yes . i'm kind of saying that above .. But if theirs a point were the machine can't predict your actions even given all data say .. 10 minute or 10 year event horizon .. we are actually creatures with free will
@@mars_12345 i just spent 10 minutes elebrating hit wrong button.. gone!.. if i tell you what in it for me ? Because if i'm right .. well you won't believe me and 3 days from now .. you will think it was your own thought .. see that s free will stealing other peoples thoughts loll
@Joe K ... that's a composition error. just because a cheetah can go 75 mph, it wouldn't follow that anything going 75 mph would be a cheetah. being able to predict who will win the lottery, for example, wouldn't imply the predictor has the ontology of "the lottery" especially since there is no entity that *is* "the lottery". predictors are simply good with patterns.
not me, I never smile at death in thought experiments. I like life and the reduction of suffering cause utilitarianism yay :) I think it's possible that sadism is encouraged in our culture and maybe in science if you're not careful to care about all humans and animals that you learn about. Care and love and respect sometimes are absent, just cold calculations :( Poor scientists, missing out on the beauty of creation.
“Too eager to smile when they invoke killing someone during a thought experiment” Fair point!! And it’s a bit creepy to be honest that any scientist would go to so much trouble to try and prove that people who tortured and did horrific scientific experiments on the most vulnerable in society without anaesthesia and committed genocide against millions were somehow innocent as they did not have free will and so no choice in the matter. Why would anyone want to give people like the Nazis who carried out torturous surgery on vulnerable people without pain killers the chance to hand wave away all accountability and all personal responsibility? Not to mention Stalin’s death camps, Mau and Pol Pots genocide including child murderers and child rapists. Why would scientists put so much energy into giving all these egomaniacal little sh…ts an excuse for their evil and depraved actions?
@@lemurlover7975 “Poor scientists missing out on beauty” “Just cold calculations” Well said!! And very dangerous calculations to any rational minded person with a basic understanding of integrity, morality, human rights and the warnings from history because many of this guys think that “beauty” including morals and ethics is all nothing more than an “illusion” anyway as they believe it’s completely determined by meaningless matter. Equally, for them our families and our children are nothing more than meaningless, accidental, blind, mindless, random atoms and brain chemicals creating the illusion of stable patterns and regularities under this self refuting world view. It speaks volumes that these are the same guys who built nuclear bombs at the end of the day!! They all seem to have the same mindset and now they want to build a machine that hand waves away their responsibility and accountability as it “proves” that they didn’t have any free will and choice as they were just completely determined by matter to create such an evil and destructive weapon. It’ all seems a bit too perfect and very convenient for the mind set of a depraved narcissistic over privileged little sh….t!! Especially when one of these evil little sh…ts decides to press the button that destroys everyone. The fact is that the “natural sciences” can’t “prove” anything as they are provisional and can only infer. It’s a constantly changing landscape regarding what (is) not what (ought) to be. The “natural sciences” does not make any capital T truth claims regarding values. The fact is that it’s common knowledge in modal logic and analytical philosophy that … “you can’t get an (ought) out of an (is)” - (David Hume) The “natural sciences” are fundamentally agnostic when it comes to ontological claims regarding value, metaphysics and existence and in particular the qualities of experience. Because “truth” with a capital T is the role of metaphysics, transcendental categories, modal logic and analytical philosophy. Equally, determinism is a tautology and even if it was true ironically determinism is a metaphysical presupposition that can not even be proven, justified or grounded in a strictly reductive materialism, atheism or philosophical naturalism that clearly excludes metaphysical realities. No religion ever created a weapon with the potential to destroy our children and grandchildren’s future at the press of a button (nuclear weapons) for this kind of monstrosity you need secular twentieth century science/technology and physicists and secular scientists who believe that morality is an illusion as we are all just chemical and biological robots with no free will or choice!! Furthermore, according to Johnathan Sacks the prominent public intellectual, philosopher, author and head of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth…. “Since Hiroshima and the Holocaust, science no longer holds its pristine place as the highest moral authority. Instead, that role is taken by human rights. It follows that any assault on Jewish life - on Jews or Judaism or the Jewish state - must be cast in the language of human rights.”(Rabbi Johnathan Sacks) Determinism is an attack by nihilistic and fatalistic scientists on human rights, human duties and justice for the victims of evil and depraved crimes. “The news today about 'Atomic bombs' is so horrifying one is stunned. The utter folly of these lunatic physicists to consent to do such work for war-purposes: calmly plotting the destruction of the world! Such explosives in men's hands, while their moral and intellectual status is declining, is about as useful as giving out firearms to all inmates of a gaol and then saying that you hope 'this will ensure peace.” (J.R. Tolkien 1945). I rest my case!!
@@lemurlover7975 “Never smile at death in thought experiments” Well said!! According to the Auschwitz survivor Viktor Frankl who was a psychiatrist and scientist (and survivor of two Nazi death camps) moral subjectivists, that is those who prefer to value humanity as nothing more than biological and chemical robots. That is those who view our families and our children as nothing more than (A bag of Chemicals) and just (determined machines). Free will deniers are a danger to our families and our children… According to Victor Frankl…. “If we present a man with a concept of man which is not true, we may well corrupt him. When we present man as an automaton of reflexes, as a mind-machine, as a bundle of instincts, as a pawn of drives and reactions, as a mere product of instinct, heredity, and environment, we feed the nihilism to which modern man is, in any case, prone. I became acquainted with the last stage of that corruption in my second concentration camp, Auschwitz. The gas chambers of Auschwitz were the ultimate consequence of the theory that man is nothing but the product of heredity and environment - or, as the Nazis like to say, of ‘Blood and Soil.’ I am absolutely convinced that the gas chambers of Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Maidanek were ultimately prepared not in some Ministry or other in Berlin, but rather at the desks and in the lecture halls of nihilistic scientists and philosophers.” (Victor Frankl). Frankl’s words are very sobering and should give us pause as we consider what we are teaching the next generation in our own sacred halls of learning. Are we teaching students that they are the product of their environment, not responsible for their actions? Are we teaching them to view good and evil not as absolutes but illusory and just cold calculated variables dependent upon one’s cultural norms and preferences? If so, we are simply hurtling the next generation towards the Auschwitzes, Treblinkas, and Maidaneks of the 21st century? I rest my case!!
Aside from 60% not being very good "predictability", notice that there is always a non zero lag time (call it t) between true initial awareness of choice, and communication of that awarenes via the pushing of a button.. Also note that t is variable and it takes extra effort by the participant to get it close to zero and how it is VERY easy to be lazy and let t get large (e.g. like the 1 or 2 seconds mentioned here)... Hence, (probabilistically) the larger t is, the easier it is for researcher to be fooled into thinking he predicted the awareness of the participant's choice, when in reality what he might be "predicting" is just the communication of that choice -- a crucial difference with regard to free will... This would be like telling a participant you can predict what hand they will hold a candy bar in behind their back, but always making the "prediction" AFTER they chose their hand (and from a viewpoint that can be seen via a mirror placed strategically behind them).
such a good approach to sweep away the semantic stuff about what words mean and focus on what it would mean to construct a better predictive model of human behavior than thinking of yourself and others as agents with beliefs, goals, reasons who make decisions and choices within the constraints of culture, biology, laws of physics
Aside from the obvious flaw I've already pointed out, saying someone "predicted" something 60% of the time when there are only two options is a terrible/misleading use of verbiage... Note that even a guessing blind monkey will "predict" the right outcome 50% of the time (on average).... And also note that the same guessing blind monkey will occasionally guess the right outcome 60% of the time (with repeated experiments).. Correctly guessing does not equal prediction.
Not that it should be fun beating a dead horse, but let's have some fun by beating a dead horse... In case nobody has figure it out yet, if they had truly predicted 60%, the remaining 40% would be randomly guessed correctly half the time (on average) by our abstract blind monkey above. Half of 40% = 20%. Therefore, they would've reported a 60% + 20% = 80% in overall correct picks... ...I hate to say I told you so AGAIN but didn't I say most scientists don't understand the true nature of randomness?? ;) (No actual dead horses were beaten or actual blind monkeys were exploited in the making of this comment) :)
Let’s assume that I (deterministically) decide to base all my future decisions on a random number generator. I don’t have free will, but determinism no longer directs my choices.
The reason that this question can't / hasn't be resolved is because it sits over the edge of what a time-bound creature can comprehend. The future can be known by beings that travel faster than light. None of us will ever do that. Alternate universes pivot for us on the present moment, which is all we have. In the sweep of time the path not taken does not seem to exist any more. “The moving finger writes; and, having writ, moves on: nor all thy piety nor wit shall lure it back to cancel half a line, nor all thy tears wash out a word of it. -- Omar Khayyam.
6:27 I'd be worried about much more: you not only would have to copy the person but also everything around that person, say at least about a micro-lightsecond of volume, i.e. the exact configuration of all atoms around that person, their temperature but also the gravity conditions of each atom etc... in other words, that copy would have to be that very same person in the very same location and time. Because the outside world also influences our decisions, even if it's just a smell, a change in temperature or whatever.
Totally agree. He completely missed out on, the human brain being interactive with the environment in a very complicated way. And also when he said the brain can be reduced to a system of computation I had to stop
Sure but that's exactly what he was saying anyway...All he is really talking about are the degrees of freedom and hidden variables involved in trying to create a copy. Any physicist will tell you that such computations can not be done in practice because of hidden variables, and he didn't have to go any further than what he said to prove his point...whether talking about the inside or the outside of the brain was irrelevant, because talking about the degrees of freedom and hidden variables is inclusive to both the inside and outside of the brain.
That's very Hegelian (as I understand hegelianism), you can't understand or "know" the part without knowing the whole (I take know to mean predict with 100% accuracy). So I think the computational machine would have to have every variable, the "full quantum picture". Whelp, off to watch a video about Hegel and quantum physics now!
That’s a very good point but would be impossible to do, even in principle, because whatever size of sample you took you couldn’t have an identical copy in the same location and environment as the original. Certainly, the larger the sample the more similar the two copies would be but it is impossible to superimpose identical anythings in an identical location.
''...put that answer into a sealed envelope'', but why do you have to do that? If EVERYTHING is determined, theoretically you can determine everything in the future no matter what. So is that machine able to determine what I will do if I read what's inside the envelope? I am so sick and tired of this people trying to appear fatalists and simply ignore this simple contradiction.
Firstly, such a machine would not be able to exist. Secondly, in reading the information, it would destructively change it and produce the picture of a reality that can never exist.
