On Mon, Jun 04, 2018 at 01:12:57PM -0400, John Clark wrote: > > >* * > > *Free-will is often defined by an ability to do something randomly, * > > > Free-will is NOT *often* described that way, I have but I've never heard > anyone else do so;
I'm _sure_ you've heard me describe it that way. It's in my book. My usual formulation is "free will is the ability to do something stupid", which could be paraphrased as "do something irrational". But effectively, that is the same thing as "do something randomly", at least for some definitions of "random". > I like it because, although it is not useful to the > slightest degree it is one of the very few free will definitions that is > not pure gibberish. > Not only is it not gibberish, but it also turns out that acting a little bit irrational is useful, in that you prevent your enemies from exploiting the predictability of you actions if you were perfectly rational. Cheers -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Senior Research Fellow [email protected] Economics, Kingston University http://www.hpcoders.com.au ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
