9 ms·

No one actually believes this, including you. You may say you do, and even think you do, but you don’t. Everyone acts as if they and others around them possess

by nardi 8y ago

No one actually believes this, including you. You may say you do, and even think you do, but you don’t. Everyone acts as if they and others around them possess free will. We act that way because that’s what we believe. Honestly, I don’t think we understand enough about consciousness and how it arises from physical brains/bodies to make such an extraordinary claim like “there is no free will,” when the entire history of human thought and philosophy presupposes that there is.

subcosmos 8y ago
They don't actually believe it. Deterministic processes in their brain are making them THINK they believe it.
- WilliamEdward 8y ago
  There's literally no way to know whether this is true or not, so it's not worth discussing as if any one of us knows what the truth is. If you feel like you have free will, that's important. If you feel like you don't, oh well, but don't let your beliefs interfere with other people's choices (or their deterministic actions, in this case).
- pjc50 8y ago
  The point is that this is a distinction without a (usable) difference. "Free will" is an ill-conditioned question that comes from dualist assumptions.
buboard 8y ago
> as if they and others around them possess free will. How would we "act as if they don't" ?
- Ygg2 8y ago
  If I punch you, will you blame me?
  - buckminster 8y ago
    I don't blame you because you had a choice. I blame you to discourage future punches.
    - tudelo 8y ago
      That seems absurd.
      - buckminster 8y ago
        How so? You don't need free will to adapt to feedback.
        catawbasam 8y ago
        So if you believed I punched you deliberately, but also believed no action of yours would keep me from punching you again, does that mean you would do nothing? Even if I called you a coward?
        mmatear 8y ago
        Then do it you wont unless your DNA thinks the reward you get for validating your assumptions is greater then the consequences of your actions. Likewise for the person your debating. That's why internet debates are so much worse than in person way less consequence for your actions.
        buckminster 8y ago
        If you look at people who are actually in that unlikely position (e.g. prisoners, slaves) then typically they do in fact do nothing.
        Pica_soO 8y ago
        Game theory will do, where the willy is to free.
  - lisper 8y ago
- carapace 8y ago
  I believe that the vast majority of people are effectively mechanical. Very few people notice and remember themselves. Maybe one in 10^6 or fewer. There's a old Buddhist story, you're in a small boat on a lake in a thick fog, you can barely see beyond your boat. Out of the fog comes another boat that crashes into yours, and you start to yell at the other boater to be careful, but a break in the fog reveals that no one is in the boat. You've been yelling at nothing. For me, either the other person is present, and therefore harmless, or they are absent, and therefore blameless. In any event, it's wrong to get upset or angry. However, one should take steps to prevent damage to boats. Two things: it's been shown that, by the time you consciously decide to act, your neurons have already been increasing in activity for ~100ms. In other words, it's been scientifically shown that our conscious experience of "free will" is preceded by unconscious nervous activity. Make of that what you will. ;-) Pun intended. Second, when you observe a person while remembering yourself it affects them. I've seen burly lads transform into scared little boys under a mindful gaze. When you're present people don't punch you.
lisper 8y ago
> No one actually believes this, including you. I'm pretty sure that I'm in a better position to know what I actually believe than you are, and I'm telling you, I really do believe this. There are only three possibilities: either free will is an illusion, or dualism is true, or consciousness is the result of unknown new physics. The first is by far the most likely from a scientific point of view, and the evidence for it is actually pretty overwhelming. But just because it's an illusion doesn't mean that you can't or shouldn't live your life as if it were real. It's a very compelling illusion as long as you don't know how the trick is done, and so far, we don't.
- jchrisa 8y ago
  You can be a monist and still believe in physics and free-will. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomalous_monism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomalous_monism
- pavel_lishin 8y ago
  I think what _nardi_ is trying to say is that there's no functional difference between having free will, and acting as if you do. What decisions do you make differently with your knowledge that free will is an illusion? What choices do you make differently? (fwiw, I agree with you; I just think it doesn't particularly matter now.)
  - lisper 8y ago
    > What decisions do you make differently with your knowledge that free will is an illusion? What choices do you make differently? Interestingly, my belief in the illusory nature of free will has had a huge impact on my life. I'm a much more laid-back person than I used to be. I don't stress out so much over making mistakes. It has also helped me in a lot of practical aspects of my life. For example, it has helped me lose weight. I think about my desire to eat as my brain playing a sort of a trick on me, and that makes it easier for me to "decide" not to give in to the craving. I treat the part of me that wants to eat the cookie as a separate entity from "me" that just happens to reside in the same brain, and I interact with it through internal dialogs like I would a small child. It sounds weird, but it works, at least for me. I'm almost down to the same weight I was in college (and I'm 54).
ajuc 8y ago
> We act that way because that’s what we believe. Don't assume we have a free will when debating if we do :) If we don't have a free will, then the fact that we believe in free will is irrelevant, and you cannot deduce that we believe in it from the fact that we act as if we believed in it. Free will is most probably a quirk of language, an answer to a misleading question based on wrong assumptions. There are no difference in the state of universe no matter if there is free will or not.
