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Philosophers latched onto the idea of QM in consciousness bc they thought the randomness aspect left room for free will. Of course it doesn't, any more than hoo

Philosophers latched onto the idea of QM in consciousness bc they thought the randomness aspect left room for free will. Of course it doesn't, any more than hooking up an axe over your head that will only drop if a certain atom decays means that you can now choose the time of your death. The point being we don't control the randomness, it evolves according to the laws of QM and therefore there is no role at all for "choice" to play. Also observe that a rock has the same level of access to the underlying randomness of QM and we don't say it has free will. Even if the human brain propagates the randomness upwards to larger systems, there is still no choice in how that is done. Theoretically, it is possible for a rock to exhibit crazy quantum behavior every once in awhile as well. Of course, free will is an inconsistent notion predicated on the idea that there is a "you" separate from "your chemicals" that would do something different if only that dang physics would let it. But separate yourself from your chemicals and you don't get free will, you get literally nothing. People don't realize the implicit dualism in all of this free will stuff

zeotroph 9y ago
"There is no free will!" is also used by some radical neurologists to suggest questionable changes to society, some seriously close to human rights abuses. So to counter that other areas of science (or gaps therein) are searched for what seems like free will, but as you said this won't change anything. I think the concept of free will is needed, and not as a necessary lie to hold society together. I think of it as the number of paths open to you and the likelihood of every one. With every decision you will then randomly fall into one (aided by QM or not). So every person can and should be encouraged to cultivate their pathway network, which is what an open society based on discussions and science already does. Yes, all this is not "free will" in the strictest sense and should probably get a hipper name, but this will serve humanity and humanism more than the alternative of what in the end is just fatalism.
- danbruc 9y ago
  With every decision you will then randomly fall into one (aided by QM or not). »Making a decision« is not a coherent concept. Your actions can either be a function of the current state of the universe or they can be independent of the current state of the universe, they can be either deterministic or random. Or some combination of the two. »Making a decision«, at least that is the way I understand it, means choosing one of several different possible actions and this choice is neither random nor determined by the current state of the universe. As far as I can tell such a thing can not exist, random means not a function of the current state, a function of the current state means not random, there is no room for a third option. And if you think carefully about it, you will notice that »making a decisions« really makes no sense despite the fact that we use the phrase all the time. Just think a bit about a thing that is neither a function of the current state nor random, it just makes no sense. If it existence, then we are currently missing something extremely fundamental about the world. So every person can and should be encouraged to cultivate their pathway network, which is what an open society based on discussions and science already does. We will probably do this but it is fundamentally an illusion without free will and as I just said I am pretty certain it is. Without free will things like encouraging people are meaningless, things just happen, whether deterministically or randomly. I am as stuck as everyone else with the belief that I can make decisions and go down one path or another, but it is an illusion. We will probably keep talking as it were not for the foreseeable future, we will encourage people to do this or that, we will decide to do one thing instead of a different thing, we will be happy or disappointed or angry that someone decided to a specific thing. We will continue to ignore that all this is not in my or your or anyone's control. Not that we could change it, outside of our control, too.
  - drdeca 9y ago
    > »Making a decision« is not a coherent concept. You might "believe" that, but I doubt that you believe it "in your heart of hearts" (I.e. that you alieve it). Choice is fundamental to the human experience. Regardless of its objective existence, disbelieving it's existence doesn't allow for making better choices. Choice is presupposed. Choose well.
  - apk-d 9y ago
    > As far as I can tell such a thing can not exist, random means not a function of the current state, a function of the current state means not random, there is no room for a third option. That's an very good and intuitive point, thanks. Winner in the "shut down the old, silly, unproductive discussion in the least amount of sentences" category.
  - zeotroph 9y ago
    Indeed, Making a decision« is not a coherent concept., I should have written the quoted sentence as "making a 'decision' means you will then randomly (but weighted) fall into one outcome". Whether that source of randomness is QM or just deterministic chaos* (say, it depends on being somewhere a second early or any other butterfly-factor). The point is, some decisions might always have a p=1.0, others only a p=.8. And in the not-QM case that is decided by other factors in advance, so the closer you get to the point-in-time itself, the closer it gets to 1.0. The point is that these different probability values are there, and could be a faux-will. E.g., no matter how bad your commute was, you will be kind to your coworkers (high p), or if your mind encounters new information, you might change your mind (p ~ .5). Concrete example: like encouraging people are meaningless Person has an exam in a week, nobody cheers, and depending how good the coffee is over a week, the weather, etc., p_passing_the_exam is 0.6. So, rolling back time and playing it again 40:60, QM outside the mind, maybe someone making decisions with a geiger counter could be the randomness source. But with some encouraging, p might climb to 0.7 because they outweigh some negative factors. The fact that you cheered someone on, is of course also just a certain probability, but one which you could shape. * if it is all deterministic chaos and QM is a big lie, then Maxwells daemon could compute it all, but nobody in this universe will every have access to all that data, so it is the same.
- albertTJames 9y ago
