8 ms·

Herding Cats and Free Will Inflation (2020) [pdf]

26 points by benbreen 6y ago

Supermancho 6y ago
tl;dr - Free Will can exist within determinism^. Just because you have strings does not mean you lack autonomy, which I agree with. There's a little bit about how chance can exist in determinism that is little more than sophistry, imo. ^this is a direct response to Sam Harris afaict
- thisrod 6y ago
  > There's a little bit about how chance can exist in determinism that is little more than sophistry, imo. I read that bit as a really good answer to a question famously posed by Knuth: 7 is a random number iff the reasons it isn't 8 are beyond anyone's control.
- feanaro 6y ago
  Aren't these just word games? How do you define "autonomy"?
wildermuthn 6y ago
Fascinating paper about how absolute free-will isn’t necessary to have a practical free-will that maintains and protects autonomous control over ourselves. This ties in neatly with the claim that consciousness evolved in order to predict other agent’s behavior (presumably to counteract if not control those agents). In such a case, an evolutionary arms race of controlled unpredictability would occur as each agent seeks to control others while simultaneously being uncontrollable.
- KKPMW 6y ago
  > the claim that consciousness evolved in order to predict other agent’s behavior I fail to see why consciousness would be necessary for prediction. Any more context here?
  - erikpukinskis 6y ago
    Without consciousness you experience a single unified reality: your reality. You need consciousness to “step outside” into a 3rd person or 2nd person view.
    - KKPMW 6y ago
      I fail to see why that would be true. I think there are different definitions of consciousness here that are being mixed up. > Without consciousness you experience a single unified reality: your reality. To me the word "experience" is what consciousness seems to be about. In that case without consciousness you can "step outside" and everything, but you would have no "internal experience" of any sort. i.e. be a "philosophical zombie" [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie
  - maroonblazer 6y ago
    Philosophers call this ability to predict another agent's behavior "theory of mind". Presumably it would be impossible to have a theory of mind - a theory about what another agent will do - without first being aware of your own.
    - KKPMW 6y ago
      To me it seems like you can have a state of mind, and use that state to predict the state of mind of others without being _aware_ of your state of mind at the same time - that is, without being conscious.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - ncmncm 6y ago
        In principle, yes. In practice, it would be much harder to rig a system that can be aware of others' states of mind without being aware of its own. Nature never does things the hard way when the easy way works. Consciousness is the easy way.
maroonblazer 6y ago
> “Contra-causal” or “libertarian” free will is a fantasy. But what follows from that? Nothing whatever about moral responsibility or the justification of punishment, for instance. I think Coyne, Harris, et al would contest this. If someone cuts me off in traffic my first instinct is to get angry at them, to blame them and wish ill of them. But if we "rewind the tape" and it happens again and again then it's hard to rationalize my negative response. What follows is a more compassionate stance. That's pretty significant. I think Dennett misses Harris' larger project which is to better understand ourselves and others. His meditation project, Waking Up, speaks to the very same concerns Dennett articulates in this article regarding sources of distraction like social media.
- mensetmanusman 6y ago
  There is no rationalization without free will, so the argument breaks down.
  - ncmncm 6y ago
    You are (also) programmed to rationalize. It is a consequence of your programming to maintain your own comfort.
hardmath123 6y ago
> Actually, he’d be very unlikely, even with the imagined high tech that I gave him, to be able to control whether the coin came down heads or tails—especially if you provide the coin. It's funny, Dennett talks about a "coin tossing machine" as a virtual impossibility, but Persi Diaconis actually had one built! It is described in this paper: https://statweb.stanford.edu/~susan/papers/headswithJ.pdf https://statweb.stanford.edu/~susan/papers/headswithJ.pdf > Physicists have calculated that if you really want to predict coin flips, you have to know the location of every electron in the visible universe and its gravitational effect on the coin. This is not really true either. Coin tosses leak a lot of information into the physical world. For example, here is a short paper on trying to predict the outcome of a coin toss by analyzing the sound of the "ping!" it makes: https://cs.stanford.edu/~kach/can-one-hear-the-fate-of-a-coin.pdf https://cs.stanford.edu/~kach/can-one-hear-the-fate-of-a-coi...
- ThrustVectoring 6y ago
  You don't even need a fancy machine. Simple practice with flipping and catching a quarter in a consistent way can get you statistically significant differences from a 50:50 ratio between heads and tails. The important part is that you're catching the flipped coin out of the air, rather than letting it bounce on the ground. The bounce is much less controllable than how high and how quickly you're spinning the coin - the bounce depends not only on the rotational and kinetic energy, but the exact phase angle it lands at, whereas at the end of the catch you only care about how high and quickly you flipped the coin, which can be done consistently enough by hand. And honestly, even if they brought a machine, as long as you allow it to land without interference and call which side you want in the air, it'll end up being fine. They'd have to know which side you'd pick in order to rig it, and that's just as bad as the initial coinflip.
mensetmanusman 6y ago
Free will is a supernatural entity. Or, we are zombies. To think there is a middle ground is kidding yourself (I had no choice but to post this comment)

