Re: Free Will Theorem
Hi John, Le 27-avr.-05, à 16:17, John M a écrit : again a post from you with your wits. I will post my reply (if I get the relevant points from Russell and - if I can - ) onlist. However your expression: ... I think we can progress only by understanding misunderstandings ... (what I assume as 'the list's understanding of 'my' mis...) assumes a position of judging the content of a proper understanding. I wonder... Could you develop a little bit. I'm not sure I figure out what you try to say. Thanks, Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
Re: Free Will Theorem
I will suppose the message of Russell was for the list, and forward it (without the attachment :). Russell, dont hesitate to tell me where are you stuck in UDA. Same question for Hal Finney. A summary of UDA: http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/SANE2004Slide.pdf Explanation can be find in: http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/SANE2004MARCHAL.htm I recall for some new people in the list that UDA (the universal doevtailer argument) is a proof that if we are (digital) machine then physical appearances emerge from the overlapping of all possible machine dreams, where a machine dream is a computation seen from a first person point of view. Bruno Le 27-avr.-05, à 11:40, Russell Standish a écrit : I agree with Bruno. There have been a few times I've taken discussions off list, only to regret it later. Re Bruno's thesis, I don't have a problem accepting the conclusions, just a problem understanding the reasoning. I am working on this though - my current task is writing a book, and part of that is to review all these ideas on the evrything-list. Cheers On Wed, Apr 27, 2005 at 08:49:55AM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 26-avr.-05, ? 21:36, John M a ?crit : Russell wrote: Ah John, if only I could understand what you're saying... * Sorry, Russell, I fell back into my wholitic lingo with several items that are not identical to the 'general usage'. I wish you could point out 'some' which I should try to elaborate on. Maybe we could do this in private exchange, to be nice to the list. That would not be nice to the list, imo. I'm sure people on the list can trash by themselves the threads in which they are not interested. We have good training with the spam. But also, I think we can progress only by understanding misunderstandings ... In particular I intend to make somme comments on a post by John asap, and so I would prefer the thread stays online. This is Wei Dai non-moderate list, and I know non-moderation makes people tending to moderate themselves a little bit too much ... :) The reason I'm interested in the John/Russell debate is that I suspect Russell can swallow my methodology but not yet entirely the conclusions; and I suspect John can swallow my conclusions, but not really the methodology. So I could (selfishly) be helped in communicating my work by finding a sort of mean between Russell and John. I will elaborate later. Bruno John M - Original Message - From: Russell Standish [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: John M [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Stathis Papaioannou [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; everything-list@eskimo.com Sent: Friday, April 22, 2005 10:30 PM Subject: Re: Free Will Theorem http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- *PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment to my email, which is of type application/pgp-signature. Don't worry, it is not a virus. It is an electronic signature, that may be used to verify this email came from me if you have PGP or GPG installed. Otherwise, you may safely ignore this attachment. --- - A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 8308 3119 (mobile) Mathematics 0425 253119 () UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Australia http://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02 --- - http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
Re: Free Will Theorem
Le 26-avr.-05, à 21:36, John M a écrit : Russell wrote: Ah John, if only I could understand what you're saying... * Sorry, Russell, I fell back into my wholitic lingo with several items that are not identical to the 'general usage'. I wish you could point out 'some' which I should try to elaborate on. Maybe we could do this in private exchange, to be nice to the list. That would not be nice to the list, imo. I'm sure people on the list can trash by themselves the threads in which they are not interested. We have good training with the spam. But also, I think we can progress only by understanding misunderstandings ... In particular I intend to make somme comments on a post by John asap, and so I would prefer the thread stays online. This is Wei Dai non-moderate list, and I know non-moderation makes people tending to moderate themselves a little bit too much ... :) The reason I'm interested in the John/Russell debate is that I suspect Russell can swallow my methodology but not yet entirely the conclusions; and I suspect John can swallow my conclusions, but not really the methodology. So I could (selfishly) be helped in communicating my work by finding a sort of mean between Russell and John. I will elaborate later. Bruno John M - Original Message - From: Russell Standish [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: John M [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Stathis Papaioannou [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; everything-list@eskimo.com Sent: Friday, April 22, 2005 10:30 PM Subject: Re: Free Will Theorem http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
Re: Free Will Theorem
Dear Bruno, again a post from you with your wits. I will post my reply (if I get the relevant points from Russell and - if I can - ) onlist. However your expression: ... I think we can progress only by understanding misunderstandings ... (what I assume as 'the list's understanding of 'my' mis...) assumes a position of judging the content of a proper understanding. I wonder... With friendship John M PS: with apologies I correct my typo in the post to Russell: please read WHOLISTIC instead of 'wholitic' in my 1st sentence.J. - Original Message - From: Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: John M [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Russell Standish [EMAIL PROTECTED]; everything-list@eskimo.com Sent: Wednesday, April 27, 2005 2:49 AM Subject: Re: Free Will Theorem Le 26-avr.-05, à 21:36, John M a écrit : Russell wrote: Ah John, if only I could understand what you're saying... * Sorry, Russell, I fell back into my wholitic lingo with several items that are not identical to the 'general usage'. I wish you could point out 'some' which I should try to elaborate on. Maybe we could do this in private exchange, to be nice to the list. That would not be nice to the list, imo. I'm sure people on the list can trash by themselves the threads in which they are not interested. We have good training with the spam. But also, I think we can progress only by understanding misunderstandings ... In particular I intend to make somme comments on a post by John asap, and so I would prefer the thread stays online. This is Wei Dai non-moderate list, and I know non-moderation makes people tending to moderate themselves a little bit too much ... :) The reason I'm interested in the John/Russell debate is that I suspect Russell can swallow my methodology but not yet entirely the conclusions; and I suspect John can swallow my conclusions, but not really the methodology. So I could (selfishly) be helped in communicating my work by finding a sort of mean between Russell and John. I will elaborate later. Bruno John M - Original Message - From: Russell Standish [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: John M [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Stathis Papaioannou [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; everything-list@eskimo.com Sent: Friday, April 22, 2005 10:30 PM Subject: Re: Free Will Theorem http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
Re: Free Will Theorem
Russell wrote: Ah John, if only I could understand what you're saying... * Sorry, Russell, I fell back into my wholitic lingo with several items that are not identical to the 'general usage'. I wish you could point out 'some' which I should try to elaborate on. Maybe we could do this in private exchange, to be nice to the list. John M - Original Message - From: Russell Standish [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: John M [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Stathis Papaioannou [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; everything-list@eskimo.com Sent: Friday, April 22, 2005 10:30 PM Subject: Re: Free Will Theorem
Re: Free Will Theorem
Ah John, if only I could understand what you're saying... On Fri, Apr 22, 2005 at 11:45:22AM -0400, John M wrote: - Original Message - From: Russell Standish [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: John M [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Stathis Papaioannou [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; everything-list@eskimo.com Sent: Tuesday, April 19, 2005 8:09 PM Subject: Re: Free Will Theorem Russell S. writes in his convoluted from attachment-digging out ways: Laplace's daemon is a hypothetical creature that knows the exact state of every particle in the universe. In a deterministic universe, the daemon could compute the future exactly. Of course the daemon cannot possibly exist, any more than omniscient beings. In a quantum world, or a Multiverse, such daemons are laughable fantasies. Nevertheless, they're often deployed in reductio ad absurdum type arguments to do with determinism. Again the stubborn anthropomorphic one-way thinking about the idea of a total determinism in one way only. Everything calculated 'in' there is only ONE outcome in the world - as the essence of the one-way universe's own determinism. This was the spirit that made the total greater than the sum of its components - the Aris-total of the epistemic level 2500 years ago. It is an age-old technique to invent a faulty hypothesis (thought experiment, etc.) and on this basis show the 'ad absurdity' of something. Determinism as I would like 'to speak about it' is the idea that whatever happens (the world as process?) originates in happenings - (beware: not a cause as in a limited model, but) in unlimited ensembles of happenings all over, not limited to the topical etc. boundaries we erect for our chosen observations. The happenings are including the 'ideational' part of the world, which is 'choice-accepting' - consequently not fully predictable. As in: endogenously impredicative complexities. Anticipatory is not necessarily predictable and (my) deterministic points to the other side: not where it goes TO, but comes FROM. Even there it is more than we can today encompass (compute?) in full. This may be a worldwide applicational principle of the spirit that made its minuscule example into QM as the 'uncertainty'. Or the cat, or a complimentarity. Alas, I cannot 'speak about it', because we are not up to such level. Not me, not you, not even the materialistic daemon. We all are rooted in the materialistic reductionist models what our neuronal brain can handle - in a world of unlimited interconnectedness. John Mikes -- *PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment to my email, which is of type application/pgp-signature. Don't worry, it is not a virus. It is an electronic signature, that may be used to verify this email came from me if you have PGP or GPG installed. Otherwise, you may safely ignore this attachment. A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 8308 3119 (mobile) Mathematics0425 253119 () UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Australiahttp://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02 pgp6ubIaIpqno.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Free Will Theorem
