23 ms·

Photons, Quasars and the Possibility of Free Will

• montenegrohugo 8y ago
  I've always thought of free will as an absurdity. Here's my thought process: If I make a decision, there's 2 possibilities: 1. The decision is based upon prior information and states, therefore there is a deterministic causality 2. The decision is not based upon prior causality: E.g. I have a "soul" and that's what decides. However, if we look into 2, we arrive at the same problem: 1. Either the souls decision is deterministic based upon metaphysical information 2. Or the soul has a soul (where the same problem appears, turtles all the way down) 3. Or, if the choice is not based on any prior information, then we must conclude that it is therefore completely random (since its not based on anything) So, either there is no free will because all your actions are determined by past actions, or instead free will just means that part of your actions are just based on, essentially, the throw of a dice. In both of these cases, you yourself have 0 agency. I think saying that Free Will exists when it equates to a random choice is absurd.
  • _Schizotypy 8y ago
    I would completely agree. Our decisions are made based on previous stimuli. Our networks of neurons are altered by stimuli as we grow, this determines how we process later stimuli and the process repeats.
    • y_molodtsov 8y ago
      The thing is, this process is so complex it’s useless to talk about determinism of human actions.
      • deusum 8y ago
        Facebook/Google/Amazon probably know your own process better than you.
      • _Schizotypy 8y ago
        I would agree, at this point in time it isn't really possible for us to truly understand the overall system that affects how we make decisions as in. We can at least start with the basics of understanding that it exists rather than stating that we somehow have this sort of magical "free will"
    • millstone 8y ago
      A silver atom's angular momentum is aligned based on the field in a Stern-Gerlach device. This alignment determines how these atoms react to a future magnetic field. Therefore a silver atom's angular momentum is deterministic. But it's not. A totally deterministic universe would have been a lot simpler. Why go through so much trouble?
      • gpderetta 8y ago
        Why there should be a why?
        • whatshisface 8y ago
          You don't get to know in advance which questions will pan out into answerable ones. You could answer "why should there be a why" to literally and question about why. In fact, you could have said that about the motion of the planets, right up until Newton - which shows that the category of things that can be answered like that contracts over time.
          • gpderetta 8y ago
            That's a how, not a why. Asking why is it worth the trouble ascribes intentionality to the universe where none is expected
  • pdonis 8y ago
    What if the prior states that your decision is based on are states of your brain? For example, states of your brain processing particular information, considering all the factors involved in the decision, and determining what the best decision is, all things considered?
  • millstone 8y ago
    If the soul has free will, then it cannot have a second-soul to dictate to it. What is the problem with the first-level soul that can freely choose, perhaps incorporating that metaphysical information into its decision?
    • praptak 8y ago
      The problems arise when you start to think what influences the soul's decisions. Does it make decisions solely based on its state? Then you have determinism. Not only state? Than what is this not-state that creates the free will? Adding some dice throwing into this mix does not sound like free will either.
      • bambataa 8y ago
        That applies if you think of a soul as ‘just another mind’, but my understanding is that souls are usually seen as different. What I find problematic with them is that they can be defined to be whatever you need to get out of a logical fix eg “souls use state but are non-deterministic”. Ultimately you’re asking what defines a soul, which is unknown as far as I can tell.
        • praptak 8y ago
          Ultimately I am asking what defines free will. The attempts at definitions that involve soul seem either circular ("soul is that part of human that has free will") or an unnecessary step, i.e. the considerations about soul might as well apply to original human, without the attempt to define a separate soul.
          • gpderetta 8y ago
            An argument could be that the soul is not constrained by the law of phisics or even logic and ultimately unknowable. But then the link between the soul and the phisical world should be detectable due to violations of the laws of phisics. Unless we believe that the whole universe is unlogical and does not follow the law of phisics. We might as well end this, and any other, debate then.
  • EventH- 8y ago
    A decision can be based on prior information (in the sense of being informed by it) while not being deterministic. This is how Aristotle and Aquinas handle the relationship between the Intellect and the Will, where the will chooses between goods which are known by the intellect. It is precisely in this choosing between different goods that we are classically understood to have free will. So, our decisions are determined in the sense that we are only able to choose things that appear good to us, but free in the sense that we can choose between those goods.
    • TheOtherHobbes 8y ago
      Absolutely no human has ever operated like this. We experience choice and decision as subjective processes controlled by a subjective experience of self. But all of those experiences are subjective, and delusional to varying degrees. I recently had a fascinating experience with a lawyer while buying a house. The vendors and the agent did various things annoy my lawyer, and she set up a situation where the agent was - apparently as a free choice - compelled to pay the lawyer a sum of money to close the sale. I'm sure the agent made what she considers a free choice, albeit not a comfortable one. But in fact the lawyer was always in control of the situation, and knew exactly where to push, and how hard, to get the result she wanted. If you have good psychological insight, humans can be ridiculously predictable and easy to manipulate. And said humans will still insist their decisions are made with full awareness and agency - even when they aren't. So in what sense is will free at all? You really don't need to resort to quantum physics to understand there are serious problems with the concept. Marketing, politics, and law provide plenty of evidence that free will is a convenient fiction, not a psychological ground truth.
