5 ms·

Right, this is no different than having a random die roll in our brain have a chance of influencing every decision we make. Randomness washes away agency, it ca

by simonh 5y ago

Right, this is no different than having a random die roll in our brain have a chance of influencing every decision we make. Randomness washes away agency, it can’t add it. I'm not denying there's any randomness at all, quantum mechanics is a thing. For me free will us about agency. The important thing about a decision I freely make is that I as a free agent am the cause of the decision, not external influences or random effects. That actually demands a high degree of determinism, because it means I, my state, my memories skills preferences and biases determine the outcome. Otherwise it’s not _my_ choice. The catch 22 on that is that I don’t get to decide my state. I can’t choose my genetics, the way my neurons connected when I was a foetus, etc. We are all stuck with who we are. It’s this line of thinking that for example converted me from a retributionist to a reformist on the issue of criminal rehabilitation. I just can’t stand firm against the implacability of the logic. I have no choice.

akimball 5y ago
Only if “no different” means not yet observable.
- ethanbond 5y ago
  Not yet observable and no reason whatsoever to expect that it’s waiting to be discovered, aside from our moral desires. Where in the physical laws of the universe would you even look for free will?
mjburgess 5y ago
Indeterminacy here isn't "a roll of the die" in some significant sense. All these things, "genetics, neurones" etc. are chaotic systems. Thus there is only /necessarily/ probabilistic "conditions" on who you are; event at the classical level. It's classical physics which is necessarily indeterminate here /because/ we cannot measure precisely enough. I think this is significant enough to somehow fit it into the picture on free will. Not least, because as you say elsewhere, free will actually requires a level of determinism which may actually be absent from the world. The meaning of the future being "open" here isnt reducible to "a roll of the die". Almost all significant macroscopic systems have a "deterministic gap" between their state today and their state tomorrow. In some sense chaotic systems must be able to "forget their history", as at some point, their historical state sequences will be insufficient to determine their present state. There may be something in this which enables a certain sense of freedom, and a certain lack of it.
- simonh 5y ago
  I don't see how these are all chaotic systems. There are plenty of systems in the universe that are not chaotic. In fact living things, and brains in particular expend a lot of energy expelling entropy. These systems are complex for sure, but that's not at all the same thing. They are very highly ordered, and could not produce consistent repeatable outputs if they weren't. We can't predict very much about the state of a hurricane a week in advance, but my calendar at work is full of events weeks and months in advance that experience tells me have a very high likelihood of happening much as expected. Our projects are extremely complex and can take years to complete. All of that doesn't look much like a chaotic system to me.
  - mjburgess 5y ago
    I need to do more research on the topic, but I think this is a little bit of an illusion. A chaotic system, K, is one in which the probability of measuring a "high order digit" (eg., 10,000) in the output is sensitive to a "low order digit" in the input (eg., 0.000001). Something like: P(log_o K(state) | log_i state) < 1 where o >> i It seems true that a non-chaotic deterministic function, eg., f(t) can be created such that "K(state) is bounded by f(approximation)". Eg., K(state) is the weather, and f(approximation) is the climate model. Or K(state) is the behaviour of gas particles, and f(approximation) is the gases temperature model. Or K(state) is the changing matter distribution of the universe, and f(approximation) is the stable gravitational field model in our solar system. f() is long-run predictable -- but K() isnt. But we know f() fails in the long-run -- K() does eventually change against the predictions of our model f(). Eg., over long periods of time, the climate changes; the non-ideal gasses may spontaneously condense; the sun "explodes". f() is only ever a locally/apparently deterministic approximation.
