3 ms·

I agree. To say we're able to influence the system is to assume free will, which I believe is an undecidable problem. Ultimately this is just a matter of semant

• PeterisP 6y ago
  It does not need to assume free will, which indeed is a much harder philosophical issue - it needs to assume that the decisions of the intervention are caused by factors outside of the system you're studying (which usually isn't the whole world), which is easy to get if you have some actual external influence, and very hard to determine if you're purely observing. For example, if you're allocating patients in control and treatment group based on a roll of dice - the dice don't have free will, but they are influencing the "system" of the patients and their treatment, while that system is not causually influencing the dice rolls. For another example, if a baby is "experimenting" by babbling (a key part of language acquisition, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babbling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babbling), it's not necessary or relevant to decide whether free will is involved, the baby obtains useful experimental results of what sound experiences are caused by which attempts to move the tongue/mouth/etc, even if there's no free will and the attempts to move the tongue/mouth/etc are also deterministically caused by the sensory experiences of the baby.