Free will?

[FreeTony]

Firstly, no computer can give actual random numbers. All random number generators that I'm aware of are pseudo-random. And you're equating randomness with at least the folk notion of free will. That makes it more like random will.

But more importantly, you missed Julia's point. Rerunning a function is not the same as how she suggested to see if we have free will in the libertarian sense, i.e the ability to have done otherwise than you in fact did. What she said to do is to actually go back so that EVERYTHING was the exact same and see if the agent can actually change what they had done.

Yep, you're correct. You tend to do something like pi multiplied by present time in milliseconds.

I'm pretty sure I didn't miss Julias point. The crux of it actually comes down to the way in which the random time is generated. In the computer example you wouldn't generate a different output if you reset the universe, because of the way the random number is generated (it isn't random). However I'm not sure that with Quantum Mechanics that the same is true. I should have qualified that in my example the random number generator was a perfect one, rather than a real one.


The point I'm trying to make is that just because you do something different in the reset universe, it doesn't mean you have actually actively had any influence on the fact a different outcome has occured.

Is free will just the ability to do something different, or does it imply some sort of choice in this?