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The schism between our science and politics is finally getting airtime. Liberal western politics are based on individual liberty and free will. However, mainstr

by amasad 9y ago

The schism between our science and politics is finally getting airtime. Liberal western politics are based on individual liberty and free will. However, mainstream science maintains that we're neither individuals nor have free will. Do we try to reconcile both views? Or do we drop one in favor of the other? This, by the way, is also the subject of Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, by the same author behind Sapiens.

TheCowboy 9y ago
You could argue that it has been shown that it isn't so black and white, not all decisions are a result of pure free will in all cases. But there has not been some conclusion that there is no free will by "mainstream science" as it is still an open topic. It's also not necessarily contradictory for it to be a bit of both.
- amasad 9y ago
  Do you agree with the following: - Mainstream science operates on the assumption of physicalism. - Mainstream science operates on the assumption that mind/consciousness is reducible to the brain organ. - Mainstream science operates on the principle of causation. What follows from that is that libertarian free-will is impossible. What you're left with is determinism (and compatibilism which isn't a scientific view, but a moral one).
  - 77pt77 9y ago
    > What you're left with is determinism Not true even at a fundamental level. Why should it be true at a macro/aggregate one?
    - ak4g 9y ago
      Can you clarify what you mean? How are we not left with determinism at a fundamental level? (And if it starts with a Q, then at most one can say is that it's possible that it's not deterministic. It's perfectly compatible with determinism, just not (AIUI) (and IANATP) currently known whether or not it is the case.)
      - acover 9y ago
        Quantum mechanics? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Determinism#Modern_scientific_perspective https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Determinism#Modern_scientific_... Edit: why downvote this?
        MacsHeadroom 9y ago
        It's widely accepted that QM is fully deterministic, even if the future is unpredictable in practice. Broglie–Bohm, being an equivalent and sound interpretation, is poof of this. Quantum randomness isn't truly random. There's no free lunch for free will to be found in QM.
        acover 9y ago
        Sorry, I am reading conflicting information. The Wikipedia page seems to say the opposite. > the result is not traditional determinism, but rather determined probabilities > Thus, quantum physics casts reasonable doubt on the traditional determinism of classical, Newtonian physics in so far as reality does not seem to be absolutely determined. > A critical finding was that quantum mechanics can make statistical predictions which would be violated if local hidden variables really existed. There have been a number of experiments to verify such predictions, and so far they do not appear to be violated. This would suggest there are no hidden variables, although many physicists believe better experiments are needed to conclusively settle the issue This appears to be an open issue. With evidence pointing towards true randomness. You mentioned the pilot wave theory. Is there experimental evidence in favor of it beyond standard quantum mechanics? > Bohmian mechanics has never been widely accepted in the mainstream of the physics community. [0] Thanks. This is all quite over my head. [0] - https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-bohm/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-bohm/
        77pt77 9y ago
        > the result is not traditional determinism, but rather determined probabilities This is the crux you should retain.
  - tacomonstrous 9y ago
    None of your postulates are accurate or well-defined. --I don't know what 'physicalism' means. --Mainstream science doesn't even claim to know what consciousness is, let alone what it can be reduced to. --Science does not operate on the principle of causation. The point is to make falsifiable predictions that can, when verified, be considered as evidence that your hypothesis for how things work might just be how they work. There is just so much we don't know. Using science to justify some new-agey claptrap about determinism is just malfeasance.
    - amasad 9y ago
      >None of your postulates are accurate or well-defined. >--I don't know what 'physicalism' means. Is "well-defined" a codeword for "I don't understand"? Physicalism is as well-defined of a concept as anything can be. >--Mainstream science doesn't even claim to know what consciousness is, let alone what it can be reduced to. Since you don't understand what is "physicalism" I don't think you're going to get this point. The idea is that everything is reduced to elementary physical structures. Therefore nothing can be extra-physcial, super-natural or otherwise. I.e. non-dualist. Therefore the mind must be reduced to physical structures. >--Science does not operate on the principle of causation. So is there anything that is uncaused? When the scientist constructs an experiment do they think "oh what if the billiard ball moved without cause?". >There is just so much we don't know. Using science to justify some new-agey claptrap about determinism is just malfeasance. Actually "new-agey" thought tries to do the exact opposite: save dualism and free will.