- Original Message - From: Russell Standish [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: John M [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Stathis Papaioannou [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; everything-list@eskimo.com Sent: Tuesday, April 19, 2005 8:09 PM Subject: Re: Free Will Theorem Russell S. writes in his convoluted from attachment-digging out ways: Laplace's daemon is a hypothetical creature that knows the exact state of every particle in the universe. In a deterministic universe, the daemon could compute the future exactly. Of course the daemon cannot possibly exist, any more than omniscient beings. In a quantum world, or a Multiverse, such daemons are laughable fantasies. Nevertheless, they're often deployed in reductio ad absurdum type arguments to do with determinism. Again the stubborn anthropomorphic one-way thinking about the idea of a total determinism in one way only. Everything calculated 'in' there is only ONE outcome in the world - as the essence of the one-way universe's own determinism. This was the spirit that made the total greater than the sum of its components - the Aris-total of the epistemic level 2500 years ago. It is an age-old technique to invent a faulty hypothesis (thought experiment, etc.) and on this basis show the 'ad absurdity' of something. Determinism as I would like 'to speak about it' is the idea that whatever happens (the world as process?) originates in happenings - (beware: not a cause as in a limited model, but) in unlimited ensembles of happenings all over, not limited to the topical etc. boundaries we erect for our chosen observations. The happenings are including the 'ideational' part of the world, which is 'choice-accepting' - consequently not fully predictable. As in: endogenously impredicative complexities. Anticipatory is not necessarily predictable and (my) deterministic points to the other side: not where it goes TO, but comes FROM. Even there it is more than we can today encompass (compute?) in full. This may be a worldwide applicational principle of the spirit that made its minuscule example into QM as the 'uncertainty'. Or the cat, or a complimentarity. Alas, I cannot 'speak about it', because we are not up to such level. Not me, not you, not even the materialistic daemon. We all are rooted in the materialistic reductionist models what our neuronal brain can handle - in a world of unlimited interconnectedness. John Mikes
Re: Free Will Theorem
On Sun, Apr 17, 2005 at 06:01:19PM -0400, John M wrote: Russell, I hate to discuss sci-fi (the daemon), but you wrote: The daemon computes the future - not just predicts or guesses, but computes it exactly. So in your opinion the daemon 'knows' (= applies for this exact comp) all the unlimited details of a totally interconnected world. IMO she cannot be different from the world itself. And the computer usable for the daemon could not be different from - (!!!) the world itself again. The unlimited database applied by the infinite computing. No neglects, no surprizes. Exact computation of the future. - Fine. Laplace's daemon is a hypothetical creature that knows the exact state of every particle in the universe. In a deterministic universe, the daemon could compute the future exactly. Of course the daemon cannot possibly exist, any more than omniscient beings. In a quantum world, or a Multiverse, such daemons are laughable fantasies. Nevertheless, they're often deployed in reductio ad absurdum type arguments to do with determinism. Then again: Tierra is not a model, it is a computational system that can be studied in its own right. Our definitions of 'model' are different. I call it (and used it that way) a limited aspect of the totality, in the first place limited by the (actual?) level of our continually increasing knowledge base. Since you hopefully do not deal in sci-fi, your Tierra circumstances are limited at least in this sense. You do limited computations and draw conclusions which in your word do not seem to be appreciated as a limited outcome. Here is the punctum saliens I make in reductionistic vs wholistic: to draw universal conclusions upon model-studies. This may not be the place for debating this point, but a model stands in a modelling relation to some other system. There is meant to be some correspondence between the model and the system that allows one to draw inferences from the model about the system. Tierra, on the other hand is not a model, in this sense - it is an evolutionary system in its own right. It is not particularly interesting in its own right, except that by studying it, and comparing it with other evolutionary systems, one might discover what is common to all evolutionary systems, and what is peculiar to particular ones - eg the Earth's biosphere. Your position about Tierra is appreciable, which does not hit me as a surprize. I just consider them a step. Even if you employ 'The Daemon you could not get the totality: without total input no total outcome. On the other hand, if we succeed, we will have a far better understanding of creativity, plus probably have a powerful new technology to boot. That I agree with and this is the reason for my appreciation of your project. Just please, don't 'daemonize' it. John Mikes - Original Message - From: Russell Standish [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: John M [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Stathis Papaioannou [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; everything-list@eskimo.com Sent: Wednesday, April 13, 2005 7:58 PM Subject: Re: Free Will Theorem -- *PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment to my email, which is of type application/pgp-signature. Don't worry, it is not a virus. It is an electronic signature, that may be used to verify this email came from me if you have PGP or GPG installed. Otherwise, you may safely ignore this attachment. A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 8308 3119 (mobile) Mathematics0425 253119 () UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Australiahttp://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02 pgpr5fQT2lm2z.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Free Will Theorem
On Mon, Apr 18, 2005 at 05:14:42PM -0700, Pete Carlton wrote: On Apr 11, 2005, at 11:11 PM, Russell Standish wrote: I'm dealing with these questions in an artificial life system - Tierra to be precise. I have compared the original Tierra code, with one in which the random no. generator is replaced with a true random no. generator called HAVEGE, and another simulation in which the RNG is replaced with a cryptographically secure RNG called ISAAC. The results to date (and this _is_ work in progress) is that there is a distinct difference between the original Tierra PRNG, and the other two generators, but that there is little difference between HAVEGE and ISAAC. This seems to indicate that algorithmic randomness can be good enough to fool learning algorithms. That's a very interesting experiment -- you might be interested to know that Dennett (again, in Elbow Room) predicted something similar; that for all the cases where randomness impacts an organism's choices, true randomness would be practically indistinguishable from sufficiently unpredictable pseudorandomness. I'm glad you're doing these experiments. How does your true random number generator work? Do you have preliminary results posted somewhere? Have a look at Standish, R.K. (2004) ``The Influence of Parsimony and Randomness on Complexity Growth in Tierra'', in ALife IX Workshop and Tutorial Proceedings, Bedau et al. (eds). which is posted on my website. You said The whole debate you quote from Dennett seems quaint and out of date... ... Well, it looks like there are as many definitions of free will as there are people taking part in the debate -- which is precisely why we need to talk about it, and why it's a good idea be familiar with at least the high points of the past 2500 years of philosophical literature on the subject, in order to avoid making the same mistakes that other brilliant minds have made. I agree with you on this. I am aware of most of these arguments, as they tend to be repeated over and over whenever this topic comes up. However, most of these arguments I find particularly unconvincing when seen in the light of a quantum Multiverse. I think it is time to move on, or to shut up. Cheers -- *PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment to my email, which is of type application/pgp-signature. Don't worry, it is not a virus. It is an electronic signature, that may be used to verify this email came from me if you have PGP or GPG installed. Otherwise, you may safely ignore this attachment. A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 8308 3119 (mobile) Mathematics0425 253119 () UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Australiahttp://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02 pgpYqSWPd8tNv.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Free Will Theorem
On Mon, Apr 18, 2005 at 05:45:58PM -0700, Hal Finney wrote: On Apr 11, 2005, at 11:11 PM, Russell Standish wrote: I'm dealing with these questions in an artificial life system - Tierra to be precise. I have compared the original Tierra code, with one in which the random no. generator is replaced with a true random no. generator called HAVEGE, and another simulation in which the RNG is replaced with a cryptographically secure RNG called ISAAC. The results to date (and this _is_ work in progress) is that there is a distinct difference between the original Tierra PRNG, and the other two generators, but that there is little difference between HAVEGE and ISAAC. This seems to indicate that algorithmic randomness can be good enough to fool learning algorithms. It definitely should be. At least certain types of cryptographic random number generators are reducible to factoring. That means that if any program can distinguish the output from the crypto RNG from the output of a true RNG, you could factor a large number such as an RSA modulus. This would be an important and completely unexpected cryptographic result. Assuming that factoring is truly intractable, crypto RNGs are as good as real ones, and deterministic universes are indistinguishable from nondeterministic ones. Hal This was exactly the point Sasha Wait made when I presented these results at ALife 9. However the argument doesn't quite hold, because I've never claimed that my procedure was computationally feasible (in fact it strikes me that my algorithm is NP-hard, however that doesn't stop me throwing lots of supercomputer grunt at it!). It is always possible to factor large numbers, its just that it is assumed to be computationally infeasible. However, in another sense the point is valid. Complexity is in the eye of the beholder, and the beholder will have limited computational capability, and probably unable to distinguish between true randomness and sufficently strong cryptographic sequences. Cheers -- *PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment to my email, which is of type application/pgp-signature. Don't worry, it is not a virus. It is an electronic signature, that may be used to verify this email came from me if you have PGP or GPG installed. Otherwise, you may safely ignore this attachment. A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 8308 3119 (mobile) Mathematics0425 253119 () UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Australiahttp://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02 pgpYsy7fIZoSl.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Free Will Theorem
On Apr 11, 2005, at 11:11 PM, Russell Standish wrote: I'm dealing with these questions in an artificial life system - Tierra to be precise. I have compared the original Tierra code, with one in which the random no. generator is replaced with a true random no. generator called HAVEGE, and another simulation in which the RNG is replaced with a cryptographically secure RNG called ISAAC. The results to date (and this _is_ work in progress) is that there is a distinct difference between the original Tierra PRNG, and the other two generators, but that there is little difference between HAVEGE and ISAAC. This seems to indicate that algorithmic randomness can be good enough to fool learning algorithms. That's a very interesting experiment -- you might be interested to know that Dennett (again, in Elbow Room) predicted something similar; that for all the cases where randomness impacts an organism's choices, true randomness would be practically indistinguishable from sufficiently unpredictable pseudorandomness. I'm glad you're doing these experiments. How does your true random number generator work? Do you have preliminary results posted somewhere? Anyway, I think that the important question of free will is not Could I have done otherwise than I did in >this exact circumstance, but this: Am I so constituted that I will act the way I did in circumstances >relevantly like this, but will be able to change my behavior in the way I want to when circumstances change?. In other words -- we really don't care whether or not we'd do the same thing over and over again if circumstances were exactly the same. That kind of free will, what you would get from indeterminism, is not at all what people care about when they think about whether they have free will or not. What we care about is whether we have self-control. You said The whole debate you quote from Dennett seems quaint and out of date... , but I think it's very useful (and actually it was from the Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy, not from Dennett). There's been a lot of definitional hair-splitting here about just what free will is and isn't; I propose to approach the question in a different way: What do you personally care about? Does it matter to you whether the universe is deterministic or not? Would it matter to you if you realized someone was using subliminal advertising on you to make you buy things? (I'm not suggesting that what we want to be the case has any influence on what is the case; I'm just trying to get at what people mean when they say free will.) Well, it looks like there are as many definitions of free will as there are people taking part in the debate -- which is precisely why we need to talk about it, and why it's a good idea be familiar with at least the high points of the past 2500 years of philosophical literature on the subject, in order to avoid making the same mistakes that other brilliant minds have made. Pete
