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The clockwork universe: is free will an illusion?

theguardian.com

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Re: The clockwork universe: is free will an illusion?

#71

Post by kazoomonger »

jakobnissen wrote: post #66
danbruc wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they _do_ have something to do with _actual_ free will. But this is the problem right there, you call it actual free will and someone believing in magical free will will deny this and call magical free will actual free will. Sure, one can do this, overload the term, and figure out from context what kind of actual free will is meant in each instance. But would it not be much easier to give up on the term free…

It's similar to how both people who believe in phlogiston and people who believe in chemistry call fire "fire" - or how people who believe in the life spark and people who don't call life "life", or how people call light "light" regardless of whether they believe in the ether, the standard model or something else. No matter the academic discussion of what free will is or isn't, we still have to address the fact that…

> the fact that dominoes and animals and people appear to behave according to different rules

The crux of the issue is that you're wrong here. Humans have this vanity that we're special, but we're really not. We behave according to the same rules, we're just relatively complex systems within those rules compared to dominoes.

When most people think of "free will", what they actually mean is "unpredictability". That's why nobody thinks dominoes have free will, some people think animals have free will, and lots of people think humans have free will. It's much harder to predict human behavior from the point of view of a human than dominoes, but to a superintelligent AI, we're just dominoes.

> accountability and responsibility ... morally blameworthy.

It's actually very simple and doesn't require any such notions. If there is a thing that is causing you or others harm, you act to prevent that thing from causing harm. There's no difference between a murderer and a deadly snake in that regard. I'm not going to ponder whether or not its morally blameworthy as I remove it from my house.

Re: The clockwork universe: is free will an illusion?

#72

Post by dotsam »

As we can't train ourselves *not* to see an optical illusion (even if we know it is an illusion), I think we're also stuck with the experience of free will, even if we conclude it is an illusion. But like illusions, we can use our knowledge, rather than our experience, to guide our response to the illusion. Revising the criminal justice system would be a good outcome, and I am glad to see this mentioned!

Re: The clockwork universe: is free will an illusion?

#73

Post by AlexandrB »

anvandare wrote: post #68

Things either have a cause, and then they are causal. Or they have no cause, and then they are random. But in the opinions of some, the laws of physics stop at the neck, beyond which things are neither causal nor non-causal nor random nor non-random but 'free'. Whatever that might mean. (Apparently it's some sort of unmoving mover which moves itself and interacts with the universe without being interacted upon by the…

> Things either have a cause, and then they are causal. Or they have no cause, and then they are random.

This is probably the most succinct statement that sums up the problem with "free will". As soon as you start to try to define "free will" in terms of the natural sciences you run into insurmountable contradictions that suggest that it must be an illusion.

Edit: I wonder what proportion of posters here believe both that "free will" is not an illusion and that "strong AI" is possible.

Re: The clockwork universe: is free will an illusion?

#74

Post by nonameiguess »

monkeycantype wrote: post #35

You 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 would…

This is hilarious. I had a nice email back and forth with Daniel Dennett about 15 years ago, but I knew who he was and initiated contact on purpose to talk about something he was an expert on. Good to see he is still approachable.

Re: The clockwork universe: is free will an illusion?

#75

Post by lambda_obrien »

zwkrt wrote: post #22
Shaddox wrote: post #14

I 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…

Based on your posting here I’m guessing you actually have enough freedom to be doing almost anything you want but you’ve “trapped” yourself in some awful situation that allows you to abdicate responsibility based on how terrible it is for you.

You're probably right, whether we have free will or not, we still cannot tell the future, so we should act as if we have it. This poster is clearly conflating their own life situation, which might limit them somehow, with the universe at large. I could get divorced and disown my son and run off to another place to start another life, but I "can't" do that because of my own morals and limitations for what I'm willing to do. The OP could do a similar thing, but chooses not to because of whatever thing is limiting then from that decision.

Re: The clockwork universe: is free will an illusion?

#76

Post by AnimalMuppet »

danbruc wrote: post #18
senectus1 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The standard argument against free will is sound. I must have missed that memo :-P

Just try to define what free will actually means and see things fall apart. The entire idea of free will makes no sense to begin with if one thinks clearly about it.

I suspect you're wrong. But you made the claim, could you supply some of this "clear thinking"?

Re: The clockwork universe: is free will an illusion?

#77

Post by AlexandrB »

unknown_apostle wrote: post #38

I 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 w…

> 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.

Isn't the drug example a contradiction? If my brain was healthy ("free") when I decided to take drugs, why would the resulting drugged state be less "free"? After all, it was my "free" choice to take the drugs and alter my mental state.

Edit: Also the definition of "mental illness" is somewhat nebulous and not historically fixed. Homosexuality was at one point called a mental illness.

Re: The clockwork universe: is free will an illusion?

#79

Post by coldtea »

>“That’s free will: were you to rewind the tape of world history, to the instant just before you made your decision, with everything in the universe exactly the same, you’d have been able to make a different one.”

Huh? Why?

Shouldn't it be the opposite?

As much as I have a personal will, I will continue to will the same thing if we replay the situation -- all other things being exactly the same.

I don't chose something at random. I express who I am, based on my life story in space time.

To make a light example, if I'm a person who prefers Big Macs over Chinese, I will pick a Bic Mac if I'm asked to make such a decision, no matter how many times we rewind and replay the universe state.

Free will is not about me suddenly picking some random alternative. How would that ever express who I am (and thus, my, _my_ personal will?).

What's "free" about this free will since its inexorably tied to my space-time history? Well, it's exactly the fact that it's my space-time history, and can't be altered based on some external factor.

It's not "free" as in arbitrarily changeable, but free as in "expressing me and only me" (that is: my space-time history who made me what I am).

Re: The clockwork universe: is free will an illusion?

#80

Post by jokoon »

coldtea wrote: post #79

> “That’s free will: were you to rewind the tape of world history, to the instant just before you made your decision, with everything in the universe exactly the same, you’d have been able to make a different one.” Huh? Why? Shouldn't it be the opposite? As much as I have a personal will, I will continue to will the same thing if we replay the situation -- all other things being exactly the same. I don't chose someth…

Some people will argue that you are not so exceptional, which is the whole thing about the snowflake argument.

You share most of your specificities with other homo sapiens.

Individualism is a thought system that is centered on liberalism. Watch "the century of the self".

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