J.This continues to be a very slippery/tenous project for me... not surprising as there seems to be no persuasively concluding "opinion" anywhere, no matter how assertive some (e.g. Sapolsky) seem to be in support of their position.
I really appreciate the Schopenhauer quote you offered up... it very much fits my own self-reflection.
I do agree that we (humans and perhaps a few other species/entities) do seem to have the ability to *imagine* a future and experience the fact (illusion) of our actions leading to some reasonable facsimile of that future? Sometimes I can recognize in myself for this closed loop (intention->action->results->perception) to be confirmation bias... it feels as if I have *predicted something* based on a *planned action* which then *appears* to come true. Other times it feels excruciationgly real that my intention->action yielded a result (perfectly?) aligned with my intention.
My recent fascination with Friston Free Energy and Markov Blankets and Active Inference has provided me with something *like* an intuitive bridge between the mechanistic and the experiential as well as a mechanism for potentially extending (an analog to) what I experience around this loop of intention->results which might apply to AI/ML in a vaguely convincing way? I think there would have to be some meta-meta-levels involved which of course feels a bit like "hand waving"... the jury (in my overfull head) is still out. It also aligns well with my (lame?) understanding of Hawkin's 1000 brains/cortical column theory of brain (cortex) functioning.
On 6/10/25 2:05 AM, Jochen Fromm wrote:
You argue "free will is a pattern, a relentless stubbornness in doing". It fits to Robert Sapolsky who says it is all wired and (pre-)determined and there is no free will. And to Schopenhauer's pessimistic view "A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants" ("Der Mensch kann tun, was er will, aber er kann nicht wollen, was er will")To me it looks like free will is the opposite: we are the only animals which have the ability to break the patterns that govern our behavior. You have the freedom to choose what you want to be on fire about - at least in principlehttps://youtu.be/4vtVOJB2r4Q J. -------- Original message -------- From: Nicholas Thompson <thompnicks...@gmail.com> Date: 6/10/25 1:47 AM (GMT+01:00)To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam@redfish.com> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Free will—ghost in the machine or just clever wiring?I am overwhelmingly happy to take a position on free will for Marcus:You don’t have it, I don’t have it. George doesn’t have it. Will is not the sort of thing that can be had. It is a pattern, a relentless stubbornness in doing.Sent from my Dumb Phone On Jun 9, 2025, at 2:36 PM, steve smith <sasm...@swcp.com> wrote: On 6/9/25 12:25 PM, Jochen Fromm wrote:Why do you call ChatGPT George? I must have missed it. Or who was George?We have a bar named George R in Berlin by the way, in the quarter where I live. It is named after George Remus, an American bootlegger during the Prohibition erahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Remussomeone might add an extra R in homage to our own George R.R. (Martin)?I'm surprised the "George" reference slipped by you, I don't know if it was Stephen or Nick who first started making the reference to GPT (any version) in that mode, but it was a variant on another personal name I think Stephen used for a while with "Gupta" as the surname? I think it was intended to suggest a serious collaborator, but somehow (d)evolved to George? If I weren't so lazy, I'd go dig through the archives... I think someone with a higher fidelity memory or implicated in that origination will pile on here?<OpenPGP_0xD5BAF94F88AFFA63.asc>.- .-.. .-.. / ..-. --- --- - . .-. ... / .- .-. . / .-- .-. --- -. --. / ... --- -- . / .- .-. . / ..- ... . ..-. ..- .-..FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listservFridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom https://bit.ly/virtualfriamto (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/archives: 5/2017 thru present https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/ .- .-.. .-.. / ..-. --- --- - . .-. ... / .- .-. . / .-- .-. --- -. --. / ... --- -- . / .- .-. . / ..- ... . ..-. ..- .-.. FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoomhttps://bit.ly/virtualfriam to (un)subscribehttp://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIChttp://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ archives: 5/2017 thru presenthttps://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/ 1/2003 thru 6/2021http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/
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