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John Conway: Discovering free will (2011)

82 points by monort 8y ago

tomhoward 8y ago
Archive version: http://archive.is/NlB7R http://archive.is/NlB7R
- akavel 8y ago
  Part 2: http://web.archive.org/web/20180726093121/https://plus.maths.org/content/john-conway-discovering-free-will-part-ii http://web.archive.org/web/20180726093121/https://plus.maths...
dziungles 8y ago
I find the topic of the free will to be the most fascinating. The abscence of the free will ('free will' as it is defined by the pop culture) is a revolutionary idea because the current world structures and narratives are based on the notion that free will exists. It is a much more revolutionary idea than Copernicus' round Earth discovery, because the illusion of the free will influences our lives more and in multiple ways. I'm also a strong believer that the society without the idea of the free will would be a much more compassionate, healthier and happy.
- austinjp 8y ago
  Well that's a cliffhanger. How would that society be all those things?
  - l3mu 8y ago
    I suppose it wouldn't have a choice!
  - karmakaze 8y ago
    I can defitely see some of the upsides-mostly a lack of judgemental views and just pragmatic solutions. Some examples are the varying effectiveness of prison systems around the world. Similarly for treatment of mental health issues or addictions. What I find hard to gauge is the potential downside to thinking without free will. There's no accountability so anything goes, or even a 'then why bother at all' infliction. Personally I think we're moving in the right direction on this and could move somewhat faster so thus kind of awareness and discussion is great. I'm less in favor of taking it to the extreme and hoping that it wasn't too far. Maybe a small population will do that experiment for larger groups to watch and learn from.
- coldtea 8y ago
  There's an endless loop in this argument. Per definition, if free will doesn't exist, then you can't say that "the illusion of the free will influences our lives more and in multiple ways." If free will doesn't exist, then our lives, thoughts and choices are predetermined, and thus they can't be "influenced" by our belief in free will (or lack thereof). In fact if we are in such a world, the we can't even opt to believe in free will or not -- since in such a world, our beliefs are also predetermined themselves. The society wont be any more "compassionate, healthier and happy" in such a world based on any of its beliefs. It would only be compassionated, healthier and happy if its predetermined to be so. The only option for your argument to work, would be for free will to exist while the society doesn't believe it does. Such a society, indeed, could be more compassionated, healthier and happy (it remains to be proven, but it's a possibility that non-belief in free will could change things positively, as long as free will exists for this non-belief to make a difference).
  - colomon 8y ago
    For your last case, isn't it just as likely the opposite would happen? If Fred don't deserve any blame for being a mass murderer, why should Sally get any credit for not giving in to her instinct to see him hang for it? And what would the point of trying to be compassionate be?
  - n4r9 8y ago
    I don't follow your reasoning at all. You seem to be quite confused over how beliefs could possibly work in a predetermined world. Firstly, a lack of free will does not imply predetermination, since it's possible that some things are fundamentally random. Secondly, even if everything is predetermined, it can still be the case that our choices can be influenced by our belief in free will. You could imagine two instances of a fairly simple bot which has a "isFreeWillBelieved" property. One of them has it set to true and the other to false, and they make different choices accordingly. Thirdly, whilst we can't "opt" to believe in free will or not, whether or not we believe in it can certainly change over time due to building evidence and argumentation.
    - coldtea 8y ago
- imglorp 8y ago
  > society without the idea of the free will would be a much more compassionate, healthier and happy. I'm less optimistic. What will keep people--resigned to their fate--from plopping on the couch to wait it out, as opposed to attempting something more ambitious? As someone famous said, if the outcome was certain, it wouldn't be a game; so if humans don't have some risk, some excitement, there will be no motivation.
  - tjoff 8y ago
    I find that argument similar to "without religion what stops you from murder and raping people?" The absolute knowledge that free will doesn't exist doesn't really change much at all. It might give you a different outlook and, optimistically, a better understanding of different viewpoints. If you are absolutely contempt to sit on the couch for the rest of your life nothing stops you from choosing that in a free-will world. Most of us would be bored and will try other ways to entertain our self. Whether that desire is founded on free will or just a predetermined evolutionary trait doesn't really change the outcome. You believing in free will or not is quite irrelevant compared to the impact your surrounding has on you. It is even your surrounding that forms the basis of your belief in the first place.
  - trabant00 8y ago
    > What will keep people--resigned to their fate--from plopping on the couch to wait it out, as opposed to attempting somethin I don't think this is how it works from my observations. People don't decide to couch it out based on their philosophy or the expected outcome. They may rationalize it that way but what I believe is that based on their experiences so far some people are simply driven to go out and do stuff and others don't want to do anything mostly. And my belief is compatible with the "no free will" theory.
  - dziungles 8y ago
    "What will keep people--resigned to their fate--from plopping on the couch to wait it out, as opposed to attempting something more ambitious?" When the mind and body is in movement, when it has goals and ambitions - that all creates a good feeling for a human being. Look at kids in healthy environments. Look at kids in unorthodox schools. Look at successful entrepreneurs who keep working even after they become financially independent. The opposite "lying in bed" doesn't stimulate the mind, nor body, is boring and depressing. Only in today's world, where we have the concept of responsibility, we blame people if they try and fail. Or we don't create opportunities for people to learn useful skills, and then we force them (in a moral ways of course) to work in poorly paid, low status and hard labour jobs. Of course, under such conditions, many people believe that happiness is lying in bed.
