On 15 Mar 2013, at 21:18, John Clark wrote:
On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 10:16 AM, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be>
wrote:
>> No that is the exact opposite of the truth, we cannot follow our
own self determination. If you tell me that a system is
deterministic you have added exactly zero information by telling me
that the system also has "free will", thus "free will" means
nothing and is just a noise.
>If you tell me that a system is deterministic you have added
exactly zero information by telling me that the system also has
"consciousness", thus "consciousness" means nothing and is just a
noise.
Loss of consciousness such as in sleep or anesthesia has observable
consequences for me, I formed no new memories and the external
universe seems to have instantaneously jumped ahead, but loss of
"free will" has no observable consequences to me or to anybody else
because nobody has a clue what the dumb thing is supposed to mean.
Well it is either the loss of the will, like in some severe
depression, or the loss of freedom, like in jail or camps.
> if you tell me that a black hole is deterministic you have added
exactly zero information by telling me that the black hole also has
also a mass, thus "mass" means nothing and is just a noise.
What the hell are you talking about?? Change the mass of a Black
Hole and you change the event horizon and that can be measured.
Black holes are the simplest macroscopic objects in the known
universe but you've got to know the mass, if you know the mass, spin
and electrical charge that the Black Hole has then you know
everything that can distinguish one Black Hole from another. You
can know all there is to know about a Black Hole with just 3 numbers
(2 really because for a actual Black Hole the electrical charge is
always zero, or at least very small) but one of those numbers is the
mass.
My point was just to invalidate the kind of reasoning you were doing.
> Having self-determination does not entail that we can self-
determine ourself completely. I did not say "total self-
determination".
So all "free will" means is that sometimes we can make correct
predictions about what we will do before we do it, and sometimes we
cannot, and in general beforehand there is no way to tell which ones
we can make good predictions for and which ones we can't. And even
when we make a correct prediction about what we will do (I will
never do X for example) sometimes we'll have to wait literally
forever to know it was the correct prediction.
A pretty useless definition don't you think?
It is useful to decide if some one must be send in a jail or in an
hospital, or asylum, etc.
>> You're walking down a road and spot a fork in the road far ahead.
You know of advantages and disadvantages to both paths so you aren't
sure if you will go right or left, you haven't finished the
calculation yet, you haven't decided yet. Once you get to the fork
you find yourself on the left path and retroactively conclude that
you must have "decided" to go left.
> Yes. That's what I mean by free will. Roughly speaking.
And a powerful demon could be able to look into your head and
quickly deduce that you would eventually choose to go to the left.
Meanwhile you, whose mind works much more slowly than the demon's,
hasn't completed the thought process yet. You might be saying to
yourself "I haven't decided yet, I'll have to think about it, I'm
free to go either way" but the demon already knows for a fact that
despite your present uncertainty by the time you reach the fork you
will decide to go to the left.
No problem with that, unless the daemon interfere, but I am remain
free to contradict him, if he decides to talk.
Bruno
John K Clark
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