I believe human free will is more limited than we realize. Example imagine your skill set is different than mine. I cant do what you do and you cant do what I do, therefore we have been programed different. If we use this way of thinking I believe we can program free will around a set of basic skills or rules for computers or AI. Just an idea
i don't see any point in granting an agent-predictor could be created that perfectly predicted what an agent would do. that wouldn't suggest a person is externally controlled or a person whose actions are sufficiently controlled through agency (e.g. the system in operation making choices). all it would imply is that using various techniques, we can tell at some point in time what an agent will do before she does it. it's also a composition error to presume that such a predicting apperatus works because it is in fact one and the same as the agent (e.g. the system in operation making choices).
Not "randomness" ( not even sure that's a REAL word lol) ONLY "undiscovered" because once discovered,studied and categorized it's not really "random" anymore . ... A puzzle might look like "random" pieces to an unknowing perception HOWEVER each "random" piece has been precut and pre-fitted in order to guarantee that it WILL work if given the proper equation ....... NOTHING can EVER be "random" because if "chance" itself were EVER given a chance it would ALL be NO MORE and THIS existence would instantly be DONE ...... It's been chomping at the bit for the opportunity since the beginning of TIME itself and will ALWAYS be waiting for it's "random" CHANCE lol
Noah t ... Look up "wave function collapse" ( you probably WON'T be able to get the FULL grasp at FIRST) .... Or look up "schrodingers cat theory" ( probably a BETTER simplified version of the same thing) ... The particles ARE "random" . .. UNTIL they are "observed" by the conscious mind ... THEN they MUST comply with whatever the "observer" has ALREADY perceived them to BE .... The quantum physicists have created an instrument a while back ( even HAVE a home version NOW lol) that WILL demonstrate THIS VERY FACT .... ALSO an important factor to remember that when the particles ARE just flying around randomly it's because they are unobserved so therefore irrelevant ANYHOW ... As when in THIS stage they are actually anything ... Everything .... And nothing at all ( they are EVERY possible outcome and are of absolutely ZERO relevance UNTIL observed) .... If a tree falls in the woods and nobody is around to "hear" it .... It CANNOT EVER make a sound .... Sound requires "observation" in order to be relevant . ... So DOES everything else ..... The randomness that your referring to is the very INSTANT the particles actually form ... By the time they are formed they are ALREADY( at least within THIS universe) "observed" . ... Otherwise they just NEVER ARE ... And NEVER WILL BE .... So therefore ALWAYS irrelevant .... Quantum mechanics are tricky because it's almost like time itself ... When you figure it out ... It actually seems to change because it's been realized lol .... But ONE guarantee that you can ALWAYS count on ... Mathematics NEVER LIE .... And everything within THIS existence IS based upon numbers .... The TRUTH is ALWAYS in the numbers .......TRUTH FM2020 ....
..I can predict that you both will get up from your chair, but not when, to know when you will act upon all those preparations that can be detected in the brain by machine can not be done, you cant measure the initiating act...it is outside of time...
3:20+ "if the machine were really that perfectly predicting my actions then why shouldn't I just consider this machine to be a second copy or second instantiation of myself?Right. How do I know I'm not the machine?"
If humans can create things that work randomly ie. random number generators, could nature have selected for something similar in regards to consciousness?
the question of free will is already a step too long to make,it presuppose the existence of individual selves,it comes from ignorance about our essence,no such thing as individual human beings
Do you mean the fragmented areas of our brains that must work together to lead us to decisions (more clear in traumatized people and people with multiple personality disorder?) They still make up one whole person acting on behalf of the good of society.
When you make a copy of yourself there will be no original or all the copys are original. its an observation point of view, think of it like how spacetime its relative. so here we have kind of the same thing. ORIGINAL copy its relative to selfness. belive me... im sure its all about relative point of awarness.
That would be a fun experiment. If the machine could tell what a person was going to say in advance, what if you showed the person the readout? Would they then be able to say something different, or would it not make a difference. I tried it on my ex long ago. I knew exactly what she would say in an argument, so I told her in advance what she was going to say. The result of the experiment was that she still said exactly what I predicted. So I know for sure that she was deterministic.
In rational agents, that kind of information would compute into the deterministic equation and would no doubt result in a change in behaviour, buy only in the case of rational agents.
Maybe she just repeated what you said to have you believe you knew everything in order to de-escalate and avoid violence. I've done that before. I have patterns of speaking that I've used to de-escale fights while my inner monologue is totally different and can be a bunch of random jumbled thoughts and images. Sometimes these come out too, and the people get very confused when they do, saying I'm not acting predictably and saying what I have trained myself to say during conflicts, but sharing my inner monologue more.
@@lemurlover7975 I'm sure you are a paragon of rationality compared to the she-devil I was married to. There was never a moment that violence was anticipated or possible, at least not from me. This blanket moratorium on striking women that most Western men have inculcated at a young age produces the most outrageous behavior in some females. Boys learn on the playground that certain behaviors will result in a punch to the mouth, but some girls are so confident of their immunity to violence that they do not have any limit to their provocations. It's awesome that you are able to deescalate fights, but maybe it would be better to not have the fight in the first place. That's my policy now as an oldster. I just walk away from the situation.
@@paulheinrichdietrich9518 That word "determinism" has such built in sophistry that it can be used to support any absurdity. You identify an agent, you acknowledge that new information can be causative in a change of behavior, and yet you still cling to it being determined, even though the new info can easily be ignored. I guess the main absurdity is identifying a "deterministic equation" that does not exist anywhere in nature. It is obviously something you made up for the occasion.
@@caricue New information cannot be ignored; it will always have an influence on your future behaviour. There is no such thing as an uncaused or spontaneous behaviour, but rather all choices are a product of past choices and experiences, available information, desire or coercion.
You can’t.. you cannot overcome the schrodinger uncertainty equation.. not even matter itself can do it .. you can’t replicate your process because every particles on your brain are not in a fixed state.. they change unpredictably every moment, differently every time unrelated to previous state, and you don’t know which of them are responsible and how affects your thoughts
@@camugachannel6170 I never said free will is real. Determinism is at root level. You can’t assume that since you feel sad something is wrong, or if you are depressed that’s predetermined and you won’t do nothing to change because if it would be it would be predetermined, because (since no one can’t know the future, not even particles themselves, and since even a small difference in an atom can lead to massive differences in futures) you can’t know if your effort to change is that itself predetermined. You don’t need to know how a phone works, you just use it.. you don’t need to know how universe works, you have just to live it. If science explain it well done, good for us, it will not change anything because we are part of what we are studying, you can’t study the universe within that universe, if you want to study how our universe works you need to sit on another universe and observing it by outside without interfering in it.. you know why science works? Because it VIRTUALLY separate what it study from the observer, because the information that are cut out are negligible, if you want to know the speed of a ball on the grass you need to know few parameters, you don’t need to know al the atoms of the universe.. but if you attempt to explain everything then you can’t cut out anything, and you can’t because the observer is whiting the observation field. A fish can’t study the ocean, only an outsider can see the ocean, the fish lives it, we are part of the system, we are the system, we are the physics laws that people are so depressed thinking they ruling us.. we are the universe, we are not 40 50 60 years old, the atoms that form me are billions years old, and they will last another billions of billions
There is no analytical solution to the three body problem, let alone the eighty-six billion body problem. The best we can do is to evaluate probabilities and limited special-case states.
if we could observe the quantum realm without interfering with it there would be no need for the uncertainty principle. and who's to say that we wont be able to someday accomplish this.
it's hard to change someone's mind because people are egotistic and like themselves... maybe if people learned more about this Quantum computer (like the deepest details) ideas about the mind, people will have a smaller ego and be more intellectual rather than egotistic.
I think they have to learn how to be humbled before God and see themselves as a small but important part of a much larger creation and plan to get rid of their egotism. I think that learning quantum theory and becoming very intellectual can also make people very egotistical about their intelligence and the fact that they know more than most people do about physical reality. They think that makes them better than a lot of other people who do not know or understand. They need to be able to accept that they know what they know and then be humble enough to find ways to teach it to others while not lording it over them while crowing like a rooster about how smart they are. Anyway come to Life Church Online if you want to hang out and see how I worship God. IDK, maybe you'd enjoy it? Have a great day. :)
I'm not sure what physics of free will Scott is referring to, but he seems to acknowledge that determinism is absolutely correct (6:10 - 6:21). The extent of our knowledge of our future actions is not the question. The question at heart is: are our actions predetermined by the physics of the universe? The starting conditions define the ending conditions and everything in-between. Both Newtonian physics and Einstein's conclusions of 4-dimensional space time corroborate this.
consciousness is not computation. In other hand, a machine by definition is tool that compute, it can't have a subjective experience. The answer does not rely on whether we can build a machine or not to prove that we have free will or not or that human are somehow deterministic and the probabilities of their choices can be computed.
I think the amount of data processing required to predict a person's actions to exact precision would increase exponentially, and so you could never in principle predict someone's behaviour exactly, and furthermore there would be a strong heuristic limit to how well you could predict it
How can a mathematical model or a machine predict human behaviour when humans are always innovating. Can you develop determinants for that which is not yet conceived? No.
It can't ever. No machine could ever be constructed to measure it as it would influence the final product of the decision. But, the final decision was always going to happen that way.
The you who 'has" free will isn't real. The ego is like an eddy in the flow of awareness. Just like a whirl has no existence apart from the flow of fluid that creates/sustains it and determines what it will do, the ego has no existence apart from the actions in awareness that creates it's illusory existence , and determines what the apparent 'I' wills itself to do. The will of the I is really just the action of totality. Without the action of totality there is no center around which the appearance of a self coalesces. Without the flow of fluid there is no center around which the "eye" of the whirl coalesces. Like the sound of a flute can't be found in the objects which condition its manifestation, The owner and controller of the body cant'be found in the objects which condition it's manifestation. The only freedom "we" can have is freedom from illusion.
The self is an illusion because you are free to make whichever choices are best for your existence. Identity towards a personality is a fixture most people have because it’s the simplest way to exist. Therefore you do have free will, especially since you have no proof of a higher intelligence that can exactly predict your actions, and no occurrence can be replicated to the exact degree it occurred.
