21 ms·

From chaos to free will

61 points by jonbaer 6y ago

clawedjird 6y ago
I’m probably missing something (and would gladly welcome correction), but this only seems to address a limited form of determinism. I’m not sure how the existence of randomness at the molecular level or the fact that psychological experience can influence human biology challenges determinism at large, much less proves the existence of free will.
- cmpb 6y ago
  I would appreciate a response to this as well, from the author or someone knowledgeable on this subject
  - adjkant 6y ago
    I've spent a good deal of time on this subject. In my opinion, this article did little to nothing and the parent here is a very valid critique. The argument it made is basically "We can't accept determinism, but hey, it's not true because there might be quantum randomness." I think it's important to highlight something here - history is fraught with people on both sides of "this is random" and "this is predictable in this way" being wrong. I would not be surprised to find that further research in physics over centuries ends up showing what we currently see as "randomness" is simply a very complicated system. Even if you are able to rest bigger arguments on top of quantum randomness, it's not exactly a sturdy base coming from the bleeding edge of physics. It's also very common among in the community of this debate to get bogged down in the theoretical and not look back to the very real applications of free will concepts in the world. Many of the distinctions they make are not really useful for humans, and they haven't realized even the most basic parts of the arguments can have radical societal effects.
    - dkn775 6y ago
      Similar to the butterfly effect in a way. Looking at a regression model as an example in equation form: Y = a + bX + e Some "proportion" of a phenomenon is understood. However, many things are not immediately understood but only seen to be a factor in explaining a phenomena if looking at things from a very complete, long term perspective. Something which we are unlikely be able to do. Many people can feel when an action produces a ripple effect. Now think of tons of ripple effects interacting, some influential, some not, etc. Anyway, back to the equation - we have +e the error term, which is the uncertainty that any such explanation will fully predict how something plays out. I think what you're getting at is the error term also has characteristics. One of those properties could be that certain things advance all, others are bad for all. Just to tie it back to your other comments.
- ReactiveJelly 6y ago
  I sure don't feel convinced that free will exists. What do non-determinists think would be the testable or observable difference between a universe with and without free will?
  - jes5199 6y ago
    I don’t think it is possible to test the difference. Any situation that looks like free will can also be explained by determinism. The only evidence is the subjective experience of choice, which is invisible to science
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- jariel 6y ago
  I think that this is a good point, and maybe the thesis is stretched a little bit. That said, lack of real determinism does two things at least 1) it possibly changes our almost 'fundamentalist' view of the universe as being deterministic, which is I think our 'default instinct' these days and 2) opens the door to other possibilities. The 'gap' to consciousness/free will and other things, as you point out, remains.
  - GoblinSlayer 6y ago
    Determinism doesn't guarantee easy intuitive understanding. Many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics is deterministic, but even educated people easily fail to understand it, because it's still not intuitive.
abellerose 6y ago
I’ve given up on the idea of free will. I think the illusion does more harm than good to society but everyone deeply has been conditioned to think it’s true and things will never change in my lifetime. The article doesn’t do the necessary job of convincing me that quantum physics has any real impact on people having responsibility over their thoughts & actions. I’ve always wanted to see how a person could somehow not be effected by the system being the universe and where the person is a subsystem. I think that would be the most interesting thing for me. Sadly the belief that a God just made it so isn’t logical and not something I can even begin to see how it would work. Determinism being partially untrue by some outside force making the universe truly random doesn’t allow a person making personal choices they should be responsible over. In fact such an existence would be terrifying. Performing thoughts & actions that just randomly happen with no valid reason. I’m predicting society will eventually throw away the free will illusion when science destroys inequality.
- hsitz 6y ago
  Maybe you're familiar with Yuval Noah Harari's position in the free will vs. determinism debate. He argues that, not only is the idea of free will a myth, it's harmful to society: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/sep/14/yuval-noah-harari-the-new-threat-to-liberal-democracy https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/sep/14/yuval-noah-har... Also, it seems you're getting at an interesting idea: we can understand determinism, and we can understand chance, but free will seems to want to combine the two concepts in some incomprehensible/nonsensical way, which nobyd can understand.
  - naasking 6y ago
    Combining them is easy. Lookup Compatibilism, which is the dominant view among philosophers.
    - hsitz 6y ago
      Yes, so easy it doesn't really combine them. Compatibilism gives an explanation that essentially redefines what is meant by "free will". Compatibilism makes compatible a concept of determinism and a specific concept of "free will". Yes, it gives a coherent way of speaking about these two seemingly contradictory things; enabling us to avoid nonsense or self-contradiction. However, the compatibilist notion of "free will" is in fact incompatible with what most people mean (or think they mean) when they say they "have free will".
jbay808 6y ago
The article is very confused. Just about every paragraph is confused in a different way, but I'll start with one simple point of confusion. Constraints on physical systems (such as the given example of a string constraining the motion of an apple to a circle) are simplifications that we use to model the system. Nature doesn't notice the constraints -- the string is just a bunch of atoms, the same as the apple, and they're all following the same equations. But to us, it can be easier to model a system with a single degree of freedom and some constraints, rather than 10^23 degrees of freedom and no constraints. The brain, and a CPU, do not generate constraints that overrule the physics of their base particles. The appearance of constraints is just the dance of many particles following the rules, just like everything else, but arranged in a clever way that matches the useful, more easily modeled behaviour of a constrained system.
- acqq 6y ago
  Maybe the "confusion" is intentional. In the scientific papers, at least in some areas, it is expected to disclose potential conflicts of interest. In magazine essays one can see just an essay without a context, which could potentially explain where the author comes from. That's why I have searched for the author and have found: George F. R. Ellis is, not accidentally, "a past president of the International Society for Science and Religion", "an active Quaker", and a winner of Templeton Prize "originally awarded to people working in the field of religion (Mother Teresa was the first winner), but in the 1980s the scope broadened to include people working at the intersection of science and religion."
- Ygg2 6y ago
  I think the article is the philosophical equivalent of "Does tomato cure cancer?". No, but under certain condition it appears to help.
michaelmrose 6y ago
