you turn the page of the book of life and it says: "you are still reading the book of life"

@kawaiipotatoes2951

8 жыл бұрын

simple

@johannesvahlkvist

8 жыл бұрын

+Kawaii Potatoes well, you turn to the page that tells you what happens next week then...

@DestroyedArkana

8 жыл бұрын

It just would say that you're still reading the book! And if you go away and come back, it just says that you closed and opened the book again.

@SuperFailism

7 жыл бұрын

Depends on if it's words or a picture book, if it's from your eye perspective and you turn the page every time you finished the forethought of the page ahead (to make sure you finish the book) you would be able to read it. You may also get other forethought of you getting up and doing stuff but it may also change or rewrite if you decide to do something else. It might also be from the perspective of the book, or even possibly the reader. At the end of the day it's a magical book.

@bigbschannel8731

7 жыл бұрын

One of the problems with the "book of life" thought experiment is this... If you read your future (and this is a proxy for "foreknowledge") you may try to do something else that was different than your "foreknowledge" showed you. Doing something different doesn't demonstrate freedom, it negates the fact that you had real "foreknowledge". Clearly, you didn't foresee the actual choice you made you only predicted a possibility that would never actually occur. "You" being the generic you, not Kawaii Potatoes specifically ... ;)

I CAN predict accurately- What I cannot do is to INDICATE accurately using my light bulb in the manner prescribed.

@LortOfTheStones

8 жыл бұрын

+Vic Demise So you got back to the hundred years old wisdom that the only thing we can be certain about is that we should be certain about nothing.

@JoeyHauschildt

8 жыл бұрын

+Zsolt Lőrinczy He's saying that you can predict with perfect accuracy if you write your prediction on paper. The light bulb as an indicator is an unnecessary requirement.

@VicDemise

8 жыл бұрын

+Zsolt Lőrinczy Well I agree with that point (and I'm sure that whole "I'm certain I know nothing." line of thought goes back even thousands of years, but that's not what I was getting at. I'm saying that one can predict if the light will be on or off easily- The whole "frustrator" circuit proves NOTHING about free-will one way or the other. BTW, I don't really buy into the whole free-will thing anymore. I think there is the illusion of us having free-will, but really people are always doing the best they can, even when they're doing very bad things. I think this is important because if we can grasp this as being true, we will no longer be so pointlessly punishment oriented and we will work more towards lovingly fixing the causes of bad behavior. Sure, some people (though very few) may need to be removed from society for the good of society, but most crimes are not deterred because of the threat of some punishment- not even murder. Then we have all of those victim-less crimes (i.e: DRUGS) that really cannot be crimes at all if there are no victims. I think religion is the biggest reason that people are wired to desire seeing people get punished (and that's all B.S. about controlling people). Even if you're raised without religion, you're still surrounded by people and culture infected with that whole faulty way of seeing things, and we can easily adopt that same punishment mindset, even though it makes no sense to an evolved mind.

@elizziebits

8 жыл бұрын

+Vic Demise The problem the video is trying to describe has to do with the ability knowing what will happen not indicating it. Indicating that you know is really secondary to the central question. He only include the fact that the foreknowledge was indicated to make it easier to grasp. You can modify the thought experiment slightly and get the exact same result even without "indicating." The central problem is with having the foreknowledge itself, not with indicating you have it. Here's a way you could modify it. Just imagine that instead of a light sensor the box can sense the state of your neural activity and determine if you've decided the light will be on or off. You might say, "Well then I am just indicating in a different way." The problem is that if you "have" the knowledge you can imagine a thought experiment where you "having that" messes with the outcome you think you have.

@JoeyHauschildt

8 жыл бұрын

Liz Kinsch You're still setting requirements on the indication method. You also made the person that is conducting the experiment, part of the experiment. I'll make the prediction if we are testing your neural activity. But as long as I am part of your machine, your experiment just plain sucks. Can you come up with a machine that would frustrate an outside observer?

Oh wow, so many intelligent people in comments. I see arguments without verbal offences. Hope in humanity restored :)

@cooleyo470

7 жыл бұрын

This is why I like philosophy and people who are also interested in it. Philosophy is such an open ended field, no matter the topic, and it attracts people of that mindset.

@f.j.n.9215

7 жыл бұрын

Well fuck you, this comment section is way too civilized

@Nick-tp3ug

7 жыл бұрын

Floris Niemeijer Here here good sir!🍻

@DrXaOs

7 жыл бұрын

Floris Niemeijer lol

@macsnafu

5 жыл бұрын

Watch out, here come the frustrators! ;-)

predict lightbulb is off, break lightbulb.

@anzarmalik7522

8 жыл бұрын

+LolsTheGreatAndPowerful I would have simply placed a black cardboard between the sensor and the light bulb. Why am I the only one who though of that?

@mcddennisk

8 жыл бұрын

+Just Anzar It's implied you have no other resources than those he gave you. Still it is silly because if you predicted correctly you'd already know you could not give an answer and would just proceed exactly as you predicted. So even though you KNEW the answer and was able to predict exactly what happened you already knew it was a question you could not transmit the answer under those conditions.

@anzarmalik7522

8 жыл бұрын

Daniel Freire But he said you get all the resources formula or devices you want.

@LewmasOfMinecraft

8 жыл бұрын

Or, you can time the pulses of energy to the bulb just right so that when the sensor looks at your bulb to determine the 12 o'clock on/off state, all of the photons coming from your light just happen to miss the sensor, and the sensor perceives the light as off even though it is on.

@RodMartinJr

6 жыл бұрын

Now, that's thinking outside the box.

'The frustration' is not an argument against determinism If I had all knowledge I could ask for (was omniscient), I would know that you were going to trick me.

@DamienDunn

9 жыл бұрын

C26000 I love your response. Determinists would have to reject quantum physics. Because in quantum physics when you interact with the system, you change the system..... But of course they can simply say " oh you were always going to interact with the system " so there is no use arguing with determinists.

@DamienDunn

9 жыл бұрын

Mark VR Determined from the origin of which universe ? What about the multiverse theory, that there are infinite universes with infinite possibilities, each time you make a decision you jump into a new universe

@putinstea

9 жыл бұрын

I'll second what Mark VR said. Virtually all of science is evidence towards a deterministic universe. That doesn't mean it HAS to be deterministic of course. But it probably means that that it's a lot "easier" to explain natural phenomena by the simple principle of 'cause and effect', than to explain how our universe has an inherent element of randomness. If it has that. With regards to quantum physics, I don't understand nearly enough of it to "legitimately" reject it outright. I just refuse to buy into it until someone comes up with a proper explanation on what quantum entanglement is and why it's possible.

@7Dimensi0ns

9 жыл бұрын

Iorveth Quantum physics has been around for quite a while now and it has done and shown lots of stuff and whilst i share your thirst for a good explenation, we might just have to concede in regards to quantum mechanics. Do you agree though that radioactive decay is truly a random process? If so then if i told you that i have a box with a radioactive element in it and after say 10 minutes i will open it and see if the element is still there or if it has decayed, if it has decayed then i will do a jumping jack and if it is still there then i will do a puch up. What would i do in a deterministic universe? Well since the radioactive decay of that element is random, you cannot tell right? If you tell me that radioactive decay is not random then you have to show me an explenation which proves that it is indeed deterministic, or if you prefer a different example then we can take quantom field fluctuations as the alternative.

@whitenssphd2094

9 жыл бұрын

7Dimensi0ns Do you shit your pants every day or do you hold it (control) until you find a bathroom? I AM NOT arguing that there is a separate compartment in you (a soul) in charge of free will. Taking a shit is a completely determined process. Rather than going into detail about all of the causal factors and how they work together to expel your waste, we simply use labels such as choice, control, or free will to refer to this behavior (a completely determined process). Saying that free will doesn’t exist is just a silly game of semantics. May be you don’t like the term free will. Regardless we need a name for this phenomenon. If you don't fucking like it try and invent another term that you like. And see if it catches on. I seriously doubt that you could do that. The heart "controls" your blood circulation. Call every medical textbook up in this country and try to get them to replace it with your term. Good luck LOL

the paradox is not in the predictability of the future state, it's in the way you're required to announce that prediction. this experiment tells us nothing about whether or not future states can be predicted. the very restrictions put on the method of making your prediction known makes the prediction necessarily false but it proves nothing, the same way a traffic light would still work if we all agree to drive at red and stop at green.

@demonstructie

8 жыл бұрын

+mitchell crosby I did not say I can't announce it.

@nathansgreen

8 жыл бұрын

It's a thought experiment: the prediction and declaration are subsumed into one thing because you can't actually disambiguate them. If you know the future but cannot communicate it, you're outside the experiment entirely.

@demonstructie

8 жыл бұрын

+nathansgreen yes I am outside it because an experiment that only works if you agree to adhere to the outcome right from the start is a thoroughly unuseful experiment. It's no different from an adult with both hands behind his back with a piece of candy in one of them, who then lets a kid choose one hand and whichever hand the kid chooses, he will have the piece of candy in the other hand. You're not supposed to fall for that trick anymore after you're like 4 years old.

@ThereIsAnExtension2UndoHandles

8 жыл бұрын

+demonstructie It not a "trick" to be outgrown, its the very definition of a frustrator. In your child situation, you will always be wrong due to the frustrator, which is the exact point he was making in the video. Frustrators exist to make you fail no matter how much prior knowledge you have, meaning that there are 2 different paths reality can take, meaning determinism is destroyed if foreknowledge is brought into play.

@hulkslayer626

8 жыл бұрын

It's a metaphor. The lights aren't the important part. It's supposed to make you think...