- zaarn 8y ago
  If we discovered free will doesn't exist, provably, which is my current position, I don't think anything would change. The illusion that we have free will was strong enough that we used law to keep everything in line, make people responsible for their actions, etc. I see no reason why either side of the coin would or should stop that behaviour. If our actions are a result of our environment, shouldn't the environment to the best of our ability be changed such that negative actions have a lower probability of occuring? With free will you punish people for a crime because it's their fault. Without you punish people to create an environment in which crime is not desirable. (Though resocialization / rehabilitation is probably a better option)
- tmoravec 8y ago
  > I'm also a strong believer that the society without the idea of the free will would be a much more compassionate, healthier and happy. There's a major religion where one of the main theses is that everything is predestined. I haven't noticed those societies to be significantly more compassionate, healthier, or happy.
  - dziungles 8y ago
    Which religion?
- akavel 8y ago
  I'm not really sure I understand what you're arguing for or observing, but notably, the article actually argues for free will existing (thus I assume not being an illusion), if you read it to the end: > Although the Free Will Theorem can't prove if we have free will, it does have a fundamental consequence: if the Universe is deterministic, and a particles behaviour is always described by a function of the past, then we can’t have free will. And Conway is convinced that we do: "I can’t prove we have free will but I still believe that we do." > While this and other repercussions are still being discussed by the mathematics, physics and philosophical communities, the theorem has had a profound impact on Conway himself. "It’s really affected how I look at the world. I believe that the glimmerings of freedom are in every particle – in the clouds, in everything – the particles are all taking free decisions." > [...] > And he immediately emphasises he’s not attributing some sort of consciousness to the particles. "You mustn’t misread it, we’re not asserting these particles make decisions, we’re not saying they have any consciousness. What happens is they act, they indubitably act, and which action the particle does is free in this sense, it is not a predetermined function of the past. And that’s not the same as randomness, oh dear me no!" Though I'm still not sure to what extent this whole argument hangs on the third axiom dubbed "MIN", which according to the article, "isn’t experimentally testable" per Conway. Given it's also the one I don't-understand-the-most, I'm not sure how to look at the whole thing at face value. That said, the way they constructed the analogy, and how the article's author managed to approach it with an attempt at simplifying, are totally super interesting. I mean, that just the possibility of even constructing an analogy here (between something so vague and problematic to measure as free will, and something so material and experimental as behaviours of particles) is certainly stimulating for thoughts and some philosophical pondering.
- monort 8y ago
  Ted Chiang has a short story "What's expected of us" about possible consequences of proving the absence of free will: https://www.nature.com/articles/436150a https://www.nature.com/articles/436150a
- glitchc 8y ago
  It's been tried. Many times over. The type of society you advocate is a religious one. One would argue this is still the dominant model. In America, more than 50% believe in some form of God. Some nations are outright religious. Poland and Italy are ~85% accepted Catholic and over 95% if you include lapsed Catholics. Most religions believe in predestination, in that God's Will supersedes man's will, everything happens for a reason, and our fate is decided the day we are born. Individual religious folk are more compassionate on average, take care of the needy, poor and downtrodden. Religious societies however, have led to intolerance, persecution and rigid class systems.
  - dziungles 8y ago
    As far as I know, the opposite is true. The concept of the free was heavility influenced by Christianity and I bet by other religions too.
- posterboy 8y ago
  You are free to do so, but talking in absolutes won't get you anywhere. There's the will to be free and the will to be content, not to say contained. These are two extremes and the target is in the middle, if and only if this is really just a two dimensional thing ... If you wonder how two dimensions can have a middle, think of negative and positive parts of the number line as individual axis ... I havent' figured out the maths, it's not a normed vector space, though. Either way, people strive for consistency, but will is a highly inconsistent notion. So there must be more angles to the equation. Free will is an oxymoron, or the homogenous solution ignoring higher orders at best, because will immediately constrains freedom.
- 8bitsrule 8y ago
  Absence... is a revolutionary idea Indeed. For one thing, if it were true, then everyone who's ever been convicted of a crime and punished has been the victim of a complete fantasy ... imposed on them and us by fate. Stereotypes, biases, hate crimes, going to war or not, building the pyramids or not, painting the Mona Lisa, creating a symphony ... picking this flower or not, falling in love or not, discarding a cigarette butt on the beach ... all equally driven by immutable, unstoppable fate? That's not happy.
finmin 8y ago
Conway proves the existence of free will not by nebulous philosophical arguments but by a combination of quantum mechanics and relativity. Note the definition of 'free will' here is specific: fundamental particles future states cannot be purely a function of the information in their past light cones and so only 'they' can fully determine their future state, and this is not the same thing as them having random number generators; they truly are free
- Rounin 8y ago
  As far a I can tell from the article, Conway doesn't prove the existence of free will at all, not even attempt to do so. Instead he explores what the implications of free will would be if it exists. And despite the claim to the contrary, his definition of "free will" isn't appreciably different from randomness, only he uses the word "randomness" to mean pseudorandomness, so he sticks the term "free will" on true randomness. An interesting contribution to quantum physics, presumably, but not a proof of free will.
  - zornthewise 8y ago
    Can you define precisely what you mean by random in this context?
    - Rounin 8y ago
