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> all the 'wrong' bits set ends up not smoking. How would we know that all of the 'pro-smoking' bits are set? Are we aware of all the possible bits? I've alw

> all the 'wrong' bits set ends up not smoking. How would we know that all of the 'pro-smoking' bits are set? Are we aware of all the possible bits? I've always been ardently anti-smoking, even as a kid, even though I was surrounded by smokers. (I'm not claiming that YOU are claiming those are even close to all of the relevant bits, just stating background.) So now I'll make something up: perhaps I was going to become a smoker, except as a toddler, something really bad (from my toddler perspective) happened to me while I was pondering the people smoking around me. And that alone setup sufficient neural pathways that over-rode all of the 'pro smoking' bits, present and future. I believe that the relevant 'bits' are so numerous as to be effectively random. I understand your assertion that free will can't be a thing in a fully deterministic universe, that randomness is a requirement. At the same time, I'm still not convinced that randomness necessarily leads to free will. I honestly don't think that humans have the linguistic or cognitive tools necessary to rigorously discuss or even consider this question. Is there an effective difference between having and not having 'free will' when the playing field is so many orders of magnitude more complex than our ability to quantify or understand it? A sufficiently advanced bot in a sufficiently advanced game, even when using a completely deterministic pseudo random number generator, should be fully able to convince us that it has free will.

jacquesm 9y ago
> I've always been ardently anti-smoking, even as a kid, even though I was surrounded by smokers. (I'm not claiming that YOU are claiming those are even close to all of the relevant bits, just stating background.) I'm pretty anti smoking too. I grew up around smokers, people with yellow fingers and I absolutely hated the smoke. Still, genetics being what it is if that had not been the case I probably would have tried it at some point (ditto alcohol) and given my addictive nature I probably would have been hooked. So we're pretty much in the same boat there. > I believe that the relevant 'bits' are so numerous as to be effectively random. A large number of bits does not automatically - or effectively - imply randomness. It's all about patterns and independence, you could have millions of bits that change in lockstep (think 'game of life') and it would be totally deterministic. > A sufficiently advanced bot in a sufficiently advanced game, even when using a completely deterministic pseudo random number generator, should be fully able to convince us that it has free will. It wouldn't because you could set up a second bot with the same initial seed and the fact that both of them would act exactly the same way to within the limit of observation would be proof that they were deterministic.
- Diederich 9y ago
  Thank you. At this point, I'm pretty convinced that my other assertion is true: that humans don't even have the necessary tools to think about and discuss this topic with any kind of rigor. We are pleasantly and politely talking past each other, which is pretty fun and interesting, but not conducive to substantive progress. In the end, I guess I'm saying that whether we have free will is effectively unknowable, that the underlying complexity is way too high for us to grok. Thus, there isn't a realistic difference between having it and not having it. It brings to mind an argument I had with a creationist a long time ago, that asserted that the universe was only a few thousand years old. I convinced him that it looked much older than that, and the response was that perhaps God made it, a few thousand years ago, look billions of years old. My response: "What's the difference between a universe that is billions of years old and a universe that, in every detail, only appears to be billions of years old, even if it is in fact much younger? If God made it look billions of years old, it's still very worthwhile to study and learn from it." I view the whole free will question in a similar way: whether we do or don't have it, it seems like we have it, and so studying it is worth while.

jacquesm 9y ago

> I've always been ardently anti-smoking, even as a kid, even though I was surrounded by smokers. (I'm not claiming that YOU are claiming those are even close to all of the relevant bits, just stating background.) I'm pretty anti smoking too. I grew up around smokers, people with yellow fingers and I absolutely hated the smoke. Still, genetics being what it is if that had not been the case I probably would have tried it at some point (ditto alcohol) and given my addictive nature I probably would have been hooked. So we're pretty much in the same boat there. > I believe that the relevant 'bits' are so numerous as to be effectively random. A large number of bits does not automatically - or effectively - imply randomness. It's all about patterns and independence, you could have millions of bits that change in lockstep (think 'game of life') and it would be totally deterministic. > A sufficiently advanced bot in a sufficiently advanced game, even when using a completely deterministic pseudo random number generator, should be fully able to convince us that it has free will. It wouldn't because you could set up a second bot with the same initial seed and the fact that both of them would act exactly the same way to within the limit of observation would be proof that they were deterministic.

Diederich 9y ago
Thank you. At this point, I'm pretty convinced that my other assertion is true: that humans don't even have the necessary tools to think about and discuss this topic with any kind of rigor. We are pleasantly and politely talking past each other, which is pretty fun and interesting, but not conducive to substantive progress. In the end, I guess I'm saying that whether we have free will is effectively unknowable, that the underlying complexity is way too high for us to grok. Thus, there isn't a realistic difference between having it and not having it. It brings to mind an argument I had with a creationist a long time ago, that asserted that the universe was only a few thousand years old. I convinced him that it looked much older than that, and the response was that perhaps God made it, a few thousand years ago, look billions of years old. My response: "What's the difference between a universe that is billions of years old and a universe that, in every detail, only appears to be billions of years old, even if it is in fact much younger? If God made it look billions of years old, it's still very worthwhile to study and learn from it." I view the whole free will question in a similar way: whether we do or don't have it, it seems like we have it, and so studying it is worth while.