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Suddenly There Aren't Enough Babies. The Whole World Is Alarmed

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Re: Suddenly There Aren't Enough Babies. The Whole World Is Alarmed

#101
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This argument is not logically valid. Nothing changes with respect to the possibility of defining something if there is no free will - defining something is merely mapping an identifier to a representation of meaning. A purely mechanical device can define things just fine. Free will is demonstrably not necessary to define things.

It is logically valid, because it’s like asking a candle flame to flicker in a certain pattern to prove it can control how it flickers to other candle flames. If we have no free will we are just like candle flames; any argument that says we are more than candle flames is not valid when you assume we are candle flames. People forget that logic requires axioms.

Your argument does not hold at all. In fact I'd go so far as to say it is total nonsense.

If I were to ask you to act a certain way and you do, this would neither prove nor disprove free will, because it tells me nothing about whether causality required you to act that way or differently and whether or not you deviated from causality, and so your analogy is meaningless. It is not what we'd ask you to do in order to prove free will.

You're using an assumption about an invalid argument as an argument in favour of free will, and that's no more valid than the original invalid argument.

To prove free will you need to prove that there are decisions in the brain that does not follow a) strict causality, b) randomness, c) any combination of the two. As you've pointed out, experiments where you ask a subject to act in specific ways do not produce evidence for it, as they can just as well just be causality in action. That the strawman hypothesis you presented is not valid does not prove the inverse, nor does it release any obligation of proponents of the idea of free will from providing evidence, or even just a definition to support their idea.

Free will is an absolutely extraordinary claim in that respect, because it implies a third category of events that is not a mix of strict cause-effect chains and random events, but introduces a "will-effect" chain that has no direct causal link but at the same time is not random.

As it stands, without a definition, the notion of free will is not even a fanciful hypothesis - to suggest it is a hypothesis would imply a fully formed idea. But the concept is so woolly and meaningless it tells us nothing.

It's at most a fervent wish or hope of not being an automaton. But a wish is not evidence, nor an argument, or even a hypothesis.

If you want to produce a valid argument for free will, you need to be able to either proffer a hypothesis for how such a "will-effect" chain can exist, or demonstrate physical transitions in a mind that are demonstrably not cause-effect or random byproducts of ordinary physics.

Even just come up with a coherent definition and you will be world famous, as you'd have introduced a new area of logic. If you can prove a physical mechanism for it, you'll have Nobel Prize in physics in the bag.

Re: Suddenly There Aren't Enough Babies. The Whole World Is Alarmed

#102
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure—but that just means I get to indulge my kids with private school and trips to Japan. By contrast our neighbors are probably right around the median, and had kids in their 20s like we did, and their kids are just as happy. (At the end of the day—both sets of kids value the fact that the respective grandparents live nearby more than anything money can buy.) The point you’re trying to make is contradicted by the de…

It doesn't actually seem contradictory; not that I know much about law (hell, I think I lost my belief in it sometime in the last decade or so), but my impression is that it's a fairly all-consuming profession between school and a very grinding early career and very competitive; taking time out to raise children could be very costly. And I bet a lot are coupled with other lawyers so there's not much likelihood of one…

But that’s the selfishness I’m talking about. If a professional career is even in the cards for someone, then they started with a huge (and unearned) cognitive advantage over others. But they’re not going to have kids because they might have to compromise their lifestyle? (Or regard living like a normal person equivalent to “ruin?”)

That’s what I’m calling selfish. These people could have kids. They just choose to prioritize their lifestyle, and the pursuit of their individual career. They forgo the fundamental pillar of the human experience for marginally better odds at a career that makes some giant corporation marginally more money.

