{Split} Discussion on free will

[a500lbgorilla]

{split from Holy mother of awesome - galaxies collide} Woops, missed a few of the first posts. But I'm tired so it's ok.

Thinking too much about this stuff can make one realize that there is no such thing as free will

If you think about it harder, you'll reason yourself out of it. Then you'll have a laugh.

[a500lbgorilla]

Thinking too much about this stuff can make one realize that there is no such thing as free will

If you think about it harder, you'll reason yourself out of it. Then you'll have a laugh.

Wrong. It is totally clear and obvious to me that free will doesn't exist. It was even clear to me before I read anything at all on the subject. When I couldn't reason myself out of it I looked it up on the net and found out about hard determinism and felt that it matched my views quite closely. I felt really sick and depressed for several weeks and I'm still not over it.

We are nothing more than advanced biological 'robots'. Free will is merely an illusion and I didn't write this post because I chose to, I wrote it because all the particles in the universe dictated that I was destined to do it.

We are programmed (by evolution) to always choose what is best for us. Think of a man like a mosquito flying through air. The mosquito might think that it can stop beating its wings at any moment - but it's an illusion. It's not 'programmed' to stop beating its wings in mid-air.

A similar thought is that while driving on a freeway you feel like you could suddenly turn the wheel and crash hard. It's just an illusion, you couldn't do it. You simply COULD NOT do it. You could only do it if you wanted to harm yourself, but still you feel like you could do it - even if you didn't want to do it.

I think the most ridiculous thing is that the particles we are made of are so advanced, that by simply flowing around for millions of years, they group in such away that they create beings that realize that they are only freely flowing particles flying around. This tought still tilts me.

I really like what boost said about this, and I'm just happy that the 'movie' I'm watching has been really great, so far. And because 'my movie' is so good, I've got to take all the bad things in my life and realize that none of the good things could ever have happened without them. It's a good method for real-life tilt control.

Oh my. I don't have the time write now. But I will give you something to think about to bring you back to a happier side. It's gonna be fun

[ProZachNation]

Interesting thoughts on free will. I am like 99% certain that we are the only species that will sacrifice our life for the life of someone not related to us.

Bees do it because the off spring of the queen is equally related the offspring they would reproduce that is why they give up the chance to reproduce.

People say reproduction is the only thing we are ment to do but thats not it exactly, the passing along of genetic information seems to be the driving force. If the genetic information that you contain can be passed on through your relatives it is ok to die or give up your chance at reproduction.


off topic but yeah

[pocketfours]

Oh my. I don't have the time write now. But I will give you something to think about to bring you back to a happier side. It's gonna be fun

GL mate

[wufwugy]

personally i think the idea of no free will is awesome. i found peace in realizing that i couldn't blame my misfortune or thank my fortune on religious deities, and i like the idea that there is no free will. however, postulating there is no free will is basically postulating nothing. there is no way we can know one way or the other so its kinda pointless other than to provide some kind of psychological comfort or something.

heres some interesting work on the brain that suggests that we may not have free will. http://iidb.infidels.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=241529 . i could go either way on the subject simply because i think theres no way of knowing. anyways im looking forward to what aboogorilla has to say.

[boost]

pocketfours I agree with you about us not having free will, however you make some really atrocious arguments. Youve confused evolution with the chemistry that makes us tick. If we are to believe that we simply are a complex series of chemical reactions than evolution plays no part in our destiny since it too is predetermined by this endless set of reactions.

A sort of mindfuck that I find interesting is that if we agree for a second that everything is simply a complex series of reactions which of course could then be represented by equations, then what exactly happens when an equation contains a square root?

[pocketfours]

pocketfours I agree with you about us not having free will, however you make some really atrocious arguments. Youve confused evolution with the chemistry that makes us tick. If we are to believe that we simply are a complex series of chemical reactions than evolution plays no part in our destiny since it too is predetermined by this endless set of reactions.

I haven't confused evolution with anything. Evolution is the 'process' that perfects the machines (us). All particles in the universe are flowing freely, their paths are altered only by the forces of other freely flowing particles (in other words not by our free will). Evolution is simply the name for the particle flow event that occurs when life improves itself from generation to generation.

[wufwugy]

personally i think the idea of no free will is awesome. i found peace in realizing that i couldn't blame my misfortune or thank my fortune on religious deities, and i like the idea that there is no free will. however, postulating there is no free will is basically postulating nothing. there is no way we can know one way or the other so its kinda pointless other than to provide some kind of psychological comfort or something.

heres some interesting work on the brain that suggests that we may not have free will. http://iidb.infidels.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=241529 . i could go either way on the subject simply because i think theres no way of knowing. anyways im looking forward to what aboogorilla has to say.

We can know and we do. Unless we possess some kind of divine powers that can change the laws of physics within our body then free will isn't possible.

but the existence, or lack thereof, of free will provides no distinct results. if we have free will our observations and actions are exactly the same as if we dont. thus there is no way to tell which it is.

[a500lbgorilla]

Thinking too much about this stuff can make one realize that there is no such thing as free will

If you think about it harder, you'll reason yourself out of it. Then you'll have a laugh.

Wrong. It is totally clear and obvious to me that free will doesn't exist. It was even clear to me before I read anything at all on the subject. When I couldn't reason myself out of it I looked it up on the net and found out about hard determinism and felt that it matched my views quite closely. I felt really sick and depressed for several weeks and I'm still not over it.

We are nothing more than advanced biological 'robots'.

