The question of free will is bound up with the question of consciousness. We first need to understand what consciousness is, where it resides, and what its boundaries are, before we can understand free will. It is not possible to properly test a statement such as: "I have free will" without understanding what the "I" refers to
Photons, Quasars and the Possibility of Free Will
241–250 of 265 posts
Re: Photons, Quasars and the Possibility of Free Will
#242To me, articles like these are littered with logical fallacies. I truly wonder if the quoted scientists really meant what the article says. For example: "And if our measurements are random, there is no way for the photons to know ahead of time which orientation will be measured. So, there can’t be any hidden variable to determine the outcome. Whether we get the left or right shoe, or the left or right glove, the resu…
On the contrary, a series of groundbreaking experiments have demonstrated that Bell's Inequality holds, which is incompatible with any local hidden variable theory (and what you are saying here is a local hidden-variable theory.) Non-local hidden-variable theories are just as counter-intuitive as any of the conventional interpretations of quantum mechanics, which is not surprising, as they also have to satisfy Bell's inequality.
I have no opinion on what this says about free will, though I suspect that whatever it does, it is not much.
See, for example, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAXxSKifgtU
Re: Photons, Quasars and the Possibility of Free Will
#243Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Its pretty easy to argue that this is impossible. Yep! It is very likely that this is impossible. >you would need a computer running a model of the world at the sub-atomic level and somehow running it faster than the world itself unfolds. I'm 100% sure that would be impossible. I'm not 100% sure. The universe? Sure. We know that's impossible because of our understanding of physics - we cannot store the amount of inf…
This is called Laplace's Demon. It has been disproven by chaos theory.
>This is called Laplace's Demon.
Pretty close!
Laplace's Demon also talks about seeing the past - which my hypothetical does not. Nor am I concerned with calculating the entire universe, only the portions that would effect human cognition - just that which will be observable. Much of the universe is beyond our light cone, and unless we are in the center of the universe, almost certainly the vast majority is, and none of that needs to be calculated. Severely restricts the requirements vs. Laplace's demon.
>It has been disproven by chaos theory.
Not quite! Chaos theory relies on imperfect information. It does nothing to disprove Laplace's Demon, which involves perfect information. For chaos theory to be applicable, there has to be minor variations between the initial conditions. Chaos theory is not a theory that we cannot predict things because they are unpredictable, it is a theory that says that minor variations at the onset can result in huge differences in the eventual outcome. These problems only exist if you do not have perfect information.
Thermodynamic irreversibility disproves Laplace's Demon's seeing into the past portion. The Copenhagan interpretation of quantum mechanics also puts a nail in the Demon.
Things get interesting if we are ever able to create a 300 qubit quantum computer - at this point, you can perform more calculations in an instant than there are atoms in the known universe. Is that granular enough to accurately determine human behavior?
The whole computer thing is more an aside than anything, though - just providing a hypothetical in which case free will not existing would actually have practical application on how humans live. Without it, I can't think of any reason why we should behave in any other way than we do, regardless of the underlying truth.
Re: Photons, Quasars and the Possibility of Free Will
#244Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is called Laplace's Demon. It has been disproven by chaos theory.
>This is called Laplace's Demon. Pretty close! Laplace's Demon also talks about seeing the past - which my hypothetical does not. Nor am I concerned with calculating the entire universe, only the portions that would effect human cognition - just that which will be observable. Much of the universe is beyond our light cone, and unless we are in the center of the universe, almost certainly the vast majority is, and none…
Lets say you have that 300 qubit quantum computer, and you only need to simulate your own light cone. Trouble is, that quantum computer is also in your light cone. So to accurately simulate your light cone, your simulation has to include itself, recursively. Hence: not going to happen.
Re: Photons, Quasars and the Possibility of Free Will
#245I’m a person who acknowledges everything is deterministic and free will is a facade. The two types of people I’ve encountered who desire the notion of free will: 1) Person with ego who needs to have a belief in free will. 2) Persons who has ego, gets annoyed by free will being a facade and refuses to think about it because “it doesn’t matter” to this person. I’m perplexed if the problem is singular between the two ty…
3) Person who desires it for the sake of personal accountability
I would think that is still either 1) or 2). It all comes down to the ego with accountability.
Re: Photons, Quasars and the Possibility of Free Will
#246Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This is an awkward constraint for a universe designer: isn't a totally deterministic universe much easier and simpler? Huh? Maybe it's natural selection, all the way down, and all the way up. The results aren't at all "random", but they're also not at all designed.
I think he means it would be expensive to inject randomness all the time instead of just letting a rule-based system go from state to state deterministically.
OK, except why are you putting it in those terms?
It just is what it is. There's no reason to think that stuff evolves in the least-expensive way.
And there are rules. What we call laws of physics. It's just that there's lots of wiggle room. At least, if you're lucky enough.
Re: Photons, Quasars and the Possibility of Free Will
#247So many popular science articles have started to commit ontological fallacies like this. Free will obviously exists because we experience it. This question presumes a denial of experience and a claim that really the experience isn't real but instead this other thing that cannot ever be experienced is. What's even the motivation for that? The motivation seems to be to paint an awe-inspiring picture of mystery through…
> Free will obviously exists because we experience it. You seem to be confusing the subjective experience of consciousness with free will. They aren't equivalent. (Free will can be viewed as a conjecture about the relationship of conscious experience with the outside world, but is not synonymous with conscious experience.)
I'm not. If I meant the experience of consciousness I would have said so.
Re: Photons, Quasars and the Possibility of Free Will
#248So many popular science articles have started to commit ontological fallacies like this. Free will obviously exists because we experience it. This question presumes a denial of experience and a claim that really the experience isn't real but instead this other thing that cannot ever be experienced is. What's even the motivation for that? The motivation seems to be to paint an awe-inspiring picture of mystery through…
How do "we experience" free will?
By making choices on one's own accord. This is the only qualifier of Free Will. The argument against Free Will is that this is actually an illusion despite the experience–the argument is a metaphysical one, which can never be known as it's circumscribed in the noumena.
Re: Photons, Quasars and the Possibility of Free Will
#249Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is called compatibilism and yeah it seems to be a mainstream view in the academic debate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatibilism https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/
More than mainstream, it's the majority view among philosophers (59% Compatibilists, the rest even split among 3 other possibilities): https://philpapers.org/surveys/results.pl
I wonder if it is mainstream because it is functional rather than because it mirrors reality. The ability to ascribe a moral weight to a choice and then punish or reward an individual for that choice, resolves issues such as nudging people toward "appropriate" behaviour, enacting some vengeance against people who do harm to others, etc. It appears to me to be a neat legal fiction but, perhaps, not the most effective tool.
Re: Photons, Quasars and the Possibility of Free Will
#250Earlier quoted context omitted.
To get rid of the randomness you have to have prepared the result of every decision that is currently attributed to randomness in a big lookup table.
Why would that be necessary if there are local deterministic propagation rules, that have been there since the beginning?
Because local, deterministic rules don't agree with experimental observations as far as I understand quantum physics. You can have either local, or deterministic, but not both without superdeterminism, i.e. the giant lookup table, or instant communication.