Randomly found a link to this video on super determinism from his blog and found it super interesting. 100% agree, what is 'free will' anyways? A concept with no scientific definition. Why is it even used to explain anything in quantum mechanics?
It's a matter of scale. At the highest level, of the individual, if you present them with two options, they will chose one of the options. At that level, the question is a trivial: yes, obviously they have "the capacity [] to choose between different possible courses of action unimpeded."[1] Your description was just an explanation of how they choose. If you then ask if the individuals also have "the capacity to do otherwise"[2] then that depends on whether things are deterministic or probabilistic. If they're probabilistic, then yes, otherwise no.
In all three cases, yours and my two, the question is answered trivially and uninteresting. The real question philosophers are asking, I'm told, is whether people have moral responsibility or not. It's interesting psychologically too, should you really feel guilty if you couldn't have done differently?
This view is based on a misunderstanding of what moral responsibility is. Moral responsibility is essentially credit assignment [1]. It exists as a concept not because it matters whether or not you actually could have done differently before, but rather as a mechanism to teach you to do differently in a similar situation in the future. "You" is just a machine making decisions. When you make a bad decision, according to the other machines surrounding you (society) or your own brain's reward system, you are assigned blame or feel guilty because you should avoid making the same decision again in a similar situation.
To say that moral responsibility requires something supernatural doesn't make sense, since we successfully use the concept all the time. Its a mechanism for multi-agent learning.
But if free will does not exist then other machines (humans) aren't making these decisions either... it's turtles all the way down so to speak. You could go on to say that the entire system (of humans, society etc) is either determined or probabilistic, but still no free will exists. It is meaningless to say whether you should feel guilty or not etc. as it is just part of a system no one has any control over...
Edit:
What I meant to say is that moral responsibility exists like natural selection in evolution, it is there but we don't choose it to be there, it is part of the natural system we find our selves in.
It becomes a similar question as asking: if god or "something" created the universe, what created that something. Its turtles all the way down yes.
>"it is part of the natural system we find our selves in". Like exactly everything else that surrounds us :)
And here you eventually hit both the limitation that without abstractions you can only simulate a less complex system, and also how the information about the exact state of the system is fundamentally limited by the (quantum) uncertainty principle (which also allows the discretisation of information, via Planck's constant h) - entropy being a superfluous concept meaning just "lack of information" :
https://www.av8n.com/physics/thermo/entropy-more.html#sec-ph...
The open question is why and how humans can "feel" guilt. How can a machine have a subjective experience at all? What is a subjective experience? This is the so-called "hard problem".
I've come to the same conclusion. Even without free will, "punishment" is a crucial tool in teaching agents acceptable behavior. Perhaps there's a meta morality question of whether the gains from that teaching are worth the suffering of the individuals being punished.
To hear about it and to then decide "this absolves me of any guilt, because I couldn't have done it any differently" is also a choice your process made. Counterfactually, it could've made the opposite choice (though it didn't do so).
Now, me pointing this out presents yet another choice and opportunity for change. And these opportunities keep happening for the rest of your life.
In essence, even though you cannot change your actions in a very deep sense, concluding "I can't change myself because it's already determined" is always a premature conclusion, whenever it is made.
If a person with Tourette's said profanities to you during your Zoom meeting, would you hold them equally responsible as a person not having it? No, because it's a symptom and you assume it is out of their control and they didn't have a malicious intent. If both persons said "sorry it wasn't in my control", you'd think
1) the person A didn't do bad, because they have a tic and they definitely don't have negative feelings towards me
2) the person B has an anger management issues and may or may not have negative feelings towards me, maybe he's bad
We assume intent is malicious when a person has the capability to stop themselves from doing something negative towards us and yet they "chose" not to.
A CPU that doesn't work when power is off could be a good CPU, but a CPU that doesn't work when power is on is a faulty CPU.
We just established nobody chooses what they do or how they feel, so at best it's like a matter of degree and at worst it's completely arbitrary.