I don't see the connection between being impossible to predict and being actuated by will instead of the underlying physics. Even if no being in the universe could possibly predict the behavior of a system that includes an intelligent being and even further suppose that due to true randomness it was in fact not predetermined. I don't see how it would make the entity's actions determined by their own thoughts instead of the smaller scale pieces of the system. If its truly impossible to predict and we have the perception of having free will and in fact if many things including our own life experience truly are explicable in terms of thoughts, will desires, actions does it really matter if the particles made me do it? What is the practical differences between free will and not?
- GoblinSlayer 6y ago
  I think, it's a naming mistake. If impredictable will was called random will few people would deny its impredictability.
- CuriouslyC 6y ago
  Bell's Theorem basically says that there isn't a deterministic system underlying quantum mechanics. Therefore the universe is fundamentally unpredictable. You could take that to mean everything is random, or that everything has "free will" (constrained by the need to coexist with everything else). Personally, I find the idea that the universe is a living thing that can feel and act all scales of complexity to be delightful, and it certainly has massive ethical ramifications.
  - jerf 6y ago
    Chaos theory (and I mean the real thing, with the real math) also shows that "deterministic" does not imply "predictable", either. Even classical systems can be fundamentally unpredictable. I think one of the problems with this question is that the experiments are fundamentally impossible. You can't put an identical person in identical situations 100 times and see what they do. That wouldn't necessarily even solve the problem since exactly what any given result would even mean would still be up for debate, but you can't even get that far. You can deny free will all you like and you'll never be able to prove it by predicting everything in advance. You can claim it all you like and you'll never be able to show the existence of the counterfactual world where you freely chose differently. Doesn't matter how much word chopping you do.
hliyan 6y ago
The article had a lot of great individual points, but it doesn't seem to make one coherent point. Personally, I've begun to cautiously subscribe to a form of panpsychism, where what we call free will (and perhaps even consciousness), is the same thing as quantum fluctuations, but at scale.
- LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago
  I prefer to call it checksum errors in the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akashic_records https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akashic_records :)
- jbay808 6y ago
  I unfortunately don't think it makes any good points -- just about every one of its arguments is fatally flawed, sadly. With respect to consciousness being tied to quantum physics -- There doesn't appear to be any shape that matter can be sculpted into that allows that matter to "freely choose" the outcome of a quantum experiment. (Change the distribution yes, but not select particular outcomes from a wide distribution). Free will doesn't emerge from quantum randomness -- if it did, it would be analogous to setting up a two-slit experiment where the photon is capable of freely choosing to go through the left slit every time, under the power of a conscious spirit and in defiance of the predictions of quantum probabilities. Our brains do not have this power either. Whatever the quantum field fluctuations are occurring inside our brains, our rational thought is at best recording it, most likely is robust to it, most likely not formed by it, and certainly not consciously selecting particular favoured quantum outcomes.
  - hliyan 6y ago
    > it would be analogous to setting up a two-slit experiment where the photon is capable of freely choosing to go through the left slit every time Not what I meant though. What I meant was that free will / consciousness (not sure if they're two separate things or aspects of the same thing) is an emergent property of quantum fluctuations, similar to wetness being an emergent property of the H2O molecule. It's a bit hand-wavy yes (if it weren't, I'd be publishing a paper right now). The hypothesis (and it's just a hypothesis) is that if quantum fluctuations are all entirely independent, then there is no chance of any emergent properties. But if fluctuations do interact (i.e. proximity in space and/or time affects each other's probabilities), then properties can emerge. Perhaps what we perceive as consciousness / free will is just one such property.
xycombinator 6y ago
So do you critics of the article adhere to the belief that the current state of the universe is predictable from the initial state and the laws of physics? Does that prediction take time? If it doesn't, if it is instantaneous, it's just a hand-waving god. If the prediction for any given instant takes trillions of years, it's meaningless. How am I supposed to see it as anything other than an obstinate adherence to a principle, an unfalsifiable dogma?
- adjkant 6y ago
  1. Yes > Does that prediction take time? Of course it takes an understanding of the entire universe, which we don't have. > If it doesn't, if it is instantaneous, it's just a hand-waving god. If the prediction for any given instant takes trillions of years, it's meaningless. The lack of ability to predict does not change the facts of determinism one way or the other, and that concept alone changes many things about the world, which is why we should care about it 100%. Since I think it will be most helpful to your line of questioning, here's a simplistic but concrete example: Without formal free will, responsibility takes a very different form, and that alone can be used in arguments such as punishment vs rehabilitation, levels of societal equality, and human rights arguments.
- analog31 6y ago
  In my view, that's a straw man. I don't think physicists believe that. I think that most physicists are comfortable treating some phenomena such as nuclear decay and shot noise as truly random. Whether that's a useful model or a fundamental truth is actually something that's not of practical interest outside of perhaps a very small cadre of theoreticians. But one of my physics professors had an amusing comment: We can't calculate the energy levels of the hydrogen atom in years of CPU time, but the hydrogen atom can compute its own wavefunction in a femtosecond. Aside from microscopic phenomena, at least macroscopic systems can compute their own future just fine. My own view is that free will is a theological / philosophical solution in search of a scientific problem.
  - jbay808 6y ago
    I agree that nuclear decay is random, but I wouldn't say it's necessarily an example of non-determinism in the universe. As a subscriber to multiverse theory, I'd say that the appearance of random outcomes is just the way it feels to be a human in a quantum superposition.
yters 6y ago
The author has a couple arguments, some stronger than others. The argument that changing constraints dramatically change system function, and thus enable top down control, is good. It is why we can program computers without being quantum physicists. Additionally, the point that if determinism is true then all texts were encoded in the initial conditions is also good. And finally, his point that determinism undermines the rationality of morality is also good. The book "Life at the Bottom" maked this point vividly, where criminals seem to be unanimous that their actions are out of their control. Where his argument falls apart is explaining the source of top down causation. The author makes the supervenience fallacy, conclusively demonstrated by Jaegwon Kim. There is no logical possibility of top down causation within materialism.
- jbay808 6y ago