Richard Holton: Problem of Free Will In response to the claim near the end that "many things may be frustrators, particularly human beings." If determinism is true and the book of life is not a fiction, but a book of fact (in keeping with the nature of the thought experiment) then a reader who reads ahead to a future page (lets say what they will be doing next Monday at 9 am) will find that at that time they will be doing exactly as the book says. There is no option for them to be 'a frustrator' as claimed. They would not be able to defy the book of life simply because they don't like the idea of them being a puppet (as mentioned). They might not like the idea, but in a deterministic world they are. If, however, indeterminism is true then (assuming we agree that indeterminism introduces truly random events) then it would be impossible to write a book of life; so a book of life could not exist in an indeterministic world. Any book under this scenario could be nothing more than a book of fiction. I think there was an accidental slight of hand labelling the light experiment as a frustrator, then labelling a person not wanting to be a puppet as a frustator. Free will arguments often cite determinism and indeterminism. I personally believe that the notion of free will is false, no matter whether we are living in a deterministic or indeterministic world. To grasp this we need do nothing more than observe how one thought and emotion spontaneously appears after the next. It seems at first glance that there is a self that is somehow generating the next thought, that there is an I who is captain of the ship. But on reflection I (I being loosely termed here) have come to the opinion that there is no self, no I, but a brain that runs on auto-pilot. Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be). Wishing you an enjoyable conscious voyage, with calm waters.

@orbsandtea

10 жыл бұрын

I was about to write a reply with with near exactly your criticism, though I wouldn't have put it as clearly. You are a masterful explainer. Or maybe I just think so because your explanations coincided so well with what I had already concluded. But you worded it better than I could. I would add this in response to the light switch thought-experiment: He claims that the frustrator frustrates the ability to predict the future event. Now, we need to keep in mind that he redefined the meaning of the word "predict" earlier in the experiment. He changed it to mean the flipping of a switch. This does not change the actual meaning of "prediction". In a deterministic world, that person would still be able to predict (the actual thing) whether the light would be on or off at noon, and he would do this by computing all the prior causes including himself and the 11:55-light bulb. Also. When he tries to explain how humans can be frustrators in a deterministic world, he is already assuming that we have "free will". He is assuming that our actions are not wholly the outcome of prior causes, but that our actions can be first causes. Though if our actions were the first causes of anything, the world could not be deterministic. Thus frustrators to accurate prediction can't exist if the world is deterministic. The prediction is itself in the list of prior causes that will cause later events. That same prediction was the result of prior causes. I am not impressed by this lesson of this philosopher. I haven't thought enough about the concept of "frustrators", but I am persuaded that the methodology, that this philosopher uses to explore the concept, is flawed in its assumptions. Wei wu wei (doing without doing). ~ Timo. P.S. I love how we can write long replies on YT now ! Though I get carried away...

@RogerBays

10 жыл бұрын

Timo, Timo Hi. Thanks for the compliment, brightened my day. I am in the throws of writing a book on all this, so your comments very validating. Thanks again.

@geesehoward7261

10 жыл бұрын

It's funny how philisophers can write whole books on littlerally garbage that can be debunked just by practicing simple experiements in reality.

@faustoefulvio

3 жыл бұрын

Thank you kind sir, wish you a good conscious voyage, too!

@user-pp8ru6uu1s

2 жыл бұрын

The book of life wouldn’t work just like an omniscient god. The book could be very, very, very smart and knowledgeable, but not all knowing of what has and will happen. And even if the book did work and assuming it describes how that future event happened, you now have knowledge of how to prevent the future event if you do not desire it. The only things that will remain the same, is the events that you still desired. I guess a way to put it is like this, suppose you gave Humpty Dumpty the book of Humpty Dumpty. Now that he knows of the undesirable event, he will avoid it. By viewing the book, you would likely change your future. Let’s go to your ship. Say the ship is flowing down a stream and there exist multiple other streams but it is going in one particular direction. Suppose a bird that sees where that the boat will crash on the path it’s on. The bird swoops down and says the boat will crash by going down this path. Because we will only do what we desire given our knowledge, the bird informed the captain, and the captain desires to not crash, now he will not crash, and so the future was really that the ship was not going to crash. The book only works if nobody is viewing the book. Say the book says you’re going to walk out of the library through the front door in 5 minutes where a dog will bite you and it explains what lead to that happening, now you’ll just avoid doing what you know will lead to an undesirable outcome so the book would be wrong. Plus, a boat going down a stream is not a very good description of determinism. We are more like a water particle that makes up the stream, not a ship on the stream.

*"man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains"* (I know that Rousseau wasn't talking about free will but what better way to sum up this subject?) That frustrator part blew my mind.

I have to agree with the people in the comments that indicate the only problem is being constrained to answering the question by means of the light bulbs. Since I am a human being, and have a hard time inferring that I cannot simply state my observation based on my knowledge of the conditions, to me it seems deceptive that my only means of communicating my prediction are the precise means by which my prediction will be thwarted. That is to say, since I am aware of the mechanism by which the light turns on and off, as was indicated in the experiment, not only can I predict the outcome but I can control it to 100% of my satisfaction. I can do this test every day for a million years and never be wrong except to the person that is only using the state of my light bulb as the answer to their question. This limitation seems farcical to me, and only serves to prove a point that has no bearing in reality. In that sense, it does nothing to answer the question of free will in reality, unless the whole of reality is a box, 2 lights, some set of conditions, and a person whose only means of communication is the condition of the light that proves them wrong every time. And before you grapple at me with the fact that it is a thought experiment and so the universe within it is basically as I described, I would retort... great, so what? It has no bearing on reality and does little that I can see to illustrate any larger point.

@hulkslayer626

8 жыл бұрын

It's called a metaphor. Replace the use of the word "frustrator" with "chaos theory/uncertainty principle/free will" and you have a metaphor for life. Nothing is written in stone and even though everything in the world adheres to the laws of nature, the outcome isn't always guaranteed.

@vialgyy

8 жыл бұрын

The point is that you have no other option of expresing your prediction the same way you have no other option of expresing a prediction for the world since you have a limited point of view as an individual.

@pjrt_tv

7 жыл бұрын

The point of the simple device (he even said it, it is very simple) is to show what a frustrator is.

@DeekerJones

7 жыл бұрын

Pedro Rodriguez Right, and I got that point but there is the larger question of free will in the topic. If it was simply a demonstration of the precept, then it would be intriguing unto itself, but I fail to see how that actually ties into the larger question of free will. At best, it adds an assumption to the question. That assumption would be that we are independent agents and can act as "frustrators" in our model of free will. It assumes that we have some level of control in the universe but the basic question remains. If we have free will, then and only then, can we act as "frustrators" in the universe. So you have to assume that we do have free will for this thought experiment to have any validity. However, if we do not have free will, and only act in accordance with a predestined outcome then we have precisely zero impact on the result and are no longer "frustrators" but the inevitable result that was always going to be. So this thought experiment is nothing but a circle jerk for itself and does precisely nothing to further the line of reasoning. If anything, it basically restates the questions from "Do we have free will?" to "Are we frustrators?" and so, we are exactly where we started. Taken out of context, it is an intriguing, if ridiculously simplistic thought experiment that begs more questions than it answers. Within the context of free will it attempts to seem profound when in fact, it is a literal expression of nothing.

@hulkslayer626

7 жыл бұрын

+Deeker Jones begging more questions than it answers is the point of Philosophy :) And it WAS very simple...purposely so. Like an introduction to the idea of unpredictability/free will/chaos theory. It served it's purpose cause we're all discussing it ;) Never stop learning. Never stop questioning. never stop sharing ideas. That is how we grow.

This man should've studied hypnotism, his voice keeps putting me under hypnosis every time I try to watch this video.

Of course we have free will. We have no choice (Christopher Hitchens).

@There-Is-No-Virus

9 жыл бұрын

Aguijon1982 To me free will is being able to make choices that are your own and not predictable even by a computer 1 million times smarter than us. And I think we do not have free will. We are just along to enjoy the ride and to maybe experience acceptance

This was great listening to. The only one problem with the example you gave for the "humans are frustrators" theory is that someone can purposely "predict" what he knows to be false in order to motivate the person to do the opposite, thus fulfilling the real prediction. Basically like reverse psychology. In the light bulb example, this would be like a person predicting the bulb would be on, so he "tells a lie" by purposely putting a bulb that's off next to it. This is kind of like a self-fulfilling prophecy. You know what is going to happen, but in trying to avoid fate you cause the very end result that was predicted to occur in the first place.

@lunaponta594

Жыл бұрын

i know this was 6 years ago, but i thought about this solution all throughout the video and wanted to tell you why it can't happen. on catch number 2 he says "if you put that lightbulb on, then that's an indicator that you believe the lightbulb on the box will be on" (4:43), so you can't place the lightbulb on, and say your prediction was that it's gonna be off. you cant place a "fake page" on the book of life, and the page can't change. you can't do reverse psychology because you can't write on the page something you don't think will happen, it's the final prediction. that's also the problem i saw with time travelling movies where the future would change. isn't the future already gonna happen? even if the future could change, there would be a future of you changing the future in the future, so time is changing but also fixed? maybe? but of course that couldn't work on the book because the pages would need to change, and if it did, at the exact moment you saw your near future, it would be infinitely switching, contradicted, and impossible.

