7 ms·

The typical source of confusion is conflating "free" with "unpredictable". But they're not the same thing at all.

by V-2 5y ago

vidarh 5y ago
"Unpredictable" is imprecise to the point of being meaningless. If a black box is fully deterministic to the point that you can construct a model that is entirely accurate, then there's nothing "free" about it. What you're modelling has no agency. For the notion of "free will" to have any meaning at all, it doesn't need to be "unpredictable" in the sense that it keeps confounding someone trying to predict it all the time, but it does need to deviate from predictions sometimes or you have just an automaton, and it needs to do so in a way that is fundamentally impossible to model, and it needs to do so without just injecting randomness. I've yet to see anyone present a definition of "free will" that doesn't reduce to smoke and mirrors, because that would mean coming up with some fourth category in a venn diagram of determinism, randomness and the combination of the two where they intersect, that is non-deterministic in a way that can't be explained by layering a deterministic model and randomness.
- kybernetikos 5y ago
  > What you're modelling has no agency I see no reason to think that just because something is predictable it is not free. That seems like such a strange constraint to me that I can only assume that we have different understandings of what it means to be free. If I know someone well, I might predict that when offered a free choice between an ice cream and a brussels sprout they will choose the ice cream. The fact that I was able to predict that with an incredibly high degree of certainty didn't stop them from being free.
  - danbruc 5y ago
    I understand why you would call your offer a free choice, the are no constraints attached to the options that could obviously influence the decision, for example picking the ice cream also requires paying a million. Different people with different preferences would make different choices. But pick one specific person, why would you call their pick a free choice? There choice might not be influenced by your offer but it will be by their preferences. Let them choose, rewind the universe a minute or two, let them choose again. They will make the same choice over and over and over again. Maybe not if there is true randomness in the universe and this choice happens to be influenced by some random event.
  - vidarh 5y ago
    Given the same starting state, either you get the same outcome every time, or there's randomness involved, that is the point. I challenge you to describe a selection process that is not fully deterministic but where the lack of determinism is caused by something other than randomness. That is what you need to be able to come up with to define free will in a way that isn't smoke and mirrors. There's no agency. Nothing but automatons.
    - kybernetikos 5y ago
      > There's no agency. Nothing but automatons. Only if you define 'agency' as requiring magic. If you think that there's no conflict (as I do) between being an automaton and having agency, then there's no problem here.
      - vidarh 5y ago
        Yes, if I argue that "free" means "not free" there's no problem there, I agree. Which is why I keep asking those who believe in free will here to actually define it. People almost never even try, because once you do it very quickly becomes clear that it's incredibly hard to the point that you'd have a theory named after you and get taught in university philosophy courses if you managed to come up with something that isn't obviously broken. The point being that if you start asking questions to determine what people think free will means, you'll find most will argue an automaton can not have free will. In which case to "rescue" free will you need to come up with a way in which entities with supposed free will are not automatons. So, sure, it is possible to posit an infinite set of theories of "free will" that are true. But I'd claim that nobody has so far managed to come up with one that is both true and that most people will agree fits the woolly concept of "free will" the way most people use it. The concept is almost religious in the sense that most proponents of it are unwilling to try to nail down specific definitions that might give rise to testable hypotheses, and those who do tend to come up with definitions that are so far from the common understanding as to be meaningless.
        kybernetikos 5y ago
        I think free will is the feeling of being a choice making agent in the absence of unreasonable external constraints. This isn't original or unique with me, and I've held this view for quite a large number of years (e.g. this comment from 6 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11740316 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11740316). It fits pretty well with what people mean when they say 'free will' or 'free choice' in normal every day life (i.e. if you have a gun to your head, you don't have free will, but in lots of other cases you do). Your definition of it being entirely nonsensical is clearly even worse than this definition for being accepted the way most people use it, since your view implies that there is nothing people mean when then say 'free will', while the fact that almost everyone can tell the difference between someone robbing a bank of their own free will and someone robbing a bank because their loved one is being held hostage tells you that it really does have meaning.