      How about "proceeding, made, or occurring without definite aim, reason, or pattern". From https://www.dictionary.com/browse/random https://www.dictionary.com/browse/random .
    - Rounin 8y ago
      On second, thought, though, after looking at the paper at finmin's suggestion, I agree that their definition is distinct from randomness in a meaningful and interesting way.
  - finmin 8y ago
    you have to read the actual paper not the article
darekkay 8y ago
If you find this topic interesting, I highly recommend watching this talk by Sam Harris [0]. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCofmZlC72g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCofmZlC72g
popnroll 8y ago
Oh boy, I know this is arrogant; It's pretty easy to show evidence of determinism. 1) Read my brain, check if in ten seconds I will say yes or nothing. 2) Don't tell me. 3) Wait ten seconds. 4) Compare results. I'm aware of the experiments of reading brain decisions faster than our consiousness (machines telling which button we will play "before we realized"). No, no psychomotor tricks. Just read my brain, don't tell me until I made my choice. If you get 100% I believe you, meanwhile, no evidence.
- ppod 8y ago
  >no evidence Why do you assume that the null hypothesis is free will?
  - popnroll 8y ago
    I'm not assuming free will exists. To be honest, I'm personally a compatibilist. I'm determinism and free will agnostic. No evidence for free will doesn't mean determinsm is true. No evidence for determinism doesn't mean free will is true. Is an unpopular opinion. But I see no gap in the logic.
bloak 8y ago
"Conway thinks the free decisions of the particles inside us might account for our own free will." Another mathematician, Roger Penrose, made a similar claim, but with "consciousness" instead of "free will". I find this very implausible. So does Douglas Hofstadter, probably, though I've not yet read his main book on the subject. Thought experiment: You make a mathematical model of how neurons work, you cut up a human's brain, and you build a machine that simulates it. Wherever the model required randomness, you use pseudorandom numbers, generated cryptographically, so the entire system is deterministic. You connect it up to some kind of humanoid robot. Does the resulting system behave roughly like a human, and, if so, does it have free will, and is it conscious? People who believe that consciousness or free will depends on fundamental physics have to believe: * Either that the simulated human won't work like a human: it will mysteriously fail to function, but how exactly? * Or that the simulated human will seem to work like a real human, but nevertheless it won't be conscious; it will be a mere "zombie". The first option seems intuitively implausible to me, and the second option sounds like silly sophistry.
- foldr 8y ago
  In the case of free will I don't see any intuitive implausibility. It's intuitively plausible that someone/something could exhibit human-like behavior without actually having free will. After all, some people think that regular humans fall into this category!
  - Drakim 8y ago
    The issue is that a lot of people look at humans and say "This kind of behavior requires and proves free will", which would mean that exhibiting human-like behavior without free will ought to be impossible.
    - foldr 8y ago
      I don't think anyone concludes that humans have free will on the basis of their behavior. At least, that's a pretty unusual line of argument.
montenegrohugo 8y ago
So it seems that quantum particles do not "choose" their state until observed. I've heard this multiple times now, including in this article (demonstrated by the 33 sticks analogy). I'm curious, has any research been done on HOW they "choose" their state when observed? I imagine it is pretty difficult (if not impossible) to analyze this, but is there any insight of the factors that make a quantum particle choose its state? Or is the prevalent theory that it is completely random? PD: I find this topic fascinating.
- n4r9 8y ago
  This is basically where interpretations of quantum mechanics come into play. The maths/experiments alone don't tell you much. There are only a few things we can be sure of, e.g. the particle is not choosing a locally determined, pre-existing value as in classical mechanics. What you believe after that comes down to which "comforting illusion" you are most willing to ditch.
  - posterboy 8y ago
    > the particle is not choosing a locally determined, pre-existing value as in classical mechanics Translation: The value of to entangled measurements does not allow inference of a value back in time. > What you believe after that comes down to which "comforting illusion" you are most willing to ditch. You should drop the illusion that even 1% reading here understand enough relativity theory to even understand the problem. I don't. I took a few crash courses on physics and they tried to teach the double slit experiment to us in the second semester. Of course they had to cut it short and call it "magic". Of course even scientists parrot popular science when explaining only the difficulties they face, not the exact physics, I guess. All this local hidden variable stuff seems like a version of Laplace's demon. Well of course you don't have enough data. There could always be another hidden variable. But instead QC takes a statistical approach like thermodynamics, ignoring single states and looking at, ironically speaking, the bigger picture. > What you believe after that comes down to which "comforting illusion" you are most willing to ditch. There's no illusion to ditch. You start with a null hypothesis, so the problem is which null hypothesis to fall back on. To ditch a hypothesis you need to understand the experiments in question and the math. The philosphy is an after thought to rationalize the results, but it doesn't matter much to e.g. the material scientists doing the field work, and vice versa, the level of precision of these measurements is so far removed from our every day understanding that it really has no bearing on Multiverse Theories and all that popular nonsense. By the way, non-local hidden variables have not been ruled out. Where's the difference, distance (ie. locality) might just be a matter of more than 4 dimensions?! Maybe I misunderstand. Different question. Why is time always the independent variable? I think the problem is that people like things linear, first order, because I have a huge problem imagining differential equations, recursion and what not, even OEDs, not to mention PDEs.
flabbergast 8y ago
