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A delightful quirk of relativity theory

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Re: A delightful quirk of relativity theory

#111

This would be more fun in a blog post. Twitter is a fucking horrible format for a complex analysis of special relativity. That aside, my favourite quirk from relativity is this: "The more you move in space, the less you move in time." Like relativity in general, it sounds simple enough, but it's consequences are profoundly shocking. (That is, if you take the time to understand it, and don't leap to the conclusion tha…

There is no room for free will in physics, period . All processes are completely deterministic. Even quantum processes might appear to be probabilistic if you look at individual particles, but the statistics are nevertheless completely deterministic: if you look at enough particles, a predictable shape will emerge. The future is set in stone and not only is there no way to change it, but the concept of changing the f…

> quantum processes [...] are nevertheless completely deterministic

It's like you're trying to avoid mentioning hidden variables or bell's theorem directly. That is, you're probably not correct when you say something like that.

Re: A delightful quirk of relativity theory

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> not be possible to reliably predict a human being's actions in advance. That's also true for purely deterministic systems. Basically any complex deterministic system (and quite a few relatively simple ones) you very quickly get to a point where you can't predict future behavior. On top of that, showing exactly the issues with metaphysical "free will", this corollary has a lot of constraints that are also poorly def…

The difference between quickly getting to a point where you can't forecast the weather, and the fact that you can't predict wavefunction collapse at all, is significant on a more than metaphysical level. Figuring out which bucket human beings fall in to is a legitimate question.

> the weather

> wavefunction

Which of these are commonly accepted (or even argued by a sizable minority) to have free will in a metaphysical sense?

> Figuring out which bucket human beings fall in to is a legitimate question.

That may be true, but it doesn't seem like it has anything to do with the ill-defined notion of "free will". I'm also not familiar with anyone who views human behavior to be anything like a collapsing wave form so I'm not entirely sure this is a "legitimate" question since I'm not sure there is any evidence or support for the one side of the argument (though I'm always up for pointers to arguments about this).

Re: A delightful quirk of relativity theory

#113
post #42

This would be more fun in a blog post. Twitter is a fucking horrible format for a complex analysis of special relativity. That aside, my favourite quirk from relativity is this: "The more you move in space, the less you move in time." Like relativity in general, it sounds simple enough, but it's consequences are profoundly shocking. (That is, if you take the time to understand it, and don't leap to the conclusion tha…

Rescuing free-will from the jaws of spacetime would be cool! Free will does not exist. It is logically inconsistent. Either your choice is some function of your current state and the environment you are in, then the choice is not free, or it is independent of your current state and the environment you are in, then it is not your choice in any meaningful way, it is just the result of a coin flip. You can do some menta…

> Either your choice is some function of your current state and the environment you are in, then the choice is not free

This is as free as you can get and I don't think anyone ever posited "free will" as something other than this.

Re: A delightful quirk of relativity theory

#114
post #42

This would be more fun in a blog post. Twitter is a fucking horrible format for a complex analysis of special relativity. That aside, my favourite quirk from relativity is this: "The more you move in space, the less you move in time." Like relativity in general, it sounds simple enough, but it's consequences are profoundly shocking. (That is, if you take the time to understand it, and don't leap to the conclusion tha…

Rescuing free-will from the jaws of spacetime would be cool! Free will does not exist. It is logically inconsistent. Either your choice is some function of your current state and the environment you are in, then the choice is not free, or it is independent of your current state and the environment you are in, then it is not your choice in any meaningful way, it is just the result of a coin flip. You can do some menta…

Regarding your either/or line of reasoning in your first paragraph. Are you sure these are the only two possibilities? Could there be partial dependence on the current state of one’s mind and environment? Does the same exact state always lead to the same exact decision? That is, if a universe began exactly as ours did and everything was the same up until time t when a decision is made by someone is that decision always the same? It seems to be to yes and that would support your view but does it have to be yes.

Also, I wonder if your either/or line of reasoning depends on the Law of the Excluded middle. What happens to your reasoning if that law is not true?

Re: A delightful quirk of relativity theory

#115
post #42

This would be more fun in a blog post. Twitter is a fucking horrible format for a complex analysis of special relativity. That aside, my favourite quirk from relativity is this: "The more you move in space, the less you move in time." Like relativity in general, it sounds simple enough, but it's consequences are profoundly shocking. (That is, if you take the time to understand it, and don't leap to the conclusion tha…

Rescuing free-will from the jaws of spacetime would be cool! Free will does not exist. It is logically inconsistent. Either your choice is some function of your current state and the environment you are in, then the choice is not free, or it is independent of your current state and the environment you are in, then it is not your choice in any meaningful way, it is just the result of a coin flip. You can do some menta…

Free will implies agency, and isn't disproved by predictability. I love pizza and hamburgers, and just because you can predict that I will eat either pizza or hamburgers with 95+% likelihood, that does not imply that I did not actively choose one of the two. I had the freedom to choose tofu, I just decided not to because I hate it.

Re: A delightful quirk of relativity theory

#116
post #108
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You’re trying to apply logic to an untestable philosophical debate. If you believe free will doesn’t exist, you can’t design an experiment that would invalidate that belief. And if your theory is untestable and unfalsifiable, then what good is it other than a creative exercise? This is reversing the burden of proof. The issue with "free will" is getting those who think there is a meaningful "free will" concept to a…

> This is reversing the burden of proof. No, in response to someone vaguely mentioning the words “free will”, you made the claim: “Free will does not exist.” The burden of proof is now on you to provide evidence of your claim as well as on you to define the terms contained within your claim. I am not arguing the “free will” debate either way for the reasons mentioned previously and do not care to define the terms as…

Russel's teapot.

