John Conway & Simon Kochen Discuss The Free Will Of Subatomic Particles

paw.princeton.edu

29 points·jswinghammer··5 comments

Wow, that's amusing.

When I was younger, this was why I would read all sorts of lightweight books on quantum mechanics. I hated the idea of a mechanistic universe, as it did not seem to allow for the possibility of choice. Quantum mechanics offered a way out in its apparent "randomness" (albeit vaguely and rather strangely).

In fact, not so long ago I was debating with someone, defending the existence of free will along these lines (of course more informally and intuitively, as I am not a physicist). It's nice to see more informed people making the argument.

I thought the same thing! I came to the conclusion a while ago that if free will exists, it must originate from someplace outside of Newtonian physics or our current understanding of chemistry.

The common mistake the opposition makes is that the complement of "determinism" is "randomness". In fact, the complement of "determinism" is "non-determinism", of which "randomness" is only one possibility; ostensibly "free-will" is another.

You should keep reading... I don't think you've grokked the subject yet. Read something that has actual math in it.

See also http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=532003 where there is already much discussion. Discussion there is now closed because it's four months ago.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com