Free will does exist, only we don't have it. We live in our own little world of illusions, thinking and dreaming. In reality every random influence can change our path. Reality only exists in the present moment; just try to "be" there for a few minutes (without thinking) and you realize you don't have "free will". These are qualities that come with a huge price that almost none of us can or want to pay for, mainly because we love to dream we already have it. Examples of people with free will are: Jesus Christ, Buddha, etc..
- montenegrohugo 8y ago
  I'm curious as to what your theological beliefs are? How come you list Jesus (which I would understand if you are christian) but also, in the same breath, Buddha?
  - ardillaroja 8y ago
    As I understand it there's pretty firm evidence that both Jesus and Buddha existed and arguably they both had some pretty cool ideas...
    - delinka 8y ago
      That doesn’t mean that their ideas weren’t generated by a deterministic machine inside their skulls. GGP doesn’t explain why he thinks these individuals had free will and the rest of us don’t. Seems to me even in “random” yet deterministic systems, you’ll still get “anomalous” behavior that others within the system catagorize as “somehow different” - still doesn’t mean their will is freer than others’.
      - ardillaroja 8y ago
        Yeah absolutely. I don't agree with his 'examples', but I'll defend to the death his right to use them in the same breath. It seems absurd to claim a handful of humans to have free will and others not, not really sure what that would even mean.
thefranke 8y ago
The whole free will debate always falls flat on its face because the distinction between free will and free choice is never made. You may not have free will, but you have natural tendencies that you gravitate towards. However, these can only be expressed if you have the choice to do so. There is a joke that I think captures this philosophy of Compatibalism quite well: A reporter asks a citizen in Pyongyang to comment about life in North Korea. The citizen answers "Well, I can't complain".
dingo_bat 8y ago
> "You mustn’t misread it, we’re not asserting these particles make decisions, we’re not saying they have any consciousness. What happens is they act, they indubitably act, and which action the particle does is free in this sense, it is not a predetermined function of the past. And that’s not the same as randomness, oh dear me no!" Why not? Couldn't seem to find a reason for this assertion. If the behavior of a particle is not predetermined, how is it not random?
- popnroll 8y ago
  I don't know if this adds anything to your comment; The input of a program is neither predetermined nor random. If there is an input "out of our reality", then our reality would not be predetermined nor would it be random. (Which makes sense for the simulation hypothesis, which I enjoy having that conversation with my colleagues)
  - joe_the_user 8y ago
    It's easy to say X part of a system is "neither predetermined nor random" within a system defined as open (like a computer program or even a machine with a dial that can be set by an operator). When a system is closed, things become harder. Chaitin's number represents (very roughly) the structure of any complete mathematical system and it can be shown to be random in the sense of Kolmogorov.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  - vokep 8y ago
    but that just means there is more logical (predetermined) action 'out of our reality' The input of a program is predetermined by the physics that drive input to reach the program. (or it is from nowhere and is truly random, though I doubt this is the case)
    - madeuptempacct 8y ago
nabla9 8y ago
The free will as it defined in this context means the ability of an entity to do truly __random__ choices not dependent on the surrounding environment or their causal history. It does not mean that they can intelligently freely choose between the options. Any cognitive mechanism that does reasoned decisions is not free. It can just have a random or arbitrary[1] element in it. I like how Einstein never mixed free will with true randomness. Used the better metaphor: throwing the dice. --- [1]: What I mean with arbitrary is something that derives choices that are not relevant to the decision decision. For example pseudorandomness.
stultifying 8y ago
Okay, but it still doesn't mean the particle passes through both slits.
posterboy 8y ago
Ensembles can disentangle, right? Then, if measuring only one side, how do you know the other side is entangled? How did experiments establish entanglement anyway? If you measure hundred runs and all correlate, sure you can say the next one will too, but that's literally a predetermined outcome.
dekhn 8y ago
If you're an armchair quantum theorist, I have a suggestion. Rather than sitting around positing how the world works, build an actual quantum experiment, and spend some time just thinking about what's going on with your intuitive brain and comparing it to what you observe. It's a bit pricey, but https://www.thorlabs.com/newgrouppage9.cfm?objectgroup_id=6957 https://www.thorlabs.com/newgrouppage9.cfm?objectgroup_id=69... is a full quantum erase experiment with a straightforward, visible path for the photons. I personally found that arguing with people with pop-sci level of understanding of quantum to be pretty exhausting. If you can setup an experiment like this and understand it, it goes a long way to reconfiguring your brain to accept the counterintuitive implications of QM. That said I still hold out an irrational hope for superdeterminism.
- theoh 8y ago
  This is a teaching problem, because (like most things that are taught) there's no way for most students to verify it. People who seek out areas of ambiguity or contested models in later life, after formal or professional education: good luck to them. They would surely benefit from your suggestion. But the rest of us are going to have to just believe what we are told, having applied certain personal heuristic filters to the info we are getting...
atemerev 8y ago
For me, this is a bad name for the theorem. Free will is not just indeterminism, it also includes agency. If I understood the argument correctly, there is still one possibility of global determinism: imagine a "God function", a random oracle that gives all results to all measurements, unpredictable but fully deterministic. Even if it can't be predicted from previous states of the world, it can still maintain some sort of "determinism". It can even be tractable: imagine a pseudo-random generator with some seed and "external" state as this God function. It should all work.
- n4r9 8y ago
  It "works", although it's an absurdity at the level of Descartes' evil demon. See superdeterminism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdeterminism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdeterminism

82 points by monort 8y ago

tomhoward 8y ago

Archive version: http://archive.is/NlB7R http://archive.is/NlB7R

akavel 8y ago
Part 2: http://web.archive.org/web/20180726093121/https://plus.maths.org/content/john-conway-discovering-free-will-part-ii http://web.archive.org/web/20180726093121/https://plus.maths...

dziungles 8y ago

I find the topic of the free will to be the most fascinating. The abscence of the free will ('free will' as it is defined by the pop culture) is a revolutionary idea because the current world structures and narratives are based on the notion that free will exists. It is a much more revolutionary idea than Copernicus' round Earth discovery, because the illusion of the free will influences our lives more and in multiple ways. I'm also a strong believer that the society without the idea of the free will would be a much more compassionate, healthier and happy.

austinjp 8y ago
Well that's a cliffhanger. How would that society be all those things?
- l3mu 8y ago
  I suppose it wouldn't have a choice!
- karmakaze 8y ago
  I can defitely see some of the upsides-mostly a lack of judgemental views and just pragmatic solutions. Some examples are the varying effectiveness of prison systems around the world. Similarly for treatment of mental health issues or addictions. What I find hard to gauge is the potential downside to thinking without free will. There's no accountability so anything goes, or even a 'then why bother at all' infliction. Personally I think we're moving in the right direction on this and could move somewhat faster so thus kind of awareness and discussion is great. I'm less in favor of taking it to the extreme and hoping that it wasn't too far. Maybe a small population will do that experiment for larger groups to watch and learn from.
coldtea 8y ago
There's an endless loop in this argument. Per definition, if free will doesn't exist, then you can't say that "the illusion of the free will influences our lives more and in multiple ways." If free will doesn't exist, then our lives, thoughts and choices are predetermined, and thus they can't be "influenced" by our belief in free will (or lack thereof). In fact if we are in such a world, the we can't even opt to believe in free will or not -- since in such a world, our beliefs are also predetermined themselves. The society wont be any more "compassionate, healthier and happy" in such a world based on any of its beliefs. It would only be compassionated, healthier and happy if its predetermined to be so. The only option for your argument to work, would be for free will to exist while the society doesn't believe it does. Such a society, indeed, could be more compassionated, healthier and happy (it remains to be proven, but it's a possibility that non-belief in free will could change things positively, as long as free will exists for this non-belief to make a difference).
- colomon 8y ago
  For your last case, isn't it just as likely the opposite would happen? If Fred don't deserve any blame for being a mass murderer, why should Sally get any credit for not giving in to her instinct to see him hang for it? And what would the point of trying to be compassionate be?
- n4r9 8y ago
  I don't follow your reasoning at all. You seem to be quite confused over how beliefs could possibly work in a predetermined world. Firstly, a lack of free will does not imply predetermination, since it's possible that some things are fundamentally random. Secondly, even if everything is predetermined, it can still be the case that our choices can be influenced by our belief in free will. You could imagine two instances of a fairly simple bot which has a "isFreeWillBelieved" property. One of them has it set to true and the other to false, and they make different choices accordingly. Thirdly, whilst we can't "opt" to believe in free will or not, whether or not we believe in it can certainly change over time due to building evidence and argumentation.
  - coldtea 8y ago
imglorp 8y ago
> society without the idea of the free will would be a much more compassionate, healthier and happy. I'm less optimistic. What will keep people--resigned to their fate--from plopping on the couch to wait it out, as opposed to attempting something more ambitious? As someone famous said, if the outcome was certain, it wouldn't be a game; so if humans don't have some risk, some excitement, there will be no motivation.
- tjoff 8y ago
  I find that argument similar to "without religion what stops you from murder and raping people?" The absolute knowledge that free will doesn't exist doesn't really change much at all. It might give you a different outlook and, optimistically, a better understanding of different viewpoints. If you are absolutely contempt to sit on the couch for the rest of your life nothing stops you from choosing that in a free-will world. Most of us would be bored and will try other ways to entertain our self. Whether that desire is founded on free will or just a predetermined evolutionary trait doesn't really change the outcome. You believing in free will or not is quite irrelevant compared to the impact your surrounding has on you. It is even your surrounding that forms the basis of your belief in the first place.
- trabant00 8y ago
  > What will keep people--resigned to their fate--from plopping on the couch to wait it out, as opposed to attempting somethin I don't think this is how it works from my observations. People don't decide to couch it out based on their philosophy or the expected outcome. They may rationalize it that way but what I believe is that based on their experiences so far some people are simply driven to go out and do stuff and others don't want to do anything mostly. And my belief is compatible with the "no free will" theory.
- dziungles 8y ago