      - tacomonstrous 9y ago
        >The idea is that everything is reduced to elementary physical structures. Therefore nothing can be extra-physcial, super-natural or otherwise. I.e. non-dualist. Therefore the mind must be reduced to physical structures. I understand that some people claim this to be a definition, but that hardly makes it one. What's 'extra-physical'? To do this, you must first define what boundaries physicality has. I don't think there is any good definition to be offered here without begging the question. >So is there anything that is uncaused? When the scientist constructs an experiment do they think "oh what if the billiard ball moved without cause?". A scientist has a model for certain phenomena that can be verified experimentally. One can call this causality, sure, but that it leads inexorably towards determinism seems far from clear to me. >Actually "new-agey" thought tries to do the exact opposite: save dualism and free will. I have no opinion on the question of 'free will' as you frame it. Is it part of the human condition that one's circumstances have a large role to play in how life proceeds? Certainly! I'm just against the view that science has anything to say about it.
  - taneq 9y ago
    If we had free will we'd choose not to get into big online discussions about whether or not we have free will, without first defining what we meant by free will...
    - amasad 9y ago
      I tend to agree with you -- the universe can't be so lazy as to generate such a useless string of words that is your comment. For the definition I refer you to introductory philosophy texts.
      - taneq 9y ago
        > For the definition I refer you to introductory philosophy texts. Because that's the definition that everyone is using in this kind of free-form conversation? Nah. If we were all using the same definition, it wouldn't generate this much discussion.
        amasad 9y ago
        We're commenting on an article by a philosopher about an advanced text about human behavior by a top scholar that is also making claims about philosophy. Surely, I can't be faulted for assuming some competency in basic philosophy in the discussion.
  - szemet 9y ago
    Science needs only methodological naturalism not metaphysical naturalism. There are religious scientists - they personally believe that miracles exist so they oppose the real methaphysical naturalism but they assume naturalism during work (that is the methodolical kind), and that is enough for progress, science doesn't care.
  - majewsky 9y ago
    I'm wondering where science would end up if it operated with the same methods, but started from different underlying assumptions than those that you listed. If it would be able to build unexpected, but nonetheless verifiable theories; or if it would just end up being unable to produce anything useful whatsoever without these axioms.
BurningFrog 9y ago
> mainstream science maintains that we're neither individuals nor have free will Citation needed!
- amasad 9y ago
  How about the article you're commenting on? It said exactly the same thing, just different words.
  - coldtea 9y ago
    The article (and several modern scientists and lots of classical philosophers) confuse free will with some external entity that can take decisions for our life while standing outside it (as some objective spectator). In the end, those decisions, even if they were possible, would not be free will, but either arbitrary (random) or requiring some homunculus doing the thinking somewhere inside us. Rather, I say, our will, and that's free enough, and as free as it gets, is mixed up in ourself: it is ourself. Our body, past history, experiences, brain structure, etc, define us, and their sum is what ends up taking the decisions. Thus it doesn't even matter if our "conscious self" is not aware of a decision we've made as some studies say [1]. Our body is still us (in fact, that's all there is when we talk about our self, our body + our neural synapses as shaped by our life experiences from our trajectory in space-time). We are not some souls independent of our body/life story. We ARE our life story/body. This means that determinism (that the universe makes us takes exactly a specific decision at every point etc), if exists, is totally combatible with such a notion of free will. Free doesn't mean "able to go random" but "expressing freely its owner" -- and since our will's owner is our body+history, it cannot but take a single decision each time, those that determine who we are, and thus our essence. [1] http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080411/full/news.2008.751.html http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080411/full/news.2008.751.ht...
    - amasad 9y ago
      Sure, that's compatibilism. But it's not a scientific view, it's a moral one. However, most people would disagree with you. The lay person's view are actually more of a libertarian view of free-will.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
int_handler 9y ago
> Liberal western politics are based on individual liberty and free will. > However, mainstream science maintains that we're neither individuals nor have free will. You are conflating government control and social interactions. Liberal western politics is based on individual liberty and free will in the context of government policy. Such policies are focused on reducing the control that governments have on individual rights and not how individuals are influenced by other individuals within societies, which is the topic that Homo Deus and Sapiens focus on.
- TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
  "focused on reducing the control that governments have on individual rights and not how individuals are influenced by other individuals within societies" The distinction here becomes very blurry very rapidly. Governments are composed of individuals within societies. Individuals influence each other within a socio-political framework.
- amasad 9y ago
  How am I conflating those things? Also false on Homo Deus, it covers both and much of it is about governments, politics and policies. Happy to quote some, but really just open the book on a random page you'll probably see that.
0xfeba 9y ago
Not having free will and being capable of acting on it are two very different things. That is, it doesn't matter if we have free will or not, we can't base any immediate decisions on it since we are not Laplace's demon.
elihu 9y ago
If we assume that free will doesn't exist (which I don't agree with, but for the sake of argument we'll assume it doesn't), one might still expect people to make choices that maximize their own well-being and it isn't too much of a stretch to suppose that such choices are more often than not good for society, or at least more so than a planned society where most choices are made for you by some authority. One can argue for democracy, free speech, and other modern liberal ideas on the basis that they produce a more stable, prosperous society. This assumes that we've already decided that stability and prosperity are attributes that society should have. I think science is a great tool for figuring out what the consequences of a particular action are likely to be, but it's not a tool that will tell us which of several outcomes we should prefer.
- amasad 9y ago
  You're echoing Hume's is-ought distinction which I generally agree with.
- techbio 9y ago
  Optimism and Hume notwithstanding the outcomes regarding prosperity and stability may be bestowed upon the society as a whole without the choices by individuals having individually assisted their own life outcomes.
  - skookumchuck 9y ago
    Societies where the choices are made by the government, not the individuals, have not bestowed prosperity and stability on the whole.
    - brabel 9y ago
      China seems to be a counter example to that (and the largest example in the history of mankind, with 600 million people having a prosperous life thanks to, arguably, the government making decisions on their behalf, not to mention it has been the most stable civilization on Earth despite a few periods of instability), though on the whole, you might be right. I just wouldn't claim that with nearly as much confidence as you do.
owebmaster 9y ago
I've been thinking about this recently. My conclusion is that a good arrange would is a strong state together with a free society. This is what happens in both current world superpowers, China and USA, but the former have a state a little stronger than its +1.5bi population while the latter has a "free society" stronger than the biggest government of the human history.
dredmorbius 9y ago
This is only one of several areas in which our institutional structures (including law, politics, finance, and economic theory) are at odds with scientific models. As a famous Kenyan has said, "reality has a way of biting back".[1] ________________________________ Notes: 1. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-us-canada-38671714/obama-s-advice-to-trump-reality-has-a-way-of-biting-back http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-us-canada-38671714/obama-...
justinpombrio 9y ago
> However, mainstream science maintains that we're neither individuals nor have free will. What is your definition of free will such that mainstream science says that we do not have it? In general, I'd recommend always stating your definition of free will when discussing it, because people's definitions differ. Given that definition, how would the world look if we did have it, and if we didn't? (You are part of the world, so your inner feelings count, if that's all you think would differ.) How sure are you that the world looks the first way, and not the second way?
- amasad 9y ago
  This is really not a point of contention in philosophy. And that's I think why the OP didn't bother to define it as well. I suggest reading one of the philosophy encyclopedias online to get answers to the question of definition.
  - justinpombrio 9y ago
    The first three sentences of the free will article in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy say: > “Free Will” is a philosophical term of art for a particular sort of capacity of rational agents to choose a course of action from among various alternatives. Which sort is the free will sort is what all the fuss is about. (And what a fuss it has been: philosophers have debated this question for over two millennia, and just about every major philosopher has had something to say about it.) The first three sections after that (1.1, 1.2, 1.3) are about different definitions of free will. Where did you get the idea that free will had a settled definition? Is there something else I should be reading?
    - amasad 9y ago