Re: Free Will Theorem
On Apr 11, 2005, at 11:11 PM, Russell Standish wrote: I'm dealing with these questions in an artificial life system - Tierra to be precise. I have compared the original Tierra code, with one in which the random no. generator is replaced with a true random no. generator called HAVEGE, and another simulation in which the RNG is replaced with a cryptographically secure RNG called ISAAC. The results to date (and this _is_ work in progress) is that there is a distinct difference between the original Tierra PRNG, and the other two generators, but that there is little difference between HAVEGE and ISAAC. This seems to indicate that algorithmic randomness can be good enough to fool learning algorithms. It definitely should be. At least certain types of cryptographic random number generators are reducible to factoring. That means that if any program can distinguish the output from the crypto RNG from the output of a true RNG, you could factor a large number such as an RSA modulus. This would be an important and completely unexpected cryptographic result. Assuming that factoring is truly intractable, crypto RNGs are as good as real ones, and deterministic universes are indistinguishable from nondeterministic ones. Hal
Re: Free Will Theorem
Russell, I hate to discuss sci-fi (the daemon), but you wrote: The daemon computes the future - not just predicts or guesses, but computes it exactly. So in your opinion the daemon 'knows' (= applies for this exact comp) all the unlimited details of a totally interconnected world. IMO she cannot be different from the world itself. And the computer usable for the daemon could not be different from - (!!!) the world itself again. The unlimited database applied by the infinite computing. No neglects, no surprizes. Exact computation of the future. - Fine. Then again: Tierra is not a model, it is a computational system that can be studied in its own right. Our definitions of 'model' are different. I call it (and used it that way) a limited aspect of the totality, in the first place limited by the (actual?) level of our continually increasing knowledge base. Since you hopefully do not deal in sci-fi, your Tierra circumstances are limited at least in this sense. You do limited computations and draw conclusions which in your word do not seem to be appreciated as a limited outcome. Here is the punctum saliens I make in reductionistic vs wholistic: to draw universal conclusions upon model-studies. Your position about Tierra is appreciable, which does not hit me as a surprize. I just consider them a step. Even if you employ 'The Daemon you could not get the totality: without total input no total outcome. On the other hand, if we succeed, we will have a far better understanding of creativity, plus probably have a powerful new technology to boot. That I agree with and this is the reason for my appreciation of your project. Just please, don't 'daemonize' it. John Mikes - Original Message - From: Russell Standish [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: John M [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Stathis Papaioannou [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; everything-list@eskimo.com Sent: Wednesday, April 13, 2005 7:58 PM Subject: Re: Free Will Theorem
Re: Free Will Theorem
John Mikes wrote: Dear Stathis, isn't this getting out of control? I am not talking about your ingenious octopus question (ask the octopus!) I am talking of the simplistic anthropomodelled and today-level-related way of thinking: something (anything) is black or white, in other words: it is either this (one) way we can think about now, or it is THE other ONE way we can think of now, as an alternative. This list produced more advanced ways of thinking over the 5-6 years (?) I have the pleasure of reading in. Sorry if I got carried away on this thread, John. I have been trying to say that free will is a subjective experience, first and foremost, and to debate whether it is philosophically or scientifically sound is a category error. You could take the 8-freedom I described for my octopus and conclude that it it is nonsensical or contradictory, but it would be foolish to then say the octopus is wrong about what it feels; i.e., ask the octopus is the correct answer. I thought you might agree with me here if nowhere else, since you can take it as showing a mild contempt for science. --Stathis Papaioannou _ $60,000 prize pool to be won. Three winners. Apply now! http://www.healthe.com.au/competition.do
Re: Free Will Theorem
Thanks, Stathis, I did not think of this perfect formulation of yours: free will is a subjective experience A big (nonreligious) amen. Contempt for science? maybe a realistic valuation of the model-based observations and the boundary-enclosed explanations we call science. Every age abides within the level of its epistemic inventory of cognitive enrichment (in other words: thinking that 'we just know it all') and fashions the world(view) accordingly. Then comes new information and science tries to comply with it (mostly just complicating things). (Think of 'entropy', the 200+year old sweaty explanation for (now) obsolete observational ideas - since then at least a dozen times reformulated, redefined, and still one of the favorite cop-out of most (not only) physicists. Informational entropy, hah?) An advanced thinker must keep his eyes open for the obsolescence of the habitual knowledge-base. It took me 50 years in a successful reductionistic (polymer) science practice to start thinking in interconnections beyond the models. I found the 'reductionistic' science practically very effective, useful and in the line of progress, don't misunderstand me. Thanks for your insight John M - Original Message - From: Stathis Papaioannou [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: everything-list@eskimo.com Sent: Saturday, April 16, 2005 9:53 AM Subject: Re: Free Will Theorem John Mikes wrote: Dear Stathis, isn't this getting out of control? I am not talking about your ingenious octopus question (ask the octopus!) I am talking of the simplistic anthropomodelled and today-level-related way of thinking: something (anything) is black or white, in other words: it is either this (one) way we can think about now, or it is THE other ONE way we can think of now, as an alternative. This list produced more advanced ways of thinking over the 5-6 years (?) I have the pleasure of reading in. Sorry if I got carried away on this thread, John. I have been trying to say that free will is a subjective experience, first and foremost, and to debate whether it is philosophically or scientifically sound is a category error. You could take the 8-freedom I described for my octopus and conclude that it it is nonsensical or contradictory, but it would be foolish to then say the octopus is wrong about what it feels; i.e., ask the octopus is the correct answer. I thought you might agree with me here if nowhere else, since you can take it as showing a mild contempt for science. --Stathis Papaioannou _ $60,000 prize pool to be won. Three winners. Apply now! http://www.healthe.com.au/competition.do
Re: Free Will Theorem
Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 14-avr.-05, à 14:48, Stathis Papaioannou a écrit : A decision I make is free when I feel that I could have decided otherwise. OK I can take that definition of free-will, although I would bet that free-will will always be in company of any genuine act of will. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ It is exactly the quibbling over precise definitions etc. that I was trying to avoid. When I say my decision was free, I mean that it *felt* free, as opposed to a decision I might have made with a gun held to my head. I have to use some word to describe it, so that you can understand what I'm talking about, which is only possible if you have similar experiences. Philosophers then take this word free, look at various possible meanings, and decide whether my use of the word is appropriate. For example, if free means neither random nor determined, then I am misusing the word or deluding myself, because everything has to be some combination of random or determined. However, I didn't intend to enter such a debate when I used that word! Suppose an octopus, in addition to the regular human-type free will (will I have dinner now or later?), has a special 8-free will when it has to decide which tentacle it will use. This 8-free will feels completely different to the other sort, in that the octopus mentally spins a roulette wheel, which feels completely random, but at the moment it moves the thus-chosen tentacle, a strange retrospective causality event takes place, such that the octopus knows with every fibre of its being that the chosen tentacle was the correct one all along. OK, here is the question. Given our knowledge of physics, does the octopus really have 8-freedom, or not? --Stathis Papaioannou _ $60,000 prize pool to be won. Three winners. Apply now! http://www.healthe.com.au/competition.do
Re: Free Will Theorem
Dear Stathis, isn't this getting out of control? I am not talking about your ingenious octopus question (ask the octopus!) I am talking of the simplistic anthropomodelled and today-level-related way of thinking: something (anything) is black or white, in other words: it is either this (one) way we can think about now, or it is THE other ONE way we can think of now, as an alternative. This list produced more advanced ways of thinking over the 5-6 years (?) I have the pleasure of reading in. Just as 'random' is not free, once it is the consequence of (any) generator system (deterministic outcome, even if it includes 'many') and as the poorly identified 'deterministic' is not the one and only (especially not the teleological end-point identifying aberration) origination-way in a world of more interlaced efects (in the complexity of the wholeness) than we. or any (semi?)closed system can presently (and practically) compute, the question of Now, which one of the two do I feel? is questionable to put it nicely. You are right on when you wrote: neither random nor determined, then I am misusing the word or deluding myself, because everything has to be some combination of random or determined. However, I didn't intend to enter such a debate when I used that word! you just missed your own distinction of random as 'some combination'. Based on the emotional brainwashing (religious AND scientific) in our young years (schools?), we all are prone to such 'deluding' if we are not careful. It is so interesting when members with free insight and unrestricted mind's freedom fall back into the 'oneplane restricted' classical mathematical ways and negate the (still) unknown. If it is not Q-science it is not true. Comp my way or the highway. 101 physix class. (Not even religion!) It is so amazing how an unusual and emotion-based (superstition?) topic can distort the advanced thinking in the minds! My God! (??) John Mikes - Original Message - From: Stathis Papaioannou [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: everything-list@eskimo.com Sent: Friday, April 15, 2005 6:27 AM Subject: Re: Free Will Theorem Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 14-avr.-05, 14:48, Stathis Papaioannou a crit : A decision I make is free when I feel that I could have decided otherwise. OK I can take that definition of free-will, although I would bet that free-will will always be in company of any genuine act of will. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ It is exactly the quibbling over precise definitions etc. that I was trying to avoid. When I say my decision was free, I mean that it *felt* free, as opposed to a decision I might have made with a gun held to my head. I have to use some word to describe it, so that you can understand what I'm talking about, which is only possible if you have similar experiences. Philosophers then take this word free, look at various possible meanings, and decide whether my use of the word is appropriate. For example, if free means neither random nor determined, then I am misusing the word or deluding myself, because everything has to be some combination of random or determined. However, I didn't intend to enter such a debate when I used that word! Suppose an octopus, in addition to the regular human-type free will (will I have dinner now or later?), has a special 8-free will when it has to decide which tentacle it will use. This 8-free will feels completely different to the other sort, in that the octopus mentally spins a roulette wheel, which feels completely random, but at the moment it moves the thus-chosen tentacle, a strange retrospective causality event takes place, such that the octopus knows with every fibre of its being that the chosen tentacle was the correct one all along. OK, here is the question. Given our knowledge of physics, does the octopus really have 8-freedom, or not? --Stathis Papaioannou
