what he wants to write about.
What makes you want to make him not want to write what he wants to write about?
Well, unfortunately, you can't control it either!
Re: What You (Want to)* Want
#49I 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…
> I found the concept of free will at odds with my opinion that the brain and physics are very deterministic. Physics don't have to be deterministic in order to be at odds with free will. Whether neurons fire due to a predefined pattern, or they fire with some probabilities do not change the equation for "how can a biological machine have free will?" Choice is at odds with both predefined rules and drawing from a ran…
I have tried to answer to your last paragraph in 2 or 3 different ways but it's such a complex argument I don't think I'm smart enough to express simply and eloquently in a forum comment.
But I very much appreciate the food for thought and input you've given me.
Re: What You (Want to)* Want
#50I 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…
> I found the concept of free will at odds with my opinion that the brain and physics are very deterministic.
IMO, this is the prime example of theory vs practice. In my opinion, our universe is deterministic at a theoretical level, but will never be practically deterministic.
* Everything is likely made of a fundamental building block that can be predicted and modeled. In isolation, there is a small enough system that can be represented deterministically.
* The universe is far, far too complex to apply determinism in any meaningful way.
* Any device able to model the determinism of the universe at a fundamental would itself be non-deterministic. That devices would either (1) need to model itself - which would be infinitely recursive since the model of itself would also need to model itself (2) isolated from the universe - which is currently impossible and also implies that our universe is a simulation within another system (3) operate on abstractions/simplifications - which leaves room for error.
* Finally, determinism is only practically useful if it can be used to (1) repeatedly generate the same results for the same inputs (2) or, predict the results based on knowing the inputs.
* 1. This will never be possible because we operate within the system being modeled. That system progresses forward and the same inputs can never be utilized more than once (some variable somewhere would be different).
* 2. We are so incredibly far from modeling determinism that it's still impossible to predict results for known inputs. There will always be unknown in a model that leads to error.