I don’t think your idea of ‘robots’ is an accurate or realistic one. So I’m going to take a moment to explore AI. Artificial intelligences will probably not exist in the computers of today. The great AI advancements of the past, like Eliza which could fool people in believing it was demonstrating human behavioral intelligence by learning to rephrase your comments or questions back to you in hopes of making you believe it was understanding. If you typed in, "My boyfriend and I don't talk anymore," Eliza might say, "Tell me more about your boyfriend." or "Why do you think you and your boyfriend don't talk anymore?" Or Deep Blue which beat Gary Kasparov at chess. Deep Blue didn't intuitively outwit Kasparov. An expert human player looks at a board position and immediately sees what areas of play are most likely to be fruitful or dangerous, whereas a computer has no innate sense of what is important and must explore many more options. Deep Blue had no sense of history for the game or knows anything about its opponent. It won because it could think much, much faster than a human. But like a calculator can do arithmetic but not understand it, Deep blue could play chess but doesn't understand it. That was lifted from the book this guy wrote: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/125 (Thank you, ProZach). I'm telling you, you can not equate yourself to a robot with how you understand robots currently. Your brain is not here to execute a series of tasks which dictate your survival and reproduction or whatever else you think you're here to do. It takes 10 times as much feedback than it gives output. Your brain is constantly adjusting to its senses and it is predictive in nature. Robots as you know them are a code, a processor to read the code and memory to store information. Hawkins offers an interesting thought experiment to demonstrate the difference between an computer as you know them (A CPU, memory and programming) and your brain (which receives immediate feedback and possess a sense or understanding of time; which processes rapidly changing streams of information; and possesses memory which is predictive in nature): "Suppose you have a room with a slot in one wall, and inside is an English-speaking person sitting at a desk. He has a big book of instructions and all the pencils and scratch paper he could ever need. Flipping through the book, he sees that the instructions, written in English, dictate ways to manipulate, sort and compare Chinese characters. Mind you, the directions say nothing about the meanings of the Chinese characters; they only deal with how the characters are to be copies, erased, reordered, transcribed, and so forth. Someone outside the room slips a piece of paper through the slot. On it is written a story and questions about the story, all in Chinese. The man inside doesn't speak or read a word Chinese, but he picks up the paper and goes to work with the rule book. He toils and toils, rotely following the instructions in the book. At times the instructions tell him to write characters on scrap paper, and at other times to move and erase characters. Applying rule after rule, writing and erasing characters, the man works until the book's instructions tell him he is done. When he is finished at last he has written a new page of characters, which unbeknownst to him are the answers to the questions. The book tells him to pass his paper back through the slot. He does it, and wonders what this whole tedious exercise has been about." He goes on to say that the paper slide in is a story in Chinese with some questions at the end to test his knowledge of the material. The paper which he slides out of the room demonstrates an insightful understanding of the Chinese story and questions passed in. From outside, it seems as though the room demonstrates true understanding. When, in reality, no specific part of the room demonstrated any understanding of the story. Not the CPU, the person mindlessly executing commands, not the book or the software program feeding instructions to the CPU and not the scratch paper memory scattered throughout the room. He adds, "This argument created a huge row among philosophers and AI pundits. It spawned hundreds of articles, plus more than a little vitriol and bad blood. AI defenders came up with dozens of counterarguments to Searle, such as claiming that although none of the room's component parts understood Chinese, the entire room as a whole did, or that the person in the room really did understand Chinese, but just didn't know it. As for me, I think Searle had it right. When I thought about how computers worked, I didn't see understanding happening anywhere." The only way we're going to have AI like humans is when we construct robots who's brains are similar in structure to our own brains. We do not execute commands based on the stimulus of our environment or the programming of our brains. We won't be like robots, robots will be like us. This is the point where I'm asking for that non-intuitive jump, you simply don't understand enough about your brain right now to know what it is that your brain is doing. It is not a robot, in how I believe you think robots to be. If anything was going to give us free will, it would be our brains and you simply don’t know enough about your brain to know for certain that you are programmed. Though the behaviors you demonstrate may seem programmed, the workings of your mind could be free to do what they wish. And that freedom could be based solely on the feedback from other workings of your mind. Developing a network created simply by how the network wished to be created.

Free will is merely an illusion and I didn't write this post because I chose to, I wrote it because all the particles in the universe dictated that I was destined to do it.

Even if all the particles in the world acted by AND-OR-IF-etc-logic; acted by a set of laws with all motion pre-prescribed, There are some freedoms out there. There are too many variables, too many particles and energies interacting at once for there to be a set flow or a destiny. With an infinite number of particles and energies interacting an infinite amount of time with almost an infinite number other particles, there's plenty of room for randomness.

We are programmed (by evolution) to always choose what is best for us. Think of a man like a mosquito flying through air. The mosquito might think that it can stop beating its wings at any moment - but it's an illusion. It's not 'programmed' to stop beating its wings in mid-air.

A similar thought is that while driving on a freeway you feel like you could suddenly turn the wheel and crash hard. It's just an illusion, you couldn't do it. You simply COULD NOT do it. You could only do it if you wanted to harm yourself, but still you feel like you could do it - even if you didn't want to do it.

The mosquito is different from the human by its brain. It's a good point, but when it comes to free will or other philosophical threads, drawing a parallel between humans and bugs is going to leave some heavy elements out of consideration and should just be thrown out the window. I am basing this off the idea that our brains give us free will. And our brains differ from other animals brains in structure and detail. And again, we do not know enough about how our brains work to be certain of anything.

As a sidebar and a huge spoiler alert, this is why I love the movie Fight Club. If you can recall the scene where Edward Norton and Brad Pitt are in the car and Brad Pitt’s character, Tyler Durden lets go of the steering wheel. Edward Norton’s character is driven to grab the wheel. Tyler Durden says, “Look at you! You’re pathetic!” “Fine…” he says as he reluctantly releases the wheel and prepares to crash. Later in the movie, you realize that Edward Norton created his alter ego Tyler Durden. I just love thinking about how one side of his brain says to the other, “You programmed piece of shit, LIVE for once!” Hence, the line after the car accident, “You just had a near-life experience!”

I think the most ridiculous thing is that the particles we are made of are so advanced, that by simply flowing around for millions of years, they group in such away that they create beings that realize that they are only freely flowing particles flying around. This tought still tilts me.

I really like what boost said about this, and I'm just happy that the 'movie' I'm watching has been really great, so far. And because 'my movie' is so good, I've got to take all the bad things in my life and realize that none of the good things could ever have happened without them. It's a good method for real-life tilt control.

I believe that we don't yet understand the workings of our brain to realize that there is no such thing as free will. To make that realization, you're making big assumptions which could easily be wrong. If you can acknowledge that, then you should be able to reason yourself out of the rest of it.

[a500lbgorilla]

pocketfours I agree with you about us not having free will, however you make some really atrocious arguments. Youve confused evolution with the chemistry that makes us tick. If we are to believe that we simply are a complex series of chemical reactions than evolution plays no part in our destiny since it too is predetermined by this endless set of reactions.

A sort of mindfuck that I find interesting is that if we agree for a second that everything is simply a complex series of reactions which of course could then be represented by equations, then what exactly happens when an equation contains a square root?

Nothing would change. If we're fully describing the equations of anything, then discovering that there is a square root would not affect what was happening. It had to be happening for us to describe it that way. Either it does or it doesn't. I don't know what you're trying to get at.

[a500lbgorilla]

personally i think the idea of no free will is awesome. i found peace in realizing that i couldn't blame my misfortune or thank my fortune on religious deities, and i like the idea that there is no free will. however, postulating there is no free will is basically postulating nothing. there is no way we can know one way or the other so its kinda pointless other than to provide some kind of psychological comfort or something.

heres some interesting work on the brain that suggests that we may not have free will. http://iidb.infidels.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=241529 . i could go either way on the subject simply because i think theres no way of knowing. anyways im looking forward to what aboogorilla has to say.

We can know and we do. Unless we possess some kind of divine powers that can change the laws of physics within our body then free will isn't possible.

We don't know enough about the laws of physics to know if it would take a "divine power" to change the "laws" within our bodies that you believe are acting in such a way as to remove your free will.

I simply believe it's foolish to believe that we have no free will based on these things. I believe our brains to be systems which take so much feedback from other constantly adjusting parts of it that the system truly does have the free will to choose how it develops. But I do think about it and I do run down a lot of avenues of thought where you could be right, I can see why this belief would be a tough nut to crack.

[a500lbgorilla]

pocketfours I agree with you about us not having free will, however you make some really atrocious arguments. Youve confused evolution with the chemistry that makes us tick. If we are to believe that we simply are a complex series of chemical reactions than evolution plays no part in our destiny since it too is predetermined by this endless set of reactions.

I haven't confused evolution with anything. Evolution is the 'process' that perfects the machines (us). All particles in the universe are flowing freely, their paths are altered only by the forces of other freely flowing particles (in other words not by our free will). Evolution is simply the name for the particle flow event that occurs when life improves itself from generation to generation.

Damn strong logic, sir. It's an odd sense when everything fits together so well. The universe works under those same principles. But I have never once thought that the universe of particles in space and the universe of human interaction work under any near the same set of laws or rules. We simply don't know enough about how the brain works, and by extension how the world we've created works. Free will does not exist in the universe of particles, free will exists in the universe of mans creating. Mosquitoes do not have free will because they live in their environment. Mankind has freewill because we live in our environment and in our world. What was the particle flow behind the creation of money? What was the particle flow behind the creation of art?

