I found that playing Rock, Paper, Scissors against an AI opponent demonstrated at least to me that I was not even able to make what I thought were random choices. The only way I could hold the AI to a draw was by using an external source of random numbers.
The clockwork universe: is free will an illusion?
31–40 of 120 posts
Re: The clockwork universe: is free will an illusion?
#32I think self consciousness is the sticking point for a mechanical or probabilistic universe. It exists. It eludes quantifiable definition. It makes no sense in a mechanism. It is central to free will.
Re: The clockwork universe: is free will an illusion?
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
Believing in free will or not are different configurations in your mind, leading to different future outcomes. Who are you to disbelieve in anything?
Only pointing out that there's no meaningful convo to be had at hardware/micro level. IMO there is no free will there. Free will only becomes important on a personal (I do x because it's meaningful to me) or social contexts (I'm responsible for consequences of x action). I doubt the philosophers are trying to say anything about our day to day lives and that's where most of the opposition is coming from (ie no free wi…
This is why the body-mind is said to be the vehicle of the soul. These are all very ancient ideas, determinism especially.
As you suspect, people discussing this misses out on how it's all relative, not so absolute.
Re: The clockwork universe: is free will an illusion?
#34I guess this explains why I feel so trapped. Like a pawn to my own circumstances. To live life is to live in servitude. I'm a slave to my own needs of bread, water and circus. To supply this never-ending need I must serve someone else too. I must serve the needs of my family as well : they want and expect things out of me too. So where does that leave me? A never-ending cycle of busy-bodying. I can't even get mad or…
From experience, this is not a good thought trajectory. Your life is your making.
Re: The clockwork universe: is free will an illusion?
#35You want to make me cringe? remind me that I got into an email conversation on my theory on this topic with an internet stranger and it turned out that person's name was daniel dennett, who I would assume assumed that I knew who he was and that I was an internet fan boy.
I'm not a philosopher, I didn't even know who daniel dennet was, so while certain that my view was covered somewhere long before I was born, I wouldn't know which century, but would guess all of them.
I am the deterministic set of operations and coefficients that calculates my choice. My will is not caged by a deterministic universe, the deterministic universe is the the constraint ensures my choice is the true reflection of who I am, the true has of the private key of my character. A quantum magic spinny wheel doesn't liberate me, it would undermine the integrity of my choice.
Re: The clockwork universe: is free will an illusion?
#36Re: The clockwork universe: is free will an illusion?
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
The debate between "no free will" and "magical supernatural free will" is silly and pointless, and yes, it should have been settled long time ago. But it bugs me that so many people are eager so claim that because magical free will doesn't exist, that means no free will can exist. Compatibilism is not a new idea either. The usual argument is that compatibilists are moving the goal posts, but I simply don't understand…
The usual argument is that compatibilists are moving the goal posts, but I simply don't understand that argument. It is moving the goal post because it just changes the definition of free will into some triviality. I had a choice between apples and oranges and I picked the apple because I like apples more. Sure, you can call this free will if you want to but what is the point? The max function had a choice between 1…
I think decisions presupposing self-consciousness posit an input into the decision making process that doesn’t come from the outside. Surely correlated with the world but not determined by it.
Re: The clockwork universe: is free will an illusion?
#38I personally find it highly likely that the decision mechanism emerges from physical computation in the brain.
However, when we talk about decision mechanisms, we inevitably introduce the question of whether this decision mechanism can work better or worse.
“Free will” may be seen as a computational notion of “health” for this decision mechanism, similar to how we use the term health for our physical bodies. A free will is a healthy will, in the sense that our decision mechanism is not broken by e.g. drugs, electrodes or mental illness.
Second, many people, myself included, hold the assumption that the ordering between options A and B is not purely subjective. If there exists an ordering of options which is objective and external to the agent of choice, then the choices that are actually made can be compared to that external ordering. Free will in this sense denotes the observation that our choices may reflect an ordering which is significantly different from the ordering imposed by reality. This is not a scientific claim and cannot be disproven scientifically. Holding this assumption is in fact a choice.
Re: The clockwork universe: is free will an illusion?
#39From what I understand of the Many-Worlds Theory, if it's correct, we can have both 'free will' and 'determinism': a man orders pizza, in 90% of possible futures he chooses a Margherita which is his favorite, but in 10% he orders something else.
Re: The clockwork universe: is free will an illusion?
#40> _A growing chorus of scientists and philosophers argue that free will does not exist. Could they be right?_
Most likely not. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...