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You’re starting from a definition of free will that is a modern outlier compared to the historical use of the term in Western culture. That our will is not com

You’re starting from a definition of free will that is a modern outlier compared to the historical use of the term in Western culture. That our will is not completely free is obvious to a child: they can’t always get they want. They can’t will an ice cream cone into existence. “Free will” never meant freedom from physics, so it’s a tautology to say it’s not free because of physics. > A recursive function, that mutates itself is still bound by it's rules for mutation and recursiveness. It doesn’t matter. If the recursive function results in all possible outcomes within a boundary (as many do), then anything operating entirely within that boundary is not constrained by the function. There are a lot of things denied to human will by physics. I can’t will myself up into the air or will myself to live forever without food. Inside those boundaries, my behavior cannot be said to be constrained by physics. I don’t violate the standard model of quantum physics by declining dessert because I’m trying to lose weight. Which is the sort of banal decision that “free will” has historically referred to. > Choice doesn't grow out of an exponentially growing number of possible states. This is backward. The right way to say this is that many human choices are not constrained by the number of available states.

bheadmaster 4y ago
> You’re starting from a definition of free will that is a modern outlier compared to the historical use of the term in Western culture. > That our will is not completely free is obvious to a child: they can’t always get they want. They can’t will an ice cream cone into existence. > “Free will” never meant freedom from physics, so it’s a tautology to say it’s not free because of physics. Well, would you care to share with us what "free will" really means, then?
- ratrocket 4y ago
  Not OP, but later in their comment they say: > [...] declining dessert because I’m trying to lose weight. Which is the sort of banal decision that “free will” has historically referred to. So, they shared that "free will" really means things like ... declining dessert.
  - bheadmaster 4y ago
    In that case, by "free will" they mean "the feeling of free will". In which case it's completely besides the point, since the original argument is about how can free will arise from deterministic/random universe. If the rebuttal is "well I feel like I have free will" there is nothing anyone can do to refute that, since the feeling is real, to them. But that doesn't mean free will itself is real. He's not really choosing to decline dessert just for the sake of it - he has a motivation behind it: losing weight. Now, one could say "well I could decline dessert just for the sake of it" to prove a point, but then "proving a point" would be the motivation for declining dessert. There's just no way out. Free will is a fundamentally ill-defined concept, just like consciousness. We all "feel" it, but nobody can put it into words precisely enough to enable any kind of rigorous discussion.
- snowwrestler 4y ago
  Of course I can't say what free will "really means," which is a bit of a rhetorical trap. I can say that historically, free will as a concept was invented by people to explain their observations of themselves and others making decisions. As a concept it has historically been scoped to our lived experiences. A person can choose to sin (or not), choose to commit a crime (or not), choose how to react to their stimulus and base motivations. A hungry person can choose not to eat, and go on a hunger strike. An irate person can choose not to be violent toward the object of their anger. An aroused person can choose not to have sex with the object of their desire. Which of these decisions violate our understanding of physics? None of them. A person on hunger strike will eventually die of malnutrition or lack of energy, no matter how strong their will to live on. In that way it is (and has been) a concept which is strongly constrained by physical reality, not a metaphysical free-for-all.
  - bheadmaster 4y ago
    > Of course I can't say what free will "really means," which is a bit of a rhetorical trap. Then I'd argue there's no point in even discussing it. "What can be said, can be said clearly" and all that jazz.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - snowwrestler 4y ago
      I deleted a more contentious comment. I’ll just say that I think we can constrain the discussion of complex topics even if we can’t nail down the exact answer yet.
wodenokoto 4y ago
> “Free will” never meant freedom from physics, so it’s a tautology to say it’s not free because of physics. I don’t understand all your points but let me give a go at answering this one: If we follow a markov-graph with rules between each point on the graph, until we reach a node with a decision, then hopefully we can agree that your choice is not free will, but just a rule set. If we introduce a pair of dice to help navigate the decision graph, that doesn’t introduce free will either. If we write down a set of rules for how to mutate the graph on each move, we still haven’t introduced free will. We are still following sets of rules blindly by the constraints of the rules and the rolls of the dice. If we substitute the markov graph with _any_ computable, self modifiable, stochastic function, we don’t change the essence of the above argument. If the brain is a biological machine that self-mutate following rules set in its structure, guided by the randomness inherited by nature, it is still just a function. So where is the free will? Where does it fit in? If it’s “well, you’re not a slave. You have the freedom to say and think what you want” then shouldn’t we consider GPT-3 to have free will? It says what it wants. If its pseudo rng isn’t good enough to qualify we can hook it up to some decaying radioactive isotopes. We can even hook it up to update its weights every time it receives human input, if free will require constant mutations of its function. So I don’t agree with your argument. I think a reasonable critique of free will is that it doesn’t fit into our understanding of physics, unless we want to bestow free will on simple computer programs.
- snowwrestler 4y ago
  You're trying to start with our fundamental physical theories and calculate your way to free will. And you're right that we can't do that. But we can't calculate our way to a rose, or a tree, or a squirrel, or a human, or Mt Everest either. We can't even calculate our way to folding proteins. How complex phenomena emerge from the fundamental laws of the universe is a blank spot on the map of human understanding. You're looking there and saying "I don't see a road to free will through here." You think this says something about free will, but all it really does is say something about the map. The best we can do is observe complex phenomena and look for contradictions to fundamental physical theory. I can observe a beetle and see if anything about it contradicts quantum mechanics. So far, no. And observations of free will do not either. This only disproves free will if you carefully define "free will" in advance as a quality that contradicts fundamental physics. But why would you do that? Free will has historically meant the quality that allows people to make decisions in the course of everyday life, not a quality that allows them to do fantastic feats like generate infinite amounts of energy or some other violation of physics. As long as our ability to freely make decisions doesn't violate our understanding of physics, you can't say that our understanding of physics excludes our ability to freely make decisions.