@arminho21

11 ай бұрын

@@lunaponta594 The problem with the example to me is that your light bulb is an indicator, a way you use to communicate your prediction. The frustrator doesn't prevent you from correctly predicting the state of the light bulb, it prevents you from communicating your predition correctly. This to me is just an absurd and shouldn't be used as a real thought experiment (like you can't consider a married bachelor in another universe)

@lunaponta594

11 ай бұрын

@@arminho21 you are correct, it really just prevents you from answering correctly, not from predicting correctly. but it's still a very good thought experiment because it poses a question to free will, by disproving the existance of a book of life if you don't believe in destiny. it never said you can't predict human behavior, just that it's impossible for us to write it down without it being incorrect, cause if answers can change to make the written thing incorrect, even if you know what's gonna happen, what's written is still gonna be incorrect. this could be expanded to thoughts. if you are a human being who can predict the future perfectly, if you really have free will, you could make your own prediction false. would the prediction account for that? if it did, you'd recieve a different answer, and you wouldn't have the same reaction, so it wouldn't be true anymore. it's still a useful example to think about free will and predictions of the future, especially when talking about a god. but the lightbulb example confuses a lot of people, so i still prefer using the "test where teacher decides the right answer is always the one you didn't choose" thought experiment

@jamesparker8748

10 ай бұрын

The problem is about communicating what you’d know as the prediction based on foreknowledge if the censor is made known to you. So this isn’t a problem with prediction rather than setting arbitrary restraints on communicating the foreknowledge to another I don’t see this as an issue with knowing the outcome but an artificial restraint in communicating the knowledge

In what capacity is this guy teaching at MIT? Is he a TA? "You still can't come up with an accurate prediction" - The test isn't about my ability to predict. I'm not just being asked to predict; I'm being asked to predict and then communicate the prediction in such a way as to invalidate the prediction. *All the test proves is whether the person who built the box knew how to connect a cadmium sulfide cell to a transistor.*

@YouAndWhoseTube

10 жыл бұрын

That was unfortunate phrasing on the part of the speaker, but you've missed the point, as (depressingly) seemingly everyone else commenting on this video has. It would obviously be very easy to predict whether the lightbulb on top of the box will be on or off: if the lightbulb you control is on, it'll be off; if yours is off, it'll be on. However, the reason your 'prediction' may only be signalled using your lightbulb (which, as opposed to the 'frustrator', may be called a 'fail-to-predicter') is that it is supposed to leave you in analogous circumstances to the author of the Book of Life (i.e. someone with complete access to the laws of a deterministic universe) and to show that writing an accurate Book of Life in a universe with frustrators (i.e. those subjects of a Book of Life that are able to frustrate/rebel against its descriptions) is impossible, just as it is impossible to signal/'predict' whether the other lightbulb is on or off. To try to predict the behaviour of a frustrator in such a way that signals to the frustrator your prediction (i.e. in the free will case, the laws of the universe relevant to their predicted actions) is impossible, as (by definition) they frustrate your predictions.

@YouAndWhoseTube

10 жыл бұрын

YouAndWhoseTube Rereading my post, I realise I got something subtly wrong: I should have said "To accurately predict the behaviour of..." etc, rather than "To try to predict the behaviour of..." etc. Obviously you can try to 'win' the game, but you're bound to fail just as any prediction of your behaviour that is signalled to you and that you (can and do) 'frustrate' is bound to be inaccurate.

@HunsV

10 жыл бұрын

YouAndWhoseTube One problem with how the argument is posited is that our universe _doesn't stand alone._ Fundamental particles zip between our universe and others all the time; they appear and disappear and then pop up in a different place without having apparently moved (although they did move through whatever other universe they went to.) There are also some theories (not proven yet as far as I know) that gravity comes from a much higher dimensional space and "leaks" into ours, which is why it's incredibly weak compared to the EM force. That means that T[0] would have to contain the initial state of _all_ universes that could ever possibly interact with us (e.g. by sharing fundamental particles or "leaking" gravity to us), or influence those that do in such a way as to alter the state of ours. You also have to know the laws of physics in all those universes as well. Constants that govern things like the speed of light or the effectiveness of gravity are not necessarily the same, so you have to take all that into account. So, if you have a _full_ T[0] and a _full_ compendium of the laws of physics in all relevant universes, and infinite computers, then what happens to the frustrator? Having enough resources to predict the state of the light box also means having enough resources to predict the state of _you,_ including the effect of that knowledge _on_ you. You already know whether you will turn on your light and how the light box will react, and whether you will do this or not is determined beforehand. If you know this and change your mind at the last second, that too was predetermined.

@12dollarsand78cents

10 жыл бұрын

HunsV "our universe and others", are you high? There is NO evidence of any universe other than the one we are in.

@videotrash

10 жыл бұрын

YouAndWhoseTube of course writing a book of life in a universe with frustrators is possible. but the predictions become useless if you show them to a person whose future action the book predicts. there's a really trivial reason for that: the book of life in its predictions of future actions doesn't account for the book of life being shown to the person whose actions are being predicted. but this really doesn't say anything: a book of life doesn't have to be shown to us, to be true, so it can exist (thus we would be determined). he acknowledges it at the end of the video, when he says that a demon "outside the system" could predict our actions. this completely invalidates his argument of course, as it isn't necessary to communicate your predictions about someone’s behavior to this person, in order for them to become true, as i said above. it actually doesn't make any sense it all, to assume that- which he tacitly does.

Logically speaking, you've effectively created a system where the outcome is not the prediction. O = ~P. So by definition, the outcome cannot be predicted in advance. The prediction is always wrong. Another way to look at this is in terms of self-referential feedback. The liar's paradox is a good example - "This sentence is false." You can't assign a truth value to the system without contradicting that assignment. You can't predict the future without the outcome contradicting your prediction. So all your decision algorithm does is oscillate back and forth between states, never converging. It's a textbook example of undecidability. In a very roundabout way, this is why it is impossible to reliably predict the stock market. The entire system is built around people trying to make decisions now on what they expect the future will be. However, knowledge of the future is, itself, information that affects the decisions people make, thereby changing the flow of events. Thus, knowledge about the future actually changes the rules by which the system is governed, thereby ruining the reliability of that knowledge. The system may be deterministic in a sense, but any attempt to couple future predictions back to the inputs will immediately destroy those predictions. To me this implies that determinism cannot be a true thing. It's as if deterministic systems can be engineered to create indeterminate systems. So maybe the universe just isn't deterministic after all.

@CodeNameDoug

9 жыл бұрын

I also spotted this as the halting problem when I first saw it. So if a layman like me can see it, not a good sign. But I also think this doesn’t make the case for the problem with free will. At least in this case, there is a solution. According to the nature of the exercise the subject is given full knowable of how the system works, including its built in contradiction. By definition of the exercise, his “prediction” which must be displays by the second light will always produce the opposite result in the first light. But what if we do this a bunch of times, say 100 attempts at this prediction. Random chance suggests that the subject would get it right 50% of the time. But according to this scenario, the subject will make the wrong prediction 100% of the time. A 100% wrong prediction is still a perfect prediction. What if we add an outside observer who has to make his on prediction on weather the first subject will predict the first light correctly or incorrectly. The second subject will quickly deduce that the first subject is directly influencing the outcome. It’s not a prediction - the first subject is directly controlling the result. Thus if the first subject is given an ultimatum, say the light must be on or you die, than first subject can easily insure the first light is on, despite the fact he has a 100% failure rate at predicting weather the light will be on or off.

@dekippiesip

9 жыл бұрын

AntiCitizenX it doesn't imply determinism isn't a true thing. It only demonstrates that an agent within a deterministic system can never predict it's future since that agent itself influences the future. But there is no problem for a being outside an isolated system in predicting the future of that system. A being from another universe could still predict our future.

@AntiCitizenX

9 жыл бұрын

dekippiesip Fair enough. The distinction in the video is that of determinism vs foreknowledge. So at least we can see that perfect foreknowledge is not possible. But this also raises a somewhat pragmatic issue; that even if the universe were deterministic, then that fact cannot be useful to any of us within the actual universe. Therefore even if the universe were deterministic, it might as well not be.

@dekippiesip

9 жыл бұрын

AntiCitizenX that's a practical issue of course. And it's perfectly true, but this doesn't imply other implications of determinism would be harmed. What about moral responsibilities? If the universe is deterministic and you could only act 1 way in a given situation, you are just as morally responsible as a hurricane is. These and some other issues are still relevant. As to weather it would be emperically impossible to prove if our universe is deterministic? Well if we would know all laws of physics and prove that they imply determinism in a closed system then we have proved the universe is deterministic on the premise that those laws are correct(wich would have been thoroughly experimentally verified). Of course quantum mechanics seems to be indeterministic and that's a major problem for anyone who thinks the universe is deterministic.

@darris321

9 жыл бұрын

Doug Kulp he isn't saying that the prediction is impossible. The light is a metaphor- when you have multiple choices, not just two, it becomes impossible to know predict. Getting it wrong 100% of the time would not be a perfect prediction in that case. The metaphor is for anything that causes the prediction to muddy up the ability to be correct. Also don't think of it as a binary true or false. Some of your predictions can be verified and then made less easy by other variables.

If they ask me if I think to have free will, I answer: "I have no choice".

Hi really enjoyed this - Thank you. some of what made it so good was the use of the 'drawing' graphics. Can you tell me what software you use to achieve this? Thanks

I've never come across a coherent definition of "free will" that actually does what the people who traditionally want there to be free will (theologians, for example) need it to do. If my decision is determined by an inherently unpredictable bit of quantum fluctuation or whatever, it's still being determined by a physical system. My state of mind isn't any more or less under the control of some sort of metaphysical "free" kernel of individuality than it would be in a predictable universe. And even if we propose some kind of non-material, transcendental soul-thing that is involved in decision making, surely that decision is still conditioned by my state of mind, my personality, and my perception of the situation I'm deciding about...all of which are conditions that are determined by prior states + the current situation, whether predictably or not, no matter what the exact mechanism involved is. And so all the definitions of "free will" I've seen either boil down to something coherent but trivial/unhelpful, like "unpredictability" or "freedom from coercion", or are incoherent, like the ones proposing a non-material soul or whatever. My current view is that "does free will exist" is just an incoherent question to begin with.

@wmrajput

3 жыл бұрын

Even if we believe there a soul completely free of the body, that makes the decision, why does one soul make decides to do good and one decides to do evil? Why are some metaphysical agents of free will able to make moral decisions. The whole concept of free will is a religious theological concept to explain good snd evil behaviour and makes stands no scrutiny. Everything else i feel is just philosphysing and beating about the bush

@user-pp8ru6uu1s

2 жыл бұрын

@@wmrajput If a soul is what gives you free will, then you must ask, “Does the soul have free will?” If a god like being gave the soul a basis on how to control the body, then the soul does not have the ability to go against that and thus no free will.

