Free Will

[andrewducker]

Note: Option two should include a "Not". Please pretend it does.

[Poll #1786450]

Context is the discussion here where someone is completely failing to explain to me what they mean by the term.

Comments

[andrewducker]

My views are similar to this:

If you can't see that, then try this.

[woodpijn.livejournal.com]

Hee, this is going to be fun.

Although I can't tell if there was meant to be a "not" in the second option or if you're making some subtle meta point.

Personally I agree more with Mike and Andrew Stevens in the linked debate.

[ninebelow.livejournal.com]

Although I can't tell if there was meant to be a "not" in the second option or if you're making some subtle meta point.

I was trying to work that out too!

[andrewducker]

I'm an idiot. But I'm not changing it now because (a) it's funny and (b) a bunch of people have answered it now.

Oh well!

[andrewducker]

Can you explain what you mean by Free Will then, because I'm not getting it from them...

[pete stevens (from livejournal.com)]

I think I am thinking, therefore I might possibly be.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

I think there is room for choice in our decisions and that the future as a whole it not predictable (quantum mechanics supports this, and I don't believe we'll find any determinate order underlying its apparent chaos). However, it's also clear that the majority of the choices that people make are exceedingly determinate.

Similarly, I believe in Everett's many worlds hypothesis, but don't believe that every particle event spawns a new universe, because much of the world as a whole is clearly determinate, but not all of it. I remember a discussion of chaos theory I read years ago, where the author talked about predicting the weather, and said that most of the time weather prediction was relatively easy, but sometimes, presumably due to complex chaotic interactions, it wasn't predictable all all - I think both the universe and humans work that way too. I think that for any sort of ultimate prediction of human behavior we will be left with statistics, and they may end up as highly accurate statistics, but that in some cases that's all we'll ever be able to know - much as with the paths and lifespans of various particles.

[undeadbydawn.livejournal.com]

the apparent chaos of quantum mechanics is being worked on as we write. One theory is that there may be a jump in quantum states through the atomic well on influence of laser [electromagnetic] stimulation.

the maths behind that is a *total bitch*

from what I've seen, it makes a lot of sense.

[strawberryfrog.livejournal.com]

Dan Dennett wrote a whole book on the subject, which I don't pretend to understand.

[andrewducker]

I did understand the Wikipedia article*, and thoroughly agree with it. So that's good!


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elbow_Room_%28book%29

[recycled-sales.livejournal.com]

I think this is one of those arguements that I usually try to ignore. Generally it's because I believe one thing (irrationally) and would probably argue the opposite if pressed for debate.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

I’m also enjoying the accidental irony of a question about free will only having one answer.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

I first read this question as Do you believe in free WiFi and was immediately thinking about marginal costs of data movement, fixed infrastructure costs and the psychology of pricing signals. I enjoyed that. Thinking about Free Will has also been fun. Two thinking moments (or arguably two moments where the physical entity identified as me did some nifty algorithm sorting and appeared to derive pleasure from it) for the price of one. Bravo.

[andrewducker]

Free WiFi is good insofar as it attracts people that you want it to.

So for bars and coffee shops that want people to come in, make themselves comfy, and buy lots of their produce it's as much a good as comfy seats and the right kind of music.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

I am uncertain if free will exists. The evidence we have seems to be consistent with both hypotheses; that free will exists and that a combination of probabilistic and deterministic physical occurrences. I think this may be a difficult thing to prove from the inside of our own brains / souls.

I tend to believe in it – for a given value of believe.

The Universe appears to be set up in a way that requires either free will or the illusion of free will. Free will, I think, under pins morality and morality appears to be a significant aspect of the evolution of complex social animals.

It may be the case that I do not have free will but that all of you do.

[andrewducker]

Can you tell me what you mean by "Free Will"?

[alitheapipkin.livejournal.com]

I believe in it but the 3rd option is probably also correct.

Possibly the most accurate description of my views is that I wish to live in a world where my entire life is not determined by my brain chemistry and therefore I operate on the assumption that there is free will because I do not want to contemplate the alternative. This may be total self-delusion but frankly I don't care.

[andrewducker]

That is, I'm sure, a common approach. It's certainly one I used to share :->

[simont]

I wanted to vote both "there is not such a thing" and "never heard a good definition".

Excluding the compatibilist definition (which clearly does exist and is a useful concept for some purposes but I generally think it's best considered as a completely distinct concept that is not what people are talking about in this sort of conversation), the concept of free will seems to be that it's a factor influencing brain activity (and thence people's actions) which is neither deterministic nor random but some third option.

That's not really a definition, in that all it does is tell you what free will is not. I don't think I've ever heard a coherent explanation of what reasonable kind of thing that might fit that description it is; I occasionally hear people saying things like "Well, it's choice!" in defiance of all known neurology, but that doesn't really strike me as adequate.

But even without a definition, just on the basis of the above definition-by-negatives, I'm happy to take the position that I think there isn't such a thing; of course I have no proof of that, but it seems like a weird concept and not obviously a necessary consequence of anything else I believe, so I'll assume not until proven otherwise.

[drainboy.livejournal.com]

Do we have sadness?

We have sadness in the sense that people act in ways that appear sad and, if questioned, can explain their feelings of sadness.

