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Can you use your "free will"? Try your hand

people.ischool.berkeley.edu

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Re: Can you use your "free will"? Try your hand

#201

Post by avgcorrection »

karmakaze wrote: post #128

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'.…

> 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.

So many technical (read: narrowly educated) people make philosophical arguments that just boil down to an incredulous stance.

Re: Can you use your "free will"? Try your hand

#202

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

GTP wrote: post #181
lupire wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you define free will?

I say that I have free will because my decisions come from myself and not from something outside me. Sure, the context in which I live can influence my decisions, but the final choice is mine and it can happen that I take a decision that goes against what the context (society, family etc.) would expect from me.

You feel your decisions come from yourself - whatever that is. That's not at all the same as having objective proof they do.

Re: Can you use your "free will"? Try your hand

#204

Post by BurningFrog »

karmakaze wrote: post #128

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'.…

The core of most confusion in the "free will" philosophical debates is that the "free will" concept is undefined, and people assume many different unspoken such definitions when debating it.

Re: Can you use your "free will"? Try your hand

#205

Post by Kranar »

jtbayly wrote: post #194
brvsft wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, I get you. And you're right, if I pitted a 'random' program against this site, the outcome would tend toward 50%.

Yes, but... 50% prediction rate would indicate that half of the time you are predictable, meaning you don't have much free will. 0% prediction rate would indicate that you have 100% free will. Randomness is not a good measure of free will.

Maybe the issue is that we're being too discrete, thinking in terms of absolute predictability or absolute unpredictability.

Ultimately a 50% prediction rate means that you are as unpredictable as is possible, the state of maximum entropy. Any deviation from 50%, towards 100% or 0%, is a state of lower entropy.

You can forget the free will and just consider a fair coin toss. If someone had the ability to always guess a coin toss incorrectly, every single time, then you'd know that this person possesses something absolutely incredible and unique, rather magical. Similarly if they guess a coin toss correctly every single time they would also possess something magical.

It's the person who can only correctly guess a coin toss 50% of the time that is uninteresting, ordinary and possesses absolutely no special or magical insight. But deviating from 50% would require having some knowledge about the coin. A 0% prediction rate would require having total knowledge of the coin, so would a 100% prediction rate. It's 50% that requires having no knowledge whatsoever.

Re: Can you use your "free will"? Try your hand

#206

Post by kerkeslager »

nerdponx wrote: post #17
kerkeslager wrote: post #16

I feel like there's an "aesthetic" to randomness, which I see in examples of Japanese wabi sabi. I don't know how to describe what that looks like in keypresses exactly, but if I imitate that, I'm able to keep the rolling average at I question the relation to free will however--will seems more related to preference than randomness to me, and a better example of that would be something like "I prefer the f key". Confl…

Maybe I've just seen way too many random sequences, but I was able to hold it around 40% for a while. True randomness tends to generate sequences that are slightly "uncomfortable" or "inhuman" -- I can't think of a better way to describe it. So I just kept trying to generate the least-comfortable sequences I could think of, and it worked alright. There should be a lot more long runs than you'd imagine.

Welllll... if you were holding it at 40% you were actually not random, you were doing the opposite of the model.

Re: Can you use your "free will"? Try your hand

#207

Post by baetylus »

mcv wrote: post #190
omoikane wrote: post #13

The prediction algorithm is actually very straightforward[1]. It's a fun exercise to write a sequence generator specifically to defeat it. Here is a sequence that can get the prediction rate down to 13%: ddddd dfddd dffdd dfdfd ddfff ddfdd fdffd dffdf ddfff fdfdf dfffd ffdff fffff dffff ffddf fffdf dfffd ffdff ffffd ddfff Generated using this Perl script: my %table = (); my $s = "fffff"; for(my $i = 0; $i $table{$s}{…

Are you saying you just automated free will in such a simple algorithm?

This goes deeper than we thought.

Re: Can you use your "free will"? Try your hand

#208

Post by datameta »

mcv wrote: post #190
omoikane wrote: post #13

The prediction algorithm is actually very straightforward[1]. It's a fun exercise to write a sequence generator specifically to defeat it. Here is a sequence that can get the prediction rate down to 13%: ddddd dfddd dffdd dfdfd ddfff ddfdd fdffd dffdf ddfff fdfdf dfffd ffdff fffff dffff ffddf fffdf dfffd ffdff ffffd ddfff Generated using this Perl script: my %table = (); my $s = "fffff"; for(my $i = 0; $i $table{$s}{…

Are you saying you just automated free will in such a simple algorithm?

They automated the intent from their free will

Re: Can you use your "free will"? Try your hand

#209

Post by boothby »

cs702 wrote: post #155
boothby wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can improve that by around 13% if you soften the inequality (your > should be >=, I believe) table = {} s = 'ddddd' for i in range(100): if i%5 == 0: print(s) state = table.setdefault(s, {'f':0, 'd':0}) s = s[1:] + ('f' if state['f'] 0 else 'd') state[s[-1]] += 1

Inevitable. Gotta love HN.

To be sporting, I left a little bug resulting from my weird compulsion to golf snippets like this.

Re: Can you use your "free will"? Try your hand

#210

Post by karaterobot »

karmakaze wrote: post #128

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'.…

I assume they used "free will" in the title because the student who did the best in the original test, when asked how they did it, said they just used their free will. I assume nobody involved—either the author of the linked page, or Scott Aaronson—believe that this simple game disproves free will by itself (whatever they believe about it in general).
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