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It feels like this is mostly a disagreement over language. We all agree that determinism and "predictability" are independent questions. You've equated "free wi

by davmre 10y ago

It feels like this is mostly a disagreement over language. We all agree that determinism and "predictability" are independent questions. You've equated "free will" with non-determinism and therefore see predictability to be orthogonal, whereas Aaronson equates "free will" with non-predictability, making determinism orthogonal though I imagine he'd argue for it on other grounds. It's not clear that there's an actual disagreement over anything except which words to use for which concepts. FWIW, I think Scott has read more of the philosophical literature on free will than probably anyone else in the world with a comparable level of quantum-physical expertise. If he's too confused to be allowed to discuss these issues, then what is the path by which philosophers expect to stay relevant and up-to-date with new knowledge? A field whose currency of legitimacy is "you must have devoted your life to understanding every detail of dispute in the existing literature" is not a living field that hopes to learn from outsiders and grow with new scientific inquiry. I think the best philosophers recognize this, and are willing to engage more broadly.

foldr 10y ago
I wouldn’t equate free will with physicalism. It’s possible that physicalism might entail the absence of free will (I don’t claim to know the answer to this question), but it’s pretty clear that the entailment doesn’t go in the other direction. I’m a bit frustrated here, because physicists often seem to retreat to this position that it’s all just a question of terminology once people start pushing back against their philosophical claims. If Aaronson actually is using terms in such a weird way as you suggest, then I just have no idea what he is on about. We already have a perfectly fine word that means unpredictable; there’s no need to repurpose “free”. I admit that I have no way of knowing what he has or hasn’t read, and my comment on that was snarky. But he doesn’t refer to any philosophical work in the interview, and I couldn’t find much published work by him that really engages with the current literature.
- moultano 10y ago
  I think Aaronson believes the following. If there are provably no experiments that could differentiate a propery X from "free" then X is equivalent to "free." I think unpredictability passes that test.
  - foldr 10y ago
    Hmm, that seems like a fairly banal observation. Of course you can't tell whether someone has free will looking from the outside. In the general case the behavior of someone with free will will be indistinguishable from random behavior. If free will was just about patterns of behavior then it wouldn't be a very interesting philosophical issue.
    - Tyr42 10y ago
      Here's the paper he wrote on it, I think it'd be good to take a look at it directly. https://arxiv.org/abs/1306.0159 https://arxiv.org/abs/1306.0159 Scott is making a pair of claims: If it's possible to build a fast, noninvasive, perfect predictor then what more can science say to show that people don't have free will? If it's impossible to build such a predictor, for some fundamental reason, then what more can science say to show that free will exists.
      - foldr 10y ago
        Ah, in the paper he says that he's not actually talking about free will. That makes it less confusing. But I still think he's making much too strong a connection between Knightian unpredictability and free will. I don't see any reason at all to think that the former is a necessary condition for the latter, and he doesn't really attempt to argue the point. (He promises that he's going to argue it in section 2.5, but then section 2.5 ends up only talking about problems of personal identity.)
    - moultano 10y ago
      >Of course you can't tell whether someone has free will looking from the outside. Before quantum mechanics and uncomputability, the "of course" went the other direction.
      - foldr 10y ago
        I don't see how that makes any difference. Could you expand?

by davmre 10y ago

foldr 10y ago

I wouldn’t equate free will with physicalism. It’s possible that physicalism might entail the absence of free will (I don’t claim to know the answer to this question), but it’s pretty clear that the entailment doesn’t go in the other direction. I’m a bit frustrated here, because physicists often seem to retreat to this position that it’s all just a question of terminology once people start pushing back against their philosophical claims. If Aaronson actually is using terms in such a weird way as you suggest, then I just have no idea what he is on about. We already have a perfectly fine word that means unpredictable; there’s no need to repurpose “free”. I admit that I have no way of knowing what he has or hasn’t read, and my comment on that was snarky. But he doesn’t refer to any philosophical work in the interview, and I couldn’t find much published work by him that really engages with the current literature.

moultano 10y ago
I think Aaronson believes the following. If there are provably no experiments that could differentiate a propery X from "free" then X is equivalent to "free." I think unpredictability passes that test.
- foldr 10y ago
  Hmm, that seems like a fairly banal observation. Of course you can't tell whether someone has free will looking from the outside. In the general case the behavior of someone with free will will be indistinguishable from random behavior. If free will was just about patterns of behavior then it wouldn't be a very interesting philosophical issue.
  - Tyr42 10y ago
    Here's the paper he wrote on it, I think it'd be good to take a look at it directly. https://arxiv.org/abs/1306.0159 https://arxiv.org/abs/1306.0159 Scott is making a pair of claims: If it's possible to build a fast, noninvasive, perfect predictor then what more can science say to show that people don't have free will? If it's impossible to build such a predictor, for some fundamental reason, then what more can science say to show that free will exists.
    - foldr 10y ago
      Ah, in the paper he says that he's not actually talking about free will. That makes it less confusing. But I still think he's making much too strong a connection between Knightian unpredictability and free will. I don't see any reason at all to think that the former is a necessary condition for the latter, and he doesn't really attempt to argue the point. (He promises that he's going to argue it in section 2.5, but then section 2.5 ends up only talking about problems of personal identity.)
  - moultano 10y ago
    >Of course you can't tell whether someone has free will looking from the outside. Before quantum mechanics and uncomputability, the "of course" went the other direction.
    - foldr 10y ago
      I don't see how that makes any difference. Could you expand?