      • waterhouse 8y ago
        In game theory, you encounter situations where a player's optimal strategy is a "mixed strategy", i.e. "x% chance of choosing strategy A, y% chance of choosing strategy B, ...", with at least two nonzero values in x,y,... . For example, in rock-paper-scissors, if your strategy is anything other than 1/3 rock, 1/3 paper, 1/3 scissors, then an opponent can defeat you (in terms of expected value) by choosing the right pure strategy. People don't normally take out a die to make the choice, but... In a sport like boxing, if in certain situations you always "punch high" or "punch low" or otherwise act predictably, that will probably hurt your chances against an observant opponent. That presumably applies to real fights as well. Outside of direct combat, sometimes someone does you a small favor (or a small offense), and maybe the only favor (or punishment) you can do them in return is significantly larger than that; in that case, the appropriate response might be an x% chance of doing the thing and 1-x% of doing nothing. So nondeterminism is a useful skill in at least some circumstances, quite likely some circumstances that existed in the environment where we did lots of evolving. Therefore I would expect us to have evolved some capability for (apparent) nondeterminism. How often does the agent deal with lawyers in an adversarial situation? How often does the lawyer deal with people in adversarial situations like that? If an expert is able to see through and manipulate a beginner, well, I don't consider that good evidence that humans can never effectively deploy nondeterminism.
  • mirimir 8y ago
    Why not just consider that there's a mix of determinism and randomness? I mean, if the question is "What's 1+9 in base 10?", the decision/answer is always "10". But if it's "What do you want for lunch?", the decision depends on how I'm feeling, what I've been eating lately, etc, etc. And there's certainly some randomness there. And then there are decisions where there's just too little information, or too much confusing information, and I'm left with making a SWAG. Maybe almost random. Even literally, with a coin or whatever. But about the soul thing, I totally agree. There's the same problem, "turtles all the way down" (or up, as the case may be). Also, there's the issue that our conscious awareness is clearly not making any decisions. Other stuff is handling that, and we mostly just observe, and tell ourselves that we're in charge. As Old Bill Burroughs put it in Naked Lunch: > "Possession" they call it.... Sometimes an entity jumps in the body -- outlines waver in yellow orange jelly -- and hands move to disembowel the passing whore or strangle the nabor child in hope of alleviating a chronic housing shortage. As if I was usually there but subject to goof now and again.... Wrong! I am never here.... Never that is fully in possession, but somehow in a position to forestall ill-advised moves.... > Patrolling is, in fact, my principle occupation.... No matter how tight Security, I am always somewhere ...
  • russdill 8y ago
    You're making the assumption that thought is a computational process. While there's a ton of evidence to back that up, you can't claim it as an absolute truth, especially when allowing the existence of metaphysics and souls.
  • krzat 8y ago
    Not sure if it makes sense to use concept of soul in logical reasoning, maybe that's where absurdity comes from.
  • nnq 8y ago
    Sometimes you pick from a set of actions for each you have equal reasons/information to pick. And you pick technically randomly. But after you made the choice, you stick/commit to it, you identify with it. The other choices are no longer a possibility. You become fixed in this particular causality. And it defines "you" as "the one who [randomly] picked choice X and Y and ... and ended up on this particular causal path". This is what exercising free will means and how it defines you. And if you put it in this terms it also becomes obvious that any kind of mechanism can "exercise free will" if you choose to look at it from this perspective. (The problem with defining "free will" I think is that people get stuck thinking in terms of it as a fixed concept that needs a "what is" type of definition, instead of a procedural/operational "how to" definition. You only care about processes and mutations to the state of reality... not fuzzy wozzy philosopondering. Replace "what is" kind of knowledge with "how to" kind of knowledge and concepts like "free will" become christal clear and obvious. Also it's pointless to bring in another undefined concept, eg. "soul" when defining other.)
    • gpderetta 8y ago
      Any definition that assigns free will to potentially any object, including fundamental particles, doesn't seem a very useful definition to me.
    • naasking 8y ago
      > Sometimes you pick from a set of actions for each you have equal reasons/information to pick. And you pick technically randomly. If this were true, people wouldn't have any actual preferences and be fairly consistent with their choices. Clearly they are, ergo people do not make choices "technically randomly".
  • atq2119 8y ago
    As usual, these kinds of discussions are really about what we mean by words. What does "free will" mean? I think technically inclined people like us are easily led down the path you describe, but over the years I've become convinced that the kind of definition that leads you to "free will = random choice" is pretty pointless because it's so vacuous. I like to take a step back and ask: why are we interested in free will in the first place? In practice, what tends to be really relevant are questions like: are criminals responsible for their actions? Free will is better defined as a shorthand for these kinds of questions. And in that context, it seems clear to me that even if our actions are purely deterministic, we can still have free will. What matters isn't whether our will is free of physics or determinism; what matters is whether or to what extent our will is free from the influence of other people and society. Once you look at it this way it's also clear that there are no absolutes. We all influence each other, which puts limits on our free will, but we aren't just puppets, either.