Umm, no, yes you can predict whether the lightbulb will be on, it's just that you will modify the outcome by signaling your answer. It's not a problem. I mean, what's the point of that thought experiment? You can easily predict it, you just can't signal it in the way the experiment asks you to. I suppose you could make it more complex by making it so that the machine that lgihts the lightbulb could read your mind and turns the lightbulb off as soon as you know it will be on. That would make it a paradox, a true frustrator, although in reality, knowing how the brain works, the lightbulb would just turn on and off real fast. This whole video is disapointing. I have a lot respect for MIT, but this killed a little of it. I mean, youtub user AntiCitizen X explained the problem of free will a lot better, and he isn't an MIT professor. His video is also more entretaing

@dragonbane44

8 жыл бұрын

+Sinclairelim Exactly what I thought. This video just put a limitation in the mechanism by which you can convey your answer. Catch 2 is unnecessary to this experiment.

@AshtonClemens

8 жыл бұрын

+Sinclairelim The light showing the answer is the 'Book'. We're the 'sensor'. I think...

@LolsTheGreatAndPowerful

8 жыл бұрын

+Sinclairelim Point is, if you know what would happen in the future of your life, would you follow its rules.

@Sinclairelim

8 жыл бұрын

Telling me of the outcome would be modifying the system and therefore the outcome. There is no paradox.

@LolsTheGreatAndPowerful

8 жыл бұрын

Sinclairelim Meaning you do, in fact, have free will. Since you can change the outcome of the future.

I love the way his initial premise starts with the word "if".

By far the best video of all 2022 months. I just submitted my thesis (:

Yeah this wasn't about free will at all, but about knowledge. I'd say that what people mean with free will is not only that they "could have chosen otherwise" all things staying the same, but also that they themselves (their conscious self) is the ultimate cause of their own actions, the ultimate "decider". And that is self defeating, even though you might feel in control.

It will be off at 12 because the constant switching will break the bulb

@manafro2714

3 жыл бұрын

Haha, that's a creative problem solving at work! Nice!! :)

These videos are informative and eye-catching. I look forward to watching more.

I think you make a good point that the frustrator compromise a person's decision entirely, so it seems unrealistic. But I think the purpose of the thought experiment is to show that there are cases, where no matter how much you know about every fact about a person prior to the point of deciding and all the laws of the universe but still wrongly predicts what the person will do next. The mismatch between the prediction and the eventual action can depend on the whim and impulse of the person.

No, I can come up with an accurate prediction. You've just forced me to signal my prediction in a stupid way.

@RandomlyAwesomeFilms

7 жыл бұрын

exactly

@ayoubouazzani490

7 жыл бұрын

No, I think the point of the video, is that if you, the mind that is doing the prediction, is inside the system whose behavior you're trying to predict, than your prediction would turn wrong since the prediction itself is a particular change in the system. Replace the light sensor with a device that can read into your mind, and the idea will be clearer. The light bulb device was an illustration of what is frustrator in general.

Another often forgotten aspect of the question of free will is that we are humans, a specific kind of animal. We do not think freely, we thinking like a human, a homo sapiens. A lot of processes are not conscious, and neuroscience suggests that we make our decisions before we are even aware of it. Our ability to have a "will" or to make choices depends on the construction of the brain, and the brain is biased towards being a successful homo sapiens. Emotions and instincs are there to control our behaviour and cause us to make specific choices. So this is another limitation to free will: We cannot think freely.

@antiHUMANDesigns

8 жыл бұрын

mitchell crosby This all depends on what you mean by "free will". What I'm talking about, here, is the fact that we're forced to think like humans, because we have a human brain. That may only matter in 50% of the cases, so to speak, since logic and such is always the same for any brain. But the choices we make are human choices, not "free" choices in the sense of not being biased or controlled by our nature. Without our motivation to do what humans do, we wouldn't do anything. We wouldn't talk, eat, or anything. We'd be vegetables. the only reason I'm writing this, here, is because some part of my brain, in some sense, thinks that this is helpful to me. Perhaps it's about bonding and making alliances, or perhaps it's about social status, I don't know. But I do know that my whole "system" (hormones, or whatever) rewards me for this behaviour, and that's why I do it. If I had none of this kind of "coersion", I wouldn't waste my time doing this. So is this a free choice? That's my point.

@antiHUMANDesigns

8 жыл бұрын

mitchell crosby Our pre-frontal cortex allow us to retrieve information from the brain, and process it, and then put it back again. This is somewhat unique to us. It means we can second-guess ourselves where most other animals can't. And something that truly appears unique to us is that we can form new information from old information, by processing it this way. Other animals appear to only be able to learn by what they can take in, not what they can produce themsleves. But all this aside, the reason we have these capabilities is still that it has been beneficial through our evolutionary history. Everythign we can do is in the simple interest of successfully having as many offspring as possible that go on to having offspring. Therefore, this is always our underlying motive in everything we do: To further our genes. If we truly had free will, then why do we all seem to act the same way? If we had free will, then we could act in any way we want to. But 7 billion people are all acting typically humans, and seem to like generally the same kind of things, and so on. If I get angry because someone pisses me off, then that is not by choice, either. And when I get really angry, my free will get quite limited. I act tyically like an "angry person". When in love, or when I'm sad, and so on, it's the same. So it'd be quite naïve to think that while you're not angry or sad, you'd truly have more "free will". You probably don't. you just think you do. You're still stuck being a human, and you're stuck with the capabilities and limitations of the human brain. "you would argue that the influence we have from all the shit going on in our brains does not allow free will." I have made it clear that this only limits free will in a specific sense of the word. A completely differetn sense of the word is when we mean whether our choices are based on cause and effect. In that sense, we *obviously* do not have free will, because that would imply a violation of natural law. But I'm talking abotu this other thing: The fcat that we think like humans, not "freely" in the semse of being unbiased in our thinking. And also that our human brains sets the limitations and specifics of our metnal capabilities. Does a 1-year old child have the same free will that we have as adults? Why are they unable to consider consequences, for example? It's because their brains are not finished, yet. "after thinking about it the only way free choice would be a plausible idea is if we had souls. " And we don't, that has been established since we started learning about the brain. "Soul" is a very primitive concept from the time when we didn'e even know that the blood circulates in the body, basically. Now that we can study brains, and especially damaged brains, we've established that everything that makes us who we are are physically part of the brain, and they can all be physically and chemically altered. There is no "room for a soul", anymore. The word has simply become a metaphor and nothing else. So the only "soul" that can still exist would be one that is effectively useless. It wouldn't be the person or the personality, because those are physically in the brain. Memories, personality, capabilities, all various aspects of "intelligence", all these things are in the brain, not in some "soul".

@antiHUMANDesigns

8 жыл бұрын

mitchell crosby No, I undertand that you probably weren't arguing that souls exist, I just wanted to add that they definitely don't. "I think most humans would agree they have a sense of free will right" Yes,a dn the thing is that whether or not we do have a free will, in some ultimat sense, it amkes no difference unless you could actually see the future. If it's still practically impossible (and perhaps even theoretically impossible) to perfectly predict someone's mind, then it really doesn't matter if we have this free will or not. But this thing I was arguing actually does matter. I have given that a lot of thought: What does it mean to think like a human? If we can understand why we seem to make the choices we do, then we can choose more freely whether we want to be like that or not. See my title "anti|HUMAN Designs"? That is exactly this thought: If you know what makes you human, then it's up to you to pick what about being human you want to keep, and what you don't. If I make bad choices when I'm angry, then beign aware of this gives us the opportunity to change. And my idea is that this could be taken even further. Most people are "ants". They don't know why they're doing what they're doing, they just do it. They're following their insticts. I think this should be a choice we make, on a per case basis. " free will is not even conceivable in any meaningful way without being human. " If we program an AI on a computer, so that we've got a framework for thought: A system that is capable of processing information and making choices. What will it "do"? Nothing. Sure, it'll automatically process its visual input and so on, but it won't make any choices because nothign drives it to make any particular choices unless we program it with emotions or instincts, aswell. Humans do have this systematic driving force. Our entire brains are designed with the purpose of predicting the future so that we can make beter choices that leads us to having more offspring that go on to have more offspring Our brains are just a tool for that end. So how can we "think freely"? And to think freely shoudl also imply that we have the capability to think in any way, and about any thing. But just as one example, we cannot think about higher dimensional shapes, for example. If we get brain damaged, we might no longer be able to think about ourselves, or about the future, or such, because he parts of the brain responsible for that kind of capability have been damaged. So what makes us think we even have all the possible capabilities to start with? If we meet some aliens, it's possible that they are able to think in a way that we simply cannot think. And perhaps we can think in some way that they cannot. "1 in 4 people are affected by mental health issues which does cause a huge barrier to truly free " I am sort of one of them. I am autistic, and I suffer from mental health issue that are common to autistic people, such as anxiety , depression (lack of motivation), and obsessive tendencies, aswell as problems with executive functions. It's also a social developmental disorder, which is what it's classified, by itself, without the common problems that often appear together with it. Of course, on the other hand, we asperger's people tend to have a great aptitude for some things, and great ability to focus and learn, and we tend to have above average IQ. But we often have problem applying ourselves in a useful way. I'm know quite a lot of things about many subjects, and I'm multi-talented (many forms of arts, computer programming, science...), but I am unable to apply this in a useful way. And to return to what's relevant: Yes, sometimes I do things that I ddo not feel like I do out of free will. Obsessive behaviour, aswell as things I simply cannot do, for no apparent reason. Well, often because I hadn't planned to do that thing, and we autistic people have a hard time changing plans. But being so fundamentally different from other people does give me an insight into what it means to be human, because I see what things could be different. Damn, I'm sorry, I don't have time to complete this reply. I'll get back to you.

