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"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 t

"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...

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...