[ProZachNation]

Well if you think about evolution people only think about the good outcomes.

You know when you see the dead bird that is like deformed and all fucked up and fell out of its nest, yeah nature did not select that poor fucker.

Billions upon billions of mistakes happen per "good" thing in evolution.

[a500lbgorilla]

What was the particle flow that left you with such a limiting outlook on life? My framework for approaching the world gives me many more possibilities, choices and options. Even if there was no free will, simply seeing these possibilities means that I could take one of them. Have you ever just had a craving pop in your head and you search endlessly through the grocery store only to decide to eat something you've never tasted before? I have. I did it a few days ago with some orange flavored chocolate. How did that day's stimulus differ from the time previous when I maybe settled on something healthier? Even if it is a set of processes in my head which dictated what I did, I can influence those processes. I can set out to change my tastes. When I needed to diet, I realized what it was that my mind was doing when I would over-eat. I would always be tasting food, trying to think about what I would enjoy eating. Now I realize that I need to check my stomach to see if it's full, if not I'm not hungry. I took it upon myself to restructure my world and I went about and did it. That means my brain decide it wasn't operating appropriately and it took it upon itself to alter its own structure to suit my arbitrary list of needs.

That's an example of free will but I'll try to take it as a description of one of those evolutionary "processes" which provide that illusion of me being in control. But I want to believe that I possess free will, because by those same evolutionary processes, I believe it more to be more valuable. If I trust my brain to always do what's best for me, then allowing it to explore every avenue with the belief that it has complete control means that my brain is more likely to make decisions which will be better for me. If I believe the mind has no free will, then it has no real power at all and therefore will always follow the path of least resistance. And though it may do it many times, it does not do it every time. So therefore, as far as I care, I have free will. Ha, that's cool. Even trying to reason that I have no free-will reasons itself back to having free will. I've got a dynamically stable mind towards the idea of free will.

I'm also very tired. But this was fun.

[spoonitnow]

I thought I'd throw this in there. There was some historical guy in physics (I think, might have been some other field) who proposed the following to think about: what if everything in our universe was "reset" to say October 23, 2008 at 12:30 PM EST. By reset, I mean every single bit of everything was placed back exactly like it was when that moment passed, and every particle and sub-particle had the same position and motion and whatnot. The question is, would everything after that proceed like it has?

Also, while it's definitely fun to think about and can help us on a number of psychological levels, it probably wastes time to think about these sorts of things.

[pocketfours]

I really appreciate your thoughts 'rilla.

I could write a reaaaallly long answer but I don't think we would be anywhere close to a conclusion. I will answer with short points:

1. I'm as open-minded as anyone else you will ever meet. I also have a very analytical way of thinking. I have accepted the lack of free will as a fact, but that's mostly for the reason of building a foundation on top of which I can build and expand my understanding of life and the universe. I'm not saying that it's impossible that I will change my mind on that some day, but it's very unlikely since it would necessarily require that I would have misunderstood some of the fundamental laws of physics.

2. I agree 100% that the brain is so complicated that we might never understand how exactly it works. But that's not the point. I firmly believe that in this universe, it is not possible for any living being, no matter how advanced, to possess free will. If there is some alien race out there, one million times more advance than we are, even they will not have free will. I do think that a basic understanding of quantum physics is enough to understand why we free will simply isn't possible.

3. It took me a long time and a lot of thinking before I could accept that freely flowing particles could form something as advanced as a human being. Having accepted that, the lack of free will seems very obvious and logical.

4. Repeating what wufwugy wrote: If we would have free will, then we would still do everything precicely the same way. We wouldn't be 'human' if we wouldn't always choose the action that we prefer the most.

5. The fact that we always 'do what we want to do' will often lead us to trouble in life. We get addicted to things we know are bad for us. We tilt at the poker tables and choose to play badly because we want to do it (because it feels good). Etc.

6. I would also really want to believe that we possess truly free will, but in light of all the evidence to the contrary I have to believe that we do not. I usually don't like to preach about this because I think it might be a little too much for some people to handle.

7. I also believe that there is no such thing as 'meaning of life'. I think that life on this planet is very much comparable to mold growing on a rotten apple - we simply just 'exist' because some incredibly unlikely events took place that formed our solar system the way it is and sparked life on this planet. We might be advanced enough to closer explore our galaxy one day, but I see that just as 'the mold expanding'. The universe as a whole might have some kind of meaning or purpose, and perhaps that's what ultimately should be considered as 'the meaning of life'.

8. You might think from all this that I'm a really negative and unmotivated person, but it's not like that. I'm a very positive minded and optimistic fellow who likes to enjoy life to the fullest. I'm also way more intelligent than the average person (as most winning poker players probably are and clearly many of the posters here), and I think about these things because I can, but also because my findings might change the way I think about life. That in part might enable me to find happiness in places where others would never even think of looking, and it already has.

-P4's

[bigspenda73]

clif notes?

[IowaSkinsFan]

Thinking too much about this stuff can make one realize that there is no such thing as free will

If you think about it harder, you'll reason yourself out of it. Then you'll have a laugh.

Wrong. It is totally clear and obvious to me that free will doesn't exist. It was even clear to me before I read anything at all on the subject. When I couldn't reason myself out of it I looked it up on the net and found out about hard determinism and felt that it matched my views quite closely. I felt really sick and depressed for several weeks and I'm still not over it.

We are nothing more than advanced biological 'robots'.

