4 ms·

I liked this interview with Judea Pearl on free will: https://youtube.com/watch?v=sg7Oq4suH_E https://youtube.com/watch?v=sg7Oq4suH_E The summary is basically

I liked this interview with Judea Pearl on free will: https://youtube.com/watch?v=sg7Oq4suH_E https://youtube.com/watch?v=sg7Oq4suH_E The summary is basically that to our best knowledge there is no free will because decisions are caused by neural activities which in turn are caused by sensory input and noise (but unlikely by quantum noise). However, humans have evolved a strong sense of agency because that's simply an efficient way to reason about machines that produce actions in response to the entirety of their sensory input (especially regarding parent child relationships and mutual behavior correction). This neuroarchitectural bias is essentially an illusion of free will that is so firmly wired into our brains that we cannot escape it. It is also the reason why the idea of a God comes so intuitively to many of us: an invisible actor which can be used to explain inexplicable chains of causation and can serve as a very effective metaphor for behavioral error correction (as a proxy for actual social repercussions, and hence relieved from all the complicated and hence fallible power relations to actual social error correction instances).

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
simonh 10y ago
For some frankly ridiculous definition of free will, yes. I think definitions of free will that this assumes - impossible to predict from pre-existing conditions - is synonymous with random choices. But random choices don't seem to be very free. Where is the agency? I am the pre-existing condition that (largely) determines my choices. That's what makes my decisions mine and not just 'free' decisions devoid of context, responsibility or attribution. So if my decisions are made by me and are not coerced or biased by limited access to information, then they are mine and they are free and I will happily accept responsibility for them. But magically occurring decisions free of conditions and not influenced in any way by my actual mental state or faculties are simply not my decisions.
- taneq 10y ago
  A construct that can react in only one way to any given set of inputs (including its internal state, etc.) intuitively doesn't have 'free will'. A construct that can react in multiple ways to a single given set of inputs, but does so by combining them with some internal inputs which are non-deterministic but generally random in nature, also intuitively doesn't have 'free will'. What you need to really satisfy the intuitive concept of 'free will' is some analytical agency, external to our physical reality, which affects the outcome in some purposeful way. So, basically, a 'soul'. Of course, to move past the 'intuitive' sense we're gonna need to actually rigorously define 'free will', which is something that is curiously lacking in virtually all discussions of this kind of stuff.
  - simonh 10y ago
    > A construct that can react in only one way to any given set of inputs (including its internal state, etc.) intuitively doesn't have 'free will'. Then intuition is wrong, as is often the case. Either the decision is random, or it is mine, or it is somebody or something else's. There can be combinations of those factors, and of course that is actually the usual case. In fact arguably in practice it's always the case. > What you need to really satisfy the intuitive concept of 'free will' is some analytical agency, external to our physical reality, which affects the outcome in some purposeful way. So, basically, a 'soul'. But any analytical agency is going to encapsulate state. Moving that outside our physical bodies is just kicking the can down the metaphysical road but doesn't actually solve anything. If we want to invoke pure randomness, there's always Quantum Mechanics. In fact there's a post on the intersection of quantum mechanics and biology on the front page right now [0]. But of course random input doesn't seem very 'free' either. My point is that 'free will' in the abstract isn't an agency. To have agency there must be an agent and agents have state. When we are talking about free will, we should be talking about the free will of the agent. To the extent that the agent made the decision without undue external influence then they have free will. Can we ever be free of ourselves? Edit: byt +1, good post and I definitely concur with your last point. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12314600 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12314600
    - hacker42 10y ago
Capt-RogerOver 10y ago
How does seeing a human as "neural activities which in turn are caused by sensory input and noise" contradict an idea of free will? The neural activity is obviously so complicated that it can make "sense" of the sensory input and the noise, and make intelligent decisions based on past experience, on it's own generatlizations of experience, on external ideas, etc. etc. There are obviously some mechanisms for creating new information and action, based on past experience as well (thus also creating new unforeseen behavior). These mechanisms can clearly be implemented on the neural machine of the brain, since it's evident that it can even already be approximated in Google Deep Dream to create new unforeseen images based on previous inputs. Whether the human can always verbally describe the decision tree (or whatever other decision mechanism is used), is another question. But even if it cannot describe, so what? The decision is done somewhere deep in the net, and the verbal processor does not have access to it. It's still the network making a decision... So what makes you say that free will is an "illusion"? Our brains obviously soak up the information and then make future decisions based on that information (subject to effectiveness of learning, etc...).
- JoeAltmaier 10y ago
  That quote makes brains sound like deterministic machines. Which would contradict free will.
  - Capt-RogerOver 10y ago
    The notion that determinism leads to seeing the world in terms of simple predictable clockwork universe is obsolete. Look up "chaos theory". It describes how even very few deterministic rules applied to a vast number of elements can very quickly produce chaotic, unpredictable and non-deterministic results. Especially if those rules include feedback loops. BBC has a very good documentary on this called "The secret life of chaos". To summarize, given all this new informatio: no, deterministic machines do not contradict free will. Because those machines are intelligent and have feedback loops and can (deterministically) make intelligent decisions based on the information.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

