5 ms·

I love the idea of true randomness because it seems, to my uninformed mind, to allow us the possibility of free will. Without true randomness, while we may enjo

by pvnick 13y ago

I love the idea of true randomness because it seems, to my uninformed mind, to allow us the possibility of free will. Without true randomness, while we may enjoy the illusion of free will, our decisions are ultimately left to deterministic hidden variables. That makes me sad. But given true randomness, we may in fact have some mechanism whereby we are truly autonomous. How that might work is way beyond me and probably leads very quickly to pseudoscience and quackery, but it's certainly fun to think about.

avalaunch 13y ago
I'm not sure random will is equivalent to free will. Is a choice still a choice if it's made randomly? Couldn't you say that the photon in the experiment has free will then? What's the difference?
- moyix 13y ago
  There's a pretty good essay from Scott Aaronson [1] that tries to disentangle the question of randomness from unpredictability, by saying that unpredictable events (which he says are the only things we know of physically that might permit something like free will) are events to which we can't assign a probability distribution. It separates out the notions of "random" events like coin flips, which we know will go heads with p=.5 and tails with p=.5, from truly unpredictable events, where we can't say even in principle what the probabilities of the outcomes might be. These latter events are where he finds some wiggle room for free will. [1] http://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/giqtm3.pdf http://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/giqtm3.pdf
- pvnick 13y ago
  That's a good point, I'm not quite sure how to answer that. I know almost nothing of quantum mechanics. My logic is simply that if you had a large enough calculator and nothing was truly random that you could predict us having this conversation from the moment of the big bang. That's incompatible with true freedom of will (which someone is sure to ask me to define, I swear metaphysics suffers from death by definitions). But given true randomness: 1) Person faced with ethical decision 2) Random events somewhere in the brain 3) _____________ 4) Unpredictable autonomous decision! Or something like that. Edit: moyix's is a much better response than mine
- colechristensen 13y ago
  True randomness eliminates determinism. With determinism free will is ruled out. That doesn't mean everything that shows true randomness has free will.
  - Xcelerate 13y ago
    > With determinism free will is ruled out. This is a popular statement but I've never thought that to be the case. Imagine you're creating a movie. You can pick the actors, the characters, the plot, etc. When you play the movie, the playback is completely deterministic. But that doesn't mean free will didn't design the film. I could see something similar applying to reality. Your actions may be predetermined, but that doesn't specify exactly how they were determined.
  - baddox 13y ago
    > With determinism free will is ruled out. Not according to compatabilism.
- coldtea 13y ago
  >I'm not sure random will is equivalent to free will. It's not per se, but it's kind of an analogue -- in that both are escapes from determinism. Something random can be seen as an event that has no causual expanation (and thus cannot be predicted by studying the previous state of the system). But there still must be an agent, bringing the random outcome into the universe. In the same manner, free will too can be thought of as a event that has no causual explanation. In this case, the difficult question is how a "free will" based decision relates to the person making it (if it's a product of his memories then it's deterministic, and thus not free). One way to solve this might be to think of the persons' decision making process as a "random number generator". So, the output is deterministic (the same for the same state of memories, like with a programmatic RNG), but with a unique seed for this person (the state of memories itself), and a unique RNG algorithm (the wiring of his brain). In this case, unlike calculating a dice result given dimensions, weight, power of throw, wind conditions, etc, nothing can produce the same output as the free will person without going through the whole process (a total simulation).
dimatura 13y ago
Suppose you program a simple robot (say, like a Neato) to try to move around while vacuuming and avoiding obstacles. It follows a purely deterministic program. Now suppose you have another robot controlled purely with a quantum-level source of randomness (say, it turns to the left each time a particle decays). Would the second robot really be more free? I think not. Intuitively, what we call "free will" seems proportional to the ability of an entity to interact with its environment in a complex way.
bkoa 13y ago
Just because CS people have a tendency to vastly overestimate their qualifications in other fields doesn't mean uniformed speculation about an incredibly well-discussed topic in philosophy is appropriate for HackerNews.
- matt-attack 13y ago
  Well, maybe CS people realize most of the good questions in life simply cannot be answered by philosophers. They're just ill-equipped. It's really up to the physicists.
- chrismonsanto 13y ago
  That's very elitist. Academic philosophers do not 'own' philosophy. What is the harm of us ordinary folk discussing it? (Also, if anything is inappropriate for HN, it's snarky one-liners. Please don't do that.)
- coldtea 13y ago
  You seem to have vastly overestimated your qualifications in philosophy. Any rookie in philosophy 101 can tell you that tons of philosophers have been in favor of EVERYBODY participating in philosophical discussions, and that leaving philosophy to the "experts" is mostly an idea of academic philosophers (that is, people with very little contribution to the history of philosophy, and a whole lot of secondary and derived output of annotating the historically important --and usually "amateur"-- philosophers).
splat 13y ago
Roger Penrose has been making a similar argument for some time now. He argues that consciousness must be a quantum phenomenon and that it takes place in microtubules in neurons. It's an interesting idea, but has been met with a lot of skepticism because the structures are too large to really exhibit any quantum effects. But if you're interested in reading more, here's the Wikipedia article about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orch-OR http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orch-OR
ajanuary 13y ago
I've never been able to get my head around the idea of free will. Maybe it's because in lacking even a rudamentary background in philosophy. I think people mean they make decisions. Doesn't that mean randomness robs you of free will? The you (whatever that is) isn't making decisions, chance is. If it's you making decisions, wouldn't those decisions have to depend on you and the situation, which means it's entirely deterministic? If I know you and I know the situation, I could predict your decision?