  "What will keep people--resigned to their fate--from plopping on the couch to wait it out, as opposed to attempting something more ambitious?" When the mind and body is in movement, when it has goals and ambitions - that all creates a good feeling for a human being. Look at kids in healthy environments. Look at kids in unorthodox schools. Look at successful entrepreneurs who keep working even after they become financially independent. The opposite "lying in bed" doesn't stimulate the mind, nor body, is boring and depressing. Only in today's world, where we have the concept of responsibility, we blame people if they try and fail. Or we don't create opportunities for people to learn useful skills, and then we force them (in a moral ways of course) to work in poorly paid, low status and hard labour jobs. Of course, under such conditions, many people believe that happiness is lying in bed.
zaarn 8y ago
If we discovered free will doesn't exist, provably, which is my current position, I don't think anything would change. The illusion that we have free will was strong enough that we used law to keep everything in line, make people responsible for their actions, etc. I see no reason why either side of the coin would or should stop that behaviour. If our actions are a result of our environment, shouldn't the environment to the best of our ability be changed such that negative actions have a lower probability of occuring? With free will you punish people for a crime because it's their fault. Without you punish people to create an environment in which crime is not desirable. (Though resocialization / rehabilitation is probably a better option)
tmoravec 8y ago
> I'm also a strong believer that the society without the idea of the free will would be a much more compassionate, healthier and happy. There's a major religion where one of the main theses is that everything is predestined. I haven't noticed those societies to be significantly more compassionate, healthier, or happy.
- dziungles 8y ago
  Which religion?
akavel 8y ago
I'm not really sure I understand what you're arguing for or observing, but notably, the article actually argues for free will existing (thus I assume not being an illusion), if you read it to the end: > Although the Free Will Theorem can't prove if we have free will, it does have a fundamental consequence: if the Universe is deterministic, and a particles behaviour is always described by a function of the past, then we can’t have free will. And Conway is convinced that we do: "I can’t prove we have free will but I still believe that we do." > While this and other repercussions are still being discussed by the mathematics, physics and philosophical communities, the theorem has had a profound impact on Conway himself. "It’s really affected how I look at the world. I believe that the glimmerings of freedom are in every particle – in the clouds, in everything – the particles are all taking free decisions." > [...] > And he immediately emphasises he’s not attributing some sort of consciousness to the particles. "You mustn’t misread it, we’re not asserting these particles make decisions, we’re not saying they have any consciousness. What happens is they act, they indubitably act, and which action the particle does is free in this sense, it is not a predetermined function of the past. And that’s not the same as randomness, oh dear me no!" Though I'm still not sure to what extent this whole argument hangs on the third axiom dubbed "MIN", which according to the article, "isn’t experimentally testable" per Conway. Given it's also the one I don't-understand-the-most, I'm not sure how to look at the whole thing at face value. That said, the way they constructed the analogy, and how the article's author managed to approach it with an attempt at simplifying, are totally super interesting. I mean, that just the possibility of even constructing an analogy here (between something so vague and problematic to measure as free will, and something so material and experimental as behaviours of particles) is certainly stimulating for thoughts and some philosophical pondering.
monort 8y ago
Ted Chiang has a short story "What's expected of us" about possible consequences of proving the absence of free will: https://www.nature.com/articles/436150a https://www.nature.com/articles/436150a
glitchc 8y ago
It's been tried. Many times over. The type of society you advocate is a religious one. One would argue this is still the dominant model. In America, more than 50% believe in some form of God. Some nations are outright religious. Poland and Italy are ~85% accepted Catholic and over 95% if you include lapsed Catholics. Most religions believe in predestination, in that God's Will supersedes man's will, everything happens for a reason, and our fate is decided the day we are born. Individual religious folk are more compassionate on average, take care of the needy, poor and downtrodden. Religious societies however, have led to intolerance, persecution and rigid class systems.
- dziungles 8y ago
  As far as I know, the opposite is true. The concept of the free was heavility influenced by Christianity and I bet by other religions too.
posterboy 8y ago
You are free to do so, but talking in absolutes won't get you anywhere. There's the will to be free and the will to be content, not to say contained. These are two extremes and the target is in the middle, if and only if this is really just a two dimensional thing ... If you wonder how two dimensions can have a middle, think of negative and positive parts of the number line as individual axis ... I havent' figured out the maths, it's not a normed vector space, though. Either way, people strive for consistency, but will is a highly inconsistent notion. So there must be more angles to the equation. Free will is an oxymoron, or the homogenous solution ignoring higher orders at best, because will immediately constrains freedom.
8bitsrule 8y ago
Absence... is a revolutionary idea Indeed. For one thing, if it were true, then everyone who's ever been convicted of a crime and punished has been the victim of a complete fantasy ... imposed on them and us by fate. Stereotypes, biases, hate crimes, going to war or not, building the pyramids or not, painting the Mona Lisa, creating a symphony ... picking this flower or not, falling in love or not, discarding a cigarette butt on the beach ... all equally driven by immutable, unstoppable fate? That's not happy.