- bdamm 8y ago
  This philosophical line of thinking is without much basis. In certain Buddhist teachings is the idea that we really only have about 60% free will. That is, 40% of our actions are not something we ever could have done differently, but there's still room for plenty of actual choice. Personally this seems pretty high, but even 10% truly self-directed free will would still be astounding. There's no scientific understanding of where exactly consciousness is rooted, so if you take that to assume it means there's no such thing as conscious choice, I conclude you are a fatalistic downer who I don't want to hang with.
  - ajuc 8y ago
    > This philosophical line of thinking is without much basis. It has exactly as much basis as the alternatives, explains the world just as well, gives the exact same predictions, but needs less assumptions. BTW - why is lack of free will a downer? I perceive is as neutral.
    - breischl 8y ago
      >BTW - why is lack of free will a downer? I perceive is as neutral. Not the GP, but lack of free will implies that people have no agency over their actions, and hence can't really take pride in anything they've accomplished. They're just squishy robots following their programming and lying to themselves about why they do the things they do. Or at least that's one depressing way to interpret it.
hathawsh 8y ago
For me, acting as if people possess free will is a conscious decision. When I'm tired, I sometimes slip into my natural mode of thinking of everyone as automatons. I have to choose to believe that people are conscious. I have to remind myself that people are not merely robots, or even if they are, it's self-destructive if I think of them as robots.
- desiderantes 8y ago
  You didn't choose to believe, because you don't have free will, remember?
  - hathawsh 8y ago
    If there is no free will, then the word "choose" is not a special word that implies consciousness. The word "choose" simply means particles flow one direction instead of another due to some combination of other particle flows. Therefore, whether I have free will or not, yes I did choose to believe.
- Kapow 8y ago
  You think everyone else can't make conscious decisions, but you can? That sounds like solipsism, or just a lack of empathy.
  - hathawsh 8y ago
    Yes, there is a part of me that seems solipsistic. There is also another part that sees myself as an automaton along with everyone else. And there is yet another who reasons that at some level of sophistication, it's impossible to distinguish between automatons and beings with free will; I no longer care whether I have free will and rejoice in living along with everyone else.
WalterSear 8y ago
Consciousness is an abstraction layer, rather than a illusion.
circlefavshape 8y ago
Free will is a subjective experience we all have, no matter what we believe. Talking about it in terms of Physics is kinda barking up the wrong tree afaics
AngryData 8y ago
I believe it. Free will is an illusion, humans are just biological automatons, along with every other animal. Thinking you have free will doesn't change whether or not you actually have free will. Just as someone believing they are intelligent doesn't make them intelligent.
- bitL 8y ago
  Experiment: you decide to do something and keep doing necessary things, putting all distractions aside, until you get there. Was that decision and perseverance towards the goal given to you by some viral DNA mutation, or is there a chance there might be some free will in you?
mattigames 8y ago
The concept of free-will is so preposterous, baseless like souls or ghosts; because lack of understanding how the brain works doesn't make what happens inside it more metaphysical.
redwards510 8y ago
I don't believe in free will because of a simple thought experiment. Maybe someone with a background in ML can chime in. Imagine we could perfectly map all your brain's neural connections at an instant in time to software. This is not out of the realm of possibility in the future, right? Now imagine we "asked" that model to make a decision. Any decision. Wouldn't that frozen-in-time model give the same answer every time?
- Iolaum 8y ago
  This is not possible because of quantum mechanics. You cannot know the exact location and speed of particles in your brain and therefore cannot build a deterministic model to predict its behavior.
  - yesenadam 8y ago
    I think chaos theory suffices to establish your second sentence, without needing to bring in quantum mechanics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory
    - Iolaum 8y ago
      Chaos theory is enough if you accept imperfect measurements, which would result in small changes in initial conditions. But you need quantum mechanics to prove that you cannot have perfect measurements of all the quantities involved in the evolution of a system.
- javajammer 8y ago
  It might give the same answer, but I'm not concluding much from the thought-experiment. The model takes as input its environment, which includes its past decisions. If you pose the same question to it twice, it might choose to do something different the second time just because it weighs "whimsy" as a positive. How random is its RNG? Can it tell? What would it do differently if it knew the answer to these questions?
- sutterbomb 8y ago
MrEfficiency 8y ago
>No one actually believes this, including you I believe it. My brain is a collection of experiences and my body is a chemical reaction.
toasterlovin 8y ago
Whether or not you believe something is orthogonal to whether or not it is true.
zkomp 8y ago
Not really the entire history of human thought; the actual philosophers who thought differently were harshly persecuted, their books burned, or if they saw it coming did not even dare to publish their true thoughts...
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

by nardi 8y ago

subcosmos 8y ago

They don't actually believe it. Deterministic processes in their brain are making them THINK they believe it.