Re: Suddenly There Aren't Enough Babies. The Whole World Is Alarmed

#103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't actually seem contradictory; not that I know much about law (hell, I think I lost my belief in it sometime in the last decade or so), but my impression is that it's a fairly all-consuming profession between school and a very grinding early career and very competitive; taking time out to raise children could be very costly. And I bet a lot are coupled with other lawyers so there's not much likelihood of one…

But that’s the selfishness I’m talking about. If a professional career is even in the cards for someone, then they started with a huge (and unearned) cognitive advantage over others. But they’re not going to have kids because they might have to compromise their lifestyle? (Or regard living like a normal person equivalent to “ruin?”) That’s what I’m calling selfish. These people could have kids. They just choose to pr…

What is living like a "normal" person? Paying exorbitant premiums for health insurance for the family? Worrying about making your rent that increases 10% every year? Being one car breakdown from losing your job and the above? Have you considered that people are not selfish but perhaps anxious? That we've built a system to extract labor from people via precarity and they are responding as stressed people will? And if people live in such a state, they might see it as selfless to spare children from such an existence? That "Conceptualizing parenting as a stressor" might be a useful model to explain peoples' behavior? It's just weird to me to think that after a few hundred thousand years of being human and reproducing, we have in the span of a century become (evolved) to be too "selfish" to do so; to me it makes more sense to think in terms of environment.

Re: Suddenly There Aren't Enough Babies. The Whole World Is Alarmed

#104
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is logically valid, because it’s like asking a candle flame to flicker in a certain pattern to prove it can control how it flickers to other candle flames. If we have no free will we are just like candle flames; any argument that says we are more than candle flames is not valid when you assume we are candle flames. People forget that logic requires axioms.

Your argument does not hold at all. In fact I'd go so far as to say it is total nonsense. If I were to ask you to act a certain way and you do, this would neither prove nor disprove free will, because it tells me nothing about whether causality required you to act that way or differently and whether or not you deviated from causality, and so your analogy is meaningless. It is not what we'd ask you to do in order to p…

Thanks for the engagement (whether you had a choice or not ;)!

The main issue is that we approach the topic with a different set of axioms. E.g. your limitation of requiring a proof involving (a-c) is analogous to asking someone to build a steel bridge with three colors of legos.

Free will and consciousness are tautologically joined, so any attempt to create a framework to disprove/prove one or the other will have to be all encompassing.

It has the same issue though that you have to decide that you are conscious to begin using reason, even though no one can prove it scientifically.

If your starting point is that no one is actually conscious, it’s impossible to disprove, and it’s obviously wrong (and any attempt to prove it’s not obviously wrong would knee-cap itself since it’s impossible ‘to logic’ without a reasoning engine).

Re: Suddenly There Aren't Enough Babies. The Whole World Is Alarmed

#105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s impossible to define it or do anything requiring verbs if you don’t have free will, so it’s tautologically impossible to satisfy this class of solipsistic ideas.

Lol because commands can't be typed out by a computer. Your argument is flawed.

Simply point to a computer that has never had conscious human involvement in any part of its evolution and wait for it to type out something ;)

Re: Suddenly There Aren't Enough Babies. The Whole World Is Alarmed

#106
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your argument does not hold at all. In fact I'd go so far as to say it is total nonsense. If I were to ask you to act a certain way and you do, this would neither prove nor disprove free will, because it tells me nothing about whether causality required you to act that way or differently and whether or not you deviated from causality, and so your analogy is meaningless. It is not what we'd ask you to do in order to p…

Thanks for the engagement (whether you had a choice or not ;)! The main issue is that we approach the topic with a different set of axioms. E.g. your limitation of requiring a proof involving (a-c) is analogous to asking someone to build a steel bridge with three colors of legos. Free will and consciousness are tautologically joined, so any attempt to create a framework to disprove/prove one or the other will have to…

> The main issue is that we approach the topic with a different set of axioms. E.g. your limitation of requiring a proof involving (a-c) is analogous to asking someone to build a steel bridge with three colors of legos.

Well, yes. The alternative is for you to give me a definition of free will that allows for it within the constraints of cause-effect and randomness.

Without such a definition, the option we are left with is inherently "breaking free" of that, and then we need another category of effect.

I don't believe either is possible, but we specifically do not have evidence that such other category of "will-effect" transition is possible, no observed mechanism, no observation of such a category, nor a hypothesis that provides even the starts of a coherent definition of what it would even mean.

So yes, the point is that the problem appear obviously impossible to resolve in favour of free will without either new logic or a definition of free will I don't think possibly can meet expectations.

> Free will and consciousness are tautologically joined, so any attempt to create a framework to disprove/prove one or the other will have to be all encompassing.

