4 ms·

I'm curious what hacker news readers think about Andrew Friedman's work on closing the "free will loophole" in bell's theorem.

winter_blue 9y ago
If there is anything such as free will, then it has to arise out of indeterminacy in the particles that constitute the human form. If every particle in the human body could be acocunted for, and its next state predicted deterministically based on a fixed set of laws, that means no living organisms have free will, and are merely executing a program whose behavior and outcome is determined solely by its initial state. There is no "ongoing input" in the form of free will decisions/choices. And you need to take the realistic philosophical consequences of that very seriously ... if there is no free will ... I simply cannot imagine how someone can live with that. You might as well kill yourself now, since you are nothing but a robot. I really do despise (and am horrified) by a worldview that says we're all robots, and have no free will. Learning about indeterminacy at the quantum level was a huge relief. It's a logical deduction/conclusion that this low-level indeterminism is likely amplified into "choice" in human beings.
- themgt 9y ago
  > It's a logical deduction/conclusion that this low-level indeterminism is likely amplified into "choice" in human beings. I would agree, and it's a concise way of putting it. It's easy to criticize the idea of quantum consciousness since no one yet can understand or explain how it would be physically possible, but in a deep way the idea of brains "capturing" / amplifying indeterminacy is extremely attractive.
- jjaredsimpson 9y ago
  Randomness doesn't give you free will. If you substitute direct choice of a particular next state and instead are only allowed to sample a state space, you still aren't free to choose. Said another way: flipping a coin cant't make Harvey Dent free.
  - themgt 9y ago
    True, but if you think quantum mechanics is the same as "flipping a coin" I think you need to do more reading. I have yet to hear anyone explain the delayed choice quantum eraser experiment in a way that's remotely compatible with a classical understanding of reality, much less analogize it to a coin flip.
    - sekhat 9y ago
      No, but particles states can only be in a limited set of positions / values. While these values take a larger range, they are still limited. I believe the coin example jjaredsimpson gave was, while hyperbole, to show that the states are limited, and thus can't be used in and of itself as an explanation of free will.
- dwaltrip 9y ago
  If you can't tell that you are a "robot", does it really matter? Does that steak taste any worse? Does the sunset seem less beautiful? Do your decisions feel less real? Enjoy the ride! You only have 1 ticket =)
  - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
    >If you can't tell // Does it matter if you don't exist? I reckon, yes.
    - dwaltrip 9y ago
      What? Not being in "control" is very different from not existing.
- thwarted 9y ago
  And you need to take the realistic philosophical consequences of that very seriously ... if there is no free will ... I simply cannot imagine how someone can live with that. I'll consider the realistic philosophical consequences of that seriously once they are presented. Your inability to imagine how someone can live with that doesn't provide any support for, and isn't an example of, what those realistic philosophical consequences are. if there is no free will ... You might as well kill yourself now So if one doesn't have choice, one should choose to kill oneself? This makes no sense.
- anst 9y ago
  Free will arising from quantum indeterminacy, well, that's a thought of Robert Penrose. The bad news is that even he didn't manage to convince others and the theory didn't really took off. In other words, we are not yet ready to understand such a link. However, there is the Strong Free Will Theorem of Conway and Kochen. Essentially, they prove that "if humans have free will, then elementary particles already have their own small share of this valuable commodity", see http://www.ams.org/notices/200902/rtx090200226p.pdf http://www.ams.org/notices/200902/rtx090200226p.pdf
- xaa 9y ago