mannykannot 5y ago
If you have not already done so, you might want to look into the compatibilism stance in philosophy. Note that I am not suggesting that this will answer your questions, or that it does so for me. I have a strong suspicion that the most it does is provide some sort of explanation for why we tend to feel we have free will (or, equivalently I think, to define it in a non-intuitive way.) Free will is the real 'hard problem' for materialists who think they have it. Dualists will not even get to that question until they can offer some affirmative hypotheses about whatever is going on in minds.
- naasking 5y ago
  > or, equivalently I think, to define it in a non-intuitive way. Interesting that you'd frame it that way, because empirical studies have shown that lay people intuitively agree more with Compatibilism [1]. [1] Why Compatibilist Intuitions are not Mistaken: A Reply to Feltz and Millan, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/274892120_Why_Compatibilist_Intuitions_are_not_Mistaken_A_Reply_to_Feltz_and_Millan https://www.researchgate.net/publication/274892120_Why_Compa...
  - mannykannot 5y ago
    Interesting, and as the authors have given reason to doubt the "free-will-no-matter-what" explanation of the responses, I withdraw my intuition about what counts as intuitive. I doubt, however, that this will be the last word on the issue. Indeed, in "Questions for a Science of Moral Responsibility", Fischborn writes, about this paper, "In fact, people might even consider that free will is compatible with fatalism, a stronger version of determinism, as long as fatalism does not preclude an agent's actions to derive from their desires and values (Andow & Cova, 2016)" - my emphasis, as that seems to be begging the question in a way. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/319445158_Questions_for_a_Science_of_Moral_Responsibility https://www.researchgate.net/publication/319445158_Questions...
    - naasking 5y ago
      Yes, I think this just confirms the Frankfurt cases. Suppose the Holocaust was fated to happen. It seems reasonable to say that Hitler carried some responsibility for it regardless, while Germans who fought the Nazi party did not. But, I'm perhaps not a typical Compatibilist, as I think in a meaningful sense that we are more blameworthy the more deterministic we are [1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28819641 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28819641
CuriouslyC 5y ago
Unpredictability != randomness
- simonh 5y ago
  That's true, there's always superdeterminism.
- naasking 5y ago
  I'm not sure that's true anymore. Both truly unpredictable and "truly random" phenomena (whatever that means) are incompressible and thus unpredictable. I think they are largely interchangeable, formally.
  - CuriouslyC 5y ago
    The digits of pi are incompressible and unpredictable, yielding only to computation, but definitely not random. The word random implies a lack of order that we can't rightly claim knowledge of.
    - naasking 5y ago
      > The digits of pi are incompressible and unpredictable, yielding only to computation, but definitely not random The BBP formula can be used to calculate the Nth digit of pi without computing all preceding digits. I'd say that's pretty successful compression. > The word random implies a lack of order that we can't rightly claim knowledge of. That we have no knowledge of it does not entail that no such knowledge exists. That's the point I'm trying to make: we have no evidence of such a distinction, we only have evidence of our ignorance of the sequence's cause. The universe could very well be completely deterministic, in which case the set of "random" sequences is empty.