    • stareatgoats 8y ago
      Agree it's about word meanings, and superimposing different meanings of the same word on each other (often in an attempt to close any cracks in our worldview that might allow religious concepts to take hold). That's probably why "free will" discussions are such a mess. > In practice, what tends to be really relevant are questions like: are criminals responsible for their actions? Exactly what I've landed in too, i.e. does free will have any real every-day meaning. The answer must be an unequivocal "yes", otherwise questions like these would be meaningless (which they are not): - "did they force you to take that apple or did you do it of your own free will?" - "was the sex voluntary or were you forced?". - etc The problematic word/concept here is really "force" and the different meanings of that word. The force of causality is fundamentally different from the force of coercion, and they can not be used interchangeably. And so the question of "free will" should really be disentangled from physics, once and for all.
      • gpderetta 8y ago
        I think this practical definition is quite interesting, useful, and worth discussing about, but I suspect that most people have a more nebulous, metaphisical idea of free will.
  • reitanqild 8y ago
    Well. People argue against free will. I've learned to embrace it and it makes my and my kids and my neighbours and my colleagues (and so on) lives a tiny bit better everytime I take advantage of it. (Yes, I've made a decision to use my life for good.) I've lived like this more and more for 20 years now and my life has become increasingly better.
  • jf- 8y ago
    The question doesn’t really have significance in an everyday sense. To have free will means to be able to choose between options. To ask questions about determinism may be intellectually interesting but is of little practical consequence.
  • karmakaze 8y ago
    I myself have gone through a similar line of reasoning. My conclusion however has always been undecided and that the answer lies in an area where I'm not sufficiently versed. A good thought experiment is to consider the simulation hypothesis. It doesn't require you to believe it, it's just a thought experiment to show a counter example that lies outside of the deduction. 1. We are living in a simulated universe. 2. But our characters are controlled by beings in an outer universe with everything else that follows the laws of physics being programmed. So in the context of our universe our actions are based on metaphysical mumbo jumbo, inexplicable in our laws of physics. We the avatars are the beings in the outer universe. So we have 'free will' that is not determined by the state of our universe. Now of course the simulation hypothesis has a turtles all the way down issue, but that's not the point here. The point is to be clear about our terms. When we say deterministic we mean with respect to the laws of our universe. The thought experiment just makes the terms clear and not conflate what's happening in one with all. If you want to make the definition that free will is something that's not deterministic in all universes, that's something different to discuss.
    • gpderetta 8y ago
      It seems that the avatar theory should be falsifiable: does the mind behaves fully accordingly to the laws of phisics (whether deterministically or probabiliatically via quantum effects) or does some unphisical, unaccoutable effect affects it? It should be possible to design an experiment to magnify this effects and test for them, at least in theory.
  • naasking 8y ago
    > So, either there is no free will because all your actions are determined by past actions, or instead free will just means that part of your actions are just based on, essentially, the throw of a dice. In both of these cases, you yourself have 0 agency. Your mistake is assuming that determinism precludes agency. You've merely claimed this, you haven't proven it like you did with case #2. You'll actually find that you can't prove this and so you should give up that assumption, at which point you've reinvented Compatibilism. That's why Compatibilism is the majority view among philosophers.
  • empath75 8y ago
    I would say that anything which is both deterministic and fundamentally unpredictable by humans can be said to have something like "Free Will", which I think includes a lot of non-conscious systems as well as human beings. The weather, flocks of birds, river flows, sunspot activity, etc -- really any kind of chaotic system -- which is not the same thing as saying it's random. But it's also a self centered definition, because I think a being with vast computational power and perfect knowledge of the current state of a chaotic system might not see it as free.
• millstone 8y ago
  The article argues that "randomness" (by which it means essential unpredictability) is experimentally backed. This is an awkward constraint for a universe designer: isn't a totally deterministic universe much easier and simpler? Free will has no room to survive in a clockwork universe. But free will remains a viable position, despite the philosophical contortions, but supported by experimental evidence like what's discussed here. And that seems like an argument in itself, right? It ain't come this far...
  • jessriedel 8y ago
    Why would randomness leave more room for free will? It's random.
  • mirimir 8y ago
    > This is an awkward constraint for a universe designer: isn't a totally deterministic universe much easier and simpler? Huh? Maybe it's natural selection, all the way down, and all the way up. The results aren't at all "random", but they're also not at all designed.
    • joycian 8y ago
      I think he means it would be expensive to inject randomness all the time instead of just letting a rule-based system go from state to state deterministically.
      • mirimir 8y ago
        OK, except why are you putting it in those terms? It just is what it is. There's no reason to think that stuff evolves in the least-expensive way. And there are rules. What we call laws of physics. It's just that there's lots of wiggle room. At least, if you're lucky enough.
  • naasking 8y ago
    > Free will has no room to survive in a clockwork universe Incorrect, see Compatibilism. In fact, free will as a concept is incoherent without some degree of determinism.
