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I was into a choose your own adventure books when I was a kid, there was one in particular that you are told in the beginning that there is a perfect ending but you can’t get there by choice. There was no path in the book that got you to that page. You had to just decide to not follow the rules and turn to that page.
I think I remember that one, unless it’s a reoccurring element in choose your own adventures. It was about ice cream and parallel universes or time travel or something right?
Had aliens in it. They were abducting sentients from all over to try to see if anyone knew how to get to space-paradise.
You need a starship to penetrate the barrier at the centre of the galaxy.
It’s not the book that OOP was thinking of, but you’re probably thinking of Meanwhile by Jason Shiga.
Yep, that’s the one. Remember I picked it up in the library years ago because of the cover saying any path is correct. I remember If you open to the page not connected to anything it shows the main character riding a colossal squid with no context.
How would you know when to turn to that page though?
If it tells you at the start to turn to that page and you do, does it tell you the story from 80-90% of the way through? Or is it a totally new short story since you haven’t started yet?
Because it was on like page 24 and you read page 23. So you knew it was there you just couldn’t find a way to get there. Also the first sentence was something like “you figured it out!”.
Thats a very META choose your own adventure. I like it.
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Such a clever use of the medium. I love this sort of brilliance.
From all the discussions I’ve read about Free Will, I’m convinced the term actually doesn’t mean anything at all. What would a world with free will look like? What would a world without free will look like? How would a person with/without it behave? Would there be any tangible difference between them?
As far as I can tell, free will is supposed to be a property of a person, which may or may not have something to do with physics, either everybody has it or nobody has it, and nobody has a definition that would let them measure it (without reducing the question to a disagreement over semantics). I think that whether someone believes in free will is a trick question; you can’t believe or disbelieve in a something that isn’t even a real concept to begin with.
It’s like the “are we living in a simulation” question. It’s impossible to prove or disprove and ultimately does not affect our lives in any way that we can control. Just a thought experiment.
It may be possible to prove if one day we can prove whether universe is or isn’t deterministic.
It can in theory be disproved - if we ever manage to prove that universe is deterministic, free will by definition cannot exist.
Not necessarily, even if everything is determined randomly we still end up without free will, because then it’s not us that somehow introduce the randomness from both outside and within the system, it is randomness itself that makes us
Nah, that’s just your thought process. As far as I know, if universe is proven to be undeterministic, free will remains unproven and undisproven.
Eh, maybe, maybe not.
What is the definition of free will that is only possible in a non-deterministic universe? Is non-determinism the only requirement for a universe to qualify as having free will?
What is the definition of free will that is only possible in a non-deterministic universe?
If the universe is deterministic, every particle has a mathematically determinable path, meaning you can fully predict where each particle will be in a billion years. Our thoughts and everything are carried by neurons in our brain, as is our will. So if the universe is deterministic, every neuron had to fire at exactly the same moment it did and it could’ve never happened otherwise, meaning every thought and action is predetermined.
Is non-determinism the only requirement for a universe to qualify as having free will?
No idea.
Is non-determinism the only requirement for a universe to qualify as having free will?
He’s not making any claims about that argument. He is saying that determinism implies no free will.
Edit: meant to reply to Chicken.
meaning every thought and action is predetermined.
Sure, but that isn’t a definition of free will, and it is unclear why this should have something to do with free will. Whatever it is, why can’t you still have it even as a part of a deterministic system? A definition that allowed this wouldn’t be surprising to me, and some people do seem to support such definitions.
No idea.
This reinforces my point; I don’t think people talking about free will have a very specific idea of how what they are talking about relates to anything else.
I find it very clear. If you can’t really decide because everything was already decided, you don’t have free will. A definition that grass is meat wouldn’t be surprising to me either. It wouldn’t be correct, but it wouldn’t be surprising. I wasn’t talking about what free will is, I was talking about one specific case of what it isn’t.
If you can’t really decide because everything was already decided
You can demarcate the boundary of decisions however you like. My decisions can still be called decisions while being part of a larger system that those are inherited from, or not, depending on how you arbitrarily choose to use the word. Either way it doesn’t change what is actually happening.
The problem with “free will” is that it isn’t used to make claims about what is actually happening. It is undefined, just a vehicle for semantic assertions.
I wasn’t talking about what free will is,
I don’t think you can, because it isn’t anything.