The typical source of confusion is conflating "free" with "unpredictable". But they're not the same thing at all.

by V-2 5y ago

The typical source of confusion is conflating "free" with "unpredictable". But they're not the same thing at all.

"Unpredictable" is imprecise to the point of being meaningless. If a black box is fully deterministic to the point that you can construct a model that is entirely accurate, then there's nothing "free" about it. What you're modelling has no agency. For the notion of "free will" to have any meaning at all, it doesn't need to be "unpredictable" in the sense that it keeps confounding someone trying to predict it all the time, but it does need to deviate from predictions sometimes or you have just an automaton, and it needs to do so in a way that is fundamentally impossible to model, and it needs to do so without just injecting randomness. I've yet to see anyone present a definition of "free will" that doesn't reduce to smoke and mirrors, because that would mean coming up with some fourth category in a venn diagram of determinism, randomness and the combination of the two where they intersect, that is non-deterministic in a way that can't be explained by layering a deterministic model and randomness.

kybernetikos 5y ago
> What you're modelling has no agency I see no reason to think that just because something is predictable it is not free. That seems like such a strange constraint to me that I can only assume that we have different understandings of what it means to be free. If I know someone well, I might predict that when offered a free choice between an ice cream and a brussels sprout they will choose the ice cream. The fact that I was able to predict that with an incredibly high degree of certainty didn't stop them from being free.
- danbruc 5y ago
  I understand why you would call your offer a free choice, the are no constraints attached to the options that could obviously influence the decision, for example picking the ice cream also requires paying a million. Different people with different preferences would make different choices. But pick one specific person, why would you call their pick a free choice? There choice might not be influenced by your offer but it will be by their preferences. Let them choose, rewind the universe a minute or two, let them choose again. They will make the same choice over and over and over again. Maybe not if there is true randomness in the universe and this choice happens to be influenced by some random event.
- vidarh 5y ago
  Given the same starting state, either you get the same outcome every time, or there's randomness involved, that is the point. I challenge you to describe a selection process that is not fully deterministic but where the lack of determinism is caused by something other than randomness. That is what you need to be able to come up with to define free will in a way that isn't smoke and mirrors. There's no agency. Nothing but automatons.
  - kybernetikos 5y ago
    > There's no agency. Nothing but automatons. Only if you define 'agency' as requiring magic. If you think that there's no conflict (as I do) between being an automaton and having agency, then there's no problem here.
    - vidarh 5y ago
      Yes, if I argue that "free" means "not free" there's no problem there, I agree. Which is why I keep asking those who believe in free will here to actually define it. People almost never even try, because once you do it very quickly becomes clear that it's incredibly hard to the point that you'd have a theory named after you and get taught in university philosophy courses if you managed to come up with something that isn't obviously broken. The point being that if you start asking questions to determine what people think free will means, you'll find most will argue an automaton can not have free will. In which case to "rescue" free will you need to come up with a way in which entities with supposed free will are not automatons. So, sure, it is possible to posit an infinite set of theories of "free will" that are true. But I'd claim that nobody has so far managed to come up with one that is both true and that most people will agree fits the woolly concept of "free will" the way most people use it. The concept is almost religious in the sense that most proponents of it are unwilling to try to nail down specific definitions that might give rise to testable hypotheses, and those who do tend to come up with definitions that are so far from the common understanding as to be meaningless.
      - kybernetikos 5y ago
        I think free will is the feeling of being a choice making agent in the absence of unreasonable external constraints. This isn't original or unique with me, and I've held this view for quite a large number of years (e.g. this comment from 6 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11740316 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11740316). It fits pretty well with what people mean when they say 'free will' or 'free choice' in normal every day life (i.e. if you have a gun to your head, you don't have free will, but in lots of other cases you do). Your definition of it being entirely nonsensical is clearly even worse than this definition for being accepted the way most people use it, since your view implies that there is nothing people mean when then say 'free will', while the fact that almost everyone can tell the difference between someone robbing a bank of their own free will and someone robbing a bank because their loved one is being held hostage tells you that it really does have meaning.