Matthew, i think that existence proved itself to be beyond ”complex”, beyond human language as a whole even. How could something that exists be, if not wildly strange? My intuition is that the Dao must be well beyond description, and well beyond the gross black/white human logic. I personally apply this to the human 'self' as well, and i think that anyone who says that it's an illusion is falling into false black/white dichotomies. This ”eddy within consciousness” we call ego is a self-organising self-sustaining pattern of mental activity, one which once formed it constrains its environment, exactly like an eddy. Thus, it's not exactly an illusion. I know he general propositions you'd bring to point towards the ego's illusion and i want to tell you in advance that i agree with them. Yet, my intuition is that if you really want to be free from illusion you have to drop the reality of your mental schemas (like the ”ego is an illusion” schema; with all the evidence, concepts and relations you've gathered and integrated under it) and see that these schemas are very useful, esthetic perspectives one takes and uses to be able to ”work”, for lack of a better word. But they cannot be Truth. Existence, as it manifests here for us, still allows for many degrees of freedom. I'm sure that you have a very particular experience, different in significant ways from that of the average western ”shopper”, but your experience isn't more real than anyone else's. There's no ”maya experience” vs ”nirvana experience” - no dualism of Reality. Just different manifestations of it. When i was 18 years old i was very firmly experiencing my ego - that was absolutely real then & there. Now, i'm seeing and feeling things differently, very likely more in line with your experience. But i have no impact whatsoever over how that 18 year old felt. And i'm glad he felt that way because it was beautiful. There's something Alan Watts said, something like ”If we manage to enlighten the whole damn universe, if such a thing is even meaningful to say, the what do you think it would happen next? It would do it all over again off course! Worms and fishes, cats and mice, blind people and sages..”. But this doesn't mean you should't try to ”awaken the whole damn thing” if that's your honest understanding and action. Mine is that we should try to do anything to extinguish suffering, and NOT to extinguish illusion, because unlike what was true more than 2000 years ago, nowadays we have other means of dealing with suffering besides enlightenment. Please take a look at this wonderful answer to the question ”How will the next millenium look like?” (the passages belong to philosopher David Pearce, someone who's especially concerned with human and animal suffering) - medium.com/@rares_mircea_82/passages-from-philosopher-david-pearces-answer-to-the-question-of-how-will-the-year-3000-look-like-c6dc0293b9cd
Damn this messed with my mind. I never related free will with identity before. So if the initial condition determines everything, does that mean I have free will in the sense that it's the initial condition that has free will, and since I'm an extension of that condition, I have free will because it is me. I'm doing what it wants but we are one so really we are doing what we want, in the sense that we are all part of one thing doing what it wants us to do because we are doing it and we have free will because we are all that one thing that has free will? In other words, there is free will, but only one single universal will that we are all a piece of? So everyone is responsible for everything everyone does? I mean none of this is probably the case, but it's certainly a way to look at this that I've never thought of before.
I agree that when we act or speak we affect everyone else in the world with our actions so I try to act in ways that are kind and reduce suffering. I prepare myself to say these words and actions by selectively seeking out what sorts of thoughts can support a free will that leads me to practice acts of kindness. I'm a Christian as well, and that helps support me in my quest to be kind. It was hard before without the support. I go to Life Church Online. It's working out well for me. Just can't convince anyone to really accept me in small groups so far because cancel culture is in church too. :( But the ideas I fill my mind with lead me to greater success with showing kindness and I get some of them from Scripture, some from Philosophy, some from Physics...and I never stop learning. :) Phillipians 4:8 Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable-if anything is excellent or praiseworthy-think about such things. www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Philippians%204%3A8&version=NIV
It says making an exact copy of an uknown quantum state is impossible. If you could somehow know all the qualtum states , say with an entaglement-assisted teleportation method than you could theoretically do it.
I found his argument about building a machine that could predict everything that a person does, doesn’t address all the issues of free will. Am I reasonable in thinking this?
Twins do make remarkably similar decisions to one another, they’re the closest we’ve got to copying a brain, but you couldn’t say they both don’t have independent free will.
Conversly: If we dont have free will, then we are controlled by something else; does it have free will? If not, again that must be controlled by something else, does that have free will? If not . . . etc. etc. sooner or later we must come to a being with free will that controls, otherwise everything would be chaos and the universe would go into heat death. So at least Free Will exists (somewhere).
Everyone has free will, to do the will of satan or God, consequences to follow. Most people love sin more than righteousness... and like it or not, you reap what you sow in the end. Sam and his kind will lie for profit and lead you straight to hell where they will join you prior to God's judgement day on sin and the eternal lake of fire with satan for sinners. Nothing you think or say will change that one bit, just like you can't prevent your appointment with death God has waiting for you... the same God who made you lovingly in his image for a life with him that you constantly rejected.
What about a person who gets access to a machine predicting her future actions and the person now decides to change it in cases she does not like the outcome.
Depends on how deep down the rabbit hole you wish to go. Brains do not calculate in isolation, they are constantly bombarded by input. So to make accurate predictions you would need to not only know the subject's brain, but all that affects it. In other words, the machine would need to calculate every particle that in any way could affect the brain in question, which would then include itself and its own future prediction and effect of that on that brain. This is, of course, ignoring the chance of quantum events inserting randomness somewhere that affects the outcome. I do think the video misses the point, though. Whether or not the uncertainty principle prevents us from copying a brain and creating predictions is irrelevant to whether or not we have free will. Quantum randomness only creates unpredictability, not agency. All signs seem to point to the reality that our consciousness is only a passenger observing events over which it has no control.
I'm not referring to a label I have never heard before, no. You'll have to be more specific if I am to offer any further opinion. This serves as a good example of the lack of usefulness of labels unless you first establish a common understanding of them. This was the first hit when I googled impossibilism: "Impossibilism is a Marxist theory that stresses the limited value of political, economic, and social reforms under capitalism.
@@mascot4950 Impossibilism is the position that free will does not exist even if determinism is wrong, because chance on the level of particles can not give us the free will we care about. My idea obviously would not work when the machine would be perfect, because then it would predict that that exactly this would happen: that the machine would influence the outcome. A less perfect machine that would calculate different possible developments should be much more useful. That such a machine can never be perfect is suggested by the fact that any system never can describe itself perfectly.
@@tnvheiseler As I mentioned, I think that focusing on the machine/predictions is missing the point. To the question of whether we have free will or not, the ability to predict is irrelevant as long as we have the randomness of quantum effects. By the same token, quantum effects do not have any bearing on the matter of free will unless we can be shown to have the ability to affect these events and make them not truly random. In order to have free will our consciousness would need to somehow be above the laws of physics as we currently understand them, to make our brains do other than what the laws of physics dictates it must. Based on our current knowledge, it would have to function on a level different to that of our physical brain. In other words, the only way to I see to claim we have free will, is to invoke the supernatural. Thus the only rational conclusion based on current evidence, is that we do not have free will. Our brains do what our brains do and our consciousness is a result of that, not a cause. We need new evidence before considering a different conclusion. Or, as some seem fond of doing, redefine "free will" until it means something they can claim we have.
Since we are utilizing modern science: Modern science claims that from an expanding singularity everything in existence in this universe came into existence, including the forces of nature that it operates by, and including you and me with our supposed consciousness, memories, thoughts and supposed freewill. But now, does everything in existence really exist per se, OR does only the singularity exist in the form of all things including you and me with our supposed consciousness, memories, thoughts and supposed freewill? Maybe "we" don't even exist but the singularity wants "us" to think we exist and have our own individual "freewill", when in actual fact we don't, in part because "we" don't even exist in the first place? How could we be so certain that it is not that way in actual reality?
It's impossible to calculate. No machine could ever be built to measure it as it would change the decision paths of those observing it's outcome. But, this would produce the true outcome, as it was always going to happen. The machine was always going to be built producing the final path. Determinism had to be real. It just doesn't serve any real purpose and is incalculable.
ok individually you don't feel threatened because an exact calculation doesn't exist, but what if a governing body can reasonably predict herd behavior based on intimidation and reward to create policies that seem to you as "culture". Think of things like a social credit system, recording it's own effectiveness and adjusting accordingly, maybe even individually then (exceptions to rules for people who need that as a motivator and more intimidation for people who need that). In that sense, I think Free Will is already over or close to it.
TH-cam agorythms are terrible at telling me what I want to watch and therefore I have freewill to search for new stuff, until a computer algorythm can tell me otherwise.
Not at all clear why predictability has fangs. Surely it's good enough to imagine causal determinism is true and see what the result is for free will and moral responsibility.
@@shrimpflea Because it's causal determinism that has the fangs. It's the concept of one physically possible future that can be arrived at from the past as it was, which is important. If it's predictable or not adds nothing of relevance.
If this is world is really just a materialistic world without any outside influence, then it sounds possible to arrive at a place where we can predict how neurons fire in the brain and how they respond to certain chemical combinations that cause us to make certain decisions but, we don't even know what consciousness is yet. Trillions of neurons fire to make the simplest of decisions, so good luck with your machine. After you make this machine, can you make another one that tells us where matter comes from please?. You should have the skill by then.
The machine would change the outcome of the decision to a certain degree. You cannot observe everything about a particle. And if you feed the input of the machine back into the human, that information would change the outcome. The determined path was always going to be that a machine was used to produce the final result. True determinism is impossible to calculate.
What is the difference between will and free will. If you choose to eat mutton over fish (an odd choice) is it a “free” choice because you hate mutton, but determined if you hate fish. Buddha did not say things were “determined “. Rather that they were “conditioned “. So that agency still has a role in human life. The concept of “freedom “ is a religious term so that God will not seem a bully when he tortures creatures of his own making. That’s it. That’s all.
Often it's discussed how the human mind is like a program that can be transferred to a computer or copied. But they never talk about something I find very important. Of course there is the body and all it's sensations it sends to our brain and which fills our awareness but I also think even more about the environment, the society. For me, a big part of who you are, is not inside you but outside you If you see all these YT animal clips, it's like the intrinsic nature of an animal, the "instinct" or even DNA is not really that important. A dog can think he's a sheep if raised among sheep. Locked in a computer , without all those threads connecting you to your senses and society, the mind transferred would probably panic immensely and go nuts, disintegrate fast. About free will, it's possible that for an higher being, we act not free but here on earth the concept more or less works satisfactory. In the justice system, free will is accepted but also "perhaps not so completely free will" ;-) , it's often very complicated since you see again that even rats don't choose to drug themselves if they are in a stimulating, good environment.
Jean-Pierre, those are some good point you raised. I would add that a human is alive, and a computer isn't, no matter how advanced, so if you somehow "transferred" a mind, it would be dead like the computer. I'm beginning to think that life is the key to the question of consciousness and free will, but science has abandoned any thought of life being special into the category of superstition. I also would have no problem with a justice system that was more understanding of the limits of free will in many people, but you would still have to protect the rest of us from them.
@@caricue Something seems almost to push life into existence but yet we can't create life out of nothing in the lab. The whole immense universe seems devoid of aliens. Hopefully I (we) live long enough to witness the discovery of other (simple) life in at least the solar system. That could perhaps bring more insight.
@@jean-pierredevent970 Sure, finding simple life could be cool for biochemists and philosophers, but I want my aliens. I want someone new to talk to that isn't burdened by our history and psychology. Super advanced tech wouldn't be bad either.
