Free Will

[Queso]

But who says everything in the universe is inevitable (i.e. deterministic), and what support can they offer for such a claim?

 

every action has an equal and opposite reaction,

it appears we're just

Doing That.

[Tarantism]

right, but if everything is inevitable, which hasnt been mathamatically shown, then there is no longer cause/effect, there is just effect.

[Queso]

Just effect?

 

That makes absolutely no sense.

 

There's actions and recations everywhere

it's everything.

[arkain101]

The purpose of time?

 

Time is not directly purposeful. Its kind of like gravity. An effect that results from the act of other causes.

 

It is also flow illusionary by the use of our memory. When you go down to the smallest detail, there is a frequency. The frequency has space, between energy blips. Each blip is a creation bursting out of the constant of infinity.

[Kriminal99]

Free will is the ability to freely chose between similar alternatives. If there was and apple and orange on the table, free will would allow one to chose either alternative. If one prefers the apple or orange one still has will or choice but not free will, because some unconscious robotic type bias is controlling part of the will.

 

The concepts of will and free will allows human to depart from the robotic nature of animal instinct. I can force my body to eat or drink too much or I can starve myself. The future is not defined by the wiring of the brain, at least in the short term. In both example, the body and brain will eventually try to restore balance. Maybe this part of the robot is good.

 

This is the one thing I wonder about as opposed to strict determinism, but I lean towards determinism. How do you know that you don't choose the apple because 3 years ago you got a stomach virus after eating an orange and you saw a car similar to the one that you saw that day and it reminded you of it and slightly triggered your gag response when seeing the orange or because you once ate an apple on a hot date and the apple was better than apples you had tried before and now you forever loved apples over oranges or for any other equally or more complex reason?

 

Also @ billg my question is similar to the one addressed at hydrogenbond, how do you know that the processing of information and exertion upon the world is not some deterministic self checking mechanism that we simply ride along with and watch?

[HydrogenBond]

Also @ billg my question is similar to the one addressed at hydrogenbond, how do you know that the processing of information and exertion upon the world is not some deterministic self checking mechanism that we simply ride along with and watch?

 

The distinction between free will and will does indicate that unconscious processes are often at work turning free will into just will. The problem with the deterministic philosophy is that it would imply one could not learn to like both the apple and orange and therefore achieve free will. If one starts with the nebulus will to do it, one can learn free will inspite of unconscious bias or determinism.

 

For example, if one's choice of an apple or orange is deeply connected to a personal experience that is deeply felt, one, with a lot of work could trace the cause and affect back to when both were good foods. In that case the determinism of birth was to have this original free choice/will. While the dertiminism of that fateful day was to help lead one to an understanding of their free will which comes with life's experiences and wisdom.

[pgrmdave]

You are taking it to too high a level, a psychological level. Determinism still allows for you to like the apple and the orange, it simply states that all events are the direct result of all those events before it. This doesn't mean that you saw a scary clown once so you'll always be scared of clowns, it means that if the universe is in state A, and state A yields state B, then state A will always yield state B (or rather, would have always yielded state B, as part of state A would be the time). Taking determinism to a higher level is like taking the Uncertainty Principle to a higher level - it doesn't work.

[Kriminal99]

I agree. Things considered random are often deterministic but a small change in factors we can see that contribute to it cause alot of change in the outcome. So you might constantly be processing past experiences and whichever had the most impact on you or you processed at the last second, would determine your decision. IE it might be random the way tossing a dice is random, yet still deterministically based on your past experiences. Thats why I asked how can hydrogenbond be sure its not deterministic... if it were so random it wouldn't be easy to see it was deterministic even if it was.

[Buffy]

if it were so random it wouldn't be easy to see it was deterministic even if it was.

That's not quite true. Random inputs are bounded within the system in which they exist. A simple example of this is a dice-driven game of Monopoly: It can have random inputs (and if you insist, I'll use beta-decay dice, so that it is truly non-deterministic input), but it hardly "decays into pure entropy": it behaves as a highly consistent and constrained system, with completely unpredictable outcomes.

 

Its not too different with neurons firing really: outcomes are consistent but there is a random element that does have a *real* effect in at least some cases, even if it is constrained by the structure of the system: it is *not* necessarily predictable.

 

I know this topic gets beaten to death, but for me there are two key misconsceptions that get in peoples way:

• Quantum effects cannot be manifested at a macro level: This is disproven by all these devices we've had around for decades like beta-decay random generators. There is lots of evidence of effects of natural decay that very directly affect macro systems, and Brownian Motion is also connected to quantum non-determinism.
  
• Quantum effects are only believed to be non-deterministic because we don't know enough about them. This is a remote possiblility of course, but it would require many fundamental and well validated elements of quantum theory to be disproven. You can argue this one, but you've got no evidece to back it up.

 

Okay, so back to Free Will, which I think is actually much more interesting and is only tickled by random sampling inputs, but is *primarily* an effect of evolving logical systems: the underlying randomness is a *tool* used by neural nets and evolutionary algorithms to effect the generation of new rules for the system. THAT's free will in my book and is *driven* by what you know and what you think.

 

I believe that a lot of what is going on here simply misses the notion that very complex logic systems that incorporate these technologies are already doing pretty incredible things (like driving across the desert without human input) even though they are amazingly primitive.

 

Poisson distributed,

Buffy

[Kriminal99]

How does your statement contradict what I said? If you are choosing between an apple and an orange obviously the possible outcomes are either you eat the apple, or you eat the orange. What I was saying is that the choice can be made deterministicly and still be more complicated than "you never eat apples cause you had a bad experience with one in childhood"

 

Theres no evidence to back up that quantum effects are truly deterministic, but what people who refer to your "misconception" are pointing out about is that we have no evidence to back up that they are non deterministic either. Without sidetracking, I'll just say that:

Prob(Everything|Were not in kansas any more Todo) = .5

[pgrmdave]

Quantum effects are only believed to be non-deterministic because we don't know enough about them. This is a remote possiblility of course, but it would require many fundamental and well validated elements of quantum theory to be disproven. You can argue this one, but you've got no evidece to back it up.

 

This is what I believe, but I have neither the knowledge of physics or of mathematics, nor the money and equipment to even begin to test my ideas.