• intralizee 8y ago
  I’m a person who acknowledges everything is deterministic and free will is a facade. The two types of people I’ve encountered who desire the notion of free will: 1) Person with ego who needs to have a belief in free will. 2) Persons who has ego, gets annoyed by free will being a facade and refuses to think about it because “it doesn’t matter” to this person. I’m perplexed if the problem is singular between the two types of persons and if it’s either: ego, desire, greed, selfishness, or these people really need a belief similar to persons of religious ideology to continue functioning as who they are subconsciously. To me it’s fascinating to observe because I genuinely propose the world would be better when the majority lives by reason in reality; when it comes to law, health, the environment, finances, and social problems. The psychological impact would be the most exciting thing for me personally to witness as I cannot imagine any negatives of a majority understanding determinism compared to the madnesses today in society; where the majority “who blame everyone” or compare themselves to others unfortunate as the outcome wasn’t determined before birth.
  • starbeast 8y ago
    Ever heard that knowledge is the opposite of thought?
  • wallace_f 8y ago
    >I'm convinced I'm right, and I've transformed any opposing arguments into two ad hominen attacks relying on stereotypes I don't have anything to say about the debate of free will vs determinism, but I particularly dislike your style of reasoning. Most people do this within topics of politics and economics, which conveniently allows them to allow their confirmation bias without putting themselves in the other person's shoes to understand where they disagree. Instead they'd rather go with the prejudiced "oh they must be that kind of (stereotyped) person."
    • intralizee 8y ago
      My style of reasoning is how it came to be by all the events I've lived in life. A lot of unfavorable events, unfortunate circumstances and with its happy moments. I could try to do mental gymnastics to produce something more desirable for "you" but I prefer to simplify my observation into what I wrote. I don't really see any substance other than from your ego in your reply.
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• sadness2 8y ago
  I believe that free will is possible. Our conceptions of existence are limited by our perspective; that of a causative (and, OK, possibly random) reality, but it's possible that our wills are interfaced with super-dimensional spirits (souls, if you like). The fact that we cannot conceive of an existence which is not causative does not mean that our spirits do not dwell in one. One way of approximating such an existence is to consider it as "timeless". This timeless spirit may then, in a sense, exercise influence on our wills throughout our entire lifespan, simultaneously (perhaps through a quantum interface). You could call this deterministic, but how is it deterministic in any meaningful sense if our choices are "determined" by a spirit which is, by definition, our essential self, free of circumstantial preconditions?
• dtujmer 8y ago
  I think Sam Harris put it like this: for free will, it doesn't even matter if reality is deterministic or random because the determinism or randomness are found at the quantum level, many levels "below" neurological free will. Let's say we have Universe 1 (deterministic) and Universe 2 (random). You face a choice - raise your left hand or your right hand. In U1, if you went back in time several times, you would always pick the same hand because the configuration of matter in the universe would "require" that the next step, globally, is you raising that same hand. In U2, if you went back in time, there could be some variance - maybe you'd pick the other hand 50% of the time - but this variance would happen on a quantum level and only manifest neurologically/physically. I still see no possibility of the classical idea of free will there.
  • jgh 8y ago
    wasnt there a story linked here a couple weeks ago about neurons possibly having some sensitivity to quantum interactions? Wouldn't that mean that the quantum level is not actually below neurological free will?
  • naasking 8y ago
    > I still see no possibility of the classical idea of free will there. That's because you're mistaken that the classical version of free will requires the ability to do otherwise in the sense of making different choices after rewinding time. Consider what that actually means: an outcome that is different every time you sample it, even going back in time, is classified as a random phenomena. That's not what free will means, classically. Where is the will if your choices are random? Furthermore, the Frankfurt cases debunked this old notion of the principle of alternate possibilities back in the 60s. Sam Harris is simply mistaken about the applicability of this principle.
• random_upvoter 8y ago
  If free will did not exist, how would you ever be able to imagine such a thing? An entity that is constrained by determinism, say a computer program, has no room to "step outside" its own frame and imagine things running an different way. In essence, free will and consciousness the same thing.
  • Drakim 8y ago
    We can imagine tons of things that don't exist. For instance I'm currently imagining a bouncy ball that instead of bouncing according to deterministic laws, bounces according to a mystic will-based system.
    • chasd00 8y ago
      and i'm currently imagining getting work done rather than being on HN :)
• placebo 8y ago
  Consider the possibility that whether the future is predetermined or not has nothing to do with free will. The persistence of the notion of free will seems to be an attempt to reconcile a feeling of what seems to be a very real, conscious and subjective "me in here" vs, what seems to be an objective, deterministic "world out there". This division is necessary for science to exist. But what if there is a deeper truth than just being stuck with the question of whether "I" can control the outcome of events or "I" am powerless to do anything about them. Consider the possibility of access to knowledge before there's an intellectual division into a "me" and "not me", a knowing where the entire notion of whether there's free will or not becomes completely irrelevant. This seems to be the common theme running through various teachings of mysticism, from Zen to Sufism. I don't think science should try and make use of mysticism, as science starts where mysticism ends (and vice versa), but any attempt by science to wrestle with the question of free will appears to me as pointless as an attempt of a Zen master to wrestle with solving problems in quantum mechanics. It's simply not in their domain.
  • jstanley 8y ago
    > Consider the possibility that whether the future is predetermined or not has nothing to do with free will. If free will exists, that would seem to imply that people can make decisions that affect their future. Wouldn't free will therefore imply nondeterminism? I agree that notfreewill does not imply determinism.