by pvnick 13y ago

avalaunch 13y ago

I'm not sure random will is equivalent to free will. Is a choice still a choice if it's made randomly? Couldn't you say that the photon in the experiment has free will then? What's the difference?

moyix 13y ago
There's a pretty good essay from Scott Aaronson [1] that tries to disentangle the question of randomness from unpredictability, by saying that unpredictable events (which he says are the only things we know of physically that might permit something like free will) are events to which we can't assign a probability distribution. It separates out the notions of "random" events like coin flips, which we know will go heads with p=.5 and tails with p=.5, from truly unpredictable events, where we can't say even in principle what the probabilities of the outcomes might be. These latter events are where he finds some wiggle room for free will. [1] http://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/giqtm3.pdf http://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/giqtm3.pdf
pvnick 13y ago
That's a good point, I'm not quite sure how to answer that. I know almost nothing of quantum mechanics. My logic is simply that if you had a large enough calculator and nothing was truly random that you could predict us having this conversation from the moment of the big bang. That's incompatible with true freedom of will (which someone is sure to ask me to define, I swear metaphysics suffers from death by definitions). But given true randomness: 1) Person faced with ethical decision 2) Random events somewhere in the brain 3) _____________ 4) Unpredictable autonomous decision! Or something like that. Edit: moyix's is a much better response than mine
colechristensen 13y ago
True randomness eliminates determinism. With determinism free will is ruled out. That doesn't mean everything that shows true randomness has free will.
- Xcelerate 13y ago
  > With determinism free will is ruled out. This is a popular statement but I've never thought that to be the case. Imagine you're creating a movie. You can pick the actors, the characters, the plot, etc. When you play the movie, the playback is completely deterministic. But that doesn't mean free will didn't design the film. I could see something similar applying to reality. Your actions may be predetermined, but that doesn't specify exactly how they were determined.
- baddox 13y ago
  > With determinism free will is ruled out. Not according to compatabilism.
coldtea 13y ago
>I'm not sure random will is equivalent to free will. It's not per se, but it's kind of an analogue -- in that both are escapes from determinism. Something random can be seen as an event that has no causual expanation (and thus cannot be predicted by studying the previous state of the system). But there still must be an agent, bringing the random outcome into the universe. In the same manner, free will too can be thought of as a event that has no causual explanation. In this case, the difficult question is how a "free will" based decision relates to the person making it (if it's a product of his memories then it's deterministic, and thus not free). One way to solve this might be to think of the persons' decision making process as a "random number generator". So, the output is deterministic (the same for the same state of memories, like with a programmatic RNG), but with a unique seed for this person (the state of memories itself), and a unique RNG algorithm (the wiring of his brain). In this case, unlike calculating a dice result given dimensions, weight, power of throw, wind conditions, etc, nothing can produce the same output as the free will person without going through the whole process (a total simulation).

dimatura 13y ago

Suppose you program a simple robot (say, like a Neato) to try to move around while vacuuming and avoiding obstacles. It follows a purely deterministic program. Now suppose you have another robot controlled purely with a quantum-level source of randomness (say, it turns to the left each time a particle decays). Would the second robot really be more free? I think not. Intuitively, what we call "free will" seems proportional to the ability of an entity to interact with its environment in a complex way.

bkoa 13y ago

Just because CS people have a tendency to vastly overestimate their qualifications in other fields doesn't mean uniformed speculation about an incredibly well-discussed topic in philosophy is appropriate for HackerNews.

matt-attack 13y ago
Well, maybe CS people realize most of the good questions in life simply cannot be answered by philosophers. They're just ill-equipped. It's really up to the physicists.
chrismonsanto 13y ago
That's very elitist. Academic philosophers do not 'own' philosophy. What is the harm of us ordinary folk discussing it? (Also, if anything is inappropriate for HN, it's snarky one-liners. Please don't do that.)
coldtea 13y ago
You seem to have vastly overestimated your qualifications in philosophy. Any rookie in philosophy 101 can tell you that tons of philosophers have been in favor of EVERYBODY participating in philosophical discussions, and that leaving philosophy to the "experts" is mostly an idea of academic philosophers (that is, people with very little contribution to the history of philosophy, and a whole lot of secondary and derived output of annotating the historically important --and usually "amateur"-- philosophers).

splat 13y ago

Roger Penrose has been making a similar argument for some time now. He argues that consciousness must be a quantum phenomenon and that it takes place in microtubules in neurons. It's an interesting idea, but has been met with a lot of skepticism because the structures are too large to really exhibit any quantum effects. But if you're interested in reading more, here's the Wikipedia article about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orch-OR http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orch-OR

ajanuary 13y ago

I've never been able to get my head around the idea of free will. Maybe it's because in lacking even a rudamentary background in philosophy. I think people mean they make decisions. Doesn't that mean randomness robs you of free will? The you (whatever that is) isn't making decisions, chance is. If it's you making decisions, wouldn't those decisions have to depend on you and the situation, which means it's entirely deterministic? If I know you and I know the situation, I could predict your decision?