Are you trying to sound really deep? “I don’t think you can, because it isn’t anything.” - what kind of pseudo-intellectual stuff is that?
Disagree. Look up compatibilism
There are so many cases like that. For example, define intelligence. If you try to, you’ll run in loops of equally undefined abstract concepts.
And that’s basically what philosophy is about.
Even though intelligence isn’t precisely defined, people still have enough of an idea about it to have some consensus about how it should be measured. An animal that keeps running into a wire fence trying to get through is showing less intelligence than an animal that notices an opening a few feet away and walks through that instead. Free will is much less defined than even that.
Well, intelligence is defined as what the intelligence test measures.
But lets try a different one: sentience. Or consciousness.
Well, intelligence is defined as what the intelligence test measures.
Right, so where’s the Free Will test?
sentience. Or consciousness.
IMO these are a bit worse defined than intelligence, but still more so than free will. I don’t think it would mean anything to say I don’t believe in free will, but when I say I don’t believe in consciousness, the delusion I deny is one people actually have. The state of your brain is only that, a state, but people are possessed by an overpowering intuition of having experience that is independent from the physical reality and data structure.
Free will on the other hand isn’t even a delusion, it isn’t anything more than rhetoric.
Same as conciousnes. That concept only consists to differentiate between groups of living beings to justify eating some of them. (Disclaimer, I too eat meat, but using conciousnes/sentience as a justification is just a rethoric, or more plainly a lie).
I think the the divide in this is Thought vs Action. You can choose to think of whatever. Imagine things whether possible or not.
To be able to act on those thoughts could be an entirely different thing.
But even with thoughts, we’re still limited by our humanity. For you and I, we could likely find common ground on many things. Come to similar conclusions. But trying this with any other animal and it all falls apart.
Absolutely right. There are of course definitions of free will that would grant us free will, like one could argue that a traffic light has free will, but there is no reason to believe that humans are not just reducible to a set of (complicated) biological processes. People of all religions and even plenty of atheists believe that somehow human consciousness is something special that transcends the material laws of the universe. That is what most people still seem to think, so it seems. Even I would dare to say that most people, including you, who know that this is likely false still have some deep rooted belief in the illusion. You may not believe in truly free will, but that is only the top of the iceberg part of your mind. The rest is deeply invested in the notion.
Interestingly Buddhists have as one of their central tenets that there is not only no free will, but not even a self. The idea of a self is nothing more than an idea. It has a function, but is inherently an empty construct. What it means to be a human can only be experienced in the moment. If one looks closely enough at that experience, the illusion of free will can be relented even at its deepest root. Paradoxically, I can report, this is incredibly freeing.
turns to page 73
A team has been dispatched to your location.
Weirdly, I feel like the best argument to free will comes from Dr. Malcolm (famously acted in a pervy way by Jeff Goldblum) who talked about chaos theory. Complex systems have an underlying order. But also, the reverse of that is true, in that simple systems can lead to complex behaviour. Or to borrow a subreddit term, “never tell me the odds.”
That’s not an argument for free will. Chaos is just a mathematical property of certain systems.
We can mathematically prove that the complexity of certain systems means that their outcomes are unpredictable if you look far enough into the future because of exponentially how many possible outcomes there are.
That’s all chaos theory is, the idea that even if the universe behaves according to deterministic or probabilistic physics, and we could map the position and properties of every single particle in the universe, we still wouldn’t necessarily be able to predict the future in X years.
That’s not an argument for free will though, tons and tons and tons of relatively simple systems (like the famous three body problem) that do not involve free will produce chaotic outcomes.
Thanks for bringing up Sexy Beefcake Dr Malcolm.
Right emergence. That doesn’t mean that you couldn’t in theory predict exactly what a human being would do if you had perfect measurements.
To me we should stop worrying about free will and worry about agency. You have more agency than a slave, a billionaire has more than you. We know that people have agency.
Slams book shut in disgust
When I first played Life Is Strange I already knew about the choice at the end, but without context it didn’t really mean much to me. I thought that over the course of the game I’d come to prefer one option over the other.
By the time the final mission started I was still very much on the fence, so I went and choose the third option: Closing the game and leaving it’s characters in a limbo of uncertainty
Sam Harris and Jay Garfield have a great podcast about free will. Saint Augustine came up with the idea of free agency in order to get God off the hook for Eve’s fall. Fascinating stuff.
