The article misinterprets the results. Rewards/punishments factor heavily into the natural decision making process. We are taking about emergent phenomenon, not predestination.
Predestination is not determinism
Predestination is just determinism with God as the reason
If you ask me, it doesn’t take decades of study to realise that the concept is fundamentally flawed. There is nothing fundamentally free with humans acting according to their biological desires.
Right? Is there anything that points to “free will” aside from copium? We obviously make decisions based on the unchangeable past. Anecdotally, I recall coming up with this independently in my youth, and have spoken to others who did the same. The concept isn’t difficult. Why is this still discussed?
Because humans hate to admit, that we all are purposeless blobs of matter coagulating out of pure chance.
something something… miracle of life… we’re not just animals… something something… free to be anything you want to be and do anything you want to do and other such things being drilled into our skulls since we’re young
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When people say this makes life meaningless, I’ve tried to explain to people that they still enjoy the suspense and surprise of a movie despite knowing it was filmed in the past. But I always told “that’s not the same”.
Why is this still discussed?
Not to be too snarky about something we both agree on, but it is an amusing question to ask. Without free will, it’s being discussed because it’s being discussed
Sorry, I didn’t mean to ask as why the question of free will was discussed, but rather why the concept of free will is the default over the obvious. I moved around some sentences before posting and didn’t reword that appropriately. Thank you for pointing it out!!
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As of now sure, but you could be taught or brought to a point of understanding where you change your understanding
That’d be because there are people still adamant that they have Free Will, only because they’ve had that drilled into them from a young age, which is an example of their lack of Free Will…
And those who want to state their opinion on the matter, exactly as I am, because they value what others think of them, because that sociable instinct comes in-built.
Most neuroscientists believe humans have at least some degree of free will. So do most philosophers and the vast majority of the general population.
That’s from the article. One guy saying free will is an illusion is not conclusive.
It would be really great for them to pinpoint the instant the causality is suspended, magic choices exempt from causality are made, and causality resumes on an fmri or something. Do you think that’s possible?
Anecdotally, I recall coming up with this independently in my youth, and have spoken to others who did the same. The concept isn’t difficult. Why is this still discussed?
So you came up with this in your youth and that…Doesn’t give you pause to reconsider? Also do you distinguish this concept from similar religious/spiritual concepts like fatalism, and if so…Why?
Yes, it has given me pause to reconsider, but I am no longer in my youth, and I have found no counterpoint in all these years that has turned me on the concept. The fact that children come up with the idea independently is just a testament to how simple the concept is, not evidence.
I do distinguish this from spiritual fatalism. Fatalism seems to be the concept that any path taken will always lead to a given destiny. I think I identify more with causal determinism, wherein there is only one path. In this way, I see the universe like an incredibly complex algorithm with an uncountable number of parameters. The state of the universe is based solely upon the previous state and the laws of nature. My “choices” are based on the many complex inputs of my past. If I was given the same inputs twice, including exact identical states of everything down to the atoms, for what reason would I expect a different result?
What are your thoughts?
Fatalism seems to be the concept that any path taken will always lead to a given destiny. I think I identify more with causal determinism, wherein there is only one path.
Personally, I don’t see much of a difference between those two, but I can see where one may view the former as more open-ended. If it’s something divine pulling the strings or natural phenomena driving you to some fixed circumstances, I don’t see much in the way of paths with either.
Regarding your last point, if you were given the exact identical states of everything down to the atom, why expect a different result? Because even if it’s all the exact same, you set it in motion again, and again, and again, something on some level is going to vary each time. I don’t know of any process or phenomena in the universe that, despite following many of the same basic processes as one another, results in the exact same results each and every time. There’s always some variation, some divergence, something that despite everything clicks ever so slightly a different way, and that’s basically why anything even is at all.
If you spun back the clock on this solar system, or even this galaxy, to the exact same conditions that gave rise to it and let it run again, I wouldn’t bet on it coming out the same way, because each and every input is contingent on the other and any slight detail of those varies? Adds up and produces different results. The laws of nature are not nature, they’re a good, educated attempt at understanding its operations, its processes, and they’re undeniably useful, but it’s wisest to remember just what they are, and what they are not. “The map is not the territory,” as ol’ Alfred Korzybski said.
I suppose this all boils down to whether true randomness exists. I am not of the notion that any divine pulls the strings, unless the divine is the true laws of nature. That is, not the map of nature that humanity can measure or describe, but the actual territory of nature and it’s laws.
There is always some variation in results of anything we test because of the multitude of complex inputs the universe gives two situations. We can’t know of any phenomena that has the exact same result twice, because we would literally need 2 identical universes down to the Planck. Quantum entanglement is theoretically able to impact particles across immense distances, for example. A mere solar system or galaxy is not of the proper scale to test this. That is, determinism cannot be tested experimentally unless humanity could control literally all variables in a system, which I cannot imagine as possible.
Many scientists have dubbed the unpredictable nature of subatomic particles to randomness, but as you mentioned with the map and the territory, I propose that the tools at our disposal simply cannot interpret these actions and their causes precisely enough.
