Anthropic Nonsense

[Ethelred]

Originally posted by Dr.Oogkloot


Turing machines can't have free will?

Not as far as I can see. Everything is fixed. There is no opportunity for inherently unpredictable decisions. Roger Penrose has written two books on the subject. I think he his wrong about microtubules as a source of quantum interactions but his discussions of Turing machines and Goedel's Proof does look at least moderatly sound.

Penrose is uncomfortable with the idea of strong artificial intligence but I don't see him showing it to be impossible except in regards to Turing Machines. Add in a quantum computing component or even a source of true randomization like a radioactive material based random number generator and you get around his objections to strong artificial inteligence.

[Lung]

What is it with you guys? You beat the creationists into submission and are left with nothing to do except argue amongst yourselves?

[Dr.Oogkloot]

Originally posted by SpencerH
Interesting philosophical stuff!

Heres what I want to know, whats the basis for more than one universe? It seems to me that this is something that is tossed around with some glibness (no offense intended). Are we talking about something like quarks vibrating at different frequencies or is it metaphysics on top of more metaphysics?

Firstly, the Many Worlds "Interpretation" of quantum mechanics is IMO the simplest one; it's the one you get when you don't add any arbitrary assumptions to explain away all the other worlds.
This is not metaphysics since it can, in principle, be tested experimentally (I can explain this in more detail if you want).

Secondly, there's the stronger idea that "all mathematically/logically possible universes exist".
For this you might want to look at:

http://www.theophys.kth.se/~max/toe.html

("Is ``the theory of everything'' merely the ultimate ensemble theory? ", by Max Tegmark)
and

http://www.idsia.ch/~juergen/everything/html.html

("A Computer Scientist's View of
Life, the Universe, and Everything", by Jürgen Schmidhuber)

This idea nicely solves a few philosophical problems but also introduces a few new ones.

[Dr.Oogkloot]

Originally posted by Ethelred
Not as far as I can see. Everything is fixed. There is no opportunity for inherently unpredictable decisions.

What does that have to do with free will?
Even if there is randomness how would that help for free will? It would still not be your "choice" if it were random. But choices aren't made at the atomic level anyway, they are made on a higher level and at that level they are perfectly free in the sense of not being impeded of something outside the mind.
It's easy to be misled by saying that your choices are predetermined; they are only predetermined (if you're a Turing machine), because all the processes in your mind work in such a way that you make a certain choice given a certain opportunity. I.e. they are predetermined, but they are determined *by you*. *Unless* there is supposed to be some sort of mystical "you" outside of your body and brain and the laws according to which it works. People who argue that free will and determinism are incompatible IMO often make this strange assumption.

Roger Penrose has written two books on the subject. I think he his wrong about microtubules as a source of quantum interactions but his discussions of Turing machines and Goedel's Proof does look at least moderatly sound.

I disagree. I may explain why later when I have more time

Penrose is uncomfortable with the idea of strong artificial intligence but I don't see him showing it to be impossible except in regards to Turing Machines. Add in a quantum computing component or even a source of true randomization like a radioactive material based random number generator and you get around his objections to strong artificial inteligence.

You'd need that specific mysterious noncomputable quantum gravity process that Penrose thinks is at work in the microtubules, not just any kind of randomness. Normal randomness shouldn't affect the Goedel argument (which is, BTW, wrong anyway )

[Aeson]

But choices aren't made at the atomic level anyway, they are made on a higher level and at that level they are perfectly free in the sense of not being impeded of something outside the mind.

Can a process, no matter how abstract, ever function without obeying the laws that govern it's atomic makeup?

People who argue that free will and determinism are incompatible IMO often make this strange assumption.

Our choices are made by us internally of course. Just as a computer makes choices internally. Most proponents of free will wouldn't apply it to a computer, but would to a human. Even though each is 'programmed' to make the choices they do. The 'programmer' is just more abstract in our case.

It's easy to be misled by saying that your choices are predetermined; they are only predetermined (if you're a Turing machine), because all the processes in your mind work in such a way that you make a certain choice given a certain opportunity. I.e. they are predetermined, but they are determined *by you*.

If you accept a deterministic view of the world, each circumstance is dependant on what brought it about. In this sense there is no room for free will. While the function/state of your mind can make choices when viewed within a limited scope, it loses that ability when all the factors that went into it's formation are taken into account. The mind is formed in a deterministic process just as anything else.

It all comes down to the definition of free will used, and the scope in which it is applied.

[Rogan Josh]

As I have argued before on these forums there is no room what-so-ever for free-will in our current models of fundamental physics. It doesn't matter whether they are deterministic or quantum because, as Dr.O pointed out, doing things on the roll of a die is also not free-will.

Therefore not only is there no evidence for free-will -- modern physics theories do not allow it!

If you want to have free-will on a scientific footing you have to come up with something fundamentally different.

[Dauphin]

Until we understand conciousness, I will not rule out free will.