I don’t think your idea of ‘robots’ is an accurate or realistic one. So I’m going to take a moment to explore AI. Artificial intelligences will probably not exist in the computers of today. The great AI advancements of the past, like Eliza which could fool people in believing it was demonstrating human behavioral intelligence by learning to rephrase your comments or questions back to you in hopes of making you believe it was understanding. If you typed in, "My boyfriend and I don't talk anymore," Eliza might say, "Tell me more about your boyfriend." or "Why do you think you and your boyfriend don't talk anymore?" Or Deep Blue which beat Gary Kasparov at chess. Deep Blue didn't intuitively outwit Kasparov. An expert human player looks at a board position and immediately sees what areas of play are most likely to be fruitful or dangerous, whereas a computer has no innate sense of what is important and must explore many more options. Deep Blue had no sense of history for the game or knows anything about its opponent. It won because it could think much, much faster than a human. But like a calculator can do arithmetic but not understand it, Deep blue could play chess but doesn't understand it. That was lifted from the book this guy wrote: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/125 (Thank you, ProZach). I'm telling you, you can not equate yourself to a robot with how you understand robots currently. Your brain is not here to execute a series of tasks which dictate your survival and reproduction or whatever else you think you're here to do. It takes 10 times as much feedback than it gives output. Your brain is constantly adjusting to its senses and it is predictive in nature. Robots as you know them are a code, a processor to read the code and memory to store information. Hawkins offers an interesting thought experiment to demonstrate the difference between an computer as you know them (A CPU, memory and programming) and your brain (which receives immediate feedback and possess a sense or understanding of time; which processes rapidly changing streams of information; and possesses memory which is predictive in nature): "Suppose you have a room with a slot in one wall, and inside is an English-speaking person sitting at a desk. He has a big book of instructions and all the pencils and scratch paper he could ever need. Flipping through the book, he sees that the instructions, written in English, dictate ways to manipulate, sort and compare Chinese characters. Mind you, the directions say nothing about the meanings of the Chinese characters; they only deal with how the characters are to be copies, erased, reordered, transcribed, and so forth. Someone outside the room slips a piece of paper through the slot. On it is written a story and questions about the story, all in Chinese. The man inside doesn't speak or read a word Chinese, but he picks up the paper and goes to work with the rule book. He toils and toils, rotely following the instructions in the book. At times the instructions tell him to write characters on scrap paper, and at other times to move and erase characters. Applying rule after rule, writing and erasing characters, the man works until the book's instructions tell him he is done. When he is finished at last he has written a new page of characters, which unbeknownst to him are the answers to the questions. The book tells him to pass his paper back through the slot. He does it, and wonders what this whole tedious exercise has been about." He goes on to say that the paper slide in is a story in Chinese with some questions at the end to test his knowledge of the material. The paper which he slides out of the room demonstrates an insightful understanding of the Chinese story and questions passed in. From outside, it seems as though the room demonstrates true understanding. When, in reality, no specific part of the room demonstrated any understanding of the story. Not the CPU, the person mindlessly executing commands, not the book or the software program feeding instructions to the CPU and not the scratch paper memory scattered throughout the room. He adds, "This argument created a huge row among philosophers and AI pundits. It spawned hundreds of articles, plus more than a little vitriol and bad blood. AI defenders came up with dozens of counterarguments to Searle, such as claiming that although none of the room's component parts understood Chinese, the entire room as a whole did, or that the person in the room really did understand Chinese, but just didn't know it. As for me, I think Searle had it right. When I thought about how computers worked, I didn't see understanding happening anywhere." The only way we're going to have AI like humans is when we construct robots who's brains are similar in structure to our own brains. We do not execute commands based on the stimulus of our environment or the programming of our brains. We won't be like robots, robots will be like us. This is the point where I'm asking for that non-intuitive jump, you simply don't understand enough about your brain right now to know what it is that your brain is doing. It is not a robot, in how I believe you think robots to be. If anything was going to give us free will, it would be our brains and you simply don’t know enough about your brain to know for certain that you are programmed. Though the behaviors you demonstrate may seem programmed, the workings of your mind could be free to do what they wish. And that freedom could be based solely on the feedback from other workings of your mind. Developing a network created simply by how the network wished to be created.

Free will is merely an illusion and I didn't write this post because I chose to, I wrote it because all the particles in the universe dictated that I was destined to do it.

Even if all the particles in the world acted by AND-OR-IF-etc-logic; acted by a set of laws with all motion pre-prescribed, There are some freedoms out there. There are too many variables, too many particles and energies interacting at once for there to be a set flow or a destiny. With an infinite number of particles and energies interacting an infinite amount of time with almost an infinite number other particles, there's plenty of room for randomness.

We are programmed (by evolution) to always choose what is best for us. Think of a man like a mosquito flying through air. The mosquito might think that it can stop beating its wings at any moment - but it's an illusion. It's not 'programmed' to stop beating its wings in mid-air.

A similar thought is that while driving on a freeway you feel like you could suddenly turn the wheel and crash hard. It's just an illusion, you couldn't do it. You simply COULD NOT do it. You could only do it if you wanted to harm yourself, but still you feel like you could do it - even if you didn't want to do it.

The mosquito is different from the human by its brain. It's a good point, but when it comes to free will or other philosophical threads, drawing a parallel between humans and bugs is going to leave some heavy elements out of consideration and should just be thrown out the window. I am basing this off the idea that our brains give us free will. And our brains differ from other animals brains in structure and detail. And again, we do not know enough about how our brains work to be certain of anything.

As a sidebar and a huge spoiler alert, this is why I love the movie Fight Club. If you can recall the scene where Edward Norton and Brad Pitt are in the car and Brad Pitt’s character, Tyler Durden lets go of the steering wheel. Edward Norton’s character is driven to grab the wheel. Tyler Durden says, “Look at you! You’re pathetic!” “Fine…” he says as he reluctantly releases the wheel and prepares to crash. Later in the movie, you realize that Edward Norton created his alter ego Tyler Durden. I just love thinking about how one side of his brain says to the other, “You programmed piece of shit, LIVE for once!” Hence, the line after the car accident, “You just had a near-life experience!”

I think the most ridiculous thing is that the particles we are made of are so advanced, that by simply flowing around for millions of years, they group in such away that they create beings that realize that they are only freely flowing particles flying around. This tought still tilts me.

I really like what boost said about this, and I'm just happy that the 'movie' I'm watching has been really great, so far. And because 'my movie' is so good, I've got to take all the bad things in my life and realize that none of the good things could ever have happened without them. It's a good method for real-life tilt control.

I believe that we don't yet understand the workings of our brain to realize that there is no such thing as free will. To make that realization, you're making big assumptions which could easily be wrong. If you can acknowledge that, then you should be able to reason yourself out of the rest of it.

Wow sick post.

[IowaSkinsFan]

Question:

Let's say your mind and observation capabilities were large enough to know everything about everything. You know "Bob" as well as his best friend could ever dream. You know when an asteroid will hit the earth to the millisecond. Etc.

If someone did actually have the capabilties of knowing every fine point of the present, could he conceivably predict the future?

[boost]

rilla my point about a square root in an equation is that there would not be one answer, I guess I was kinda trying to hint at parrallel universes. A kind of combination of free-will and everything being predetermined in the sense that everytime therei s a choice to be made it could be represented by an equation that resulted in the square root of a positive number. Of course there cant be two choices, so what happens to the other correct solution to the equation? Idk... Im just kinda rambling on an abstract thought.

As for other things n this thread, I have a lot of thoughts but I cant seem to put them into words very well right now. Ill revisit the thread later when I feel I can articulate my thoughts better.

[zook]

I also don't think humans have free will. BUT, I think that fact is utterly meaningless. We feel like we have free will and we will never (and I'm saying never) be able to measure all the variables in the human brain such that we can accurately predict all future actions and decision-making. There are just too many variables at the cellular and circuit levels for us to accurately measure and model. However, we can already predict simple decision-making in monkeys and even influence it with tiny, well-placed electrodes. A friend of mine does this kind of research and it is awesome, but scary.

I do think at some point we will create artificial intelligence that believes it has free will. At which point it will become more obvious that we ourselves don't.

[pocketfours]

Question:

Let's say your mind and observation capabilities were large enough to know everything about everything. You know "Bob" as well as his best friend could ever dream. You know when an asteroid will hit the earth to the millisecond. Etc.

If someone did actually have the capabilties of knowing every fine point of the present, could he conceivably predict the future?

This is the question about determinism. If you believe in determinism, then you believe that he could. To me determinism seems plausible, but I cannot be absolutely convinced about it. I have also read very little on the subject.

[a500lbgorilla]

Question:

Let's say your mind and observation capabilities were large enough to know everything about everything. You know "Bob" as well as his best friend could ever dream. You know when an asteroid will hit the earth to the millisecond. Etc.

If someone did actually have the capabilties of knowing every fine point of the present, could he conceivably predict the future?

Yes and no. We can already predict the future in many instances fairly accurately. But they are mostly with the elegant laws of nature. Once we get some elegant laws of biology and of human thought, then we'll be able to better answer your question. But I think the extent to which you're assuming the brain has limitless capabilities is a bit too far. We do have a near infinite ability to know, certainly enough brain power to understand lifetimes and lifetimes of knowledge. But it definitely has limitations. Just as motion in the universe is seemingly limited by the speed of light, knowledge in the mind will be limited by its size or structure or processing power.