  Thanks for the summary, this makes it easier to address his other points. You already see the issue with constraints -- which is why our reality is a bottom-up one, but with the appearance of top-down rules. The point that if determinism is true all texts are encoded, also applies to any other organized information, e.g. human DNA. If books can only be thought of as the product of human free will, and not just natural law, then equally, DNA must be credited to something's free will. But what? Does evolution have free will? No, I think they're both the outcomes of natural processes. We can still build legal systems of copyright on top of that though, and claim credit for those works. (As for where the data comes from if not the Schrodinger equation -- that problem also has a simple solution, which is that we're on the leaf of a widely branching tree, and the data is seeded by the index of our branching history).
  - yters 6y ago
    If books can only be created by human free will, and evolution does not have free will, then that implies DNA must have been generated by something like a human. Aliens?
    - jbay808 6y ago
      That's where the original article author's argument would logically lead, yes. And of course those aliens might have some DNA equivalent... So I think it's clear that the author's argument here is pretty weak.
adjkant 6y ago
> If you seriously believe that fundamental forces leave no space for free will, then it’s impossible for us to genuinely make choices as moral beings. > The underlying physics would in reality be governing our behaviour, and responsibility wouldn’t enter into the picture. First, this is one of the few useful things said here. Responsibility, poof. I agree. And I think that radically changes how we should approach so many things. As a hard determinist who is writing arguments, ethics, and moral frameworks around said determinism, I think there is a big issue with a lot of discussions about free will - definition. When most humans say "free will", they don't mean randomness, not even close. While philosophers in this argument have spent a good deal of time on randomness, I think that focus misses the point entirely. Even if there is molecular randomness, how does that give any more meaning to humans? At the end of the day, the human idea of control gains nothing from it. When humans say "free will", they are referring IMO in actuality to a real thing - a combination of many things, but basically agency + lack of prediction powers. At the end of the day, those are not going away anytime soon, if ever. This is where ethical, moral, and social questions are based, not in free will formally. The lack of formal free will is crucial for underpinning all of this, but it in no way makes ethics and the like impossible. We still exist and experience the world, and it is in all of our best interests to go towards a "better" one. Whether we were always going to do that or not doesn't change that, nor does it change the human experience. I will say this - determinism must be approached carefully precisely because of articles like this - it is easy for the worst effect of determinism on humans to actually be the idea itself and how it makes people defeatist about morality. I hope to spend my time making a good case for how to approach it safely and in a way that makes the world better, and I wish more people were looking at that instead of arguing about quantum randomness.
- jbay808 6y ago
  I agree. I think this gives ethicists the task of accepting deterministic reality the way it's always been, and developing a moral framework that is in harmony with that reality. Morals can still exist without the principle of free will, just like they can exist without God dictating a list of 10 commandments. Murder can still be wrong without free will, just like it can still be wrong without God saying so.
ravenide 6y ago
“Quantum mechanics disproves determinism and therefore disproves free-will-skepticism” is an asinine argument I hear parroted everywhere and it drives me bonkers. Ok, say quantum mechanics is at play and your cells don’t behave deterministically. Is that randomness somehow your free will? Are you willfully collapsing wave functions or whatever? The real reason free will doesn’t exist is not to do with determinism, but the fact that you don’t exist. You’re a collection of cells that, regardless of whether they behave deterministically or randomly, are out of your control. The concept of “you” is just a high-level abstraction, a shorthand, that falls apart as soon as you dig into the details of what’s going on (as all abstractions do).
- naasking 6y ago
  So by that argument, cars don't exist either. Ontologically, this is true. The ontology of physics contains neither cars or free will. So when someone points to a car and says, "that's a car", what are they doing if not pointing at a car? If you can answer this question sensibly, then it should be straightforward to also understand what a victim means when they point to an accuser and says, "they attacked me of their own free will". Free will is just as real as cars. Which is to say either you reject the existence of both, or you reject neither.
  - adjkant 6y ago
    The way you are using the object and the name can also apply to humans within a deterministic world though along with the parent argument. When I say a car, I am using it as shorthand to say "this collection of atoms". Same goes in your example of the attacker. But, you added a very interesting phrase at the end with "of their own free will". I've addressed this in other posts, but basically, what you mean with free will there has nothing to do with the formalized free will the article discusses, but is still very much a relevant idea to the situation and the practical world. The "you don't exist" in the parent argument is not being used to say the person does not exist in the physical world or with a collective name for the atoms, it simply is highlighting that such a level of complex formal free will doesn't appear to be possible. It's begging the question of the definition of free will.
dandanua 6y ago
Nowadays many people are referencing quantum mechanics when they try to explain some elusive and fuzzy notions like free will, consciousness, afterlife, mysticism, religious beliefs etc. This is such a bullshit. In fact, quantum mechanics is so bizarre, it can't even explain what is objective reality from the macroscopic point of view. The only thing it explains for us, classical creatures, is that our world is much more "complex" than we could imagine. Pun intended.
- WalterSear 6y ago
  They also, uniformly, think that a quantum observer is someone in a lab coat with a clipboard, and that Schrodinger's mind experiment was intended as a demonstration rather than the objection that it was.
  - GoblinSlayer 6y ago
    And they think EPR paradox exists to prove and praise quantum weirdness.
lihaciudaniel 6y ago
Gladly would take the school of Stoicism position on free-will: we are like a dog tied to a running cart, we have some sort of freedom where to run but we all have one destiny.
air7 6y ago
def free_will: return QuantumRNG.random() > 0.5 Unpredictability doesn't infer free will.
bondarchuk 6y ago
It's always the same. A lengthy verbose article arguing about free will, and (at this time) 53 comments about free will. But was ever a rigorous definition of "free will" given? Not at all.
- GoblinSlayer 6y ago
  A will free from external influence.
  - dghf 6y ago
    >A will free from external influence. But what do you class as an external influence? Do social norms, including widely held moral codes, count? What about laws, and the threat of punishment for breaking them? What about environmental conditions that provoke emotional states (fear, anger, joy)?
    - GoblinSlayer 6y ago
      The first introductory lecture on politics starts with "laws are written by current political elite to enforce their interests". There are many social norms many people don't share like smoking, snobism, virtue signaling, fake smiles, it's even difficult to share the norms, because they don't make any coherent system.