26 points by benbreen 6y ago

tl;dr - Free Will can exist within determinism^. Just because you have strings does not mean you lack autonomy, which I agree with. There's a little bit about how chance can exist in determinism that is little more than sophistry, imo. ^this is a direct response to Sam Harris afaict

thisrod 6y ago
> There's a little bit about how chance can exist in determinism that is little more than sophistry, imo. I read that bit as a really good answer to a question famously posed by Knuth: 7 is a random number iff the reasons it isn't 8 are beyond anyone's control.
feanaro 6y ago
Aren't these just word games? How do you define "autonomy"?

wildermuthn 6y ago

Fascinating paper about how absolute free-will isn’t necessary to have a practical free-will that maintains and protects autonomous control over ourselves. This ties in neatly with the claim that consciousness evolved in order to predict other agent’s behavior (presumably to counteract if not control those agents). In such a case, an evolutionary arms race of controlled unpredictability would occur as each agent seeks to control others while simultaneously being uncontrollable.

KKPMW 6y ago
> the claim that consciousness evolved in order to predict other agent’s behavior I fail to see why consciousness would be necessary for prediction. Any more context here?
- erikpukinskis 6y ago
  Without consciousness you experience a single unified reality: your reality. You need consciousness to “step outside” into a 3rd person or 2nd person view.
  - KKPMW 6y ago
    I fail to see why that would be true. I think there are different definitions of consciousness here that are being mixed up. > Without consciousness you experience a single unified reality: your reality. To me the word "experience" is what consciousness seems to be about. In that case without consciousness you can "step outside" and everything, but you would have no "internal experience" of any sort. i.e. be a "philosophical zombie" [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie
- maroonblazer 6y ago
  Philosophers call this ability to predict another agent's behavior "theory of mind". Presumably it would be impossible to have a theory of mind - a theory about what another agent will do - without first being aware of your own.
  - KKPMW 6y ago
    To me it seems like you can have a state of mind, and use that state to predict the state of mind of others without being _aware_ of your state of mind at the same time - that is, without being conscious.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - ncmncm 6y ago
      In principle, yes. In practice, it would be much harder to rig a system that can be aware of others' states of mind without being aware of its own. Nature never does things the hard way when the easy way works. Consciousness is the easy way.

maroonblazer 6y ago

> “Contra-causal” or “libertarian” free will is a fantasy. But what follows from that? Nothing whatever about moral responsibility or the justification of punishment, for instance. I think Coyne, Harris, et al would contest this. If someone cuts me off in traffic my first instinct is to get angry at them, to blame them and wish ill of them. But if we "rewind the tape" and it happens again and again then it's hard to rationalize my negative response. What follows is a more compassionate stance. That's pretty significant. I think Dennett misses Harris' larger project which is to better understand ourselves and others. His meditation project, Waking Up, speaks to the very same concerns Dennett articulates in this article regarding sources of distraction like social media.

mensetmanusman 6y ago
There is no rationalization without free will, so the argument breaks down.
- ncmncm 6y ago
  You are (also) programmed to rationalize. It is a consequence of your programming to maintain your own comfort.

hardmath123 6y ago

> Actually, he’d be very unlikely, even with the imagined high tech that I gave him, to be able to control whether the coin came down heads or tails—especially if you provide the coin. It's funny, Dennett talks about a "coin tossing machine" as a virtual impossibility, but Persi Diaconis actually had one built! It is described in this paper: https://statweb.stanford.edu/~susan/papers/headswithJ.pdf https://statweb.stanford.edu/~susan/papers/headswithJ.pdf > Physicists have calculated that if you really want to predict coin flips, you have to know the location of every electron in the visible universe and its gravitational effect on the coin. This is not really true either. Coin tosses leak a lot of information into the physical world. For example, here is a short paper on trying to predict the outcome of a coin toss by analyzing the sound of the "ping!" it makes: https://cs.stanford.edu/~kach/can-one-hear-the-fate-of-a-coin.pdf https://cs.stanford.edu/~kach/can-one-hear-the-fate-of-a-coi...

ThrustVectoring 6y ago
You don't even need a fancy machine. Simple practice with flipping and catching a quarter in a consistent way can get you statistically significant differences from a 50:50 ratio between heads and tails. The important part is that you're catching the flipped coin out of the air, rather than letting it bounce on the ground. The bounce is much less controllable than how high and how quickly you're spinning the coin - the bounce depends not only on the rotational and kinetic energy, but the exact phase angle it lands at, whereas at the end of the catch you only care about how high and quickly you flipped the coin, which can be done consistently enough by hand. And honestly, even if they brought a machine, as long as you allow it to land without interference and call which side you want in the air, it'll end up being fine. They'd have to know which side you'd pick in order to rig it, and that's just as bad as the initial coinflip.

mensetmanusman 6y ago

Free will is a supernatural entity. Or, we are zombies. To think there is a middle ground is kidding yourself (I had no choice but to post this comment)