[a500lbgorilla]

rilla my point about a square root in an equation is that there would not be one answer, I guess I was kinda trying to hint at parrallel universes. A kind of combination of free-will and everything being predetermined in the sense that everytime therei s a choice to be made it could be represented by an equation that resulted in the square root of a positive number. Of course there cant be two choices, so what happens to the other correct solution to the equation? Idk... Im just kinda rambling on an abstract thought.

As for other things n this thread, I have a lot of thoughts but I cant seem to put them into words very well right now. Ill revisit the thread later when I feel I can articulate my thoughts better.

The funny thing about numbers is as, someone pointed out in another awesome post, they're seemingly constantly accurate and useful but that does not mean that our understanding of square roots is fully explained and corrected in all its fine detail. Basically, if the equation has a square root, either the equation is correct and that has a bunch of fun avenues for exploring or the process can't be described by equations as we understand them today, and that has other even more abstract avenues for exploring.

[a500lbgorilla]

I also don't think humans have free will. BUT, I think that fact is utterly meaningless. We feel like we have free will and we will never (and I'm saying never) be able to measure all the variables in the human brain such that we can accurately predict all future actions and decision-making.

You're making the assumption that since your brain does so many different things in seeing, hearing, feeling and processing internally in these same formats, that it has an almost indescribable set of differences and fine details. Or as you said: variables. What if there is one very describable theory which does not describe the differences of the brain but described its similarities. Then we would be able to know which details to not pay attention to and which details to pay attention to.

There are just too many variables at the cellular and circuit levels for us to accurately measure and model. However, we can already predict simple decision-making in monkeys and even influence it with tiny, well-placed electrodes. A friend of mine does this kind of research and it is awesome, but scary.

Again, you're assuming that because we have so much information on the subject and no way to comprehend it all that we won't be able to. I see people amassing information with a lack of an overall framework to understand it. Once we make that one non-intuitive step and come to some surprisingly elegant and unexpected conclusions, we will begin to understand much, much more of how it is our brains work.

I do think at some point we will create artificial intelligence that believes it has free will. At which point it will become more obvious that we ourselves don't.

If we do create an artificial intelligence which believes it has free will, it will have just as much free will as me. It is the old story of lose a leg but replace it with a perfectly functioning replica machine leg: I'm still human. Replace every functioning part of my body with a perfectly functioning machine replica, including each and every one of my neurons, I am still me. The me that has free will, you may classify me as humanoid or cyborg but I'm still me. If I play chess but replace the knight with an empty salt shaker, I'm still playing chess. Even if I replace every functioning piece, they still act exactly as the actual pieces and I am still actually playing chess.

[boost]

ya and how would we know that the machine is wrong, that it really doesnt have free will? Even if we did know this, I dont see how it relates to providing an answer to whether we have free will.

[zook]

ya and how would we know that the machine is wrong, that it really doesnt have free will? Even if we did know this, I dont see how it relates to providing an answer to whether we have free will.

We will have programmed it! We'll know exactly what's determining all of it's actions, so we'll know it doesn't have free will!

[zook]

rilla: I lost you a few places, but I think you're suggesting that we're going to figure out enough about the brain to "prove" that we have free will and explain how it works? I think the opposite will happen. The more we study decision-making, the more we'll see that brain activity predictive of the action we're planning precedes the conscious thought. Researchers will be able to predict decisions before you even make them. Some of these experiments have already been done: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Libet

[a500lbgorilla]

rilla: I lost you a few places, but I think you're suggesting that we're going to figure out enough about the brain to "prove" that we have free will and explain how it works? I think the opposite will happen. The more we study decision-making, the more we'll see that brain activity predictive of the action we're planning precedes the conscious thought. Researchers will be able to predict decisions before you even make them. Some of these experiments have already been done: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Libet

Nope, I'm saying that we don't know enough about the brain to know if free will exists and that this argument is very cyclical. One day, you can believe there is free will and reason yourself that there is none. The next day, you'll be able to realize that we have free will again. I think the belief of free will is more valuable to myself and, by some abstract extension, humanity and so I try to focus on arguing that free will exists. I know that I could be convinced that there is no such thing as free will, I just wanna see how long I can defend it.

[a500lbgorilla]

ya and how would we know that the machine is wrong, that it really doesnt have free will? Even if we did know this, I dont see how it relates to providing an answer to whether we have free will.

We will have programmed it! We'll know exactly what's determining all of it's actions, so we'll know it doesn't have free will!

BOOM! sorry, but you do not really know what to expect out of artificial intelligence! We won't "program" AI. It will not be some script for a CPU to read and execute. We will build an AI similar to our own brains. We will understand how intelligence is made but that does not necessarily mean that the system will have no free will. That the system will [edit woops, bad placement of 'not'] be able to grow and expand based on the system itself. It would be like a universe which decides it wants to get warmer because that would be a better mode of existence. How could we possibly make something smarter than us if we understood everything about understanding? Would it be smarter just because it can understand faster than us? Like Deep Blue playing chess but not understanding chess? No, I firmly believe it will understand and it will have an ability to further it own understand, restructure it own intelligence to become much more capable that us. If we have free will, it will too. Again, I'm a little drunk.

[boost]

ya and how would we know that the machine is wrong, that it really doesnt have free will? Even if we did know this, I dont see how it relates to providing an answer to whether we have free will.

We will have programmed it! We'll know exactly what's determining all of it's actions, so we'll know it doesn't have free will!

this makes no sense. but rilla already explain why. And by your thinking I could write a simple html script where I can type "do you, the ai program I have created, have free will" and have it say "yes." I know it doesnt because I programmed it to say yes, its a simple entryutput script. How does this prove that we dont have free will?

[spoonitnow]

If I play chess but replace the knight with an empty salt shaker, I'm still playing chess. Even if I replace every functioning piece, they still act exactly as the actual pieces and I am still actually playing chess.

I thought I'd add to this particular example that an uncountable number of times I (and others, obviously) have played chess without a board because of our visualization and feelings for chess positions (and for what it's worth, you don't lose nearly as much playing strength while doing this as you would first expect). We'd just verbally call out our move and wait for the other person. What's also interesting is when you play someone who has sight of a board and moves the pieces along with the game you're playing with them, but you don't have sight of a board.

Just thought I'd throw that out there for consumption.

[spoonitnow]

Like Deep Blue playing chess but not understanding chess?

Was too lazy to mention something about how a program plays chess and other games/performs other decision-making processes compared to how humans do, but was skimming along and saw another chess reference so I got suckered into it. The thing about programs that play chess like Deep Blue, Fritz, Junior, Hiarcs, and so on is that the analysis and evaluation that they perform is based on a set of rules. If a human sat down with a flow-chart type deal representative of the decision-making processes in these chess engines, then he or she would come up with the same moves. These types of programs don't think -- they follow a flow chart faster than we can.

[baron_greenback]

What value is a morally righteous act if there is no such thing as free-will?

[Taxi]

I'm glad this got split from the galaxies discussion

[spoonitnow]

What value is a morally righteous act if there is no such thing as free-will?

What value is a morally righteous act if there IS free will?

[boost]

If I play chess but replace the knight with an empty salt shaker, I'm still playing chess. Even if I replace every functioning piece, they still act exactly as the actual pieces and I am still actually playing chess.