Re: Free Will Theorem
Hal Finney writes: Stathis Papaioannou writes Here is my definition: a decision I make is free when I feel that I could have decided otherwise. Is the question of free will just a matter of definitions? Definitional arguments are sterile and have no meaning. If I define free will to be a 14 pound bowling ball, then there, I've proven that free will exists. But it's not a very useful approach. It is important to understand that there is more to the free will problem than just definitions. Before trying to define away the problem, it is necessary to clearly state it and understand it. The page I pointed to, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/, goes on to do so in the very next paragraph after the one I quoted: : 1.5 The Free Will Problem : : If we are to understand compatibilism as a solution to the free : will problem, it would be useful to have some sense of the problem : itself. Unfortunately, just as there is no single notion of free will : that unifies all of the work philosophers have devoted to it, there is : no single specification of the free will problem. In fact, it might be : more helpful to think in terms of a range of problems. Regardless, any : formulation of the problem can be understood as arising from a troubling : sort of entanglement of our concepts, an entanglement that seems to lead : to contradictions, and thus that cries out for a sort of disentangling. In : this regard, the free will problem is a classic philosophical problem; : we are, it seems, committed in our thought and talk to a set of concepts : which, under scrutiny, appear to comprise a mutually inconsistent : set. Formally, to settle the problem - to disentangle the set - we must : either reject some concepts, or instead, we must demonstrate that the : set is indeed consistent despite its appearance to the contrary. : Just to illustrate, consider this set of propositions as an historically : very well known means of formulating the free will problem. Call it the : Classical Formulation: : : 1. Some person (qua agent), at some time, could have acted otherwise : than she did. : 2. Actions are events. : 3. Every event has a cause. : 4. If an event is caused, then it is causally determined. : 5. If an event is an act that is causally determined, then the agent : of the act could not have acted otherwise than in the way that : she did. This is more or less the point I was trying to make: philosophical discussion leads to a troubling entaglement that seems to lead to contradictions. I return to what I called a definition but I should probably have called a description of the basic phenomenon we are discussing: A decision I make is free when I feel that I could have decided otherwise. Is this OK as a starting point, before we start analysing what it all means, and regardless of what the ultimate conclusion is going to be? I'm not saying anything controversial yet; I'm simply describing under what circumstances I get this free will feeling, whatever that is. Now, a philosopher comes along and tells me that in fact, I am mistaken. I could not actually have decided otherwise, because my brain was following a script predetermined by the laws of physics. Or, just as bad, I could have decided otherwise, but it would have been due to random events in my brain, and thus it have no more been my decision than if I had been enslaved to the outcome of a coin toss. First, I might point out that the philosopher is putting words in my mouth. I never claimed that my cerebral decision-making processes were not random or not deterministic. All I claimed was that I get the free will feeling when I *feel* I could have decided otherwise. I may not know much about physics or philosophy, but I certainly know how I feel! If I learn that my brain is actually based on an old poker machine, that is interesting, but I still feel the way I feel. On the other hand, I might aknowledge that my feeling of freedom is not actually consistent with the particular interpretation of the term freedom the philosopher is trying to foist on me. In other words, if freedom means not bound by determinism or randomness, then I could not possibly be free, simply because there is no third alternative to determinism or randomness! In this case, I would have to admit that my free will feeling is something quite peculiar, with no correlate in the real world. Fine: let's say this is what it is. My subjective experience of free will remains unchanged, my behaviour remains unchanged, and my attitude towards other people (also exercising this strange, non-free, non-random, non-deterministic free will thing) remains unchanged. --Stathis Papaioannou _ SEEK: Now with over 80,000 dream jobs! Click here: http://ninemsn.seek.com.au?hotmail
Re: Free Will Theorem
Stathis Papaioannou writes: This is more or less the point I was trying to make: philosophical discussion leads to a troubling entaglement that seems to lead to contradictions. I return to what I called a definition but I should probably have called a description of the basic phenomenon we are discussing: A decision I make is free when I feel that I could have decided otherwise. Is this OK as a starting point, before we start analysing what it all means, and regardless of what the ultimate conclusion is going to be? I'm not saying anything controversial yet; I'm simply describing under what circumstances I get this free will feeling, whatever that is. It's probably OK, but it seems a little ambiguous. Do you mean that you feel this in a naive way, before giving it any philosophical thought? Or do you mean that you still feel this after considering, for example, that you live in a deterministic and/or random universe? And worse, that if you live in a multiverse, then your choice in fact was no choice at all and was rather the subjective experience of a splitting of the multiverse into two parts, one part where you made one choice and one part where you made the other? Would you still feel that you could have decided otherwise if this was your mental model of the universe? Now, a philosopher comes along and tells me that in fact, I am mistaken. I could not actually have decided otherwise, because my brain was following a script predetermined by the laws of physics. Or, just as bad, I could have decided otherwise, but it would have been due to random events in my brain, and thus it have no more been my decision than if I had been enslaved to the outcome of a coin toss. First, I might point out that the philosopher is putting words in my mouth. I never claimed that my cerebral decision-making processes were not random or not deterministic. All I claimed was that I get the free will feeling when I *feel* I could have decided otherwise. I may not know much about physics or philosophy, but I certainly know how I feel! If I learn that my brain is actually based on an old poker machine, that is interesting, but I still feel the way I feel. Doesn't this require a degree of cognitive inconsistency or dissonance, in which you must separate your knowledge of the nature of reality from your instinctive feelings about your behavior? On the other hand, I might aknowledge that my feeling of freedom is not actually consistent with the particular interpretation of the term freedom the philosopher is trying to foist on me. In other words, if freedom means not bound by determinism or randomness, then I could not possibly be free, simply because there is no third alternative to determinism or randomness! In this case, I would have to admit that my free will feeling is something quite peculiar, with no correlate in the real world. Fine: let's say this is what it is. My subjective experience of free will remains unchanged, my behaviour remains unchanged, and my attitude towards other people (also exercising this strange, non-free, non-random, non-deterministic free will thing) remains unchanged. I guess I'm having trouble understanding this subjective experience of free will. It seems to require a somewhat sophisticated degree of self-modelling and self-understanding, in order to model the concept that your mind could have behaved differently and made a different choice. Yet it is blind to other physical realities. Aren't you just lying to yourself? Or do you really have this feeling as a direct, pre-rational self-perception, like the experience of redness or of pain? I'm not sure I have any such feeling, but perhaps I have internalized the philosophical arguments so much that they have contaminated this pure self-perception that you describe. Hal Finney
Re: Free Will Theorem
Hal Finney writes: On the other hand, I might aknowledge that my feeling of freedom is not actually consistent with the particular interpretation of the term freedom the philosopher is trying to foist on me. In other words, if freedom means not bound by determinism or randomness, then I could not possibly be free, simply because there is no third alternative to determinism or randomness! In this case, I would have to admit that my free will feeling is something quite peculiar, with no correlate in the real world. Fine: let's say this is what it is. My subjective experience of free will remains unchanged, my behaviour remains unchanged, and my attitude towards other people (also exercising this strange, non-free, non-random, non-deterministic free will thing) remains unchanged. I guess I'm having trouble understanding this subjective experience of free will. It seems to require a somewhat sophisticated degree of self-modelling and self-understanding, in order to model the concept that your mind could have behaved differently and made a different choice. Yet it is blind to other physical realities. Aren't you just lying to yourself? Or do you really have this feeling as a direct, pre-rational self-perception, like the experience of redness or of pain? I'm not sure I have any such feeling, but perhaps I have internalized the philosophical arguments so much that they have contaminated this pure self-perception that you describe. Yes, that's just what I mean. It is just like the perception of redness or pain - just as essentially private. If I do try to analyse this feeling, it seems that when I make a free decision, I am not bound by deterministic laws, nor am I doing something completely random. Clearly, this is physically impossible, for what other driving mechanism is there than randomness or determinism? But I don't really think this is saying much more than that when I experience a pain, it seems to me that something more is happening than mere electrical impulses in my brain, even though I am aware intellectually that that is the physical reality. If you want, you could say that all subjective experience is a kind of self-deception. --Stathis Papaioannou _ SEEK: Now with over 80,000 dream jobs! Click here: http://ninemsn.seek.com.au?hotmail
Re: Free Will Theorem
Hal Finney wrote: The question of free will has generated an enormous amount of philosophical literature. I'd suggest reading at least the first part of this page on Compatibilism, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/. Compatibilism is the doctrine that free will is compatible with determinism. Probably the most well known advocacy of compatibilism is Daniel Dennett'e 1984 book Elbow Room. From the page above: Compatibilism offers a solution to the free will problem. This philosophical problem concerns a disputed incompatibility between free will and determinism. Compatibilism is the thesis that free will is compatible with determinism. Because free will is taken to be a necessary condition of moral responsibility, compatibilism is sometimes expressed in terms of a compatibility between moral responsibility and determinism. This is all getting far more complex than it needs to be. I think the problem lies in unexamined assumptions about what the term free will means, setting up the compatibilist/ incompatibilist debate when there is no call for such a debate in the first place. Here is my definition: a decision I make is free when I feel that I could have decided otherwise. That's it! It covers every eventuality; if I don't have this free feeling, then it isn't free will. Now, where in this is there a theory about randomness and determinism? In fact, the feeling I get when I am exercising free will is neither that I am being controlled by deterministic laws of nature nor that I am doing something random; it is a unique feeling which, like an itch or a pain, has no correlate in the objective world and can only be understood by actually experiencing it. I realise that as a matter of fact, I *must* be subject to either deterministic laws, randomness, or some combination of the two - there are no other possibilities - but this knowledge no more negates the legitimacy of my subjective experience of freedom than the knowledge that pain is just lectrical impulses in a nerve negates my experience of toothache. --Stathis Papaioannou _ Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE! http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/