"Free will is an emergent property that is consistent with the microscopic dynamics." - Sean Carroll “I am very comfortable with the idea that we can override biology with free will.” - Richard Dawkins
"But it's perfectly possible that actually my decision to immigrate or not to immigrate was influenced by events in the brains which were influenced by other events, influenced by other events, which fundamentally all have a definite physical cause." - also Richard Dawkins, from the very same interview your quote is from. A more recent statement when asked specifically about the concept of free will: "When I think I have free will, when I think that I am exercising free choice, I am deluding myself." - also Richard Dawkins I don't want to put words into Dawkins' mouth, but from what I gather he seems to feel that even if you have a materialistic world view and accept the notion that free will is an illusion, the chain of events deciding your actions is so long and complex that it makes no sense to colloquially differentiate between free will vs. the illusion of it. It makes no difference to how it feels to us, and it certainly makes no difference when talking about whether we e.g. can deny our genes' desire to propagate themselves by us using contraception (example paraphrased from the interview of your quote).
Scott Aaronson is not a physicist. He is a computer scientist. I think he is talking about topics in this video which he most likely knows very little about.
Because free will is in the mind (assuming it exists). The mind exists in the real world (unless you’re a dualist), and anything in the real world is subject to the laws of physics
yeah all of quantum theory and string theory is pretty metaphysical since you cannot physically go another universe to or truly prove the multiverse or other pieces of the theory that they used math and their minds to come up with.
Woulsnt a copy Just be like a picture of you? To look back in time or predict the future you would need the exact information about everything that incluenced that persoon in the past and future. So lets say that I have a copy of you. I could only predict the future if it had the input you were having in the future. But without that or with different input it would Just be another version of you.
She drew a house 25 years ago and now she lives this house. She dreamed of clean energy and now it’s happening. Like all beautiful things it takes time. She dreamed of a machine of understanding her....
I think the way they are looking at the question of freewill will never lead to the understanding. We know that the energy field precedes the physical manifestation, so why do we connect freewill with our actions? If we look at how we feel about an event that is taking place in our life, then this leads to at least one explanation be it wright or wrong. Example: If you criticised my cooking and it hurt my feelings and I determined to get even, I might choose to cook you something I knew you disliked. If I knew you disliked all green vegetables for instance, then when the opportunity arrived I would cook what green vegetable was in season - a whole plate full. Your criticism has determined my future action but the season has determined the way it is delivered. The answer to freewill lies in consciousness; how we react to events sets-out the next manifestation that will occur in that sequence. it is a feedback loop from consciousness to physical manifestation in space/time. An eye for an eye leads to a world of half blind people.
I think this subject is mute .. the real question is are we in a deterministic world a semi deterministic or psuedo deterministic universe.. if we live in a Strictly deterministic universe.. every thing eventually is predictable. Here is a fun thought .. can parts of our own brain predict our future action or what action we would take if it was given enough data about that future event? probable .. (pardon the pun).. ok why would it be any different for us and the universe.. we are part of the universe the brain is a part of us, ego, individual.. why is it so hard to imagine that eventual we can predict the actions of a future universe if we are given enough data about that event.. and on top of that .. it only appears predictive.. if we live in a deterministic universe.. .. so the answer is ....... it is not answered yet... why ?? Well if the universe is purely deterministic then eventual all theory's combine and we make it to the point of singularity .. at that point we hit fast forward and we know our own end .. but if we don't live in a purley deterministic only semi deterministic we may never be able to construct the past based on today . and tomorrows data .. which thus would leave the door wide open for some form of .....(in the voice of Neo) .. Choice.
Locality seems to me to be a big issue with determinism -- if an oracle is going to "model" me, I think it'd also have to "model" my locality. Where I am located in the universe is important w.r.t. my point of view, and hence my decisions. So, it seems to me that such a model would need to include all the details of my "local" universe, and hence recreate not only me but the things that I consider in my mind to be "local" to me, and determine which things in my locality are going to hold my attention at the moment of making a decision. Basically, I am not symmetric w.r.t. location, and the "information" available at my location is not symmetric either.
I always thought that the 4th dimension of spacetime in the block universe overrode whatever quantum uncertainty existed, giving us no free will and merely going through the motions of our predetermined future.
I don't think you have to perfectly replicate the brain. If you can predict the person's actions with 60% accuracy just looking at the brain, and 10 years from now you can predict their actions with 70% or 75% accuracy, that's a strong indication that it's just a matter of technology and as time goes by and you study the brain, you'll increase your accuracy and it's simply a matter of brain chemistry and not free will.
Scott Aaronson is not a neuroscientist or psychologist, so I am very dubious of anything that he says about these topics which he himself is not an expert in. He is a computer scientist who is out of his depth in this video.
@Singularity Neuroscience, psychology, biology, physics and philosophy are all relevant to this problem, but computer science? Idon't see how it enters the picture.
@Singularity This was my original reply, hope it shows: @Singularity The idea of "process" and "information" are philosophical in nature; saying that the brain "stores information" is purely metaphorical. Still, the idea that the brain is a system of networks, and that it can be analogous to a computer in this regard seems adequate; however, I fail to understand how studying two disciplines that appear to present commonalities such as computer science (of which we know some) and neuroscience (of which we know little as yet) could help us solve metaphysical problems such as: is there a mind separate from the body? or does free will exist?
no matter what you believe in....it is only your opinion....even if its fact, its your opinion that the fact makes sense and that you should believe in it. That is called faith. The really smart people understand that you must have faith........faith does not equal religion....its only a belief.....so its all in your head. how can you truly validate your own beliefs since everything you experience is all in your head.
How many blunts did you smoke man? "The really smart people understand that you must have faith"? Is that a fact, opinion, belief, faith? Oh, I see is all in your head right? lol.
I don't know about humans but I think God does not have total free will... 1. You can choose to cease to exist by committing suicide (God forbid!)...but God can never cease to exist...come what may... So, how can God be called free? 2. You can choose to leave the path of goodness and start doing bad deeds...God can never ever even wish to do bad deeds.. So how come God has total free will??
It looks like _scientific determinism,_ the *basis* of all modern science, governs not only physical processes but also our brain/mind: _For example, a study of patients undergoing awake brain surgery found that by electrically stimulating the appropriate regions of the brain, one could create in the patient the desire to move the hand, arm, or foot, or to move the lips and talk. It is hard to imagine how free will can operate if our behavior is determined by physical law, so it seems that we are no more than biological machines and that free will is just an illusion._ -Stephen Hawking, _The Grand Design,_ 32, 2010 💕 ☮ 🌎 🌌
It suits some people at this point in their lives, but they could have just as well been born in a world where everyone was naked, and been just as fine with that.
Ah, but human societies with their concepts of "freedom" and "responsibility", and legal systems that back them up, do not work the same without pretending we all have free will. I'm afraid we are stuck with it. If you want to rebuild the social structures of humanity, all I can say is good luck with that.
Well, philosophy is a semantic residue left when you take away all the equations from physics. He's a confirmed mathematician (complexity theory, etc.).
Only if the belief that the atoms call the shots is correct. Robert Pirsig observed that higher patterns of order use lower patterns of order for their own purposes, that biological systems use chemistry for example to act in accord with different principles than that of matter. I'd say the likelihood for free will is still quite strong, it's our existing metaphysics that undermines our logic on the matter.
TH-cam knows what I want to watch before I do.
nice one :)
algorithm of consciousness
Scary, isn't it
Predictability not necessarily determinism or cause-effect.
I absolutely love this channel. Thank you.
if the machine can predict your actions, than you are the machine... mind blown
yes . i'm kind of saying that above .. But if theirs a point were the machine can't predict your actions even given all data say .. 10 minute or 10 year event horizon .. we are actually creatures with free will
@@cameronidk2 and the free will comes from ... ? Please elaborate your pov :)
@@mars_12345 i just spent 10 minutes elebrating hit wrong button.. gone!.. if i tell you what in it for me ? Because if i'm right .. well you won't believe me and 3 days from now .. you will think it was your own thought .. see that s free will stealing other peoples thoughts loll
@Joe K ... that's a composition error.
just because a cheetah can go 75 mph, it wouldn't follow that anything going 75 mph would be a cheetah.
being able to predict who will win the lottery, for example, wouldn't imply the predictor has the ontology of "the lottery" especially since there is no entity that *is* "the lottery".
predictors are simply good with patterns.
Scientists always seem a bit too eager to smile when they invoke killing someone during a thought experiment 🤔
Psychos; all of them
not me, I never smile at death in thought experiments. I like life and the reduction of suffering cause utilitarianism yay :) I think it's possible that sadism is encouraged in our culture and maybe in science if you're not careful to care about all humans and animals that you learn about. Care and love and respect sometimes are absent, just cold calculations :( Poor scientists, missing out on the beauty of creation.
“Too eager to smile when they invoke killing someone during a thought experiment”
Fair point!! And it’s a bit creepy to be honest that any scientist would go to so much trouble to try and prove that people who tortured and did horrific scientific experiments on the most vulnerable in society without anaesthesia and committed genocide against millions were somehow innocent as they did not have free will and so no choice in the matter. Why would anyone want to give people like the Nazis who carried out torturous surgery on vulnerable people without pain killers the chance to hand wave away all accountability and all personal responsibility? Not to mention Stalin’s death camps, Mau and Pol Pots genocide including child murderers and child rapists. Why would scientists put so much energy into giving all these egomaniacal little
sh…ts an excuse for their evil and depraved actions?
@@lemurlover7975
“Poor scientists missing out on beauty”
“Just cold calculations”
Well said!! And very dangerous calculations to any rational minded person with a basic understanding of integrity, morality, human rights and the warnings from history because many of this guys think that “beauty” including morals and ethics is all nothing more than an “illusion” anyway as they believe it’s completely determined by meaningless matter. Equally, for them our families and our children are nothing more than meaningless, accidental, blind, mindless, random atoms and brain chemicals creating the illusion of stable patterns and regularities under this self refuting world view. It speaks volumes that these are the same guys who built nuclear bombs at the end of the day!! They all seem to have the same mindset and now they want to build a machine that hand waves away their responsibility and accountability as it “proves” that they didn’t have any free will and choice as they were just completely determined by matter to create such an evil and destructive weapon. It’ all seems a bit too perfect and very convenient for the mind set of a depraved narcissistic over privileged little sh….t!! Especially when one of these evil little sh…ts decides to press the button that destroys everyone.