WilliamEdward 8y ago
There's literally no way to know whether this is true or not, so it's not worth discussing as if any one of us knows what the truth is. If you feel like you have free will, that's important. If you feel like you don't, oh well, but don't let your beliefs interfere with other people's choices (or their deterministic actions, in this case).
pjc50 8y ago
The point is that this is a distinction without a (usable) difference. "Free will" is an ill-conditioned question that comes from dualist assumptions.

buboard 8y ago

> as if they and others around them possess free will. How would we "act as if they don't" ?

Ygg2 8y ago
If I punch you, will you blame me?
- buckminster 8y ago
  I don't blame you because you had a choice. I blame you to discourage future punches.
  - tudelo 8y ago
    That seems absurd.
    - buckminster 8y ago
      How so? You don't need free will to adapt to feedback.
      - catawbasam 8y ago
        So if you believed I punched you deliberately, but also believed no action of yours would keep me from punching you again, does that mean you would do nothing? Even if I called you a coward?
        mmatear 8y ago
        Then do it you wont unless your DNA thinks the reward you get for validating your assumptions is greater then the consequences of your actions. Likewise for the person your debating. That's why internet debates are so much worse than in person way less consequence for your actions.
        buckminster 8y ago
        If you look at people who are actually in that unlikely position (e.g. prisoners, slaves) then typically they do in fact do nothing.
      - Pica_soO 8y ago
        Game theory will do, where the willy is to free.
- lisper 8y ago
carapace 8y ago
I believe that the vast majority of people are effectively mechanical. Very few people notice and remember themselves. Maybe one in 10^6 or fewer. There's a old Buddhist story, you're in a small boat on a lake in a thick fog, you can barely see beyond your boat. Out of the fog comes another boat that crashes into yours, and you start to yell at the other boater to be careful, but a break in the fog reveals that no one is in the boat. You've been yelling at nothing. For me, either the other person is present, and therefore harmless, or they are absent, and therefore blameless. In any event, it's wrong to get upset or angry. However, one should take steps to prevent damage to boats. Two things: it's been shown that, by the time you consciously decide to act, your neurons have already been increasing in activity for ~100ms. In other words, it's been scientifically shown that our conscious experience of "free will" is preceded by unconscious nervous activity. Make of that what you will. ;-) Pun intended. Second, when you observe a person while remembering yourself it affects them. I've seen burly lads transform into scared little boys under a mindful gaze. When you're present people don't punch you.

lisper 8y ago

> No one actually believes this, including you. I'm pretty sure that I'm in a better position to know what I actually believe than you are, and I'm telling you, I really do believe this. There are only three possibilities: either free will is an illusion, or dualism is true, or consciousness is the result of unknown new physics. The first is by far the most likely from a scientific point of view, and the evidence for it is actually pretty overwhelming. But just because it's an illusion doesn't mean that you can't or shouldn't live your life as if it were real. It's a very compelling illusion as long as you don't know how the trick is done, and so far, we don't.

jchrisa 8y ago
You can be a monist and still believe in physics and free-will. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomalous_monism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomalous_monism
pavel_lishin 8y ago
I think what _nardi_ is trying to say is that there's no functional difference between having free will, and acting as if you do. What decisions do you make differently with your knowledge that free will is an illusion? What choices do you make differently? (fwiw, I agree with you; I just think it doesn't particularly matter now.)
- lisper 8y ago
  > What decisions do you make differently with your knowledge that free will is an illusion? What choices do you make differently? Interestingly, my belief in the illusory nature of free will has had a huge impact on my life. I'm a much more laid-back person than I used to be. I don't stress out so much over making mistakes. It has also helped me in a lot of practical aspects of my life. For example, it has helped me lose weight. I think about my desire to eat as my brain playing a sort of a trick on me, and that makes it easier for me to "decide" not to give in to the craving. I treat the part of me that wants to eat the cookie as a separate entity from "me" that just happens to reside in the same brain, and I interact with it through internal dialogs like I would a small child. It sounds weird, but it works, at least for me. I'm almost down to the same weight I was in college (and I'm 54).

ajuc 8y ago

> We act that way because that’s what we believe. Don't assume we have a free will when debating if we do :) If we don't have a free will, then the fact that we believe in free will is irrelevant, and you cannot deduce that we believe in it from the fact that we act as if we believed in it. Free will is most probably a quirk of language, an answer to a misleading question based on wrong assumptions. There are no difference in the state of universe no matter if there is free will or not.

