The Erosion of Free Will: Why Society's Loss of Belief in Freedom Is Dangerous • Hacker News Board

Re: The Erosion of Free Will: Why Society's Loss of Belief in Freedom Is Dangerous

#61

Post by wizofaus » Sat, Apr 08, 2023, 6:16 AM UTC

labster wrote: post #7

UncleOxidant wrote: post #3

Hasn't a lot of the swing towards determinism and away from free will been driven by modern physics?

Modern physics has turned pretty hard against determinism and towards a probabilistic view.

At the quantum level perhaps, but my understanding is that quantum level indeterminism isn't likely to play much of a role in the functioning of the human brain. Even if it were, while it might seem to theoretically at least allow for free will, it doesn't help explain what it really means at the physical level. Personally I accept that the only sensible explanation is that it's an illusion, but it's a sufficiently powerful illusion that's essentially indistinguishable from what genuine free will might actually be, and hence there's little point worrying about whether it genuinely exists. I do worry a little what it might mean for our criminal justice system if gradually everyone were to accept free will was just an illusion though.

Re: The Erosion of Free Will: Why Society's Loss of Belief in Freedom Is Dangerous

#62

Post by Nevermark » Sat, Apr 08, 2023, 6:24 AM UTC

Animats wrote: post #38

That's a mess of an article. It confuses "free will" and "freedom". "Free will" is an internal issue within brains. "Freedom" is about what you can do before some external constraint stops you. Confusing the two does not help. On the free will side, there are various technical arguments. One science fiction author has one of his robots, asked about free will by a human, say that they have a random number generator, a…

> There are psychology experiments which indicate that the explanation for a decision is generated after the decision is made.

Beyond experiments, there just isn't an alternative.

Unless our decision making was completely conscious and objective (lists, arithmetic, logical selection or elimination, etc.) then it includes subconscious components (feelings, instinct, intuition, reflex, etc.) whose processes we don't know, and which are dependent on so many parameters that they likely could never be accurately summarized. Even if we could somehow be conscious of our activity at the individual neuron, synapse and neurotransmitter reservoir level.

So for most decisions, there is no alternative to conjecturing/confabulating our decision making process. For the same reasons we have to conjecture/confabulate other's decision making processes.

Other than simply self reporting that we don't know, and we know that we don't know ("I have a bad feeling about this!")

In both cases, the point is that it is better to have some model to predict future decisions by ourselves and others, inevitably incomplete and inaccurate, than to have no model at all.

Re: The Erosion of Free Will: Why Society's Loss of Belief in Freedom Is Dangerous

#63

Post by Brian_K_White » Sat, Apr 08, 2023, 6:26 AM UTC

Animats wrote: post #38

That's a mess of an article. It confuses "free will" and "freedom". "Free will" is an internal issue within brains. "Freedom" is about what you can do before some external constraint stops you. Confusing the two does not help. On the free will side, there are various technical arguments. One science fiction author has one of his robots, asked about free will by a human, say that they have a random number generator, a…

I thought right at the beginning they not only stated pretty plainly, but also illustrated with a simple enough example, that they are concerned with neither simple physical limitation nor a simple idea of will, but with the effects of ideas.

You are physically free to do something(freedom, by your description), and able to decide to or not(free will, by your description), but there is another govorner which is what you believe or how you reason on all manner of other possibly related topics.

You don't do something, and it's not because you aren't free to, nor because you have no free will to imagine it, nor because you don't want to.

Re: The Erosion of Free Will: Why Society's Loss of Belief in Freedom Is Dangerous

#64

Post by Brian_K_White » Sat, Apr 08, 2023, 6:36 AM UTC

lapcat wrote: post #15

> If there’s no free will, every solution must be a top-down one. If people aren’t free to choose, then “people don’t change”—they can’t change. Neither of these claims is justified or even explained by the author.

Neither of those statements are claims that need to be explained or justified.

They are proposed lines of reasoning that themseves explain and justify other arguments.

You might still challenge them, but the challenge would just be your own counter statement. For instance, are you claiming that: If people aren't free to choose, they can still change just fine?

Re: The Erosion of Free Will: Why Society's Loss of Belief in Freedom Is Dangerous

#65

Post by Nevermark » Sat, Apr 08, 2023, 6:53 AM UTC

Free will, like our concept of ourselves and other objects as identifiable "things", is simply a useful approximation.

It is useful to think of an island as a clear concept, with an area and border with the sea. But the more accurately you attempt to identify its shape, at higher and higher resolution, the more complex its perimeter and shape become. Until quantum mechanics kicks in and you have superpositions of particles being exchanged at the border between "land" and "water", etc.

Islands, their perimeters and areas, are real, but they are models, not actually "real" in a fundamental sense.

Likewise, our ability to make our own choices independent of our environment, "choose what we choose", is also real, in a useful self-modeling sort of way.

But if we had complete monitoring access to all our decision making processes, we would quickly realize our decision making is overwhelming implemented with vast subconscious components, that we don't have direct control over, nor were even given the opportunity to "choose".

(I.e. trillions of neurons, synapses, neurotransmitter levels, etc. And that our environment both physically, and via sensory input, constantly and chaotically impacts all of these parameters, in ways we are neither aware of, or can resist. And the quantum nature of our chemistry even further decouples our ability to coherently choose what we choose.)

Free will is a very useful concept in our every day lives.

But free will doesn't exist, even as a viable concept, at any fundamental level.