      - dghf 6y ago
        >The first introductory lecture on politics starts with "laws are written by current political elite to enforce their interests". That doesn't make them any less real in their potential effects. Say I want to steal a stockbrocker's Bentley, but I don't because I fear the legal consequences. Is my will free from external influences? > There are many social norms many people don't share But there are few people who don't share any social norms. > it's even difficult to share the norms, because they don't make any coherent system I don't see that they have to. Hypocrisy has never been a bar to such norms: for example, not that long ago (and to some extent still today), men with illegitimate children were commonly excused or even lionised, while women with illegitimate children were stigmatised.
slfnflctd 6y ago
This stuff makes my head hurt. I can choose to have beer for breakfast, or I can restrain myself and eat some eggs & toast instead. I have faced this choice numerous times, and I do not choose the same way every time. I can feel that choice dangling in front of me, and know I have the ability to do either one. Sometimes I can't decide, and I flip a coin. The idea that free will doesn't exist is not a concept most humans beings are ready to even try to think about-- I like to think I possess at least average intelligence, and despite trying for years I cannot make sense of the world while trying to hold that thought in my mind. There is a lot of stuff we do 'automatically', but a world where my choices are all deterministic simply does not make sense to me and is not useful.
- jes 6y ago
  I can relate. I have been a informal student of this topic for the last five years or so. In my case, my study of the topic has helped me to manifest more compassion for myself and for others. That change, in turn, improved all my relationships.
  - slfnflctd 6y ago
    I guess I should amend the last part of what I said with, "[is not useful] ...when considering my own behavior." With regard to evaluating others, I agree that this mindset can definitely help foster increased kindness, which in many circumstances is one of the most useful outcomes you can hope for. For example, it does seem fairly clear at this point that the retribution/punishment model of treating lawbreakers causes more problems than it solves.
- vidarh 6y ago
  For me it is the idea of what it would mean to actually have free will that makes my mind hurts, because it is such an bizarre idea. Maybe it is because of decades of software development hammering in causality. Because free will implies that cause and effect breaks down, but in a way that is not random but governed by some agency that is not following the cause and effect of the physical structure of the brain. Where would that agency come from? How would it enable a decision that is not then just deterministic one step removed, or randomness one step removed, or agency one step removed? And so we have infinite regression: For each additional step of agency you add to sidestep the problem, the same questions arises of how the decision can be made without being a combination of determinism and randomness or involve some external agency... Conversely, the idea that we do not have free will is easy to resolve for me: Consider yourself a character in a movie. Conceptually your character has free will within the movie universe. Your character could have chosen differently if it had been written differently. But in the movie they will always make the same choice, no matter how many times you rewind, because the choice is already locked in.
titzer 6y ago
FTA: "So what determines which messages are conveyed to your synapses by signalling molecules? They are signals determined by thinking processes that can’t be described at any lower level because they involve concepts, cognition and emotions in an essential way. Psychological experiences drive what happens. Your thoughts and feelings reach ‘down’ to shape lower-level processes in the brain by altering the constraints on ion and electron flows in a way that changes with time." I think what the author is trying to say is that our psychological experience is influencing the molecular forces. But the psychological experience is just an abstraction, a collection of patterns that exist in the 'data' of the brain's connectivity and charge states. The brain's circuitry "runs" the software and its rules. Just because those rules flip a few electrical switches here and there doesn't mean those switches don't follow logic. This is a hopelessly confused mess of an article by someone who clearly doesn't understand computation.
- GoblinSlayer 6y ago
  Yeah, mind philosophers should learn to code. Lots of mistakes can be prevented with just that.
codeulike 6y ago
Determinism is meaningless if there is no way to exploit that determinism. So it is with the universe: It may well be deterministic, but there is no way to build a computer that could 'look ahead' and make predictions (because of chaos theory, sensistive dependence on initial conditions etc, and because any computer that could model the universe would be bigger than - or become part of - that universe). So determinism is kindof irrelevant. And hence free will is also irrelevant. Its just an incoherent concept. If a given scene was re-run twice with everything exactly the same, then you _might_ choose differently? But in a way that is somehow different from randomness? Its just meaningless. What people mean by free will is more like 'what happens next is influenced by things inside my skull, rather than solely from outside of it'. Which is fine. Think of the universe as a determinstic computer that is calculating its own future microsecond by microsecond. There is no way to jump ahead in the calculations, even though it may be determistic.
- adjkant 6y ago
  I've replied to a good deal of posts you can find in this thread so to keep this short - I would argue that you can derive conclusions from the idea/existence of determinism alone, even without exploiting its "predictive" power since that is basically impossible for us.
  - tsegratis 6y ago
    Nice ideas @codeulike What about a (very) small deterministic part of the universe, and a very large machine to compute its outcomes? At some scale differential the machine could compute faster, or that small part of the universe could be frozen at zero kelvin, to give the machine a head start That could be a useful exploit of determinism. Even if the machine never computes faster, it could be used as a test to see if it always gave the same result as that part of the universe ---- But I agree your suggestion is enough to give value to a deterministic universe -- if there's no other way to get an outcome from the universe, than to run it. Then enough complexity by itself gives value to our lives, even within a deterministic system I don't think this is enough for free will though, or giving us intrinsic value, beyond being part of a computation. Especially since the computation result is unknowable at this present time -- let us hope it is useful A non-deterministic system however gives us free will; our decisions have an effect beyond initial conditions; our lives can then have a value more commensurate to the extent we feel for them. We are worthwhile, valuable. It also makes interesting conclusions about God Quantum mechanics argues strongly for non-determinism, and I don't have a reason to argue otherwise I suppose a good/bad value system though would require more... I don't know where @adjkant gets his/hers from? For any decision to be more than hitting a target with a blindfold on... We need some information surely. Some kind of source that indicates good/bad. This could be the outcome of your computation, or something else... I suppose without that source, from our perspective, there is no real value difference between determinism, and free will -- our personal input would be zero, or random For that source... there is an easy 5 letter answer accepted by about 33%