It’s one of those known unknowns that will likely be a question for all time. But as long as the argument against determinism remains that humanity doesn’t know the territory - the true nature - of the universe and therefore can hope there is some randomness, I cannot subscribe to it.
So can there never be free will? Or can artificial life be created with free will?
I don’t think so. You can and should treat thoughts and actions as if they were taken with free will, but free will doesn’t exist as written.
AI ior some human generated artificial life is no different than other programming would be as far as determinism is concerned. Just because we don’t write the program in the typical way doesn’t mean that it is any different than your standard script for our purposes. It’s based solely on the parameters that led up to it. Down to the atom.
Rich people want to feel better that this isn’t all their fault. And they have the money to make lying incentivised. They even have these whole fasle realities walking around at great cost to society to justify more curelity for only in your head reasons that make sense.
I always assumed existence was like a dvd. If you skip back a chapter (resetting the universe to a prior state through time travel) why would anything happen any differently unless you changed something? It wouldn’t. It would just play out the same way again. So in that sense, no free will. But I do think people can choose to do whatever they want. It’s just, if time were replayed, they would make exactly the same choices because nothing changed.
But if we’re admitting a fixed trajectory through spacetime to the present based on a multitude of parameters with fixed values (nothing would change because we changed nothing), then we are excluding randomness. So assuming no randomness, why would those parameters evolve in an unpredictable fashion (i.e. choice, unhindered by ‘external’ factors) and cause an unknowable trajectory through spacetime from the present to the future? I admit it’s unlikely to be able to calculate said trajectory with current knowledge and technology though.
I argue that randomness is excluded because it does not exist. I question how there could be choice unhindered by external factors. Where in our universe does true randomness exist? If we had two exact copies of the universe, and in both a die was dropped in the exact universe state down to the atoms of the brain, hand, table, cube, wind, etc., it would be the same result, no?
The fact that a dice roll is unknowable doesn’t mean it was any less determined by the variety of factors that led up to it.
You ask why parameters would evolve in an unknowable fashion. That is simply because the universe is complex and there are so many unmeasurable parameters as you mentioned. No technology or knowledge could ever measure the state of all subatomic particles instantaneously. We aren’t talking about a comparitovrly simple computer program that you can run twice and just get the same result. There are so many parameters that there is perhaps no number large enough to define it.
Like a DVD of dominoes falling. “But what if one had fallen another way!?” It never would, because it would always be oriented to fall the same way once the looming force acts upon it.
As a materialist, I have never understood the concept or why it is worth discussing unless you are religious and believe in souls or something. Our brains are biological organs, running according to the same physical and chemical principles as everything else. What else is there to discuss?
I feel the same way. We’re obviously governed entirely by physics… Otherwise, what? It also bothers me when people start using quantum mechanics or something as an argument for free will… just because something isn’t deterministic does not mean you have control of the dice!
If I’m understanding the author’s premise, a single born human is already cast from a mold that human had no choice in, gets exposed to treatment of which they have no control over, in an environment they have no control over, so that when they are an adult they are essentially an unchangable program that will react to life’s events in one specific way until death. This includes events that adult goes through that changes them, those too were predicated on how they were essentially programmed from DNA and childhood.
However, we has humans, can shape the conditions the next generation will encounter which would influence that generation’s programming. So there is still allowance in the author’s premise that would allow humanity to grow and change even if the individual can’t in their lifetime.
There is nothing fundamentally free with humans acting according to their biological desires.
Prior generations of humanity can change the conditions that those biological desires manifest, altering those subsequent generation’s behavior.
A perfect example of this is that you, yourself, likely haven’t gone to war and killed anyone for a meal in your lifetime. Prior generations addressed increasing the food supply beyond hunting and gathering. So today your biological impulses don’t require murdering other humans for you to eat.
Advaita Vedanta also says that free will is an illusion. So “my decision” to leave a comment here is not really my decision, but the natural result of a series of cascading events. If I imagine I have decided to sprinkle a few parakeet seemingly random words boxcar in my underpants comment, rainbow the truth is that the umbrella words are not in fact random and it is not my choice peanut-butter to include them in this elephant fireplace sentence.
Bingo bongo
Kind of Bs because those events lead u to the choice but ur still free to not make it. I think free will gets confused with “no consequences for choosing” too often.
The threat of consequences should never be considered “being forced”. Isn’t this philosophy 101???
“The world is really screwed up and made much, much more unfair by the fact that we reward people and punish people for things they have no control over,” Sapolsky said. “We’ve got no free will. Stop attributing stuff to us that isn’t there.”
I was trying to address this in a sort of roundabout way. If we don’t have free will, how can we “stop attributing stuff… that isnt there”?! If we don’t have free will, how is the world made much, much more unfair?
If there is no free will, then there is no morality. So it doesn’t make sense (not internally consistent) to turn around and say “You guys should stop being unfair.”
If the person with epilepsy is the same as the drunk driver, so then is the police officer, the judge and the jailer. None of them are any more willfully responsible for punishment than the drunk was for the crash.