Re: Free Will Theorem
In various places including a post in the All/Nothing multiverse thread: http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/m5859.html I have defined information as the potential to establish a boundary. I have been arguing that Turing's decision procedure result points towards the multiverse being a countable set of world states rather than a continuum. This is rather an argument from the particular to the general. Is it perhaps better to look at the above definition of information as requiring that the multiverse be a countable set of world states since a continuum has no internal boundaries? So the illusion of free will and consciousness I propose may follow from the above definition as a truncation of memory when a world reality moves through a series of states as I have been arguing from looking at Turing's work. Hal
Re: Free Will Theorem
Please find my remarks interspaced below. John M - Original Message - From: Russell Standish [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Stathis Papaioannou [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; everything-list@eskimo.com Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2005 2:11 AM Subject: Re: Free Will Theorem Russell wrote in his attachment-style post: [RS]: Since we live in a quantum mechanical world, randomness is inherently quantum mechanical. Chaos, as a classical mechanism will amplify quantum randomness. [JM]: Rather: we call the world we live in a QM-al one, because based on the limited information humanity gathered over the past 2-3 millennia a QM was derived and adjusted with our limited view of the world, so the statement should fit. Earlier such statements did expire and we have no proof that future enrichment of the epistemic cognitive inventory we get will not change the QM-based worldview as it did the Flat earth earlier. [RS]: However, from the point of view of extracting sufficient randomness to fool opponents in an evolutionary setting, classical chaos is good enough. No agent will have the computational power of Laplace's daemon [JM]: poor daemon still could only compute known facts. Future discoveries are hard to include into ongoing computations - however Ms Daemon may have deeper insight than our cognitive inventory (knowledge-base) of today. [RS]: I'm dealing with these questions in an artificial life system - Tierra to be precise. I have compared the original Tierra code, with one in which the random no. generator is replaced with a true random no. generator called HAVEGE, and another simulation in which the RNG is replaced with a cryptographically secure RNG called ISAAC. The results to date (and this _is_ work in progress) is that there is a distinct difference between the original Tierra PRNG, and the other two generators, but that there is little difference between HAVEGE and ISAAC. This seems to indicate that algorithmic randomness can be good enough to fool learning algorithms. [JM]: I am sure you do a decent job. Tierra, however, does not include facts that will be discovered (observed?) centuries from now. So the system is based on a limited model of today's (yesterday's?) modeling. It may give valuable answers to situations we face now, but your remark about applying the unknowable (RNGs) does not secure the outcome to match the future ways we may find later on. Of course this is the way to do research, science and the (limited model based) results are treasures for the further work. Our entire technology has been developed this way. John Mikes (PS: you assure us that the 'attachment format' you apply is harmless. I agree, but to read it one has to open the attachment, then open the text (4 clicks) and it appears on a different screen from the one a reply can be written. Several members give us the convenience of reading their posts on the page where the list is answerable. JM, just an old grouch.)
Re: Free Will Theorem
Stathis Papaioannou writes Here is my definition: a decision I make is free when I feel that I could have decided otherwise. Is the question of free will just a matter of definitions? Definitional arguments are sterile and have no meaning. If I define free will to be a 14 pound bowling ball, then there, I've proven that free will exists. But it's not a very useful approach. It is important to understand that there is more to the free will problem than just definitions. Before trying to define away the problem, it is necessary to clearly state it and understand it. The page I pointed to, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/, goes on to do so in the very next paragraph after the one I quoted: : 1.5 The Free Will Problem : : If we are to understand compatibilism as a solution to the free : will problem, it would be useful to have some sense of the problem : itself. Unfortunately, just as there is no single notion of free will : that unifies all of the work philosophers have devoted to it, there is : no single specification of the free will problem. In fact, it might be : more helpful to think in terms of a range of problems. Regardless, any : formulation of the problem can be understood as arising from a troubling : sort of entanglement of our concepts, an entanglement that seems to lead : to contradictions, and thus that cries out for a sort of disentangling. In : this regard, the free will problem is a classic philosophical problem; : we are, it seems, committed in our thought and talk to a set of concepts : which, under scrutiny, appear to comprise a mutually inconsistent : set. Formally, to settle the problem - to disentangle the set - we must : either reject some concepts, or instead, we must demonstrate that the : set is indeed consistent despite its appearance to the contrary. : Just to illustrate, consider this set of propositions as an historically : very well known means of formulating the free will problem. Call it the : Classical Formulation: : : 1. Some person (qua agent), at some time, could have acted otherwise : than she did. : 2. Actions are events. : 3. Every event has a cause. : 4. If an event is caused, then it is causally determined. : 5. If an event is an act that is causally determined, then the agent : of the act could not have acted otherwise than in the way that : she did. If you google on 'free will problem' you will find other definitions and analyses which are similar. Here is one from the religious perspective, where these problems originally arose, often in the context of God's omniscient knowledge of the future, http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06259a.htm: : The question of free will, moral liberty, or the liberum arbitrium of the : Schoolmen, ranks amongst the three or four most important philosophical : problems of all time. It ramifies into ethics, theology, metaphysics, : and psychology. The view adopted in response to it will determine a man's : position in regard to the most momentous issues that present themselves : to the human mind. On the one hand, does man possess genuine moral : freedom, power of real choice, true ability to determine the course : of his thoughts and volitions, to decide which motives shall prevail : within his mind, to modify and mould his own character? Or, on the other, : are man's thoughts and volitions, his character and external actions, : all merely the inevitable outcome of his circumstances? Are they all : inexorably predetermined in every detail along rigid lines by events of : the past, over which he himself has had no sort of control? This is the : real import of the free-will problem. Another one, from the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://www.rep.routledge.com/article/V014: : ... [I]n many human beings, the experience of choice gives rise to a : conviction of absolute responsibility that is untouched by philosophical : arguments. This conviction is the deep and inexhaustible source of the : free will problem: powerful arguments that seem to show that we cannot : be morally responsible in the ultimate way that we suppose keep coming : up against equally powerful psychological reasons why we continue to : believe that we are ultimately morally responsible. Maybe we don't like this way of formulating the problem, but if we are going to continue to debate it, we ought to at least state what the problem is. Hal Finney
RE: Free Will Theorem
-Original Message- From: John M [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2005 10:04 PM To: Russell Standish; Stathis Papaioannou Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; everything-list@eskimo.com Subject: Re: Free Will Theorem .. [JM]: I am sure you do a decent job. Tierra, however, does not include facts that will be discovered (observed?) centuries from now. So the system is based on a limited model of today's (yesterday's?) modeling. It may give valuable answers to situations we face now, but your remark about applying the unknowable (RNGs) does not secure the outcome to match the future ways we may find later on. Of course this is the way to do research, science and the (limited model based) results are treasures for the further work. Our entire technology has been developed this way. John Mikes You make much of the fact that our knowledge is incomplete and the possibility that our most fundamental theories of the world may change. But change to what? What third possibility is there between random and deterministic? Do you contemplate dualism, which is not a future theory but one of the past? Brent Meeker
Re: Free Will Theorem
On Tue, Apr 12, 2005 at 06:03:57PM -0400, John M wrote: Please find my remarks interspaced below. As are mine... John M - Original Message - From: Russell Standish [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Stathis Papaioannou [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; everything-list@eskimo.com Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2005 2:11 AM Subject: Re: Free Will Theorem Russell wrote in his attachment-style post: [RS]: Since we live in a quantum mechanical world, randomness is inherently quantum mechanical. Chaos, as a classical mechanism will amplify quantum randomness. [JM]: Rather: we call the world we live in a QM-al one, because based on the limited information humanity gathered over the past 2-3 millennia a QM was derived and adjusted with our limited view of the world, so the statement should fit. Earlier such statements did expire and we have no proof that future enrichment of the epistemic cognitive inventory we get will not change the QM-based worldview as it did the Flat earth earlier. Actually the argument doesn't depend on the exact details of QM. Bruno Marchal gives a very persuasive argument based on the difference between 1st and 3rd person experience (Tegmarks Frog and Bird picture) as to why any observer will exist in a indeterminate world regardless of how deterministic the 3rd person world is. I use quantum mechanics because it is the current best theory of reality, but really the argument is far stronger than that. [RS]: However, from the point of view of extracting sufficient randomness to fool opponents in an evolutionary setting, classical chaos is good enough. No agent will have the computational power of Laplace's daemon [JM]: poor daemon still could only compute known facts. Future discoveries are hard to include into ongoing computations - however Ms Daemon may have deeper insight than our cognitive inventory (knowledge-base) of today. The daemon computes the future - not just predicts or guesses, but computes it exactly. Of course the daemon doesn't understand higher level emergent concepts, but that's another story. [RS]: I'm dealing with these questions in an artificial life system - Tierra to be precise. I have compared the original Tierra code, with one in which the random no. generator is replaced with a true random no. generator called HAVEGE, and another simulation in which the RNG is replaced with a cryptographically secure RNG called ISAAC. The results to date (and this _is_ work in progress) is that there is a distinct difference between the original Tierra PRNG, and the other two generators, but that there is little difference between HAVEGE and ISAAC. This seems to indicate that algorithmic randomness can be good enough to fool learning algorithms. [JM]: I am sure you do a decent job. Tierra, however, does not include facts that will be discovered (observed?) centuries from now. So the system is based on a limited model of today's (yesterday's?) modeling. It may give valuable answers to situations we face now, but your remark about applying the unknowable (RNGs) does not secure the outcome to match the future ways we may find later on. Of course this is the way to do research, science and the (limited model based) results are treasures for the further work. Our entire technology has been developed this way. Of course, Tierra is not a model, it is a computational system that can be studied in its own right. Of course the question I'm studying is under what conditions can a computational system be creative. If the answer is none, then we will probably never know it, and the search will be futile. But if we were forced to this posiition, then the consequences for our world view would be profound. On the other hand, if we succeed, we will have a far better understanding of creativity, plus probably have a powerful new technology to boot. John Mikes (PS: you assure us that the 'attachment format' you apply is harmless. I agree, but to read it one has to open the attachment, then open the text (4 clicks) and it appears on a different screen from the one a reply can be written. Several members give us the convenience of reading their posts on the page where the list is answerable. JM, just an old grouch.) The attachment is a bog-standard RFC2015 signature. You can read the RFC at ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc2015.txt if you want to know the technical reason why the message body needs to be in an attachment. The problem is that certain popular email clients (eg MS Outlook) are simply not standards compliant. This is not *my problem*. It is the problem for the users of that software. the RFC dates from 1996, so its not as though the email software hasn't had enough time to implement the standard. I need to sign my emails for work and other reasons, however I can explicitly remove certain email addresses from being signed altogether. I have added all my subscribed email lists
RE: Free Will Theorem
-Original Message- From: John M [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, April 13, 2005 9:05 PM To: Brent Meeker; everything-list@eskimo.com Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Free Will Theorem Dear Brent, I wish I had the insight into future development of our knowledge-base. Or am I rather happy, not to have it? Of course I do not contemplate dualism or any other 'expired' folly. I had a hint lately that 'determinism' can be thought of in more than one way. What ways would those be? I can see that determinism may be relative to what is known. Most things are unpredictable, i.e. indeterminate, because we don't know enough about how they work (brains) or we don't know an initial state (the weather) from which to project, or both. But being deterministic is usually meant determined in principle, i.e. in accord with our best theory of how things work. Of course nothing is strictly predictable in this sense, both because of quantum randomness and because an event could be influenced by a CMB photon from our past light horizon. On the other side: random was mentioned as absolute and relative (this was not the proper word, sorry). Did the accolades of Ptolemy foresee the Big Bang cosmology (whether we consider it 'proper', or not)? Why would awards forsee anything? In any case, one can't forsee new scientific theories. One can guess or hypothesize; but a new theory isn't accepted until there's some empirical evidence. Brent Meeker
Re: Free Will Theorem
Le 12-avr.-05, à 05:26, Stathis Papaioannou a écrit : And does it really make much difference, whether we are talking truly random or intractably pseudo-random? You may be interested to know that the class of problems soluble by machine with pseudo-random oracle is properly contained in the class of problems soluble by machine with (genuine) random oracle: KURTZ S. A., 1983, On the Random Oracle Hypothesis, Information and Control, 57, pp. 40-47. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
RE: Free Will Theorem
Norman Samish wrote: I have somewhat arbitrarily defined free will as voluntary actions that are both self-determined by a Self-Aware Object, and are not predictable. My reasoning is that if something is completely predictable, then there is no option for change, hence no free will. But this illustrates the problem. Randomness is not an option, or will. Randomness is simply randomness. What is doing the opting? To preserve an option for change, you must appeal to a ghost in the machine (dualism); otherwise you have preserved the freedom, but at the cost of loosing the will. We are then merely dice making random actions, with the *illusion* of will. How is this superior to determinism? On this issue, Jonathan Colvin apparently disagrees, since he states that There is no contradiction between determinism / predictability and free will, so long as free will is viewed as self-determinism. But free will would be a meaningless concept in a deterministic universe. If the future were completely predictable then how could there be free will? Everything would be pre-ordained. Everything would indeed be pre-ordained. But why would this make our will not free? What does free mean, in this context? I don't think free in this sense means simply non-deterministic, or random. I consider myself a free man, as opposed to a prisoner. But the definition of a free man is not someone who acts randomly; it is someone free from *external coercion* or imprisonment. Likewise, our will is free if it is free from *external* coercion. It is a fallacy to believe that *internal* (self) determinism is contrary to free will, for it makes no sense that one could coerce one's self. Equating freedom with non-determinism is, IMHO, committing a category error. Jonathan Colvin
Re: Free Will Theorem
[Forwarded to the list on behalf of Quentin Anciaux] From: Quentin Anciaux [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Stathis Papaioannou [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Free Will Theorem Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2005 14:53:55 +0200 Le lundi 11 avril 2005 à 22:41 +1000, Stathis Papaioannou a écrit : We would then still believe that we had free will , even though in reality we are all blindly following a predetermined script. How could we possibly know that this is not what is in fact happening? --Stathis Papaioannou Hi list, Even if the script is predetermined, the input of the script is not. So it could be true that we follow a predetermined path for any input, but we cannot predict what input, so the free seems to be there. Quentin Anciaux _ $60,000 prize pool to be won. Three winners. Apply now! http://www.healthe.com.au/competition.do
Re: Free Will Theorem
Quentin Anciaux wrote: Le lundi 11 avril 2005 à 22:41 +1000, Stathis Papaioannou a écrit : We would then still believe that we had free will , even though in reality we are all blindly following a predetermined script. How could we possibly know that this is not what is in fact happening? --Stathis Papaioannou Hi list, Even if the script is predetermined, the input of the script is not. So it could be true that we follow a predetermined path for any input, but we cannot predict what input, so the free seems to be there. And in a similar vein from Brent Meeker: Yet many things people do are predictable by those who know them well. I don't know of any evidence that the human brain is chaotic - though it seems a good hypothesis. But besides the brain being unpredictable due to its complexity and possible random events at synapses, there is a third, and I think more important source of effective randomness. Each person has perceptions, which change their brain state almost continuously. Even if the brain were perfectly deterministic, it's coupling with the rest of the world through perception could make it unpredictable. It is ironic that basically dumb environmental processes are being invoked to rescue the mind from mechanical predictability! Thinking about this I am reminded of the observation that humans are quite poor at the apparently simple task of generating random numbers. There is a strong tendency to try to avoid patterns in order to make the numbers more random. A human-generated list will therefore have a relative paucity of consecutive digits, double and triple digits, and so on. This phenomenon is apparantly so consistent that it has found use in fraud investigations, where lists of financial data have been concocted to conceal illegal or negligent activities. This is probably one area where the proverbial chimpanzee bashing away at a keyboard would presumably do a better job than a human (if all the keys were equally easy to reach). Counterintuitively, the smarter you are, the more predictable you are. --Stathis Papaioannou _ Searching for that dream home? Try http://ninemsn.realestate.com.au for all your property needs.
Re: Free Will Theorem
The question of free will has generated an enormous amount of philosophical literature. I'd suggest reading at least the first part of this page on Compatibilism, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/. Compatibilism is the doctrine that free will is compatible with determinism. Probably the most well known advocacy of compatibilism is Daniel Dennett'e 1984 book Elbow Room. From the page above: Compatibilism offers a solution to the free will problem. This philosophical problem concerns a disputed incompatibility between free will and determinism. Compatibilism is the thesis that free will is compatible with determinism. Because free will is taken to be a necessary condition of moral responsibility, compatibilism is sometimes expressed in terms of a compatibility between moral responsibility and determinism. 1. Terminology and One formulation of the Free Will Problem. 1.1 Free Will It would be misleading to specify a strict definition of free will since in the philosophical work devoted to this notion there is probably no single concept of it. For the most part, what philosophers working on this issue have been hunting for, maybe not exclusively, but centrally, is a feature of agency that is necessary for persons to be morally responsible for their conduct.[1] Different attempts to articulate the conditions for moral responsibility will yield different accounts of the sort of agency required to satisfy those conditions. What is needed, then, as a starting point, is a gentle, malleable notion that focuses upon special features of persons as agents. Hence, as a theory-neutral point of departure, free will can be defined as the unique ability of persons to exercise control over their conduct in a manner necessary for moral responsibility.[2] Clearly, this definition is too lean when taken as an endpoint; the hard philosophical work is about how best to develop this special kind of control. But however this notion of control is developed, its uniqueness consists, at least in part, in being possessed only by persons. 1.2 Moral Responsibility A person who is a morally responsible agent is not merely a person who is able to do moral right or wrong. Beyond this, she is accountable for her morally significant conduct. Hence, she is, when fitting, an apt target of moral praise or blame, as well as reward or punishment. Free will is understood as a necessary condition of moral responsibility since it would seem unreasonable to say of a person that she deserves blame and punishment for her conduct if it turned out that she was not at any point in time in control of it. (Similar things can be said about praise and reward.) It is primarily, though not exclusively, because of the intimate connection between free will and moral responsibility that the free will problem is seen as an important one.[3] 1.3 Determinism A standard characterization of determinism states that every event is causally necessitated by antecedent events.[4] Within this essay, we shall define determinism as the metaphysical thesis that the facts of the past, in conjunction with the laws of nature, entail every truth about the future. According to this characterization, if determinism is true, then, given the actual past, and holding fixed the laws of nature, only one future is possible at any moment in time. Notice that an implication of determinism as it applies to a person's conduct is that, if determinism is true, there are (causal) conditions for that person's actions located in the remote past, prior to her birth, that are sufficient for each of her actions. 1.4 Compatibilism's Competitors The compatibilists' main adversaries are incompatibilists, who deny the compatibility of free will and determinism. Some incompatibilists remain agnostic as to whether persons have free will. But most take a further stand regarding the reality or unreality of free will. Some of these incompatibilists, libertarians, hold that at least some persons have free will and that, therefore, determinism is false. Other incompatibilists, hard determinists, have a less optimistic view, holding that determinism is true and that no persons have free will. A minority opinion is held by hard incompatibilists, who hold that there is no free will regardless of determinism's truth or falsity. I don't think the essay covers it, but as others have pointed out the problem with basing free will (as defined above) on quantum indeterminacy is that it seems as bad as determinism as far as satisfying our instincts about what deserves blame or praise. We don't praise a machine for working as designed, nor do we praise the dice for coming up the way we want in a gambling game. These are not moral agents. This is the paradox, and the essay on compatibilism might also shed light on how a purely random nondeterminism can be compatible with free will as well. Hal Finney