61 points by jonbaer 6y ago

I’m probably missing something (and would gladly welcome correction), but this only seems to address a limited form of determinism. I’m not sure how the existence of randomness at the molecular level or the fact that psychological experience can influence human biology challenges determinism at large, much less proves the existence of free will.

cmpb 6y ago
I would appreciate a response to this as well, from the author or someone knowledgeable on this subject
- adjkant 6y ago
  I've spent a good deal of time on this subject. In my opinion, this article did little to nothing and the parent here is a very valid critique. The argument it made is basically "We can't accept determinism, but hey, it's not true because there might be quantum randomness." I think it's important to highlight something here - history is fraught with people on both sides of "this is random" and "this is predictable in this way" being wrong. I would not be surprised to find that further research in physics over centuries ends up showing what we currently see as "randomness" is simply a very complicated system. Even if you are able to rest bigger arguments on top of quantum randomness, it's not exactly a sturdy base coming from the bleeding edge of physics. It's also very common among in the community of this debate to get bogged down in the theoretical and not look back to the very real applications of free will concepts in the world. Many of the distinctions they make are not really useful for humans, and they haven't realized even the most basic parts of the arguments can have radical societal effects.
  - dkn775 6y ago
    Similar to the butterfly effect in a way. Looking at a regression model as an example in equation form: Y = a + bX + e Some "proportion" of a phenomenon is understood. However, many things are not immediately understood but only seen to be a factor in explaining a phenomena if looking at things from a very complete, long term perspective. Something which we are unlikely be able to do. Many people can feel when an action produces a ripple effect. Now think of tons of ripple effects interacting, some influential, some not, etc. Anyway, back to the equation - we have +e the error term, which is the uncertainty that any such explanation will fully predict how something plays out. I think what you're getting at is the error term also has characteristics. One of those properties could be that certain things advance all, others are bad for all. Just to tie it back to your other comments.
ReactiveJelly 6y ago
I sure don't feel convinced that free will exists. What do non-determinists think would be the testable or observable difference between a universe with and without free will?
- jes5199 6y ago
  I don’t think it is possible to test the difference. Any situation that looks like free will can also be explained by determinism. The only evidence is the subjective experience of choice, which is invisible to science
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
jariel 6y ago
I think that this is a good point, and maybe the thesis is stretched a little bit. That said, lack of real determinism does two things at least 1) it possibly changes our almost 'fundamentalist' view of the universe as being deterministic, which is I think our 'default instinct' these days and 2) opens the door to other possibilities. The 'gap' to consciousness/free will and other things, as you point out, remains.
- GoblinSlayer 6y ago
  Determinism doesn't guarantee easy intuitive understanding. Many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics is deterministic, but even educated people easily fail to understand it, because it's still not intuitive.

abellerose 6y ago

I’ve given up on the idea of free will. I think the illusion does more harm than good to society but everyone deeply has been conditioned to think it’s true and things will never change in my lifetime. The article doesn’t do the necessary job of convincing me that quantum physics has any real impact on people having responsibility over their thoughts & actions. I’ve always wanted to see how a person could somehow not be effected by the system being the universe and where the person is a subsystem. I think that would be the most interesting thing for me. Sadly the belief that a God just made it so isn’t logical and not something I can even begin to see how it would work. Determinism being partially untrue by some outside force making the universe truly random doesn’t allow a person making personal choices they should be responsible over. In fact such an existence would be terrifying. Performing thoughts & actions that just randomly happen with no valid reason. I’m predicting society will eventually throw away the free will illusion when science destroys inequality.

hsitz 6y ago
Maybe you're familiar with Yuval Noah Harari's position in the free will vs. determinism debate. He argues that, not only is the idea of free will a myth, it's harmful to society: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/sep/14/yuval-noah-harari-the-new-threat-to-liberal-democracy https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/sep/14/yuval-noah-har... Also, it seems you're getting at an interesting idea: we can understand determinism, and we can understand chance, but free will seems to want to combine the two concepts in some incomprehensible/nonsensical way, which nobyd can understand.
- naasking 6y ago
  Combining them is easy. Lookup Compatibilism, which is the dominant view among philosophers.
  - hsitz 6y ago
    Yes, so easy it doesn't really combine them. Compatibilism gives an explanation that essentially redefines what is meant by "free will". Compatibilism makes compatible a concept of determinism and a specific concept of "free will". Yes, it gives a coherent way of speaking about these two seemingly contradictory things; enabling us to avoid nonsense or self-contradiction. However, the compatibilist notion of "free will" is in fact incompatible with what most people mean (or think they mean) when they say they "have free will".

jbay808 6y ago

The article is very confused. Just about every paragraph is confused in a different way, but I'll start with one simple point of confusion. Constraints on physical systems (such as the given example of a string constraining the motion of an apple to a circle) are simplifications that we use to model the system. Nature doesn't notice the constraints -- the string is just a bunch of atoms, the same as the apple, and they're all following the same equations. But to us, it can be easier to model a system with a single degree of freedom and some constraints, rather than 10^23 degrees of freedom and no constraints. The brain, and a CPU, do not generate constraints that overrule the physics of their base particles. The appearance of constraints is just the dance of many particles following the rules, just like everything else, but arranged in a clever way that matches the useful, more easily modeled behaviour of a constrained system.

acqq 6y ago
Maybe the "confusion" is intentional. In the scientific papers, at least in some areas, it is expected to disclose potential conflicts of interest. In magazine essays one can see just an essay without a context, which could potentially explain where the author comes from. That's why I have searched for the author and have found: George F. R. Ellis is, not accidentally, "a past president of the International Society for Science and Religion", "an active Quaker", and a winner of Templeton Prize "originally awarded to people working in the field of religion (Mother Teresa was the first winner), but in the 1980s the scope broadened to include people working at the intersection of science and religion."
Ygg2 6y ago
I think the article is the philosophical equivalent of "Does tomato cure cancer?". No, but under certain condition it appears to help.

michaelmrose 6y ago

I don't see the connection between being impossible to predict and being actuated by will instead of the underlying physics. Even if no being in the universe could possibly predict the behavior of a system that includes an intelligent being and even further suppose that due to true randomness it was in fact not predetermined. I don't see how it would make the entity's actions determined by their own thoughts instead of the smaller scale pieces of the system. If its truly impossible to predict and we have the perception of having free will and in fact if many things including our own life experience truly are explicable in terms of thoughts, will desires, actions does it really matter if the particles made me do it? What is the practical differences between free will and not?