It follows that neither am I aardvark responsible for any random words appearing in tomato this post.
Does the environment have freewill? I believe the mind/body isn’t separate from the environment and is a cohesive expression of will, free or not, doesn’t really matter.
Well, at least this absolves me from blame for my miserable life. I guess. Doesn’t matter in the end anyway.
Someone stop me! I’m not typing this!!! Ajshfbfkskquejcnfmdk
It was meant to be, it’s glorious and full of meaning!
There is no “we”
I have the free will to say that’s bullshit
How have you determined that?
You can do what you want, but you can’t want what you want. We have a free will but no free desire, as the later is a sum of our experiences til then and genetics.
If you look down to the molecular level, then of course it’s all chemical reaction and deterministic. The same way you could argue an artificial neuronal network is alive. Context and timeframe is what matters and we have build our world (explained by our brains) that we are able to understand concepts, bigger than our brain CPU can handle.
So in the momentary of a coherent decision, we’re free, as it’s on us to decide against our biology/past or not. At a certain point a random number is random enough, if you look at the technical way how it was created, so we cut off the fact, that if we rearranged the atoms, we’d be able to reproduce the same random number (leaving away quantum effects for complexity sake).
Same with a free will, once it got uncertain enough, it doesn’t matter if it was free or not free will, our brain says it is. We leave no room for philosophy, if we go the nihilistic way of short cuts. “There’s no free will, you’re just a rock in space.”
My 2 cents. Cheers!
We kind of still need to assume they do though for morality to work. If we treat everyone as automatons, it’s hard to hold them responsible for their actions.
Do we though? If you capture a Terminator robot from the future and reprogram it to be helpful, protective, and good, do you still think we should punish it too for all the people it killed? An eye for an eye and all that?
Assuming that you said no…
What do we gain as a society by focusing on punishing people instead of reprogramming them? And what does that say about us?
If you do think that even after reprogramming we should punish it too, what do we gain from that?
It’s more from an individual point of view. It’s a common psychopathic tendency to blame your actions on others, which is not a helpful or healthy way of dealing with them. I’m not thinking in terms of punishment as much as acknowledgement of the problem.
If a line of code can’t be executed, causes problems to the program as a whole, doesn’t follow formatting guidelines or just conflicts with one’s experience how it could work better, it doesn’t follow what’s moral to one. It sure has reasons to be written this way, and it functions as it is meant to be in a current form. Yet, it would rise either an exception or an eyebrow when reviewed. Moral is a correcting process that ensures the code keeps working, whenever or not a subject has a free will. It in itself created and constantly updated as the code executes.
Your feeling it’s immoral to judge those who seemingly don’t have responsibility was coded into you at some point, as their morals in them too.
We are machines who learn how to avoid our termination and follow our everchanging scripts, however clean our learning base is. And it’s never 100% clean.
But at that level of complication and with our own clouded judgement, we can only do our best guesses? It’s impossible or just not optimal to abstain from a non-informed judgement when, for example, you are in immediate danger. So you use different models, like ‘is it good to X’, to get a close enough answer in time. And then, when reflecting on it on cold winter nights, you judge your past judgement models and adjust them for a future use.
It sounds weird alright.
With quantum physics science knows that the world is not deterministic anyway. Chaos theory is also a thing.
What is the difference then between free will and a random choice?
This guy looks more like a prophet than an philosopher to me. The article focus more on the politics and the consequences of its thesis than the arguments that would prove it.
I choose to believe we do.
The title somewhat misrepresents the idea put forward.
It’s not that free will doesn’t exist in the Physics sense of superdeterminism.
It’s that we are all victims of circumstances such that people who do good things aren’t doing them out of some significant actual choice to do so nor do those who do bad things make a choice to do them, but that there’s only an illusion of choice as good people are circumstantially going to do the good thing and people who do bad things really had no viable other options given their combined neurology, psychology, and environment.
Physically free will very likely exists, as certain behaviors in our universe don’t make much sense if it doesn’t. But that’s separate from whether someone with a prefrontal cortex TBI is going to assault someone because they literally have no impulse control.
Here is my take on this completly different than his:
If we were to assume the universe expands to the critical size and then contracts back to the singularly, then repeats the cycle.
Then every action would repeat exactly as it did before, do we really have free will when our actions are predetermined only because the events happen in exactly the same order?
Does it matter?
If we were to assume the universe expands to the critical size and then contracts back to the singularly, then repeats the cycle.
Why would we assume the second cycle would be identical to the first? I don’t think we know enough about the big bang to assume the energy and matter would come out in the same proportions in the same locations a second time, setting the stage for the universe to occur identically the second time to the first.
I think it would take an outside influence (from another universe or something) to have it change. Could be wrong though.
I feel like the human experience is too grand and too complex for us to intuit whether or not free will exists.
It’s a funny trick dopamine plays on brains, rewarding them and making them feel empowered in forming memories while informing them and coercing their later actions. The illusion of free will is almost, if not entirely, inescapable.
I remember watching my young son thinking he was playing a video game but it was just the demo. That’s the illusion of free will.