Re: Free Will Theorem
On Tue, Apr 12, 2005 at 09:45:49AM -0700, Hal Finney wrote: The question of free will has generated an enormous amount of philosophical literature. I'd suggest reading at least the first part of this page on Compatibilism, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/. Compatibilism is the doctrine that free will is compatible with determinism. Probably the most well known advocacy of compatibilism is Daniel Dennett'e 1984 book Elbow Room. From the page above: Compatibilism offers a solution to the free will problem. This philosophical problem concerns a disputed incompatibility between free will and determinism. Compatibilism is the thesis that free will is compatible with determinism. Because free will is taken to be a necessary condition of moral responsibility, compatibilism is sometimes expressed in terms of a compatibility between moral responsibility and determinism. Moral responsibility is nothing more than a pre-legal version of legal responsibility. It has nothing to do with free-will. Also we live in a nondeterministic world. With compatibilism, we need to ask why. With incompatibalism, we merely need to ask why free-will is necessary for consciousness. The whole debate you quote from Dennett seems quaint and out of date... Cheers -- *PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment to my email, which is of type application/pgp-signature. Don't worry, it is not a virus. It is an electronic signature, that may be used to verify this email came from me if you have PGP or GPG installed. Otherwise, you may safely ignore this attachment. A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 8308 3119 (mobile) Mathematics0425 253119 () UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Australiahttp://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02 pgpLwoHUJkOxy.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Free Will Theorem
Norman Samish wrote: To have free will, the actions of a SAO cannot be completely predictable. To be free of complete predictability, at least some of the SAO's actions must ultimately depend on some kind of random event. At the most fundamental level, this must be quantum indeterminacy. This is not what most people mean by free will. If I ask you to pick one of two cards, and you are initially reaching for the left card but then a random quantum event causes a muscle spasm in your arm which makes you to point to the right card instead, would you say this was an example of free will on your part? Jesse
RE: Free Will Theorem
Norman Samish wrote: If free will simply means self-determination then Jonathan is right, and to the extent we are self-determined we have free will. He says, the only relevant question as to whether our will is free is whether our conscious minds (our selves) determine our actions. But what about the sufferers of schizophrenia who Stathis Papaioannou referred to? They exercise self-determination, and their mental state is such that their actions, at least in some cases, are completely predictable. Do they have free will? I don't see that the actions of schizophrenia patients are any more predicatable than yours or mine. In fact, people suffering from this disease are often *less* predictable (which is why schizophrenia can sometimes be dangerous). To the extent that their actions are controlled by their conscious minds, they have free will. If they feel they are being forced to act contrary to their will (speculatively, perhaps by *random* excitation of parts of their brain) I would suggest that they do *not* have free will in such cases, because their actions are not willed by their conscious minds. In this case randomness is contrary to free will, illustrating why basing free will on unpredictability is a fallacy. Another example might be a self-aware computer of the future that would be programmed to have predictable actions as well as self-determination. Would it have free will? Yes. Although what do you mean by predictable? Its actions might be predictable only insofar as an identical program subjected to identical stimulus would give identical actions (its actions might be predictable but computationally irreducible). In both cases, the actions of the Self-Aware Organism are predictable, hence their will is not free. They are bound by their destiny. I don't see how mere predictability is incompatible with free will. Your actions too are predictable. If I set you in the middle of a highway with a large bus heading for you, I predict you will move out of the way, unless you are suicidal. Does that mean *you* do not have free will? To have free will, the actions of a SAO cannot be completely predictable. Why not? Jonathan Colvin
Re: Free Will Theorem
Le 11-avr.-05, à 08:08, Jesse Mazer a écrit : Norman Samish wrote: To have free will, the actions of a SAO cannot be completely predictable. To be free of complete predictability, at least some of the SAO's actions must ultimately depend on some kind of random event. At the most fundamental level, this must be quantum indeterminacy. This is not what most people mean by free will. If I ask you to pick one of two cards, and you are initially reaching for the left card but then a random quantum event causes a muscle spasm in your arm which makes you to point to the right card instead, would you say this was an example of free will on your part? That random event would not help indeed. But it does not answer Samish question. Actually I agree with you. I don't see how any indeterminacy could be used in free-will. I agree also with George and Russell on the fact that responsability (in which I believe) has nothing to do with free-will. Actually I am not sure I can put any meaning on the word free-will. My old defense (in this and other list) was just a defense of the notion of will. If someone can explain me how he/she distinguish free-will from will, I would be glad. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
Re: Free Will Theorem
Norman Samish wrote: But what about the sufferers of schizophrenia who Stathis Papaioannou referred to? They exercise self-determination, and their mental state is such that their actions, at least in some cases, are completely predictable. Do they have free will? Another example might be a self-aware computer of the future that would be programmed to have predictable actions as well as self-determination. Would it have free will? In both cases, the actions of the Self-Aware Organism are predictable, hence their will is not free. They are bound by their destiny. To have free will, the actions of a SAO cannot be completely predictable. To be free of complete predictability, at least some of the SAO's actions must ultimately depend on some kind of random event. At the most fundamental level, this must be quantum indeterminacy. It may be the case that quantum indeterminacy adds a random element which contributes to our experience of free will, but you are dismissing the other theoretical possibility, which is that our brains are vastly, chaotically and perhaps even intractably complex, but nonetheless completely deterministic machines. We would then still believe that we had free will , even though in reality we are all blindly following a predetermined script. How could we possibly know that this is not what is in fact happening? --Stathis Papaioannou _ Are you right for each other? Find out with our Love Calculator: http://fun.mobiledownloads.com.au/191191/index.wl?page=191191text
Re: Free Will Theorem
Bruno wrote: Actually I am not sure I can put any meaning on the word free-will. My old defense (in this and other list) was just a defense of the notion of will. If someone can explain me how he/she distinguish free-will from will, I would be glad. Bruno I currently consider Free Will to be a noun as in I acted of my own free will. and perhaps it should be hyphenated as Bruno does. I currently consider will to be a verb. As in I will the board to break. This idea seems more tenuous than free will. I have argued that Turing's result re decision procedures points towards full determinacy in the evolution of worlds [as would it seems pre loading the All, or the Everything, or the Plenitude with all information - [some of which would then not describe worlds]] and it may also point towards the illusion of free will by limiting the number of descriptions of states of worlds to a countable set resulting in the truncation of memory. In terms of reward/punishment the illusion of free will should be just as relevant [or non relevant] as the real thing so long as agents [another illusion? perhaps structure is better] can change from world state to world state [learn] which seems inherent in the idea of evolving world. Is such a possible illusion, or its origin, the origin of the concept of consciousness? Sort of an illusion or perhaps inductive inference [as per Bruno] of self consistency due to the truncation of memory? Hal
Re: Free Will Theorem
Norman Samish wrote: If free will simply means self-determination then Jonathan is right, and to the extent we are self-determined we have free will. He says, the only relevant question as to whether our will is free is whether our conscious minds (our selves) determine our actions. But what about the sufferers of schizophrenia who Stathis Papaioannou referred to? They exercise self-determination, and their mental state is such that their actions, at least in some cases, are completely predictable. Do they have free will? I don't see that the actions of schizophrenia patients are any more predicatable than yours or mine. In fact, people suffering from this disease are often *less* predictable (which is why schizophrenia can sometimes be dangerous). To the extent that their actions are controlled by their conscious minds, they have free will. If they feel they are being forced to act contrary to their will (speculatively, perhaps by *random* excitation of parts of their brain), I would suggest that they do *not* have free will in such cases, because their actions are not willed by their conscious minds. In this case randomness is contrary to free will, illustrating why basing free will on unpredictability is a fallacy. Another example might be a self-aware computer of the future that would be programmed to have predictable actions as well as self-determination. Would it have free will? Yes. Although what do you mean by predictable? Its actions might be predictable only insofar as an identical program subjected to identical stimulus would give identical actions (its actions might be predictable / deterministic but computationally irreducible). In both cases, the actions of the Self-Aware Organism are predictable, hence their will is not free. They are bound by their destiny. I don't see how mere predictability is incompatible with free will. Your actions too are predictable. If I set you in the middle of a highway with a large bus heading for you, I predict you will move out of the way, unless you are suicidal. Does that mean *you* do not have free will? To have free will, the actions of a SAO cannot be completely predictable. Why not? There is no contradiction between determinism / predictability and free will, so long as free will is viewed as self-determinism. Jonathan Colvin
RE: Free Will Theorem
Apologies for double-posting. My dial-up account is rather unreliable. Jonathan Colvin Norman Samish wrote: If free will simply means self-determination then Jonathan is right, and to the extent we are self-determined we have free will. He says, the only relevant question as to whether our will is free is whether our conscious minds (our selves) determine our actions. But what about the sufferers of schizophrenia who Stathis Papaioannou referred to? They exercise self-determination, and their mental state is such that their actions, at least in some cases, are completely predictable. Do they have free will? JC: I don't see that the actions of schizophrenia patients are any more predicatable than yours or mine. In fact, people suffering from this disease are often *less* predictable (which is why schizophrenia can sometimes be dangerous). To snip
Re: Free Will Theorem
