4 ms·

You are a machine. Except you don't have 360 degree sensors or lidar.

by toasterlovin 7y ago

sorokod 7y ago
But they do have free will and agency.
- revscat 7y ago
  Not really. If you’re stuck in rush hour traffic, your “free will” is limited by your immediate surroundings, specifically the cars around you. Sure, you could abandon your car and walk or something, but that’s not likely a rational choice. Given that “free will” is limited, and doubly so when operating a vehicle, that’s not very much of a rebuttal.
  - sorokod 7y ago
    Limited or not, it is different from having none at all. Obviously it is up to the individual to quantify the loss.
    - toasterlovin 7y ago
      FWIW, there is zero evidence that anything like the common conception of free will exists. It is basically a folk explanation for a decision matrix that has hundreds or thousands of inputs that are mostly opaque to the tools currently at our disposal. There is no reason to believe that there will be anything left which we can label "free will" once we are able to measure and quantify all of these inputs and the system operating on them.
- tialaramex 7y ago
  Your "free will" is at least mostly an illusion achieved by altering your sense of time. Hooked up to machines to record microsecond by microsecond we can then watch things happen in order on the playback and see the trick done. First the human does something, then their brain assesses what was done and it constructs a story explanation for what was done. The human comes to believe that they did what they did on purpose for a reason - an exercise of free will, as established in the story, even though we can see that isn't the order in which it happened. If you're sure you would know about this distortion I've got bad news. Your vision already depends on a similar trick that's been known for decades. Your eyes can't see anywhere near well enough to achieve what you think you can see. Instead a mechanism refreshes the details periodically while not giving you access, your image of the world is a composite assembled from a recent-ish focal image and guesses about what everything else probably still looks like. You feel like it's a live video feed, but it isn't, and it never has been your whole life. Maybe this trick is only happening a lot of the time for small decisions, and we do have some mysterious free will, exactly the way we think we do but it's just much less often relevant than you intuit. But maybe the fact is that trick is all that was ever happening, we're not special except that we've deluded ourselves and that is sort of special in its own way.
  - invalidusernam3 7y ago
    Really interesting. Do you have any links you could share where I could read more about these ideas (both the freewill one and the vision one)
    - tialaramex 7y ago
      Transsaccadic memory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transsaccadic_memory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transsaccadic_memory is the name for the phenomenon I described for vision. It's uncontroversial that what we think we see is synthesised because saccades are definitely a thing, you can watch other people's eyes move while they report not changing where they're looking - but exactly how that synthesis works is not something for which you'll find widespread agreement. The experiment where you watch yourself looking at one eye then another in the mirror is a trivial one to do at home on your own though if you just want that sharp "Oh!" moment as a quick pay off. Why don't your eyes seem to move! The underpinning idea in the free will thing is Wegner's idea, he's done various experiments about this e.g.: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10424155 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10424155
  - sorokod 7y ago
    Really keen to see how this would play out in a criminal court. Something like "your honour, I did shoot Steve repeatedly, but science shows that I can't be held accountable"?
- toasterlovin 7y ago
  FWIW, I would probably count that as a reason to prefer autonomous cars, not as a reason to prefer human drivers. People are pretty bad decision makers. I would much rather have life or death decisions made by a team of engineers using data from thousands of actual incidents to inform their thinking.
  - sorokod 7y ago
    You must be looking forward Ai driven legal system and having your life partner determined by an ML gizmo.
    - toasterlovin 7y ago
      There are a bunch of ways in which those are not comparable examples. Most drivers are amateurs; lawyers and judges are not. Choosing a life partner is not a life or death matter (for the most part). Nor does it affect people aside from yourself.
- xutopia 7y ago
  Driving has nothing to do with free will and agency. It's not art!

You are a machine. Except you don't have 360 degree sensors or lidar.

sorokod 7y ago

But they do have free will and agency.

revscat 7y ago
Not really. If you’re stuck in rush hour traffic, your “free will” is limited by your immediate surroundings, specifically the cars around you. Sure, you could abandon your car and walk or something, but that’s not likely a rational choice. Given that “free will” is limited, and doubly so when operating a vehicle, that’s not very much of a rebuttal.
- sorokod 7y ago
  Limited or not, it is different from having none at all. Obviously it is up to the individual to quantify the loss.
  - toasterlovin 7y ago
    FWIW, there is zero evidence that anything like the common conception of free will exists. It is basically a folk explanation for a decision matrix that has hundreds or thousands of inputs that are mostly opaque to the tools currently at our disposal. There is no reason to believe that there will be anything left which we can label "free will" once we are able to measure and quantify all of these inputs and the system operating on them.
tialaramex 7y ago
Your "free will" is at least mostly an illusion achieved by altering your sense of time. Hooked up to machines to record microsecond by microsecond we can then watch things happen in order on the playback and see the trick done. First the human does something, then their brain assesses what was done and it constructs a story explanation for what was done. The human comes to believe that they did what they did on purpose for a reason - an exercise of free will, as established in the story, even though we can see that isn't the order in which it happened. If you're sure you would know about this distortion I've got bad news. Your vision already depends on a similar trick that's been known for decades. Your eyes can't see anywhere near well enough to achieve what you think you can see. Instead a mechanism refreshes the details periodically while not giving you access, your image of the world is a composite assembled from a recent-ish focal image and guesses about what everything else probably still looks like. You feel like it's a live video feed, but it isn't, and it never has been your whole life. Maybe this trick is only happening a lot of the time for small decisions, and we do have some mysterious free will, exactly the way we think we do but it's just much less often relevant than you intuit. But maybe the fact is that trick is all that was ever happening, we're not special except that we've deluded ourselves and that is sort of special in its own way.
- invalidusernam3 7y ago
  Really interesting. Do you have any links you could share where I could read more about these ideas (both the freewill one and the vision one)
  - tialaramex 7y ago
    Transsaccadic memory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transsaccadic_memory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transsaccadic_memory is the name for the phenomenon I described for vision. It's uncontroversial that what we think we see is synthesised because saccades are definitely a thing, you can watch other people's eyes move while they report not changing where they're looking - but exactly how that synthesis works is not something for which you'll find widespread agreement. The experiment where you watch yourself looking at one eye then another in the mirror is a trivial one to do at home on your own though if you just want that sharp "Oh!" moment as a quick pay off. Why don't your eyes seem to move! The underpinning idea in the free will thing is Wegner's idea, he's done various experiments about this e.g.: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10424155 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10424155
- sorokod 7y ago
  Really keen to see how this would play out in a criminal court. Something like "your honour, I did shoot Steve repeatedly, but science shows that I can't be held accountable"?
toasterlovin 7y ago
FWIW, I would probably count that as a reason to prefer autonomous cars, not as a reason to prefer human drivers. People are pretty bad decision makers. I would much rather have life or death decisions made by a team of engineers using data from thousands of actual incidents to inform their thinking.
- sorokod 7y ago
  You must be looking forward Ai driven legal system and having your life partner determined by an ML gizmo.
  - toasterlovin 7y ago
    There are a bunch of ways in which those are not comparable examples. Most drivers are amateurs; lawyers and judges are not. Choosing a life partner is not a life or death matter (for the most part). Nor does it affect people aside from yourself.
xutopia 7y ago
Driving has nothing to do with free will and agency. It's not art!