finmin 8y ago

Conway proves the existence of free will not by nebulous philosophical arguments but by a combination of quantum mechanics and relativity. Note the definition of 'free will' here is specific: fundamental particles future states cannot be purely a function of the information in their past light cones and so only 'they' can fully determine their future state, and this is not the same thing as them having random number generators; they truly are free

Rounin 8y ago
As far a I can tell from the article, Conway doesn't prove the existence of free will at all, not even attempt to do so. Instead he explores what the implications of free will would be if it exists. And despite the claim to the contrary, his definition of "free will" isn't appreciably different from randomness, only he uses the word "randomness" to mean pseudorandomness, so he sticks the term "free will" on true randomness. An interesting contribution to quantum physics, presumably, but not a proof of free will.
- zornthewise 8y ago
  Can you define precisely what you mean by random in this context?
  - Rounin 8y ago
    How about "proceeding, made, or occurring without definite aim, reason, or pattern". From https://www.dictionary.com/browse/random https://www.dictionary.com/browse/random .
  - Rounin 8y ago
    On second, thought, though, after looking at the paper at finmin's suggestion, I agree that their definition is distinct from randomness in a meaningful and interesting way.
- finmin 8y ago
  you have to read the actual paper not the article

darekkay 8y ago

If you find this topic interesting, I highly recommend watching this talk by Sam Harris [0]. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCofmZlC72g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCofmZlC72g

popnroll 8y ago

Oh boy, I know this is arrogant; It's pretty easy to show evidence of determinism. 1) Read my brain, check if in ten seconds I will say yes or nothing. 2) Don't tell me. 3) Wait ten seconds. 4) Compare results. I'm aware of the experiments of reading brain decisions faster than our consiousness (machines telling which button we will play "before we realized"). No, no psychomotor tricks. Just read my brain, don't tell me until I made my choice. If you get 100% I believe you, meanwhile, no evidence.

ppod 8y ago
>no evidence Why do you assume that the null hypothesis is free will?
- popnroll 8y ago
  I'm not assuming free will exists. To be honest, I'm personally a compatibilist. I'm determinism and free will agnostic. No evidence for free will doesn't mean determinsm is true. No evidence for determinism doesn't mean free will is true. Is an unpopular opinion. But I see no gap in the logic.

bloak 8y ago

"Conway thinks the free decisions of the particles inside us might account for our own free will." Another mathematician, Roger Penrose, made a similar claim, but with "consciousness" instead of "free will". I find this very implausible. So does Douglas Hofstadter, probably, though I've not yet read his main book on the subject. Thought experiment: You make a mathematical model of how neurons work, you cut up a human's brain, and you build a machine that simulates it. Wherever the model required randomness, you use pseudorandom numbers, generated cryptographically, so the entire system is deterministic. You connect it up to some kind of humanoid robot. Does the resulting system behave roughly like a human, and, if so, does it have free will, and is it conscious? People who believe that consciousness or free will depends on fundamental physics have to believe: * Either that the simulated human won't work like a human: it will mysteriously fail to function, but how exactly? * Or that the simulated human will seem to work like a real human, but nevertheless it won't be conscious; it will be a mere "zombie". The first option seems intuitively implausible to me, and the second option sounds like silly sophistry.

foldr 8y ago
In the case of free will I don't see any intuitive implausibility. It's intuitively plausible that someone/something could exhibit human-like behavior without actually having free will. After all, some people think that regular humans fall into this category!
- Drakim 8y ago
  The issue is that a lot of people look at humans and say "This kind of behavior requires and proves free will", which would mean that exhibiting human-like behavior without free will ought to be impossible.
  - foldr 8y ago
    I don't think anyone concludes that humans have free will on the basis of their behavior. At least, that's a pretty unusual line of argument.

montenegrohugo 8y ago

So it seems that quantum particles do not "choose" their state until observed. I've heard this multiple times now, including in this article (demonstrated by the 33 sticks analogy). I'm curious, has any research been done on HOW they "choose" their state when observed? I imagine it is pretty difficult (if not impossible) to analyze this, but is there any insight of the factors that make a quantum particle choose its state? Or is the prevalent theory that it is completely random? PD: I find this topic fascinating.

n4r9 8y ago
This is basically where interpretations of quantum mechanics come into play. The maths/experiments alone don't tell you much. There are only a few things we can be sure of, e.g. the particle is not choosing a locally determined, pre-existing value as in classical mechanics. What you believe after that comes down to which "comforting illusion" you are most willing to ditch.
- posterboy 8y ago
  > the particle is not choosing a locally determined, pre-existing value as in classical mechanics Translation: The value of to entangled measurements does not allow inference of a value back in time. > What you believe after that comes down to which "comforting illusion" you are most willing to ditch. You should drop the illusion that even 1% reading here understand enough relativity theory to even understand the problem. I don't. I took a few crash courses on physics and they tried to teach the double slit experiment to us in the second semester. Of course they had to cut it short and call it "magic". Of course even scientists parrot popular science when explaining only the difficulties they face, not the exact physics, I guess. All this local hidden variable stuff seems like a version of Laplace's demon. Well of course you don't have enough data. There could always be another hidden variable. But instead QC takes a statistical approach like thermodynamics, ignoring single states and looking at, ironically speaking, the bigger picture. > What you believe after that comes down to which "comforting illusion" you are most willing to ditch. There's no illusion to ditch. You start with a null hypothesis, so the problem is which null hypothesis to fall back on. To ditch a hypothesis you need to understand the experiments in question and the math. The philosphy is an after thought to rationalize the results, but it doesn't matter much to e.g. the material scientists doing the field work, and vice versa, the level of precision of these measurements is so far removed from our every day understanding that it really has no bearing on Multiverse Theories and all that popular nonsense. By the way, non-local hidden variables have not been ruled out. Where's the difference, distance (ie. locality) might just be a matter of more than 4 dimensions?! Maybe I misunderstand. Different question. Why is time always the independent variable? I think the problem is that people like things linear, first order, because I have a huge problem imagining differential equations, recursion and what not, even OEDs, not to mention PDEs.

