On 3/12/2010 4:51 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
Hi Brent,
We have discussed this a long time ago. Ah, perhaps it was on the FOR list.
Free-will can only diminish when indeterminacy is added.
It is a product of awareness of ignorance on oneself, that an high level
construct. I appreciate infinitely both Kochen and Conway, but on "free
will" they make the beginners' error, like Penrose makes the beginners
error on Gödel.
What error is that? They only purport to prove that the particles have
the same free will as experiments - not that either one has it (whatever
it is).
You can use the self-duplications iteration thought experiment to
illustrate that indeterminacy is not needed, and even annoying if too
big, to let free will develop itself.
Or to let the will develop itself. free-will is an oxymoron. Do you
believe in free free-will ? :)
Only in the legal sense of "free from coercion", otherwise I think
Dennett has it right in "Elbow Room".
Brent
"You can avoid responsibility for everything if you make yourself small
enough."
--- Daniel Dennett
Bruno
On 12 Mar 2010, at 00:04, Brent Meeker wrote:
My apologies. I forgot that Lawrence National Laboratories no longer
hosted the physics archive. I should have cited:
http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0604079
The Free Will Theorem
Authors: John Conway
<http://arxiv.org/find/quant-ph/1/au:+Conway_J/0/1/0/all/0/1>, Simon
Kochen <http://arxiv.org/find/quant-ph/1/au:+Kochen_S/0/1/0/all/0/1>
(Submitted on 11 Apr 2006)
Abstract: On the basis of three physical axioms, we prove that if
the choice of a particular type of spin 1 experiment is not a
function of the information accessible to the experimenters, then
its outcome is equally not a function of the information
accessible to the particles. We show that this result is robust,
and deduce that neither hidden variable theories nor mechanisms of
the GRW type for wave function collapse can be made relativistic.
We also establish the consistency of our axioms and discuss the
philosophical implications.
And here's a later, stronger version that uses some weaker premises.
http://arxiv.org/abs/0807.3286
Brent
On 3/11/2010 2:16 PM, John Mikes wrote:
Brent, nice statement:
* "But it's certainly not a deterministic universe" *
**
I have to take your word, because the reference you gave said: * "NOT
FOUND"*
So what kind of a 'universe' is it? bootstrap, self reflecting
autodidacta? Creator-made?
John M
**
**
On 3/11/10, *Brent Meeker* <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On 3/11/2010 1:26 PM, m.a. wrote:
*Bruno and John,*
* The confusion is my fault. I copied the URL from a Kurzweil
page heading when I should have gone to the article itself, so
the wrong feature appeared. This is the one I requested comments
about:*
*http://www.physorg.com/news186830615.html*
(Excerpts)
*PhysOrg.com) -- When biologist Anthony Cashmore claims that the
concept of free will is an illusion, he's not breaking any new
ground. At least as far back as the ancient Greeks, people have
wondered how humans seem to have the ability to make their own
personal decisions in a manner lacking any causal component
other than their desire to "will" something. But Cashmore,
Professor of Biology at the University of Pennsylvania, says
that many biologists today still cling to the idea of free will,
and reject the idea that we are simply conscious machines,
completely controlled by a combination of our chemistry and
external environmental forces.*
**
*To put it simply, free will just doesn’t fit with how the
physical world works. Cashmore compares a belief in free will to
an earlier belief in vitalism - the belief that there are forces
governing the biological world that are distinct from those
governing the physical world. Vitalism was discarded more than
100 years ago, being replaced with evidence that biological
systems obey the laws of chemistry and physics, not special
biological laws for living things.“I would like to convince
biologists that a belief in free will is nothing other than a
continuing belief in vitalism (or, as I say, a belief in
magic),” Cashmore told /PhysOrg.com/. *
**
*There seems to be an evolutionary rightness and inevitability
to the idea that free will is taking its place as just another
illusion like vitalism, religion, aether, absolute time and
space, geocentric universe, single-galaxy universe and so on.
But I think people will have an even tougher time dealing with
the implications of strict determinism. It's an idea that could
tear through the entire fabric of society even though acceptance
needn't change one's behavior in the slightest respect. marty a.*
But it's certainly not a deterministic universe.
_http://xxx.lanl.gov/PS_cache/quant-ph/pdf/0604/0604079.pdf_
Brent
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