      It's not different definitions of free will unless you're using "definition" super broadly to mean anything that talks about the subject. At the end of the paragraph: >If there is such a thing as free will, it has many dimensions. In what follows, I will sketch the freedom-conferring characteristics that have attracted most of the attention
- deleted 9y ago
zzzzzzzza 9y ago
"mainstream science maintains that we're neither individuals nor have free will" lol. You haven't even bothered trying to give a definition of what free will is... The definition of which is something for philosophers to debate. What I think you mean to say is, at the level of human perception, mainstream science maintains the universe is deterministic (as opposed to non deterministic (which quantum mechanics might be (or "super deterministic)). A deterministic universe is in no way incompatible with the notion of "liberty". You might think of each "choice" you make as a transition in a finite state machine. If you have more potential transitions from any given state, you have more liberty. You do choose what transitions to take, your issue is just that at some level the universe caused you to choose one of those transitions... well what would "free will" look like? A ghost ("soul") outside of the universe controlling your actions instead? How is that any better? Why does the ghost make it's choices? Not sure what you even mean by science maintains we aren't individuals?
- amasad 9y ago
  I probably shouldn't be replying to people who end sentences with "lol". But ok, I'll bite. >You haven't even bothered trying to give a definition of what free will is I assume you read the article and we're using that as context in our discussion as people do when they're discussing articles on HN. >The definition of which is something for philosophers to debate. Not really, there are three accepted mainstream philosophical views on free will: libertarian, determinism, and compatabilism. >What I think you mean to say is, at the level of human perception, mainstream science maintains the universe is deterministic (as opposed to non deterministic (which quantum mechanics might be (or "super deterministic)). Not sure what this exactly means, but the "universe is deterministic" is part of what mainstream science claims. >You might think of each "choice" you make as a transition in a finite state machine. If you have more potential transitions from any given state, you have more liberty. You're pushing a homunculus theory of free-will here. The idea that there is a "you" that is making a choice for you. That's libertarian point of view. >well what would "free will" look like? A ghost ("soul") outside of the universe controlling your actions instead? How is that any better? Why does the ghost make it's choices? Actually based on your previous sentence you seem to believe that -- not me. >Not sure what you even mean by science maintains we aren't individuals? The break-down of the "individual self" as a theory. Look into studies done on patients with severed brain hemispheres. It shows you that there is more than one competing selves. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zx53Zj7EKQE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zx53Zj7EKQE
lr4444lr 9y ago
Maybe, but assuming Shermer has correctly conveyed the contents of this part of the book, Sapolsky's got a lot of nerve asserting so confidently in this book that there is such a definitively deterministic core to humans behavior at the macro level while acknowledging irreducible complexity irrespective of scale as he did so clearly in one of his Stanford lectures: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_njf8jwEGRo&index=21&list=PL150326949691B199 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_njf8jwEGRo&index=21&list=PL.... I really like the guy as an educator, and I'm sure he's earned his scientific chops, but that doesn't qualify him to be even an amateur ethicist.
matt4077 9y ago
Politics are a bit ahead of you, at least in the most advanced countries (Scandinavia etc.): They have almost completely eliminated concepts such as (moral) guilt from law. They may send you to (a rather comfortable) prison, but never as retribution. Only being an actual, ongoing danger to others can justify taking someone's freedom. Same with drug addiction: it's treated as a disease, not personal failure.
- amasad 9y ago
  I've heard that about Scandinavia. That's a great step forward!
- nyolfen 9y ago
  > They may send you to (a rather comfortable) prison, but never as retribution. this was contested in a recent HN thread[1], with regards to norway in particular: > Only a few prisoners enjoy the freedom of this island, which is equivalent to a trustee camp in a US min security prison. The rest who were given 10+ year sentences are in complete isolation in what the media loves to refer to as hotel prisons. In these cells everything is provided for you including your own shower, therefore there's no reasons for the guards to ever let you out and you stay in there 23hrs per day. Because the media calls them hotels, it prevents any prisoner from being able to complain and be taken seriously, so often these guys will either light their cells on fire and hopefully get transferred to one of the older style jails so they can talk to other inmates, or they just kill themselves. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14430539 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14430539