  "there is no free will" is used by all neuroscientists I have ever worked with, and I have been a neuroscientist for 10 years. Those are not radicals. Moreover, I have never heard of a scientist who would suggest human right abuses except maybe in Nazi germany or other totalitarian regime. Questionnable changes to society, that depends on your view of the world, if you are a climate change denier then a scientist would be perceived as trying to change society in a questionable way I suppose.
- outlace 9y ago
  Interestingly I wrote an essay about morality that essentially follows your logic of maximizing the number of paths a person has open to them, although I used different terminology. https://medium.com/@Med_Student/on-morality-4a30d7e20dc8?source=linkShare-2d6ed8f0e59e-1496336764 https://medium.com/@Med_Student/on-morality-4a30d7e20dc8?sou...
Capt-RogerOver 9y ago
Your views sound outdated. There is a "you" separate from "your chemicals". In the same way a character in a video game is in fact very separate from the transistors that power the computer that the game runs on. They live in different worlds, by different rules and both have very different implications for life. There is a perfectly valid and functional world model that incorporates both the science and it's atoms and spirituality. Functional in a sense that people having this view can both apply their knowledge to the scientific domain (building new mechanical machines) and also to the spiritual domain, that is be truly happy and enlightened in the way the experience their own life. (Seeing yourself (factually incorrectly) as ONLY a chemical machine does not produce happiness, mission, love, etc. (nor good health for that matter, because health is affected by psychological wellbeing a lot) without a solid spiritual foundation.) Jordan Peterson has a very good video about this, something about reconciling science and religion. The point is, "Free Will" is not a scientific concept, it's a concept from spirituality. And can very well fit with all of the science that is known to humanity today. Free will comes not from the randomness of quantum mechanics, but from implications of the chaos theory (which has basically killed determinism as a means of understanding the human life experience).
- Fyorl 9y ago
  On the contrary, I find that seeing myself as only a chemical machine is a very freeing experience that leads to greater happiness and contentment. I find it strange that you can talk about concepts of 'you' being 'factually' correct or incorrect when there are very few established facts about consciousness or self - it all seems like mostly open philosophical debate from what I've seen.
  - WhitneyLand 9y ago
    I don't think you are necessarily in disagreement with him. The fact we are machines doesn't mean the circuits to video game analogy is incorrect, in fact I think it's apt. If physics is about understanding the fundamental nature of matter and energy then why do we study chemistry? Because they are different abstractions that yield different insights. So the point is thinking about consciousness may be more useful that thinking about chemicals even if we understand some of the low level mechanics.
tritium 9y ago
The "randomness" of QM is merely an aspect of the discipline humans have designed, in order to digest the predictable parts of the systems examined. We know, that due to differences of scale, and due to the fact that we must make predictions about systems in motion, as they exist, we must divorce ourselves from the concept of control. But, the "randomness" is not assuredly an innate component of reality. It is simply how we deal with the circumstances as they have happened to confront us. We have a tool that we use, in order to inspect reality. The information that the tool provides to us is practical and useful, but still represents only an estimate of unknowable facts.
- opaque 9y ago
  You seem to be expounding the idea of local realism a la Albert Einstein > "God does not play dice with the universe." So you're in good company. However, it's more complicated than it appears and most physicists do not agree. The randomness in QM is different and deeper than that which appears classically. For example, a coin flip isn't really random: if we can measure the coin's weight and the imparted momentum precisely enough we can predict the result. In QM this is fundamentally impossible, a measurement of a superposition state produces a random outcome. It's not merely and expression of our lack of knowledge of the underlying facts. Experimental violations of Bell's inequality demonstrate that there are no underlying facts in QM (called 'hidden variables'). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell%27s_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell%27s_theorem Unless you accept one of: A) There is no free will: we are all enacting a clockwork fate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdeterminism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdeterminism B) Non-locality (faster than light interactions between distant systems) It sound like you may already accept A, in which case fair enough!
  - tritium 9y ago
    My statement was written in such a way, so as to deliberately avoid this part of the conversation, forcing you're use of the word "seem" to be injected into your conclusion. I am aware of the charged concepts of Bell's Theorem, Fate and Determinism and the interplay of Quantum Entanglement and that unique quirk of particle spins seeming to solidify into concrete realities, only after observation. Basically, I'm taking the position of the agnostic, and concluding nothing. I am aware of the conflicts and debates you've enumerated, and eliciting no opinion or stance. What I am saying, is that all of these things I've avoided are human interpretations of observed realities for now, and remain mostly unresolved, with neither side really giving in, regardless of numbers and head count on either side.
pygy_ 9y ago
John Conway and Simon Kochen would like to have a word with you: https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0604079 https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0604079
awptimus 9y ago
That QM is random to us is no more correct on its face than a dice roll being random. A dice roll follows rules of classical physics and given enough information about the state of the system we can accurately predict /exactly/ how the die will land. It ceases to be random as we increase knowledge. That QM has a limit to the knowledge we can acquire within the confines of our observations does not indicate some philosophical "true randomness."