Personally I am in the no-free-will & no-predeterminism camp.

[SpencerH]

Originally posted by Dr.Oogkloot
Firstly, the Many Worlds "Interpretation" of quantum mechanics is IMO the simplest one; it's the one you get when you don't add any arbitrary assumptions to explain away all the other worlds.
This is not metaphysics since it can, in principle, be tested experimentally (I can explain this in more detail if you want).

Thanks for the effort of putting that together. The only problem is I left calculus and quantum mechanics back about 20 years ago, so I'm looking for something in english . Maybe I should re-read Hawkings book, I dont remember if there was anything about multi-universes though.

Heres my confusion. At some point if your talking about multi-universes that exist as physical entities, and not just as possibilities on a piece of paper, you must run into the problem of "stuff" (note the technical jargon here). Unless completely different physical rules apply (and maybe thats what this is about) atoms are composed of quarks and one proton with an electron is still a hydrogen atom. In terms of quantum mechanics we can talk about where the electron is, and where it is not, but an atom still has mass and occupys a point in space. So how do two atoms occupy the same space? Isnt that what is required for multiple universes? In my simplistic way I might think of same space but different time. But such distortions of space/time only occur in massive gravitational fields dont they?

[Rogan Josh]

I am really doing my best to try any stay out of this multiverse business... but its ... very .... hard!

....must.....not....reply....agggh

[SpencerH]

why not?

[Aeson]

If you were to take any object, and then add another dimension, what do you have? Say for instance, a 2D to 3D conversion. You have a plane, and by adding another dimension you've just added an infinite number of planes, all sandwiched together.

Think about it reversed. Projecting a 3D object onto a 2D surface. You can do so to create an illusion of depth through transformations, but it really isn't there. Each point on the 2D surface is representative of an infinite number of corresponding points (most of which get clipped) that made up the 3D version.

If you allow for more dimensions than 3D + time, there would be an infinite number of 3D volumes that compose the 4th. Just like any other dimensional composition. Infinite points on a line, infinite lines in a plane, infinite planes in a volume.

[SpencerH]

Originally posted by Aeson
If you allow for more dimensions than 3D + time, there would be an infinite number of 3D volumes that compose the 4th. Just like any other dimensional composition. Infinite points on a line, infinite lines in a plane, infinite planes in a volume.

This is a mathematical concept. I'm aware that in mathematics there are infinite dimensions. But I'm a cellular microbiologist not a mathematician. To me, this is an interesting philosophical discussion but I dont see a link to "reality".

[Aeson]

It doesn't link to "reality" except as an abstract concept, if reality is viewed 3 dimensionally. 2 3D objects can't reside in the same place if only 3 dimensions exist, otherwise they would have to be the same object.

I was just trying to point out that other dimensions open up their own space if they exist, regardless of how we view them. Two objects can both reside at the same x,y,z coordinates if another dimension is added.

There are applications of non-viewable dimensions to our 3D reality. The obvious one is time. We can view a 3D 'slice' of time in any given moment, but can't see it as a dimension except in a philosophic/mathmatic capacity. If you set an object down, move it, and then put another where it was, you now have 2 objects at the same x,y,z coordinates. The difference is you have added the dimension of time (t), which allows the same x,y,z, coordinate to apply to an infinite number of x,y,z,t coordinates.

A camera cuts out time. Each picture is a moment. If you were to take pictures of 2 objects at the same point at different times, then merge the photos, it looks like they are transposed on top of each other. They never were at the same place, but the limitations of the camera view creates the illusion that they are. The limitations of our senses do much the same thing when applied to more dimensions than they can deal with.

Some theories (Quantum Physics, Superstring) use other dimensions or worlds to help explain what happens in our own. Whether or not these other dimensions actually exist doesn't matter except from a philosophical viewpoint. What affects our reality is if these theories help us predict/manipulate our own environment.

[SpencerH]

Ok, that agrees with what I thought the mutli-verse component of the discussion was relating to.

thanks

[Dr.Oogkloot]

Our choices are made by us internally of course. Just as a computer makes choices internally. Most proponents of free will wouldn't apply it to a computer, but would to a human. Even though each is 'programmed' to make the choices they do. The 'programmer' is just more abstract in our case.

The reason I wouldn't say a computer has free will, is that I wouldn't say a computer has will at all. Will is something you talk about when it's about minds, and a computer is not complex enough to think of it as a mind.
If or when computers become artificially intelligent, they will also have free will I think.

While the function/state of your mind can make choices when viewed within a limited scope, it loses that ability when all the factors that went into it's formation are taken into account. The mind is formed in a deterministic process just as anything else.

Why can't free choosing be a deterministic process?

It all comes down to the definition of free will used, and the scope in which it is applied.

That's very true. But I haven't seen one application where you need to know whether your choices were determined in advance on a microscopic physics level, so that way of thinking about free will seems useless.