by amasad 9y ago

TheCowboy 9y ago

You could argue that it has been shown that it isn't so black and white, not all decisions are a result of pure free will in all cases. But there has not been some conclusion that there is no free will by "mainstream science" as it is still an open topic. It's also not necessarily contradictory for it to be a bit of both.

amasad 9y ago
Do you agree with the following: - Mainstream science operates on the assumption of physicalism. - Mainstream science operates on the assumption that mind/consciousness is reducible to the brain organ. - Mainstream science operates on the principle of causation. What follows from that is that libertarian free-will is impossible. What you're left with is determinism (and compatibilism which isn't a scientific view, but a moral one).
- 77pt77 9y ago
  > What you're left with is determinism Not true even at a fundamental level. Why should it be true at a macro/aggregate one?
  - ak4g 9y ago
    Can you clarify what you mean? How are we not left with determinism at a fundamental level? (And if it starts with a Q, then at most one can say is that it's possible that it's not deterministic. It's perfectly compatible with determinism, just not (AIUI) (and IANATP) currently known whether or not it is the case.)
    - acover 9y ago
      Quantum mechanics? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Determinism#Modern_scientific_perspective https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Determinism#Modern_scientific_... Edit: why downvote this?
      - MacsHeadroom 9y ago
        It's widely accepted that QM is fully deterministic, even if the future is unpredictable in practice. Broglie–Bohm, being an equivalent and sound interpretation, is poof of this. Quantum randomness isn't truly random. There's no free lunch for free will to be found in QM.
        acover 9y ago
        Sorry, I am reading conflicting information. The Wikipedia page seems to say the opposite. > the result is not traditional determinism, but rather determined probabilities > Thus, quantum physics casts reasonable doubt on the traditional determinism of classical, Newtonian physics in so far as reality does not seem to be absolutely determined. > A critical finding was that quantum mechanics can make statistical predictions which would be violated if local hidden variables really existed. There have been a number of experiments to verify such predictions, and so far they do not appear to be violated. This would suggest there are no hidden variables, although many physicists believe better experiments are needed to conclusively settle the issue This appears to be an open issue. With evidence pointing towards true randomness. You mentioned the pilot wave theory. Is there experimental evidence in favor of it beyond standard quantum mechanics? > Bohmian mechanics has never been widely accepted in the mainstream of the physics community. [0] Thanks. This is all quite over my head. [0] - https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-bohm/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-bohm/
        77pt77 9y ago
        > the result is not traditional determinism, but rather determined probabilities This is the crux you should retain.
- tacomonstrous 9y ago
  None of your postulates are accurate or well-defined. --I don't know what 'physicalism' means. --Mainstream science doesn't even claim to know what consciousness is, let alone what it can be reduced to. --Science does not operate on the principle of causation. The point is to make falsifiable predictions that can, when verified, be considered as evidence that your hypothesis for how things work might just be how they work. There is just so much we don't know. Using science to justify some new-agey claptrap about determinism is just malfeasance.
  - amasad 9y ago
    >None of your postulates are accurate or well-defined. >--I don't know what 'physicalism' means. Is "well-defined" a codeword for "I don't understand"? Physicalism is as well-defined of a concept as anything can be. >--Mainstream science doesn't even claim to know what consciousness is, let alone what it can be reduced to. Since you don't understand what is "physicalism" I don't think you're going to get this point. The idea is that everything is reduced to elementary physical structures. Therefore nothing can be extra-physcial, super-natural or otherwise. I.e. non-dualist. Therefore the mind must be reduced to physical structures. >--Science does not operate on the principle of causation. So is there anything that is uncaused? When the scientist constructs an experiment do they think "oh what if the billiard ball moved without cause?". >There is just so much we don't know. Using science to justify some new-agey claptrap about determinism is just malfeasance. Actually "new-agey" thought tries to do the exact opposite: save dualism and free will.
    - tacomonstrous 9y ago
      >The idea is that everything is reduced to elementary physical structures. Therefore nothing can be extra-physcial, super-natural or otherwise. I.e. non-dualist. Therefore the mind must be reduced to physical structures. I understand that some people claim this to be a definition, but that hardly makes it one. What's 'extra-physical'? To do this, you must first define what boundaries physicality has. I don't think there is any good definition to be offered here without begging the question. >So is there anything that is uncaused? When the scientist constructs an experiment do they think "oh what if the billiard ball moved without cause?". A scientist has a model for certain phenomena that can be verified experimentally. One can call this causality, sure, but that it leads inexorably towards determinism seems far from clear to me. >Actually "new-agey" thought tries to do the exact opposite: save dualism and free will. I have no opinion on the question of 'free will' as you frame it. Is it part of the human condition that one's circumstances have a large role to play in how life proceeds? Certainly! I'm just against the view that science has anything to say about it.
- taneq 9y ago
  If we had free will we'd choose not to get into big online discussions about whether or not we have free will, without first defining what we meant by free will...
  - amasad 9y ago
    I tend to agree with you -- the universe can't be so lazy as to generate such a useless string of words that is your comment. For the definition I refer you to introductory philosophy texts.
    - taneq 9y ago
      > For the definition I refer you to introductory philosophy texts. Because that's the definition that everyone is using in this kind of free-form conversation? Nah. If we were all using the same definition, it wouldn't generate this much discussion.
      - amasad 9y ago
        We're commenting on an article by a philosopher about an advanced text about human behavior by a top scholar that is also making claims about philosophy. Surely, I can't be faulted for assuming some competency in basic philosophy in the discussion.
- szemet 9y ago
  Science needs only methodological naturalism not metaphysical naturalism. There are religious scientists - they personally believe that miracles exist so they oppose the real methaphysical naturalism but they assume naturalism during work (that is the methodolical kind), and that is enough for progress, science doesn't care.
- majewsky 9y ago
  I'm wondering where science would end up if it operated with the same methods, but started from different underlying assumptions than those that you listed. If it would be able to build unexpected, but nonetheless verifiable theories; or if it would just end up being unable to produce anything useful whatsoever without these axioms.