I thought I'd add to this particular example that an uncountable number of times I (and others, obviously) have played chess without a board because of our visualization and feelings for chess positions (and for what it's worth, you don't lose nearly as much playing strength while doing this as you would first expect). We'd just verbally call out our move and wait for the other person. What's also interesting is when you play someone who has sight of a board and moves the pieces along with the game you're playing with them, but you don't have sight of a board.

Just thought I'd throw that out there for consumption.

you did a long stretch in prison?

[boost]

What value is a morally righteous act if there is no such thing as free-will?

kinda a side track but there are christian based religions out there that believe that god has set everything up and we are destine to our fate. Im pretty sure the omish are one of these groups. What perplexes me is what then drives them to live such dull repressed lives? What purpose is there for judgment after death if everything is predetermined?

[pgil]

the whole discussion of free will, though a fascinating subject, is pointless. It is always debated because there is an inherent circularity that means that no answer will be sufficient. It is the old homunculus all over again. every description of 'free will' at some point has someone stating that "they" decided X. What "they" is uncertain. How they know that "they" decided it is also not clear. How they manage to differentiate themselves from their brains is also not certain.

The easy way out is to argue that there is no such thing as will, free or otherwise. There is no inherent "I" that acts, or decides, or determines, or wills.

It is similar to how you get out of the Descartes "I think therefore I am" bullshit argument. I couldn't figure this out for the longest time, but it really bugged me because it seemed like such a weak argument for the existence of the self. Then I read Neitsche, and his simple easy argument was that Descartes argument relied on a peculiarity of language wherein a verb required a subject, and not on some philosophical truth.

Also, the thought experiments where your brain is systematically replaced by machinery (usually silicon chips) is quite bad. Your neurons cannot be replaced by chips, their mode of communication is too different, chips are not organic and can't grow new dendrites, or prune connections, etc. And lets not forget about the staggering number of glial cells that would also have to be replaced.

[pgil]

What value is a morally righteous act if there is no such thing as free-will?

kinda a side track but there are christian based religions out there that believe that god has set everything up and we are destine to our fate. Im pretty sure the omish are one of these groups. What perplexes me is what then drives them to live such dull repressed lives? What purpose is there for judgment after death if everything is predetermined?

I don't know about the amish, but the jehovah's witnesses have similar beliefs. only 144000 people will get into heaven. those people are already chosen. but, you act good because if you don't, then you necessarily aren't one of the chosen, or at least that is my understanding.

what value does anything have outside of the value that we as individuals and society place on it? none. the presence of absence of free will does not change the value of anything because value is not a function of degrees of freedom of will.

[a500lbgorilla]

EDITING to remove length.
-P4's

I'm sorry, I really didn't see this post earlier. I can't answer it now since I'm kinda drunk. But I will get to it!

[wufwugy]

rillas drunk everybody. put everything on hold till he gets his sobriety sorted out.

[pantherhound]

i misread the thread and initially thought someone was giving away a free Wii, but this is better.

What is free will's link to the concept of fate for those of you who don't believe in it? or has that already been discussed? i think also people misunderstand what the concept of the ''meaning of life' is, i fucking hate people who say "Reproduction, working hard and then you die." anyone who says that is incapable of deep thought. kind of like a microstakes player trying to give advice in the high stakes forum.

[a500lbgorilla]

rillas drunk everybody. put everything on hold till he gets his sobriety sorted out.

Haha, don't hate. I was really enjoying myself last night.

[a500lbgorilla]

I really appreciate your thoughts 'rilla.

I could write a reaaaallly long answer but I don't think we would be anywhere close to a conclusion. I will answer with short points:

1. I'm as open-minded as anyone else you will ever meet. I also have a very analytical way of thinking. I have accepted the lack of free will as a fact, but that's mostly for the reason of building a foundation on top of which I can build and expand my understanding of life and the universe. I'm not saying that it's impossible that I will change my mind on that some day, but it's very unlikely since it would necessarily require that I would have misunderstood some of the fundamental laws of physics. Why are you applying physics to biology though? We have no Newtons laws of biological processes. So in making this jump of that the laws of the universe are like the laws of living creatures (where free will exists), doesn't make sense to me.

2. I agree 100% that the brain is so complicated that we might never understand how exactly it works. But that's not the point. I firmly believe that in this universe, it is not possible for any living being, no matter how advanced, to possess free will. If there is some alien race out there, one million times more advance than we are, even they will not have free will. I do think that a basic understanding of quantum physics is enough to understand why we free will simply isn't possible.

3. It took me a long time and a lot of thinking before I could accept that freely flowing particles could form something as advanced as a human being. Having accepted that, the lack of free will seems very obvious and logical. So you're saying that the freely flowing particles can not create something with free will?

4. Repeating what wufwugy wrote: If we would have free will, then we would still do everything precicely the same way. We wouldn't be 'human' if we wouldn't always choose the action that we prefer the most. Again, you have no idea exactly how your brain is choosing the actions that you take. You're making big assumptions here.

5. The fact that we always 'do what we want to do' will often lead us to trouble in life. We get addicted to things we know are bad for us. We tilt at the poker tables and choose to play badly because we want to do it (because it feels good). Etc.

6. I would also really want to believe that we possess truly free will, but in light of all the evidence to the contrary I have to believe that we do not. I usually don't like to preach about this because I think it might be a little too much for some people to handle.

7. I also believe that there is no such thing as 'meaning of life'. I think that life on this planet is very much comparable to mold growing on a rotten apple - we simply just 'exist' because some incredibly unlikely events took place that formed our solar system the way it is and sparked life on this planet. We might be advanced enough to closer explore our galaxy one day, but I see that just as 'the mold expanding'. The universe as a whole might have some kind of meaning or purpose, and perhaps that's what ultimately should be considered as 'the meaning of life'.

8. You might think from all this that I'm a really negative and unmotivated person, but it's not like that. I'm a very positive minded and optimistic fellow who likes to enjoy life to the fullest. I'm also way more intelligent than the average person (as most winning poker players probably are and clearly many of the posters here), and I think about these things because I can, but also because my findings might change the way I think about life. That in part might enable me to find happiness in places where others would never even think of looking, and it already has.

-P4's

[pocketfours]

Why are you applying physics to biology though? We have no Newtons laws of biological processes. So in making this jump of that the laws of the universe are like the laws of living creatures (where free will exists), doesn't make sense to me.

The laws of quantum mechanics and nuclear physics still apply in biological processes.

So you're saying that the freely flowing particles can not create something with free will?

Yes, that's precicely what I'm saying. There can be no being with free will within a universe consisting entirely of small particles that react with each other in a predictable fashion. For free will to exist, the elementary particles within us would need to take an alternative path when we would 'want' them to. Our brain would somehow need to 'communicate' with the elementary particles within our brain.

'Atom 112334532223, please disregard the attracting electromagnetic force from atom 248237465345 and reduce energy level of electron 12 by two steps now', said the brain.
'I copy that, it seems I'm having troubles with energy level seven, I need to keep nr 12 at level nine until the problem is sorted out,' answered the particle.
'Acknowledged. Please alter your course according to procedure 269 and keep away from sector 7322212 until your energy level is lowered as instructed.'
'Affirmative, Brain!'