@antiHUMANDesigns

8 жыл бұрын

mitchell crosby "This topic worries me and i definitely dont have enough information to come to anything nearing an answer so i will just leave with you the idea to toy with more. " Well, I'm not really qualified, either, I'd say. I had a tough childhood and it made me question these things, and I learnt a lot from it all. "In the case of the 4 dimensional objects we can not visualize them but that does not mean we know nothing or can know nothing about their existence. they can be simulated projected into 3d" I'm saying we can't think that way. The only way for us to think about such things is by splitting the problem into pieces we can think about. Or, we can simply look at what it means mathematically, or represent the problem in a way that our brain can handle, like a 3D projection. But my point becomes pretty apparent when you consider this: When you see a 3D-object on a 2D-monitor, your brain thinks of it as a 3D-object even though it's actually 2D. Project a 4D object into 3D or 2D, and the brain does *not* think of it as a 4D object. All I'm saying is that our brains can't think of them. And it's possible that "a brain" *could* think of such things, right? It's just that *we* cannot. If we did meet some alien (?) who could think in a way we can't, that's when we'd have a good example, if we could ever understand it. As for the rest, I don't really have much to say. I have to admit that I'm not actually very interested in discussing this, because it's mostly "philosophical".

this is my favorite wireless philosophy video so far

Hi, where is the 2nd part? Great video; referred by my teacher in Philosophy class, Mr. Levin. Thank you!

5:30 And the cheat is introduced. Why cheat, because it is a logical impossibility. Make your light bulb match this ones state, by definition this one will be in the opposite state, and you can only receive information as communicated in the first part. The question is defined so as to be impossible. All a frustrator does is demonstrate some methods of communicating foreknowledge would be ineffective. It has no effect on actually being able to make the prediction.

@Jester123ish

10 жыл бұрын

What it says is once you've made the prediction then it is possible for something to ensure that it doesn't come true. Thus your prediction was wrong.

@JacobBe5

10 жыл бұрын

The prediction is still accurate, but due to limitations of the receiver they are incapable of ever learning the actual prediction. As others have already noted the real prediction is "The light will be in the opposite state as this one". Yet there is no way to communicate that to the receiver. The receiver is incapable of even understanding the prediction. The prediction is still valid, the entity making that prediction still knows it is valid. They know if they do nothing (leave their light off) their prediction will still occur, and they know if they turn on their light their prediction will still occur.

@orbsandtea

10 жыл бұрын

It seems the logic of this philosopher has been rebuked by many. 0o He redefined the meaning of "prediction" in the thought experiment, and then forgot it was redefined so he thought that the implications for that type of "prediction" applied to the actual concept: prediction.

...The metaphysical problem is the problem that absolutely makes the idea of free will impossible, so this video was a bit silly.

The concept of infinity always confounds everything.

What does noon and 11:55am have to do with it? If you have all the knowledge on the light and how it works, then the directions regarding signaling which one is on can be discarded. With the knowledge of how the bulb actually works, knowing that the directions you were given are faulty, you can know with certainty whether it'll be off or on depending on what you do. Right? Or did I miss something even tho I watched it 3x?

The thing I hate about this whole free will debate is that nobody ever defines free will. Yes, of course we have free will if you mean it in the sense that our brain is able to do action based off of stimulus created as a reaction or recording of the memories of the past. That is, simply, reality. To say that we have no brain and are incapable of doing that which we are obviously doing in empirical reality is to deny reality. The debate seems to be a semantic debate. "No, we do have foobar because foobar is defined as X and Y, and both X and Y exist" "No, we don't have foobar because foobar is defined as Y and Z, and Z does not exist." It's just a pointless and meaningless debate.

@AniMerrill

8 жыл бұрын

+Johnathan Sherbert Agreed. It's obvious, I think, to anybody that we at least have a very strong illusion of free will that is generally universal between human beings as nobody actually does have enough accurate knowledge of human psychology to predict correctly what choices someone will make. I mean, just consider this (I just learned this recently so forgive me), that a deck of 52 cards can be shuffled in so many possible combinations that even if you shuffled them perfectly different every second you would never run out of combinations for the length of possible human existence (or at least, during the lifetime of the Earth). Between the multitude of DNA combinations, the amount of neurons in the brain (which challenges the amount of stars in the known universe PER person in some estimates), all the ways nature and nurture can "program" the human being seemingly randomly (one person who suffers abuse becomes a serial killer, the other becomes a humanitarian)... I mean, I'm of the opinion that proper free will (as described, for example, in Christian philosophy or whatever) doesn't exist and that we are ultimately just organic computers piloting chemical robot bodies with some very eloquent "artificial intelligence" (lol feels weird to say that), but when you consider the mountain of Chaos Theory bullshit we would have to sort through to determine the outcome of any one person's life, even someone as cynical as me has to sit back and appreciate the grand miracle and phenomenon that is human existence. And in that sense, you'd almost have to shrug your shoulders and admit that, illusion though it may be, the idea of free will is at least very compelling. Either way though, the thought experiment in the video was very lacking and, as a lot of metaphysical philosophy tends to be, extremely arbitrary in it's explanation. Honestly, we'd probably find more answers delving deeper into behavioral psychology and stuff and learning more about why people make certain decisions and certain stimulus one can avoid in order to make more conscious decisions (i.e. manipulative advertising or whatever).

@johannesgh90

8 жыл бұрын

+Ethan Merrill (AniMerrill) I think the determinism argument is too narrow. Free will isn't just incompatible with determinism, it's incompatible with causality, which is a prerequisite for any imagined world that would harbour any kind of life that would have will, 'cause will is useless without causality. Even in a non-deterministic world where randomness plays a huge role in deciding what happens, your wants and desires are still results, they are just the results of prior causes plus randomness then ... you cannot will a will into existence without there being a will to do that there already existing. Free will is just a paradox that sounds plausible.

@JohnathanSherbert

8 жыл бұрын

Johannes G Halldorsson Free will, for the most part, is really just a term used when people don't want to explain the logic of the situation. It's sort of a word meant to stall things. Unfortunately, many people think the point of philosophy or metaphysics is not to think, but have an emotional reaction to a deepity. Definitions solve 99% of debates.

@johannesgh90

8 жыл бұрын

Johnathan Sherbert I agree, I think the idea itself is too old for it's origin to be knowable but if I were to take a guess it's either just the assumed answer based on how our brains work or - what I think is the likeliest explanation - it's a justification for punishment, whether by a leader, a group of people or a god.

@krieginphernjacobson

8 жыл бұрын

"determinism" means that there is only one possible pathway for the universe to go on, that if you were to relive events from the past everything would progress the same way, that if you ate an apple for breakfast you wouldn't be able to go back in time and change what you did, "free will" means there are an infinite amount of pathways for the universe to progress, that if you relive events then people could choose to act differently, that you can go back in time and change how things happened.

The solution to the problem of foreknowledge is rather trivial. The predictor requires a certain amount of information states to store its content as well as for processing power. The number of information states of the predictor must always necessarily be equal to the number of information states in what it wishes to predict, though almost it's essentially always more. This means that there are two options: either the predictor IS the entire system, rendering it meaningless, or the predictor is outside of the system and cannot interact with it. After all, if it could interact with the system, then it would have to take itself into account, meaning it would have to consider its own information states again, etc.

@JozefLewitzky

9 жыл бұрын

That's not 'trivial' though, it's a deep problem that destroys the possibility that agents acting within a system could ever predict all its consequences in full. For humanity, this means we can never know our full determinacy

@rex635

9 жыл бұрын

Jozef Lewitzky Its consequences of the solution might be quite profound, sure. but that doesn't mean the conclusion itself isn't trivial.

@sirsimplexton3151

9 жыл бұрын

Jozef Lewitzky I think one of the problems is that this still seems to hinge on the notion that we'll lack knowledge of our own behaviors, our own machinery used to make decisions. If we had that knowledge (ex: revealed through future advances in neuroscience and computer simulation) combined with all the external variables, then the state change of becoming aware of how we make decisions would only occur once, not recursively. The transition in state of not knowing to knowing would then only occur once, and that state change would alter our future decision-making, but it would not happen recursively and continue to alter future possibilities beyond that point. Once we know the light bulb is a "frustrator", so to speak we'll not only know its behavior to predict it but would be able to control it in advance. We would now be back to an infinite loop that leads to the same outcome every time: the system would become closed and completely deterministic through that knowledge.

@sirsimplexton3151

9 жыл бұрын

Jozef Lewitzky Put another way, the only way to alter our future behavior is to change a present state. Even if time loops, that state change could only happen once at a given _t_. If we're aware of the state change and the consequences of it on our behavior, then the future is still fixed and predictable. The only way to have an unpredictable future is have incomplete information. It follows logically that lacking information of the future will lead to an unpredictable future. There's no other way to have an unpredictable future unless there is a gap in our knowledge, and filling that knowledge would once again make that future predictable.

The problem with this argument is that we don't know the prediction, therefore we can't be the frustrator. On the other hand, the all knowing entity knows everything about the initial conditions.

This is a great video. I have a question about determinism, as well. I understand there is an inherent randomness in many things we study. In our notions of determinism that everything can be known and everything can be calculated, how does randomness play a role? Thanks.

@zeecke11

10 жыл бұрын

Nothing is literally random; it is merely a word used to describe what we do not have the tools to calculate. In Computer Science, there is a random number generator that, no matter how much you observe the generated numbers, you will be unable to predict the response. However, this does not mean that the program has a will of its own; we simply do not understand its nature. The creator of that program, the programmer, knows that the calculations are relative to the time currently displayed on the system of that computer so that the same variable is never used twice and thus it appears random to the observer. If we had the algorithm and every variable, then everything in that program or our universe can be accurately predicted. If you want to know how we control for variability, then I suggest studying statistics.

@hussainather2360

10 жыл бұрын

Excellent response. Thank you!

@zeecke11

10 жыл бұрын

The measurements are random, not the nature of what is measured.

If you've given me all the knowledge and computing power in the world I would know about the sensor and then say its a rigged game and I'm not going to play. . .

The book of life obviously could not tell you what you were going to do (without regard to frustrators or not), since the book would have to know in advance how you would react to hearing such a prediction. But to do that it would have to know which prediction it would make beforehand. People outside watching with their own book of your life might be able to predict your actions, and maybe they could tell you after the fact and prove to you that you didn't have free will by filming you and the prediction book. But since there would have to be some interaction between you and the outside environment, the predictions could not be perfect.

@WeAreShowboat

9 жыл бұрын

We Are Showboat In fact any system that predicts the action of an object, and whose prediction has any physical effect on that object (through sound waves, EM waves, etc.), will be impossible if the effect is large enough to impact the prediction.

