Comment by piloto_ciego | Hacker News Reader

Comment by piloto_ciego | Hacker News Reader

Pay attention to the people with the most dogmatic views in this thread about determinism and free will. It’s extremely interesting. Typically (and strangely) I find the most dogmatic folks are mostly determinists. I think probably because it’s more “science-y” than a philosophy that has to say “I don’t know.”

Even in this thread you’ll note that there’s a very vocal group of people who would happily shout down any idea that there’s any sort of free will in the universe and that the universe is anything other than a cold mechanistic computation that was determined billions of years ago. They’ll shit talk Penrose, or shout about pseudoscience, and very few of them will critically engage with the topic in good faith. They’ve already made up their minds. Not only that but some of them (troublingly) will even talk how we’re not even conscious at all. As if we are all just meat computers or something.

Now, I don’t know if we’re conscious or not and I don’t know if the world is on rails either, but it certainly feels like I have free will and it certainly feels like I’m responsible for my actions and it qualitatively feels like I’m conscious.

Obviously, not all of my choices are made freely, but some of the ones that matter to me at least seem to be made freely. But a lot of people seem absolutely sure that we’re not making anny choices and we have no free will. It’s weird to me, because literally every day I get increasing evidence suggesting I have free will within some limits and the universe is unfathomable and unpredictable.

Not to be an ass, but if I can be honest I kinda pity the folks that don’t have that experience. I reckon if you’ve never made a decision that really mattered it would be easy to feel like it all wasn’t your choice. Maybe that’s too harsh, but anti-free will and determinism are just as untestable as any other philosophy I suppose, but I do wonder what kind of life can lead to people thinking that they’re not making any conscious decisions.

I’m a determinist and I certainly feel like I’m in control of my thoughts and actions. That doesn’t mean I actually am. I think that we as humans are just hardwired to feel like we have free will, even if we believe otherwise on an intellectual level.

I don't know how you define "determinism" but perhaps in the sense that future is determined by the past, right? The initial state of a system and the forces acting on it determine its state at some future time. Right?

But universe doesn't work tat way. Universe is non-deterministic because quantum effects happen randomly. They cannot be predicted, only their probabilities can.

That does depend on your interpretation of quantum mechanics: the wave-function is still entirely deterministic. Non-determinism is only induced by 'collapse', but it's not mandatory for this to ever happen: the many-worlds interpretation is basically the result of saying it doesn't, and is completely deterministic. (In fact 'collapse' interpretations are not particularly popular theoretically, because it's actually a blurry line of decoherance: it's just generally convenient for interpreting the outcome of a calculation, and you can assume it's a close enough approximation to experiment once your system has interacted with your detectors).

>the many-worlds interpretation is basically the result of saying it doesn't

Few problems with this, the state that a particle can be in after the collapse of the wave function follows a probability distribution, so if all states are equally real then why does it seem like some states are more likely than others? Why would probabilities be such a powerful mathematical tool, and how would it work in a MWI.

If all points of the universe branch out into several universes after each particle interaction, where does all this energy come from? If all branches are equally real why even have the wave function in the first place?

> if all states are equally real then why does it seem like some states are more likely than others?

Because some states are more probable than others. That is what the wave-function tells us. It does not give equal probability to every possible outcome.

> Universe is non-deterministic because quantum effects happen randomly.

One of Penrose's foundational arguments is that the random element of quantum collapse is deeply unsatisfactory; he thinks it's a defect in the theory that must eventually lead to its replacement by a better theory.

Einstein had a similar conviction. But from all we know now quantum description of the world is the best theory we have. Particles behave following probability distributions. There are laws (of QM) they follow, but that does not mean the outcome is deterministic. We cannot predict the outcome of quantum experiments, only their probability based on the previous state of the world. And that is not because our instruments are not sharp enough, it seems indeterminism is a fundamental part of quantum reality.

Now if the tiniest elements behave that way non-deterministically and we can assume they do have an effect on the world around them, then it seems to be the whole world is more or less indeterministic. Probability distributions can be observed that's all.

Further credence to the idea of non-deterministic world is given by Chaos Theory. A butterfly flapping its wings in Africa can cause a storm in Kansas. Therefore the indeterminism at the atomic level is amplified to the macro-level, as predicted by Chaos Theory.