Pretty sure that “free will” is just our monkey brains attempting to rationalize what we mostly do based on instincts.
For anyone who’s skeptical about ‘free will’ being illusion, please read consider this book “Free Will” by Sam Harris, it will change allot.
Edit: there is another one, “Predictably Irrational”. This does not deal with the matter directly but can help developing a opinion on the matter.
Lol I am going to excersise my free will and burn that book at the stake… or did I really have free will? Maybe I was predetermined to do that since the beginning of the universe. Maybe free will is the
friends we makeatoms we interact with all along!predeterminism or fatalism is illogical.
https://breakingthefreewillillusion.com/determinism-vs-fatalism-infographic/
oh yeah that’s good content baby
Due to quantum mechanics, we know this is not true. There is a level of uncertainty and probability and the smallest level of our universe. The deterministic model of the universe has been put to rest a century ago.
Although it’s worth mentioning that randomness doesn’t make “free will” real.
I chose the worst possible time to read this whole comment section. I’m high as fuck.
Yup! But i don’t think we can use the idea that the universe is predetermined.
I did see another commenter mention super determinism but i don’t have enough knowledge on it to comment on it and its relevancy.
There is a level of uncertainty and probability and the smallest level of our universe. The deterministic model of the universe has been put to rest a century ago.
This is true, what we instead have is a probabilistic model of the universe, which still obeys very clear statistical rules and probabilities, also seemingly leaving no room for free will.
A dice roll doesn’t have more free will just because it’s random.
The fact that we have a probabilistic model of the universe does not proof the universe is non-deterministic. It may just be computationally irreducible and therefore best modeled through probability. Quantum mechanics’ use of probability does not proof that the universe throws dice. There are many explanations possible, but the short of it is: we don’t know and quantum mechanics doesn’t give us the answer.
No. On average things are average. So while not everything can be fully predicted you don’t usually need to. A laser, a transistor, a diode are all devices that depend on QM theories being true. We have lasers, we have screens, we have neat flashlights, we have computers. Just because we can’t say everything doesn’t mean we can say nothing. Every time your lungs fill it is only because vacuums are unlikely, not impossible just unlikely.
Uncertainty doesn’t save free will, at most it sets limits to it.
I think you are not getting it quite right. Those “low level” things are predetermined. Where you get the uncertainty is that there is always a bigger or smaller picture.
Determinism and uncertainty are both perfectly compatible with each other.
- if you agree to this hypothesis, turn to page 72 70% of the times
- if you disagree, turn to page 72 40% of the times
- if you’re viewing this through polarized glasses, turn to page 72 80% of the times
- if you’re an electron, rotate 360° to page 72
Unless superdeterminism is true. But does it make a difference anyway? “Free will” is overrated.
The fact that quantum mechanics models physical processes stochastically does not mean that there is free will neither that the universe is non-deterministic. This statement is strictly true.
To be unfunny:
The whole idea of a balls hitting each other universe went out the window when we hit the quantum era. We have had to adapt to a reality where matter is somehow a statistical phenomena, and the details are always hidden from us in one way or another. Entanglement is another confusing thing, and its super common - not just some rare phenomena in a lab, it’s more of a fact of particle interaction
So our brains are somehow statisical-chemical-electric sugar powered supercomputers that have entangled state. And the brain actually stretches across the body, with various chemistry being produced throughout
In short, nobody has any idea how brains really work, it’s way more elaborate than current AI. It’s also likely impossible to fully simulate a brain - it would have to BE a brain
There’s a separate question about the nature of randomness in the universe, but all we can know is that follows a normal distribution over time. It seems truly random from our point of view. Of course, who’s to say if God likes to fudge the numbers a little
Yes, but none of that refutes the argument that we lack free will. The trillions of interactions leading up to an ‘action’ on our part can be random, determined, or some mixture - but they still ‘cause’ our next action, rather than our 'free will ’ causing the action. If you believe in free will, you believe in a magical quality we possess which is somehow neither random (else it wouldnt be ‘will’) nor determined (else it wouldn’t be ‘free’)
I personally find all discussion around free will annoying. Whether or not I have free will I still have to decide to do shit. I can’t just go on autopilot.