Only partially, in the positive case. Consciousness would seem to need to exist for free will to exist, but in the event free will does not, there's no reason to presume that affects the possibility of consciousness.

> It has the same issue though that you have to decide that you are conscious to begin using reason, even though no one can prove it scientifically.

It does not have the same issue. Whether you have free will or not, there's no reason why that need to affect your life at all. Clearly we think we make choices. Whether we make those choices or not, we act as if we do. As it is, we already have solid evidence that our conscious "decision" often is not causally linked to the actual "choice", so we can't rely on our introspection to even give us an accurate description of what "choices" we make, or why, and we know from e.g. split brain experiments that the brain can easily be made to rationalise how it "chose" things it never did. Accordingly, whether the mechanism actually controlling actions exercise free will or not, we'd expect our consciousness to experience it the same way.

Re: Suddenly There Aren't Enough Babies. The Whole World Is Alarmed

#107
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the engagement (whether you had a choice or not ;)! The main issue is that we approach the topic with a different set of axioms. E.g. your limitation of requiring a proof involving (a-c) is analogous to asking someone to build a steel bridge with three colors of legos. Free will and consciousness are tautologically joined, so any attempt to create a framework to disprove/prove one or the other will have to…

> The main issue is that we approach the topic with a different set of axioms. E.g. your limitation of requiring a proof involving (a-c) is analogous to asking someone to build a steel bridge with three colors of legos. Well, yes. The alternative is for you to give me a definition of free will that allows for it within the constraints of cause-effect and randomness. Without such a definition, the option we are left w…

This could go on for many hundreds of pages, but I thought I would share:

“Well, yes. The alternative is for you to give me a definition of free will that allows for it within the constraints of cause-effect and randomness.”

https://youtu.be/itLIM38k2r0?si=1wTeSVdX28UlB2jf

This interview with Nobel prize winning mathematical physicist Roger Penrose describes a framework where quantum mechanical time hopping during a measurement removes this cause-and-effect concern you have. E.g. The nature of reality of time and matter fields is even more complicated than we understand, and our macros scale understanding of cause and effects might be too limiting when considering constraints of consciousness.

Re: Suddenly There Aren't Enough Babies. The Whole World Is Alarmed

#108
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact is that my parents generation (currently retiring) made a bet on the younger generations supporting them through the retirement [insert socialism joke if you're from the US]. I never signed up to this tho, I have been born into it. Now I agree that the whole thing is in principle a good idea, but all fairness goes out of the window as soon as a your demographics are such that the biggest voting block is at t…

What do you suggest regarding the social contract? I'm asking because whatever policy you'd like to see applied to the current elderly, is to be applied with twice the intensity to yourself, as the generation behind you is even smaller.

I think of this as a generic problem that happens when the (in this case) age structure of the representatives differs from the working population.

So any fix would involve changing the age structure of representation. The particulars of the fix would depend on the specifics of a particular system, but one idea that could fix things would be absolute limits to the time you can be in office. So for example a rule that states any person may serve only X years in parliament over the course of their life. Those limits might have other benefits.

Maybe even an absolute age limit would make sense, e.g. retirement age + X years. Of course old people should get political representation, but maybe putting a cap on it would work to make it more a government of working people.

Another idea would be a voting multiplier, that gives proportionally more power to representatives that are from age brackets that are underrepresented in the governing body.

All of these might have unanticipated side effects and there are probably even better ideas, but the point is: whatever it is, it has to be something that gives true concessions to the young people, otherwise there can be no true political negotiation between the retired many and the working few.

Re: Suddenly There Aren't Enough Babies. The Whole World Is Alarmed

#109
post #48
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That listing of people seems pretty comprehensive. If that’s not the “whole world” it comes pretty close! And to be clear, us parents think that being “childfree” is shallow and selfish, like being one of those sovereign citizens who doesn’t want to pay taxes. It’s basically being the ultimate hipster—thinking of oneself as being too special for something hominids have been doing for millions of years.

When people who don't want to be parents become parents out of obligation they tend to f up their kids.

I don't think that's true, or at least, overstates it. I think there are a lot of people who don't feel strongly about becoming parents that end up being great parents.
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