GoblinSlayer 6y ago
I think, it's a naming mistake. If impredictable will was called random will few people would deny its impredictability.
CuriouslyC 6y ago
Bell's Theorem basically says that there isn't a deterministic system underlying quantum mechanics. Therefore the universe is fundamentally unpredictable. You could take that to mean everything is random, or that everything has "free will" (constrained by the need to coexist with everything else). Personally, I find the idea that the universe is a living thing that can feel and act all scales of complexity to be delightful, and it certainly has massive ethical ramifications.
- jerf 6y ago
  Chaos theory (and I mean the real thing, with the real math) also shows that "deterministic" does not imply "predictable", either. Even classical systems can be fundamentally unpredictable. I think one of the problems with this question is that the experiments are fundamentally impossible. You can't put an identical person in identical situations 100 times and see what they do. That wouldn't necessarily even solve the problem since exactly what any given result would even mean would still be up for debate, but you can't even get that far. You can deny free will all you like and you'll never be able to prove it by predicting everything in advance. You can claim it all you like and you'll never be able to show the existence of the counterfactual world where you freely chose differently. Doesn't matter how much word chopping you do.

hliyan 6y ago

The article had a lot of great individual points, but it doesn't seem to make one coherent point. Personally, I've begun to cautiously subscribe to a form of panpsychism, where what we call free will (and perhaps even consciousness), is the same thing as quantum fluctuations, but at scale.

LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago
I prefer to call it checksum errors in the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akashic_records https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akashic_records :)
jbay808 6y ago
I unfortunately don't think it makes any good points -- just about every one of its arguments is fatally flawed, sadly. With respect to consciousness being tied to quantum physics -- There doesn't appear to be any shape that matter can be sculpted into that allows that matter to "freely choose" the outcome of a quantum experiment. (Change the distribution yes, but not select particular outcomes from a wide distribution). Free will doesn't emerge from quantum randomness -- if it did, it would be analogous to setting up a two-slit experiment where the photon is capable of freely choosing to go through the left slit every time, under the power of a conscious spirit and in defiance of the predictions of quantum probabilities. Our brains do not have this power either. Whatever the quantum field fluctuations are occurring inside our brains, our rational thought is at best recording it, most likely is robust to it, most likely not formed by it, and certainly not consciously selecting particular favoured quantum outcomes.
- hliyan 6y ago
  > it would be analogous to setting up a two-slit experiment where the photon is capable of freely choosing to go through the left slit every time Not what I meant though. What I meant was that free will / consciousness (not sure if they're two separate things or aspects of the same thing) is an emergent property of quantum fluctuations, similar to wetness being an emergent property of the H2O molecule. It's a bit hand-wavy yes (if it weren't, I'd be publishing a paper right now). The hypothesis (and it's just a hypothesis) is that if quantum fluctuations are all entirely independent, then there is no chance of any emergent properties. But if fluctuations do interact (i.e. proximity in space and/or time affects each other's probabilities), then properties can emerge. Perhaps what we perceive as consciousness / free will is just one such property.

xycombinator 6y ago

So do you critics of the article adhere to the belief that the current state of the universe is predictable from the initial state and the laws of physics? Does that prediction take time? If it doesn't, if it is instantaneous, it's just a hand-waving god. If the prediction for any given instant takes trillions of years, it's meaningless. How am I supposed to see it as anything other than an obstinate adherence to a principle, an unfalsifiable dogma?

adjkant 6y ago
1. Yes > Does that prediction take time? Of course it takes an understanding of the entire universe, which we don't have. > If it doesn't, if it is instantaneous, it's just a hand-waving god. If the prediction for any given instant takes trillions of years, it's meaningless. The lack of ability to predict does not change the facts of determinism one way or the other, and that concept alone changes many things about the world, which is why we should care about it 100%. Since I think it will be most helpful to your line of questioning, here's a simplistic but concrete example: Without formal free will, responsibility takes a very different form, and that alone can be used in arguments such as punishment vs rehabilitation, levels of societal equality, and human rights arguments.
analog31 6y ago
In my view, that's a straw man. I don't think physicists believe that. I think that most physicists are comfortable treating some phenomena such as nuclear decay and shot noise as truly random. Whether that's a useful model or a fundamental truth is actually something that's not of practical interest outside of perhaps a very small cadre of theoreticians. But one of my physics professors had an amusing comment: We can't calculate the energy levels of the hydrogen atom in years of CPU time, but the hydrogen atom can compute its own wavefunction in a femtosecond. Aside from microscopic phenomena, at least macroscopic systems can compute their own future just fine. My own view is that free will is a theological / philosophical solution in search of a scientific problem.
- jbay808 6y ago
  I agree that nuclear decay is random, but I wouldn't say it's necessarily an example of non-determinism in the universe. As a subscriber to multiverse theory, I'd say that the appearance of random outcomes is just the way it feels to be a human in a quantum superposition.

yters 6y ago

The author has a couple arguments, some stronger than others. The argument that changing constraints dramatically change system function, and thus enable top down control, is good. It is why we can program computers without being quantum physicists. Additionally, the point that if determinism is true then all texts were encoded in the initial conditions is also good. And finally, his point that determinism undermines the rationality of morality is also good. The book "Life at the Bottom" maked this point vividly, where criminals seem to be unanimous that their actions are out of their control. Where his argument falls apart is explaining the source of top down causation. The author makes the supervenience fallacy, conclusively demonstrated by Jaegwon Kim. There is no logical possibility of top down causation within materialism.