The fact is that the “natural sciences” can’t “prove” anything as they are provisional and can only infer. It’s a constantly changing landscape regarding what (is) not what (ought) to be. The “natural sciences” does not make any capital T truth claims regarding values. The fact is that it’s common knowledge in modal logic and analytical philosophy that …
“you can’t get an (ought) out of an (is)” - (David Hume)
The “natural sciences” are fundamentally agnostic when it comes to ontological claims regarding value, metaphysics and existence and in particular the qualities of experience. Because “truth” with a capital T is the role of metaphysics, transcendental categories, modal logic and analytical philosophy. Equally, determinism is a tautology and even if it was true ironically determinism is a metaphysical presupposition that can not even be proven, justified or grounded in a strictly reductive materialism, atheism or philosophical naturalism that clearly excludes metaphysical realities.
No religion ever created a weapon with the potential to destroy our children and grandchildren’s future at the press of a button (nuclear weapons) for this kind of monstrosity you need secular twentieth century science/technology and physicists and secular scientists who believe that morality is an illusion as we are all just chemical and biological robots with no free will or choice!!
Furthermore, according to Johnathan Sacks the prominent public intellectual, philosopher, author and head of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth….
“Since Hiroshima and the Holocaust, science no longer holds its pristine place as the highest moral authority. Instead, that role is taken by human rights. It follows that any assault on Jewish life - on Jews or Judaism or the Jewish state - must be cast in the language of human rights.”(Rabbi Johnathan Sacks) Determinism is an attack by nihilistic and fatalistic scientists on human rights, human duties and justice for the victims of evil and depraved crimes.
“The news today about 'Atomic bombs' is so horrifying one is stunned. The utter folly of these lunatic physicists to consent to do such work for war-purposes: calmly plotting the destruction of the world! Such explosives in men's hands, while their moral and intellectual status is declining, is about as useful as giving out firearms to all inmates of a gaol and then saying that you hope 'this will ensure peace.”
(J.R. Tolkien 1945).
I rest my case!!
@@lemurlover7975
“Never smile at death in thought experiments”
Well said!! According to the Auschwitz survivor Viktor Frankl who was a psychiatrist and scientist (and survivor of two Nazi death camps) moral subjectivists, that is those who prefer to value humanity as nothing more than biological and chemical robots. That is those who view our families and our children as nothing more than (A bag of Chemicals) and just (determined machines). Free will deniers are a danger to our families and our children… According to Victor Frankl….
“If we present a man with a concept of man which is not true, we may well corrupt him. When we present man as an automaton of reflexes, as a mind-machine, as a bundle of instincts, as a pawn of drives and reactions, as a mere product of instinct, heredity, and environment, we feed the nihilism to which modern man is, in any case, prone.
I became acquainted with the last stage of that corruption in my second concentration camp, Auschwitz. The gas chambers of Auschwitz were the ultimate consequence of the theory that man is nothing but the product of heredity and environment - or, as the Nazis like to say, of ‘Blood and Soil.’ I am absolutely convinced that the gas chambers of Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Maidanek were ultimately prepared not in some Ministry or other in Berlin, but rather at the desks and in the lecture halls of nihilistic scientists and philosophers.” (Victor Frankl).
Frankl’s words are very sobering and should give us pause as we consider what we are teaching the next generation in our own sacred halls of learning. Are we teaching students that they are the product of their environment, not responsible for their actions? Are we teaching them to view good and evil not as absolutes but illusory and just cold calculated variables dependent upon one’s cultural norms and preferences?
If so, we are simply hurtling the next generation towards the Auschwitzes, Treblinkas, and Maidaneks of the 21st century?
I rest my case!!
Aside from 60% not being very good "predictability", notice that there is always a non zero lag time (call it t) between true initial awareness of choice, and communication of that awarenes via the pushing of a button.. Also note that t is variable and it takes extra effort by the participant to get it close to zero and how it is VERY easy to be lazy and let t get large (e.g. like the 1 or 2 seconds mentioned here)... Hence, (probabilistically) the larger t is, the easier it is for researcher to be fooled into thinking he predicted the awareness of the participant's choice, when in reality what he might be "predicting" is just the communication of that choice -- a crucial difference with regard to free will...
This would be like telling a participant you can predict what hand they will hold a candy bar in behind their back, but always making the "prediction" AFTER they chose their hand (and from a viewpoint that can be seen via a mirror placed strategically behind them).
such a good approach to sweep away the semantic stuff about what words mean and focus on what it would mean to construct a better predictive model of human behavior than thinking of yourself and others as agents with beliefs, goals, reasons who make decisions and choices within the constraints of culture, biology, laws of physics
This guy's a beaut. Fantastically evocative isolation of the problem. Really made me smile.
Aside from the obvious flaw I've already pointed out, saying someone "predicted" something 60% of the time when there are only two options is a terrible/misleading use of verbiage... Note that even a guessing blind monkey will "predict" the right outcome 50% of the time (on average).... And also note that the same guessing blind monkey will occasionally guess the right outcome 60% of the time (with repeated experiments).. Correctly guessing does not equal prediction.
Not that it should be fun beating a dead horse, but let's have some fun by beating a dead horse... In case nobody has figure it out yet, if they had truly predicted 60%, the remaining 40% would be randomly guessed correctly half the time (on average) by our abstract blind monkey above. Half of 40% = 20%. Therefore, they would've reported a 60% + 20% = 80% in overall correct picks...
...I hate to say I told you so AGAIN but didn't I say most scientists don't understand the true nature of randomness?? ;)
(No actual dead horses were beaten or actual blind monkeys were exploited in the making of this comment) :)
Let’s assume that I (deterministically) decide to base all my future decisions on a random number generator. I don’t have free will, but determinism no longer directs my choices.
Nice coherent discussion - this guy has clear structured thinking and the humility it requires.
The reason that this question can't / hasn't be resolved is because it sits over the edge of what a time-bound creature can comprehend. The future can be known by beings that travel faster than light. None of us will ever do that. Alternate universes pivot for us on the present moment, which is all we have. In the sweep of time the path not taken does not seem to exist any more.
“The moving finger writes; and, having writ, moves on: nor all thy piety nor wit shall lure it back to cancel half a line, nor all thy tears wash out a word of it. -- Omar Khayyam.
6:27 I'd be worried about much more: you not only would have to copy the person but also everything around that person, say at least about a micro-lightsecond of volume, i.e. the exact configuration of all atoms around that person, their temperature but also the gravity conditions of each atom etc... in other words, that copy would have to be that very same person in the very same location and time. Because the outside world also influences our decisions, even if it's just a smell, a change in temperature or whatever.
Totally agree. He completely missed out on, the human brain being interactive with the environment in a very complicated way.
And also when he said the brain can be reduced to a system of computation I had to stop
Sure but that's exactly what he was saying anyway...All he is really talking about are the degrees of freedom and hidden variables involved in trying to create a copy. Any physicist will tell you that such computations can not be done in practice because of hidden variables, and he didn't have to go any further than what he said to prove his point...whether talking about the inside or the outside of the brain was irrelevant, because talking about the degrees of freedom and hidden variables is inclusive to both the inside and outside of the brain.
That's very Hegelian (as I understand hegelianism), you can't understand or "know" the part without knowing the whole (I take know to mean predict with 100% accuracy). So I think the computational machine would have to have every variable, the "full quantum picture". Whelp, off to watch a video about Hegel and quantum physics now!
Lucid thinking everyone! Thanks for sharing! 😎💭☘️💖🌞
That’s a very good point but would be impossible to do, even in principle, because whatever size of sample you took you couldn’t have an identical copy in the same location and environment as the original. Certainly, the larger the sample the more similar the two copies would be but it is impossible to superimpose identical anythings in an identical location.
I have free will, I watch porn whenever I want
try to stop watching and youll find out how much freewill you have
@@xsuploader Bullshit.
@@paulheinrichdietrich9518 what is ?
@@xsuploader That watching less porn can augment your free will.
@Mehdi Sahtali First comment by Arkham Choudhary.
''...put that answer into a sealed envelope'', but why do you have to do that? If EVERYTHING is determined, theoretically you can determine everything in the future no matter what. So is that machine able to determine what I will do if I read what's inside the envelope? I am so sick and tired of this people trying to appear fatalists and simply ignore this simple contradiction.
Firstly, such a machine would not be able to exist. Secondly, in reading the information, it would destructively change it and produce the picture of a reality that can never exist.
I love how excited he is about the subject. 5:31 "Excellent." I thought he almost jizzed his pants lol
Haha he was so happy to talk about this subject
I believe human free will is more limited than we realize. Example imagine your skill set is different than mine. I cant do what you do and you cant do what I do, therefore we have been programed different. If we use this way of thinking I believe we can program free will around a set of basic skills or rules for computers or AI. Just an idea
i don't see any point in granting an agent-predictor could be created that perfectly predicted what an agent would do.
that wouldn't suggest a person is externally controlled or a person whose actions are sufficiently controlled through agency (e.g. the system in operation making choices).
all it would imply is that using various techniques, we can tell at some point in time what an agent will do before she does it.
it's also a composition error to presume that such a predicting apperatus works because it is in fact one and the same as the agent (e.g. the system in operation making choices).
Very much yes. It's visible with Non local advantage of quantum coherence
This guy says it's possible to build such computer yet the quantum mechanics physicists keep finding out more and more randomness every year.
Not "randomness" ( not even sure that's a REAL word lol) ONLY "undiscovered" because once discovered,studied and categorized it's not really "random" anymore . ... A puzzle might look like "random" pieces to an unknowing perception HOWEVER each "random" piece has been precut and pre-fitted in order to guarantee that it WILL work if given the proper equation ....... NOTHING can EVER be "random" because if "chance" itself were EVER given a chance it would ALL be NO MORE and THIS existence would instantly be DONE ...... It's been chomping at the bit for the opportunity since the beginning of TIME itself and will ALWAYS be waiting for it's "random" CHANCE lol
@@frankmoser6251 no quantum mechanics are literally random, particles move in probable directions, not predictable ones
Noah t ... Look up "wave function collapse" ( you probably WON'T be able to get the FULL grasp at FIRST) .... Or look up "schrodingers cat theory" ( probably a BETTER simplified version of the same thing) ... The particles ARE "random" . .. UNTIL they are "observed" by the conscious mind ... THEN they MUST comply with whatever the "observer" has ALREADY perceived them to BE .... The quantum physicists have created an instrument a while back ( even HAVE a home version NOW lol) that WILL demonstrate THIS VERY FACT .... ALSO an important factor to remember that when the particles ARE just flying around randomly it's because they are unobserved so therefore irrelevant ANYHOW ... As when in THIS stage they are actually anything ... Everything .... And nothing at all ( they are EVERY possible outcome and are of absolutely ZERO relevance UNTIL observed) .... If a tree falls in the woods and nobody is around to "hear" it .... It CANNOT EVER make a sound .... Sound requires "observation" in order to be relevant . ... So DOES everything else ..... The randomness that your referring to is the very INSTANT the particles actually form ... By the time they are formed they are ALREADY( at least within THIS universe) "observed" . ... Otherwise they just NEVER ARE ... And NEVER WILL BE .... So therefore ALWAYS irrelevant .... Quantum mechanics are tricky because it's almost like time itself ... When you figure it out ... It actually seems to change because it's been realized lol .... But ONE guarantee that you can ALWAYS count on ... Mathematics NEVER LIE .... And everything within THIS existence IS based upon numbers .... The TRUTH is ALWAYS in the numbers .......TRUTH FM2020 ....
