Is free will real?

[The Grand Nudger]

Regardless of whatever misapprehensions or nebulous experiences "we" may be toiling under-up to an including the "we", finding dinner is a good skill for a living thing to have. It doesn't matter whether a mirage or veritable tracks in the sand lead you to dinner, from a systems standpoint. Again, you and I have very different ideas about self.

[bennyboy]

Regardless of whatever misapprehensions or nebulous experiences "we" may be toiling under-up to an including the "we", finding dinner is a good skill for a living thing to have. It doesn't matter whether a mirage or veritable tracks in the sand lead you to dinner, from a systems standpoint. Again, you and I have very different ideas about self.

If you're capable of ever feeling offended, then that is true only in the context of forum threads. If you've ever thought "Who does this guy think he is?" or "How dare you?!" then that is true only in the context of forum threads.

I'm pretty sure nobody here is living in a near-perfect zen-like condition, watching detachedly as his body goes through a deterministic, hormone-driven existence, and always maintaining a cool, rational vision of a purely mechanical universal truth. Frankly, I think the ideas you guys are willing to own up to and the ideas you guys actually live by and act on are highly unlikely to be the same. Also, you're ugly, your caretakers dress you funny, and your breath smells like the private parts of unwashed donkeys!

[Mudhammam]

I'm pretty sure nobody here is living in a near-perfect zen-like condition, watching detachedly as his body goes through a deterministic, hormone-driven existence, and always maintaining a cool, rational vision of a purely mechanical universal truth. Frankly, I think the ideas you guys are willing to own up to and the ideas you guys actually live by and act on are highly unlikely to be the same. Also, you're ugly, your caretakers dress you funny, and your breath smells like the private parts of unwashed donkeys!

"Philosophical truths are only systems, the most seductive of which is the one whose author has the most skill, wit and enlightenment, and in which each can decide for himself because, for most readers, the arguments in favour are no more proved than those against, and because a few degrees of probability more or less on one side or the other are enough to decide and force our agreement; and only well-formed minds (who are much rarer than those who are called wits) can feel or grasp these differences. How many arguments, mistakes, hatreds and contradictions have arisen from the famous question of liberty or fatalism! Yet they are only hypotheses. A narrow or fanatical mind, believing the doctrines in bad pamphlets, which he recites to us with a self-satisfied air, naturally imagines that all is lost -- morality, religion, society -- if it is proved that man is not free. The man of genius, on the contrary, the impartial and unprejudiced man, sees the solution to the problem, whatever it is, as completely unimportant both in itself and in relation to society. Why? Because it does not lead in practice to the delicate and dangerous implications with which the theory seems to threaten society. I think I have proved that remorse is a prejudice created by education and that man is a machine despotically governed by absolute fatalism. I may be mistaken and I am willing to believe so. But suppose, as I sincerely believe, that it is philosophically true; what does it matter? All these issues can be put in the same class as the mathematical point, which only exists in the heads of mathematicians, and so many other geometrical and algebraic problems whose clear and ideal solutions demonstrate all the power of the human mind. This power is not the enemy of the laws and this theory is innocent, the result of pure curiosity, which is so little applicable in practice that it can no more be used than can all the metaphysical truths of the most advanced geometry."

- Julien Offray de La Mettrie

[The Grand Nudger]

I'm pretty sure nobody here is living in a near-perfect zen-like condition, watching detachedly as his body goes through a deterministic, hormone-driven existence, and always maintaining a cool, rational vision of a purely mechanical universal truth.

Well, I couldn't lay claim to any of that, no - but why should I or would I, and what would it have to do with the veracity of my positions? If any of that was an accurate description of how someone with my positions -should live- and yet I didn't.....then you have what -an appeal to hypocrisy - ? Get that shit outta heeeeyah?

Frankly, I think the ideas you guys are willing to own up to and the ideas you guys actually live by and act on are highly unlikely to be the same.

Then, frankly, you'd be wrong. I can see why you'd think that though, from your POV. As before, I don't have the same list of attachments to these various concepts we've been discussing, so alot of what you see as conflict just doesn't factor in to the way I view my experience juxtaposed against our knowledge.

[bennyboy]

Awwwww, I thought the donkey thing would get a reaction, for sure. Maybe I'm wrong about you guys!

Okay, so here we have a case where the philosophical idea is taken as true (or, maybe, that it is most likely true given the evidence). And yet, even knowing free will to be false can't make the instinct we CALL "free will" any less convincing. Or, even knowing that the sense of self, as we conceive it, is illusory, doesn't stop us from being fully immersed in that sense.

Is this really so different than acting as though a table is flat? A table IS really flat in a sense, because the density of particles along one side of a plane really is higher than that on the other side. Couldn't I say of my ideas and memories that SO MANY are related to this mythical, illusory "self" that this relationship is sufficient to say the self is real? That is, that the self is the keystone which holds all ideas about the world into a coherent web, rather than allowing every experience I've ever had to remain discrete, unrelated, and therefore useless as part of a greater system of thought?

[robvalue]

To take a sideswipe at this, I wonder what are the possible gains of scientific investigation of "how" we make decisions? Apart from it being very interesting, of course.

I'm not trying to be dismissive, I find it a fascinating subject, but I'm a bit vague about what practical uses any conclusion could have. Any thoughts?

[bennyboy]

To take a sideswipe at this, I wonder what are the possible gains of scientific investigation of "how" we make decisions? Apart from it being very interesting, of course.

I'm not trying to be dismissive, I find it a fascinating subject, but I'm a bit vague about what practical uses any conclusion could have. Any thoughts?

I can brainstorm some.

One would be to improve the response time of prosthetics. If a computer can know what you're planning to do before you are consciously aware of it, it will guide movements much more smoothly. Another would be with dieting, quitting smoking, etc. If you can understand better at which level a supposedly free-willed person continually "fails" to behave in a healthy way, you have a better chance of identifying possible solutions.

There are possible legal ramifications. If free will is considered an illusion, then medical treatments might supplant punishment-- and this trend could lead to improvements in brain surgery and chemical therapies.

Another implication would be in establishing laws for the treatment of AI devices. Are they "conscious?" Should they be prevented from acting with "free will," if such is found to be just a predictable response to environmental stimuli?

[robvalue]

Interesting stuff, thank you. I hadn't considered those points.

[bennyboy]

And one more thing. If free will is real on any level, then we are possibly at a border condition-- what would the mechanism be for free will? We may need to make more progress into how matter can be sentient, for example. Maybe we'll discover in a lab an incredible relationship between QM mechanics and the mind, for example. Certainly, there are already some observer effects where our observations of particles seem to affect the way they behave. Would the same apply if a robot observed as if a thinking human does, for example?

Forgive the rants, I was kind of excited by the nature of your question.

[robvalue]

That's fine! I like rants. Sometimes you just gotta splurge what's in your brain I'm happy you liked my question! Although I enjoy the abstract, I like to step back and see if there is actually any applications to things.

Indeed, I do find this quantum uncertainty business fascinating. To me it's the nearest thing to "evidence" of being in a simulation; things are not fully determined until required, could this be a processing saving feature?

Of course, this is bordering on conspiracy theories, but I find it interesting to think of all possibilities.

The way things behave at the quantum level is so insane and counter-intuitive, you have to kind of block out how you usually expect the world to work. But then there's this idea of overall quantum results being fairly predictable. I'm not sure if that's just due to statistics or what, I'm very much a quantum Virgin. I'm actually starting a beginner's books about it called "How to teach quantum physics to your dog." The author found the idea of a dog learning it useful, because a dog doesn't have the baggage of our preconceptions about physics.