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I don't see how that is any different than a human being. We are all just a collection of particles being acted upon by certain fundamental laws of the universe

I don't see how that is any different than a human being. We are all just a collection of particles being acted upon by certain fundamental laws of the universe. Why do you think you're so different?

UncleOxidant 4y ago
Computation and information.
- animal_spirits 4y ago
  Can you elaborate?
  - stronglikedan 4y ago
    A river can't choose which side of the fork to take, like we can.
    - katmannthree 4y ago
      Ahh, the ever-elusive ``free will.'' Do you happen to have a rigorous definition of it you'd like to bring up for discussion?
      - didntreadarticl 4y ago
        Doesnt have to be free will, just has to be information processing. A robot could also choose which side of a fork to take, based on programming or machine learning etc.
      - Natsu 4y ago
        Do you have to know what free will is to experience the feeling of causing your own body to do things after thinking? Heck, do you even have to know what the sun is to see that it glows in a way the average rock does not? And yes, I know of blackbody radiation, it's why I used this example. Because blackbody radiation is something you can find in maybe some minimal sense all over the place and yet there's quite a difference between the sun and and the minimal EM emitted by an average rock, just as there is a difference between life with lots of agency and life with very little agency at all (e.g. viruses). Sometimes the difference is more a difference of degree than kind. What propels us is persistent and internal to the parts of us we control and our own systems are self-stabilizing. What propels most of the universe is largely external and not controlled by anything with any significant agency or ability to deliberate.
        squeaky-clean 4y ago
        > Do you have to know what free will is to experience the feeling of causing your own body to do things after thinking? But, how do you know every other human is the same and you're not the only one with free will? And following that, how do you know a river doesn't feel the same way?
        Natsu 4y ago
        Cogito ergo sum. You only need one sample to prove existence of a thing. As for the rest, communication. I can share information with other people and debate this. That's not possible with a river. Animals are in between, they can clearly understand some things but not everything. Moreover we can point to an ability to process things that predicts this difference in our ability to communicate.
        squeaky-clean 4y ago
        Sounds like ChatGPT has free will under those rules then.
      - voldacar 4y ago
        What percentage of your beliefs and ideas do you possess a "rigorous definition " for?
        WaxProlix 4y ago
        Ideally, all of the ones I pipe up into a philosophical conversation about.
        kgwgk 4y ago
        Do you think anyone here can choose whether to participate in the conversation or what to say?
      - bryanrasmussen 4y ago
        humans all seem to experience making decisions, even the people who claim that there is no free will but that one is an automaton proceeding from some force that one cannot, in the end, identify. These automaton identifying people however with the ever-elusive force that they cannot identify don't seem any better positioned rhetorically than the free will people, but for some reason they get to claim that free will does not exist just because it cannot be identified with sufficient rigor to match their arguments despite not being able to provide a sufficiently rigorous definition of what happens at the limits where free will breaks down. If Occam's razor where a thing it seems more sensible just to proceed as if free will actually existed.
  - UncleOxidant 4y ago
    DNA is a highly dense information (low entropy) storage and transmission medium that (under the right conditions) is able to self-replicate (Similar for RNA). DNA contains the blueprint to construct the "computer" that it runs on which is pretty amazing. An inanimate object contains no DNA, can't replicate, can't "decide" to act. Living organisms composed of and constructed by DNA can process inputs and use the incoming data to decide to act upon their environment. Even simple worms,fungi and bacteria have processing capability and the ability to manipulate their environment. Rocks? Not so much (ok, to clarify, not at all).
    - uoaei 4y ago
      But there is a very, ahem, vital difference between "not so much" and "not at all". Can you please clarify?
- uoaei 4y ago
  There is a nonzero amount of computation and information existing in the dynamics of a river. This suggests a difference to humans in degree, not a difference in kind.
- yrdmb 4y ago
  So we have less agency than a smartphone which holds more information and computes faster than we do? I don't like the sound of that.
didntreadarticl 4y ago
Ok so lets say the universe is a giant deterministic* computer calculating its own future one picosecond at a time. If something acts only due to external forces - a rock rolling down a hill, or a river flowing around some rocks, we say it doesn't have agency. If something partially acts based on processing/decision making processes running inside its own boundary - like us, or a roomba, we say it has agency. So it comes down to processing and actions as a result of processing. Doesn't matter whether its deterministic or not. * = (probably; ultimately it doesnt matter much whether its deterministic or partially random, either way theres no way of finding out the future other than waiting for it to arrive, due to sensitive dependence on initial conditions)
- Avshalom 4y ago
  you've constructed a definition where laminar flow doesn't have agency but turbulent flow does.
  - didntreadarticl 4y ago
    turbulence = complex system which isnt necessarily the same as processing. But perhaps you could build some sort of processor using turbulence.
    - mxkopy 4y ago
      Indeed, one of the ways in which someone was trying to prove that Navier-Stokes can't be solved was to build a Turing machine out of turbulent vortices. If it's possible, then an analytic solution to their motion would be equivalent to solving the halting problem.
- didntreadarticl 4y ago
  So a glider in game of life doesnt have agency but you can build a computer in game of life that has memory and can base its actions on prcoessing and past input https://www.nicolasloizeau.com/gol-computer https://www.nicolasloizeau.com/gol-computer
- 4y ago
eternalban 4y ago
> I don't see how that is any different than a human being. Are you even looking? A river's movements and evolution of its path can be ascertained, analysed, reduced to variables, entered into a model that describes a causal mechanism, and out comes (progressively better) output that matches actual behavior. Thus a river is a natural phenomena subject to natural laws and analytical description. A human being is an agent that continuously makes choices in a high dimensional choice-space of possible actions that can only be predicted and regulated by extreme measures such as physical confinement, psychological pressure, and denial of natural rythms of the body. A free human being of a given measure of 'wit' or 'curiosity' ("hey, temprature!") in a expansive context of choice would be nearly impossible to 'simulate'. So simply by looking we "see" that indeed a human being, while certainly a natural phenomena subject to natural laws, exhibits unmatched complexity of behavior, and appears to act on internal reflection which is casually disconnected from immediate physical environment ..
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
  This is some god of the gaps bullshit. You're basically just saying that since humans are systems we can't yet accurately model with a computer we're clearly special. You're just asserting that humans meet some arbitrary standard of complexity without an explanation of why that standard matters.
  - Vecr 4y ago
    Humans (or a human in singular, all humans might actually be easier in a sense) probably can't be simulated into the future very well at all. A human brain is a highly chaotic system, so the ability to simulate it would be affected by the inability to get precise state information in the first place (probably bumping into uncertainty, if you could somehow even get that far), and after that I suspect you would get massive divergences due to quantum effects. If that's not enough, if I suspected I was being simulated I would fuzz my decision making with fundamentally unpredictable random numbers to put a stop to that problem. Probably something along the lines of the quote "all processes that are stable we shall predict. All processes that are unstable we shall control" would work better. Just brain chip everyone so they can't diverge from the simulation.
kupopuffs 4y ago
You cannot reason with a river. You can only follow it and divert little bits and pieces of it for your own benefit
- krapp 4y ago
  You can say the same about society. Beyond personal relationships, for most people the rest of humanity may just as well be another force of nature.

