Benjamin Libet's argument against free will is being questioned • Hacker News Board

Re: Benjamin Libet's argument against free will is being questioned

#61

Post by sutterbomb » Sat, Nov 09, 2019, 1:23 AM UTC

Gibbon1 wrote: post #54

jknoepfler wrote: post #42

Ah, the hallmark of 20th century pseudo-intellectualism: operationalize an ill-defined concept (e.g. "free will," "rationality," "empathy"), produce a dubiously reproducible experiment, maybe write a controversial paperback making ridiculously hyperbolic claims, let the press go apeshit, $$$. Other flavors include: Pluck a plausible, edgy explanation out of a vast hypothesis space (e.g. evolutionary psychology), over…

A good question to ask does the answer to any of these nebulous ill defined questions have any non socio-politcial consequences? If the answer is no, be very very dubious.

The concept of free will has tremendous implications for oursocio-policial world, such as in criminal justice or even taxation.

Re: Benjamin Libet's argument against free will is being questioned

#62

Post by etbebl » Sat, Nov 09, 2019, 1:45 AM UTC

rpmisms wrote: post #3

I don't see how the original experiment "debunked" free will. Wouldn't the decision-making process spark neural activity?

For me it more lays plain the inherent contradictions of (this version of) free will than directly disproves it. What would it mean if the conscious decision to do something came before any neural activity reflecting that?

(Dualism!)

Re: Benjamin Libet's argument against free will is being questioned

#63

Post by cortesoft » Sat, Nov 09, 2019, 1:56 AM UTC

armitron wrote: post #56

cortesoft wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this an inherent problem with looking at brain activity for this sort of thing? Suppose free will is real, and a person makes the decision and then takes the action. The brain waves marking that the decision was made HAVE to show up before the person is aware that they have made a decision, because both their awareness has to be 'signaled' by a brain wave coming from a decision. The deciding process, the decisi…

You are mixing up definitions. You use "you" to mean "brain". Under that model, of course you can't disprove free will. But the model you are using is not at all useful, as you illustrate in your confusion. The idea of free will is typically assigned to a "conscious self-model", not just a brain. The self-model generally accepted to be an emergent construct of the brain. Thus, in the "conscious free will" model, if t…

I don't think I follow... even if we think of the "conscious free will" as being an emergent property of the brain, it would still be made up of brain waves within the brain.

What else would free will be but an aspect of your brain? There is nothing else for it to be?

Re: Benjamin Libet's argument against free will is being questioned

#64

Post by Gibbon1 » Sat, Nov 09, 2019, 2:19 AM UTC

sutterbomb wrote: post #61

Gibbon1 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good question to ask does the answer to any of these nebulous ill defined questions have any non socio-politcial consequences? If the answer is no, be very very dubious.

The concept of free will has tremendous implications for oursocio-policial world, such as in criminal justice or even taxation.

Yes but what are the non socio-politcial consequences? There aren't any. Does it matter if a pilot flying a plane has free will or not? No not really.

That's a tell that using any particular answer to this question for policy is a bad idea.

Re: Benjamin Libet's argument against free will is being questioned

#65

Post by toasterlovin » Sat, Nov 09, 2019, 2:48 AM UTC

pharke wrote: post #60

equanimitivity wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“It’s only acausal if you thought that awareness is what causes movement” Exactly, people believed that the thoughts they are aware of when making a decision to move were actually how they decided to move.

Yes, I think the confusion of thoughts with the mind seems to be at the root of much of the controversy surrounding free will. Narrativized thought is not necessary for action although it often accompanies it. Too often we mistake the verbal part of our mind for our whole mind, it is only a part though it happens to be the loudest!

Free will is the non-religious version of believing in souls.

When you examine what people actually mean when they use the term “free will” in the vernacular, they essentially mean something which affects the mind, but which is not the mind. It’s incoherent in light of the fact that the “it” that they’re referring to ceases to exist once the brain in question ceases to function.

Re: Benjamin Libet's argument against free will is being questioned

#66

Post by armitron » Sat, Nov 09, 2019, 3:34 AM UTC

cortesoft wrote: post #63

armitron wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are mixing up definitions. You use "you" to mean "brain". Under that model, of course you can't disprove free will. But the model you are using is not at all useful, as you illustrate in your confusion. The idea of free will is typically assigned to a "conscious self-model", not just a brain. The self-model generally accepted to be an emergent construct of the brain. Thus, in the "conscious free will" model, if t…

I don't think I follow... even if we think of the "conscious free will" as being an emergent property of the brain, it would still be made up of brain waves within the brain. What else would free will be but an aspect of your brain? There is nothing else for it to be?

