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Interesting because it messes with the school of thought that everything is determined already and we're just following a sequence of actions that arise from th

Interesting because it messes with the school of thought that everything is determined already and we're just following a sequence of actions that arise from the starting conditions of the universe. If causality is broken then maybe we have free will?

paulusthe 4y ago
That's a very lazy school of thought though. It's just atheistic Calvinism, a tautology masquerading as a "philosophy". Calvin believed in pre-destination (your fate and every decision you make is decided before you exist) on the grounds that, because God exists and is omnipotent, what you are doing must therefore be what God wants to happen, both good and bad. After all, God is omnipotent, so there you go. Today's Calvinists just replace God-driven destiny with nature-driven destiny, but the underlying tautology (X exists, therefore X was always destined to exist, as proven by the fact that it exists at all) remains the same. In fact, it's an arguably more ignorant version of Calvinism, because it requires that one completely dismisses any knowledge they have of probability theory. So it's the "smarter" Calvinism that requires you be ignorant of 20th century mathematical advances. Hate that crap. The only people I hear talking about it are silicon valley utopians, which is probably the other reason I hate it.
- flanked-evergl 4y ago
  > In fact, it's an arguably more ignorant version of Calvinism, because it requires that one completely dismisses any knowledge they have of probability theory No to pick too many nits, but I think it is well established that knowledge of formal sciences (i.e. mathematics) does not impart knowledge about natural sciences (i.e. physics). While maths a useful tool, there are no established rules of inference for reality, and without rules of inference you can't really make claims on infinite sets. Natural sciences allow us to find mathematical constructs that make good predictions within specific constraints or that have not yet been falsified, just because something is true in probability theory does not make it true in reality.
- anotherman554 4y ago
  If humans lacked free will, probability would still be useful, because humans use it when they have imperfect information about an upcoming event.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  > In fact, it's an arguably more ignorant version of Calvinism, because it requires that one completely dismisses any knowledge they have of probability theory. So it's the "smarter" Calvinism that requires you be ignorant of 20th century mathematical advances. I entirely fail to see how probability theory means it's impossible for the universe to be deterministic.
- jandrewrogers 4y ago
  I don't follow this argument. The coexistence of probability theory and strict determinism create no issues in modern mathematics.
GoblinSlayer 4y ago
If causality is broken, that means hard indeterminism.
anotherman554 4y ago
It could just mean causality has more dimensions than we can perceive. It doesn't mean it is nonexistent.
- marcus_holmes 4y ago
  So my decision to have a ham sandwich for lunch is determined by some meta-universe that created the starting conditions for this universe, and allows for the breach in causality? Or somehow is involved in the backwards-arrow of quantum events that the article talks about so the universe cannot turn out any other way? I dunno, seems like a "God of the gaps" thing - we can speculate on meta-meta-universes endlessly. Including one where my decision to have a ham sandwich disturbs the state of a yet higher dimension that sets the starting parameters of your higher dimension and once again I have free will.
  - anotherman554 4y ago
    Right, physicists seem to generally agree there are parts or dimensions of the universe we cannot directly measure. If scientists can't predict whether you will eat a ham sandwich for lunch or not, it won't be clear if they can't predict it because you have "free will" or because we have limited access to information on how the universe works.
explaininjs 4y ago
Scott Aaronson's "Ghost in the Quantum Turing Machine" tackled this question in a way I found enlightening. It's a bit of a dense read (I needed a plane trip to sit down and focus on it), but it presents a compelling case for the possible reversal of time arrows when it comes to the effects of quantum indeterminism on macro scale interactions. In short: what if humans, somehow, someway, have the ability to "influence" the resolution of unobserved universal start-state quantum noise in order to affect our "will" onto the universe? Furthermore, what experiments could be done to validate or invalidate aspects of this hypothesis? https://arxiv.org/abs/1306.0159 https://arxiv.org/abs/1306.0159
- marcus_holmes 4y ago
  That seems crazy - that my decision to have a ham sandwich for lunch had to be propagated all the way back to the start of the universe in order to happen ;) And yes, provability is a major problem with all these kinds of theories. We don't have a parallel universe handy as a control, and just saying "I am not going to have a ham sandwich tomorrow" isn't a viable experiment.
  - explaininjs 4y ago
    I interpret it as a sort of entropic antennae... each person (brain? qbit?) is tuned into what might be considered an allocated "entropy bandwidth". Some decisions, like whether you eat a ham bandwidth tomorrow utilize* practically none of that bandwidth. Others, what you might consider "major life decisions" might utilize* a ton of bandwidth. Some people might be gifted with a "larger" antennae, allowing them to utilize* a higher amount of entropy per second, or per lifetime. We might call these great artists, or generally any genius-level intellectuals. Alternatively, bat-shit crazy people. *: On "utilize". A central debate (the central debate?) seems to be what sort of "state access mechanism" this maps to in our lexicon: "{reading|writing} {global|local|shared} {bandwidth|memory}"
  - yyyk 4y ago
    >had to be propagated all the way back to the start of the universe in order to happen ;) Technically, casualty required that anyway. My understanding that it's infinity in space, not time that matters here. i.e. predicting your decision to have a ham sandwich may require predicting the entire universe and since we're part of the universe and can't look from 'outside' that decision would be unpredictable from inside the universe. >And yes, provability is a major problem with all these kinds of theories. I think showing that quantum effects are negligible for human brains would do, at least regarding your decision to have a ham sandwich?
layer8 4y ago
The compatibilist view is that there is no contradiction between free will and determinism, because free will refers to macro states and determinism refers to micro states. In addition, in the many-worlds view of quantum mechanics, we don’t follow just a single sequence of events, but all physically possible sequences of events, where the points where sequences branch off each other can correspond to different decisions we “freely” took. Meaning, when we make a decision, all applicable options of choice will become actual reality.
- user81436628 4y ago
  [dead]
- lupire 4y ago
  Where exactly might the free will be, then? Compatibilism is a fancy way of saying "free will so much does not exist that what determists call free will isn't even a valid definition to use as a starting point for investigating an answer." It's not an answer to the question, it's a denial of it. Another, simpler interpretation of Compatibilism is "if free will doesn't exist, then believing it exists or not has 0 effect on anything, because our beliefs are predetermined, and so at human scales the answers Yes and No are equivalent in all observable ways".
  - GoblinSlayer 4y ago
    Definition is theory, free will is reality. When they diverge, it's theory which is improved to match reality, not the other way around.
why-el 4y ago
My favorite sentence on free will comes from Chomsky (who I think was probably quoting someone else): "if we don't have free will, then why are you arguing the point?"
electrondood 4y ago
Causality isn't broken; the universe is "simultaneously causal and teleological," because it's superdetermined. There also isn't any free will, because there isn't actually any agent who could have it. Actions we perceive as volitional actually arise in the brain up to 7s before we "choose" them. The sense of a "me" is a post hoc add-on that claims credit for everything, in order to unite the disparate phenomena that comprise the sense of self. There isn't actually any "me," and recognizing this is what the word "enlightenment" refers to.
- marcus_holmes 4y ago
  Again this seems like a "God of the gaps" thing - if this universe isn't strictly deterministic then it's superdetermined by a meta universe, and so on
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - lupire 4y ago
    What if the "so on" is infinite?
    - marcus_holmes 4y ago
      Turtles all the way down ;)
  - electrondood 4y ago
    I think it's the opposite. You need a "God of the gaps" in the form of a "person" (actually a collection of phenomena. + the phenomena of identification with these) to explain free will and agency, which defies experimental evidence. The comment that superdeterminism requires a higher-order determinism, which itself requires a yet-higher-order determinism... I think you're confusing it with a causal mindset. If the universe is effectively a recording, why does it need any ultimate cause? Causal thinking would only make sense from a perspective within that recording. Of course we want to know "why is any of this here?" But what if the ultimate question doesn't actually have an answer?

paulusthe 4y ago

That's a very lazy school of thought though. It's just atheistic Calvinism, a tautology masquerading as a "philosophy". Calvin believed in pre-destination (your fate and every decision you make is decided before you exist) on the grounds that, because God exists and is omnipotent, what you are doing must therefore be what God wants to happen, both good and bad. After all, God is omnipotent, so there you go. Today's Calvinists just replace God-driven destiny with nature-driven destiny, but the underlying tautology (X exists, therefore X was always destined to exist, as proven by the fact that it exists at all) remains the same. In fact, it's an arguably more ignorant version of Calvinism, because it requires that one completely dismisses any knowledge they have of probability theory. So it's the "smarter" Calvinism that requires you be ignorant of 20th century mathematical advances. Hate that crap. The only people I hear talking about it are silicon valley utopians, which is probably the other reason I hate it.

flanked-evergl 4y ago
> In fact, it's an arguably more ignorant version of Calvinism, because it requires that one completely dismisses any knowledge they have of probability theory No to pick too many nits, but I think it is well established that knowledge of formal sciences (i.e. mathematics) does not impart knowledge about natural sciences (i.e. physics). While maths a useful tool, there are no established rules of inference for reality, and without rules of inference you can't really make claims on infinite sets. Natural sciences allow us to find mathematical constructs that make good predictions within specific constraints or that have not yet been falsified, just because something is true in probability theory does not make it true in reality.
anotherman554 4y ago
If humans lacked free will, probability would still be useful, because humans use it when they have imperfect information about an upcoming event.
yamtaddle 4y ago
> In fact, it's an arguably more ignorant version of Calvinism, because it requires that one completely dismisses any knowledge they have of probability theory. So it's the "smarter" Calvinism that requires you be ignorant of 20th century mathematical advances. I entirely fail to see how probability theory means it's impossible for the universe to be deterministic.
jandrewrogers 4y ago
I don't follow this argument. The coexistence of probability theory and strict determinism create no issues in modern mathematics.

GoblinSlayer 4y ago

If causality is broken, that means hard indeterminism.

anotherman554 4y ago

It could just mean causality has more dimensions than we can perceive. It doesn't mean it is nonexistent.

marcus_holmes 4y ago
So my decision to have a ham sandwich for lunch is determined by some meta-universe that created the starting conditions for this universe, and allows for the breach in causality? Or somehow is involved in the backwards-arrow of quantum events that the article talks about so the universe cannot turn out any other way? I dunno, seems like a "God of the gaps" thing - we can speculate on meta-meta-universes endlessly. Including one where my decision to have a ham sandwich disturbs the state of a yet higher dimension that sets the starting parameters of your higher dimension and once again I have free will.
- anotherman554 4y ago
  Right, physicists seem to generally agree there are parts or dimensions of the universe we cannot directly measure. If scientists can't predict whether you will eat a ham sandwich for lunch or not, it won't be clear if they can't predict it because you have "free will" or because we have limited access to information on how the universe works.

explaininjs 4y ago

Scott Aaronson's "Ghost in the Quantum Turing Machine" tackled this question in a way I found enlightening. It's a bit of a dense read (I needed a plane trip to sit down and focus on it), but it presents a compelling case for the possible reversal of time arrows when it comes to the effects of quantum indeterminism on macro scale interactions. In short: what if humans, somehow, someway, have the ability to "influence" the resolution of unobserved universal start-state quantum noise in order to affect our "will" onto the universe? Furthermore, what experiments could be done to validate or invalidate aspects of this hypothesis? https://arxiv.org/abs/1306.0159 https://arxiv.org/abs/1306.0159

marcus_holmes 4y ago
That seems crazy - that my decision to have a ham sandwich for lunch had to be propagated all the way back to the start of the universe in order to happen ;) And yes, provability is a major problem with all these kinds of theories. We don't have a parallel universe handy as a control, and just saying "I am not going to have a ham sandwich tomorrow" isn't a viable experiment.
- explaininjs 4y ago
  I interpret it as a sort of entropic antennae... each person (brain? qbit?) is tuned into what might be considered an allocated "entropy bandwidth". Some decisions, like whether you eat a ham bandwidth tomorrow utilize* practically none of that bandwidth. Others, what you might consider "major life decisions" might utilize* a ton of bandwidth. Some people might be gifted with a "larger" antennae, allowing them to utilize* a higher amount of entropy per second, or per lifetime. We might call these great artists, or generally any genius-level intellectuals. Alternatively, bat-shit crazy people. *: On "utilize". A central debate (the central debate?) seems to be what sort of "state access mechanism" this maps to in our lexicon: "{reading|writing} {global|local|shared} {bandwidth|memory}"
- yyyk 4y ago
  >had to be propagated all the way back to the start of the universe in order to happen ;) Technically, casualty required that anyway. My understanding that it's infinity in space, not time that matters here. i.e. predicting your decision to have a ham sandwich may require predicting the entire universe and since we're part of the universe and can't look from 'outside' that decision would be unpredictable from inside the universe. >And yes, provability is a major problem with all these kinds of theories. I think showing that quantum effects are negligible for human brains would do, at least regarding your decision to have a ham sandwich?

layer8 4y ago

The compatibilist view is that there is no contradiction between free will and determinism, because free will refers to macro states and determinism refers to micro states. In addition, in the many-worlds view of quantum mechanics, we don’t follow just a single sequence of events, but all physically possible sequences of events, where the points where sequences branch off each other can correspond to different decisions we “freely” took. Meaning, when we make a decision, all applicable options of choice will become actual reality.

user81436628 4y ago
[dead]
lupire 4y ago
Where exactly might the free will be, then? Compatibilism is a fancy way of saying "free will so much does not exist that what determists call free will isn't even a valid definition to use as a starting point for investigating an answer." It's not an answer to the question, it's a denial of it. Another, simpler interpretation of Compatibilism is "if free will doesn't exist, then believing it exists or not has 0 effect on anything, because our beliefs are predetermined, and so at human scales the answers Yes and No are equivalent in all observable ways".
- GoblinSlayer 4y ago
  Definition is theory, free will is reality. When they diverge, it's theory which is improved to match reality, not the other way around.

why-el 4y ago

My favorite sentence on free will comes from Chomsky (who I think was probably quoting someone else): "if we don't have free will, then why are you arguing the point?"

electrondood 4y ago

Causality isn't broken; the universe is "simultaneously causal and teleological," because it's superdetermined. There also isn't any free will, because there isn't actually any agent who could have it. Actions we perceive as volitional actually arise in the brain up to 7s before we "choose" them. The sense of a "me" is a post hoc add-on that claims credit for everything, in order to unite the disparate phenomena that comprise the sense of self. There isn't actually any "me," and recognizing this is what the word "enlightenment" refers to.

marcus_holmes 4y ago
Again this seems like a "God of the gaps" thing - if this universe isn't strictly deterministic then it's superdetermined by a meta universe, and so on
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- lupire 4y ago
  What if the "so on" is infinite?
  - marcus_holmes 4y ago
    Turtles all the way down ;)
- electrondood 4y ago
  I think it's the opposite. You need a "God of the gaps" in the form of a "person" (actually a collection of phenomena. + the phenomena of identification with these) to explain free will and agency, which defies experimental evidence. The comment that superdeterminism requires a higher-order determinism, which itself requires a yet-higher-order determinism... I think you're confusing it with a causal mindset. If the universe is effectively a recording, why does it need any ultimate cause? Causal thinking would only make sense from a perspective within that recording. Of course we want to know "why is any of this here?" But what if the ultimate question doesn't actually have an answer?