Re: The Erosion of Free Will: Why Society's Loss of Belief in Freedom Is Dangerous

#66

Post by Brian_K_White » Sat, Apr 08, 2023, 6:53 AM UTC

fsckboy wrote: post #52

cypherpunks01 wrote: post #29

"Without free will, there can be no real love." What? This seems totally backwards. Author thinks that real love comes from free conscious decisiomaking? Like freely choosing which model of car to buy? I almost laughed out loud when I got to the subhead "A Childish Conversation". Some points are okay, but overall this is just not a well argued piece. Strikes me as just conveying numerous fairly boring grievances.

real love without free will is like two magnets attracting, i.e. nothing to glorify. I'm not saying that I or OP have solved any thorny free will philosophical problem, but the first step is recognizing the problem. If you believe two magnets attracting is what love is, that's fine, but promise me you'll tell that to your spouse in your vows and on every anniversary and make sure your kids don't start to imagine that…

Even "nothing to glorify" leaves room to interpret poorly.

I would say it is fine to revel in, but no special virtue.

If it really is beyond choice, then it's no better than a form of lust.

It can still be fine to experience and engage in, but it doesn't make the participants heros or good people, or bad.

Re: The Erosion of Free Will: Why Society's Loss of Belief in Freedom Is Dangerous

#67

Post by Brian_K_White » Sat, Apr 08, 2023, 7:01 AM UTC

photochemsyn wrote: post #43

lambdaphagy wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're getting downvoted for suggesting that all the great world religious traditions were comparable in their influence on Western civilization, the civilization that the author knows best, is part of, and writes about. In point of fact, the West draws primarily from the Hebrew messianic tradition and Hellenic philosophy. The influence of other systems of thought, while not literally zero (notably in the cas…

I think I'm getting downvoted because some people don't want to come to grips with the actual argument, and persist in grasping onto their benighted picture of history because it helps them to perpetuate their own modern-day mythology, if you follow?

I didn't downvote it, but I'll say I don't think it applies or really makes much sense as a response to the article, and I have no religious axe to grind wrt anything in that comment. (atheist and recognize that much valuable thinking has been done by theologians).

Re: The Erosion of Free Will: Why Society's Loss of Belief in Freedom Is Dangerous

#68

Post by uoaei » Sat, Apr 08, 2023, 9:49 AM UTC

Nevermark wrote: post #58

uoaei wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Why is progress bad?" is not a take I'd have expected to see on HN considering the wealth of techno-utopianism happily and repeatedly expressed here.

I think the point is when talking about any specific issue X, arguments for or against X need to be specific too, to have any validity. As a generality, we all want "progress". Nothing controversial about that. That "cutting red tape" is progress, is not a controversial viewpoint. Bad regulations impede better results, and decrease the freedom of some people. But "adding accountability" is also generally considered p…

Reactionary behavior is bad, a priori, for the simple fact that it displaces and forbids reasoned discussion. This makes sense for things where "the science is settled" but for many things, especially inherently subjective ones, reactionary behavior simply has no place. For this reason "reactionary politics" is a contradiction in terms while "progressive politics" is not. One can stand for the principles of progress without becoming aligned or dogmatic with respect to one or another vision of the way "forward".

Re: The Erosion of Free Will: Why Society's Loss of Belief in Freedom Is Dangerous

#69

Post by Nevermark » Sat, Apr 08, 2023, 10:50 AM UTC

uoaei wrote: post #68

Nevermark wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point is when talking about any specific issue X, arguments for or against X need to be specific too, to have any validity. As a generality, we all want "progress". Nothing controversial about that. That "cutting red tape" is progress, is not a controversial viewpoint. Bad regulations impede better results, and decrease the freedom of some people. But "adding accountability" is also generally considered p…

Reactionary behavior is bad, a priori, for the simple fact that it displaces and forbids reasoned discussion. This makes sense for things where "the science is settled" but for many things, especially inherently subjective ones, reactionary behavior simply has no place. For this reason "reactionary politics" is a contradiction in terms while "progressive politics" is not. One can stand for the principles of progress…

Right, it is a true that reactionary things are bad, by definition.

But saying something specific is bad, by labelling it reactionary is an empty argument! It reverses the condition -> implication relationship. It is circular, or at best, charged but unsupported reasoning.

To show something is bad, and possibly reactionary, you have to be specific about what is bad about the specific thing.

Re: The Erosion of Free Will: Why Society's Loss of Belief in Freedom Is Dangerous

#70

Post by lapcat » Sat, Apr 08, 2023, 11:07 AM UTC

Brian_K_White wrote: post #64

lapcat wrote: post #15

> If there’s no free will, every solution must be a top-down one. If people aren’t free to choose, then “people don’t change”—they can’t change. Neither of these claims is justified or even explained by the author.

Neither of those statements are claims that need to be explained or justified. They are proposed lines of reasoning that themseves explain and justify other arguments. You might still challenge them, but the challenge would just be your own counter statement. For instance, are you claiming that: If people aren't free to choose, they can still change just fine?

> Neither of those statements are claims that need to be explained or justified.

Heh, this claim itself needs to be explained and justified.

> They are proposed lines of reasoning that themseves explain and justify other arguments.

I would call them unexamined assumptions.

> You might still challenge them, but the challenge would just be your own counter statement.

The burden of proof is on the author to support the conclusions of the article and convince the readers of those conclusions. I remain completely unconvinced.

> For instance, are you claiming that: If people aren't free to choose, they can still change just fine?

I am claiming that people obviously do change, as an empirical matter. This is not magically an argument for metaphysical free will. It would be such a trivial argument. If anything, perhaps people have no freedom to not change.

After all, we're changing every moment, if only by aging. I wish I could avoid aging! You could liken the human body to the Ship of Theseus, constantly adding new parts and removing old parts, until hardly anything is the same years later. Moreover, we're constantly being affected by external stimuli. Or to put it in another way, we learn! How could we not change in reaction to that?