[Richard Turpin]

One other thing that occurs to me is just how much the imminent arrival of true Artificial Intelligence is going to help answer some of these questions. If we build a box of microchips who's every response can be measured, its environment controlled, and yet somehow we still can't predict the choices it makes ...

[BortimusPrime]

(01-06-2019 03:41 PM)Richard Turpin Wrote:  

One other thing that occurs to me is just how much the imminent arrival of true Artificial Intelligence is going to help answer some of these questions. If we build a box of microchips who's every response can be measured, its environment controlled, and yet somehow we still can't predict the choices it makes ...

If you give an AI the same starting state (including the same pseudorandom seed if it uses an RNG for anything) and the exact same problem it will come to the same conclusion each time. Actually this is a problem with neural nets that if you don't provide a sufficiently varied training environment then it's brain essentially gets hardwired and can't actually problem solve.

[JackinMelbourne]

Quote:

Many scientists say that the American physiologist Benjamin Libet demonstrated in the 1980s that we have no free will. It was already known that electrical activity builds up in a person’s brain before she, for example, moves her hand; Libet showed that this buildup occurs before the person consciously makes a decision to move. The conscious experience of deciding to act, which we usually associate with free will, appears to be an add-on, a post hoc reconstruction of events that occurs after the brain has already set the act in motion.

All this proves is that our subconscious mind either projects forward into the future or that our conscious mind and body lags behind OR, the most likely conclusion: that our conscious mind only remembers memories of thoughts or actions yet they still get computed in real time (quicker than we can observe them).

I'm not against the idea of our mind having the ability to act out of sync with our physical experience of time... there have been plenty of WTF coincidences, premonitions, projections and patterns to make me believe there's more to how we really function than simply 1+2=3. It's more like 10^1000 + 1 = X per nanosecond.

Then I look at animals and they have strict biological patterns... so that's that. We do too, with the ability to interfere and alter from a selection of choices.

The free will you have is the will to make choices within your current physical environment and to alter your environment within the confines of physical reality and other people's free will to keep it the same or alter it differently to you.


Here's a question: What choices led you to be on this forum right now? Dig right back to 10 years ago... was it a chance link that someone you met by chance posted on a website created by someone you don't know entirely by chance because of a decision they themselves made based on thoughts and events that happened to them by chance? Or was every single possibility along the way pre-determined?

[ThriceLazarus]

A thought concerning that eerie biological reality. Perhaps the mind itself is our Free Will. From what I understand, other species do not possess the same internal monologue which we do - every action they take may be triggered by these phantom impulses which currently perplex us. Perhaps all of our actions in the present moment are predetermined in the same way. However, as the Mind follows our perception then colors the reality we move through. That our Free Will is the freedom to interpret the world subjectively. Not to drag on, but numerous studies have shown that your subjective experience directly impacts your hormonal - and therefore neurochemical - profile.

It is a paradox then. In the present moment everything we do is already unfolding. Consciousness then steers the experience, which then triggers subsequent automatic action. It’s as if we flicker in and out of existence - which may hint toward the esoteric purpose of mindfulness.

[Kid Twist]

I think a large component of this is a pretty modern idea whose root is the desire for lack of accountability, or perhaps, excuses for irresponsibility. Notice that you don't get these in full force until places decay to a certain extent. Think of it, you're fat = you have a disease (read: you can't do anything about it, it is external to your will). People build habits, good and bad, both are long term in the making, and it is easier to destroy or do bad than it is to create, or do good. That's just a universal, understood by everyone. As is free will; at the very least it is the ability to say NO, the strength of our character to negate the passions or enslavement, but also our original word of rebellion.

If everything is determined, nothing is our fault. This is incredibly attractive to weak or lazy people. It really is that simple. The belief is a heresy, and it is from the evil one.

[Hypno]

(01-06-2019 03:41 PM)Richard Turpin Wrote:  

One other thing that occurs to me is just how much the imminent arrival of true Artificial Intelligence is going to help answer some of these questions. If we build a box of microchips who's every response can be measured, its environment controlled, and yet somehow we still can't predict the choices it makes ...

The more that AI progresses, the more we learn about ourselves and what it means to be human. AI is slowly unpacking how we think, feel and act into discrete steps or processes.

The interesting revelation is that despite our seeming differences, we all have substantially the same hardware and very similar software. And because of that, we all, or most of us, react to certain stimuli in the same, predictable ways.

This is why things like propoganda and game are so effective.

Yes, we probably have free will or the illusion of free will. But there are limits to it. Someone above called it a muscle. Others refer to NPC. Some of that is a reference to apathy, but there is the subconscious mind to account for that reacts to stimuli like propoganda.

[Avoy]

(01-07-2019 11:39 PM)Kid Twist Wrote:  

If everything is determined, nothing is our fault. This is incredibly attractive to weak or lazy people. It really is that simple. The belief is a heresy, and it is from the evil one.

This is great.

Question for the folks entertaining the scientific argument of no free will: what is the point... that we live in a simulation ultimately? Have you personally experienced any evidence of this that would make a strong case for this being true?

To argue that there is no free will would mean that you deciding to do or not do something would be impossible because an external force/operator/etc. will make you do something in its interest, not yours -- basically overriding what you've decided. What's more, every thought you're presently having is not yours... it's implanted in real-time to make you think you're sentient.

Even if we did live in a simulation, free will (if-this-then-that) would most likely be included as part of the construct because we would just be programs running within defined parameters.