5 ms·

Agreed, I struggled to follow his reasoning when I read his book, but I also am aware it was a popular science book, so maybe it was dumbed down for the general

Agreed, I struggled to follow his reasoning when I read his book, but I also am aware it was a popular science book, so maybe it was dumbed down for the general public? I've not tried to track down more academic work in this area, maybe the evidence is more compelling?

vesinisa 4y ago
I intuitively believe that free will is incompatible with determinism. This seems to be a very divisive issue - many people seem to strongly believe that free will is either an illusion or readily compatible with determinism.
- reuben364 4y ago
  Is this meant to be a reply to the above comment? My thoughts are as follows: If one can decompose one's subjective experience into an agent and the environment it interacts with, then there are several variations I can think of: - The agents actions are entirely determined by its environment - The agents actions form a probability distribution determined by it environment - The agent actions from their environment are annotated in some way that we haven't or can't have thought of that represents what the agent is. In my opinion, something that we can't think of or experience and something that doesn't exist are indistinguishable and we shouldn't really separate them except for making this statement. - There is no agent and subjective existence is merely one route down immutable decision tree that is our choices and their consequences. None of these options really intuitively sound like free will to me. Ultimately thinking along these lines requires separating the agent from the environment. EDIT: I see now the reply is to the YouTube link which I missed
- Ialdaboth 4y ago
  I'm more and more convinced this is... not exactly a false dichotomy per say, but at least a tricky one : you can have both free will at the micro level (any individual), and determinism at the macro level (any sufficiently large group of humans, considered in aggregate) at the same time.
  - FeepingCreature 4y ago
    Of course, the debate is generally about whether you can have both free will at the macro level (the human brain) and determinism at the micro level (particle physics).
    - Ialdaboth 4y ago
      Thanks. I should find and read some good sources about this, it looks like a given to me.
      - FeepingCreature 4y ago
        The trouble is counterfactuality, ie. what exactly we're talking about if we say "I went shopping, but I could have not done so." (Personally as a compatibilist, I assert it's a map-territory error; the counterfactual worlds represent evaluated decisions, not real universes.)
    - noasaservice 4y ago
      That's a 'debate' primarily in Christian theological circles, primarily pertaining to predestination. This shit, of "who has God considered holier than you to go to heaven" is just more mental gymnastics of not-science.
- jemmyw 4y ago
  I mean yeah. You don't have to do much deep thinking to realise that you can't have determinism and free will. But if you think about free will for a few minutes then you'll uncover many other issues with it at different levels. Even at the very top level. Deciding if you want a coffee? Thirsty? Remember the taste and desire it? But wait, you also recall it keeps you awake and its a bit late in the afternoon. You weigh all these things up quickly and decide... but even if the universe itself isn't deterministic, your decision making is surely not free, you took inputs with weights and that WAS the decision. It was not random. Actual free will, at the top level, would look like rolling the dice every time. My personal belief is that if we had free will life would be unbelievably chaotic and society couldn't exist. Now just go down a level and classical physical systems are deterministic, and even if you add quantum probabilities, those are tiny, and importantly, independent effects. i.e. they can't be controlled to make some system that is free of externalities. And personally I also think superdeterminism is the most likely explanation for even quantum effects, but that is untestable and therefore a somewhat pointless belief.
  - biomcgary 4y ago
    >Actual free will, at the top level, would look like rolling the dice every time. Your definition of free will is fairly extreme and doesn't really line up with what is typically meant by free will. The discussion of free will typically involves moral agency (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will). A strawman version of your view is that every time you see a bus, it should be 50-50 whether or not you jump in front of it. And, people don't jump in front of buses at that rate, so you conclude that free will is an illusion. I would flip the baseline assumption around. Occasionally, some people do jump in front of a bus, so everyone (in a place with buses) that doesn't jump has made a choice not to because they could have done otherwise. Personally, I don't think humans meaningfully exercise free will often because: 1. most of our available "choices" have either an obvious answer (do I eat?) or are largely irrelevant (Italian or Indian dish?). 2. most of us are content to operate on autopilot (as explored in the Adam Sandler movie "Click"). However, I do think the occasional real choices we make can have outsized impacts on the trajectory of our life because that choice becomes your new normal (e.g., kleptomania, drug addiction, waking up early, going for a jog).
denton-scratch 4y ago
It was indeed dumbed down for the general public. I don't have a copy to hand, but I laughed like a drain at one section of the introduction: <paraphrase> "This book is intended for a lay reader, but necessarily contains quite a bit of maths. Readers who prefer to avoid equations and formulas can skip chapters 4, 6, 12-20, 26 and 27". </paraphrase> Penrose's notion of a "lay reader" is one who doesn't have a maths degree.
- Tomte 4y ago
  That's the one where he starts the chapter to "brush up" some math with Hamiltonians or so?

