Determinism, Free Will and Paradox

[The Grand Nudger]

Nope. As word salad, yeah, of course...but otherwise nope.

If I hit the brakes at 60 and let loose at 5, I'm not going in reverse, that's not what relativity means..hehehehe but it would be awesome if it did, so I say run with it.

Trouble with the analogy is that entropy is never "missing", might be better expressed as a situation in which there is -less determinism- in one place, relative to another, not none (not that I would actually agree that this is the case, just trying to help). Will remains chained, though, even if this were so....so that's alot of "what ifs" to end up with no appreciable change. I'd lay all of that aside though, if you could describe the manner in which a brain achieves that, or could even possibly achieve it - and be willing to call that "as free a will as can be".

[Davka]

Nope. As word salad, yeah, of course...but otherwise nope.

If I hit the brakes at 60 and let loose at 5, I'm not going in reverse, that's not what relativity means..hehehehe but it would be awesome if it did, so I say run with it.

Trouble with the analogy is that entropy is never "missing", might be better expressed as a situation in which there is -less determinism- in one place, relative to another, not none (not that I would actually agree that this is the case, just trying to help). Will remains chained, though, so that's alot of "what ifs" to end up with no appreciable change.

Using the definition of entropy as "lack of order or predictability; gradual decline into disorder," it can be demonstrated that there can be areas within an entropic system in which there is a surfeit of order and predictability, and a gradual increase of order. That's more than simply slamming on the brakes - it's a bullet being fired backwards from the car.

[The Grand Nudger]

Sure, if you draw a circle around only what you wish to acknowledge and ignore where that surfeit of order comes from as per our understanding of entropy, sharpshooter.

If we ignore whatever's inconvenient we can always say that whatever's convenient is true, regardless of whether or not it is. As I mentioned though, for purposes of good discussion I'll allow it. Now tell me where our brains are getting all of that indeterminancy from, how they do it, and how I could observe that? Also..what portion of the universe is being shittifed or made even more deterministic by our "choosing" things? From whence does this spring flow?

[Davka]

Sure, if you draw a circle around only what you wish to acknowledge and ignore where that surfeit of order comes from as per our understanding of entropy, sharpshooter.

Not at all. No ignoring going on. Full acknowledgement that the system as a whole still exhibits entropy.

But that bullet, for just a little while, is going the other way. Sure, it's imparting greater speed to the car, but that does not negate the existence of the bullet, or its direction and velocity.

Eddies in a stream don't mean the stream is magically flowing uphill. I am likening life within an entropic system to eddies in a stream. I am likening free will within a deterministic Universe to eddies in a stream.

[The Grand Nudger]

Eddies or entropy man....pick an analogy and stick with it..lol.
(I get it, we're free will machines in an otherwise deterministic universe, is essentially the claim, but I think you're going to have a much harder time supporting the claim than you had making it)

[Davka]

Eddies or entropy man....pick an analogy and stick with it..lol.
(I get it, we're free will machines in an otherwise deterministic universe, is essentially the claim, but I think you're going to have a much harder time supporting the claim than you had making it)

Supporting?

Who said anything about supporting? I'm simply making unsupportable claims and then shifting the burden of proof! I learned my debating skills on a Christian forum.

[Alex K]

So, the entropy of earth can get lowered by receiving energy from he sun in form of high energy radiation, and losing the same amount of energy on he night side via infrared. The decrease in entropy due to the radiating off in the infrared outweighs the gain in entropy from receiving sunlight. It therefore makes sense to say that the entropy on earth can be lowered or at least kept constant by the sun.

[Mudhammam]

As it just so happens, this is the book I had planned on starting today:

I suspect it may have some things to do with the topic at hand...

[Alex K]

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Hm, I don't find that entirely satisfactory, but if we run with it, determinism automatically precludes free will, and lack of determinism produces it. It becomes almost the same thing.

Not at all - in fact, it's almost the opposite.

Given a purely deterministic Universe, free will would be defined as the ability of an individual to act in non-deterministic ways. Determinism would preclude free will only up until the point at which the composition of individual life forms (specifically the brain) reaches sufficient complexity as to generate the emergent property of free will. IOW, determinism in a sufficiently complex Universe would necessarily generate "pockets" of free will.

Look (for example) at the way in which the Solar System - most notably in the Earth-Moon-Sun part of the system - generates pockets of "reverse entropy," in which the energy from the Sun is allowing order and complexity to increase on Earth, at least for a little while.

We can argue that this "reverse entropy" is illusory in the larger scheme of things, representing really nothing more than minor side-effects of energy exchange between the Earth and the Sun, yet it cannot be denied that life on Earth has been increasing in complexity and order for billions of years. Thus, although entropy cannot truly be reversed, there exist little pockets - eddies in the inevitable flow towards Universal heat death - which temporarily (albeit futilely) allow for a bit of 'swimming upstream.'

Similarly, in a deterministic Universe, there might emerge pockets of non-deterministic behavior: unpredictable bubbles within the predictable whole. Free Will on the micro scale, if you will.

I'm tellin' ya, word salad FTW every time!

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I don't see how pockets of truly unpredictable behavior should be able to arise any more than pockets of violation of energy conservation can arise.

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As it just so happens, this is the book I had planned on starting today:

I suspect it may have some things to do with the topic at hand...

Awesome!

[bennyboy]

If determinism is true, then there's actually no such thing as causality: all points along the "time" line are preset and immalleable.

Say what? Determinism is *only* true if causality exists, and causality exists in so far as there is change, and change is just motion---hence, space and time. "All points along the 'time' line" are not present; the past and future, namely, or those instances in which change has occurred or is yet to occur, are not present except as they exist potentially or actually in that a body has changed and is changing. Since the past is immalleable and determines the present, the present is immalleable in so far as it must be as it presently is, and the future will proceed likewise.

You are implying a dirty trick: the injection of the experience of time into a philosophical model of time. But let me ask you this: does time really "take time" if there is nobody experiencing it? Or does it compress into a singularity, as space does as one approaches the speed of light? I propose that without the experience of causality represented by a subjective being changing perspective gradually, there would be neither time nor change-- just the coexistence of all possible states of the universe in a kind of data space.

It's not a reality, presently, but it's one that can be predicted in so far as the present conditions and their subsequent interactions can be hypothetically determined with precision. Maybe I missed something in your other posts but on what basis are you defining time---or motion---out of real existence? Of course the results will be absurd because the notion of everything existing in total stasis is not the world we experience.

Don't let absurdity scare you away from a theory, unless you are entirely sure that reality is not absurd.

In order for determinism to be true, time must exist. If future time does not exist, then it must be created, presumably constantly as the universe continues to unfold. Which is more absurd, that time is a dimension, where future events are already writ but not yet discovered? Or that the entire universe each instant recreates itself? I'm not so confident as you that the latter must be true, and I haven't seen any reason why, in a deterministic universe, it should be considered true.