3 ms·

Quantum Entanglement Can Be A Measure Of Free Will, Say Physicists

11 points by ca98am79 16y ago

adamfeldman 16y ago
This reminds of of a very cool concept that Orson Scott Card made up in his "Ender's Game" series: philotic physics – "A philote is the basic building block of matter, the true indivisible particle that is not made up of smaller ones. Philotes take up no space and are essential to the theory of philotic energy. Each atom has a philote of its own, each molecule likewise, and ultimately each human has an aiùa, an intelligent philote." Philotes have the desire/will to connect and join in an organized pattern and form matter. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concepts_in_the_Enders_Game_series#Outside http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concepts_in_the_Enders_Game_ser...)
- arethuza 16y ago
  These kinds of things always remind me of the central concept in Pullman's His Dark Materials - that dark matter is original sin.
saint-loup 16y ago
+10 points on crackpot index.
_delirium 16y ago
From the paper, they appear to be using a rather extreme definition of free will: that free will means a radically unconstrained-by-the-material-world decision-marker, who lives somewhere outside the world (perhaps in some sort of Cartesian "mind" or Christian "soul"), making completely free decisions on some ethereal plane, and then swooping into the material world to enact those decisions now and then. Hence their "bits of free will" metric, which appears to measure just how ethereal and outside-of-physics's-control each bit is. But that's hardly an uncontroversial definition of free will, and probably actually a strongly minority view among modern philosophers (it was dominant in the middle ages, but not anymore). For alternative views, see, say, Daniel Dennett, who argues that free will isn't even incompatible with determinism---the "free" in "free will" doesn't mean "free of physics", but a description of a certain kind of behavior within physics.
- bitdiddle 16y ago
  If you're interested in this sort of thing Vaughan Pratt has an excellent paper explaining all this mindy/body dualism using Chu spaces[1]. When I was reading linear logic I found it a pleasant diversion [1] http://boole.stanford.edu/pub/ratmech.pdf http://boole.stanford.edu/pub/ratmech.pdf

11 points by ca98am79 16y ago

This reminds of of a very cool concept that Orson Scott Card made up in his "Ender's Game" series: philotic physics – "A philote is the basic building block of matter, the true indivisible particle that is not made up of smaller ones. Philotes take up no space and are essential to the theory of philotic energy. Each atom has a philote of its own, each molecule likewise, and ultimately each human has an aiùa, an intelligent philote." Philotes have the desire/will to connect and join in an organized pattern and form matter. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concepts_in_the_Enders_Game_series#Outside http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concepts_in_the_Enders_Game_ser...)

arethuza 16y ago
These kinds of things always remind me of the central concept in Pullman's His Dark Materials - that dark matter is original sin.

saint-loup 16y ago

+10 points on crackpot index.

_delirium 16y ago

From the paper, they appear to be using a rather extreme definition of free will: that free will means a radically unconstrained-by-the-material-world decision-marker, who lives somewhere outside the world (perhaps in some sort of Cartesian "mind" or Christian "soul"), making completely free decisions on some ethereal plane, and then swooping into the material world to enact those decisions now and then. Hence their "bits of free will" metric, which appears to measure just how ethereal and outside-of-physics's-control each bit is. But that's hardly an uncontroversial definition of free will, and probably actually a strongly minority view among modern philosophers (it was dominant in the middle ages, but not anymore). For alternative views, see, say, Daniel Dennett, who argues that free will isn't even incompatible with determinism---the "free" in "free will" doesn't mean "free of physics", but a description of a certain kind of behavior within physics.

bitdiddle 16y ago
If you're interested in this sort of thing Vaughan Pratt has an excellent paper explaining all this mindy/body dualism using Chu spaces[1]. When I was reading linear logic I found it a pleasant diversion [1] http://boole.stanford.edu/pub/ratmech.pdf http://boole.stanford.edu/pub/ratmech.pdf