3 ms·

My (albeit atheist looking in, but with a Christian upbringing) understanding of that is it's sort of like how classical physics comes out of the randomness of

My (albeit atheist looking in, but with a Christian upbringing) understanding of that is it's sort of like how classical physics comes out of the randomness of quantum physics. You have free will, that absolutely can affect the world, but god's plan is emergent in a way that takes into account the randomness of free will, combined with occasionally putting this thumb on the scale with saints, miracles, etc. In that scheme, sinning is in a lot of ways forcing god to put his thumb on the scale. You'd think that forcing god to take some action would not be a concept, but it goes at least as far back as the ten commandments. The "take the lord's name in vain" thing was this idea that words had magical power in a snow crash kind of way and that you could literally go so far as to command god with the right incantation. Obviously that's a big no no which is why "saying curse words" was considered higher priority than "don't rape". You see pieces of that still in Orthodox Jewish numerology of Hebrew like was a plot point in Pi.

SigmundA 5y ago
That would seem to require an outside source of entropy to drive the randomness who created that and where does it come from?
- monocasa 5y ago
  Keeping with the metaphor, I'm not sure that quantum entropy requires an additional source of randomness, only the classic concept of entropy. The thermodynamic laws like that are a emergent projection of the quantum realm and don't always have a distinct analog. Additionally, one could argue a breakdown of the metaphor, that randomness isn't a complete analog for free will, and is only useful for talking about free will in aggregate where the different choices tend to cancel and coalesce. And, again, none of this is a position I actually hold, just where I've ended up trying to understand the cognitive framework of people vastly different from my own who simply have different axioms they start with.

SigmundA 5y ago

That would seem to require an outside source of entropy to drive the randomness who created that and where does it come from?

monocasa 5y ago
Keeping with the metaphor, I'm not sure that quantum entropy requires an additional source of randomness, only the classic concept of entropy. The thermodynamic laws like that are a emergent projection of the quantum realm and don't always have a distinct analog. Additionally, one could argue a breakdown of the metaphor, that randomness isn't a complete analog for free will, and is only useful for talking about free will in aggregate where the different choices tend to cancel and coalesce. And, again, none of this is a position I actually hold, just where I've ended up trying to understand the cognitive framework of people vastly different from my own who simply have different axioms they start with.