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> If reality is goverened by a mathematical structure, then there are a set of rules where it is no longer a simplified abstraction and there is no error term.

> If reality is goverened by a mathematical structure, then there are a set of rules where it is no longer a simplified abstraction and there is no error term. Either A) there is a mathematical structure and we will iterate until we find it (or it is fundamentally unknowable, thanks Godel!) or B) our brains are evolved pattern recognizers, and we deem what is repeatable as "useful" and ignore the parts that don't repeat, building a world view based on logic that certainly exists locally but isn't the fundamental fabric of reality. Something like "free will" could only fit into scenario B. I think that agentic, practical free will is entirely compatible with "A", and in fact relies on determinism for its operation. I think the common mistake that people make is that they think that the fact that only one outcome exists in the physical layer means that only one reality can exist in their decisionmaking. But the future worlds you evaluate as part of the process of making a decision are fundamentally a different kind of thing from the physically real world your decision actually plays out in - not in the sense that they're spiritual, or metaphysical, but in the sense that they're fictional constructs. There is a philosophical difficulty here in that, when you evaluate possible worlds, it must be the case that, because you will only actually make one choice, the yous in all but one of the choices seem like they are being logically inconsistent.¹ That is, all but one of those futures are not just not real, but internally incoherent, in that the you in them made a choice that, as you will soon discover, they did not actually make. To resolve this, it is again important to firmly keep in mind that these worlds are not real, and the you in them is not real, and you can just say "in this imagined world, I made this decision because it is imaginary, and I (on the real level) am using this world to evaluate the outcomes of a choice." So there is no contradiction after all. In summary: assuming that in reality only one outcome exists, your ability to simulate fictional outcomes to process the consequences of your decisions is unimpeded. That is what deciding is. That's all it ever was. ¹ A surprisingly hard-to-fix failure mode for decision theories goes like this: "Consider the possibility that I decide to do A. Looking at that future world, we can know that the output of my decision theory was A, thus proving that A is the best choice. Therefore, I should do A." Imo the correct fix is making the agent aware that this is a fictional world being evaluated by means of assuming A. So the conclusion that A is the best choice does not follow.

klik99 5y ago
Surely you would agree that brains are a product of the physical world, and thus are subject to mathematical laws (what we see as repeatable chemical and electrical deterministic actions). If you believe this capacity to imagine before acting is an emergent property of the brain, then even the imagined options are subject to the same mathematical laws. If you imagine a few different outcomes, then you were always going to imagine those outcomes and you were already going to pick the physical action. In this scenario "Free Will" is a non sequitur, things just unfold the way they were always going to unfold - the end is contained within the beginning (if there is such a thing as beginning or end anyway!) If you believe that the capacity to imagine before acting derives from something outside of the physical world, IE maybe part of it happens in the brain but another happens out of it. Perhaps it's a soul - Gurdjieff said that we're born without souls and spirituality is about developing a soul, and without one we are machines - literally used that word. There are tons of examples of people trying to explain this problem, that one just came to mind. The point is that you can't explain free will in a consistent system without implicitly introducing a foreign element that exists outside that system. If God created us, then who created God? I have yet to see a logical explanation that really addresses the problem of consciousness. Your description, while it is very interesting, I feel just squeezes the problem into an abstract realm that exists outside the system. But I don't believe in a split between physical world and the mental abstract world, they both must arise from the same place. And if anything indicates that reality is far far weirder than we can know, it's that both the physical and mental/abstract world exist, emerging from the same reality. FWIW I believe that there are some rules underpinning the world, however I suspect the physical laws that we've been able to piece together are emergent properties of something more primal, in other words there are probably systems determining systems - we see the world since the big bang but it's just a snapshot, the "systems" that we see as "natural laws" are most likely shifting slowly as well - slowly as in far slower than we can ever imagine, googleplexes of years. The underlying systems may not even be systems or rules in the logical sense, they could be, to borrow Godel, far beyond our ability to describe, or contain things that are impossible to prove. Can we even describe a system from within a system? Because I believe that, I don't believe in free will or even non-free will - things just unfold the way they always would have. EDIT: I also find it deeply weird that anything exists at all. Why isn't there just nothing? It's a seriously spooky thought if you think it through.

klik99 5y ago

Surely you would agree that brains are a product of the physical world, and thus are subject to mathematical laws (what we see as repeatable chemical and electrical deterministic actions). If you believe this capacity to imagine before acting is an emergent property of the brain, then even the imagined options are subject to the same mathematical laws. If you imagine a few different outcomes, then you were always going to imagine those outcomes and you were already going to pick the physical action. In this scenario "Free Will" is a non sequitur, things just unfold the way they were always going to unfold - the end is contained within the beginning (if there is such a thing as beginning or end anyway!) If you believe that the capacity to imagine before acting derives from something outside of the physical world, IE maybe part of it happens in the brain but another happens out of it. Perhaps it's a soul - Gurdjieff said that we're born without souls and spirituality is about developing a soul, and without one we are machines - literally used that word. There are tons of examples of people trying to explain this problem, that one just came to mind. The point is that you can't explain free will in a consistent system without implicitly introducing a foreign element that exists outside that system. If God created us, then who created God? I have yet to see a logical explanation that really addresses the problem of consciousness. Your description, while it is very interesting, I feel just squeezes the problem into an abstract realm that exists outside the system. But I don't believe in a split between physical world and the mental abstract world, they both must arise from the same place. And if anything indicates that reality is far far weirder than we can know, it's that both the physical and mental/abstract world exist, emerging from the same reality. FWIW I believe that there are some rules underpinning the world, however I suspect the physical laws that we've been able to piece together are emergent properties of something more primal, in other words there are probably systems determining systems - we see the world since the big bang but it's just a snapshot, the "systems" that we see as "natural laws" are most likely shifting slowly as well - slowly as in far slower than we can ever imagine, googleplexes of years. The underlying systems may not even be systems or rules in the logical sense, they could be, to borrow Godel, far beyond our ability to describe, or contain things that are impossible to prove. Can we even describe a system from within a system? Because I believe that, I don't believe in free will or even non-free will - things just unfold the way they always would have. EDIT: I also find it deeply weird that anything exists at all. Why isn't there just nothing? It's a seriously spooky thought if you think it through.