And "can choose to" with "can go to else{} if rx is true" - and social interaction and reward/punishment can make rx == true.
These questions are decided in legal contexts all the time, so you can look up precedent. Generally there are considerations of coercion, mental fitness, and age/experience, because your responsibility is proportional in some sense to how much you know/have learned. If you literally have never learned right from wrong, say you were raised by wolves, then you are generally not held responsible until you do (or rather, you are held responsible, but the penalties are teaching you right from wrong rather than something more severe).
> just as much as the people that you describe.
I'm not sure which people you mean. I'm saying that it is both true that you "cannot help it" in one sense and false in another sense.
There is always a causal level in which you could not have helped it. But it is never correct to conclude that there is nothing you could've done to help it, because this is also a choice and making it prevents higher-order changes.
Well in case of strong determinism, you don’t have a choice not to feel guilty. Also, you don’t a have choice to believe or not in determinism.
It's ironic since you'd have no choice whether you feel guilty or not
The idea "everything that is natural can only be everything we can objectively measure" should be problematic right? Of course whatever out there that is unmeasurable is rife with confusion, messiness, lies etc but that shouldn't mean it doesn't exist at all.
The old confounding variables problem. It's silly to believe there must be none, yet that's what the physics = everything worldview amounts to.
EDIT: I love Scott Aaronson. Of course he predicted this type of answer explicitly and is looking for a more nuanced one :)
I have a lot of trouble imagining any experiment which could completely rule out every other influencing factor. There are silly thought experiments such as what if the world has been objective for the last x00 years - prior to that and after, the laws we've observed during the period would bend; things will become inconsistent.
It's silly and I don't even believe it, but it does show that science is incapable of completely ruling out everything.
The truth could be endemic mystery. Endemic insanely and terrifyingly simple endless levels of understanding. In a way science is nothing unless that's the reality.
It's called Bell's theorem and it can even be tested at home[4]. There are no local hidden variables in quantum mechanics.[1][2][3]
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell%27s_theorem
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_paradox
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden-variable_theory
What?
> To date, Bell tests have found that the hypothesis of local hidden variables is inconsistent with the way that physical systems do, in fact, behave.
Everyday posters on this website amaze me. I should really stop coming here...
Regarding speculation, that assumes there isn't steps to knowledge about other things which physicists do not take. Any scientist will easily change their mind with the right evidence. The only issue is that the evidence takes place in one's subjective experience. It may take place specifically in contexts where it cannot be convincingly demonstrated to the general population.
It sounds silly, but if that's the nature of the object of investigation, it's necessary.
I know many people are very uncomfortable with this, but I don't really know what they actually want. I think appealing to QM to wave an indeterminism wand and 'somehow' resolve the problem is wishful thinking. Randomness, as pointed out by others here, is no answer and if all QM contributes is randomness then it's no real help. I'm perfectly willing to accept that there's a certain degree of randomness in our choices, that's fine, but it's not the answer to the question of free will.
I also don't see how appeals to some non-material source of decisions helps either, surely such a source must also have a state? It's simply punts the question, and I see no reason to suppose it actually helps answer it. Aside from the fact that if a 'non-material' source of choices interacts with real matter, surely that makes it real, right? It's just nonsense on stilts.
IMHO we are real, material beings. Our state determines our actions, with some randomness sprinkled in, and I'm fine with that. Yes this has some uncomfortable philosophical implications, but that's ok. In fact I think it's a good thing. If we're all driven by our state, and that's determined by factors outside our control, it humanises us. We're flawed beings living in a dangerous universe. We need to stick together and learn to understand and tolerate our flaws and weaknesses. Coming to this realisation has changed my attitude to a lot of things, and to me that capacity for change is all the free will I need.
In general, the concept of reason for things (aka purpose) follows a hirearchy tree structure. X happens because Y wills it. Y wills it because Z wills it. And so on. Whenever we reach a node in this tree where we can't find the parent node, we are left with a free floating will.
