4 ms·

You know, the one really interesting dynamic domain is chaotic, which is a subdomain of the deterministic! I figure free will is a chaotic phenomenon. Groundho

You know, the one really interesting dynamic domain is chaotic, which is a subdomain of the deterministic! I figure free will is a chaotic phenomenon. Groundhog day is your intuition pump here. Go back in time and most assume that the day will go mostly the same, except for the butterfly effect if you change something. Given exactly the same conditions (we went back in time, so that's pretty exact), people will make the same decisions. Most people don't assume that the day will be completely different the next time loop. The town won't suddenly spontaneously all start breakdancing or standing on their heads. (Edit: The murderer is the one who -given the same/similar conditions- will murder again. I'd politely suggest maybe we put them behind bars as a precaution against that; until/unless they learn to act differently. ) (Edit 2: Throw in stochasticity and this actually tends to smooth out chaotic systems. This is counter-intuitive! People's brains break on Evolution in the same way. Meanwhile somehow folks intuit birdshot without difficulty; which is weird!)

jddj 16d ago
To extend on your edit #1: And, when you go back in time, delete all punishment for murder and see whether you get the same number of murderers. If you get more than before, the punishment might make some sense in a deterministic world so reinstate it.
- Kim_Bruning 16d ago
  And it probably does, right? Punishment adds a negative bias to the payoff matrix. Funny side note: increasing punishment severity past a certain point actually saturates and doesn't alter the dynamics further. (which is why modern judicial punishment schedules sometimes seem so mild)
- pixl97 16d ago
  Eh, sorry chaos theory doesn't work this way. It's just as likely you go back and perform whatever magic you need to to delete punishment for murder, then zip back to 'now' and see the world is a global panopticon making sure people don't murder each other. Some of this may be a failure of people to realize what P !=NP is about, especially in non-linear systems. Small perturbations in an early state of the system can lead to wildly different outcomes in the final measured state of the system. You can't determine what that will be in non-polynomial time. The only thing you can do is make probabilistic models by running a full simulation in real time (or reality with a time machine I guess).
  - Kim_Bruning 16d ago
    If you look at chaos in dynamical systems, you can often find some equilibria (like attractors, spirals, saddle points etc ) at least, even if the details might vary. This is how people still manage to predict the weather somewhat, for instance. Oddly orbital mechanics is chaotic too, but it sort of rhymes over the millennia.
    - pixl97 15d ago
      Your correct. You'd have to run the universe simulation a bunch and pick the most probable outcomes (which makes you the most brutal serial killer in existence). The probability graph would represent the state stability of the underlying structures that guide what you're trying to measure. In weather you have things that are chaotic, but follow rules and don't create them. Things can surprise you, but you'll mostly center around particular solutions. With humans this gets a lot more complicated because you are messing with systems that follow fixed rulesets (chemistry) and things that follow self modifying rulesets (social conventions). A very unstable system on top of a semi-chaotic probability state. A good example of this would be if I deleted the concept of rain from the human mind and all of human history and knowledge. Humanity would be very surprised on the thunderstorms that popped up, but they'd continue on just as they did before. Now lets imagine I delete the concept of all gods. Would the idea of gods come back, for sure. Would they look like our gods now. Very questionable indeed. We wouldn't be getting jesus back. And the new set of religions could have wildly large effects on how the people act.

jddj 16d ago

To extend on your edit #1: And, when you go back in time, delete all punishment for murder and see whether you get the same number of murderers. If you get more than before, the punishment might make some sense in a deterministic world so reinstate it.

Kim_Bruning 16d ago
And it probably does, right? Punishment adds a negative bias to the payoff matrix. Funny side note: increasing punishment severity past a certain point actually saturates and doesn't alter the dynamics further. (which is why modern judicial punishment schedules sometimes seem so mild)
pixl97 16d ago
Eh, sorry chaos theory doesn't work this way. It's just as likely you go back and perform whatever magic you need to to delete punishment for murder, then zip back to 'now' and see the world is a global panopticon making sure people don't murder each other. Some of this may be a failure of people to realize what P !=NP is about, especially in non-linear systems. Small perturbations in an early state of the system can lead to wildly different outcomes in the final measured state of the system. You can't determine what that will be in non-polynomial time. The only thing you can do is make probabilistic models by running a full simulation in real time (or reality with a time machine I guess).
- Kim_Bruning 16d ago
  If you look at chaos in dynamical systems, you can often find some equilibria (like attractors, spirals, saddle points etc ) at least, even if the details might vary. This is how people still manage to predict the weather somewhat, for instance. Oddly orbital mechanics is chaotic too, but it sort of rhymes over the millennia.
  - pixl97 15d ago
    Your correct. You'd have to run the universe simulation a bunch and pick the most probable outcomes (which makes you the most brutal serial killer in existence). The probability graph would represent the state stability of the underlying structures that guide what you're trying to measure. In weather you have things that are chaotic, but follow rules and don't create them. Things can surprise you, but you'll mostly center around particular solutions. With humans this gets a lot more complicated because you are messing with systems that follow fixed rulesets (chemistry) and things that follow self modifying rulesets (social conventions). A very unstable system on top of a semi-chaotic probability state. A good example of this would be if I deleted the concept of rain from the human mind and all of human history and knowledge. Humanity would be very surprised on the thunderstorms that popped up, but they'd continue on just as they did before. Now lets imagine I delete the concept of all gods. Would the idea of gods come back, for sure. Would they look like our gods now. Very questionable indeed. We wouldn't be getting jesus back. And the new set of religions could have wildly large effects on how the people act.