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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

#271

Post by GTP »

mapcars wrote: post #186
GTP wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The context part is clear but how do you define "myself"? :)

Yes, I had the same discussion a couple years ago and I concluded it by saying that it boils down what's myself: is it my brain? My consciousness? My soul? But this is a related but different problem.

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

#272

Post by GTP »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #202
GTP wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure, I never said I have an objective proof. But there's no proof of the contrary either, so the two positions are at the same level, objectively speaking.

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

#273

Post by jhbadger »

lupire wrote: post #142
withinboredom wrote: post #139

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.

People who are good at chess sometimes like to play reverse chess where the goal is to get checkmated. If you are playing against another good player it can be quite difficult -- as difficult as winning under the normal conditions.

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

#274

Post by jhbadger »

smokel wrote: post #80
nonrandomstring wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Free will seems to be qualitatively different to randomness. I was going to suggest reading "The Diceman" by Luke Rhinehart [0]. But then I don't want to do that, because it really messes with some people. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dice_Man

Interestingly, this book is from 1971, whereas a famous duck went through a similar plot already in 1952 [1]. Now, how to decide if I should add this to the Wikipedia entry of "The Dice Man"? [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flip_Decision

And Harvey Dent, aka "Two Face", the Batman villain who decides to kill or spare his victims using a coin toss, was first shown in the comics in 1942!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-Face

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

#275

Post by brnaftr361 »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #258
GTP wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To an external observer, you are nothing by a very complex set of chemical and electrical reactions. With sufficient technology, we could take a snapshot of your brain and predict exactly how you respond to any given stimulus with 100% accuracy. Free will is an illusion. Consciousness is undefinable and unprovable.

Could technology be sufficient?

I mean you've got a body, too, right? So the moment the environment changes so does the mind state. So unless you've come up with a method of modeling all of those influences... And food, and hormones, and... And then you've got stuff like cosmic radiation slamming into your DNA causing dsDNA breakage and that precipitates into apoptosis and suddenly the model is off due to some completely unpredictable shit, 'cause were talking about interactions that are occuring on the scale of 6.022*10^23 per mol, and a lot of mols and a lot of different species of matter themselves subject to probability moreso than determinism at any reasonable scale.

If sufficient technology were to emerge, I expect that under no circumstances would it ever be considered as a worthy project to invest in. But the idea of such technology ever emerging itself is frankly worthy of ridicule.

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

#278

Post by gnramires »

kubanczyk wrote: post #219
gnramires wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

One step back please, the "free will" was an ill-conceived start. The core claim is about how random is human will. Throwing in the word "free" adds confusion. The will of an addict is a bit less random, okay. Is there anything quantitative going on here besides "some stuff can increase randomness" and "some other stuff can decrease randomness"?

My claim is that randomness is a dead end. It's irrelevant. But I do think free will can be a useful concept (with little relationship to randomness), although it's too complicated for a short comment I think (a complex quantification of how you can realize good things for yourself and the world).

That said, I think this is a nice experiment exactly for surfacing this kind of questioning.

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

#279

Post by simonh »

erhaetherth wrote: post #50
simonh wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the sequence is from an external source or reference, then the individual key presses are not a result of your free choices.

He's free to copy who/whatever he pleases.

Of course, but if I do a marathon on a scooter am I really doing a marathon?
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