jbay808 6y ago
Thanks for the summary, this makes it easier to address his other points. You already see the issue with constraints -- which is why our reality is a bottom-up one, but with the appearance of top-down rules. The point that if determinism is true all texts are encoded, also applies to any other organized information, e.g. human DNA. If books can only be thought of as the product of human free will, and not just natural law, then equally, DNA must be credited to something's free will. But what? Does evolution have free will? No, I think they're both the outcomes of natural processes. We can still build legal systems of copyright on top of that though, and claim credit for those works. (As for where the data comes from if not the Schrodinger equation -- that problem also has a simple solution, which is that we're on the leaf of a widely branching tree, and the data is seeded by the index of our branching history).
- yters 6y ago
  If books can only be created by human free will, and evolution does not have free will, then that implies DNA must have been generated by something like a human. Aliens?
  - jbay808 6y ago
    That's where the original article author's argument would logically lead, yes. And of course those aliens might have some DNA equivalent... So I think it's clear that the author's argument here is pretty weak.

adjkant 6y ago

> If you seriously believe that fundamental forces leave no space for free will, then it’s impossible for us to genuinely make choices as moral beings. > The underlying physics would in reality be governing our behaviour, and responsibility wouldn’t enter into the picture. First, this is one of the few useful things said here. Responsibility, poof. I agree. And I think that radically changes how we should approach so many things. As a hard determinist who is writing arguments, ethics, and moral frameworks around said determinism, I think there is a big issue with a lot of discussions about free will - definition. When most humans say "free will", they don't mean randomness, not even close. While philosophers in this argument have spent a good deal of time on randomness, I think that focus misses the point entirely. Even if there is molecular randomness, how does that give any more meaning to humans? At the end of the day, the human idea of control gains nothing from it. When humans say "free will", they are referring IMO in actuality to a real thing - a combination of many things, but basically agency + lack of prediction powers. At the end of the day, those are not going away anytime soon, if ever. This is where ethical, moral, and social questions are based, not in free will formally. The lack of formal free will is crucial for underpinning all of this, but it in no way makes ethics and the like impossible. We still exist and experience the world, and it is in all of our best interests to go towards a "better" one. Whether we were always going to do that or not doesn't change that, nor does it change the human experience. I will say this - determinism must be approached carefully precisely because of articles like this - it is easy for the worst effect of determinism on humans to actually be the idea itself and how it makes people defeatist about morality. I hope to spend my time making a good case for how to approach it safely and in a way that makes the world better, and I wish more people were looking at that instead of arguing about quantum randomness.

jbay808 6y ago
I agree. I think this gives ethicists the task of accepting deterministic reality the way it's always been, and developing a moral framework that is in harmony with that reality. Morals can still exist without the principle of free will, just like they can exist without God dictating a list of 10 commandments. Murder can still be wrong without free will, just like it can still be wrong without God saying so.

ravenide 6y ago

“Quantum mechanics disproves determinism and therefore disproves free-will-skepticism” is an asinine argument I hear parroted everywhere and it drives me bonkers. Ok, say quantum mechanics is at play and your cells don’t behave deterministically. Is that randomness somehow your free will? Are you willfully collapsing wave functions or whatever? The real reason free will doesn’t exist is not to do with determinism, but the fact that you don’t exist. You’re a collection of cells that, regardless of whether they behave deterministically or randomly, are out of your control. The concept of “you” is just a high-level abstraction, a shorthand, that falls apart as soon as you dig into the details of what’s going on (as all abstractions do).

naasking 6y ago
So by that argument, cars don't exist either. Ontologically, this is true. The ontology of physics contains neither cars or free will. So when someone points to a car and says, "that's a car", what are they doing if not pointing at a car? If you can answer this question sensibly, then it should be straightforward to also understand what a victim means when they point to an accuser and says, "they attacked me of their own free will". Free will is just as real as cars. Which is to say either you reject the existence of both, or you reject neither.
- adjkant 6y ago
  The way you are using the object and the name can also apply to humans within a deterministic world though along with the parent argument. When I say a car, I am using it as shorthand to say "this collection of atoms". Same goes in your example of the attacker. But, you added a very interesting phrase at the end with "of their own free will". I've addressed this in other posts, but basically, what you mean with free will there has nothing to do with the formalized free will the article discusses, but is still very much a relevant idea to the situation and the practical world. The "you don't exist" in the parent argument is not being used to say the person does not exist in the physical world or with a collective name for the atoms, it simply is highlighting that such a level of complex formal free will doesn't appear to be possible. It's begging the question of the definition of free will.

dandanua 6y ago

Nowadays many people are referencing quantum mechanics when they try to explain some elusive and fuzzy notions like free will, consciousness, afterlife, mysticism, religious beliefs etc. This is such a bullshit. In fact, quantum mechanics is so bizarre, it can't even explain what is objective reality from the macroscopic point of view. The only thing it explains for us, classical creatures, is that our world is much more "complex" than we could imagine. Pun intended.

WalterSear 6y ago
They also, uniformly, think that a quantum observer is someone in a lab coat with a clipboard, and that Schrodinger's mind experiment was intended as a demonstration rather than the objection that it was.
- GoblinSlayer 6y ago
  And they think EPR paradox exists to prove and praise quantum weirdness.

lihaciudaniel 6y ago

Gladly would take the school of Stoicism position on free-will: we are like a dog tied to a running cart, we have some sort of freedom where to run but we all have one destiny.

air7 6y ago

def free_will: return QuantumRNG.random() > 0.5 Unpredictability doesn't infer free will.

bondarchuk 6y ago

It's always the same. A lengthy verbose article arguing about free will, and (at this time) 53 comments about free will. But was ever a rigorous definition of "free will" given? Not at all.