    • placebo 8y ago
      I think a better way out of the trap of the free will vs. determinism question is to really dive not into the question of whether or not we have free will, but of who exactly is asking the question. What exactly is this me that's supposed to have this thing we call free will. The first change in my perception of this question was many years ago when I read Raymond Smullyan's piece "Is God A Taoist" - I think it's definitely still worth read: http://www.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/prose/text/godTaoist.html http://www.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/prose/text/godTao...
    • coldtea 8y ago
• rslonik 8y ago
  I think either we do not have free will or we have some special brain that shapes probabilities that literally make the reality as we see. And I always prefer to believe we are not special animals. Still, as opposite as deterministic universe, we may do not have free will but the future is not determined. The future may be random at some scale, with most obvious sequence of events happening and yet not prohibiting different events to happen.
• raxxorrax 8y ago
  Ah, the age old question where it doesn't matter if the answer is positive or negative at all. Since it is opinion time: I do think that we posses free will whatever the definition might be. There are enough know non-deterministic processes. I also think consideration of randomness vs determinism isn't sufficient to find an answer.
  • joycian 8y ago
    Can you supply a non-deterministic process, where the non-determinism is fundamental and not a way to quantify a lack of information about the system?
    • adrianN 8y ago
      Anything that is best described by quantum mechanics.
      • enkid 8y ago
        That's only according to some interpretations of quantum mechanics. (I.e. Copenhagen) Other interpretations, such as Many Worlds or Pilot Wave are deterministic.
        • joycian 8y ago
          Many worlds is deterministic, but not in the same sense that people might think of, right. The evolution of the wavefunction (which never collapses like in Copenhagen) is deterministic, but in any given world, random draws are appearing.
      • joycian 8y ago
        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdeterminism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdeterminism What do you think of ideas like this then?
        • adrianN 8y ago
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• wallace_f 8y ago
  This maybe is a question more about our egos than about the universe (which we do not just exist in, but are the most intricate part of). But is it even very much possible to begin to answer it? What I mean is this: The idea of choice is a human concept, which seems to be made to be illusory by the fact that, for the most part, our universe is deterministic in nature. But even in the case the universe is wholly deterministic, as the article's hidden variables theory proposes, then our choices would still be attributed to ourselves. So in that case, what created ourselves is the big bang. And what created the big bang? Is it even possible to answer that? The nature of time and the universe is not something that is understood. We understand a lot more than our ancestors due to the scientific method and the spread of the tolerance of Enlightenment-era ideals which allow its pursuit, but that seems to give the illusion that we understand the nature of our universe well-enough to answer these metaphysical queations. Perhaps we are just in a bubble that is a kind of Sagan's Flatland. Perhaps we are some insignificant random combination of patterns, or perhaps not. We have no idea what we are. But I dont believe our ownership of our choices is refuted by a universe without randomness.
• coldtea 8y ago
  >Of course, randomness isn’t the only thing necessary for free will Not only that, but randomness and determinism are equally against the (casual) idea of free will. Free will, as commonly understood, means there's an "extra layer of abstraction" between the universe (material objects and their relationships) and me. What people called "soul". It's not just that our decisions (will) are random instead of predetermined by a cascade of material interactions. Note that if one presumes a soul, free will is then not an illogical impossibility. It's just an extra layer of abstraction: it can decide based on our material-timeline-history (our interactions with the universe and others), but it's not absolutely bound by them (in the way a deterministic brain would be). A soul, in that sense, is like when a protagonist in a movie breaking the fourth wall. They exist in the world of the movie, but they have some footing outside of it. (Of course in the case of the movie, the breaking is scripted).
  • hashr8064 8y ago
    > It's not just that our decisions (will) are random instead of predetermined by a cascade of material interactions. You seem somewhat knowledgeable about this topic, so maybe you or someone else can answer this. Why can't free will just be a complex system feedback loop and name for the way we humans perceive our own decision making process in this loop. I mean why can it not be that "free will" is the decision making process which is influenced by unconscious processes and in turn influences those unconscious processes? It could be deterministic and random or the universe could turn out to work differently at some level and it really wouldn't matter. Is something like this a standard view in this whole debate on Free Will?
    • newacctjhro 8y ago
      This is called compatibilism and yeah it seems to be a mainstream view in the academic debate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatibilism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatibilism https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/
      • naasking 8y ago
• azag0 8y ago
  I find this view satisfying: “free will” is the feeling that our decisions are the consequence of the train of our inner thoughts. In that sense, free will exists. The following question is whether that feeling corresponds to physical reality or is an illusion. Here I believe it’s the latter and free will is in fact merely an interpretation of what happens around us. See the book Feee Will from Sam Harris for more.
• nyc111 8y ago
  What is interesting about this article for me is that, the question of free will has been one of the oldest subject of academic scholasticism. So how come now it is being discussed by people whose profession is about measuring and classifying natural phenomena in relation to the physical concept of force? I wonder what changed? Did physics become academic scholasticism or did free will is transformed into a physical force?
  • naasking 8y ago
    > So how come now it is being discussed by people whose profession is about measuring and classifying natural phenomena in relation to the physical concept of force? I wonder what changed? Quantum mechanics changed how physicists see the universe's classical deterministic character (see Einstein's famous quote). Then they published The Free Will Theorem and the Strong Free Will Theorem, but this conception of "free will" has no relation to the one in philosophy. It was a very poor choice of terminology IMO.