@Angelllro

8 жыл бұрын

We Are Showboat I think the book of life doesn't have any predictions beyond the page of "today". It would just be a loop of you trying to read a book in which you read that book again and again and you are unable to move on because you're stuck in the moment, reading that book.

@WeAreShowboat

8 жыл бұрын

That sounds horrible. I hope it's a good book at least.

You can't have a useful conversation about free will without defining clearly what you mean by free will. That is not a trivial requirement; it's an essential one.

Hi StJohn Miall. Glad you liked it. The software we use is called 'videoscribe'. The company behind it is called 'Sparkol'.

Very interesting video, however, I feel that each field and their corresponding professionals are looking at the "problem" of free will from a different angle. So let us consider a different manner of looking at it. Yes, the universe obeys certain laws, which in turn makes the extent of our "free will" limited to these laws. Things become very deterministic: consider the fact that I cannot be in two places at once or how I cannot "skip" a moment and time and place and instantly "be" somewhere else: for I must walk in all the spots before I reach point B. But then consider this: the variable of self-awareness affects a deterministic "thing." A bear that acts only on instinct and lacks a complex ego altogether will not be able to dissuade itself from acting out of violence when it encounters a threat. It is almost entirely determined by factors of the brain and the variables in its surroundings. However, a man that feels anger also possesses some degree of self-awareness: this difference allows a deterministic "thing" to be aware of its own deterministic nature, putting man in some sort of odd, half free will, half determined state. This idea may not satisfy the headstrong, but for the open-minded, consider how self-awareness allows a "thing" to change drastically. Humans are extremely diverse and our interests vary greatly: because we are self-aware we can alter our own "determined" paths in dramatic ways. I like to believe in the idea of free will, and I talk about it in a video so please feel free to check it out if you're interested. That is all.

@misterm1336

5 жыл бұрын

Definitely! I believe `Free Will works along Destiny. (or determinism) 50/50. I use my free will daily and there is an element of destiny to what we do and places we are at.

I've got a solution to that problem plug my light bulb into the same power source as your light bulb after the switch, this with create and infinite loop of flashing lights as mine triggers your to turn on and off which cuts and turns on the power instantly to mine as well, but at the very instant mine turns on the light from my bulb will not have yet reached the sensor and both lights will be on. When the light from my bulb reaches the sensor the current to both bulbs will be cut turning both on instantly for the length of time it take for the last of the light from my bulb to reach the sensor at which point the power is turned on again and it starts again with both lights on. So at the instant in time it reaches noon my answer will be correct, along with the rest of eternity. What does that say for free will? By the way I didn't miss the point, I just wanted to be a smartass

Its a paradox, free will cant exist if someone knows what free will is. Once you are aware of free will you cannot make yourself unaware of it, which would mean that you do not have free will over having free will. The fact that you must will something in the first place (and willing not to will excersizes the same) makes it not free. It is determined that you have free will through logic, while at the same time proves that you have none at all. 'Do i have the free will to not question if i have free will?' I think at least emphasizes this paradox.

Wait, if I don't know that device in the box is a light detector so I don't know all the initial conditions. And if I know and I know it's circuitry so what stops me from indicating the right answer just by going for the opposite option?

The problem in logic regarding the light bulb is following: you are setting the IMPOSSIBLE RULES, not for finding the result, but for the way this result has to be communicated; Based on the initial knowledge and knowing the fundamental laws, it is easy to predict the state of the light bulb, but introducing IMPOSSIBILITY into way of communicating the result is creating a false paradox. Try this example: You should tell me your age, by writing the number on a black ball of red color. It's not difficult to know what is your age, but I've created an IMPOSSIBILITY in way of communicating the result (ball can be either black or red, not both at the same time), so there is no real paradox or problem.

@juandominguezmurray7327

8 жыл бұрын

Agrre with you. The video is commiting a fallacy, I think it is the strawman. They said they have gave all the initial conditions but they haven't because they lied. So the are just proving that people lie instead of making an argument against determinism.

@ThereIsAnExtension2UndoHandles

8 жыл бұрын

No, what they are doing is defining a frustrator in an easy to understand way: A simplification, in order to communicate a complicated point. The idea of a frustrator, as they said, is to deny predictions from being made within a system. Their frustrator is rather simple, and relies on arbitrary rules placed on the predictor, but all thought experiments (and really, simplifications in general) have a similar problem. The idea is that frustrators act when you make a prediction in order to make that prediction false, but specifying a frustrator is difficult due to the fact that we aren't normally in a position to be "frustrated."

@juandominguezmurray7327

8 жыл бұрын

Austin Sampson ok but I don't think that they used it correctly. They used it to completely change the premise of the thought experiment and ultimately nullify the result of it.

@ThereIsAnExtension2UndoHandles

8 жыл бұрын

+Juan Actually, nullifying the result was the aim. The thought experiment is designed to prove that frustrators can nullify foreknowledge, those 'solving' the problem of foreknowledge. If you reapply the concept of a frustrator to the original problem, the Book of Life, but with you as the frustrator, and the book as the predictor, it proves your life isn't determined by the Book, because as a frustrator you can nullify the Book's prediction, whatever it is.

@juandominguezmurray7327

8 жыл бұрын

Austin Sampson But the inclusion of the frustator changes the initial conditions of the thpught experiment. And in the example of the book of life they even changed what the book of life actually was and they made it suceptible to that frustrator. And the same with the other example, they changed the initial conditions to make them easier to disprove, that is the strawman fallacy. It proves that if you design the experiment to be frustrated by the frustrator, the frustrator will do its work. But it says nothing about what the original experiment was designed to say.

I can predict it easily. I predict it will be off because I'm going to lie and tell the other light that it will be on. I don't even need the computing power and the knowledge.

@williamwimbourne856

2 жыл бұрын

Can you lie about something that has not happened yet?

can I switch on and off the light bulb until the battery runs out or the bulb stops working and then wait until 11:55 to answer ???

Problem with the Frustrator: when you know everything about nature, then you'll KNOW the outcome, you jsut can't express it due to arbitrary reasons. The second problem with free will is already gone thanks to quantum physics: Accurate prediction is not possible.

WAIT I'm massively confused! How does that experiment increase in difficulty in any way?? Apparently we had the ultimate omniscience, so if we knew a sensor was going to change the result we just turn it off to make it go on or on to make it go off. To me all this did was obfuscate the argument? So we read the book of life and decided to rebel and change the outcome wtf is this the book of life is the book of life the the point of it is that its unalterable by definition changing it is just logically invalid. Even reading it wouldn't matter we would just do what was destined because HEY GUYS, THATS THE PREMISE WE SET UP. This topic is so mad.

@jeremy3046

8 жыл бұрын

+Cael McDiarmid I think the point is that the book predicts what would happen if that book had never entered the universe; its entering of into the system of the universe causes its predictions to become invalid.

@caelmcdiarmid1874

8 жыл бұрын

Jeremy H hmm. Ok i can see it that way but i don't see how it invalidates the original thought experiment. The point about the Laplacian Demon is not whether an intellect could or could not be vast enough to calculate every dynamic of the cosmos. The point is that IF one could, the future and past would lay before its eyes. So even if we take this point being made that this intellect would by all means be impossible, it is not changing the point of the thought experiment. The point is just to show that if the universe is truly the effect of its past and the cause of its future then all events that are to happen have in some sense already happened. The intellect or the book of life, the demon or whatever we're calling it is just a metaphor to get people thinking about this i think. And disproving the intellects viability is missing the point.

@caelmcdiarmid1874

8 жыл бұрын

MrZelduck Well said, a similar point was made by john searle about the necessity of freedom in being conscious. People often rebut with the point that yes but we often have impressions that turn out to be dead wrong and this is true, but freedom is an impression intrinsic to consciousness that seems inextricable. You can make all sorts of mistakes about your conscious states, but not in a way about their very existence. So i agree. It needs to be noted that if we really want to understand freedom we have to be confronting epistemology and consciousness by definition.

@caelmcdiarmid1874

8 жыл бұрын

MrZelduck Nice i had a look at it, couldn't find a full version tho but through my university login in found this from the same author: download.springer.com/static/pdf/674/art%253A10.1007%252Fs11229-015-0757-6.pdf?originUrl=http%3A%2F%2Flink.springer.com%2Farticle%2F10.1007%2Fs11229-015-0757-6&token2=exp=1465980025~acl=%2Fstatic%2Fpdf%2F674%2Fart%25253A10.1007%25252Fs11229-015-0757-6.pdf%3ForiginUrl%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Flink.springer.com%252Farticle%252F10.1007%252Fs11229-015-0757-6*~hmac=771fccc830f3022eeb4018c998f951d7f74aeed37e9a812df77cf70ef6c7e56c Hilariously long link, see if you can open it the essay is entitled "How do causes depend on us? The many faces of perspectivalism" Has some fantastic arguments to the effect of your previous point

SO... you want to give me a challenge you KNOW is impossible for me? And you say you give me ALL the initial conditions, yet you later mention a light detector that will frustrate me? Wtf is this crap?

@HunsV

9 жыл бұрын

The author is confusing the prediction with the conveyance of the prediction. With clever wording, he tries to force you to think that making a prediction and conveying it are the same thing; therefore any corruption he introduces into the conveyance also invalidates the prediction. In fact, that corruption happens _after_ you've already made the prediction, and does nothing to invalidate the prediction itself. It's also a violation of causality. You can't predict something by communicating it because the prediction has to exist in a complete state _before_ it can be communicated.

@BillySnowball

9 жыл бұрын

I had the same thought. You know there is a frustrator, if you were to make a side bet you would win every time. You know switching your light on means the light will stay off and visa versa. You can accurately predict its state every time. Which is basically the exact opposite of his argument determinism. You cannot signal your prediction with the apparatus but you could say to him "I think the light's going to be off" then switch your light on. If he's trying to hint at something else it is lost on me. Perhaps he could elaborate?

@giggitygoebbels3612

9 жыл бұрын

cover up the sensor,problem solved.