If I claim Russel's teapot doesn't exist, the burden of proof is on you to prove it exists if you disagree with me, not me, because the set of claims that are so poorly defined and unlikely as to make it an unjustified burden to expect anyone to caveat the claims to make them technically correct is infinite - someone who makes an extraordinary claim without being able to provide a justification therefore needs to be prepared to take on the burden of proof.

I equally claim that santa doesn't exist, and yet will insist the burden of anyone disagreeing with my claim lies on them, not on me, even if I make the initial claim, for exactly that reason.

In this case the claim that free will does not exists puts the burden on those who disagree *because nobody here or otherwise* have presented a definition of free will that most people would agree to, not least because without narrowing the scope with a definition I have the freedom to apply whichever definition I prefer, and I have several places in this thread.

E.g. I'd argue that "free will" would require an entity to be able to do something which cannot be explained by the combination of determinism and randomness. Given we're unaware of any kind of processes that can produce outputs that are not either deterministic or random modulated by some sort of probabilistic distribution, to claim that a process that can produce such an output exist is an extraordinary claim that would give you a Nobel in physics if you could demonstrate it.

As such: Russel's teapot.

I'd love to be wrong. I'd love for someone here to come up with a definition of free will that overcomes that problem, as if so I'd be witnessing a revolution in philosophy surpassing anything we've seen in centuries.

Just like I'd be delighted to be wrong when I say that santa doesn't exist, but I do believe I'm far more likely to be proven wrong about santa than free will, given that people can at least come up with definitions of santa that are somewhat coherent if unlikely.

Re: A delightful quirk of relativity theory

#117

This would be more fun in a blog post. Twitter is a fucking horrible format for a complex analysis of special relativity. That aside, my favourite quirk from relativity is this: "The more you move in space, the less you move in time." Like relativity in general, it sounds simple enough, but it's consequences are profoundly shocking. (That is, if you take the time to understand it, and don't leap to the conclusion tha…

There is no room for free will in physics, period . All processes are completely deterministic. Even quantum processes might appear to be probabilistic if you look at individual particles, but the statistics are nevertheless completely deterministic: if you look at enough particles, a predictable shape will emerge. The future is set in stone and not only is there no way to change it, but the concept of changing the f…

Two objections:

1. Chaos theory ensures that unless we have INFINITE precision measurements, even a perfect simulation of our universe will diverge based on even the smallest differences. A difference of one particle's velocity in the googolth decimal place will eventually cause wildly different simulation outcomes. So, in practice, it's impossible to know what's going to happen given a long enough time frame, unless we can get advanced enough to have literally infinite precision measurements.

2. Given objection 1, using the law of large numbers to explain away quantum processes' non-determinism from initial conditions seems like a cop-out to me. Yes, given enough particles, they converge around some predictable value. But given the need to have exactness in measurements to predict chaotic processes, if a SMALL number of individual particles interact with other matter, and they sometimes do, how could the probabilistic nature of those individual particles be neglected?

Let me sum it up this way. If I take a quantum random number generator and use it to generate lat-long coordinates, and visit that place, could anyone or anything predict what happens given initial conditions before I do that? No, it is not bound by initial conditions.

Re: A delightful quirk of relativity theory

#118
post #93

Some people hate tweet threads like this, but I feel like it really forces concise communication and arranging thoughts into small but complete chunks. I’ve never put my thoughts into this format, but I would guess it’s actually pretty difficult and requires some careful planning to do it well, especially for a challenging topic like this. Thanks for sharing this to hacker news, sohkamyung!

It's like Power Point presentation. Forcing everyone to read at the same pace, waiting for the point to show up, instead of skimming to the part they need to read.

Re: A delightful quirk of relativity theory

#119
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What you're modelling has no agency I see no reason to think that just because something is predictable it is not free. That seems like such a strange constraint to me that I can only assume that we have different understandings of what it means to be free. If I know someone well, I might predict that when offered a free choice between an ice cream and a brussels sprout they will choose the ice cream. The fact that…

Given the same starting state, either you get the same outcome every time, or there's randomness involved, that is the point. I challenge you to describe a selection process that is not fully deterministic but where the lack of determinism is caused by something other than randomness. That is what you need to be able to come up with to define free will in a way that isn't smoke and mirrors. There's no agency. Nothing…

> There's no agency. Nothing but automatons.

Only if you define 'agency' as requiring magic. If you think that there's no conflict (as I do) between being an automaton and having agency, then there's no problem here.

Re: A delightful quirk of relativity theory

#120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no room for free will in physics, period . All processes are completely deterministic. Even quantum processes might appear to be probabilistic if you look at individual particles, but the statistics are nevertheless completely deterministic: if you look at enough particles, a predictable shape will emerge. The future is set in stone and not only is there no way to change it, but the concept of changing the f…

There is no room for free will in classical mechanics. Quantum mechanics has plenty of "room for free will," because either: 1. The universe is not deterministic (if you believe that wavefunctions collapse) 2. The mysterious thing that makes conscious entities experience high-amplitude events more often than low-amplitude events is not deterministic (if you believe in MWI). Evidence for free will, a definition of fre…

There are more than just those two interpretations. Super determinism, for example https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdeterminism
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