I don't see how that is any different than a human being. We are all just a collection of particles being acted upon by certain fundamental laws of the universe. Why do you think you're so different?

UncleOxidant 4y ago

Computation and information.

animal_spirits 4y ago
Can you elaborate?
- stronglikedan 4y ago
  A river can't choose which side of the fork to take, like we can.
  - katmannthree 4y ago
    Ahh, the ever-elusive ``free will.'' Do you happen to have a rigorous definition of it you'd like to bring up for discussion?
    - didntreadarticl 4y ago
      Doesnt have to be free will, just has to be information processing. A robot could also choose which side of a fork to take, based on programming or machine learning etc.
    - Natsu 4y ago
      Do you have to know what free will is to experience the feeling of causing your own body to do things after thinking? Heck, do you even have to know what the sun is to see that it glows in a way the average rock does not? And yes, I know of blackbody radiation, it's why I used this example. Because blackbody radiation is something you can find in maybe some minimal sense all over the place and yet there's quite a difference between the sun and and the minimal EM emitted by an average rock, just as there is a difference between life with lots of agency and life with very little agency at all (e.g. viruses). Sometimes the difference is more a difference of degree than kind. What propels us is persistent and internal to the parts of us we control and our own systems are self-stabilizing. What propels most of the universe is largely external and not controlled by anything with any significant agency or ability to deliberate.
      - squeaky-clean 4y ago
        > Do you have to know what free will is to experience the feeling of causing your own body to do things after thinking? But, how do you know every other human is the same and you're not the only one with free will? And following that, how do you know a river doesn't feel the same way?
        Natsu 4y ago
        Cogito ergo sum. You only need one sample to prove existence of a thing. As for the rest, communication. I can share information with other people and debate this. That's not possible with a river. Animals are in between, they can clearly understand some things but not everything. Moreover we can point to an ability to process things that predicts this difference in our ability to communicate.
        squeaky-clean 4y ago
        Sounds like ChatGPT has free will under those rules then.
    - voldacar 4y ago
      What percentage of your beliefs and ideas do you possess a "rigorous definition " for?
      - WaxProlix 4y ago
        Ideally, all of the ones I pipe up into a philosophical conversation about.
        kgwgk 4y ago
        Do you think anyone here can choose whether to participate in the conversation or what to say?
    - bryanrasmussen 4y ago
      humans all seem to experience making decisions, even the people who claim that there is no free will but that one is an automaton proceeding from some force that one cannot, in the end, identify. These automaton identifying people however with the ever-elusive force that they cannot identify don't seem any better positioned rhetorically than the free will people, but for some reason they get to claim that free will does not exist just because it cannot be identified with sufficient rigor to match their arguments despite not being able to provide a sufficiently rigorous definition of what happens at the limits where free will breaks down. If Occam's razor where a thing it seems more sensible just to proceed as if free will actually existed.
- UncleOxidant 4y ago
  DNA is a highly dense information (low entropy) storage and transmission medium that (under the right conditions) is able to self-replicate (Similar for RNA). DNA contains the blueprint to construct the "computer" that it runs on which is pretty amazing. An inanimate object contains no DNA, can't replicate, can't "decide" to act. Living organisms composed of and constructed by DNA can process inputs and use the incoming data to decide to act upon their environment. Even simple worms,fungi and bacteria have processing capability and the ability to manipulate their environment. Rocks? Not so much (ok, to clarify, not at all).
  - uoaei 4y ago
    But there is a very, ahem, vital difference between "not so much" and "not at all". Can you please clarify?
uoaei 4y ago
There is a nonzero amount of computation and information existing in the dynamics of a river. This suggests a difference to humans in degree, not a difference in kind.
yrdmb 4y ago
So we have less agency than a smartphone which holds more information and computes faster than we do? I don't like the sound of that.

