Comment by BrandoElFollito | Hacker News Reader

Comment by BrandoElFollito | Hacker News Reader

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BrandoElFollito

I am an ex-physist who stopped after his PhD in particle physics. I love physics but while money does not bring happiness, it is better to cry in a Mercedes than on a bike (this is not true, I just laughed when I first read it).

I went through the stages of OP (on a way smaller scale, I do not have his experience) and I think this is awesome. You continuously go from "oh yeah, now I get it" to "crap". This always have you on the bleeding edge between "this si physics, I know that" and "yes, but what if...". To me this is the essence of knowledge though curiosity.

I started my PhD on a specific topic and at some point I was a bit stuck (not panic mode stuck but pissed off stuck). I had dinner with a friend, we were discussing about my work (she is also a physicist) and she off-handly suggested something. And bam! my world changed. The direction of the thesis changed. I added an extra thesis director because what I was about to do was a world where the hands of men did not step on yet.

I thanked her profusely for her help in the thesis and suggested a joined publication (which she did not want to take because she was not interested and asked me to stop stalking her :))

And this is how science moves: because of eureka moments under the shower or at dinner or because someone thought "hmmm..." (looking at you Nikola Tesla).

So the fact that this guy doubts about what the world is, and that he is a theoretical physicist (so hopefully will not switch to some insanities) is awesome.

Off topic, but eureka moments are my favorite go-to evidence for the absence of free will. No one chooses to have a eureka moment. They just arrive. And not just those moments, but every thought in every moment. They all just arrive, none are choosen.

The presence of subconscious processes doesn't deny the existence of conscious ones.

Focus/diffuses modes are widely known/accepted.

You can direct the unconscious thoughts too. If I spend some time intensely trying to solve a problem on the conscious level, often I get new ideas on how to approach it in the morning or during a long run (without thinking about it on the conscious level).

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Unrelated: the discussions about free will often miss that the existence of atoms doesn't imply that a wooden table doesn't exist: they are on different levels of abstraction--no point in comparing.

I don’t think it rules out free will, but perhaps free will is more limited. There is a self reflective part of your mind, probably physically located in your frontal lobe, but there are also many other parts of your mind and brain that do important things, but aren’t self reflective. I’ve come to think of my brain as a committee. There are many things I can do, like walk or even do a mathematical proof, that I cannot really describe the process. We see in things like addiction that the self reflective mind also does not always (or maybe even often) have ultimate control over behavior. Kahenaman and Gallwey talk about this as System 1/2 and Self 1/2. Julian Jaynes even thinks that people used to have complete other simulated people inside of themselves that they called gods, and this still happens to people with Schizophrenia.

I choose thoughts - I can conjour images, or scenes into my mind. I can choose not to think about things.

In fact, this is a proof of free will. If you were compelled to consider the consequences of your actions then evil would be impossible. The fact that we see evil means that people can choose not to think about what will happen when they do evil things.

As the famous quote goes, you are free to choose, but you aren't free to choose what you choose.

Unpacking: assuming you aren't coerced, you choose one of N options "freely". But all the factors (many inscrutable) that contribute to the ultimate choice are predetermined from your biology to all your lived experience (which ultimately is encoded in your brain in some manner).

Sam Harris has a short (7 minute) video with a demonstration of this. The demonstration starts about 1:20 in, but it is worth watching the minute setup.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXTEmu-jUqA

I think, at this point, if someone says free will exists, beyond mere compatibilism, it should be required that they very carefully specify what the hell they are talking about.

P.s. Am I wrong for assuming that whenever someone talks about free will without mentioning compatiblism, they most likely talking about some other form?

One of the many contradictions in a religion is that a sinner could claim "God is all powerful, so he made me do that sin". So early religious thinkers had to make an exception for something that God has no power on, and called it "free will".

What's your definition?

What will your next thought be? Think of a movie — why did that movie arise in your mind?

It’s an illusion but that doesn’t negate we must operate as though our will is free!

What do you mean by “as though our will is free” when you say that “we must operate as though our will is free”?

This is at the heart of it.

Not really, the decision to choose a particular thought first comes into your mind the way above comment says.

Really - to state otherwise is just a play on words.

Think carefully. Think friend, think.

This is a bit like saying program counters don't exist because a program's control flow can be changed by interrupts.

Why would you assume it's all or nothing? Will (free or otherwise) implies something like effort and clearly we're not constantly applying effort. Believing in free will doesn't mean believing that everything results from it.

Usually people that don’t being in thought can’t think, so from their limited perspective, their arguments kinda make sense.