So long as there are things about our likes and dislikes and how we spend our time which can't be correlated with anything measurable, there is no choice but to attribute those things to our free will. The moment some component of who we are becomes predictable by science, we stop attributing that component to our free will.
The best you can do is be evolved to use true randomness (if it exists) to choose between good-enough actions, so at least nobody else can predict what you're going to do.
“This often takes the form of rejecting physical realization, affirming fundamental higher-level causal powers, or both.”
I find it fascinating to wonder about causal powers in multiple directions. Does it even make sense? Does it conflict with physicalism? What is the physical anymore? Chomsky says there is no physical for the past few hundred years. It’s worth reading about at least.
Since you like SEP, "Backward Causation"[1] is sometimes attempted as an explanation for entanglement. I don't buy it but it could be related to your question.
Commenters: "So are humans going to be able to travel FTL? Let's talk about that hypothetical for 200 comments!"
Completely ignoring physics. Everything must be human centric, everything must be dumbed down and anthropomorphised and become absolutely boring to the core until there is no more low hanging fruit left to pick.
Free will could be framed as unpredictable behavior arising from the emergent system itself, where the selection of one choice among many is deterministic, but otherwise indistinguishable from a non-deterministic system to any other mind. This is a plausible scenario that aligns with chaos theory and implies that every mind is a unique occurrence.
The firing of a single neuron can be triggered by quantum circumstances affecting the location and energy of a single calcium ion, and that single neuron can be responsible for radically different states in the meta-patterns that comprise a mind at any given point in time. Even software on silicon could be subject to bitrot, cosmic bit flips, and other fundamentally unpredictable changes. How such randomness affects the system plays into whether free will can exist in this sense.
The idea behind free will is that the mind has the ability to make choices independent of any influence except itself. It's highly probable that minds are entirely abstract, dependent on the physics of its substrate but existing as an emergent result of the particular arrangement of particles and energy in the substrate. If the choices made by a mind are indistinguishable from a hypothetically independent system not dependent on the physics of the substrate, it could be seen as "free will." Is definitely not the religious/supernatural Free Will, though.
If a mind is perfectly replicable - if you can perfectly simulate the state and ongoing experience of the mind bit for bit, - then you should be able to perfectly predict its behavior and state over time. It could be that such replication is mathematically possible but fundamentally intractable. Such a result would mean minds exhibit behavior indistinguishable from free will. It would mean that perfect knowledge of the state of the mind could never be known outside the mind itself - an extension of Heisenberg uncertainty - and simulations would be inaccurate.
The emergent, entirely abstract meta-system comprising the mind and its subjective experience could also be seen as the non-physical soul or spirit. That doesn't make room for the supernatural or magic in the universe. It might mean that divergence from prediction by the outside exists but is vanishingly small. It could also imply high probability of divergence if compute capacity needed for simulation grows exponentially over time and capacity of the mind being simulated. The answers will depend on exactly whatever "minds" turn out to be and the mathematics that govern the phenomena.
I personally think that radical divergence is likely, for no better reason than to think the universe is a much more interesting and weird place should that be true. It would mean that minds will forever be surprising, however much we increase computation and efficiency.
We don't know what minds or qualia are, and until we know for sure - as opposed to hoping and guessing and "well obviously..." - these speculations are just hand-waving.
The problem is that all of physics is filtered through our minds. We literally have no way to experience reality without experiencing it through a human mind.
So although we've managed to persuade ourselves our experiences of science are "objective", all that really means is that other human minds are very likely to have similar experiences if we set up similar circumstances in similar situations.
Potentially our minds could be operating in the conceptual and experiential equivalent of the visible light spectrum, and the range of possible "objective" experiences is very much wider.
The @and@ part may answer the free will question. Not the a or b part alone.
There is no chance in the equations of quantum mechanics as the equations are fully deterministic. The probabilities appear only when we try to explain interaction of classical systems with quantum ones. Traditional explanation is that those probabilities are inherent to the world. But this rise the question how this can be as there is no in reality classical systems, everything is quantum with deterministic equations. So more natural interpretation is that at classical level the system looses access to some information about global properties of the system and probabilities are just a natural consequence of this.