And if that is the case then we can assume that what happens in our brains is also indeterministic. Thus you could say we have "free will", our wills and thoughts and likes are a product of something indeterministic. Thus you can say that "our will is free", more or less. I'm not sure what "Having a Free Will" would mean, but I can understand that our will is not wholly determined by history.

> We cannot predict the outcome of quantum experiments, only their probability based on the previous state of the world. And that is not because our instruments are not sharp enough, it seems indeterminism is a fundamental part of quantum reality.

I know very little about QM, so I could be completely off here, but, not being able to predict the outcome of an experiment could be completely different to the outcome being deterministic.

Lay person point of view. Rewind the universe by an hour and replay. Does QM have anything to say about that? I'm inclined to think not, but I really don't know. In other words, does QM say:

1) The result would certainly be the same.

2) The result could certainly be different.

3) The theory doesn't tell us one way or another, meaning it doesn't exclude either 1 or 2 being true.

If it is 1, then we have determinism. If it is 2, then we have randomness. I don't think either of those are compatible with what people think of as free will (mysterious ability to choose outside of physics).

> Rewind the universe by an hour and replay.

I think it's impossible to rewind the universe, so no sensical theory should say anything about that. A theory that theorizes about what happens if something impossible happens would seem to be waste of time. :-)

But I think the answer is: The outcome of a quantum experiment is random. So if the same experiment is repeated, it should most probably give a different answer, unless the answer is always the same, or one of only a few possibilities.

> from all we know now quantum description of the world is the best theory we have

Penrose would agree!

I think that in The Emperor's New Mind, he sets out a scheme for classifying the quality of different theories, e.g. quantum mechanics, darwinian evolution. He classifies quantum mechanics (quantum chromodynamics?) as a "Superb" theory, because of the accuracy and precision of the predictions it makes. But he still says it's fundamentally flawed.

And there's the rub: it's always about the beauty.

> It’s weird to me, because literally every day I get increasing evidence suggesting I have free will within some limits and the universe is unfathomable and unpredictable.

I find the whole subject fascinating, but I am not an expert. I break it down for myself in this manner, so perhaps you could give your view.

If we rewound the universe by an hour (as an example). Literally, every single thing, particle, what have you in the universe is exactly as it was an hour ago. Then you started it again (1). Would you end up where everything in the universe happened exactly as it already did? Faced with the same choices, would *you* make the exact same choices, to end up exactly as we are now?

If the answer is yes, then that implies determinism, and would probably reject what you think of as free will (I'm taking a guess, because you didn't explicitly define free will).

If the answer is no, then it appears that the choices are just random. You have all the same information, all the same moral conindrums, etc, and yet, you just chose something different. Why? In this case, if it is just random, then that also seems to reject the idea of free will.

If there is some other mechanism involved here, could you describe whether it would make the same decisions or not. And if not, then on what basis would the decisions be different?

(1) I'd really prefer to avoid nitpicky arguments about the arrow of time and so on. This is just a thought experiment.

You should define “free will” if you want to claim you have direct experience of it. I’d suggest that what you’re experiencing may be just “will”.

And in my opinion, whether you’re “responsible for your actions” isn’t a question about the nature of reality (ontological), rather a question (or one of several) about how we should act in it (moral).

I’d say “free will is the ability to act at one’s own discretion.”

That’s not my definition it’s almost verbatim from the Oxford English Dictionary. Still, it’s exactly how I feel.

But morality is important to this discussion I think but I cannot put my finger on “why” it is.

I personally think of “will” as being closer to “discretion” than to “action”, but I’ll try to steer the conversation away from semantics.

What I want to focus on is what leads you to conclude that your will, or your discretion, is not deterministic. Forgetting, if we may, arguments for or against determinism from a physics perspective: what’s the argument from your personal experience? As for morality, I would make the case that ontology should inform morality but not the other way around.

You might as well be a compatibilist. Yes, it looks like free will exists and the universe is deterministic, consequently free will is compatible with determinism. Then you can realize that the myth that free will is incompatible with determinism is just a superstition.

> Yes, it looks like free will exists

Why do you say this? How do you define free will here?

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