vesinisa 4y ago

I intuitively believe that free will is incompatible with determinism. This seems to be a very divisive issue - many people seem to strongly believe that free will is either an illusion or readily compatible with determinism.

reuben364 4y ago
Is this meant to be a reply to the above comment? My thoughts are as follows: If one can decompose one's subjective experience into an agent and the environment it interacts with, then there are several variations I can think of: - The agents actions are entirely determined by its environment - The agents actions form a probability distribution determined by it environment - The agent actions from their environment are annotated in some way that we haven't or can't have thought of that represents what the agent is. In my opinion, something that we can't think of or experience and something that doesn't exist are indistinguishable and we shouldn't really separate them except for making this statement. - There is no agent and subjective existence is merely one route down immutable decision tree that is our choices and their consequences. None of these options really intuitively sound like free will to me. Ultimately thinking along these lines requires separating the agent from the environment. EDIT: I see now the reply is to the YouTube link which I missed
Ialdaboth 4y ago
I'm more and more convinced this is... not exactly a false dichotomy per say, but at least a tricky one : you can have both free will at the micro level (any individual), and determinism at the macro level (any sufficiently large group of humans, considered in aggregate) at the same time.
- FeepingCreature 4y ago
  Of course, the debate is generally about whether you can have both free will at the macro level (the human brain) and determinism at the micro level (particle physics).
  - Ialdaboth 4y ago
    Thanks. I should find and read some good sources about this, it looks like a given to me.
    - FeepingCreature 4y ago
      The trouble is counterfactuality, ie. what exactly we're talking about if we say "I went shopping, but I could have not done so." (Personally as a compatibilist, I assert it's a map-territory error; the counterfactual worlds represent evaluated decisions, not real universes.)
  - noasaservice 4y ago
    That's a 'debate' primarily in Christian theological circles, primarily pertaining to predestination. This shit, of "who has God considered holier than you to go to heaven" is just more mental gymnastics of not-science.
jemmyw 4y ago
I mean yeah. You don't have to do much deep thinking to realise that you can't have determinism and free will. But if you think about free will for a few minutes then you'll uncover many other issues with it at different levels. Even at the very top level. Deciding if you want a coffee? Thirsty? Remember the taste and desire it? But wait, you also recall it keeps you awake and its a bit late in the afternoon. You weigh all these things up quickly and decide... but even if the universe itself isn't deterministic, your decision making is surely not free, you took inputs with weights and that WAS the decision. It was not random. Actual free will, at the top level, would look like rolling the dice every time. My personal belief is that if we had free will life would be unbelievably chaotic and society couldn't exist. Now just go down a level and classical physical systems are deterministic, and even if you add quantum probabilities, those are tiny, and importantly, independent effects. i.e. they can't be controlled to make some system that is free of externalities. And personally I also think superdeterminism is the most likely explanation for even quantum effects, but that is untestable and therefore a somewhat pointless belief.
- biomcgary 4y ago
  >Actual free will, at the top level, would look like rolling the dice every time. Your definition of free will is fairly extreme and doesn't really line up with what is typically meant by free will. The discussion of free will typically involves moral agency (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will). A strawman version of your view is that every time you see a bus, it should be 50-50 whether or not you jump in front of it. And, people don't jump in front of buses at that rate, so you conclude that free will is an illusion. I would flip the baseline assumption around. Occasionally, some people do jump in front of a bus, so everyone (in a place with buses) that doesn't jump has made a choice not to because they could have done otherwise. Personally, I don't think humans meaningfully exercise free will often because: 1. most of our available "choices" have either an obvious answer (do I eat?) or are largely irrelevant (Italian or Indian dish?). 2. most of us are content to operate on autopilot (as explored in the Adam Sandler movie "Click"). However, I do think the occasional real choices we make can have outsized impacts on the trajectory of our life because that choice becomes your new normal (e.g., kleptomania, drug addiction, waking up early, going for a jog).

denton-scratch 4y ago

It was indeed dumbed down for the general public. I don't have a copy to hand, but I laughed like a drain at one section of the introduction: <paraphrase> "This book is intended for a lay reader, but necessarily contains quite a bit of maths. Readers who prefer to avoid equations and formulas can skip chapters 4, 6, 12-20, 26 and 27". </paraphrase> Penrose's notion of a "lay reader" is one who doesn't have a maths degree.

Tomte 4y ago
That's the one where he starts the chapter to "brush up" some math with Hamiltonians or so?