didntreadarticl 4y ago

Ok so lets say the universe is a giant deterministic* computer calculating its own future one picosecond at a time. If something acts only due to external forces - a rock rolling down a hill, or a river flowing around some rocks, we say it doesn't have agency. If something partially acts based on processing/decision making processes running inside its own boundary - like us, or a roomba, we say it has agency. So it comes down to processing and actions as a result of processing. Doesn't matter whether its deterministic or not. * = (probably; ultimately it doesnt matter much whether its deterministic or partially random, either way theres no way of finding out the future other than waiting for it to arrive, due to sensitive dependence on initial conditions)

Avshalom 4y ago
you've constructed a definition where laminar flow doesn't have agency but turbulent flow does.
- didntreadarticl 4y ago
  turbulence = complex system which isnt necessarily the same as processing. But perhaps you could build some sort of processor using turbulence.
  - mxkopy 4y ago
    Indeed, one of the ways in which someone was trying to prove that Navier-Stokes can't be solved was to build a Turing machine out of turbulent vortices. If it's possible, then an analytic solution to their motion would be equivalent to solving the halting problem.
didntreadarticl 4y ago
So a glider in game of life doesnt have agency but you can build a computer in game of life that has memory and can base its actions on prcoessing and past input https://www.nicolasloizeau.com/gol-computer https://www.nicolasloizeau.com/gol-computer
4y ago

eternalban 4y ago

> I don't see how that is any different than a human being. Are you even looking? A river's movements and evolution of its path can be ascertained, analysed, reduced to variables, entered into a model that describes a causal mechanism, and out comes (progressively better) output that matches actual behavior. Thus a river is a natural phenomena subject to natural laws and analytical description. A human being is an agent that continuously makes choices in a high dimensional choice-space of possible actions that can only be predicted and regulated by extreme measures such as physical confinement, psychological pressure, and denial of natural rythms of the body. A free human being of a given measure of 'wit' or 'curiosity' ("hey, temprature!") in a expansive context of choice would be nearly impossible to 'simulate'. So simply by looking we "see" that indeed a human being, while certainly a natural phenomena subject to natural laws, exhibits unmatched complexity of behavior, and appears to act on internal reflection which is casually disconnected from immediate physical environment ..

AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
This is some god of the gaps bullshit. You're basically just saying that since humans are systems we can't yet accurately model with a computer we're clearly special. You're just asserting that humans meet some arbitrary standard of complexity without an explanation of why that standard matters.
- Vecr 4y ago
  Humans (or a human in singular, all humans might actually be easier in a sense) probably can't be simulated into the future very well at all. A human brain is a highly chaotic system, so the ability to simulate it would be affected by the inability to get precise state information in the first place (probably bumping into uncertainty, if you could somehow even get that far), and after that I suspect you would get massive divergences due to quantum effects. If that's not enough, if I suspected I was being simulated I would fuzz my decision making with fundamentally unpredictable random numbers to put a stop to that problem. Probably something along the lines of the quote "all processes that are stable we shall predict. All processes that are unstable we shall control" would work better. Just brain chip everyone so they can't diverge from the simulation.

kupopuffs 4y ago

You cannot reason with a river. You can only follow it and divert little bits and pieces of it for your own benefit

krapp 4y ago
You can say the same about society. Beyond personal relationships, for most people the rest of humanity may just as well be another force of nature.