We have sadness in the sense that I have felt that I was sad in the past and recognise the sense of sadness when it comes upon me.

However lots of people can explain the bio-chemical processes of sadness and deconstruct it and look at it from another perspective that seems to suggest it is just a sense of sadness or an illusion of it bought on by the human condition and there is no objective sadness in the universe, but I still feel it and so it is real to me.

Obviously now replace sadness with free will. It is just as real as that. Strange how no-one ever questions whether we really have sadness isn't it.

(my definition of free will would be in the direction of the fact people have a sense of their actions being their own and that feel they are the operator of themselves. I do not deny for a second that all these actions are based purely on the wobbly vibrations of lots of bits of mathematics that no-one's quite figured out yet, but free will is about as real as the chair you're sitting on: you have a sense of it, you can talk about it as if its real, but to the majority of the universe it is not a chair because a chair is a human concept based on human perception, human cognition and human level interactions with those particular bits of universe fluff)

[andrewducker]

You feel sad. You feel you have free will. As sadness _is_ a feeling that's fine. But most people seem to mean more than "I feel I have a choice" when they say they have free will.

[thakil.livejournal.com]

I think that most people who claim that free will exists don't know what they mean by that. Mike in those comments is precisely arguing that. The closest I've come to a definition of free will that is at all defensible is

"There is no external force which is compelling us to make the choices which we make". This is definitely true- we have choice insomuch as we do make a free decision. It just happens that that free decision will be inevitable based on who we are and what we know at that given moment in time.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

Believe it or not, this was a major theme for the last D&D campaign I ran.

Yes, I run highbrow roleplaying campaigns.

[andrewducker]

It was one of the themes for an Amber game I ran.

What was your take in D&D? I say with morality baked in, the provable existence of souls, and the universe actively responding to the way that some people phrase their wishes the D7D universe is certainly more likely to have free-will than ours.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

I believe we have to believe there is free will. I don't know if there is or not, because while we might have the illusion of choice in life, we do still only ever pick ~one~ action, so i think it's impossible to know if we live in a deterministic universe.

But we have to believe in free will, because otherwise, what's the point?

[andrewducker]

There's a point?

Personally, I like snuggles and computer games. That keeps me going :->

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

I don't think the idea of "libertarian" or "contra-causal" free will even makes any sense.

[khoth.livejournal.com]

I came across a nice analogy (probably on lesswrong) for the feeling of choice you get:

Consider a completely deterministic chess computer, that works by analysing what happens for each possible move it could make, and choosing the best. Even though for a given position there's only one move it will actually make, it still "imagined" making a load of potential other moves. That "imagining" isn't just a pointless distraction caused by the computer not knowing that it's deterministic, it's a vital part of the process of picking the best move.

[nameandnature]

+1, like, etc. etc.

[woodpijn.livejournal.com]

There's a simple solution to this debate...

Those of us who think we have free will are right: we do. Those of you who think you don't are right: you don't.

In other words, you are NPCs. :P

[simont]

:-)

But surely this analogy runs into difficulty when a belief in one's player-character-hood is taken together with theism: after all, it's traditionally the NPCs who are more in tune with the GM's grand plan...

[undeadbydawn.livejournal.com]

AAAAACK

15 seconds of trying to red white-on-black and I now have nasty light bars in my visual field
the world is horizontally pinstriped.

Don't do it, kids

[doubtingmichael.livejournal.com]

I believe in chemical compounds. I know some physicists say "Pooh! Chemical compounds are just a consequence of the interactions of quarks and leptons interacting in characteristic ways!" but I see chemical compounds around me, operating in ways that I think are best dealt with as "things in themselves", because if you try to manage them in terms of quarks and leptons you are too divorced from the level on which they operate.

Put another, less indirect way: I believe in free will, but not as an elemental principle of reality, but as a fascinating consequence of the organisation of our universe. If I turn to the hard sciences to support that belief, I go to chaos theory, not quantum physics.

I am aware that nothing I say here is a "proof" of free will, which I think isn't provable. But I do think it's enough that I am not embarrassed to have it as a belief - or an opinion, if you prefer. Nor do I think people holding different opinions should be embarrassed (and this is not the case for some of the things I believe!).

[andrewducker]

Chaos theory says that complex things happen from simple things. And that it's hard to tell what they're going to be in advance because tiny changes in initial state can produce large changes in later states.

Which is good evidence for "We will not be able to determine the future", but not really much of an argument against determinism.

And I don't think you need to be embarrassed. You believe what you believe. Embarrassment isn't going to help anyone :->

[stillcarl.livejournal.com]

Are mistakes in LJ polls the result of a faulty free will?

I read some of that discussion, but before reading your following comment...

If so, then yes. But the decision you come to is no more "free will" than the output of a computer is. It's just more complex, and you are aware of it, which computers aren't.

I'd decided I'd say something along the lines of 'free will is a product of consciousness'.

Now you obviously believe there's a difference between computers and us, you believing we're aware and the computers aren't.

Now I don't pretend to understand what consciousness is, but I do believe it's a fine example of something that's greater than the sum of its parts. And if such an outcome's possible, why shouldn't what's greater take control of the parts from which it sprang?

[drjon.livejournal.com]

I'd go with 3, but I had no choice but to select SEWIWEIC. Because of scurvy.