  • cthalupa 8y ago
    >Did physics become academic scholasticism or did free will is transformed into a physical force? Unless you believe in a soul or something similar, and that that soul is what governs free will, then physics would have to be involved. The workings of our brains are governed by the same laws of physics as everything else.
• amelius 8y ago
  A different view: if we live in a universe that branches into multiple universe at every $PLANCK_TIME, then free will could be our consciousness choosing the branch it follows without actually interacting with the universe.
  • SonicSoul 8y ago
    Love this! As if God designed universe timeline to be immutable. The question is, by making choice B you get universe B unique to that branch you chose, but is it a new branch per person per choice? Or do multiple people get “switched” to that branch?
    • davemp 8y ago
      If you were to view people as a composition of their choices, then in the current branch every individual chose said branch. Every person who did not chose the current branch, is now a different individual. If the universe is considered a set of individuals or object, then it's unclear whether a multiple paths could lead to equivalent universes or the same. It all depends on the category theory (is the composition of choices associative, etc). That being said, I really don't like multiple/branching universes theories.
  • monktastic1 8y ago
    Of course, there is branching in the quantum sense, but alas, no evidence that we can choose which "world" we end up in. Run the Schrodinger's Cat experiment a million times, and if you get something far from a 50-50 distribution, then maybe this definition is useful.
  • Koshkin 8y ago
    I do not remember ever choosing a branch (as an act of free will), so I am left to assume that my consciousness itself has been branched.
• madmaniak 8y ago
  Wow! Such a lot of work on top of a mistake which they already figured out, too bad that only in a scale of laboratory room. If EVERYTHING is determined taking quasars from far far away (in time and space) doesn't change anything in the experiment. Back then, the experiment in the laboratory room also was determined. Pop-"science".
• chasd00 8y ago
  someone mentioned free will not existing because every decision made is the result of past decisions. Given a choice between A or B, I will only choose given who I am and therefore there was really no choice to begin with. When you're born you have no past to rely on but there sure seems to be a lot of randomness in a baby/child. Maybe randomness is free-will but it slowly erodes away with time.
  • SonicSoul 8y ago
    I think this analogy would assume baby branches off of parents decision tree, i.e. parents are responsible for choices and there is probably a mix of both throughout life (i.e. parents restricting / influencing which colleges you should apply to)
  • ilitirit 8y ago
    > Maybe randomness is free-will but it slowly erodes away with time. It's a bit tricky depending on your idea of what "free will" means, but essentially it can be argued that there's a difference non-trivial difference between free will and determinism. If the development of the Universe is predetermined, then the Universe is deterministic (in some system of logic) and free will does not exist. If the development of the Universe depends on the the outcome of truly random events, then the universe is non-deterministic, but this does not imply that free will exists. Consider: Someone has to decide between two choices which for all intents and purposes are exactly the same when measured against each other. On the most fundamental level, the only way to break the deadlock is through a "random" selection. If this random selection is driven by the aforementioned random (possibly quantum) events, then is this really "free will"? After all, the person making the decision has no conscious control of the events influencing the decision process on that level. This implies that decision making ("will") is just a function acting on inputs.
• ppeetteerr 8y ago
  Free will is a lie the mind tells itself to cope with reality. No matter where the choice to act rests, it's not with the individual willing it to be so. In a western society, with ample choice and the ability to make those choices, one might feel like they have free will. Look elsewhere, and you'll see that the "choice" to act is very limited to the circumstances of your life.
• bad_user 8y ago
  My view on "free will" is that it's a non-falsifiable notion. The universe isn't deterministic due to randomness. In absence of determinism in the universe's laws, free will is at least possible. However talking about it is like talking about the existence of God. The question is this: what observations can you make that, if they were true, would lead to the conclusion that "free will" doesn't exist? And the answer is, in the presence of randomness, there are no such observations. Think about it like this: if you could observe and analyze two universes in parallel, almost identical except that in one people have free will and in the other people don't, what differences would you be able to see? And the answer is obvious. N.B. I'm not talking about compatibilism, which is irrelevant.
  • ganzuul 8y ago
    If you have a will, your will is not free. A slightly corny but apt analogy is one of an empty cup. An empty cup can be filled with anything, but once full it needs to be emptied again before it can accept a new substance. I think this is a useful touchstone in the debate about freedom of will. - It moves the goalposts so that your requirement is the ability to shed will instead of the ability to pick new ones.
• axilmar 8y ago
  To me, articles like these are littered with logical fallacies. I truly wonder if the quoted scientists really meant what the article says. For example: "And if our measurements are random, there is no way for the photons to know ahead of time which orientation will be measured. So, there can’t be any hidden variable to determine the outcome. Whether we get the left or right shoe, or the left or right glove, the result is truly random." The above assumes that the actual properties that lead to the specific measurements have to be communicated between particles. But there has been no research in finding out if these properties are truly encoded into the particles themselves. Maybe there are no hidden variables, and maybe there is no communication, but these properties are simply encoded into the light particles, by the way they are created. "It’s spooky because entangled objects have a quantum connection, even if they are light-years apart." Or maybe they don't, and the appropriate properties are encoded into the particles themselves. "Of course, randomness isn’t the only thing necessary for free will." Free will means the power to determine one's fate through a set of thoughts (logical or not). If there is actual randomness in the Universe, then there is random will, not free will.
