John Conway – The Free Will Lectures (2009) [video]
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Re: John Conway – The Free Will Lectures (2009) [video]
#2I'm very much surprised to hear philosophical gems in this talk. If you like these thoughts, you'll like some of Alan Watts' lectures, too.
Re: John Conway – The Free Will Lectures (2009) [video]
#3I’ve heard rumours of a course of five or six lectures Conway did many years ago (before he went to Princeton). The goal is to prove Gödel’s incompleteness theorem but somehow using geometry in some way. I think you need to allow comparing two lines and knowing which is longer (and this foundational thing is hard or maybe impossible) in some sense. I don’t know what is left of eg Gödel numbering or the formal languages stuff because I’ve only heard vague descriptions of this.
I believe the contents of this course were lost to time but I’d like to be surprised.
Re: John Conway – The Free Will Lectures (2009) [video]
#4The HN crowd from my impression wants to deeply think of themselves as being in control of how their life transpired. I'm an outlier and I think free will is an illusion. Not only do I think everything is fated beyond our control but I have the belief that society would function better if people were educated young about understanding the concept of determinism and why we don't have control over how life transpires. Fundamentally we're living in a judgement & punishment system of society because religion adopted the stance of people being in control instead of what we describe as evil being a product of God. I think a society that replaces judgement & punishment with rehabilitation would be fundamentally just. I'm curious if society will evolve or stay unchanging but I think it likely won't be in my lifetime.
Re: John Conway – The Free Will Lectures (2009) [video]
#5The HN crowd from my impression wants to deeply think of themselves as being in control of how their life transpired. I'm an outlier and I think free will is an illusion. Not only do I think everything is fated beyond our control but I have the belief that society would function better if people were educated young about understanding the concept of determinism and why we don't have control over how life transpires.…
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Re: John Conway – The Free Will Lectures (2009) [video]
#6The HN crowd from my impression wants to deeply think of themselves as being in control of how their life transpired. I'm an outlier and I think free will is an illusion. Not only do I think everything is fated beyond our control but I have the belief that society would function better if people were educated young about understanding the concept of determinism and why we don't have control over how life transpires.…
"society would function better if people were educated young about understanding the concept of determinism and why we don't have control"
My life got better after I rid myself from those thoughts. I firmly believe, they are dangerous.
Re: John Conway – The Free Will Lectures (2009) [video]
#7The HN crowd from my impression wants to deeply think of themselves as being in control of how their life transpired. I'm an outlier and I think free will is an illusion. Not only do I think everything is fated beyond our control but I have the belief that society would function better if people were educated young about understanding the concept of determinism and why we don't have control over how life transpires.…
"society would function better if people were educated young about understanding the concept of determinism and why we don't have control" My life got better after I rid myself from those thoughts. I firmly believe, they are dangerous.
Intelligence is dangerous as well.
Re: John Conway – The Free Will Lectures (2009) [video]
#8The HN crowd from my impression wants to deeply think of themselves as being in control of how their life transpired. I'm an outlier and I think free will is an illusion. Not only do I think everything is fated beyond our control but I have the belief that society would function better if people were educated young about understanding the concept of determinism and why we don't have control over how life transpires.…
Yes, free will is an illusion, but a small amount of research into Quantum Physics will convince you that outcomes have a purely random component.
Re: John Conway – The Free Will Lectures (2009) [video]
#9The HN crowd from my impression wants to deeply think of themselves as being in control of how their life transpired. I'm an outlier and I think free will is an illusion. Not only do I think everything is fated beyond our control but I have the belief that society would function better if people were educated young about understanding the concept of determinism and why we don't have control over how life transpires.…
I am certainly not holding my breath for society to bite the bullet and accept this. The only way I could see any kind of transformation happening (in the US, at least) is if the sitting president were to physically say "Free will is not a thing, and because of that I'm implementing these reformations". I think that would be enough to get _a_ percentage of the populace at least talking/thinking about it (if not a large percentage).
Re: John Conway – The Free Will Lectures (2009) [video]
#10The HN crowd from my impression wants to deeply think of themselves as being in control of how their life transpired. I'm an outlier and I think free will is an illusion. Not only do I think everything is fated beyond our control but I have the belief that society would function better if people were educated young about understanding the concept of determinism and why we don't have control over how life transpires.…
Yes, free will is an illusion, but a small amount of research into Quantum Physics will convince you that outcomes have a purely random component.
Just because we can't determine why something happens doesn't mean its not predetermined. Every RNG gets its seed somehow, I don't see how we can be so sure that there is absolutely _zero_ cause for a given effect.