  I was really into this question a few years ago. I had quite a bit of existential angst about it as well. I read Penrose, etc, but at the end of it could not find any plausible mechanism for humans having free will in the sense of uncaused causation. But I use a modified version of Daniel Dennett's take on it: we CAN choose, we just can't choose what we choose. Another way of looking at it is to have two different "modes" for thinking of free will: in everyone's daily lives, they use the "traditional" view (how else could we have such things as moral praise or blame?), but when you look at the human brain as a physical system, you use the deterministic/pseudodeterministic view.
shellbackground 9y ago
I've been thinking on that topic for about a year now to justify my own behavior and actions. Free will implies, that there should be genuine "actor", that's behind all one's choices and actions. If you will try to dig down and find your own actor, you soon will discover, that all choices produced by that actor are actually based on your previous experience, so all actions are actually predefined by your own experience. The presence of genuine actor essentially leads to question "who is behind actor's actions?", which inevitably leads to infinite regress that can't be resolved. I like to see how modern science there comes close to various teachings like Buddhism, moving from external world (non-self) to internal (self).
- eternalban 9y ago
  > [A]ll actions are actually predefined by your own experience. Your past actions and deterministic plumbings of material body constrain the future possibilities but they do not remove the possibility of further choice, in the general case. Rumi's father -- both father and son were Muslim mystics -- tells an amusing tale of how the question of predeterminism and free-will was settled in their day in his spiritual diary: In Khwarazm the great majority [are] Mu'tazilis. No one there ever claims to have had a 'vision of God'. The people think of themselves as freely acting makers of their own lives. If they meet up with Jabriya, one who believes everything is predestined, they cuff him about the head and say "It's God's plan that I do this." Khwarazm is tough on the predestined people. Their houses are plundered and as they walk about in poverty they are clubbed and beaten. Mu'tazilis, on the other hand, enjoy the wealth they seize from the Jabriyas, these lazy ones who never initiate anything. "That is God's business" they say. Theirs, evidently, is to suffer in both worlds. As for the faculty of 'Choice' in the Human being, he wrote: "By the One who sets the Earth with rivers pouring through in mist below mountains, and two oceans with a strip of land in between" (27.61), we move the elements into various shapes without their consent, but Human beings, unlike water and trees, have a choice. They are given dignity, discernment, and the evolutionary wisdom that can move from death to new life, again to die and be restored on another level of Existence. You have many choices about the ways you live and work and change and survive. Say you fall into an ocean. You may give up and sink, or you may try to swim to the shore. Salvation is your decision.
ThrustVectoring 9y ago
Free will has more to do with tort law than quantum physics. Any attempt to get at "free will" through something other than legal analysis, game theory, and psychology is fundamentally misguided and is making type errors about what laypeople are talking about when they say "free will".
- simonh 9y ago
  A thousand time yes. Free will only makes sense in the context of an individual Actor. So we can talk about my free will for example. But for that free will and the choices I make to be mine, they must logically be dependent on my state at that time. If they are not determined by my state, then those choices are in no way mine. Furthermore in order to be free choices, they must not be primarily determined by external influences such as threats or misinformation. This is not a tautology. It's a necessary requirement if any choices are to be ascribed to an agent that the state of the agent must determine the choice. Why this is in any way controversial really eludes me. So are our choices pre-determined? In the sense we are talking about, yes. Is that a problem philosophically? Sure, but philosophy and the real world have no obligation to be convenient to our expectations or desires.
k400 9y ago
'free will' is unfortunate name. If randomness causes something instead of deterministic prosess, how is that free will? 'random choise loophole' does not sound so grand.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