BurningFrog 9y ago

> mainstream science maintains that we're neither individuals nor have free will Citation needed!

amasad 9y ago
How about the article you're commenting on? It said exactly the same thing, just different words.
- coldtea 9y ago
  The article (and several modern scientists and lots of classical philosophers) confuse free will with some external entity that can take decisions for our life while standing outside it (as some objective spectator). In the end, those decisions, even if they were possible, would not be free will, but either arbitrary (random) or requiring some homunculus doing the thinking somewhere inside us. Rather, I say, our will, and that's free enough, and as free as it gets, is mixed up in ourself: it is ourself. Our body, past history, experiences, brain structure, etc, define us, and their sum is what ends up taking the decisions. Thus it doesn't even matter if our "conscious self" is not aware of a decision we've made as some studies say [1]. Our body is still us (in fact, that's all there is when we talk about our self, our body + our neural synapses as shaped by our life experiences from our trajectory in space-time). We are not some souls independent of our body/life story. We ARE our life story/body. This means that determinism (that the universe makes us takes exactly a specific decision at every point etc), if exists, is totally combatible with such a notion of free will. Free doesn't mean "able to go random" but "expressing freely its owner" -- and since our will's owner is our body+history, it cannot but take a single decision each time, those that determine who we are, and thus our essence. [1] http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080411/full/news.2008.751.html http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080411/full/news.2008.751.ht...
  - amasad 9y ago
    Sure, that's compatibilism. But it's not a scientific view, it's a moral one. However, most people would disagree with you. The lay person's view are actually more of a libertarian view of free-will.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

int_handler 9y ago

> Liberal western politics are based on individual liberty and free will. > However, mainstream science maintains that we're neither individuals nor have free will. You are conflating government control and social interactions. Liberal western politics is based on individual liberty and free will in the context of government policy. Such policies are focused on reducing the control that governments have on individual rights and not how individuals are influenced by other individuals within societies, which is the topic that Homo Deus and Sapiens focus on.

TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
"focused on reducing the control that governments have on individual rights and not how individuals are influenced by other individuals within societies" The distinction here becomes very blurry very rapidly. Governments are composed of individuals within societies. Individuals influence each other within a socio-political framework.
amasad 9y ago
How am I conflating those things? Also false on Homo Deus, it covers both and much of it is about governments, politics and policies. Happy to quote some, but really just open the book on a random page you'll probably see that.

0xfeba 9y ago

Not having free will and being capable of acting on it are two very different things. That is, it doesn't matter if we have free will or not, we can't base any immediate decisions on it since we are not Laplace's demon.

elihu 9y ago

If we assume that free will doesn't exist (which I don't agree with, but for the sake of argument we'll assume it doesn't), one might still expect people to make choices that maximize their own well-being and it isn't too much of a stretch to suppose that such choices are more often than not good for society, or at least more so than a planned society where most choices are made for you by some authority. One can argue for democracy, free speech, and other modern liberal ideas on the basis that they produce a more stable, prosperous society. This assumes that we've already decided that stability and prosperity are attributes that society should have. I think science is a great tool for figuring out what the consequences of a particular action are likely to be, but it's not a tool that will tell us which of several outcomes we should prefer.

amasad 9y ago
You're echoing Hume's is-ought distinction which I generally agree with.
techbio 9y ago
Optimism and Hume notwithstanding the outcomes regarding prosperity and stability may be bestowed upon the society as a whole without the choices by individuals having individually assisted their own life outcomes.
- skookumchuck 9y ago
  Societies where the choices are made by the government, not the individuals, have not bestowed prosperity and stability on the whole.
  - brabel 9y ago
    China seems to be a counter example to that (and the largest example in the history of mankind, with 600 million people having a prosperous life thanks to, arguably, the government making decisions on their behalf, not to mention it has been the most stable civilization on Earth despite a few periods of instability), though on the whole, you might be right. I just wouldn't claim that with nearly as much confidence as you do.

owebmaster 9y ago

I've been thinking about this recently. My conclusion is that a good arrange would is a strong state together with a free society. This is what happens in both current world superpowers, China and USA, but the former have a state a little stronger than its +1.5bi population while the latter has a "free society" stronger than the biggest government of the human history.

dredmorbius 9y ago

This is only one of several areas in which our institutional structures (including law, politics, finance, and economic theory) are at odds with scientific models. As a famous Kenyan has said, "reality has a way of biting back".[1] ________________________________ Notes: 1. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-us-canada-38671714/obama-s-advice-to-trump-reality-has-a-way-of-biting-back http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-us-canada-38671714/obama-...

justinpombrio 9y ago

> However, mainstream science maintains that we're neither individuals nor have free will. What is your definition of free will such that mainstream science says that we do not have it? In general, I'd recommend always stating your definition of free will when discussing it, because people's definitions differ. Given that definition, how would the world look if we did have it, and if we didn't? (You are part of the world, so your inner feelings count, if that's all you think would differ.) How sure are you that the world looks the first way, and not the second way?

amasad 9y ago
This is really not a point of contention in philosophy. And that's I think why the OP didn't bother to define it as well. I suggest reading one of the philosophy encyclopedias online to get answers to the question of definition.
- justinpombrio 9y ago
  The first three sentences of the free will article in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy say: > “Free Will” is a philosophical term of art for a particular sort of capacity of rational agents to choose a course of action from among various alternatives. Which sort is the free will sort is what all the fuss is about. (And what a fuss it has been: philosophers have debated this question for over two millennia, and just about every major philosopher has had something to say about it.) The first three sections after that (1.1, 1.2, 1.3) are about different definitions of free will. Where did you get the idea that free will had a settled definition? Is there something else I should be reading?
  - amasad 9y ago
    It's not different definitions of free will unless you're using "definition" super broadly to mean anything that talks about the subject. At the end of the paragraph: >If there is such a thing as free will, it has many dimensions. In what follows, I will sketch the freedom-conferring characteristics that have attracted most of the attention
deleted 9y ago