Although the Heisenberg uncertainty principle states that it is impossible to precisely ascertain the momentum and position of a particle, we are still able to calculate the momentum and position of a particle at any point in time A or C, IF we know the momentum and position of the particle at B (and all the present forces that may alter its course), where A < B < C. This leads to determinism, which again leads to the conclusion that free will cannot exist.

[a500lbgorilla]

'Atom 112334532223, please disregard the attracting electromagnetic force from atom 248237465345 and reduce energy level of electron 12 by two steps now', said the brain.
'I copy that, it seems I'm having troubles with energy level seven, I need to keep nr 12 at level nine until the problem is sorted out,' answered the particle.
'Acknowledged. Please alter your course according to procedure 269 and keep away from sector 7322212 until your energy level is lowered as instructed.'
'Affirmative, Brain!'

Your brain doesn't work this way. I don't know how it works, but I know it's not like this. Or even anything analogous to this.

[pocketfours]

'Atom 112334532223, please disregard the attracting electromagnetic force from atom 248237465345 and reduce energy level of electron 12 by two steps now', said the brain.
'I copy that, it seems I'm having troubles with energy level seven, I need to keep nr 12 at level nine until the problem is sorted out,' answered the particle.
'Acknowledged. Please alter your course according to procedure 269 and keep away from sector 7322212 until your energy level is lowered as instructed.'
'Affirmative, Brain!'

Your brain doesn't work this way. I don't know how it works, but I know it's not like this. Or even anything analogous to this.

That's EXACTLY what I'm saying!

[a500lbgorilla]

We're not talking about anything exactly.

[pocketfours]

What I'm saying is that the brain can't control any of its particles. It goes like this:

'Atom 112334532223, please disregard the attracting electromagnetic force from atom 248237465345 and reduce energy level of electron 12 by two steps now', said the brain.
'Sorry Brain, I'm unable to do anything, I'm just a stupid particle. I will pass atom 248237465345, then I will flow between atoms 342579469345 and 2348578347 and finally collide with atom 52934744655 after 0.0000223 microseconds, and there is nothing you or I or anyone can do about it'.
'Fuck!'

[a500lbgorilla]

The brain has no central processor. There is no great decision making unit. There are many specialized processors which work in series and in parallel. Though no element can control their particles, the system can control its elements and that's where free will comes from.

How do you explain this conversation that we're having? How do you see no free will in what we're doing? If I choose to speak, I impact the universe of particles which then move in a predictable way, but I do not speak in a predictable manner.

[pocketfours]

The brain has no central processor. There is no great decision making unit. There are many specialized processors which work in series and in parallel. Though no element can control their particles, the system can control its elements and that's where free will comes from.

How do you explain this conversation that we're having? How do you see no free will in what we're doing? If I choose to speak, I impact the universe of particles which then move in a predictable way, but I do not speak in a predictable manner.

That's where you are wrong. You don't choose to speak and you can't impact the universe in any way whatsoever. There is not a single particle in your body which course you can alter in any way. You can move your hand, but that is just a chain-reaction of particles flowing in your brain and giving an impulse to your muscles (perhaps because a bunch of photons hit your retina and started the reaction in the first place).

In a sense the particles in your brain don't flow freely, they flow freely within the structure of particles that your brain consists of. That's why your brain can do logical things and process thoughts, very much in the same way as electrons flowing inside a microprocessor.

I know that it is very very difficult to see how this discussion is possible without free will, but try to imagine two robots having a similar discussion - we sure know that robots don't have free will. I mean obviously this discussion is too advanced for a robot at this point in time, but perhaps not in 15 years.

[boost]

meh, youre both making horrible arguments imo. Like its been said before the arguments a cyclical. Rilla your last post is completely self dependent, you cant define a word by using the word in the definition.

Pocketfours argument is a bit stronger since it doesnt rely on some sort of faith in the unknown as rilla seems to be doing. Still both sides remain inadequately supported and therefore dont hold their water.

[a500lbgorilla]

The brain has no central processor. There is no great decision making unit. There are many specialized processors which work in series and in parallel. Though no element can control their particles, the system can control its elements and that's where free will comes from.

How do you explain this conversation that we're having? How do you see no free will in what we're doing? If I choose to speak, I impact the universe of particles which then move in a predictable way, but I do not speak in a predictable manner.

That's where you are wrong. You don't choose to speak and you can't impact the universe in any way whatsoever. There is not a single particle in your body which course you can alter in any way. You can move your hand, but that is just a chain-reaction of particles flowing in your brain and giving an impulse to your muscles (perhaps because a bunch of photons hit your retina and started the reaction in the first place).

In a sense the particles in your brain don't flow freely, they flow freely within the structure of particles that your brain consists of. That's why your brain can do logical things and process thoughts, very much in the same way as electrons flowing inside a microprocessor.

I know that it is very very difficult to see how this discussion is possible without free will, but try to imagine two robots having a similar discussion - we sure know that robots don't have free will. I mean obviously this discussion is too advanced for a robot at this point in time, but perhaps not in 15 years.

I said earlier that if a robot believed it had free will, it would have free will.

[a500lbgorilla]

meh, youre both making horrible arguments imo. Like its been said before the arguments a cyclical. Rilla your last post is completely self dependent, you cant define a word by using the word in the definition.

Pocketfours argument is a bit stronger since it doesnt rely on some sort of faith in the unknown as rilla seems to be doing. Still both sides remain inadequately supported and therefore dont hold their water.

Well, half of arguing for me is actually proving to myself that I'm right. Mine has faith in the unknown, pocketfours' has faith in the known. That's why it's very cyclical, as I said earlier in the thread. But I enjoy these kind of arguments because it's like a sport to me.

I'd be interested to see if me and pocketfours were locked in a room never to leave until both of us were completely convinced we either have free will or not, if we would ever leave the room. And if we didn't, what were the limiting factors?

[pocketfours]

meh, youre both making horrible arguments imo. Like its been said before the arguments a cyclical. Rilla your last post is completely self dependent, you cant define a word by using the word in the definition.

Pocketfours argument is a bit stronger since it doesnt rely on some sort of faith in the unknown as rilla seems to be doing. Still both sides remain inadequately supported and therefore dont hold their water.

Thanks for the review I wasn't really trying to argue, I was trying to explain the same thing in different ways.

I haven't had this discussion with anyone before. Please help us make better arguments. I know we are going around in circles and I don't know how to explain my thoughts better.

Of course this discussion is similar to a discussion about religion. It's very hard to make an atheist believe in god, and the other way around. Not that it can't still be a lot of fun

[badgers]

It was really wierd, when I read the beginning of this discussion I wanted to do something random like bang my hand on the table for no apparent reason and then i realised that was exactly how i was always going to react.... Now i'm mindfucked

[pocketfours]

I'd be interested to see if me and pocketfours were locked in a room never to leave until both of us were completely convinced we either have free will or not, if we would ever leave the room. And if we didn't, what were the limiting factors?

Haha, I love this thought, but we would probably never leave, because I could never be completely convinced one way or the other. I'm just speculating and as I have said, my knowledge of quantum mechanics certainly has enough holes that I might have gotten everything wrong.

[pocketfours]

It was really wierd, when I read the beginning of this discussion I wanted to do something random like bang my hand on the table for no apparent reason and then i realised that was exactly how i was always going to react.... Now i'm mindfucked

Yeah! It's sooo sick.