Russell Standish wrote: On Mon, Apr 11, 2005 at 10:41:53PM +1000, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: It may be the case that quantum indeterminacy adds a random element which contributes to our experience of free will, but you are dismissing the other theoretical possibility, which is that our brains are vastly, chaotically and perhaps even intractably complex, but nonetheless completely deterministic machines. We would then still believe that we had free will , even though in reality we are all blindly following a predetermined script. How could we possibly know that this is not what is in fact happening? --Stathis Papaioannou I think this situation is essentially hypothetical. No machine is completely deterministic - computers are designed to be as deterministic as possible, but still suffer bit errors through chance. Human brains, however, strongly appear to be tuned to amplify noise generated at the synaptic level to effect system level. (Fractal structures in brainwave patterns, and the like). I would like this important point clarified. There is a fundamental difference between a classical, chaotic system and a truly random quantum system. The classical system may look random and for practical purposes may be taken as random, but if (a) we could measure the system's initial conditions to an arbitrary level of precision, (b) we knew the equations governing the behaviour of the system to an arbitrary level of precision, and (c) we had an arbitrarily fast/precise computer (or an arbitrarily long period in which to perform the calculation), we could calculate all future states of the system. With even a relatively simple quantum system, however, such as a single atom of a radioactive isotope, no amount of computing power, precise measurement or knowledge of the laws of physics can help us decide exactly when it will decay. Now, it seems to me that in the brain both types of random event would combine to give a very complex and unpredictable picture indeed: quantum events at the atomic or subatomic scale would be amplified by chaotic interactions at the classical scale. However, I have seen it stated that quantum events would in fact not be significant at the scale of neuronal processes. Which is correct? And does it really make much difference, whether we are talking truly random or intractably pseudo-random? Now for the age-old corny question of whether free-will is an illusion or not. Mind is an emergent property - it is not to found among the neurons making up the brain, however it is a useful predictive model. This makes it emergent in just the same way as a glider is an emergent property in the Game of Life. Just as the mind is emergent, so is free-will, for the same reason. And just as you can argue (if you want to) that GoL gliders are an illusion, you can argues that mind and free-will is also an illusion - this does not preclude them as a useful modeling concept for the organism. My personal preference is to label these emergent concepts as real (when they're useful that is), but it is a matter of taste. As an aside, I always considered the high school explanation that centrifugal force was fictitious with suspicion. My own view on free will: I feel as if I have it, but I know that in reality my brain (hence my mind) is either following a deterministic script, or (more likely) following a mostly deterministic script with a few random numbers thrown in. This does not upset me, or make me change my behaviour, any more than the knowledge that my brain is just a computer and my heart is just a pump does. --Stathis Papaioannou _ Dont just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search! http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/
Re: Free Will Theorem
I have somewhat arbitrarily defined free will as voluntary actions that are both self-determined by a Self-Aware Object, and are not predictable. My reasoning is that if something is completely predictable, then there is no option for change, hence no free will.. On this issue, Jonathan Colvin apparently disagrees, since he states that There is no contradiction between determinism / predictability and free will, so long as free will is viewed as self-determinism. But free will would be a meaningless concept in a deterministic universe. If the future were completely predictable then how could there be free will? Everything would be pre-ordained. But, as Heisenberg shows us, the future cannot be predicted. Unpredictable choices are made by SAO's, therefore free will exists. Norman Samish ~ - Original Message - From: Jonathan Colvin [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: everything-list@eskimo.com Sent: Monday, April 11, 2005 7:28 PM Subject: Re: Free Will Theorem Norman Samish wrote: If free will simply means self-determination then Jonathan is right, and to the extent we are self-determined we have free will. He says, the only relevant question as to whether our will is free is whether our conscious minds (our selves) determine our actions. But what about the sufferers of schizophrenia who Stathis Papaioannou referred to? They exercise self-determination, and their mental state is such that their actions, at least in some cases, are completely predictable. Do they have free will? I don't see that the actions of schizophrenia patients are any more predictable than yours or mine. In fact, people suffering from this disease are often *less* predictable (which is why schizophrenia can sometimes be dangerous). To the extent that their actions are controlled by their conscious minds, they have free will. If they feel they are being forced to act contrary to their will (speculatively, perhaps by *random* excitation of parts of their brain), I would suggest that they do *not* have free will in such cases, because their actions are not willed by their conscious minds. In this case randomness is contrary to free will, illustrating why basing free will on unpredictability is a fallacy. Another example might be a self-aware computer of the future that would be programmed to have predictable actions as well as self-determination. Would it have free will? Yes. Although what do you mean by predictable? Its actions might be predictable only insofar as an identical program subjected to identical stimulus would give identical actions (its actions might be predictable / deterministic but computationally irreducible). In both cases, the actions of the Self-Aware Organism are predictable, hence their will is not free. They are bound by their destiny. I don't see how mere predictability is incompatible with free will. Your actions too are predictable. If I set you in the middle of a highway with a large bus heading for you, I predict you will move out of the way, unless you are suicidal. Does that mean *you* do not have free will? To have free will, the actions of a SAO cannot be completely predictable. Why not? There is no contradiction between determinism / predictability and free will, so long as free will is viewed as self-determinism. Jonathan Colvin
Re: Free Will Theorem
On Tue, Apr 12, 2005 at 01:26:46PM +1000, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: I think this situation is essentially hypothetical. No machine is completely deterministic - computers are designed to be as deterministic as possible, but still suffer bit errors through chance. Human brains, however, strongly appear to be tuned to amplify noise generated at the synaptic level to effect system level. (Fractal structures in brainwave patterns, and the like). I would like this important point clarified. There is a fundamental difference between a classical, chaotic system and a truly random quantum system. The classical system may look random and for practical purposes may be taken as random, but if (a) we could measure the system's initial conditions to an arbitrary level of precision, (b) we knew the equations governing the behaviour of the system to an arbitrary level of precision, and (c) we had an arbitrarily fast/precise computer (or an arbitrarily long period in which to perform the calculation), we could calculate all future states of the system. With even a relatively simple quantum system, however, such as a single atom of a radioactive isotope, no amount of computing power, precise measurement or knowledge of the laws of physics can help us decide exactly when it will decay. Now, it seems to me that in the brain both types of random event would combine to give a very complex and unpredictable picture indeed: quantum events at the atomic or subatomic scale would be amplified by chaotic interactions at the classical scale. However, I have seen it stated that quantum events would in fact not be significant at the scale of neuronal processes. Which is correct? And does it really make much difference, whether we are talking truly random or intractably pseudo-random? Since we live in a quantum mechanical world, randomness is inherently quantum mechanical. Chaos, as a classical mechanism will amplify quantum randomness. However, from the point of view of extracting sufficient randomness to fool opponents in an evolutionary setting, classical chaos is good enough. No agent will have the computational power of Laplace's daemon I'm dealing with these questions in an artificial life system - Tierra to be precise. I have compared the original Tierra code, with one in which the random no. generator is replaced with a true random no. generator called HAVEGE, and another simulation in which the RNG is replaced with a cryptographically secure RNG called ISAAC. The results to date (and this _is_ work in progress) is that there is a distinct difference between the original Tierra PRNG, and the other two generators, but that there is little difference between HAVEGE and ISAAC. This seems to indicate that algorithmic randomness can be good enough to fool learning algorithms. Cheers -- *PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment to my email, which is of type application/pgp-signature. Don't worry, it is not a virus. It is an electronic signature, that may be used to verify this email came from me if you have PGP or GPG installed. Otherwise, you may safely ignore this attachment. A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 8308 3119 (mobile) Mathematics0425 253119 () UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Australiahttp://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02 pgpd8xryxN6Z1.pgp Description: PGP signature
RE: Free Will Theorem
This discussion is exhibiting the usual confusion about what free will means. The concept itself is incoherent as generally used (taken as meaning my actions are not determined). But then in this case they must be merely random (which is hardly an improvement), or we require recourse to a Descartian immaterial dualism, which merely pushes the problem back one level. The only sensible meaning of free will is *self-determination*. Once looked at in this manner, quantum indeterminacy is irrelevant. Our actions are determined by the state of our minds. Whether these states are random, chaotically deterministic, or predictably deterministic is irrelevant; the only relevant question as to whether our will is free is whether our conscious minds (our selves) determine our actions. In most circumstances, the answer is surely yes, and so we have self-determination and hence free will. Sleepwalking, reflexes, etc. are examples of actions that are not consciously self-determined, and so are not examples of free will. Jonathan Colvin ** Norman Samish writes: The answer to Stat[h]is' question seems straightforward. Given quantum indeterminacy, thought processes cannot be predictable. Therefore, genuine free will exists. ...Can someone please explain how I can tell when I am exercising *genuine* free will, as opposed to this pseudo-free variety, which clearly I have no control over? Norman Samish
Re: Free Will Theorem
If free will simply means self-determination then Jonathan is right, and to the extent we are self-determined we have free will. He says, the only relevant question as to whether our will is free is whether our conscious minds (our selves) determine our actions. But what about the sufferers of schizophrenia who Stathis Papaioannou referred to? They exercise self-determination, and their mental state is such that their actions, at least in some cases, are completely predictable. Do they have free will? Another example might be a self-aware computer of the future that would be programmed to have predictable actions as well as self-determination. Would it have free will? In both cases, the actions of the Self-Aware Organism are predictable, hence their will is not free. They are bound by their destiny. To have free will, the actions of a SAO cannot be completely predictable. To be free of complete predictability, at least some of the SAO's actions must ultimately depend on some kind of random event. At the most fundamental level, this must be quantum indeterminacy. Norman Samish ~~~ From: Jonathan Colvin [EMAIL PROTECTED] This discussion is exhibiting the usual confusion about what free will means. The concept itself is incoherent as generally used (taken as meaning my actions are not determined). But then in this case they must be merely random (which is hardly an improvement), or we require recourse to a Descartian immaterial dualism, which merely pushes the problem back one level. The only sensible meaning of free will is *self-determination*. Once looked at in this manner, quantum indeterminacy is irrelevant. Our actions are determined by the state of our minds. Whether these states are random, chaotically deterministic, or predictably deterministic is irrelevant; the only relevant question as to whether our will is free is whether our conscious minds (our selves) determine our actions. In most circumstances, the answer is surely yes, and so we have self-determination and hence free will. Sleepwalking, reflexes, etc. are examples of actions that are not consciously self-determined, and so are not examples of free will. Jonathan Colvin