@@frankmoser6251 explain how something can come from nothing
Funshot .... WHY ... It has nothing to do with this conversation ... I THINK your confused ...
..I can predict that you both will get up from your chair, but not when, to know when you will act upon all those preparations that can be detected in the brain by machine can not be done, you cant measure the initiating act...it is outside of time...
3:20+ "if the machine were really that perfectly predicting my actions then why shouldn't I just consider this machine to be a second copy or second instantiation of myself?Right. How do I know I'm not the machine?"
MOvement = in oppose ya accidently left out keyword (it's the exact same, in oppose.t)
If humans can create things that work randomly ie. random number generators, could nature have selected for something similar in regards to consciousness?
It could, but that wouldn't be "free will". A free agent is one which is "causa sui", a law onto intself.
Is it me, or the road to answer the question of freewill passes right through the explanation of consciousness first?
if you tamper with the brain it's the same thing as killing me
there are pp with halfbrains oir parts being taken out and they still same
@@azra5101 Well that just means that the informational structure that made them is still there, I guess.
@@azra5101 yeah, I encounter these kinds of people all the time.
Your choices could make the machine make the prediction
But did you have a choice in the matter?
Super determinism.
Physics can tell us nothing whatsoever about consciousness or free will (which are completely different stages in any course of action).
current physics can’t
To eushef, yes The machine would predict that too, and that is so cool 😁, complicated though
Cause and Effect. . .
Physics tells us that freewill is nonsensical. Our brains output is either determined or random; neither situation is a result of any type of freedom.
the question of free will is already a step too long to make,it presuppose the existence of individual selves,it comes from ignorance about our essence,no such thing as individual human beings
simone de filippo i feel the same way. We always feel like we have brains when in fact we are our brains.
I agree. It's like asking: can an illusion have magical powers?
Do you mean the fragmented areas of our brains that must work together to lead us to decisions (more clear in traumatized people and people with multiple personality disorder?) They still make up one whole person acting on behalf of the good of society.
When you make a copy of yourself there will be no original or all the copys are original. its an observation point of view, think of it like how spacetime its relative. so here we have kind of the same thing. ORIGINAL copy its relative to selfness. belive me... im sure its all about relative point of awarness.
That would be a fun experiment. If the machine could tell what a person was going to say in advance, what if you showed the person the readout? Would they then be able to say something different, or would it not make a difference. I tried it on my ex long ago. I knew exactly what she would say in an argument, so I told her in advance what she was going to say. The result of the experiment was that she still said exactly what I predicted. So I know for sure that she was deterministic.
In rational agents, that kind of information would compute into the deterministic equation and would no doubt result in a change in behaviour, buy only in the case of rational agents.
Maybe she just repeated what you said to have you believe you knew everything in order to de-escalate and avoid violence. I've done that before. I have patterns of speaking that I've used to de-escale fights while my inner monologue is totally different and can be a bunch of random jumbled thoughts and images. Sometimes these come out too, and the people get very confused when they do, saying I'm not acting predictably and saying what I have trained myself to say during conflicts, but sharing my inner monologue more.
@@lemurlover7975 I'm sure you are a paragon of rationality compared to the she-devil I was married to. There was never a moment that violence was anticipated or possible, at least not from me. This blanket moratorium on striking women that most Western men have inculcated at a young age produces the most outrageous behavior in some females. Boys learn on the playground that certain behaviors will result in a punch to the mouth, but some girls are so confident of their immunity to violence that they do not have any limit to their provocations. It's awesome that you are able to deescalate fights, but maybe it would be better to not have the fight in the first place. That's my policy now as an oldster. I just walk away from the situation.
@@paulheinrichdietrich9518 That word "determinism" has such built in sophistry that it can be used to support any absurdity. You identify an agent, you acknowledge that new information can be causative in a change of behavior, and yet you still cling to it being determined, even though the new info can easily be ignored. I guess the main absurdity is identifying a "deterministic equation" that does not exist anywhere in nature. It is obviously something you made up for the occasion.
@@caricue New information cannot be ignored; it will always have an influence on your future behaviour. There is no such thing as an uncaused or spontaneous behaviour, but rather all choices are a product of past choices and experiences, available information, desire or coercion.
You can’t.. you cannot overcome the schrodinger uncertainty equation.. not even matter itself can do it .. you can’t replicate your process because every particles on your brain are not in a fixed state.. they change unpredictably every moment, differently every time unrelated to previous state, and you don’t know which of them are responsible and how affects your thoughts
A perfect opposition to free will though
@@camugachannel6170 I never said free will is real. Determinism is at root level. You can’t assume that since you feel sad something is wrong, or if you are depressed that’s predetermined and you won’t do nothing to change because if it would be it would be predetermined, because (since no one can’t know the future, not even particles themselves, and since even a small difference in an atom can lead to massive differences in futures) you can’t know if your effort to change is that itself predetermined.
You don’t need to know how a phone works, you just use it.. you don’t need to know how universe works, you have just to live it. If science explain it well done, good for us, it will not change anything because we are part of what we are studying, you can’t study the universe within that universe, if you want to study how our universe works you need to sit on another universe and observing it by outside without interfering in it.. you know why science works? Because it VIRTUALLY separate what it study from the observer, because the information that are cut out are negligible, if you want to know the speed of a ball on the grass you need to know few parameters, you don’t need to know al the atoms of the universe.. but if you attempt to explain everything then you can’t cut out anything, and you can’t because the observer is whiting the observation field. A fish can’t study the ocean, only an outsider can see the ocean, the fish lives it, we are part of the system, we are the system, we are the physics laws that people are so depressed thinking they ruling us.. we are the universe, we are not 40 50 60 years old, the atoms that form me are billions years old, and they will last another billions of billions
@@CapitanTavish what the fuck are you talking about? I said *OPPOSITION* to free will, which means opposite of freedom of will. I am on your side lmao
There is no analytical solution to the three body problem, let alone the eighty-six billion body problem. The best we can do is to evaluate probabilities and limited special-case states.
if we could observe the quantum realm without interfering with it there would be no need for the uncertainty principle. and who's to say that we wont be able to someday accomplish this.
it's hard to change someone's mind because people are egotistic and like themselves...
maybe if people learned more about this Quantum computer (like the deepest details) ideas about the mind, people will have a smaller ego and be more intellectual rather than egotistic.
I think they have to learn how to be humbled before God and see themselves as a small but important part of a much larger creation and plan to get rid of their egotism. I think that learning quantum theory and becoming very intellectual can also make people very egotistical about their intelligence and the fact that they know more than most people do about physical reality. They think that makes them better than a lot of other people who do not know or understand. They need to be able to accept that they know what they know and then be humble enough to find ways to teach it to others while not lording it over them while crowing like a rooster about how smart they are. Anyway come to Life Church Online if you want to hang out and see how I worship God. IDK, maybe you'd enjoy it? Have a great day. :)
Would "the machine" have my random access memories??
I'm not sure what physics of free will Scott is referring to, but he seems to acknowledge that determinism is absolutely correct (6:10 - 6:21). The extent of our knowledge of our future actions is not the question. The question at heart is: are our actions predetermined by the physics of the universe? The starting conditions define the ending conditions and everything in-between. Both Newtonian physics and Einstein's conclusions of 4-dimensional space time corroborate this.
consciousness is not computation. In other hand, a machine by definition is tool that compute, it can't have a subjective experience. The answer does not rely on whether we can build a machine or not to prove that we have free will or not or that human are somehow deterministic and the probabilities of their choices can be computed.
good point, it's hard to quantitatively measure subjective experiences and that is why we have focus groups :)
I think the amount of data processing required to predict a person's actions to exact precision would increase exponentially, and so you could never in principle predict someone's behaviour exactly, and furthermore there would be a strong heuristic limit to how well you could predict it
Non predictability doesn't mean free will exists
Scott's curiosity is infectious.
How can a mathematical model or a machine predict human behaviour when humans are always innovating. Can you develop determinants for that which is not yet conceived? No.
Nothing is a complete novelty in the same way as nothing is really ever "created".
It can't ever. No machine could ever be constructed to measure it as it would influence the final product of the decision. But, the final decision was always going to happen that way.
Did the Camera have Free will during this interview ? Semi Circling around by choice or by predetermined influences ?
bring back the 90s extreme zoom-ins!
The you who 'has" free will isn't real.
The ego is like an eddy in the flow of awareness.
Just like a whirl has no existence apart from the flow of fluid that creates/sustains it and determines what it will do, the ego has no existence apart from the actions in awareness that creates it's illusory existence , and determines what the apparent 'I' wills itself to do.
The will of the I is really just the action of totality.
Without the action of totality there is no center around which the appearance of a self coalesces.
Without the flow of fluid there is no center around which the "eye" of the whirl coalesces.
Like the sound of a flute can't be found in the objects which condition its manifestation, The owner and controller of the body cant'be found in the objects which condition it's manifestation.
The only freedom "we" can have is freedom from illusion.
Freedom from the illusion that you don't have free will
The self is an illusion because you are free to make whichever choices are best for your existence. Identity towards a personality is a fixture most people have because it’s the simplest way to exist. Therefore you do have free will, especially since you have no proof of a higher intelligence that can exactly predict your actions, and no occurrence can be replicated to the exact degree it occurred.
Matthew, i think that existence proved itself to be beyond ”complex”, beyond human language as a whole even. How could something that exists be, if not wildly strange? My intuition is that the Dao must be well beyond description, and well beyond the gross black/white human logic. I personally apply this to the human 'self' as well, and i think that anyone who says that it's an illusion is falling into false black/white dichotomies. This ”eddy within consciousness” we call ego is a self-organising self-sustaining pattern of mental activity, one which once formed it constrains its environment, exactly like an eddy. Thus, it's not exactly an illusion.
I know he general propositions you'd bring to point towards the ego's illusion and i want to tell you in advance that i agree with them. Yet, my intuition is that if you really want to be free from illusion you have to drop the reality of your mental schemas (like the ”ego is an illusion” schema; with all the evidence, concepts and relations you've gathered and integrated under it) and see that these schemas are very useful, esthetic perspectives one takes and uses to be able to ”work”, for lack of a better word. But they cannot be Truth.