  • jobigoud 8y ago
    > Maybe there are no hidden variables, and maybe there is no communication, but these properties are simply encoded into the light particles, by the way they are created. I believe this is exactly what "hidden variables" means. Some unknown property that would be present in both particles before we measure it and constraint the possible outcomes. This is inconsistent with experiments, it was shown there is no such properties.
    • kenmicklas 8y ago
      It's only inconsistent if you assume information can't travel faster than the speed of light, for which there is no basis besides gospel.
      • Koshkin 8y ago
        Science is no "gospel."
• loup-vaillant 8y ago
  I thought this experiment was explained just as well by decoherence? Under the many world interpretation, there's no instant communication, or hidden variable, we just happen to learn in which world we are by performing the measurement. The laws of physics are still deterministic as far as I can tell.
  • furgooswft13 8y ago
    This just pushes back the point of non-determinism. Instead of the measurement, or wave function collapse, or decoherence or whatever you want to call it being not deterministic, the "world" you end up in is. If even that point is to be considered deterministic then there has to be some previous state of something to lead to it, and we're back to non-local hidden variables. This is one of the many reasons I dislike the many-worlds theory, and it's seeming popularity of late. It does not actually solve non-determinism, it just shuffles the deck a little, while also tacking on an ever expanding number of alternate universes, all the while remaining as non-falsifiable as any other QM interpretation. If I had to choose between two non-local hidden variable theories, I'd choose the one without the constant branching alternate worlds. Non-local hidden variables are almost by definition unknowable to us, so I'm not sure what we gain by pretending all this meta-physical philosophizing is actual science. It did make for a good TNG episode though.
    • loup-vaillant 8y ago
      Many Worlds is popular for a reason: it's one of the simplest interpretation that fits the facts. The scientist in you might dislike that it came about later than the Copenhagen interpretation without any experiment to distinguish them. The Bayesian in me just applies Occam's razor. Just realize that a collapse interpretation is the same as a many worlds, with the additional assumption that the blob of amplitude you don't live in is somehow flattened to zero. The "it's just maths" interpretation isn't much better: the maths tell us that we have two worlds worth of amplitudes, yet for some reason the one we don't observe isn't real. This is as ridiculous as believing that stuff you send outside the observable universe ceases to exist once it crosses the boundary. As for how far it pushes non-determinism… I'd say quite far. Under the MWI, the universe is entirely deterministic. What is not is just our subjective experience. What was originally a Physics problem is now an *anthropic" problem, similar to what you would get if you were to copy & paste humans, or do mind uploading. The more interesting mystery in my opinion is more about why the Born statistics are the way they are, instead whatever else we could imagine them to be.
• kenmicklas 8y ago
  It turns out if you make unjustified assumptions (information can't travel faster than light) you can make unjustified conclusions (no hidden variables).
• hulton 8y ago
  Get out of the way Sam Harris.
• Koshkin 8y ago
  My free will told me not to read this thread, and yet here I am...
• outlace 8y ago
  The idea that randomness gives rise to free will is ludicrous. If my brain randomly chooses to eat an apple on Monday and randomly chooses to eat a Pear on Tuesday how is that giving me more free will than if my brain was predetermined to choose an Apple then a Pear. There is no way to even conceive of what free will could be, determined or not. Either the activity of your brain is causally determined by previous brain states and interactions with the environment plus or minus randomness, neither option gives you the intuitive notion of free will. Edit: also the Nobel winner Gerard t’Hooft argues that even these quasar experiments don’t rule out determinism. He argues that any closed deterministic system will have correlations across any distance in spacetime.
  • GuB-42 8y ago
    You may or may not have "true" free will with randomness, you definitely can't have it with determinism. Random just means unpredictable. It means that the information about whether your eat a pear or an apple is nowhere to be found in the universe. We can only see it after the fact. Something has been injected in the universe from outside. That something is undecidable by definition, therefore, it is outside the realm of science, and it may very well be free will, god, a soul, whatever. Having that randomness leaves an opening for metaphysical free will. On the opposite, without randomness that form of free will is impossible. Everything is determined and science doesn't leave any space for these concepts.
    • outlace 8y ago
      So if this metaphysical 'force' is deciding your actions, that still is not free will. You can posit anything as the ultimate cause of your activity but that isn't free will, it's just a higher-level cause. Either things are ultimately caused (at whatever level, metaphysical or not) or they're just acausally random or some combination. Pushing free will into the realm of souls and God doesn't help. However, your point about unpredictability is right. There are some processes that are fundamentally unpredictable, but this unpredictability can and does occur in a completely deterministic setting. A completely closed deterministic system will have processes that are unpredictable to agents acting within the closed system, this is the nature of computational irreducibility as elaborated by Stephen Wolfram and more recently Tim Palmer. Personally, I certainly hope we live in a deterministic universe because a fundamentally random or a-causal universe would be nihilistic to me. If things just happened for no reason then that seems far more distressing than the universe following (possibly a few elegant) well-posed and deterministic rules, even if some aspects of its future evolution are unpredictable due to computational irreducibility.
