Free will and humans

[KevinM1]

This whole business about forming an algorithm is one big red herring. You admit that computers can form algorithms, but only because humans program them. Well this is tacitly accepting that an algorithm can form an algorithm. If humans can form an algorithm then, it is not necessarily the case that their doing so is non-algorithmic. Algorithms can create algorithms and since that means that human algorithm formation could be algorithmic, it defeats the premise that algorithm formation is a sign of free will, because human algorithm creation could itself be deterministically algorithmic.

That was one of the things I wanted him to realize when I asked him about machine learning (programs literally experiencing and remembering things) and self-modifying code (programs modifying and expanding their own capabilities). Does it really matter that a human seeded it with the initial code? After all, humans are merely biological machines programmed by sequences of chemicals reacting to various electrical impulses. You have a biological machine programming a technological machine. Where's the appreciable difference lie, apart from complexity? Keeping in mind that our brains are the end results of millions of years of evolution and that computer science is less than a century old.

But instead I got "herp derp Einstein."

And it's incredibly obvious that pool hasn't spent any time with computer science. Maybe he's had some intro level programming classes, but that's not the same thing.