by simonh 5y ago

akimball 5y ago

Only if “no different” means not yet observable.

ethanbond 5y ago
Not yet observable and no reason whatsoever to expect that it’s waiting to be discovered, aside from our moral desires. Where in the physical laws of the universe would you even look for free will?

mjburgess 5y ago

Indeterminacy here isn't "a roll of the die" in some significant sense. All these things, "genetics, neurones" etc. are chaotic systems. Thus there is only /necessarily/ probabilistic "conditions" on who you are; event at the classical level. It's classical physics which is necessarily indeterminate here /because/ we cannot measure precisely enough. I think this is significant enough to somehow fit it into the picture on free will. Not least, because as you say elsewhere, free will actually requires a level of determinism which may actually be absent from the world. The meaning of the future being "open" here isnt reducible to "a roll of the die". Almost all significant macroscopic systems have a "deterministic gap" between their state today and their state tomorrow. In some sense chaotic systems must be able to "forget their history", as at some point, their historical state sequences will be insufficient to determine their present state. There may be something in this which enables a certain sense of freedom, and a certain lack of it.

simonh 5y ago
I don't see how these are all chaotic systems. There are plenty of systems in the universe that are not chaotic. In fact living things, and brains in particular expend a lot of energy expelling entropy. These systems are complex for sure, but that's not at all the same thing. They are very highly ordered, and could not produce consistent repeatable outputs if they weren't. We can't predict very much about the state of a hurricane a week in advance, but my calendar at work is full of events weeks and months in advance that experience tells me have a very high likelihood of happening much as expected. Our projects are extremely complex and can take years to complete. All of that doesn't look much like a chaotic system to me.
- mjburgess 5y ago
  I need to do more research on the topic, but I think this is a little bit of an illusion. A chaotic system, K, is one in which the probability of measuring a "high order digit" (eg., 10,000) in the output is sensitive to a "low order digit" in the input (eg., 0.000001). Something like: P(log_o K(state) | log_i state) < 1 where o >> i It seems true that a non-chaotic deterministic function, eg., f(t) can be created such that "K(state) is bounded by f(approximation)". Eg., K(state) is the weather, and f(approximation) is the climate model. Or K(state) is the behaviour of gas particles, and f(approximation) is the gases temperature model. Or K(state) is the changing matter distribution of the universe, and f(approximation) is the stable gravitational field model in our solar system. f() is long-run predictable -- but K() isnt. But we know f() fails in the long-run -- K() does eventually change against the predictions of our model f(). Eg., over long periods of time, the climate changes; the non-ideal gasses may spontaneously condense; the sun "explodes". f() is only ever a locally/apparently deterministic approximation.

mannykannot 5y ago

If you have not already done so, you might want to look into the compatibilism stance in philosophy. Note that I am not suggesting that this will answer your questions, or that it does so for me. I have a strong suspicion that the most it does is provide some sort of explanation for why we tend to feel we have free will (or, equivalently I think, to define it in a non-intuitive way.) Free will is the real 'hard problem' for materialists who think they have it. Dualists will not even get to that question until they can offer some affirmative hypotheses about whatever is going on in minds.

naasking 5y ago
> or, equivalently I think, to define it in a non-intuitive way. Interesting that you'd frame it that way, because empirical studies have shown that lay people intuitively agree more with Compatibilism [1]. [1] Why Compatibilist Intuitions are not Mistaken: A Reply to Feltz and Millan, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/274892120_Why_Compatibilist_Intuitions_are_not_Mistaken_A_Reply_to_Feltz_and_Millan https://www.researchgate.net/publication/274892120_Why_Compa...
- mannykannot 5y ago
  Interesting, and as the authors have given reason to doubt the "free-will-no-matter-what" explanation of the responses, I withdraw my intuition about what counts as intuitive. I doubt, however, that this will be the last word on the issue. Indeed, in "Questions for a Science of Moral Responsibility", Fischborn writes, about this paper, "In fact, people might even consider that free will is compatible with fatalism, a stronger version of determinism, as long as fatalism does not preclude an agent's actions to derive from their desires and values (Andow & Cova, 2016)" - my emphasis, as that seems to be begging the question in a way. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/319445158_Questions_for_a_Science_of_Moral_Responsibility https://www.researchgate.net/publication/319445158_Questions...
  - naasking 5y ago
    Yes, I think this just confirms the Frankfurt cases. Suppose the Holocaust was fated to happen. It seems reasonable to say that Hitler carried some responsibility for it regardless, while Germans who fought the Nazi party did not. But, I'm perhaps not a typical Compatibilist, as I think in a meaningful sense that we are more blameworthy the more deterministic we are [1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28819641 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28819641

CuriouslyC 5y ago

Unpredictability != randomness

simonh 5y ago
That's true, there's always superdeterminism.
naasking 5y ago
I'm not sure that's true anymore. Both truly unpredictable and "truly random" phenomena (whatever that means) are incompressible and thus unpredictable. I think they are largely interchangeable, formally.
- CuriouslyC 5y ago
  The digits of pi are incompressible and unpredictable, yielding only to computation, but definitely not random. The word random implies a lack of order that we can't rightly claim knowledge of.
  - naasking 5y ago
    > The digits of pi are incompressible and unpredictable, yielding only to computation, but definitely not random The BBP formula can be used to calculate the Nth digit of pi without computing all preceding digits. I'd say that's pretty successful compression. > The word random implies a lack of order that we can't rightly claim knowledge of. That we have no knowledge of it does not entail that no such knowledge exists. That's the point I'm trying to make: we have no evidence of such a distinction, we only have evidence of our ignorance of the sequence's cause. The universe could very well be completely deterministic, in which case the set of "random" sequences is empty.