GoblinSlayer 6y ago
A will free from external influence.
- dghf 6y ago
  >A will free from external influence. But what do you class as an external influence? Do social norms, including widely held moral codes, count? What about laws, and the threat of punishment for breaking them? What about environmental conditions that provoke emotional states (fear, anger, joy)?
  - GoblinSlayer 6y ago
    The first introductory lecture on politics starts with "laws are written by current political elite to enforce their interests". There are many social norms many people don't share like smoking, snobism, virtue signaling, fake smiles, it's even difficult to share the norms, because they don't make any coherent system.
    - dghf 6y ago
      >The first introductory lecture on politics starts with "laws are written by current political elite to enforce their interests". That doesn't make them any less real in their potential effects. Say I want to steal a stockbrocker's Bentley, but I don't because I fear the legal consequences. Is my will free from external influences? > There are many social norms many people don't share But there are few people who don't share any social norms. > it's even difficult to share the norms, because they don't make any coherent system I don't see that they have to. Hypocrisy has never been a bar to such norms: for example, not that long ago (and to some extent still today), men with illegitimate children were commonly excused or even lionised, while women with illegitimate children were stigmatised.

slfnflctd 6y ago

This stuff makes my head hurt. I can choose to have beer for breakfast, or I can restrain myself and eat some eggs & toast instead. I have faced this choice numerous times, and I do not choose the same way every time. I can feel that choice dangling in front of me, and know I have the ability to do either one. Sometimes I can't decide, and I flip a coin. The idea that free will doesn't exist is not a concept most humans beings are ready to even try to think about-- I like to think I possess at least average intelligence, and despite trying for years I cannot make sense of the world while trying to hold that thought in my mind. There is a lot of stuff we do 'automatically', but a world where my choices are all deterministic simply does not make sense to me and is not useful.

jes 6y ago
I can relate. I have been a informal student of this topic for the last five years or so. In my case, my study of the topic has helped me to manifest more compassion for myself and for others. That change, in turn, improved all my relationships.
- slfnflctd 6y ago
  I guess I should amend the last part of what I said with, "[is not useful] ...when considering my own behavior." With regard to evaluating others, I agree that this mindset can definitely help foster increased kindness, which in many circumstances is one of the most useful outcomes you can hope for. For example, it does seem fairly clear at this point that the retribution/punishment model of treating lawbreakers causes more problems than it solves.
vidarh 6y ago
For me it is the idea of what it would mean to actually have free will that makes my mind hurts, because it is such an bizarre idea. Maybe it is because of decades of software development hammering in causality. Because free will implies that cause and effect breaks down, but in a way that is not random but governed by some agency that is not following the cause and effect of the physical structure of the brain. Where would that agency come from? How would it enable a decision that is not then just deterministic one step removed, or randomness one step removed, or agency one step removed? And so we have infinite regression: For each additional step of agency you add to sidestep the problem, the same questions arises of how the decision can be made without being a combination of determinism and randomness or involve some external agency... Conversely, the idea that we do not have free will is easy to resolve for me: Consider yourself a character in a movie. Conceptually your character has free will within the movie universe. Your character could have chosen differently if it had been written differently. But in the movie they will always make the same choice, no matter how many times you rewind, because the choice is already locked in.

titzer 6y ago

FTA: "So what determines which messages are conveyed to your synapses by signalling molecules? They are signals determined by thinking processes that can’t be described at any lower level because they involve concepts, cognition and emotions in an essential way. Psychological experiences drive what happens. Your thoughts and feelings reach ‘down’ to shape lower-level processes in the brain by altering the constraints on ion and electron flows in a way that changes with time." I think what the author is trying to say is that our psychological experience is influencing the molecular forces. But the psychological experience is just an abstraction, a collection of patterns that exist in the 'data' of the brain's connectivity and charge states. The brain's circuitry "runs" the software and its rules. Just because those rules flip a few electrical switches here and there doesn't mean those switches don't follow logic. This is a hopelessly confused mess of an article by someone who clearly doesn't understand computation.

GoblinSlayer 6y ago
Yeah, mind philosophers should learn to code. Lots of mistakes can be prevented with just that.

codeulike 6y ago

Determinism is meaningless if there is no way to exploit that determinism. So it is with the universe: It may well be deterministic, but there is no way to build a computer that could 'look ahead' and make predictions (because of chaos theory, sensistive dependence on initial conditions etc, and because any computer that could model the universe would be bigger than - or become part of - that universe). So determinism is kindof irrelevant. And hence free will is also irrelevant. Its just an incoherent concept. If a given scene was re-run twice with everything exactly the same, then you _might_ choose differently? But in a way that is somehow different from randomness? Its just meaningless. What people mean by free will is more like 'what happens next is influenced by things inside my skull, rather than solely from outside of it'. Which is fine. Think of the universe as a determinstic computer that is calculating its own future microsecond by microsecond. There is no way to jump ahead in the calculations, even though it may be determistic.

adjkant 6y ago
I've replied to a good deal of posts you can find in this thread so to keep this short - I would argue that you can derive conclusions from the idea/existence of determinism alone, even without exploiting its "predictive" power since that is basically impossible for us.
- tsegratis 6y ago
  Nice ideas @codeulike What about a (very) small deterministic part of the universe, and a very large machine to compute its outcomes? At some scale differential the machine could compute faster, or that small part of the universe could be frozen at zero kelvin, to give the machine a head start That could be a useful exploit of determinism. Even if the machine never computes faster, it could be used as a test to see if it always gave the same result as that part of the universe ---- But I agree your suggestion is enough to give value to a deterministic universe -- if there's no other way to get an outcome from the universe, than to run it. Then enough complexity by itself gives value to our lives, even within a deterministic system I don't think this is enough for free will though, or giving us intrinsic value, beyond being part of a computation. Especially since the computation result is unknowable at this present time -- let us hope it is useful A non-deterministic system however gives us free will; our decisions have an effect beyond initial conditions; our lives can then have a value more commensurate to the extent we feel for them. We are worthwhile, valuable. It also makes interesting conclusions about God Quantum mechanics argues strongly for non-determinism, and I don't have a reason to argue otherwise I suppose a good/bad value system though would require more... I don't know where @adjkant gets his/hers from? For any decision to be more than hitting a target with a blindfold on... We need some information surely. Some kind of source that indicates good/bad. This could be the outcome of your computation, or something else... I suppose without that source, from our perspective, there is no real value difference between determinism, and free will -- our personal input would be zero, or random For that source... there is an easy 5 letter answer accepted by about 33%