This is (to me) a highly appealing model for what is going on, but we still don't really know how to go from this viewpoint to what we observe in experiments, which is the Born rule.
If it was just classical physics, then you get yourself into the thinking that you can rewind time and all the "billiard balls" knock into each other the same way, which is why you order a soup and not a sandwich every single time on that day.
That eliminate free will. There is something about the uncertain nature of the universe at its fundamental levels that allows for consciousness to arise and actually does give us freedom to choose. Plugging in some parameters and letting the simulation run doesn't allow for this.
What is life if we are all truly just experiencing a "movie" and have no say in how it plays out? It's utterly meaningless and may as well not exist at all. And it raises very strange questions when we may not like the "movie" we are currently participating in. We have no ability to switch to another theatre?
What makes life "life" is consciousness and individual experiences.
I don't understand this line of reasoning. If I ordered a soup for lunch, and then time is rewound and I order a sandwich instead, it would appear that my choice is in fact random and therefore I most definitely do not have free will. If rewinding time is sufficient to change my past choices, doesn't that utterly demean them? I might as well flip a coin.
I think the problem with arguments regarding free will is that it's very hard to define (like consciousness for that matter). I am my brain. My brain controls what I do. Therefore, I control what I do. Only if we lift up our consciousness or free will as something higher than our brain does this become a problem.
The fact that my free will is deterministic, that is, a consequence of how the brain is structured and how the environment looks, does not change the fact that I, that is, my brain, controls what my body does. If anything, randomness makes this worse - then it is not my brain controlling my body, but some random result of a wave function collapse.
I think that the whole determinism vs randomness debate boils down to the fact that when we make a choice, for example whether to order soup or a sandwich, we have to hold the belief that either choice is possible. We can simulate ourselves in our mind taking either decision, evaluate pros and cons, and use the results to act. In that sense, because it is compatible with many counterfactuals, our internal self-model is decidedly non-deterministic. And if you think about it, it has to be non-deterministic in order to be a useful decisional tool: considering what would happen if you did X or Y is the foundation of deliberation.
The trick, though, is that ultimately this is just epistemological non-determinism: you don't know what is going to happen, and you can't know, because you are in the process of figuring it out. When I am looking at the menu, I think it is possible that I will order a soup or a sandwich, just like I think it is possible that they are out of soup, even though there is a definite answer to whether they do or not. I just don't know it. Our misstep is to (intuitively) extrapolate that if we can't know what we will choose, then no one else can.
Super determinism is the unpopular answer that solves many problems in quantum mechanics and relativity.
It also makes a lot of sense if you think of the universe as pre-rendered, just like you would a CGI movie. Determine where all the particles land upfront throughout time and then play it back like a movie.
Life can still be fun even it is pre-rendered. Like a movie you don't know what's going to happen next anyways.
It could be like an atheist's version of God, taking in comfort in knowing whatever happens was going to happen anyways. Enjoy the ride.
It's that mind-blowingly unlikely coincidence with no explanation that scientists object to.
Scott doesn't believe it's possible for them to be different though.
What if my life isn't "fun"?
A lot of people live out lives of complete suffering. Childhood cancer? Poverty? Disease? Genetic mental health issues? Inbreeding? Childhood trauma? That list goes on and on.
That isn't a movie I signed up for.
Does determinism think this is supposed to be a lesson of some sort?
Actually it does.
Your movie is going to play out the way it plays out, regardless of whatever you do. Throw your feet up in the recliner or struggle for that next promotion, doesn't matter. Brain cancer.
I just find this rubbish.
You rejecting superdeterminism, deciding that your fate is up to you, and making positive decisions to improve your life, is great. Do that.
It may be though, that those positive decisions and deciding your fate is up to you, etc, was already printed on the film. Or if instead you just throw your feet up on the recliner and decide to do nothing, then that would have already been printed on the film as well.