zzzzzzzza 9y ago

"mainstream science maintains that we're neither individuals nor have free will" lol. You haven't even bothered trying to give a definition of what free will is... The definition of which is something for philosophers to debate. What I think you mean to say is, at the level of human perception, mainstream science maintains the universe is deterministic (as opposed to non deterministic (which quantum mechanics might be (or "super deterministic)). A deterministic universe is in no way incompatible with the notion of "liberty". You might think of each "choice" you make as a transition in a finite state machine. If you have more potential transitions from any given state, you have more liberty. You do choose what transitions to take, your issue is just that at some level the universe caused you to choose one of those transitions... well what would "free will" look like? A ghost ("soul") outside of the universe controlling your actions instead? How is that any better? Why does the ghost make it's choices? Not sure what you even mean by science maintains we aren't individuals?

amasad 9y ago
I probably shouldn't be replying to people who end sentences with "lol". But ok, I'll bite. >You haven't even bothered trying to give a definition of what free will is I assume you read the article and we're using that as context in our discussion as people do when they're discussing articles on HN. >The definition of which is something for philosophers to debate. Not really, there are three accepted mainstream philosophical views on free will: libertarian, determinism, and compatabilism. >What I think you mean to say is, at the level of human perception, mainstream science maintains the universe is deterministic (as opposed to non deterministic (which quantum mechanics might be (or "super deterministic)). Not sure what this exactly means, but the "universe is deterministic" is part of what mainstream science claims. >You might think of each "choice" you make as a transition in a finite state machine. If you have more potential transitions from any given state, you have more liberty. You're pushing a homunculus theory of free-will here. The idea that there is a "you" that is making a choice for you. That's libertarian point of view. >well what would "free will" look like? A ghost ("soul") outside of the universe controlling your actions instead? How is that any better? Why does the ghost make it's choices? Actually based on your previous sentence you seem to believe that -- not me. >Not sure what you even mean by science maintains we aren't individuals? The break-down of the "individual self" as a theory. Look into studies done on patients with severed brain hemispheres. It shows you that there is more than one competing selves. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zx53Zj7EKQE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zx53Zj7EKQE

lr4444lr 9y ago

Maybe, but assuming Shermer has correctly conveyed the contents of this part of the book, Sapolsky's got a lot of nerve asserting so confidently in this book that there is such a definitively deterministic core to humans behavior at the macro level while acknowledging irreducible complexity irrespective of scale as he did so clearly in one of his Stanford lectures: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_njf8jwEGRo&index=21&list=PL150326949691B199 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_njf8jwEGRo&index=21&list=PL.... I really like the guy as an educator, and I'm sure he's earned his scientific chops, but that doesn't qualify him to be even an amateur ethicist.

matt4077 9y ago

Politics are a bit ahead of you, at least in the most advanced countries (Scandinavia etc.): They have almost completely eliminated concepts such as (moral) guilt from law. They may send you to (a rather comfortable) prison, but never as retribution. Only being an actual, ongoing danger to others can justify taking someone's freedom. Same with drug addiction: it's treated as a disease, not personal failure.

amasad 9y ago
I've heard that about Scandinavia. That's a great step forward!
nyolfen 9y ago
> They may send you to (a rather comfortable) prison, but never as retribution. this was contested in a recent HN thread[1], with regards to norway in particular: > Only a few prisoners enjoy the freedom of this island, which is equivalent to a trustee camp in a US min security prison. The rest who were given 10+ year sentences are in complete isolation in what the media loves to refer to as hotel prisons. In these cells everything is provided for you including your own shower, therefore there's no reasons for the guards to ever let you out and you stay in there 23hrs per day. Because the media calls them hotels, it prevents any prisoner from being able to complain and be taken seriously, so often these guys will either light their cells on fire and hopefully get transferred to one of the older style jails so they can talk to other inmates, or they just kill themselves. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14430539 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14430539