flabbergast 8y ago

Free will does exist, only we don't have it. We live in our own little world of illusions, thinking and dreaming. In reality every random influence can change our path. Reality only exists in the present moment; just try to "be" there for a few minutes (without thinking) and you realize you don't have "free will". These are qualities that come with a huge price that almost none of us can or want to pay for, mainly because we love to dream we already have it. Examples of people with free will are: Jesus Christ, Buddha, etc..

montenegrohugo 8y ago
I'm curious as to what your theological beliefs are? How come you list Jesus (which I would understand if you are christian) but also, in the same breath, Buddha?
- ardillaroja 8y ago
  As I understand it there's pretty firm evidence that both Jesus and Buddha existed and arguably they both had some pretty cool ideas...
  - delinka 8y ago
    That doesn’t mean that their ideas weren’t generated by a deterministic machine inside their skulls. GGP doesn’t explain why he thinks these individuals had free will and the rest of us don’t. Seems to me even in “random” yet deterministic systems, you’ll still get “anomalous” behavior that others within the system catagorize as “somehow different” - still doesn’t mean their will is freer than others’.
    - ardillaroja 8y ago
      Yeah absolutely. I don't agree with his 'examples', but I'll defend to the death his right to use them in the same breath. It seems absurd to claim a handful of humans to have free will and others not, not really sure what that would even mean.

thefranke 8y ago

The whole free will debate always falls flat on its face because the distinction between free will and free choice is never made. You may not have free will, but you have natural tendencies that you gravitate towards. However, these can only be expressed if you have the choice to do so. There is a joke that I think captures this philosophy of Compatibalism quite well: A reporter asks a citizen in Pyongyang to comment about life in North Korea. The citizen answers "Well, I can't complain".

dingo_bat 8y ago

> "You mustn’t misread it, we’re not asserting these particles make decisions, we’re not saying they have any consciousness. What happens is they act, they indubitably act, and which action the particle does is free in this sense, it is not a predetermined function of the past. And that’s not the same as randomness, oh dear me no!" Why not? Couldn't seem to find a reason for this assertion. If the behavior of a particle is not predetermined, how is it not random?

popnroll 8y ago
I don't know if this adds anything to your comment; The input of a program is neither predetermined nor random. If there is an input "out of our reality", then our reality would not be predetermined nor would it be random. (Which makes sense for the simulation hypothesis, which I enjoy having that conversation with my colleagues)
- joe_the_user 8y ago
  It's easy to say X part of a system is "neither predetermined nor random" within a system defined as open (like a computer program or even a machine with a dial that can be set by an operator). When a system is closed, things become harder. Chaitin's number represents (very roughly) the structure of any complete mathematical system and it can be shown to be random in the sense of Kolmogorov.
  - deleted 8y ago
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- vokep 8y ago
  but that just means there is more logical (predetermined) action 'out of our reality' The input of a program is predetermined by the physics that drive input to reach the program. (or it is from nowhere and is truly random, though I doubt this is the case)
  - madeuptempacct 8y ago

nabla9 8y ago

The free will as it defined in this context means the ability of an entity to do truly __random__ choices not dependent on the surrounding environment or their causal history. It does not mean that they can intelligently freely choose between the options. Any cognitive mechanism that does reasoned decisions is not free. It can just have a random or arbitrary[1] element in it. I like how Einstein never mixed free will with true randomness. Used the better metaphor: throwing the dice. --- [1]: What I mean with arbitrary is something that derives choices that are not relevant to the decision decision. For example pseudorandomness.

stultifying 8y ago

Okay, but it still doesn't mean the particle passes through both slits.

posterboy 8y ago

Ensembles can disentangle, right? Then, if measuring only one side, how do you know the other side is entangled? How did experiments establish entanglement anyway? If you measure hundred runs and all correlate, sure you can say the next one will too, but that's literally a predetermined outcome.

dekhn 8y ago

If you're an armchair quantum theorist, I have a suggestion. Rather than sitting around positing how the world works, build an actual quantum experiment, and spend some time just thinking about what's going on with your intuitive brain and comparing it to what you observe. It's a bit pricey, but https://www.thorlabs.com/newgrouppage9.cfm?objectgroup_id=6957 https://www.thorlabs.com/newgrouppage9.cfm?objectgroup_id=69... is a full quantum erase experiment with a straightforward, visible path for the photons. I personally found that arguing with people with pop-sci level of understanding of quantum to be pretty exhausting. If you can setup an experiment like this and understand it, it goes a long way to reconfiguring your brain to accept the counterintuitive implications of QM. That said I still hold out an irrational hope for superdeterminism.

theoh 8y ago
This is a teaching problem, because (like most things that are taught) there's no way for most students to verify it. People who seek out areas of ambiguity or contested models in later life, after formal or professional education: good luck to them. They would surely benefit from your suggestion. But the rest of us are going to have to just believe what we are told, having applied certain personal heuristic filters to the info we are getting...

atemerev 8y ago

For me, this is a bad name for the theorem. Free will is not just indeterminism, it also includes agency. If I understood the argument correctly, there is still one possibility of global determinism: imagine a "God function", a random oracle that gives all results to all measurements, unpredictable but fully deterministic. Even if it can't be predicted from previous states of the world, it can still maintain some sort of "determinism". It can even be tractable: imagine a pseudo-random generator with some seed and "external" state as this God function. It should all work.

n4r9 8y ago
It "works", although it's an absurdity at the level of Descartes' evil demon. See superdeterminism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdeterminism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdeterminism