20 ms·
Can you use your "free will"? Try your hand
- thghtihadanacct 3y agoBetter than a flipped coin
- ilaksh 3y agoIt sounds like the only way to "beat" this is to try to find some unrelated feed of noise to base the key presses on. Because when you actually do think about it deliberately, you fall into a pattern. One way to do this without an external data source might be to just visualize (or look at) each object in turn clockwise of a room you are familiar with. Or use any other random source of data. Then come up with a rule that applies about half the time to some objects and half to the other. Or rather, come up with the rule before thinking of the room. Maybe count the number of letters in the name of the object. If it's even, hit the f key, and if odd, hit d.
- von_lohengramm 3y agoGranted, I only tested this for a few minutes, but I found that if I thought about "repeat" vs "switch" instead of "d" vs "f", then I could reliably get under 50% prediction. Sure, the prediction rate was high 40's, but that at least means I won! A lot of it comes down to avoiding auto-piloting into a 50/50 distribution. Subconsciously, "random" means approaches 50/50 since that's how it works, right? I'm sure given enough time, it'll be able to predict me with >50% accuracy, but that's entirely okay. Random doesn't have to be fairly distributed. As long as it doesn't get to 100% then I still have personhood :^)
- stavros 3y ago50% is random, though. 40% means it's right the other way.
- fortran77 3y agoI was consistantly able to get it to be at or near 50% for long periods simply by typing English sentences in morse code, "f" for dot and "g" for dash
- valleyer 3y agoNice. I don't even know Morse code, but simply pretending to code in some letters (saying "dit" and "dah" in my head) worked.
- endominus 3y agoFrom the Github description, a quote: "In a class I taught at Berkeley, I did an experiment where I wrote a simple little program that would let people type either “f” or “d” and would predict which key they were going to push next. It’s actually very easy to write a program that will make the right prediction about 70% of the time. Most people don’t really know how to type randomly. They’ll have too many alternations and so on. There will be all sorts of patterns, so you just have to build some sort of probabilistic model. Even a very crude one will do well. I couldn’t even beat my own program, knowing exactly how it worked. I challenged people to try this and the program was getting between 70% and 80% prediction rates. Then, we found one student that the program predicted exactly 50% of the time. We asked him what his secret was and he responded that he “just used his free will.”" I can get it to about 60%. Given the algorithm used, it seems like it should be trivial to "trick" it by just cycling through novel 5-grams over and over, but to be honest I can't be bothered to check. And that would be rather contrary to the point of the exercise, if somewhat undercutting of the premise that free will is equivalent or comparable to randomness.
- aidenn0 3y ago> I can get it to about 60%. Given the algorithm used, it seems like it should be trivial to "trick" it by just cycling through novel 5-grams over and over, but to be honest I can't be bothered to check. And that would be rather contrary to the point of the exercise, if somewhat undercutting of the premise that free will is equivalent or comparable to randomness. Right; if you guess completely randomly it will hover around 50%, but if you choose the least-likely 5-gram from your history, then it should end up less than 50%.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ACow_Adonis 3y agoyes, I've done some of these before. Ive gotten up above 200 key presses at ~50% before getting bored. my secret was decidedly less sexy than free will though. i just had XX years of working as a statistician and having a better intuition as to what random strings and numbers actually look like :/
- coreyp_1 3y agoI used my free will. I chose to not do it.
- Smoosh 3y agoWas that really free will, or were you destined to not do it?
- ImAnAmateur 3y agoFate decided that the website doesn't work on mobile phones.
- LouisSayers 3y agoMaybe I have free will?... was consistently hovering just under 50%
- Buttons840 3y agoI got it down to 43%. I had my eyes closed most of the time, only opened them twice; saw a 57% and a 43%.
- munchler 3y agoCareful. If you get significantly below 50%, then you could be predicted by the negation of this algorithm. To truly beat it, I think you want to be right around 50%.
- senectus1 3y agoheh.. interesting.. I lined my finger's up to the keys, then looked away from the screen while I just "randomly" tapped to the beat of some music I was listening to. it still guessed 70%
- omoikane 3y agoThe prediction algorithm is actually very straightforward[1]. It's a fun exercise to write a sequence generator specifically to defeat it. Here is a sequence that can get the prediction rate down to 13%: ddddd dfddd dffdd dfdfd ddfff ddfdd fdffd dffdf ddfff fdfdf dfffd ffdff fffff dffff ffddf fffdf dfffd ffdff ffffd ddfff Generated using this Perl script: my %table = (); my $s = "fffff"; for(my $i = 0; $i < 100; $i++) { if( $i % 5 == 0 ) { print $i % 50 == 0 ? "\n" : " "; } my $output; if( exists $table{$s} ) { # Output opposite of what would be predicted. $output = $table{$s}{"f"} > $table{$s}{"d"} ? "d" : "f"; $table{$s}{$output}++; } else { # No prediction yet. Original source defaults to "f", so we will # output "d". $output = "d"; $table{$s}{"d"} = 1; $table{$s}{"f"} = 0; } print $output; $s = substr($s, 1) . $output; } print "\n"; If you can type carefully, increasing the length to 200 brings the prediction rate down to 10%. [1] https://github.com/elsehow/aaronson-oracle/blob/master/src/index.js https://github.com/elsehow/aaronson-oracle/blob/master/src/i...
- quickthrower2 3y agoThe creator knew you would do that...
- sublinear 3y agoPlease elaborate.
- fsckboy 3y agoyou wouldn't do anything else
- zakki 3y agothat is part of the 'free will'
- quickthrower2 3y agoJust a joke. If I explain it it becomes unfunny.
- ShamelessC 3y agoMake sure to blacklist the site in your given vim browser plugin if you're like me and immediately mashed the 'd' key and closed the tab.
- kerkeslager 3y agoI feel like there's an "aesthetic" to randomness, which I see in examples of Japanese wabi sabi. I don't know how to describe what that looks like in keypresses exactly, but if I imitate that, I'm able to keep the rolling average at <52% over a few hundred keypresses done with my eyes closed. I hit 51% three times in a row. I question the relation to free will however--will seems more related to preference than randomness to me, and a better example of that would be something like "I prefer the f key". Conflating randomness with free will has always seemed like a weak attempt to argue for the existence of free will to me.
- nerdponx 3y agoMaybe I've just seen way too many random sequences, but I was able to hold it around 40% for a while. True randomness tends to generate sequences that are slightly "uncomfortable" or "inhuman" -- I can't think of a better way to describe it. So I just kept trying to generate the least-comfortable sequences I could think of, and it worked alright. There should be a lot more long runs than you'd imagine.
- kerkeslager 3y agoWelllll... if you were holding it at 40% you were actually not random, you were doing the opposite of the model.
- xwdv 3y agoThis is one of the kind of tests we can perform on an individual in the future if we suspect they are artificial. A standard human should be fairly predictable, but an artificial person is more likely to produce true random patterns when asked to type randomly.
- prakhar897 3y agojust using fingers from both hand and looking away from screen brings it down to 50%.
- 924412409 3y agome too. using two hands seems pretty random enough.
- raincole 3y agoI fail to see how it's related to free will. I can look at the digits of PI and press d and f depending it's odd or even. So what does it prove? Nothing. Being able to beat this algorithm doesn't mean that I have free will, and choose to fall into patterns (knowing the PI solution exists) doesn't mean I don't.
- richk449 3y agoIt’s explained on the linked site that the free will comment is a joke.
- vkgfx 3y agoIt seems that it tests both free will and sense of humor.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- simonh 3y agoIf the sequence is from an external source or reference, then the individual key presses are not a result of your free choices.
- erhaetherth 3y agoHe's free to copy who/whatever he pleases.
- simonh 3y agoOf course, but if I do a marathon on a scooter am I really doing a marathon?
- praptak 3y agoIf your behaviour can be predicted then you don't have free will. Obviously you can argue whether this really predicts human behaviour or even the above implication itself (for example I think compatibilism kinda disagrees with it) but I'd say it is related.
- miika 3y agoThe question is never if we have free will or not. The question is if we are in a state where free will is available or not. For example, when I’m aware that there is space around myself, then I’m also aware that there are thoughts, feeling in the body, breath etc. In this state, I believe, it’s possible to choose. In this test I can choose the only press the other key and this algorithm doesn’t do so well. Then something triggers my attention, I react, I forget that there is space, breath, thoughts etc. and I start to execute my conditioning, which is highly predictable and free will simply isn’t available at that point. Then eventually something pulls me back to the presence, awareness. I remember there is space, breath, mind, feelings, emotions. I’m home. I’m free.
- vasco 3y agoThe universe led up to this moment where you fool yourself into thinking you have free will just cause you sat still for a bit. Doesn't mean much. Think about it, if the universe is all predetermined, how peaceful your mental state is or isn't has no impact on it. We all either have free will or not, but breathing deep isn't gonna trigger it.
- otabdeveloper4 3y agoFree will is any random process with an asymptotically infinite number of degrees of freedom, by definition. Are humans such a process? Who knows, but attempts to model individual humans have certainly failed before. (We need lots of humans in aggregate to successfully model them, once the central limit theorem starts working.)
- vidarh 3y agoI challenge you to get any more than a single digit percent of any representative sample of people to agree a random process is free will by definition. It's one of exceedingly few definitions I've heard in decades of discussing the subject that I'll agree doesn't immediately make free will impossible, but at the same time it's one that too me at least exemplifies something that is neither free nor will.
- hanselot 3y agoDo I win because I didn't press either?
- Kunsang 3y agoMobile users dont have any free will I guess.
- phanimahesh 3y agoThis feels more true than it should.
- jimmaswell 3y ago"Hacker's Keyboard" was supposed to let you pull up the keyboard anywhere but some system update broke it. I got around it with Teamviewer to my desktop.
- cubano 3y agoApparently someone hasn't been reading their user agreements very closely, have they?
- Maken 3y agoThey are slaves to the machine.
- Uzomidy 3y agoWhee, I did pretty well against it, managed to be at around 30%. https://imgur.com/a/GmaE45k https://imgur.com/a/GmaE45k (And no, I didn't write a Perl script, or have multiple goes to game the score, I just “tried not to do what I thought it'd think I'd do”.)
- mewpmewp2 3y agoI also got under 50%, started out with 10% actually, which finally went to 36%. But I feel like it's just because I threw in many of single keys in a row there.
- Uzomidy 3y agoThat's what you need to do. Most people think streaks are unlikely, which biases people to void even small streaks. The algorithm expects that, so to fool the algorithm initially, you need to tilt towards streaks, and then when begins to pick up on that, tilt away.
- naet 3y agoSomething about the feedback of being able to see when it was guessing wrong made me beat way more often than 50%, just by mixing it up or being a little unpredictable when I thought it was going to catch on to me or guessed a few in a row. I was consistently in the 20-30% for a large amount of guesses. But when I started trying to type random keys as fast as possible it started getting a lot more right.
- KerryJones 3y ago100%, I just alternated "f" & "d".
- qaq 3y agohmm hovered around 53-54%
- est 3y agoI constantly get 55%-ish rate. This is close to random guessing.
- Joel_Mckay 3y agoI chose not to press a key, but may change my mind at some random nexus in the future. Thus, we are at an stalemate for now, as the input event is yet to be observed. =)
- notShabu 3y agoFor some reason it reminds me of Dune's sandworm and how you needed to "Walk without rhythm" Being able to generate randomness is something only nature can do so by mimicking it you blend in with it.
- boothby 3y agoExamining the code, my first thought was to throw it a de Bruijn sequence[1]: a cyclic sequence of length 2^n that contains every string of length n as a subsequence. It should (and does) learn a length-32 de Bruijn sequence after only a couple of repeats, but performs miserably on a length-64 sequence. With a little (computer-)elbow grease, one can find a sequence with perfectly free will. After a short time, it starts repeating every... that's right, 64 characters. So of course, we want to find the shortest possible prefix. ddddddfdddddffddddfffdddfdfdddff ffddfddfdffddffdfddfffffdfdfdfff dffdffffffffdffffffdffffddffffff dfdfffdffdffffddfffdfdfffdddffff ffdffdffffddfdffddffdfddfffdfdfd fffdddffdffdfddffddfdffddddfffff fdffffddfffdfdfdfffdddfdfdddffdf fdfddfddffddfdffddddfdfdfdddfddf dddddffffffdffffddfffdfdfffdddff dffdfddffddfdffddddfdfdfdddfddfd etc. Note that the last two lines are a de Bruijn sequence. Repeat those until you get bored. That's how you exercise your free will. There is a deterministic bias: when in doubt, the page guesses "f". If it flipped a coin instead, a few experiments show that the greedy algorithm I and omoikane use cannot beat 25% for long. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Bruijn_sequence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Bruijn_sequence
- block_dagger 3y agoI was at 54% my first try by basically alternating between 10 fs, then 10 ds, then back and forth 3-5 times, then repeat.
- Biologist123 3y agoAn excellent and freaky 2.5 page short story in Nature on a very similar theme. If you have the time, enjoy: https://www.nature.com/articles/436150a https://www.nature.com/articles/436150a
- ungamedplayer 3y agoA choice between two is not a reflection of free will. Impress me more when you can get 60 percent across all keys on the keyboard.
- IIAOPSW 3y agoWill is a tree structure. Things that act due to the design or machinations of known forces are not free will. The computer, sophisticated though it may be, does all it does because the programmer wills it so. The things you are paid to do for your job are not your free will but rather the will of your employer. Whatever compulsory force lies one node above in the cause and effect tree, that's the thing whose will is being exerted. When we can't see any higher than a given node, we are left with a free-floating will (aka a free will). It may not actually be free in a deterministic universe, but since it is impossible to traverse the tree ad infinitum, it is a useful fiction to have a cutoff point and call whatever node you made it to "free".
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- foota 3y agoI wonder... If you don't have access to randomness, e.g., you need to base your choice off some fixed program, and with some limited program length, in theory a perfect observer should be able to guess with certainty your next choices after some time, since there's only a fixed number of possible programs? Of course this isn't of much practical use...
- jawarner 3y agoYes, the possible programs are enumerable, and you can start searching with the least complex programs and work your way up in complexity. Once you find a program that explains the available data, you cannot guarantee it will continue to explain possible future data, unless, like you mention, you constrain the program space to a finite set. What you're describing is generally how people make models of the external world.
- Cthulhu_ 3y agoYes, and this is actually a challenge in cryptography; a random number generator relies on 'random' inputs to work properly, e.g. keyboard / mouse inputs, time of day, random electricity noise, lava lamps (https://blog.cloudflare.com/randomness-101-lavarand-in-production/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/randomness-101-lavarand-in-produ...). If these inputs or parts thereof are predictable, randomness decreases, making the cryptography ultimately weaker.
- larschdk 3y agoI can keep it quite consistently at ~45%, by changing my pattern.
- laurieg 3y agoI hammered away for a while and the program was always around 50%. I wanted to be surprised at how accurate the prediction was but I simply felt let down. Funny how that works
- fsckboy 3y agoi was hammering at 18% and I felt like a failure
- sacrosancty 3y ago[dead]
- throwaway71271 3y agoi was pressing f and j instead of f and d, and was always getting 100% and i was freaking out :)
- elaus 3y agoInitially I pressed S and D and thought it was some kind of joke: Only predicting and counting the F presses, so it will always be 100% correct :)
- eimrine 3y agoI tried this with a coin and it fails to predict the coin in significantly more often than 50% events. What about human can not generate sequences of a decent randomness I knew since a Statistics course.
- kleiba 3y agoFirst try: 0% prediction accuracy. What is trying to achieve?
- gloosx 3y agoto show that a real free will is to stop right when you beat it :)
- Quinzel 3y agoI had an accuracy of around 35%. I closed my eyes, didn't think at all, and just smashed both keys as fast as I could. When I opened my eyes and started to think about how I could get it lower, the accuracy in predictions actually increased.
- kaangiray26 3y agoTake digits of pi, press 'd' if the digit is < 5, and else press 'f'. Now, what would be the prediction rate? Does it mean that the sequence was found to be created with free will? :)
- moss2 3y ago53%
- Borrible 3y ago"I" flipped a coin and pressed the keys accordingly. Whatever this particular "I" is, does it have "free will"?
- _8j50 3y agoThis doesn't work on mobile. Free will and self-determination are not the same thing. Free will means the consequences and outcomes you face can be tracked back to decisions you made. Everything can be pre-destined at a level that transcends time and space as we understand it, and you can still have free will. Imagine starting a program you wrote, you know exactly what it will do given you already know the exact parameters of it's execution environment and inputs. If the program has free will, it means that it will make decisions without those decisions being hard coded into it. In other words, its decision making is free from the will of the programmer or other programs, however, the environment, what other programs do and how the programmer adapts to the program's decision will affect the outcome. The programmer, being outside of the software reality the program is facing is able to know what free will decisions will be made and pre-plan all things accordingly. To put it a bit diffrently, this measurement and people in general confuse free will with controllable outcomes. Free will does not mean you have any control over outcomes or that your decisions cannot and have not already been predicted and known. It just means that you are allowed to make decisions based on certain input and environemnt. In a moral context, this is relevant because you get held responsible for or credited for decisions you make. Your will is free because despite outside influence or even coercion you still get a choice, even if your choice in the end had no effect on anything, you were allowed to make it anyways. If your will isn't free, you would be a mere processor executing instructions, processing decisions that were already made by others. Either your will is free, your will is not free and you are an agent of soemone else's will or some might say it's all randomness (a concept incompatible with our knowledge of causal reality).
- vidarh 3y agoYour definition of free will is a compatibilist one, and a lot of people reacts strongly negatively to compatibilist definitions when you turn explain that in a deterministic universe they are compatible with you not actually being able to make a different choice if we "rewound time". To me, a compatibilist "free will" is not free - it's an illusion. Being aware the "free" part of compatibilist free will is an illusion is important, because it has major moral implications. E.g. if people could not have acted differently than they have, then ascribing responsibility to people for their actions can reasonably be considered immoral. Your last paragraph is assuming there is agency to start with, something which is not a given, and so the argument is not logically valid as stated.
- makach 3y agoI could get it down to ~51/53% by hammering the keys. I think that is pretty good.
- chiefalchemist 3y agoWe are creatures of habit. We have biases (read: short cuts), because it's too expensive* to recalculate every decision from scratch everytime. Many decisions are influenced, but that doesn't mean we can't override such paths if necessary, or that they might evolve over time as outcomes change. * Think: fight or flight. Slow to decide flight could lead to death.
- FinnKuhn 3y agoI tried it and I need to say that it guessing correctly between 47-53% doesn't really seem that great, considering random guesses could probably land you in the same ballpark...
- laurent_du 3y agoYou have more free will than me.
- Agentlien 3y agoDoes this prediction work well for others? For me it hovers between 48-51% so basically a coin flip...
- sacrosancty 3y ago[dead]
- aronhegedus 3y agoI believe that if you ask people to actually toss a coin 100 times, vs make up 100 tosses, it's very easy to know who made it up. Humans will not like to do HHHHHH for example, even though you'd expect a sequence of 6 to come up etc. Really like the website, I'm a fan on these minimal websites
- kunley 3y ago..around 43% in several, not-so-short runs. Does going below 50% make me more human? ;) xDxD
- yreg 3y agoSuperhuman, actually.
- skinkestek 3y agoFun experiment. More importantly I can use my free will to stop engaging with it and go back to doing something productive. My 2c: Regardless of philosophy, free will is something you can have. One must fight for it,but I think it is worth the fight.
- eilefsen 3y agopretty consistently hovering between 52% and 55% for me.
- The_Colonel 3y ago33% for me. I did try to intentionally "fool" it, but still kinda disappointing it was so easy.
- AlexanderTheGr8 3y agowhat would be the statistically optimal model for this problem? the author is using a simply 5-gram prediction model. makes me wonder if some kind of hidden markov model would be optimal for this problem but not sure how exactly. thoughts from anyone proficient in statistics?
- ctenb 3y agoI got down to 0% on my first try... I'm afraid I don't get it :D I typed dddfdddfdffffddddddf
- 6stringmerc 3y agoYeah I didn’t fucking play I win
- shaftoe444 3y agoIf you predict what they will predict and do the opposite is that perfect free will or the opposite?
- yreg 3y agoI think the framing of this experiment is bad. It is actually about challenging the user to come up with a random sequence, which is pretty difficult without a coin to flip, an irrational number to copy, etc. When I just "randomly" mash the keys, the prediction rate is around 70%. I have to intentionally focus to avoid patterns as much as I can and then I'm able to pull it down to 54%. Dan Ariely[1] did a similar spiel when teaching according to his book. He asked half of class to flip a coin and write down the sequence. The other half was supposed to write down a random sequence without the coin flips. Then he collected the papers, read them out and he claims he was able to tell almost every student whether they did the real coin flips or just simulated ones. [1] - yes, his papers were retracted because he manipulated data
- tankenmate 3y agoI managed to keep it below 45% without any real thought for inputs greater than 100 keystrokes. The biggest problem humans have with randomness is that they underestimate the possibility of long runs (they are rare but not that rare).
- yreg 3y agoHow do you do long runs without any real thought?
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 3y ago67%. Am I a prime candidate to be replaced by AI?
- Fricken 3y agoWhat makes free will free? Dd we mean free from the laws of thermodynamics? I don't understand how free will can be regarded as anything other than a religious belief or superstition.
- vjk800 3y agoAfter reading how it works, I can get to around 50% by doing the following: pick a pattern of f's and d's of length between 1-5. Type that pattern. Pause for a second or two. Then change the pattern. Patterns can be, for example: only d's four times; alternate between f and d three times; single f; one f for every two d's two times. In fact, now that I "get it", I don't even need to consciously pick a specific pattern, I just smash the buttons and "somehow" change the way I smash them every five or so smashes. I get around 50% prediction rate pretty consistently with this.
- vjk800 3y agoReplying to my own comment with another method to get a low prediction rate: pick a song or a beat and drum the buttons to the tune of that song (how you map more than two different sounds to just two buttons is up to you).
- dmd 3y agoI don't really understand what's going on here. I got 52%. My 6 yo daughter got 54%. My 9 yo daughter got 53%. What are people doing who are getting much higher scores?
- mcv 3y agoI think they type less randomly and stick to some repeating patterns.
- gloosx 3y agoi started pressing and eventually it showed 0%. At this moment i knew i beat the machine because i was free to stop. There is part of free will in the amount of data you wanna give too :)
- karmakaze 3y agoIn what way is being unpredictable considered "free will"? Of course it's just being clickbaity but worth mentioning. I've seen this better used to show that humans are poor sources of randomness. Is there a difference between non-determinism and a free will choice? The latter seems to be a contradiction. A choice implies a reason which would be a cause, thus determinism. This test is asking to make random 'choices'. This does have value in something such as sports.
- legacynl 3y agoIt's hard to come up with a scientifically valid test for something as wide and vague as 'free will'. So what happens is that the tests are designed to test for very specific things that are then used to reason better about vague things like 'free will'. What this test is actually focused on is decision making. The participant in the test is asked to randomly press either button A or B. The cognitive/mental experience of the participant is the following sequence of operations that seem to happen sequentially in time: 1. The participants is asked which button to push. 2. the participant ponders his decision. 3. the participant pushes the chosen button. But what this test shows is that while the participants internal monologue is still 'deciding' whether to press A or B in step 2. The software is already able to accurately predict the answer at step 1. So this indicates that even though your internal monologue might still be going "hmm should I pick A or B?", the decision, where your internal monologue eventually will end up, has already been made. This is what the clickbait headline refers to; even though it feels like we humans are able to dictate and direct our thoughts, it seems that it doesn't entirely works that way.
- PunchTornado 3y agoHmm, I don't get it. The prediction was accurate 49% of the time, which is what I was expecting in a coin toss like this one. In which way does it predict the answer at step 1 if it's a binary choice with 50% accuracy?
- karmakaze 3y agoI don't imagine this is how a top sports competitor outwits their opponent. I expect that they have a theory of mind anticipating what the opponent expects then does something different. If we evolved in this manner, does it help to pretend that the machine has a mind to theorize about?
- ForwardObserver 3y agoIt got more than half wrong, so worse than chance : Observation- acqhabits predicted: f, observed: d predicted: f, observed: d predicted: f, observed: d predicted: f, observed: d predicted: f, observed: f predicted: f, observed: d predicted: f, observed: d predicted: d, observed: d predicted: f, observed: d predicted: f, observed: f predicted: f, observed: f predicted: f, observed: f predicted: f, observed: d predicted: f, observed: d predicted: f, observed: f predicted: f, observed: f
- ForwardObserver 3y agoIt got less than half right, so worse than just guessing. Observation- predicting learned habits and other cognitive-effort preserving strategies your brain uses are not a refutation of free will. The whole point of habits, as Marvin Minsky pointed out in Society of Mind, is to save us from having to think through every little decision, i.e. to make ourselves predictable and unburden ourselves from decisions. So in this instance, performing "randomly" in a low-stakes event is likely to reflexively trigger off a strategy in the brain which avails itself of some emergent pattern which serves the purpose of reducing cognitive effort. Call this test-taker strategy 1, i.e. just stab at the keys "randomly". Another approach for the test-taker, call it strategy 2, is to expend considerable cognitive effort trying to model the machine's own model of the test taker's emerging behavior by observing the machine's responses, and then out fox it. (HN is great b/c I know everyone followed that). That's what I did, but it took real effort. Pretty soon, I wanted to drop the heavy thing and just go back to strategy 1. IMHO the underlying assumption, that this is a test of "free will", is just flawed. Most people will enact strategy 1, be predictable and "lose". predicted: f, observed: d predicted: f, observed: d predicted: f, observed: d predicted: f, observed: d predicted: f, observed: f predicted: f, observed: d predicted: f, observed: d predicted: d, observed: d predicted: f, observed: d predicted: f, observed: f predicted: f, observed: f predicted: f, observed: f predicted: f, observed: d predicted: f, observed: d predicted: f, observed: f predicted: f, observed: f
- lupire 3y agoIt's impossible to prove that free will does not exist. I could be losing on purpose. However, what the game does is refute a particular attempt to prove that will does exist.
- NateEag 3y agoI don't see how. I think it's closer to an attempted refutation of a strawman. As one who leans towards belief in free will and also towards compatibilism, and more importantly originates from a culture with a shared belief in free will (conservative Christian evangelicalism), I don't think anyone I've known who believed in it meant "I believe my actions are fundamentally unpredictable." I think they just meant that they genuinely have an ability to choose between the options they perceive, and then to attempt to enact that choice.
- pygy_ 3y agoI can’t test it on mobile, but the last time this page made the rounds, I was able to defeat the prediction algorithm by mindlessly tapping improvised rhythms (I’m used to doing that when I’m bored).
- DonHopkins 3y agoReminds me of the "second guessing" menus that one of Ted Selker's students came up with at Media Lab (sorry I don't remember her name). It inspired me to implement the same idea with pie menus, many years ago (when JavaScript was young and XML and XSLT were cool): JavaScript Pie Menus https://youtu.be/R5k4gJK-aWw?t=255 https://youtu.be/R5k4gJK-aWw?t=255 Transcript: This was inspired by some research at MIT Media Lab. This is a demonstration of pie menus that guess what your second choice would be. When I click up [a pie menu], it allows me to select my favorite color. Let me zoom in here. Well I think it's blue [point at blue]. No, red [point at red]! Ok. So it says: "I think your favorite color is red, but your second favorite color is blue." And that's based on the fact that when I popped it up, even though I [finally] selected red, I spend the most time selecting [pointing at] blue. People tend to browse the pie menus like this, looking at things, and when they find what they like, they'll click it. But then they'll pause to consider things. So I can click up the menu, and go [point at] yellow, oh no, I'll just cancel it. And now it's guessing my favorite color is yellow, even though I didn't select one. This is a really simple elegant idea that I applied to pie menus, and it can be applied to a lot of other things, like e-commerce, or art galleries, or whatever. I wrote more about it earlier in a response to a question about exploratory pointing (what I call "browsing" and "reselection"): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17123091 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17123091 pvg on May 22, 2018 | root | parent | next [–] Although, since you're on the line, I have a question about your last post. In all the research and measurement that's gone into pie menus, have people looked into 'exploratory pointing' in pie menus? It's very common when looking through a linear menu with a mouse (many people also do it with text selection while reading) but it's super clunky and jittery in the actual pie menus I've seen in the wild. [...]
- wittjeff 3y agoPage & Neuringer (1985) showed that you could teach pigeons to be more variable. The discussion around that phenomenon has similar branches: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3501427/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3501427/
- wittjeff 3y agoMore recent review: A Critical Review of the Support for Variability as an Operant Dimension https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33024930/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33024930/
- gus_massa 3y agoFrom a comment in a previous similar project (I can't find it now), an easy method to defeat the predictor is to use 4 keys instead of 2. Instead of d and f, press s, d, f and e. The other keys are ignored by the program but the create enough confusion in your finger to make a more random sequence.
- mo_42 3y agoIf you understand how this works, the result of the game becomes invalid. Imagine, you're a complicated machine implemented in Game of Life. The game is another not so complicated machine in Game of Life and you start exchanging messages. As soon as you understand how the game works, you can simulate the internal state in your mind. This way, you can reach any score you like. So the result becomes invalid.
- incomingpain 3y agoI don't personally believe in free will, but I got a shockingly low prediction rate given it ought to be around 50%. Highest it got to was 25% briefly.
- lo_zamoyski 3y agoFree will has nothing to do with randomness.
- alexmuro 3y agoThis is one of the best things I've read on the internet in a minute. It's a modern Koan. Just use your freewill. Delightful.
- IggleSniggle 3y agoThe whole concept of free will is ridiculous; it implies that a person is isolated to themselves, when of course we are a soup of ecosystems inside of a soup of ecosystems. Asking the question "do we have free will" is really just an encoded way of defending your sense of ego. Even if you answer "no, there is no free will," it still presupposes the concept of "I".