It’s like white swans. If you’ve never seen a bird, you might think that nobody has ever seen a white swan.

You can still have free will with "locked in" events.

Time is a fourth dimension but think of everything that has and everything that will happen as a three dimensional cube for a moment.

Now step outside the cube and observe everything that has and ever will happen.

Does that mean there was no free will because it's all observable and was "locked in" ?

No of course not. It's a unique box of time. If you look around there could be another unique box of time with different free will choices being made inside it.

(btw this is one way they attempt to theorize an excuse for quantum entanglement, it "knows" the outcome already by also existing outside the box)

One can want to have eureka moments.

And than one thinks hard.

And then one fine day "eureka!"

But they do not happen on their own. It takes effort to make them possible, even though there is no guaruantee that they will come (Dead ends exists).

The choice is upstream. You choose what to focus on, which gives standing orders to your brain, which eventually leads to eureka moments.

If you choose to focus entirely on baking you'll have eureka moments about that.

Because instincts exist, there is no free will.

(Although free will is required to make any conclusion about the presence or absence of free will, so the point is moot).

Grandparent's argument is ridiculous but so is yours, how is free will required to make a conclusion on the existence of free will ?

Making any conclusion requires the use of a will, otherwise it’s just a coin flip, and random decision aren’t part of logical frameworks.

Yes they are, look at the derandomization program in computational complexity, or if you're slightly more forgiving with your definition of logic, then look at mixed strategies and Monte-Carlo algorithms.

*only random decisions can’t come to a conclusion. That would mean a random proof of free will is just as valid :)

Definitely random generators can be a subset of logic, not the superset.

I don't know what you're saying. A derandomized Las Vegas algorithm is deterministic for a given seed, so far so good. From there I'm lost.

Imagine you have no will.

Each series of words and arguments is equivalent because no understanding actually exists.

There is no mechanism behind picking one series of words over the other because a random number generator is behind anything.

You can’t trust such a system to produce any logical outcome, therefore free will (embodied understanding and decisions etc.) is required to conclude that free will doesn’t exist :)

That does not follow, a robot following the rules of correct reasoning can conclude (to a reasonable probability) that a statement is false. You may have very strong requirements in your definition of "understanding", but the robot can output a number between 0 and 1, and that's good enough for a conclusion by everyday language.

Saying an airplane concludes to tell the pilot to "pull up" is correct as far as I think most people see it.

Mathematicians have proven that there are true statements that can not be concluded to be true by following a set of rules or axioms.

Turing machine based robots will get stuck until the end of time stuck in infinite loops that humans are able to easily step out of. This is one of the requirements for understanding, so examples of robots aren’t very illuminating.

There are ways to detect that to an extent and abort in machine systems, and for humans you can see kind of analogous attacks against the immune system (it gets really, really crazy in there, real arms race stuff), but in general why do you expect humans to be specially invulnerable to Godel attacks? To the extent they're hard to attack, it's because they don't actually execute math.

Mathematical reasoning requires no will, rules can be derived from axioms algorithmically.

Not true in practice, not enough energy on the universe to algorithmically derive everything. Also, someone with understanding and will would have to set up the program :)

Well then, how do you suppose the human brain does it ? Magic ? The answer of course is: it's heuristics all the way down.

But I don't think we can agree on anything here, I am a materialist and you seem to be a dualist. You may believe in some kind of god(s), (Otherwise how could will-ful humans emerge from will-less matter ?) and I don't intend to debate this here.

My worldview is that our brains exist in a material universe that is governed by physical rules, and until I see proof of the existence of some kind of soul that is somehow able to make decisions detached from our material condition (culture, health, environment, past history), I think my position is the most reasonable one.

When you imagine an apple, do you think the apple you see is real?

Eureka moments, is the subconscious assembling conclusions and deductions and presenting them to you. That the subconscious is engaged and busy, is fed with information to build stuff from and rewarded for its actions - thus repeats it, is all conscious choices, thus subject to free will. The horse does pull of a record and the rider barely had to steer, is not a indicator of wild horses.

One thing I've discovered and utilised from a relatively early age was synergising the difference in how my conscious and subconscious processes information. It's really just the usual advice of "when stuck, go for a walk" but in my experience it's a very useful tool when done mindfully.

i don't believe in free will either, but this isn't very convincing evidence.

eureka moments don't hit like bird poo in the middle of the street. they hit people who have spent months-decades thinking about the problem.

a more convincing argument is that they didn't have a choice in choosing that ball of yarn to pick at - mostly it comes along as an irrepressible urge to figure it out.