[wufwugy]

like i said before, i basically disagree with both sides. i am positive it is impossible to know one way or the other.

p4: your approach is pseudo-scientific. you're using inductive reasoning, yet conclusions come with deductive reasoning. it may make total sense that free will does not exist, and i believe you're about as right as 50% probability, but its not proven and will likely never be. besides, truth doesn't have to 'make sense'

a problem with using inductive reasoning is that it can go in other directions because its about using observations to leap to conclusions, whereas deductive reasoning is about premises that entail one conclusion. humans are excellent at inducting yet terrible at deducting. imo, inductive reasoning being used in place of deductive reasoning is the root of all logical disharmony. i fail the test often too.

anyways, you see that our particles are in motion and cannot be changed, and nothing about this looks wrong in isolations, yet i see that particles are in motion and that motion may be due to randomness and 'decisions'. there's no way to witness the difference.

looking at it from the scale you are, not only is it impossible to tell the arbitrary from non-arbitrary, but its impossible to tell if there is even any of either and if so how much simply because our observations would be exactly the same in any case.

plus it is entirely meaningless. this type of stuff is why i used to hate philosophy. my experience of philosophy at that time was a bunch of pseudo-scientific babble arguing about things that may be that dont matter if they are or aren't. philosophical wanking. on the flip side, true philosophy is science, and that's the bestest.

no practical or even theoretical changes about anything practical will change if we know one way or the other. we will still feel and act like we have free will whether we believe we do or dont.

however, i could be wrong about it not mattering if we know the truth, i just dont see how it could matter.

[a500lbgorilla]

anyways, you see that our particles are in motion and cannot be changed, and nothing about this looks wrong in isolations, yet i see that particles are in motion and that motion may be due to randomness and 'decisions'. there's no way to witness the difference.

I feel yah on this one. And I think the source of these decisions are the basis for free will. Some part of us. Even if I'm wrong, I'm just wrong. But if you believe that you don't have the power to impact the universe when you actually do, I think you're losing the opportunity to do some great things.

[boost]

however, i could be wrong about it not mattering if we know the truth, i just dont see how it could matter.

inductive reasoning imo

[wufwugy]

however, i could be wrong about it not mattering if we know the truth, i just dont see how it could matter.

inductive reasoning imo

you're right. it is poor leaps of logic to think that i could be wrong.

[DrivingDog]

I don't believe in free will. A neuroscientist in the 80s (Benjamin Libet) did an experiment where he measured brain activity while people made 'free' choices. I don't remember all the details, but it was some simple task like pressing one of two buttons. Then he asked them to estimate when they'd made the choice. Anyways, the basic finding was that the frontal cortex had an increase in activity shortly before the subjects felt they had made their decision.

The interpretation was that the activity in the brain was making the choice and the subjects only became conscious of it later, and their subjective impression of having made the choice themselves (rather than their brain chemistry having made it) was itself only a by-product of brain activity.

Further, people who suffer damage to the frontal lobes often suffer adverse effects to motivation and will in a manner suggesting that these things exist in the frontal lobes. For example, a person who loses part of their frontal lobe may become unable to control their impulses, doing crazy things like fondling women's breasts in public or losing their temper for no reason (like Phineas Gage, the guy who got an iron bar shot through his brain). Others may develop an inability to inhibit actions such that whatever object is set in front of them, they will automatically grasp it and start using it ("Alien hand syndrome"). These kinds of phenomena suggest to me that 'will' is a function of brain tissue and thus as far outside of our conscious control as the function of the heart or liver.

In fact, to most neuroscientists this whole debate is a bit silly because they believe that all thoughts and behaviours are the outcome of activity in the brain, and that we do not have a little man in our head who is 'me' pulling levers or whatever.

[flomo]

i had to

[flomo]

i had to

[Warpe]

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/...u-have-it.html

[pocketfours]

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/fundamentals/mg19025504.000-free-will--you-only-think-you-have-it.html

For philosophers, both arguments can be troubling. "Quantum randomness as the basis of free will doesn't really give us control over our actions," says Tim Maudlin, a philosopher of physics at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. "We're either deterministic machines, or we're random machines. That's not much of a choice."

Pretty much what I have been trying to say (not that he offers any kind of proof or argument here). Proving determinism would obviously prove that free will doesn't exist, but the opposite doesn't hold true (disproving determinism only makes free will theoretically possible).

Since the mathematicians believe that we have free will, it follows for them that 't Hooft's theory must be wrong. "We have to believe in free will to do anything," says Conway. "I believe I am free to drink this cup of coffee, or throw it across the room. I believe I am free in choosing to have this conversation."

So if you don't believe in free will then you can't have this conversation? It's simply ridiculous that ones belief in free will would have any kind of influence on ones actions.

[SaulPaul]

this is getting zomgheadhurting

ill try and offer cliff notes to what the arguments have got to so far:

Free will likely to depend on determinism. Whether determinism still exists remains unsolved for now; quantom randomness suggesting it doesnt exist.

If there is true determinism; there is no free will. Indeterminism allows free will.

Just to make things cloudy again, there is a group of thought called Compatibilism, which argues that free will is compatible with determinism. Ive tried to get my head round it, but its gone kaput

[a500lbgorilla]

I just dont understand. How can there be laws to predict the transfer of ideas? The transferring of an idea is done most commonly by sentences and not all sentences are de-constructed in your mind the same way. The deeper structure of anything I'm trying to say is almost never precisely transfered. It's like compressing a file, transferring it to you and having you decompress it with some losed elements and some replaced elements. And sometimes, not even accurately.

When I say, "My cat ate some rice today." Your mind can make the presuppositions that there is a cat, there was some rice and that it was being eaten by the cat. But that will not create in your mind the same stimulus that it creates in mine. You might only think of rice you've specifically eaten and I may think of only rice which I used to make bean-bags.

So if there are laws of all particle interactions in the universe, that doesn't matter. Because the flow of ideas is not followed by any law. Ideas are formed based on what has happened before, what is happening now and what may happen in the future. Particle flow doesn't consider what may happen, does it? Even though a rock can sense gravity or an airflow can sense an approaching airfoil, they sense that based on what is happening currently. A brain can act on what it thinks is going to happen, what has happened and what is happening. Thoughts aren't trapped to one destiny. They can cycle around in your head for a while until you deem them decent enough to throw back out into the world. There has to be some element which decides when an idea is worth saying. And an element which can decide is an element of free will.

In that sense, it should be almost impossible to develop laws for the meta-processes of our brains without incorporating some decision making element.

[pocketfours]

Just to make things cloudy again, there is a group of thought called Compatibilism, which argues that free will is compatible with determinism. Ive tried to get my head round it, but its gone kaput

There's always going to be all kinds of weird thoughts about everything.

[andy-akb]

ive thought tonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnns about this, and this is what ive realized:

if we have no free will then we cant change anything, so why worry about it? just assume that we have free will because again, if we dont, then it doesnt matter.

[wufwugy]

i have free will; i shall do as i feel.

i dont have free will; i shall do as i feel.

[pgil]

there are interesting experiments done on split brain patients (corpus callosum is severed), where they were given a command such as stand up and go to the fridge, but only to 1 side of the brain. They would get up, and when asked why, would respond that they were thirsty.

they weren't thirsty, they acted without knowing why they acted, but their brain made up a story as to why they were doing what they were doing.

[SaulPaul]

its observations like this (along with general pyschology) that makes me think free will is extremely over rated by common snese.

however it obv doesnt lead any closer to an objective answer.

also depending in quantom randomness for free will is a misnomer. if were dependant on that, then its just a roll if a die that chooses are free will