Think in terms of a layered system (subsumption architecture is useful [1]).

Sure the substrate is the brain and is common to all layers, but the layers are functionally different.

The self-model, "you" is a high-level circuit. The low-level circuits make all decisions and relay the results to the higher levels.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsumption_architecture

[2] https://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=9000

Re: Benjamin Libet's argument against free will is being questioned

#67

Post by NOGDP » Sat, Nov 09, 2019, 4:28 AM UTC

chr1 wrote: post #59

NOGDP wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The first thing that is needed or this to work, is for the part of universe representing the human to be separable from the rest of the universe What do you mean by 'separable'? Humans are a product and part of the universe. > This separability would allow to talk about choice, as it allows to modify or swap the human in question and recompute the future in the same universe where the human may make another choice.…

If universe is deterministic and computable, then it is possible to create a simulation of a part of the universe that would be complex enough to contain humans and would be simple enough to pause computation, make changes to the state, copy the state, etc. So for simplicity i will talk about this simulated universe. Separable here roughly means that to compute further states of a human you need to follow only partic…

> If universe is deterministic and computable, then it is possible to create a simulation of a part of the universe that would be complex enough to contain humans and would be simple enough to pause computation, make changes to the state, copy the state, etc. So for simplicity i will talk about this simulated universe.

I don't see how the 'computable' part is relevant in regards to free will. You can write a program that outputs random numbers that it reads from some source, and you can simulate it by writing another program that outputs random numbers from the same source. The two equivalent programs will generate different numbers, but that doesn't mean they had any choice over the numbers they printed.

> Recomputing with different human shows that different choice was possible in principle.

Recomputing with different human is equivalent to creating an impossible universe. It's impossible to have two different people in the exact same situation at the same point in time in the same deterministic universe. The very action of pausing or modifying the universe from without would make the universe non-deterministic.

> And because running the simulation is equivalent to letting the simulated human to live that means we do not predict, but merely observe the choice.

Who's choice? If the algorithm is making the choice then the humans simulated by such an algorithm would not have any more free will than a video game NPC.

Re: Benjamin Libet's argument against free will is being questioned

#68

Post by istjohn » Sat, Nov 09, 2019, 4:31 AM UTC

empath75 wrote: post #36

kazinator wrote: post #28

If your brain made decisions outside of your free will which you become conscious of after the fact, then that would manifest itself as a frequent conflict: we would often disagree with the action that was taken. Because we don't disagree, it must be something that is integrated with will. Concretely, we are not surprised that our finger moved; we believe we wanted to do that and we agree with that action. Moreover,…

People frequently do things that they don't want to do or didn't plan to do -- most notably drug addicts and alcoholics.

The term for that is akrasia.

Re: Benjamin Libet's argument against free will is being questioned

#69

Post by naasking » Sat, Nov 09, 2019, 5:10 AM UTC

sutterbomb wrote: post #61

Gibbon1 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good question to ask does the answer to any of these nebulous ill defined questions have any non socio-politcial consequences? If the answer is no, be very very dubious.

The concept of free will has tremendous implications for oursocio-policial world, such as in criminal justice or even taxation.

Not really. Presumably a criminal justice system ought to be designed to be effective at rehabilitating and deterring crime. That's a strictly empirical enterprise that needn't concern itself with abstract notions of free will.

The law could of course codify its own definition of free will, which it typically does, but again this need not be affected by outside notions.

Re: Benjamin Libet's argument against free will is being questioned

#70

Post by naasking » Sat, Nov 09, 2019, 5:17 AM UTC

empath75 wrote: post #37

dang wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, but what's a better word? Refuted? The article makes clear that Schurger's counterargument has been generally accepted. Edit: given the link in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21486117 I suppose we can say "questioned".

I don't think it's even refuted. It's just redefining what 'decision' is and using that to somehow make the case for free will. Previously they were saying that the start of the neural activity was when a decision was made, and now they are saying that the decision is only made when a particular threshold is reached, but either way the decision is a result of neural activity that began before the person was conscious…

The assumption that conscious awareness is necessary for an exertion of free will is also a mistake. The original conclusion was chock full of assumptions. No one debated the specifics of the observed data, what is debatable is the meaning of that data.