winter_blue 9y ago

If there is anything such as free will, then it has to arise out of indeterminacy in the particles that constitute the human form. If every particle in the human body could be acocunted for, and its next state predicted deterministically based on a fixed set of laws, that means no living organisms have free will, and are merely executing a program whose behavior and outcome is determined solely by its initial state. There is no "ongoing input" in the form of free will decisions/choices. And you need to take the realistic philosophical consequences of that very seriously ... if there is no free will ... I simply cannot imagine how someone can live with that. You might as well kill yourself now, since you are nothing but a robot. I really do despise (and am horrified) by a worldview that says we're all robots, and have no free will. Learning about indeterminacy at the quantum level was a huge relief. It's a logical deduction/conclusion that this low-level indeterminism is likely amplified into "choice" in human beings.

themgt 9y ago
> It's a logical deduction/conclusion that this low-level indeterminism is likely amplified into "choice" in human beings. I would agree, and it's a concise way of putting it. It's easy to criticize the idea of quantum consciousness since no one yet can understand or explain how it would be physically possible, but in a deep way the idea of brains "capturing" / amplifying indeterminacy is extremely attractive.
jjaredsimpson 9y ago
Randomness doesn't give you free will. If you substitute direct choice of a particular next state and instead are only allowed to sample a state space, you still aren't free to choose. Said another way: flipping a coin cant't make Harvey Dent free.
- themgt 9y ago
  True, but if you think quantum mechanics is the same as "flipping a coin" I think you need to do more reading. I have yet to hear anyone explain the delayed choice quantum eraser experiment in a way that's remotely compatible with a classical understanding of reality, much less analogize it to a coin flip.
  - sekhat 9y ago
    No, but particles states can only be in a limited set of positions / values. While these values take a larger range, they are still limited. I believe the coin example jjaredsimpson gave was, while hyperbole, to show that the states are limited, and thus can't be used in and of itself as an explanation of free will.
dwaltrip 9y ago
If you can't tell that you are a "robot", does it really matter? Does that steak taste any worse? Does the sunset seem less beautiful? Do your decisions feel less real? Enjoy the ride! You only have 1 ticket =)
- pbhjpbhj 9y ago
  >If you can't tell // Does it matter if you don't exist? I reckon, yes.
  - dwaltrip 9y ago
    What? Not being in "control" is very different from not existing.
thwarted 9y ago
And you need to take the realistic philosophical consequences of that very seriously ... if there is no free will ... I simply cannot imagine how someone can live with that. I'll consider the realistic philosophical consequences of that seriously once they are presented. Your inability to imagine how someone can live with that doesn't provide any support for, and isn't an example of, what those realistic philosophical consequences are. if there is no free will ... You might as well kill yourself now So if one doesn't have choice, one should choose to kill oneself? This makes no sense.
anst 9y ago
Free will arising from quantum indeterminacy, well, that's a thought of Robert Penrose. The bad news is that even he didn't manage to convince others and the theory didn't really took off. In other words, we are not yet ready to understand such a link. However, there is the Strong Free Will Theorem of Conway and Kochen. Essentially, they prove that "if humans have free will, then elementary particles already have their own small share of this valuable commodity", see http://www.ams.org/notices/200902/rtx090200226p.pdf http://www.ams.org/notices/200902/rtx090200226p.pdf
xaa 9y ago
I was really into this question a few years ago. I had quite a bit of existential angst about it as well. I read Penrose, etc, but at the end of it could not find any plausible mechanism for humans having free will in the sense of uncaused causation. But I use a modified version of Daniel Dennett's take on it: we CAN choose, we just can't choose what we choose. Another way of looking at it is to have two different "modes" for thinking of free will: in everyone's daily lives, they use the "traditional" view (how else could we have such things as moral praise or blame?), but when you look at the human brain as a physical system, you use the deterministic/pseudodeterministic view.

shellbackground 9y ago

I've been thinking on that topic for about a year now to justify my own behavior and actions. Free will implies, that there should be genuine "actor", that's behind all one's choices and actions. If you will try to dig down and find your own actor, you soon will discover, that all choices produced by that actor are actually based on your previous experience, so all actions are actually predefined by your own experience. The presence of genuine actor essentially leads to question "who is behind actor's actions?", which inevitably leads to infinite regress that can't be resolved. I like to see how modern science there comes close to various teachings like Buddhism, moving from external world (non-self) to internal (self).

eternalban 9y ago
> [A]ll actions are actually predefined by your own experience. Your past actions and deterministic plumbings of material body constrain the future possibilities but they do not remove the possibility of further choice, in the general case. Rumi's father -- both father and son were Muslim mystics -- tells an amusing tale of how the question of predeterminism and free-will was settled in their day in his spiritual diary: In Khwarazm the great majority [are] Mu'tazilis. No one there ever claims to have had a 'vision of God'. The people think of themselves as freely acting makers of their own lives. If they meet up with Jabriya, one who believes everything is predestined, they cuff him about the head and say "It's God's plan that I do this." Khwarazm is tough on the predestined people. Their houses are plundered and as they walk about in poverty they are clubbed and beaten. Mu'tazilis, on the other hand, enjoy the wealth they seize from the Jabriyas, these lazy ones who never initiate anything. "That is God's business" they say. Theirs, evidently, is to suffer in both worlds. As for the faculty of 'Choice' in the Human being, he wrote: "By the One who sets the Earth with rivers pouring through in mist below mountains, and two oceans with a strip of land in between" (27.61), we move the elements into various shapes without their consent, but Human beings, unlike water and trees, have a choice. They are given dignity, discernment, and the evolutionary wisdom that can move from death to new life, again to die and be restored on another level of Existence. You have many choices about the ways you live and work and change and survive. Say you fall into an ocean. You may give up and sink, or you may try to swim to the shore. Salvation is your decision.

ThrustVectoring 9y ago

Free will has more to do with tort law than quantum physics. Any attempt to get at "free will" through something other than legal analysis, game theory, and psychology is fundamentally misguided and is making type errors about what laypeople are talking about when they say "free will".

simonh 9y ago
A thousand time yes. Free will only makes sense in the context of an individual Actor. So we can talk about my free will for example. But for that free will and the choices I make to be mine, they must logically be dependent on my state at that time. If they are not determined by my state, then those choices are in no way mine. Furthermore in order to be free choices, they must not be primarily determined by external influences such as threats or misinformation. This is not a tautology. It's a necessary requirement if any choices are to be ascribed to an agent that the state of the agent must determine the choice. Why this is in any way controversial really eludes me. So are our choices pre-determined? In the sense we are talking about, yes. Is that a problem philosophically? Sure, but philosophy and the real world have no obligation to be convenient to our expectations or desires.

k400 9y ago

'free will' is unfortunate name. If randomness causes something instead of deterministic prosess, how is that free will? 'random choise loophole' does not sound so grand.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]