Existence, as it manifests here for us, still allows for many degrees of freedom. I'm sure that you have a very particular experience, different in significant ways from that of the average western ”shopper”, but your experience isn't more real than anyone else's. There's no ”maya experience” vs ”nirvana experience” - no dualism of Reality. Just different manifestations of it. When i was 18 years old i was very firmly experiencing my ego - that was absolutely real then & there. Now, i'm seeing and feeling things differently, very likely more in line with your experience. But i have no impact whatsoever over how that 18 year old felt. And i'm glad he felt that way because it was beautiful.
There's something Alan Watts said, something like ”If we manage to enlighten the whole damn universe, if such a thing is even meaningful to say, the what do you think it would happen next? It would do it all over again off course! Worms and fishes, cats and mice, blind people and sages..”. But this doesn't mean you should't try to ”awaken the whole damn thing” if that's your honest understanding and action. Mine is that we should try to do anything to extinguish suffering, and NOT to extinguish illusion, because unlike what was true more than 2000 years ago, nowadays we have other means of dealing with suffering besides enlightenment. Please take a look at this wonderful answer to the question ”How will the next millenium look like?” (the passages belong to philosopher David Pearce, someone who's especially concerned with human and animal suffering) - medium.com/@rares_mircea_82/passages-from-philosopher-david-pearces-answer-to-the-question-of-how-will-the-year-3000-look-like-c6dc0293b9cd
Damn this messed with my mind. I never related free will with identity before. So if the initial condition determines everything, does that mean I have free will in the sense that it's the initial condition that has free will, and since I'm an extension of that condition, I have free will because it is me. I'm doing what it wants but we are one so really we are doing what we want, in the sense that we are all part of one thing doing what it wants us to do because we are doing it and we have free will because we are all that one thing that has free will? In other words, there is free will, but only one single universal will that we are all a piece of? So everyone is responsible for everything everyone does? I mean none of this is probably the case, but it's certainly a way to look at this that I've never thought of before.
Daniel Martinez That is a fucking dope opinion brother. I think this is awesome.
I agree that when we act or speak we affect everyone else in the world with our actions so I try to act in ways that are kind and reduce suffering. I prepare myself to say these words and actions by selectively seeking out what sorts of thoughts can support a free will that leads me to practice acts of kindness. I'm a Christian as well, and that helps support me in my quest to be kind. It was hard before without the support. I go to Life Church Online. It's working out well for me. Just can't convince anyone to really accept me in small groups so far because cancel culture is in church too. :( But the ideas I fill my mind with lead me to greater success with showing kindness and I get some of them from Scripture, some from Philosophy, some from Physics...and I never stop learning. :)
Phillipians 4:8 Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable-if anything is excellent or praiseworthy-think about such things.
www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Philippians%204%3A8&version=NIV
Wonderful re the brain as computer idea, the disconnect is that computers are not conscious and we are
Doesn't the no cloning theorem say that making an exact copy is impossible?
It says making an exact copy of an uknown quantum state is impossible. If you could somehow know all the qualtum states , say with an entaglement-assisted teleportation method than you could theoretically do it.
But I could chose something bizzare just to throw off the computer. If I can trick the computer, then I have free will.
This was an abysmally shallow discussion of the topic.
Physicists are shallow.
I found his argument about building a machine that could predict everything that a person does, doesn’t address all the issues of free will. Am I reasonable in thinking this?
There's no point in going any deeper because the problem of free will is currently undecidable (and could stay undecidable forever).
@5:50 host brain switches to beer thirty
Twins do make remarkably similar decisions to one another, they’re the closest we’ve got to copying a brain, but you couldn’t say they both don’t have independent free will.
Their life experiences are often very different though.
@@paulheinrichdietrich9518 Yes, this is mostly because of their free will, at least, that is how I see it.
Conversly: If we dont have free will, then we are controlled by something else; does it have free will? If not, again that must be controlled by something else, does that have free will? If not . . . etc. etc. sooner or later we must come to a being with free will that controls, otherwise everything would be chaos and the universe would go into heat death. So at least Free Will exists (somewhere).
How could you possibly download the subconscious and unconscious thought?
good point
Everyone has free will, to do the will of satan or God, consequences to follow. Most people love sin more than righteousness... and like it or not, you reap what you sow in the end. Sam and his kind will lie for profit and lead you straight to hell where they will join you prior to God's judgement day on sin and the eternal lake of fire with satan for sinners. Nothing you think or say will change that one bit, just like you can't prevent your appointment with death God has waiting for you... the same God who made you lovingly in his image for a life with him that you constantly rejected.
What about a person who gets access to a machine predicting her future actions and the person now decides to change it in cases she does not like the outcome.
Depends on how deep down the rabbit hole you wish to go. Brains do not calculate in isolation, they are constantly bombarded by input. So to make accurate predictions you would need to not only know the subject's brain, but all that affects it. In other words, the machine would need to calculate every particle that in any way could affect the brain in question, which would then include itself and its own future prediction and effect of that on that brain. This is, of course, ignoring the chance of quantum events inserting randomness somewhere that affects the outcome.
I do think the video misses the point, though. Whether or not the uncertainty principle prevents us from copying a brain and creating predictions is irrelevant to whether or not we have free will. Quantum randomness only creates unpredictability, not agency. All signs seem to point to the reality that our consciousness is only a passenger observing events over which it has no control.
@@mascot4950 you refer to impossiblism, but I think Aaronson is more interesting, because it is more practical.
I'm not referring to a label I have never heard before, no. You'll have to be more specific if I am to offer any further opinion.
This serves as a good example of the lack of usefulness of labels unless you first establish a common understanding of them. This was the first hit when I googled impossibilism: "Impossibilism is a Marxist theory that stresses the limited value of political, economic, and social reforms under capitalism.
@@mascot4950 Impossibilism is the position that free will does not exist even if determinism is wrong, because chance on the level of particles can not give us the free will we care about. My idea obviously would not work when the machine would be perfect, because then it would predict that that exactly this would happen: that the machine would influence the outcome. A less perfect machine that would calculate different possible developments should be much more useful. That such a machine can never be perfect is suggested by the fact that any system never can describe itself perfectly.
@@tnvheiseler As I mentioned, I think that focusing on the machine/predictions is missing the point. To the question of whether we have free will or not, the ability to predict is irrelevant as long as we have the randomness of quantum effects. By the same token, quantum effects do not have any bearing on the matter of free will unless we can be shown to have the ability to affect these events and make them not truly random.
In order to have free will our consciousness would need to somehow be above the laws of physics as we currently understand them, to make our brains do other than what the laws of physics dictates it must. Based on our current knowledge, it would have to function on a level different to that of our physical brain. In other words, the only way to I see to claim we have free will, is to invoke the supernatural. Thus the only rational conclusion based on current evidence, is that we do not have free will. Our brains do what our brains do and our consciousness is a result of that, not a cause. We need new evidence before considering a different conclusion. Or, as some seem fond of doing, redefine "free will" until it means something they can claim we have.
Since we are utilizing modern science:
Modern science claims that from an expanding singularity everything in existence in this universe came into existence, including the forces of nature that it operates by, and including you and me with our supposed consciousness, memories, thoughts and supposed freewill.
But now, does everything in existence really exist per se, OR does only the singularity exist in the form of all things including you and me with our supposed consciousness, memories, thoughts and supposed freewill? Maybe "we" don't even exist but the singularity wants "us" to think we exist and have our own individual "freewill", when in actual fact we don't, in part because "we" don't even exist in the first place? How could we be so certain that it is not that way in actual reality?
Why would "the singularity" have free will, volitions or conciousness, what is so special about it?
i wouldn't get in a fucking teleporter
It's impossible to calculate. No machine could ever be built to measure it as it would change the decision paths of those observing it's outcome. But, this would produce the true outcome, as it was always going to happen. The machine was always going to be built producing the final path. Determinism had to be real. It just doesn't serve any real purpose and is incalculable.
what about quantum mechanics though, the universe can’t be deterministic if particles on the quantum scale move randomly
ok individually you don't feel threatened because an exact calculation doesn't exist, but what if a governing body can reasonably predict herd behavior based on intimidation and reward to create policies that seem to you as "culture". Think of things like a social credit system, recording it's own effectiveness and adjusting accordingly, maybe even individually then (exceptions to rules for people who need that as a motivator and more intimidation for people who need that). In that sense, I think Free Will is already over or close to it.
He started well, but the strength of his arguments and the underlying assumptions were not well thought of
TH-cam agorythms are terrible at telling me what I want to watch and therefore I have freewill to search for new stuff, until a computer algorythm can tell me otherwise.
Not at all clear why predictability has fangs. Surely it's good enough to imagine causal determinism is true and see what the result is for free will and moral responsibility.
Why?
@@shrimpflea
Because it's causal determinism that has the fangs. It's the concept of one physically possible future that can be arrived at from the past as it was, which is important. If it's predictable or not adds nothing of relevance.
Why i'm watching these two guys i must not have free will.
If this is world is really just a materialistic world without any outside influence, then it sounds possible to arrive at a place where we can predict how neurons fire in the brain and how they respond to certain chemical combinations that cause us to make certain decisions but, we don't even know what consciousness is yet. Trillions of neurons fire to make the simplest of decisions, so good luck with your machine.
After you make this machine, can you make another one that tells us where matter comes from please?. You should have the skill by then.
The machine would change the outcome of the decision to a certain degree. You cannot observe everything about a particle. And if you feed the input of the machine back into the human, that information would change the outcome. The determined path was always going to be that a machine was used to produce the final result. True determinism is impossible to calculate.
What is the difference between will and free will. If you choose to eat mutton over fish (an odd choice) is it a “free” choice because you hate mutton, but determined if you hate fish. Buddha did not say things were “determined “. Rather that they were “conditioned “. So that agency still has a role in human life. The concept of “freedom “ is a religious term so that God will not seem a bully when he tortures creatures of his own making. That’s it. That’s all.
Often it's discussed how the human mind is like a program that can be transferred to a computer or copied. But they never talk about something I find very important. Of course there is the body and all it's sensations it sends to our brain and which fills our awareness but I also think even more about the environment, the society. For me, a big part of who you are, is not inside you but outside you If you see all these YT animal clips, it's like the intrinsic nature of an animal, the "instinct" or even DNA is not really that important. A dog can think he's a sheep if raised among sheep. Locked in a computer , without all those threads connecting you to your senses and society, the mind transferred would probably panic immensely and go nuts, disintegrate fast. About free will, it's possible that for an higher being, we act not free but here on earth the concept more or less works satisfactory. In the justice system, free will is accepted but also "perhaps not so completely free will" ;-) , it's often very complicated since you see again that even rats don't choose to drug themselves if they are in a stimulating, good environment.
