141–150 of 279 posts
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It is an exercise of free will to overcome the imposed barriers of some test.
Although I do believe we have free will, I don't agree with this specific example: looking at the algorithm used to predict key presses and just doing the opposite of what would the algorithm predicts, is letting the algorithm tell you what to do. This is related to inverse psychology.
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> it is accurately predicting what you won't press That is not what it's predicting. You have changed the definition of predict so that an incorrect prediction can be misinterpreted as a correct prediction.
If you have two choices ... and I always predict the wrong one ... another way to say that is: "I always predict the one you won't choose." If I can't actually predict which one you choose, then statistically, I should be right 50% of the time.
To put it more plainly: if you were wagering on the outcome, would you rather win 50% of the time (EV=0) or 100% of the time (EV=max)?
100% misprediction is only relevant if a 3rd party adversary is observing the game. In the absence of such an adversary, being reliably wrong it worthless.
It got less than half right, so worse than just guessing. Observation- predicting learned habits and other cognitive-effort preserving strategies your brain uses are not a refutation of free will. The whole point of habits, as Marvin Minsky pointed out in Society of Mind, is to save us from having to think through every little decision, i.e. to make ourselves predictable and unburden ourselves from decisions. So in t…
However, what the game does is refute a particular attempt to prove that will does exist.
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I think that's true, I think free will is more reason (of the general kind that's not only logical but takes into account your mind), than more randomness . Rather, the more your actions are aligned with your own good, brought by understanding yourself and reality, the more free I think you are. (to give an example: is an addicted person free, even if he is in principle doing "what he wants?", or is he trapped by his…
I don't agree that reason correlates with free will. Many people act irrationally. Behavioral economics was developed because "rational actor" predictions applied to large groups of people turned out to be consistently incorrect. One can willfully be irrational. I do agree with you though, that free will doesn't necessarily mean "doing what I want" (which is a libertarian principle from the French Revolution), but in…
From the Github description, a quote: "In a class I taught at Berkeley, I did an experiment where I wrote a simple little program that would let people type either “f” or “d” and would predict which key they were going to push next. It’s actually very easy to write a program that will make the right prediction about 70% of the time. Most people don’t really know how to type randomly. They’ll have too many alternation…
yes, I've done some of these before. Ive gotten up above 200 key presses at ~50% before getting bored. my secret was decidedly less sexy than free will though. i just had XX years of working as a statistician and having a better intuition as to what random strings and numbers actually look like :/
Do you have a memorized random string?
It's easy to be random if you have memorized random (or normal) data that your adversary isn't focused on. For example, early digits of pi work in most cases. Or use a generator to create a sequence to memorize.
In what way is being unpredictable considered "free will"? Of course it's just being clickbaity but worth mentioning. I've seen this better used to show that humans are poor sources of randomness. Is there a difference between non-determinism and a free will choice? The latter seems to be a contradiction. A choice implies a reason which would be a cause, thus determinism. This test is asking to make random 'choices'.…
It's hard to come up with a scientifically valid test for something as wide and vague as 'free will'. So what happens is that the tests are designed to test for very specific things that are then used to reason better about vague things like 'free will'. What this test is actually focused on is decision making. The participant in the test is asked to randomly press either button A or B. The cognitive/mental experienc…
I fail to see how it's related to free will. I can look at the digits of PI and press d and f depending it's odd or even. So what does it prove? Nothing. Being able to beat this algorithm doesn't mean that I have free will, and choose to fall into patterns (knowing the PI solution exists) doesn't mean I don't.
It's easy to create a more complex example to defeat a more advanced adversary. (Many exist.)
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Free will is equivalent to randomness with many (asymptotically infinite) degrees of freedom. Not sure if the experiment tests this. (Pressing a different key or closing the browser tab are also variables in this probability distribution.)
> Free will is equivalent to randomness with many (asymptotically infinite) degrees of freedom. I don't think this is obviously true. I can make a random number generating device with as many degrees of freedom as you like by producing a bunch of vertically polarised photons and measuring their horizontal polarisation. I don't think anyone would describe this system as having "free will". Conversely humans with "free…
There is no such thing as free will, so any attempt to define it will fail.
If we naively define it as something that isn't just pure randomness, but also something that isn't pure causality, then what is it?
Either things are causal, in which case, you can replay everything and arrive at the same point. That doens't fit an intuitive definition of free will.
Or there is randomness, play the same sequence of events again and some inherent randomness will cause a different outcome. That also doesn't fit any intuitive sense of free will.
So, since we can't even define it, it is meaningless to assume there is free will in the first place. We can talk in terms of causality or randomness.
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If you have two choices ... and I always predict the wrong one ... another way to say that is: "I always predict the one you won't choose." If I can't actually predict which one you choose, then statistically, I should be right 50% of the time.
So? If I can reliably lose every basketball game, that doesn't make be perfect at basketball. To put it more plainly: if you were wagering on the outcome, would you rather win 50% of the time (EV=0) or 100% of the time (EV=max)? 100% misprediction is only relevant if a 3rd party adversary is observing the game. In the absence of such an adversary, being reliably wrong it worthless.
50% misprediction cannot be improved upon with trivial methods.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you have two choices ... and I always predict the wrong one ... another way to say that is: "I always predict the one you won't choose." If I can't actually predict which one you choose, then statistically, I should be right 50% of the time.
So? If I can reliably lose every basketball game, that doesn't make be perfect at basketball. To put it more plainly: if you were wagering on the outcome, would you rather win 50% of the time (EV=0) or 100% of the time (EV=max)? 100% misprediction is only relevant if a 3rd party adversary is observing the game. In the absence of such an adversary, being reliably wrong it worthless.