Free Will

[Lorizael]

You know I was just talking about that yesterday. I really wonder sometimes why my friends haven't committed me.

[Flip McWho]

Because it definitely means there's absolutely no purpose to your life.

Except what I give it myself. Stop looking for something else to sit on your shoulder and tell you you're doing alright.

[Lorizael]

Originally posted by Flip McWho


Except what I give it myself. Stop looking for something else to sit on your shoulder and tell you you're doing alright.

The problem with that little theory is all those pesky serial killers in the world.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

Originally posted by Lorizael


You are right that we cannot test free will in any fashion. And because we cannot test it, we cannot assume it to be true. There are many things in this universe that we once simply assumed to be true that have turned out to be blatantly false. Flat earth and all that stuff.

The "obviousness" of a fact does not prove its existence. It merely shows that there is a universal phenomenon that needs explaining.

Also, I do not believe that any sort of fate guides my actions. That is simply a convenient metaphor that I can use to describe a deterministic universe. The logic of my belief does not rest on religion or spirituality or mysticism. It rests on something much colder and less meaningful.

while "obviousness" does not guarantee that what we perceive is what something really is. (in the case of flat earth, it is the problem of scale, we are small while the earth is a huge ball ) The concept of free will is a fundamental aspect of our being. Without it we would be unable to question its purpose, thus it is "obvious" on much deeper level than some physical properites that we can observe. Free will is as fundamental to our "spirit" or to our difference from a rock or a robot if you want to call it this way, as gravity is to the physical world around us. It is obvious in that sense. (to me at least) The fact that I know that I am despite my life appearing meaningless if looked at in detail. It is awareness of existance without prior cause, and the ability to make a choice for "me" without dependace on anything else. Free will is fundamental to life around us as we know it (OK not sure about plant life, but animal life at least).

Anyhow to me it is such a basic property that it could be considered as a "fundamental principle" or axiom in some philosophical system, no need for its existance to be derived or proven from other properties of this universe. Simply if you get to "there is no free will" , life is deterministic because of so and so, it would indicate to me that your system is lacking in some way .

[Agathon]

Nobody really believes in Free Will anyway.

Think about how many assumptions you make about how people will react, and how often you are right. If you add it up, people are 99.9% predictable. We can jot down the other 0.1% to our own ignorance.

People are more predictable than the weather, and we don't ascribe some mystical free will to the weather.

[Lorizael]

The interesting thing about the weather, though, is that we used to asrcibe mystical properties to it. In the twenty first century, though, only Pat Robertson still does.

[Arrian]

Originally posted by loinburger

The value that Fate requires me to attach to it.

The whole "do I have free will" debate is just as pointless as the "am I a brain in a jar" debate. So maybe I'm a brain in a jar -- who gives a damn? I'll never be able to prove one way or the other whether I'm a brain in a jar, so I might as well just assume that I'm not a brain in a jar and get on with my life.

If you don't have free will, then we'll never be able to convince you that you have free will if Fate dictates that you believe that you don't have free will. So we're not going to waste our time in the endeavor, unless Fate dictates that we're supposed to waste our time swaying you from a point of view from which Fate has dicated that we cannot dissuade you. Round and round we go, until eventually one of us passes out from consuming too much alcohol.

mmm, alcohol...

-Arrian

[_BuRjaCi_]

People may 99.9% predictable a person is upredictable.

The matter is boiled down to a simple question : Is the whole grater tha the sum of it's parts ? as Aristotel claims.

If not we are big bags of atoms in wich chemical and electrical, proceses make us waste precious energy in an irational thought proces ( much like system Idle proces in a computer- when ther's realy nothing else to do) that leads nowhere.

But if the whole is grater , then we are ascending to godhood ( not so fast Lorizael I'm talking about the species in a few milion years, when science alows us to manipulate the universe, not about you or me ) . For what is a God if not infinite power+ free will.

A afterthought : simple rules+ simple parameters can produce complex results as shown in the "life game " invented by a scientist I can't remember right now. Can the complex rules of our universe + our complex allow for infinet complexity? I mean the only way to prove that free will MAY exist is to be unable to predict it. Ever. And I do not mean classic deterministic predictions since because of black holes we can never know the starting parmaeters of the universe, and on the quantum level there may just be functions, not AN electron but a 95% PROPABILITY of an electron being here, but propability algorithms that no matter how advance can not predict with 100% acuraciy in the entire specter of the multiverse ( all of the alternative universes a "decision" creates ). To be hones infinite complexity is not nedded just complexity that keeps us puzzled for a few billion years until the universe ends so:

1. Is the whole greater than the sum of its parts?
2. And is that whole infinetly complex ( or at least so complex that no concisnuse that can existe, by the natural laws in our universe, can predict it before the universe ends ) ?

[Solly]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


Innit? That's what current science thinks.

Maybe there is some kind of fundamental randomness, but we have no idea how that affects the macroscopic world. Afterall, the deterministic laws still hold sway.

Deterministics laws stopped holding sway around 100 years ago, fool.

[Fake Boris]

So, given two identical causes, there can be different effects?

[Solly]

Originally posted by Oncle Boris
So, given two identical causes, there can be different effects?

Yes.

Look up the two-slit experiment if you want to learn more about the weirdness and non-commonsensical way the world really operates.

[Fake Boris]

Well, has it been demonstrated that the causes were identical?

[Solly]

Yes.

[Fake Boris]

I've read the article about the experiment on Wikipedia but it doesn't talk about probabilism.

[Solly]

Find "In Search of Schrodinger's Cat" or "In Search of Schrodinger's Kittens" by John Gribbin. They are enlightening.