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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 buil

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%

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%