@BillySnowball

9 жыл бұрын

Giggity Goebbels Quite

@ajj7794

9 жыл бұрын

Giggity Goebbels lol :P thinking outside the box i see with common sense : )

I have a question about the light bulb prediction test. What is the condition of the light bulb before someone tries to make a gues at it. Is it turned on or turned off?

@TechnoDelight

7 жыл бұрын

Let's say it was off

@TechnoDelight

7 жыл бұрын

Yes, but the problems persists either way you ask the question.

@noledelgado8111

7 жыл бұрын

The viewpoint of the narrator in this video seems one-sided. Seems like everything is unpredictable. But surely as everyone can observe, there are lots of things that can be predicted though not 100% accurate.

this channel deserves more views

Well you could cheat the box and cover the sensor. It wont detect light so it will turn the light bulb on and you do the same. Boom! Profit!

@f.j.n.9215

7 жыл бұрын

Than you could just break the bulb and say it will not light up, ever.

just block the light sensor

@tedbaker9420

8 жыл бұрын

+jeff fay Genius.

@DudeWhoSaysDeez

6 жыл бұрын

someone give this guy an award!

You think this would cheer up Sham Harris? Where's his rebuttal; somebody post a link here if you find one. PLZ/THX XOXO =P

You already said that I know all about the light bulb device. You can't then introduce a photocell. This guy must be a stand-up philosopher!

Yeah, but if you knew everything about the device, you'd know it has that sensor. And if you cannot choose a correct answer, it's only because the game is rigged in order for it to be IMPOSSIBLE for you to predict.

@DELHIBOMBAYDARBAR

4 жыл бұрын

Yes and it makes this exercise futile. What's the use of all that knowledge of circuits and computers?

This is nonsense. You can still predict what will happen. You've just set the challenge up so that I'm not allowed to say what will happen. I have to "answer" by modifying the scenario so that my answer is wrong. This is idiotic and has nothing to do with free will.

@jokul_

9 жыл бұрын

Okay, consider instead that the frustrator bases its result on the your prediction directly. For every action, there is an effect, and the simple action of coming up with the prediction at all inherently must create an effect that can be measured by the frustrator.

@Siledas

9 жыл бұрын

yourjanissary That still doesn't remove you from the causal chain, it only exposes this video's narrow construal of what a prediction can be. It seems to stem from a fundamental confusion about what determinism relates to; rather than thinking about it in terms of "what we do in the present leads to specific outcomes in the future", we should frame it more like "what's happened in the past has lead to the specific outcomes of the present".

@jokul_

9 жыл бұрын

Sorex Archaeopteryx Being outside the causal chain isn't what's being argued. It's about whether or not a predictor could ever make an always-accurate prediction about what the subject will do. If the subject is a frustrator, or is sometimes a frustrator, then the predictor cannot make an accurate prediction. If we used a quantum effect to create a subject that will do the opposite of what is predicted 50% of the time, we have created a scenario in which the predictor's prediction has absolutely no effect on the actions of the subject.

@Siledas

9 жыл бұрын

yourjanissary that's what I'm saying, though. The truth of determinism doesn't hinge on being able to make infallible predictions of future events; *fatalism* does. The core of determinism really just relates to the causal relationship between past events and the *present,* so the framing of this entire argument is inherently flawed as it's based on a misconstrual of the temporal characteristics of a deterministic framework. This tangential study of 'predictors' is basically orthogonal to how determinism relates to free will, because determinism only factors in when assessing the possible choices presently open to a conscious system, and clearly, those options are inevitably shaped by events and circumstances inhereted from the past; hence, there's no real 'freedom' of will (as nobody is 'free' to chose their available options, let alone how the structure of their brain determines how to prioritize them).

@jokul_

9 жыл бұрын

I agree with that; I was arguing only against the notion that this experiment disproved the existence of perfect prediction.

The two "catches" are a part of the system and thus the answer should be interpreted as the negation of the answer light bulb status at 11:55. Thus, you can predict the state of the light bulb given an acknowledgement of the format of the answer which is a negation of "answer light bulb" status.

I think you should have brought up the determinism-indeterminism dilemma. I ultimately don't think it's sound, but it's definitely the best argument against free will.

I think when absolutely nothing can influence our actions then we will have free will. Otherwise, everything we do is a result of past experiences influencing us on a conscious and sub-conscious level. We might think we are "choosing" something but really we are directed to that choice by many things in life.

@MrJamesdryable

Жыл бұрын

Therefore, there's no such thing as free will.

@km1dash6

Жыл бұрын

This is a logical fallacy. A person can be influenced by external factors, but not controlled by them. Suppose you feel hungry. If there is no free will, then the exact time you go to get food and what food you get was precisely dictated from the moment of the big bang. If there is free will, there might be some variation, like you might choose to get food a couple seconds later because you are choosing learn how to deal with the discomfort of hunger. Or when you go to get something to eat, your options might be limited by what's in your fridge, the weather outside, how much money you have, etc. But you can choose between the left over chinese you have in your kitchen, or going to the corner store to get some milk to have cereal. Free will is the premise of alternate possibilities: that there is a case where the probability of choosing 1 thing or another is 0 < choice < 1. Tons of external factors could push that probability closer to 0 or 1. There may be things we don't have free will over, like how we can't choose to float when skydiving without a parachute, but so long as something exists where we can choose (like choosing coffee or tea when presented the option) free will exists.

@MrJamesdryable

Жыл бұрын

@@km1dash6 You haven't looked deeply enough into this subject to be worthy of commenting.

While I don't actually agree with what this video is saying, it is irrelevant. Because of the uncertainty principle, you *cannot* know the state of a system completely, and therefore you cannot know the future, even if everything is deterministic, and I suspect that it is. If I was forced to guess, I'd say the universe is ultimately deterministic, and there is no true free will in the sense that it violates cause and effect.

@58elrond

8 жыл бұрын

+antiHUMANDesigns Exactly. So many people who post their ideas completely ignore the Uncertainty principle and tell us a impossible scenario.

@jeremy3046

8 жыл бұрын

+antiHUMANDesigns Just pretend that you are also given the ability to destroy all universes where electrons spin clockwise, or something like that.

@antiHUMANDesigns

8 жыл бұрын

mitchell crosby I am forced to believe in uncertainty, because that's what the evidence tells us. Uncertainty can still be deterministic. According to Lawrence Krauss, even though you've got quantum uncertainty and everything is about probability waves, it's *still* deterministic, because you can still calcualte the effect of it. As I see it, if these things are not deterministics, then I don't understand how it can conform to the law of the conservation of energy. If something can "choose" to start moving without a cause, then kinetic energy has been added from nothing, which violates thermodynamics. And that never seems to happen.

@58elrond

8 жыл бұрын

antiHUMANDesigns You mentioned lawrence Krauss? Anywhere/who else you know of where i can read up on determinism and uncertainty principle and stuff? All this interests me but i dont know where to go to learn more, any info is much appreciated!

@antiHUMANDesigns

8 жыл бұрын

***** Hmmm, I think you better just google this question, actually. Perhaps Stephen Hawking has some stuff about it. Otherwise, just google for some book about quantum mechanics. The uncertainty pricniple was Heisenberg, as I assume you already knew. Google if he wrote something about it, or if someone else wrote about him/it, similarly to how Paul Davis wrote about Einstein's work.

1-If one has all knowledge, one has to know about the "frustrator". Otherwise he does not and the premises of the problem are impossible. 2-if by reading the book of life, you can decide to do otherwise, it means that the book of life that you are reading is not the book of life. Thanks for the video, still a good mind excercise... :)

Is this setup fair, though? How can you use it as a test for determinism if all outcomes of the test lead to the same conclusion?

THE BOOK OF LIFE????? DOES HE MEAN THE BIBLE?????

@WirelessPhilosophy

9 жыл бұрын

zela noid I don't think so. I think he means a history of everything that happens in your life.

@s0nu777

9 жыл бұрын

zela noid en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadi_astrology en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhrigu_Samhita

@s0nu777

9 жыл бұрын

Pratik Sharma Not exactly what you asked , but this something similar.

@Kreechursl

9 жыл бұрын

zela noid No, he isn't referring to the Bible, which is a real thing. Rather, he is referring to an imaginary concept, a "book of life" that contains all possible information about everything you do, say, think, etc. The entire story of your life, which you could in theory read ahead to see what will happen later in your life.

@theRPGmaster

9 жыл бұрын

zela noid probably not.

What IS Free Will ?? You say that if you had two options you are free to choose option 1 or option 2 but whatever option you chose would have been made for a reason. now that reason would have been driven by factors external to you and outside of your control. We all make choices based upon our calculation of what choice will be best for us overall. So, it's driven by our ability to make some, often massively complex, calculation on the benefits and detriments of each option then weigh them up against each other and THEN try and calculate which future scenario will make us happiest etc. I can't see how that is free will. Massively complex and initially undetermined but not free.

@moodyplus

8 жыл бұрын

+Lewis72 Say, if you are isolated in a room, without external factors that are outside your control (other than being put in a room in isolation), and I asked you to make a choice between two identical options that are somewhat neutral to you, for instance black object 1 and black object 2, which object will you choose? Does your decision in this case demonstrate the lack of free-will?

@lewis72

8 жыл бұрын

moody You haven't defined free will. However, for example, if there were two seemingly identical cakes and I could take one, I'd probably pick the one that's easiest to pick i.e. closer to me.

@moodyplus

8 жыл бұрын

Lewis72 Let's define free will as the ability to choose between different possible courses of action. I will place the identical object in equal distance from you, in order to eliminate all external factors.

@lewis72

8 жыл бұрын

+moody In that case, a mouse has free will. An ant has free will. I might do it by saying "Eenie, meanie, minie, moh..."

@moodyplus

8 жыл бұрын

Lewis72 How do you define free will then?

We are deterministic, given choices, and subject to information at hand, we determine the best and we always go for it. It is just impossible to chose something we reckon is not the best. Even if things are equal, and we chose the closer one, if they are at equal distance we chose the right one if we are right handed, it is better just for that silly small difference. If we chose the left one, its because we deemed best to outsmart our experimenter.