- marcusverus 3y agoHow does free will imply that a person is isolated to themselves?
- SirMaster 3y agoHovers around 50% for me. So it's no better than a random guess it seems.
- Balgair 3y agoThe true test of free will is how long you spend on the site at all?
- earthboundkid 3y agoFree will is not an event in time and space. It's like examining a program and saying there can't be a programmer because everything the program does is predetermined. Yes, but the predetermining is itself determined at another level.
- DonHopkins 3y agoI run emacs for months under screen, and whenever I need a temporary buffer I generate a randomly named one by going ^X B aksjdlasjd, and half the time there's already a buffer with that name full of old text!
- davidguetta 3y agoI got 54% witout too much difficulty. not sure what to conclude
- photochemsyn 3y agoIt's easy to get 50% by flipping a coin or rolling a die. Choosing to use this method is an example of free will overcoming determinism. As far as why humans are natural pattern-generators, music is illustrative. If timing and frequency are random, that's not enjoyable music. Probably has something to do with resonance and the fundamentals of neuron biochemistry, e.g. the neuronal recharge time after firing, etc. This seems to be a general feature of evolution, look at squid color patterns or reproductive timing in algae and so on. It's probably a fundamental feature of all living systems, and could be linked to astronomical phenomenon, orbital parameters and light/dark cycles, and even down to subatomic processes, in which oscillation is always going on - but at this level, true randomness seems to exist in various processes like the timing of nuclear decays in a sample of matter. This inherent randomness at the root of everything seems quite real - hence, free will exists. I guess.
- scblock 3y agoAs accurate as a coin flip. Not particularly interesting in the end.
- getpost 3y agoRobert Sapolsky has a new book on free will, Determined[0], and he's doing lots of podcasts[1] about it. I started with Origins[2]. [0] https://www.amazon.com/Determined-Science-Life-without-Free/dp/0525560971/ https://www.amazon.com/Determined-Science-Life-without-Free/... [1] https://www.listennotes.com/search/?q=robert%20sapolsky&sort_by_date=0&scope=episode&offset=0&language=Any%20language&len_min=0 https://www.listennotes.com/search/?q=robert%20sapolsky&sort... [2] https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/the-origins/robert-sapolsky-the-illusion-fSCaOelWHYM/ https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/the-origins/robert-sapo...
- nitwit005 3y agofffddd win. That was strangely easy. I guess I have free will, a soul, God is real, and life has meaning.
- jwarden 3y agoI sat in a cafe overlooking a busy street, and pressed f when a man walked by and d when a woman walked by, and got 51%.
- tuanx5 3y agoThis reminds me of a programming assignment we had in college -- you had to write a rock paper scissor bot that went up against other students.
- ivmaykov 3y agoJust confirmed that my brain is much worse at producing randomness than python's random module. The site predicted my own "random" key strokes with ~67% accuracy. It was able to predict the output of a trivial python program that chose randomly between 'f' and 'd' with only 53% accuracy, and that probably would have converged to 50% with a larger sample.
- smaudet 3y agoInitially I was getting around 40-50% - after so many clicks it would start to tick up to 55% and hold fairly regularly. I could of course influence my patterns but I could also tell I was re-using some patterns, and getting bored of varying them after around 55%. This was fairly trivial for me, but its interesting that many people can't do this (easily).
- nathias 3y agothis has nothing to do with free will, only what our intuitive idea of randomness is
- afiodorov 3y agoI've long been very curious how one would generate a reasonably good source of randomness in a practical way without using a computer. Perhaps one could think of a song and then try to deduce randomness from the first letter of each word. I haven't found a way yet, any ideas? I occasionally want to use a reasonably good source of randomness when e.g. picking a board-game player or picking a random item on a menu.
- arcastroe 3y agoAsk a friend to pick a number (unbounded). They usually give something in the thousands or ten thousands. Whatever number they give you, divide it by the number of choices and take the remainder. Mod 2, mod 3, mod 4, mod 5, and mod 6 are pretty easy to do in your head.
- cc101 3y agoI did use my free will. I refused to walk into your trap by refusing to follow your link.
- LoveMortuus 3y agoI wonder what would happen if you used this to buy stocks. I've actually been looking for this or something similar for years now, because I remember seeing and playing with it on HN, but I was never able to find it again. Thank you for posting it!
- LoveMortuus 3y agoMy opinion is that if you have a set of everything that exists and another set of everything that doesn't exist, you won't find free will in any of them.