• deleted 8y ago
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• ethn 8y ago
  So many popular science articles have started to commit ontological fallacies like this. Free will obviously exists because we experience it. This question presumes a denial of experience and a claim that really the experience isn't real but instead this other thing that cannot ever be experienced is. What's even the motivation for that? The motivation seems to be to paint an awe-inspiring picture of mystery through the facade of science for link clicks, with the defamation of science. Science is meant to make things clear not enigmatic. The question debating if free will actually exists, is a denial of experience and a solicitation to some sort of ontology outside of experience that can never be known.
  • dragonwriter 8y ago
    > Free will obviously exists because we experience it. You seem to be confusing the subjective experience of consciousness with free will. They aren't equivalent. (Free will can be viewed as a conjecture about the relationship of conscious experience with the outside world, but is not synonymous with conscious experience.)
    • ethn 8y ago
      I'm not. If I meant the experience of consciousness I would have said so.
  • seekingcharlie 8y ago
    How do "we experience" free will?
    • ethn 8y ago
      By making choices on one's own accord. This is the only qualifier of Free Will. The argument against Free Will is that this is actually an illusion despite the experience–the argument is a metaphysical one, which can never be known as it's circumscribed in the noumena.
• prmph 8y ago
  The question of free will is bound up with the question of consciousness. We first need to understand what consciousness is, where it resides, and what its boundaries are, before we can understand free will. It is not possible to properly test a statement such as: "I have free will" without understanding what the "I" refers to
• posterboy 8y ago
  If you look at the polysemy of 'to determine', you will likely determine that the primary meaning is actually to 'recognize, find out'. In that sense, saying that somebody had no choice means they don't anymore have a choice. But looking towards the future, you never have a closed function; the outcome is open. The ambiguity of 'to determine' is still relevant, because by determining a fact, you (try to) determine an outcome. This polysemy exists the same in other languages, e.g. German "bestimmen". If you are lucky, your future will remain undetermined. After all, there's only one certain closed function for the future, which is its ... End. PS: there's a contraction when people want to make free willed choices and remain undetermined at the same time. And it gets turned on its head when people are determined not to make any decisions, because ultimately, they will be deprived of all choices. PPS: In law and politics especially, determining a 'fact' often has the ridiculous outcome that ridiculous rules based on rough estimates determine a detrimental outcome, e.g. age-limits on movies or tax collection. Those are real underlying problems, not philosophy. And the very notion of free will comes into play with 'wanton'. That does not just play a role with e.g. premediated murder, but "Willkürverbot" against law and court is anchored in the German Grundgesetz, that every decision must be based on reason. "Willkür" roughly translates to ... wow, I guess, "good faith". Whereas 'voluntary' is "freiwillig" (free willing). "Wille" compares to "Wahl" (election, choice). The history of "Willkür" is complicated, but Pfeifer compares Sanskr. "juis-", for "Kür" and related words, which reminds too much of Lt. 'iius'. > got. kiusan ‘prüfen’. Hierzu stellen sich außergerm. Entsprechungen wie aind. juṣátē, jṓṣati ‘hat gern, findet Gefallen, genießt’, awest. zaoš-, apers. dauš- ‘an etw. Gefallen finden’, griech. gé͞uesthai (γεύεσθαι) ‘kosten, schmecken, zu spüren bekommen’, lat. dēgūnere ‘kosten’, air. togu ‘wählen’ und, mit dentalem Element wie in ↗kosten (s. d.), lat. gustāre ‘kosten, genießen’, die auf eine gemeinsame Wurzel ie. g̑eus- ‘kosten, genießen, schmecken’ (im Germ. und Kelt. ‘wählen’ durch Übertragung des Wahrnehmens und Prüfens auf andere Sinnesbereiche) führen. "iius" also reminds of 'juice', as far as enjoyment goes, which with relations to blood (cp. Agr. ear - blood, juice; and the four humors [juices] theory, "Viersäfteleehre"). 'Joy' itself looks related. Talk about bad blood and gusto. Gives August a different perspective, too. Whereas "free" has to be compared to "Frieden" (piece), with a sense secure, bounded (cp. fence? Friesen ... Brit vs Fritz, through 'bh'?). Still Lt. "volens" has to be compared to Ger. "wollens" (and vollends?). Ultimately I take a shortcut and equate well with will to derive good (cp Ger. "Güte" - mercy, quality, "Gut" - merch, lot [of a farm]); And 'faith' from "Treu und Glauben" and "guter Glaube" which expresses the notion of Willkür for old Kurpfalzen best, by my own esteemed estimate. This derivation is a bit of a freestyle ("Kür" as in sports). "Kür" could relate to 'sure' if a prehistoric scur is assumed, which is, of course, obscure, as is 'obscure'. So we see that the words free will are not literal because a lot of punning was involved. None of that has anything to do with stars, but election is superficially cognate with illuminate (elector - sun; lux - light; lego - collect, read; ligo - bind) and to star has something to do with being appointed.