If in a trillion years the universe ends and there’s a complete story to tell about everything that happened, and some external observer were to watch that story, they’d see you making whatever decision you made and your life turning out in a particular way. But they wouldn’t expect that if they rewound the film that things would somehow turn out differently.
However, there isn't an explanation for why it's limited - seems like if the partial case could happen then the whole thing could happen too. (there's a long argument about this in the comments of Scott's post)
I disagree, I think quite the opposite.
Physicists often seem to adhere to a "religion" of sorts, that being atheism. Anything to get rid of the "God problem".
It's not all so cut and dry.
> “I believe in Spinoza's God, who reveals himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God who concerns himself with the fate and the doings of mankind.” - Albert Einstein
I'm not religious.
But even if fervent atheist physicists are trying to remove the God Problem, how does that mean they are selecting physical theories to make life meaningful?
For example you can have a system with two possible states, A and B. My decision to do experiments some superdeterministic setup is correlated with the state of the sytem so I only do experiments when the state of the system is A. I conclude that A is a physical law, but I'm completely wrong, its quite often B but I am only "choosing" to do experiments when it A.
(*) this is my opinion and the opinion of many, but absolutely not all physicists
The universe could still be entirely deterministic, in that your choice of experiment and measurement to make was fixed at the moment of creation. But you still believe that the results you are getting are a fair and accurate reflection of how the universe actually works.
Free will (in the philosophical sense) is irrelevant. Your choice of measurement is only influenced by what is happening locally to you at that time. The game isn't rigged to produce misleading results from the very moment of creation for all time.
The reason that super determinism is rejected is because (in the usual understanding) that it requires that the initial state of the universe is set up incredibly precisely to make all subsequent measurements appear to violate Bell's inequality, even though reality isn't actually like that.
So if we set up a quantum measurement and make a decision based on photons of light emitted from distant stars, the experimenter deterministically chooses to make just the right measurement that would make the universe look like it was violating the inequality. Including all the matter between us, and the atoms in the neurons in the experimenters brain, and the photons that were emitted before any of that existed.
This is why super determinism is rejected. It would mean that we are not "free" to choose the experiments and measurements we perform. The universe would be essentially conspiring to deceive us at all levels, including what science we do, the results we receive and the conclusions drawn from it. Which is why it would invalidate the scientific method itself. We couldn't trust anything we thought we knew.
Sabine has a different take from what I can tell. If you allow backwards causality, the measurement act is not independent of the thing being measured. See this blog entry and the comments:
http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-forgotten-solut...
Just observing that historically religion tends to select theories of the physical world that align with its moral and religious belief.
If you were to make a decision that is not in some sense pre-determined by the structure of your brain (as shaped by biology and past experiences), it would be essentially random and just as meaningless as an uranium atom "deciding" to decay at some specific moment and not another.
In other words I want it to be true that looking at the system doesn't tell you anything about when / whether I'm going to be performing experiments on it today, and more specifically I don't want you to be able to predict which measurements I'm going to do based on the system alone (i.e. without asking me).
This notion of free will is (as far as I can tell) completely necessary in order to meaningfully do physics at all.
I am of the hard determinist camp but I'm pessimistic about if we're ever going to be able to predict chaotic systems. Even if someone could predict what I'm about to do, this information would be fundamentally out of reach for me since getting this information would influence the outcome (also, maybe the predicting machine itself would causally perturb me enough to not be able to make meaningful predictions).
When prey are faced with predators on the open savannah, they may be in "unconscious mode" when grazing the grass, but if they glimpse a predator, ears and tail go up, head swings, and they have to make a decision.
I think it's important for everyone to keep in mind that "free will" is used differently in different contexts. In scientific contexts, it's more along the lines of experimental freedom, and free will and determinism are incompatible.
In ethics and law, it's more about moral responsibility and free will and determinism can be compatible (depending on who you ask).
He also had this theorem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will_theorem