bdamm 8y ago
This philosophical line of thinking is without much basis. In certain Buddhist teachings is the idea that we really only have about 60% free will. That is, 40% of our actions are not something we ever could have done differently, but there's still room for plenty of actual choice. Personally this seems pretty high, but even 10% truly self-directed free will would still be astounding. There's no scientific understanding of where exactly consciousness is rooted, so if you take that to assume it means there's no such thing as conscious choice, I conclude you are a fatalistic downer who I don't want to hang with.
- ajuc 8y ago
  > This philosophical line of thinking is without much basis. It has exactly as much basis as the alternatives, explains the world just as well, gives the exact same predictions, but needs less assumptions. BTW - why is lack of free will a downer? I perceive is as neutral.
  - breischl 8y ago
    >BTW - why is lack of free will a downer? I perceive is as neutral. Not the GP, but lack of free will implies that people have no agency over their actions, and hence can't really take pride in anything they've accomplished. They're just squishy robots following their programming and lying to themselves about why they do the things they do. Or at least that's one depressing way to interpret it.

hathawsh 8y ago

For me, acting as if people possess free will is a conscious decision. When I'm tired, I sometimes slip into my natural mode of thinking of everyone as automatons. I have to choose to believe that people are conscious. I have to remind myself that people are not merely robots, or even if they are, it's self-destructive if I think of them as robots.

desiderantes 8y ago
You didn't choose to believe, because you don't have free will, remember?
- hathawsh 8y ago
  If there is no free will, then the word "choose" is not a special word that implies consciousness. The word "choose" simply means particles flow one direction instead of another due to some combination of other particle flows. Therefore, whether I have free will or not, yes I did choose to believe.
Kapow 8y ago
You think everyone else can't make conscious decisions, but you can? That sounds like solipsism, or just a lack of empathy.
- hathawsh 8y ago
  Yes, there is a part of me that seems solipsistic. There is also another part that sees myself as an automaton along with everyone else. And there is yet another who reasons that at some level of sophistication, it's impossible to distinguish between automatons and beings with free will; I no longer care whether I have free will and rejoice in living along with everyone else.

WalterSear 8y ago

Consciousness is an abstraction layer, rather than a illusion.

circlefavshape 8y ago

Free will is a subjective experience we all have, no matter what we believe. Talking about it in terms of Physics is kinda barking up the wrong tree afaics

AngryData 8y ago

I believe it. Free will is an illusion, humans are just biological automatons, along with every other animal. Thinking you have free will doesn't change whether or not you actually have free will. Just as someone believing they are intelligent doesn't make them intelligent.

bitL 8y ago
Experiment: you decide to do something and keep doing necessary things, putting all distractions aside, until you get there. Was that decision and perseverance towards the goal given to you by some viral DNA mutation, or is there a chance there might be some free will in you?

mattigames 8y ago

The concept of free-will is so preposterous, baseless like souls or ghosts; because lack of understanding how the brain works doesn't make what happens inside it more metaphysical.

redwards510 8y ago

I don't believe in free will because of a simple thought experiment. Maybe someone with a background in ML can chime in. Imagine we could perfectly map all your brain's neural connections at an instant in time to software. This is not out of the realm of possibility in the future, right? Now imagine we "asked" that model to make a decision. Any decision. Wouldn't that frozen-in-time model give the same answer every time?

Iolaum 8y ago
This is not possible because of quantum mechanics. You cannot know the exact location and speed of particles in your brain and therefore cannot build a deterministic model to predict its behavior.
- yesenadam 8y ago
  I think chaos theory suffices to establish your second sentence, without needing to bring in quantum mechanics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory
  - Iolaum 8y ago
    Chaos theory is enough if you accept imperfect measurements, which would result in small changes in initial conditions. But you need quantum mechanics to prove that you cannot have perfect measurements of all the quantities involved in the evolution of a system.
javajammer 8y ago
It might give the same answer, but I'm not concluding much from the thought-experiment. The model takes as input its environment, which includes its past decisions. If you pose the same question to it twice, it might choose to do something different the second time just because it weighs "whimsy" as a positive. How random is its RNG? Can it tell? What would it do differently if it knew the answer to these questions?
sutterbomb 8y ago

MrEfficiency 8y ago

>No one actually believes this, including you I believe it. My brain is a collection of experiences and my body is a chemical reaction.

toasterlovin 8y ago

Whether or not you believe something is orthogonal to whether or not it is true.

zkomp 8y ago

Not really the entire history of human thought; the actual philosophers who thought differently were harshly persecuted, their books burned, or if they saw it coming did not even dare to publish their true thoughts...

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]