The Magic Box of Free Will

It was almost 9 pm on a Friday. Appreciate the effort!
Be reassured, they don't pay me to talk about this particular stuff, fortunately (but unfortunately for you).

If we see something, we never say that rather than "seeing" something, we merely experienced a computation. Therefore, if we chose something as a consequence of a computation we nevertheless "chose" something.

I forgot to add, that hard-core free-will-deniers cannot call themssleves free-thinkers. It would be like atheists calling themselves religious.

Stimulating exchanges with GnosticAtheist are acknowledged.

(a special dedication to MissAnthropic66)

Category:

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Tags:

• free
• will
• determinism
• causality
• computation
• brain
• choice
• duality
• physics
• papackar
• GnosticAtheist
• g0at
• dendrophilian

[ungnestsun]

The big flaw I see is that you falsely claim that the decision is made without external influence. You claim that this is accomplished by observing the computation during a time interval small enough to avoid external input. Despite this claim the system can still be seen to have been externally influenced. It has memory. This memory is the result of inputs obtained outside the small dt window. The deterministic system then performs an action based on the available memories.

[ungnestsun]

...cont

I defy you to take an action or formulate any thought with absolutely no traceable physical influence, accumulated knowledge or social interaction. Even a perceived involuntary action has identifiable origins. A piece of data(memory) accumulated, despite it overwhelming temporal remoteness, is never the less an external cause to the free will machine. This is true regardless of how small of a time window the necessary calculation needed to manifest a decision fits into.

[schrodcat]

"I defy you to take an action or formulate any thought with [...] no traceable physical influence."

You're absolutely right. In fact I wouldn't hypothesize free will in the absence of a "reason" (traceable physical influence) to an action, or I wouldn't call it "will" at all.

"A piece of data(memory) accumulated [...] is never the less an external cause."

Memory in and of itself is just a tape, of course, that wasn't an issue. Simulation of consequences and unbiased selection isn't memory.

[schrodcat]

"You claim [the decision without external influence] is accomplished by observing the computation during a time interval small enough to avoid external input. [T]he system can still be seen to have been externally influenced"

It isn't my claim. It's that DURING the computation there's no external influence, AND that the computation foresees the consequences of different outcomes (to some degree).

"The deterministic system then performs an action based on the available memories"

And new data.

[unassumption]

@schrodcat

Computation must forsee the outcome on the basis of something - memory, programming, input, whatever - that ultimately originated externally. I doubt a real system would work like this machine so its all meaningless anyway, especially with no definition of free will to test it against.

[unassumption]

The information required for the computations originally came from outside the box. Something external and prior to and nesicarily outside the control of the box must have created it, be it a designer or some natural process, and this is outside the box. The inputs, memory, programming, and anything else in the box, ultimately come from outside the box, before the box, and outside the box's range of options.

[scoopapa]

...they have to invoke the supernatural to do away with the influence that the laws of reality place on any process that goes on within them. Any process that behaves according to laws is influenced / determined by those laws (pretty much by definition). Any process that doesn't behave according to laws is supernatural.

[scoopapa]

I would say that the laws of physics that define the computations are the "outside influence" acting on the system. That is to say, the very fact that deterministic forces define the process makes it not free will, because they are a force that is acting on the outcome. Most free-will deniers insist that the decision making process of humans can't be "merely neurons". They aren't saying there is different sort of arrangement of matter that is really making the decisions...

[schrodcat]

"They say a random subatomic particle can trigger a whole sequence of alphanumeric..."

We are clearly not understanding each other. Yours really sounds like the creationist abuse that "hey nothing can come from random". Let me say this clearly! When talking about randomness I was challenging your incredulity position that it can ever be of any use, and I was not fixating free will to its emergence. I was also questioning your premise and scientifically dubious assumption that Laplace is actual.

[schrodcat]

Honestly, your long dissertation about human psychology is entertaining but frankly beyond the scope of the discussion. I don't think in this video I've pursued "paranormal cause and effect" and "pretty silly superstitious nonsense", so I don't care that much about your opinion on the human race.

"subatomic particles act in ways that are predictable but not precisely known."

This confirms to me that you have a gigantic hole for what concerns understanding Physics.