bheadmaster 4y ago

> You’re starting from a definition of free will that is a modern outlier compared to the historical use of the term in Western culture. > That our will is not completely free is obvious to a child: they can’t always get they want. They can’t will an ice cream cone into existence. > “Free will” never meant freedom from physics, so it’s a tautology to say it’s not free because of physics. Well, would you care to share with us what "free will" really means, then?

ratrocket 4y ago
Not OP, but later in their comment they say: > [...] declining dessert because I’m trying to lose weight. Which is the sort of banal decision that “free will” has historically referred to. So, they shared that "free will" really means things like ... declining dessert.
- bheadmaster 4y ago
  In that case, by "free will" they mean "the feeling of free will". In which case it's completely besides the point, since the original argument is about how can free will arise from deterministic/random universe. If the rebuttal is "well I feel like I have free will" there is nothing anyone can do to refute that, since the feeling is real, to them. But that doesn't mean free will itself is real. He's not really choosing to decline dessert just for the sake of it - he has a motivation behind it: losing weight. Now, one could say "well I could decline dessert just for the sake of it" to prove a point, but then "proving a point" would be the motivation for declining dessert. There's just no way out. Free will is a fundamentally ill-defined concept, just like consciousness. We all "feel" it, but nobody can put it into words precisely enough to enable any kind of rigorous discussion.
snowwrestler 4y ago
Of course I can't say what free will "really means," which is a bit of a rhetorical trap. I can say that historically, free will as a concept was invented by people to explain their observations of themselves and others making decisions. As a concept it has historically been scoped to our lived experiences. A person can choose to sin (or not), choose to commit a crime (or not), choose how to react to their stimulus and base motivations. A hungry person can choose not to eat, and go on a hunger strike. An irate person can choose not to be violent toward the object of their anger. An aroused person can choose not to have sex with the object of their desire. Which of these decisions violate our understanding of physics? None of them. A person on hunger strike will eventually die of malnutrition or lack of energy, no matter how strong their will to live on. In that way it is (and has been) a concept which is strongly constrained by physical reality, not a metaphysical free-for-all.
- bheadmaster 4y ago
  > Of course I can't say what free will "really means," which is a bit of a rhetorical trap. Then I'd argue there's no point in even discussing it. "What can be said, can be said clearly" and all that jazz.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - snowwrestler 4y ago
    I deleted a more contentious comment. I’ll just say that I think we can constrain the discussion of complex topics even if we can’t nail down the exact answer yet.

wodenokoto 4y ago

> “Free will” never meant freedom from physics, so it’s a tautology to say it’s not free because of physics. I don’t understand all your points but let me give a go at answering this one: If we follow a markov-graph with rules between each point on the graph, until we reach a node with a decision, then hopefully we can agree that your choice is not free will, but just a rule set. If we introduce a pair of dice to help navigate the decision graph, that doesn’t introduce free will either. If we write down a set of rules for how to mutate the graph on each move, we still haven’t introduced free will. We are still following sets of rules blindly by the constraints of the rules and the rolls of the dice. If we substitute the markov graph with _any_ computable, self modifiable, stochastic function, we don’t change the essence of the above argument. If the brain is a biological machine that self-mutate following rules set in its structure, guided by the randomness inherited by nature, it is still just a function. So where is the free will? Where does it fit in? If it’s “well, you’re not a slave. You have the freedom to say and think what you want” then shouldn’t we consider GPT-3 to have free will? It says what it wants. If its pseudo rng isn’t good enough to qualify we can hook it up to some decaying radioactive isotopes. We can even hook it up to update its weights every time it receives human input, if free will require constant mutations of its function. So I don’t agree with your argument. I think a reasonable critique of free will is that it doesn’t fit into our understanding of physics, unless we want to bestow free will on simple computer programs.

snowwrestler 4y ago
You're trying to start with our fundamental physical theories and calculate your way to free will. And you're right that we can't do that. But we can't calculate our way to a rose, or a tree, or a squirrel, or a human, or Mt Everest either. We can't even calculate our way to folding proteins. How complex phenomena emerge from the fundamental laws of the universe is a blank spot on the map of human understanding. You're looking there and saying "I don't see a road to free will through here." You think this says something about free will, but all it really does is say something about the map. The best we can do is observe complex phenomena and look for contradictions to fundamental physical theory. I can observe a beetle and see if anything about it contradicts quantum mechanics. So far, no. And observations of free will do not either. This only disproves free will if you carefully define "free will" in advance as a quality that contradicts fundamental physics. But why would you do that? Free will has historically meant the quality that allows people to make decisions in the course of everyday life, not a quality that allows them to do fantastic feats like generate infinite amounts of energy or some other violation of physics. As long as our ability to freely make decisions doesn't violate our understanding of physics, you can't say that our understanding of physics excludes our ability to freely make decisions.