Jon, Welcome to the list.
On Tue, Sep 27, 2011 at 12:35 AM, nihil0 <jonathan.wol...@gmail.com> wrote: > It's a little late for this post since I've already posted 2 or 3 > things, but I figured I might as well introduce myself. > Its never too late ;-) > > I'm majoring at philosophy at the University of Michigan, however I'm > studying abroad for a trimester at Oxford. I turn 21 on Oct. 4. > > I'm not sure if you were looking for people's input regarding these questions below or not, but I thought I would offer my take. > The main questions I've been researching are the following: > > 1. What kind of free will is worth wanting, and do we have it, despite > the deterministic evolution of the Schrodinger Equation? > The opposite of determinism is indeterminism (randomness) meaning the outcome is not determined by anything as far as we can tell. Let me explain the story of two artificial intelligences, and you tell me which one you believe to have a more free (less restricted) will: Robot A is programmed to have a certain personality, one in which it takes risks to aquire new experiences. It evaluates two competing needs before making a decision, the need to get out of the house and experience novel things (such as skiing, riding a bike, jumping out of a plane, etc.) vs. the need to stay alive to such that it can continue to have new experiences. It's will function evaluates these competing goals, taking into account every factor its algorithms can to make the best decision for itself. The outcome of these algorithms determine what it will do. Robot B is similarly programmed, to have more or less the same personality, but it's risk taking function is a lot simpler. When it decides whether or not to execute a certain plan, it takes the previous closing price of the S&P 500 index, multiplies it by the number of nanoseconds since 1970, then divides by 1,000 and takes the remainder. If the remainder is less than 853 it takes the risk, otherwise it does not. What the robot decides do is the robot's own decision, and it obviously favors risk, but the only real input the robot's own algorithms is the risk factor 853 times out of 1,000 it takes the risk. It has no control over the other two inputs which ultimately make the determination as to what it does. One thing is clear from looking at these two robots. The behavior of robot A can be much more nuanced, intelligent, adaptive, etc. It's personality and will are all to itself. Just because we cannot predict what robot B will do in advance does not make its will more free. I will repeat what another on this list asked a while ago, when we say "free will", "free from what?". Robot A's will is self-determined, and the only way to determine it in advance is to implement all the algorithms and decision making functions that constitute it and evaluate them. In a sense, we are re-implementing, or duplicating its will in order to see what it decides, rather than predicting it. As to your question of what kind of free will is worth having, I will ask you, in what additional ways can Robot A's will be made free? > > 2. Recent cosmological evidence indicates that our universe is > infinitely big, and everything that is physically possible happens an > infinite number of times. Does this imply that I can't make a > difference to the total (or per capita) amount of well-being in the > world? I used to be a utilitarian until I read Nick Bostrom's paper > "The Infinitarian Challenge to Aggretive Ethics." > What Bostom's paper does not seem consider (I only looked at the abstract) is that if the universe is infinitely big, you also exist an infinite number of times and places, (as does everyone else) so I would ignore his paper's conclusion that no one can make any meaningful changes in the amount of good or bad. Even if you say "everything happens", we can change the relative measure, or the frequency of the things that happen by virtue of the type of people we are. Has anyone ever helped you and have you been glad for it? I think a single affirmative answer to this question disproves Bostrom's conclusion, which is based on some tricks we can mathematically play with infinity. You can use these same tricks to prove there are as many numbers that end in 0 as there are numbers, but would you rather have something happen to you on every Nth day of your life, or only every Nth day that was evenly divisible by 10? After living an infinite number of days, an infinite number of bad things will have happened to you, sure, but in which of those lives will you have suffered more? > > 3. Can only mathematical truths be known for certain? We cannot even know mathematical truths for certain. Can you trust 100% your math teacher, your reasoning, your eyes, when following a proof, or that of someone else? Perhaps we can be .99999 certain of some mathematicians reasoning, and the fact that no one else has yet caught an error, and we are not currently delusional, but there is still an uncertainty factor. > Can you know > something without knowing it for certain? > This is a question for the writers of dictionaries. > > 4. Do the laws of physics determine (i.e., enforce) events, or do they > merely describe patterns and regularities that we have observed? > > The assumption of most physicists is that they are studying the laws that determine events. We measure them once and they describe what we have observed, but then the same law seems to be in effect again the next time we look. We don't see the laws change so it is a reasonable leap to say the laws describe how the object (physical world) in which we are embedded evolves. That said, if our consciousness is embedded within an infinite number of physical worlds (not just different locations within the same world) then the question becomes a little more complex. There is no single definite set of laws, and the more closely we look each time, the more we are helping to determine the laws for ourselves. This idea was proposed by Wheeler: http://discovermagazine.com/2002/jun/featuniverse > I would be grateful if anyone could shed some light on any of these > questions. I'm very impressed with what I've read so far from people. > > Ahh good, so you were looking for input. :-) > Glad to be here, > > Thanks, glad you are joining us. Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