zeotroph 9y ago

"There is no free will!" is also used by some radical neurologists to suggest questionable changes to society, some seriously close to human rights abuses. So to counter that other areas of science (or gaps therein) are searched for what seems like free will, but as you said this won't change anything. I think the concept of free will is needed, and not as a necessary lie to hold society together. I think of it as the number of paths open to you and the likelihood of every one. With every decision you will then randomly fall into one (aided by QM or not). So every person can and should be encouraged to cultivate their pathway network, which is what an open society based on discussions and science already does. Yes, all this is not "free will" in the strictest sense and should probably get a hipper name, but this will serve humanity and humanism more than the alternative of what in the end is just fatalism.

danbruc 9y ago
With every decision you will then randomly fall into one (aided by QM or not). »Making a decision« is not a coherent concept. Your actions can either be a function of the current state of the universe or they can be independent of the current state of the universe, they can be either deterministic or random. Or some combination of the two. »Making a decision«, at least that is the way I understand it, means choosing one of several different possible actions and this choice is neither random nor determined by the current state of the universe. As far as I can tell such a thing can not exist, random means not a function of the current state, a function of the current state means not random, there is no room for a third option. And if you think carefully about it, you will notice that »making a decisions« really makes no sense despite the fact that we use the phrase all the time. Just think a bit about a thing that is neither a function of the current state nor random, it just makes no sense. If it existence, then we are currently missing something extremely fundamental about the world. So every person can and should be encouraged to cultivate their pathway network, which is what an open society based on discussions and science already does. We will probably do this but it is fundamentally an illusion without free will and as I just said I am pretty certain it is. Without free will things like encouraging people are meaningless, things just happen, whether deterministically or randomly. I am as stuck as everyone else with the belief that I can make decisions and go down one path or another, but it is an illusion. We will probably keep talking as it were not for the foreseeable future, we will encourage people to do this or that, we will decide to do one thing instead of a different thing, we will be happy or disappointed or angry that someone decided to a specific thing. We will continue to ignore that all this is not in my or your or anyone's control. Not that we could change it, outside of our control, too.
- drdeca 9y ago
  > »Making a decision« is not a coherent concept. You might "believe" that, but I doubt that you believe it "in your heart of hearts" (I.e. that you alieve it). Choice is fundamental to the human experience. Regardless of its objective existence, disbelieving it's existence doesn't allow for making better choices. Choice is presupposed. Choose well.
- apk-d 9y ago
  > As far as I can tell such a thing can not exist, random means not a function of the current state, a function of the current state means not random, there is no room for a third option. That's an very good and intuitive point, thanks. Winner in the "shut down the old, silly, unproductive discussion in the least amount of sentences" category.
- zeotroph 9y ago
  Indeed, Making a decision« is not a coherent concept., I should have written the quoted sentence as "making a 'decision' means you will then randomly (but weighted) fall into one outcome". Whether that source of randomness is QM or just deterministic chaos* (say, it depends on being somewhere a second early or any other butterfly-factor). The point is, some decisions might always have a p=1.0, others only a p=.8. And in the not-QM case that is decided by other factors in advance, so the closer you get to the point-in-time itself, the closer it gets to 1.0. The point is that these different probability values are there, and could be a faux-will. E.g., no matter how bad your commute was, you will be kind to your coworkers (high p), or if your mind encounters new information, you might change your mind (p ~ .5). Concrete example: like encouraging people are meaningless Person has an exam in a week, nobody cheers, and depending how good the coffee is over a week, the weather, etc., p_passing_the_exam is 0.6. So, rolling back time and playing it again 40:60, QM outside the mind, maybe someone making decisions with a geiger counter could be the randomness source. But with some encouraging, p might climb to 0.7 because they outweigh some negative factors. The fact that you cheered someone on, is of course also just a certain probability, but one which you could shape. * if it is all deterministic chaos and QM is a big lie, then Maxwells daemon could compute it all, but nobody in this universe will every have access to all that data, so it is the same.
albertTJames 9y ago
"there is no free will" is used by all neuroscientists I have ever worked with, and I have been a neuroscientist for 10 years. Those are not radicals. Moreover, I have never heard of a scientist who would suggest human right abuses except maybe in Nazi germany or other totalitarian regime. Questionnable changes to society, that depends on your view of the world, if you are a climate change denier then a scientist would be perceived as trying to change society in a questionable way I suppose.
outlace 9y ago
Interestingly I wrote an essay about morality that essentially follows your logic of maximizing the number of paths a person has open to them, although I used different terminology. https://medium.com/@Med_Student/on-morality-4a30d7e20dc8?source=linkShare-2d6ed8f0e59e-1496336764 https://medium.com/@Med_Student/on-morality-4a30d7e20dc8?sou...