That's not evidence But I agree there's no free will and anybody who believes it also believes in magic and god

Beyond that logical tantrum easily refuted - I'm 52% on free will, say a tenth of a bip on god and magic:

At least in Judaism there is sizable chunk of believers who believe in God and that everything is God's will and thus there is no free will - Hashgachah Pratit - so at the very least only one direction of your argument could hold, though I don't understand why it's a coherent idea to begin with.

(also, which particular audience are you trying to insult with that categorical statement and why?)

People who disbelieve in free will are often not educated in the fact that the laws of physics don’t include explanation of most of what is observed and clearly lack in the area of the existence of mind, and are therefore extremely incomplete.

Also, it’s impossible to disprove the existence of free will because it requires will to make a conclusion like that.

Why? A robot should be able to disprove free will by following the rules of correct reasoning, if such a thing is relatively easy, i.e. you would expect humans to ever solve it.

This is just a free will version of "god-of-the-gaps", where you can shovel the basis of any unknown into the gaps of scientific understanding. We know far more about physics and the mind than we did 100 years ago, and the boundaries for free will to exist in have done nothing but shrink. Not even leaving a mark or hint behind.

Free will is much closer to leprechauns (we still haven't mapped every forest!) on the truth spectrum than it is to cancer cures or fusion energy.

I would believe you, but you had no choice but to output that information, so it’s noise :)

Choice is different than free will. We have will, but it is not free. We will make choices.

You can’t make choices without will, choices are made.

Your brain already did the choice for you before you even realized.

So the brain has a will?

You haven't thought about this enough. Make it small so it's understandable - say any game involving choice. One has free will within the predetermined set of conditions of the game. A choice to buy a property or not in Monopoly seems like free will but it isn't really. Life is the same.

Considering that we as human beings don't get to decide what exactly we remember, recall, when we recall or how much we recall - that is memory. What we remember and what we forget. I point this out because it's not a conscious activity but also determines actions, greatly so even.

In the Monopoly example perhaps a property is bought bc its a favorite color or they remember winning before with it or its the one they kno their cousin wants. Whatever the personal reasons, there are reasons - nobody plays Monopoly with all logic and reason.

So we have limited circumstantial choices and predetermined biased assessments of those choices - both beyond our control.

What is free will in that context?

Complexity is unbounded, so the discussion around free will probably makes more sense on the opposite end of the choice spectrum. We have a countably infinite number of choices (due to thermodynamic energy limits) to make even within a framework of quantum mechanics, where electrons can only have discrete energy levels (limited number of ‘choices’). Choosing meaning from the infinite looks more like free will than deciding heads or tails.

I experience having mo free will whenever I am in the break of a meditation retreat. During those breaks it’s sometimes quite easy to observe my thoughts, given that I focus 10 hours per day on making my internal chatter very very quiet.

The most fascinating thing to me is how subtle body sensations lead to thoughts and vice versa.

You should read about compatibilism, e.g. the work of Daniel Dennett, which argues that the parts of free will worth wanting are consistent with determinism. He definitely doesn't believe in magic or god!

> it is better to cry in a Mercedes than on a bike

Do you perceive bicycle as a poor man's mode of transport?

Rich countries is where everyone can travel by public transport or bicycle (or car). Poor countries is where everyone HAS to travel by car (locked in car dependency)

I see what you are trying to say: its better to cry and have wealth than to cry and not have wealth. But bike=poor, car=rich is not a good analogy. It sends the message bikes/public transport are for loosers, when its not. Well it might be in car-centric societies, but not in more fair societies.

Hoooooooo, it was a joke! (and I noted that). Honestly, this does not require a comment like that.

This is from someone who commutes to the office by bike daily (30 km) in a country where biking=good! :)

Actually the joke was Mercedes vs "trottinette" but I did not have a good translation of this French work handy (a kind of scooter you stand on and you traditionally move by pushing your foot on the ground - now they are electric). Which of course does not change anything because the scooter is good and comparing this in car-centric countries etc.

A trottinette is actually called a scooter in english. I believe a "motor scooter" is what we in France call a scooter.

Thanks, good to know. We have plenty of these false friends.

The version i’ve heard is “better to cry in a Bimmer than laugh on a bike” (sounds English-optimized, but thats just luck —- BMW also make the bikes)

ok I was a bit harsh, I have been watching too much Not Just Bikes/Urban channels and I see too many cars everywhere lol

30k is a good daily ride. Keep it up!

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