Comment by tasty_freeze | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tasty_freeze | Hacker News Reader

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I've heard people claim that the mind cannot be strictly physical for there to be free will, therefore free will must arise at the quantum level where there are "free variables" that can interface to the strictly causal physical world. Somehow these quantum events percolate up to the macro level to make manifest that free will.

The butterfly effect only works when a physical system is on the knife's edge, that it is prone to unstable/chaotic behavior. While it is conceivable that these conditions could exist at times (all the way from quantum level to saying "I'd like strawberry" vs "I'd like vanilla"), it seems unlikely to me that those conditions happen frequently enough that one's free will can direct the desired outcome consistently.

Secondly, the idea ignores the problem of how this free will "knows" which quantum events to perturb such that their effects would cause the pachinko machine of sub-atomic -> atomic -> molecular -> nervous system interactions to achieve its intended outcome.

Quantum effects apply even to physical objects. Only they are small enough to ignore. Trying to use quantum mechanics to justify free will feels forced. Surely, none of the people who believe in free will also proclaim that the will is completely random, or is something that can be modelled probabilistically.

Free will can certainly be modeled probabilistically.

> The butterfly effect only works when a physical system is on the knife's edge, that it is prone to unstable/chaotic behavior.

I am not sure exactly what you mean, but that does not sound right to me.

The weather, for example, is a chaotic system that is affected by the butterfly effect. Yet it is not on a knife's edge, I think? We will never ever, no matter the technological advancements, be able to predict the weather two months in the future. That could very well, as far as I know, require the temperature in every square foot of the atmosphere with five significant digits.

If one understand how the butterfly effect works, it is clear that it cannot be used to achieve any particular outcome: events that are "on the knife's edge" depend on basically all small perturbations that ever happened in the past, in a pseudo-cryptographic way. You can't tell that small perturbation X will result into Y without nearly perfect knowledge of the entire system, because any other unknown small perturbation anywhere might flip the result.

I think the notion of consciousness arising from quantum behavior is a kind of ‘god in the gaps’ fallacy (https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/God_of_the_gaps).

I think parent didn't talk about consciousness, but free will/randomness generated by the brain.

We already know that consciousness is lagging the decision processes in the brain (we have decided to go for vanilla ice cream 30ms before we are consciously aware).

It also seems obvious to me that the human brain can generate entropy somehow (we can unpredictably go for chocolate ice cream). While I am sure that we will be able to measure with sufficient accuracy any brain process that leads to such decision while a decision is being taken, it seems that any suggestion that we will be able know the outcome of the ice cream decision a time x prior to presenting the choice (say 60 seconds) is impossible.

I agree, but free will is not somehow being generated by that happening. In my opinion, the sensation of "free will" is strong enough in most people to cause them to defend it's objective existence, even though the evidence is doubtful.

Can you explain why?

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