Jean-Pierre, those are some good point you raised. I would add that a human is alive, and a computer isn't, no matter how advanced, so if you somehow "transferred" a mind, it would be dead like the computer. I'm beginning to think that life is the key to the question of consciousness and free will, but science has abandoned any thought of life being special into the category of superstition. I also would have no problem with a justice system that was more understanding of the limits of free will in many people, but you would still have to protect the rest of us from them.
@@caricue Something seems almost to push life into existence but yet we can't create life out of nothing in the lab. The whole immense universe seems devoid of aliens. Hopefully I (we) live long enough to witness the discovery of other (simple) life in at least the solar system. That could perhaps bring more insight.
@@jean-pierredevent970 Sure, finding simple life could be cool for biochemists and philosophers, but I want my aliens. I want someone new to talk to that isn't burdened by our history and psychology. Super advanced tech wouldn't be bad either.
"Free will is an emergent property that is consistent with the microscopic dynamics." - Sean Carroll
“I am very comfortable with the idea that we can override biology with free will.” - Richard Dawkins
great quotes, questionable sources
Two good bozos
Dawkins is a gift dude
"But it's perfectly possible that actually my decision to immigrate or not to immigrate was influenced by events in the brains which were influenced by other events, influenced by other events, which fundamentally all have a definite physical cause." - also Richard Dawkins, from the very same interview your quote is from.
A more recent statement when asked specifically about the concept of free will:
"When I think I have free will, when I think that I am exercising free choice, I am deluding myself." - also Richard Dawkins
I don't want to put words into Dawkins' mouth, but from what I gather he seems to feel that even if you have a materialistic world view and accept the notion that free will is an illusion, the chain of events deciding your actions is so long and complex that it makes no sense to colloquially differentiate between free will vs. the illusion of it. It makes no difference to how it feels to us, and it certainly makes no difference when talking about whether we e.g. can deny our genes' desire to propagate themselves by us using contraception (example paraphrased from the interview of your quote).
....and what does this have anything to do with physics? It sounds more metaphysical instead.
yes, the title is off. really is should just be "free will from the *perspective* of a physicist"
Scott Aaronson is not a physicist. He is a computer scientist. I think he is talking about topics in this video which he most likely knows very little about.
Because free will is in the mind (assuming it exists). The mind exists in the real world (unless you’re a dualist), and anything in the real world is subject to the laws of physics
yeah all of quantum theory and string theory is pretty metaphysical since you cannot physically go another universe to or truly prove the multiverse or other pieces of the theory that they used math and their minds to come up with.
Woulsnt a copy Just be like a picture of you? To look back in time or predict the future you would need the exact information about everything that incluenced that persoon in the past and future. So lets say that I have a copy of you. I could only predict the future if it had the input you were having in the future. But without that or with different input it would Just be another version of you.
what machine? the russian submarine?
She drew a house 25 years ago and now she lives this house. She dreamed of clean energy and now it’s happening. Like all beautiful things it takes time. She dreamed of a machine of understanding her....
yes
Making choices is agency. Agency is not free will.
huh?
@Steve Kennedy Then how do you define free will?
I think the way they are looking at the question of freewill will never lead to the understanding. We know that the energy field precedes the physical manifestation, so why do we connect freewill with our actions? If we look at how we feel about an event that is taking place in our life, then this leads to at least one explanation be it wright or wrong. Example:
If you criticised my cooking and it hurt my feelings and I determined to get even, I might choose to cook you something I knew you disliked. If I knew you disliked all green vegetables for instance, then when the opportunity arrived I would cook what green vegetable was in season - a whole plate full. Your criticism has determined my future action but the season has determined the way it is delivered. The answer to freewill lies in consciousness; how we react to events sets-out the next manifestation that will occur in that sequence. it is a feedback loop from consciousness to physical manifestation in space/time. An eye for an eye leads to a world of half blind people.
I think this subject is mute .. the real question is are we in a deterministic world a semi deterministic or psuedo deterministic universe.. if we live in a Strictly deterministic universe.. every thing eventually is predictable. Here is a fun thought .. can parts of our own brain predict our future action or what action we would take if it was given enough data about that future event? probable .. (pardon the pun).. ok why would it be any different for us and the universe.. we are part of the universe the brain is a part of us, ego, individual.. why is it so hard to imagine that eventual we can predict the actions of a future universe if we are given enough data about that event.. and on top of that .. it only appears predictive.. if we live in a deterministic universe.. .. so the answer is ....... it is not answered yet... why ?? Well if the universe is purely deterministic then eventual all theory's combine and we make it to the point of singularity .. at that point we hit fast forward and we know our own end .. but if we don't live in a purley deterministic only semi deterministic we may never be able to construct the past based on today . and tomorrows data .. which thus would leave the door wide open for some form of .....(in the voice of Neo) .. Choice.
Crazy. Mad. Insane.
Locality seems to me to be a big issue with determinism -- if an oracle is going to "model" me, I think it'd also have to "model" my locality. Where I am located in the universe is important w.r.t. my point of view, and hence my decisions. So, it seems to me that such a model would need to include all the details of my "local" universe, and hence recreate not only me but the things that I consider in my mind to be "local" to me, and determine which things in my locality are going to hold my attention at the moment of making a decision. Basically, I am not symmetric w.r.t. location, and the "information" available at my location is not symmetric either.
Physics of free will, defined in Philosophical Hypothetical melodramatic jargon..
Conclusion: We have free will. (Bad news for murderers, now they cant blame their destructive will on something else.)
"Once you clear away a lot of the dross ..."
Then commences to spew a lot dross about machines.
free will is like a pinball game. you can twitch the flippers a little. :-)
Your comment has given me hope in life again I thank you so much
Or so your brain wants you to think.
@@trucid2 that's a bit generic, innit?
@@dumpsky Free will is more like the pinball ball thinking it's choosing where to go.
@@trucid2 free will does not think...
I think Google Algorithm is evolving into the machine he is speaking of. It's why people think everyone agrees with them.
Quantum teleportation 🤤🤤🤤
Should have asked him about the Strong Free Will Theorem... :-)
I always thought that the 4th dimension of spacetime in the block universe overrode whatever quantum uncertainty existed, giving us no free will and merely going through the motions of our predetermined future.
What if the whole universe is a replica of another universe, designed to predict what will happen. (before it's too late).
I don't think you have to perfectly replicate the brain. If you can predict the person's actions with 60% accuracy just looking at the brain, and 10 years from now you can predict their actions with 70% or 75% accuracy, that's a strong indication that it's just a matter of technology and as time goes by and you study the brain, you'll increase your accuracy and it's simply a matter of brain chemistry and not free will.
Scott Aaronson is not a neuroscientist or psychologist, so I am very dubious of anything that he says about these topics which he himself is not an expert in. He is a computer scientist who is out of his depth in this video.
@Singularity Neuroscience, psychology, biology, physics and philosophy are all relevant to this problem, but computer science? Idon't see how it enters the picture.
@Singularity This was my original reply, hope it shows:
@Singularity The idea of "process" and "information" are philosophical in nature; saying that the brain "stores information" is purely metaphorical. Still, the idea that the brain is a system of networks, and that it can be analogous to a computer in this regard seems adequate; however, I fail to understand how studying two disciplines that appear to present commonalities such as computer science (of which we know some) and neuroscience (of which we know little as yet) could help us solve metaphysical problems such as: is there a mind separate from the body? or does free will exist?
Amazing ppl, but Robert is not a good interviewer.
He is an extremely good interviewer for these topics. Do you know someone who is better?
agree. wish he would have just hired a less creepy/awkward science communicator to lead this series
no matter what you believe in....it is only your opinion....even if its fact, its your opinion that the fact makes sense and that you should believe in it. That is called faith.
The really smart people understand that you must have faith........faith does not equal religion....its only a belief.....so its all in your head. how can you truly validate your own beliefs since everything you experience is all in your head.
Then the sun must be in your head since you experience the sun
How many blunts did you smoke man?
"The really smart people understand that you must have faith"? Is that a fact, opinion, belief, faith? Oh, I see is all in your head right? lol.
th-cam.com/video/G6jhG5Lxb-k/w-d-xo.html
I don't know about humans but I think God does not have total free will...
1. You can choose to cease to exist by committing suicide (God forbid!)...but God can never cease to exist...come what may...
So, how can God be called free?
2. You can choose to leave the path of goodness and start doing bad deeds...God can never ever even wish to do bad deeds..
So how come God has total free will??
It looks like _scientific determinism,_ the *basis* of all modern science, governs not only physical processes but also our brain/mind:
_For example, a study of patients undergoing awake brain surgery found that by electrically stimulating the appropriate regions of the brain, one could create in the patient the desire to move the hand, arm, or foot, or to move the lips and talk. It is hard to imagine how free will can operate if our behavior is determined by physical law, so it seems that we are no more than biological machines and that free will is just an illusion._ -Stephen Hawking, _The Grand Design,_ 32, 2010 💕 ☮ 🌎 🌌
Scientism detected.
Free will is a necessary fiction.
It suits some people at this point in their lives, but they could have just as well been born in a world where everyone was naked, and been just as fine with that.
Bob Aldo there's no need for it. you get rid of that idea and the world still works the same.
Ah, but human societies with their concepts of "freedom" and "responsibility", and legal systems that back them up, do not work the same without pretending we all have free will. I'm afraid we are stuck with it. If you want to rebuild the social structures of humanity, all I can say is good luck with that.
why would I believe you? you're just a biological bot who was scripted to say this :)
This might be true. I think that evolution favours egotists and the notion that we have free will is useful for egotism
This guy picked the wrong profession, would do better as a diplomat or politician
It's manifest that this guy doesn't have a philosophical training, he doesn't have rigour in analysing the conceptual space
Well, philosophy is a semantic residue left when you take away all the equations from physics. He's a confirmed mathematician (complexity theory, etc.).
I may not have "free" will, but I have MY will, which is unique, and that is enough. :)
existentialism kinda usualLy fqz on... yet attendence ...
There is no such thing as free will, everything is predetermined.
Only if the belief that the atoms call the shots is correct. Robert Pirsig observed that higher patterns of order use lower patterns of order for their own purposes, that biological systems use chemistry for example to act in accord with different principles than that of matter. I'd say the likelihood for free will is still quite strong, it's our existing metaphysics that undermines our logic on the matter.
Predetermined by whom?
the biology of the body? God?