simonh 10y ago

For some frankly ridiculous definition of free will, yes. I think definitions of free will that this assumes - impossible to predict from pre-existing conditions - is synonymous with random choices. But random choices don't seem to be very free. Where is the agency? I am the pre-existing condition that (largely) determines my choices. That's what makes my decisions mine and not just 'free' decisions devoid of context, responsibility or attribution. So if my decisions are made by me and are not coerced or biased by limited access to information, then they are mine and they are free and I will happily accept responsibility for them. But magically occurring decisions free of conditions and not influenced in any way by my actual mental state or faculties are simply not my decisions.

taneq 10y ago
A construct that can react in only one way to any given set of inputs (including its internal state, etc.) intuitively doesn't have 'free will'. A construct that can react in multiple ways to a single given set of inputs, but does so by combining them with some internal inputs which are non-deterministic but generally random in nature, also intuitively doesn't have 'free will'. What you need to really satisfy the intuitive concept of 'free will' is some analytical agency, external to our physical reality, which affects the outcome in some purposeful way. So, basically, a 'soul'. Of course, to move past the 'intuitive' sense we're gonna need to actually rigorously define 'free will', which is something that is curiously lacking in virtually all discussions of this kind of stuff.
- simonh 10y ago
  > A construct that can react in only one way to any given set of inputs (including its internal state, etc.) intuitively doesn't have 'free will'. Then intuition is wrong, as is often the case. Either the decision is random, or it is mine, or it is somebody or something else's. There can be combinations of those factors, and of course that is actually the usual case. In fact arguably in practice it's always the case. > What you need to really satisfy the intuitive concept of 'free will' is some analytical agency, external to our physical reality, which affects the outcome in some purposeful way. So, basically, a 'soul'. But any analytical agency is going to encapsulate state. Moving that outside our physical bodies is just kicking the can down the metaphysical road but doesn't actually solve anything. If we want to invoke pure randomness, there's always Quantum Mechanics. In fact there's a post on the intersection of quantum mechanics and biology on the front page right now [0]. But of course random input doesn't seem very 'free' either. My point is that 'free will' in the abstract isn't an agency. To have agency there must be an agent and agents have state. When we are talking about free will, we should be talking about the free will of the agent. To the extent that the agent made the decision without undue external influence then they have free will. Can we ever be free of ourselves? Edit: byt +1, good post and I definitely concur with your last point. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12314600 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12314600
  - hacker42 10y ago

Capt-RogerOver 10y ago

How does seeing a human as "neural activities which in turn are caused by sensory input and noise" contradict an idea of free will? The neural activity is obviously so complicated that it can make "sense" of the sensory input and the noise, and make intelligent decisions based on past experience, on it's own generatlizations of experience, on external ideas, etc. etc. There are obviously some mechanisms for creating new information and action, based on past experience as well (thus also creating new unforeseen behavior). These mechanisms can clearly be implemented on the neural machine of the brain, since it's evident that it can even already be approximated in Google Deep Dream to create new unforeseen images based on previous inputs. Whether the human can always verbally describe the decision tree (or whatever other decision mechanism is used), is another question. But even if it cannot describe, so what? The decision is done somewhere deep in the net, and the verbal processor does not have access to it. It's still the network making a decision... So what makes you say that free will is an "illusion"? Our brains obviously soak up the information and then make future decisions based on that information (subject to effectiveness of learning, etc...).

JoeAltmaier 10y ago
That quote makes brains sound like deterministic machines. Which would contradict free will.
- Capt-RogerOver 10y ago
  The notion that determinism leads to seeing the world in terms of simple predictable clockwork universe is obsolete. Look up "chaos theory". It describes how even very few deterministic rules applied to a vast number of elements can very quickly produce chaotic, unpredictable and non-deterministic results. Especially if those rules include feedback loops. BBC has a very good documentary on this called "The secret life of chaos". To summarize, given all this new informatio: no, deterministic machines do not contradict free will. Because those machines are intelligent and have feedback loops and can (deterministically) make intelligent decisions based on the information.