Capt-RogerOver 9y ago

Your views sound outdated. There is a "you" separate from "your chemicals". In the same way a character in a video game is in fact very separate from the transistors that power the computer that the game runs on. They live in different worlds, by different rules and both have very different implications for life. There is a perfectly valid and functional world model that incorporates both the science and it's atoms and spirituality. Functional in a sense that people having this view can both apply their knowledge to the scientific domain (building new mechanical machines) and also to the spiritual domain, that is be truly happy and enlightened in the way the experience their own life. (Seeing yourself (factually incorrectly) as ONLY a chemical machine does not produce happiness, mission, love, etc. (nor good health for that matter, because health is affected by psychological wellbeing a lot) without a solid spiritual foundation.) Jordan Peterson has a very good video about this, something about reconciling science and religion. The point is, "Free Will" is not a scientific concept, it's a concept from spirituality. And can very well fit with all of the science that is known to humanity today. Free will comes not from the randomness of quantum mechanics, but from implications of the chaos theory (which has basically killed determinism as a means of understanding the human life experience).

Fyorl 9y ago
On the contrary, I find that seeing myself as only a chemical machine is a very freeing experience that leads to greater happiness and contentment. I find it strange that you can talk about concepts of 'you' being 'factually' correct or incorrect when there are very few established facts about consciousness or self - it all seems like mostly open philosophical debate from what I've seen.
- WhitneyLand 9y ago
  I don't think you are necessarily in disagreement with him. The fact we are machines doesn't mean the circuits to video game analogy is incorrect, in fact I think it's apt. If physics is about understanding the fundamental nature of matter and energy then why do we study chemistry? Because they are different abstractions that yield different insights. So the point is thinking about consciousness may be more useful that thinking about chemicals even if we understand some of the low level mechanics.

tritium 9y ago

The "randomness" of QM is merely an aspect of the discipline humans have designed, in order to digest the predictable parts of the systems examined. We know, that due to differences of scale, and due to the fact that we must make predictions about systems in motion, as they exist, we must divorce ourselves from the concept of control. But, the "randomness" is not assuredly an innate component of reality. It is simply how we deal with the circumstances as they have happened to confront us. We have a tool that we use, in order to inspect reality. The information that the tool provides to us is practical and useful, but still represents only an estimate of unknowable facts.

opaque 9y ago
You seem to be expounding the idea of local realism a la Albert Einstein > "God does not play dice with the universe." So you're in good company. However, it's more complicated than it appears and most physicists do not agree. The randomness in QM is different and deeper than that which appears classically. For example, a coin flip isn't really random: if we can measure the coin's weight and the imparted momentum precisely enough we can predict the result. In QM this is fundamentally impossible, a measurement of a superposition state produces a random outcome. It's not merely and expression of our lack of knowledge of the underlying facts. Experimental violations of Bell's inequality demonstrate that there are no underlying facts in QM (called 'hidden variables'). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell%27s_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell%27s_theorem Unless you accept one of: A) There is no free will: we are all enacting a clockwork fate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdeterminism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdeterminism B) Non-locality (faster than light interactions between distant systems) It sound like you may already accept A, in which case fair enough!
- tritium 9y ago
  My statement was written in such a way, so as to deliberately avoid this part of the conversation, forcing you're use of the word "seem" to be injected into your conclusion. I am aware of the charged concepts of Bell's Theorem, Fate and Determinism and the interplay of Quantum Entanglement and that unique quirk of particle spins seeming to solidify into concrete realities, only after observation. Basically, I'm taking the position of the agnostic, and concluding nothing. I am aware of the conflicts and debates you've enumerated, and eliciting no opinion or stance. What I am saying, is that all of these things I've avoided are human interpretations of observed realities for now, and remain mostly unresolved, with neither side really giving in, regardless of numbers and head count on either side.

pygy_ 9y ago

John Conway and Simon Kochen would like to have a word with you: https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0604079 https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0604079

awptimus 9y ago

That QM is random to us is no more correct on its face than a dice roll being random. A dice roll follows rules of classical physics and given enough information about the state of the system we can accurately predict /exactly/ how the die will land. It ceases to be random as we increase knowledge. That QM has a limit to the knowledge we can acquire within the confines of our observations does not indicate some philosophical "true randomness."