If the foreknowledge is COMPLETE, then it is possible to know the outcome of choices one makes out of myriad of choices.

The logical fallacy here is that with full foreknowledge of how the machine works, it is impossible to "predict" the machine's state, because I know that I in fact control its state. It's ridiculous to ask me to predict if a light will be on or off based on my turning the light on or off - I know the answer will be whichever I choose. Also, knowing that the machine is a simple inverter, my "prediction" will be that the light is ON at Noon. When Noon comes, I will turn on my light, block its photons from the detector, and the second light will thus be ON. _That_ is a frustrator. I win.

@19916718514

2 жыл бұрын

The idea is to show that if an actor inside the box has foreknowledge, this fact would influence the very system itself, if he would to exercise his free will based on the foreknowledge ( turning the light on/off)

Sigh... with all the knowledge, I just build another frustrator and arrange it so that the original frustrator detects the lightbulp of my counterfeit frustrator. So when I light the lightbulp, my frustrator's lightbulp is turned off, hence the original frustrator lights up. And vice versa. Next...

The NOT gate on the light bulb.. Make a sensor on your box as well; Point it back, so you can show it will alternate.

Thank you for posting this! This is well done and interesting. I am tempted to say that for an actor inside the system (the universe?) the question of free will is formally undecidable!

@dante8825

Жыл бұрын

IMO, not really. Genuine 100% foreknowledge would require the ability to predict the future outcome from a computation of all of the variables in the mix. In this above thought experiment, the Frustrator is hidden in the box and thus is not factored into the predictive analysis. Thus the decision maker is unaware that their actions are a causal part of the outcome - rendering the predictive analysis incomplete and thus wrong. But, if it did know the frustrater was present, then it would point out that, whatever you do, it will do the opposite, so do whatever you want and it will do what it was always supposed to do. Thus, the influences on the decision maker fulfil the foreknowledge requirement, as a good omniscient AI would realise, the actual decision is made by the decision maker, and its the inverse of whatever they decide, focusing on the lead up and variables around what might influence the frustrater is a red herring as it's purely reactive.

@shanks1847

Жыл бұрын

​@@dante8825 but that means it can not give me an on or off answer. It can only tell me that the machine will do the opposite of what I do. But if it's really a perfect machine, it should be able to tell me exactly what will happen, including my own actions and that of the machine. Consider, i ask the machine whether I'll eat chocolate or vannila ice cream tomorrow, then whatever it tells me I decide to do the opposite. But a perfect machine should be able to take account of my behaviour. How then does it solve this problem?

What about the problem of induction how can we be certain any of the laws of science would hold up in order to predict the future in the second problem to do with epistemology

Hi the1redearth, I'm not sure how a "creator type deity" relates to this video. Can you clarify so I can perhaps engage in your thought on the video? Thanks!

Sam Harris summed up the argument quite well. It goes something like this: "most of physics is deterministic on the macro scale, we know the laws very well when it comes to non quantum actions. Every atom in the universe acts according to physics, and your brain is not exempt. This means that if your mind is acting in a non-quantum way, then your actions are predetermined based off of the stimulus that it receives. But, if our neurons act with a bit of quantum uncertainty, fine! who cares, you can not control the uncertainties of quantum mechanics, this means that on a macro scale, you lack free will, and on a quantum scale, its pure randomness of electrons, neither of these lead to free will" Argument over.

Correct me if I am wrong, not a very smart person .... is this a mix of Gobel's Incompleteness Theory, Turing's Halting Problem. Also how doesn't Poincare's 3rd Body Problem and Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle just demolish determinism unless you are claiming your initial state space is an countable infinite set of all possiblities?

It seems that the only foreknowledge he needs (and has) is the fact that whatever he chooses at 11:55, the final state of the bulb will be opposite of his choice (which can be based on anything or nothing at all). But if his foreknowledge ends before he knows that the last mechanism (with the light sensor) will be made, then there's no sense in asking him to use his foreknowledge to "know" or "predict" what the last state of the bulb will be after the last mechanism kicks in.

Very good Video. Thank you. I explain in my 3 part video-series the "forecast paradox : free will or determinism".

The problem with a frustrator is that it changes the initial conditions of the system. In effect, you are using knowledge of the future as an indication of how the future will be shaped. It's a closed loop that cannot converge to a stable stable solution. There's an entire field of engineering that deals with exactly this sort of problem. They are called non-causal filters. Your own mp3 player probably has several inside of it.

This is the logical equivalent of saying, "I'm a liar, and I'm lying right now." Just because a paradox is proposed doesn't mean the paradox exists. In your thought experiment, you've created special conditions under which a prediction will cause the prediction to be untrue -- you've created a paradox. But you created it with your experiment. It doesn't fundamentally exist because a prediction could be made that doesn't result in paradox, by, say, simply writing the prediction down and putting it in a sealed envelope.

You're moving the goalpost: You've said that you gave us all the information, but then you reveal that you have not. If I were aware of these conditions, then I could confound your frustrator by putting my light in a box, or any number of other novel possibilities. Furthermore, I could simply indicate that I have turned the light on to indicate the reverse, because I understand the machine is intended to frustrate. This experiment is spurious.

Nice, but did you predict I would place a wall between my light bulb and the machine so it could not detect my bulb?

Why does the phrase "halting problem" not appear on this thread? It's a perfectly equivalent scenario.

without free will, richard wouldn't be able to make this vid

Does my life have a trajectory? If I'm walking down a road can I turn left or right?

when i know the whole information of everything in the universe before 12, i actually know the state of my bulb before 12, so i can predict the result of your bulb, but can not express it, if at all i need to express that before 12, i gonna effect the result of your bulb, that may even contradict my prediction. this holds true under the assumption that the chaos theory is correct.

The main benefit of having a deterministic universe is that it gives us the ability to understand how things work. This enables us to predict and control events in our environment. Knowing that Kansas is prone to tornadoes, Dorothy's family makes sure to include a shelter with a strong door when building their house, preventing their otherwise inevitable death when the tornado destroys the house. Vaccinations against measles and polio prevent the otherwise inevitable spread of these illnesses among children. Thus it presents a rather evil irony when the fatalists (they call themselves "hard determinists") begin preaching to us that we no longer have free will to choose what becomes inevitable and what does not.

Someone is capable of free will and foreknowledge if said foreknowledge is of all potential futures and knowing exactly how to react to gain the desired outcome.

1. Genuine 100% foreknowledge would require the ability to predict the future outcome from a computation of all of the variables in the mix. 2. In the above thought experiment, the Frustrator is HIDDEN in the box and thus is NOT factored into the predictive analysis. Thus the decision maker is unaware that their actions are actually a key part of the causal chain leading to the outcome - rendering the predictive analysis incomplete and thus wrong - it cannot be a genuine foreknowledge unless all the facts are known. 3. But, if the decision maker and predictive analysis did know the frustrater was present, then it would point out that, noting that whatever the decision maker did, the Frustrater bulb would do the opposite. 4. What this means is, the genuine causal element is the decision made by the Decision Maker. Thus all that matters is what they decide to do. 5. Thus the predictive analysis will see the paradox and simply ask, what is your choice, as whatever you choose the opposite will occur. Getting this right is NOT about using the decision lightbulb to indicate what the frustrater will do, as that is impossible since it is designed to do the opposite. And as a result it is predictable. To explain, let's say I am the decision maker. I have a genuine omniscient AI, it is aware that the frustrater is present. As such it tells me that whatever I do to the decision lightbulb, the frustrater will do the opposite. So, since I'm triggering the outcome, if I want to know what the bulb will do, I need to ask the AI, what will I choose to do, and it will then tell me based on all of the causal influences affecting me, which tells me what the Frustrator lightbulb will do. So all I need to do is indicate the opposite of what the outcome will be, and the foreknowledge is fulfilled. The red herring here is the idea that I'm compelled to tell the frustrater that I know what it will do, I'm not. Remember, the frustrater is a concept designed to counter the prediction, but it is still an actor in the causal chain. Bottom line - to the outside observer, what happened was what was always going to happen, thus hard determinism. If the decision maker didn't know about the frustrater, then the predictive analysis was simply wrong. If the decision maker knows about the Frustrater, then it also knows that it's an actor in the chain and the outcome is changed and thus predicted by whatever the decision maker does, and thus doing the opposite produces a predictable outcome. It's a thought experiment, but where in the world does a frustrater exist that you know about but are forced to trigger into action by causing it to choose against you? Answer, no where.

I guess I'm missing something about the concept of "frustrators" or forknowledge. I don't understand why if you're within the system, frustrators can prevent foreknowledge. Presumably, the action of potential frustrators are themselves predictable so I don't see how the presence of frustrators will prove to be an insuperable obstacle. Further, foreknowledge seems to me to include an outside-looking-in connotation so why is its definition delimited?

@hulkslayer626

8 жыл бұрын

The sensor is a representative of the frustrator. So even though you have all the knowledge of how the system works and what's going to happen, you can't correctly predict the outcome within the parameters set. It's a metaphor for life. Chaos Theory/Uncertainty principle/Free will are examples of "frustrators" and foreknowledge is an example of how the laws of nature work. We know more and more of how everything works and interacts with each other everyday, but we'll never be able to know exactly what the future holds ;)

@vialgyy

8 жыл бұрын

The main point is that you are the frustrator, and you can only notice the frustrator from an outside point of view, that's a common well-known problem for antrophologists.

@Lonestar512

7 жыл бұрын

It's a Flawed False experiment and I explain it in other posts.... This experiment is absolutely Meaningless and can't be applied to an argument about Determinism....

There seem to be some problems with the "simple device" experiment: 1. "Predicting/knowing" is being lumped with "doing some action that influences a future outcome" (thus determining it) i.e. turning on the first bulb influences the second. 2. The creator of the device (here, the speaker) himself was able to predict exactly how the second light bulb would behave based on the first light bulb (all recorded in the above video), proving what he's trying to disprove ie.. determinism => foreknowledge. Knowing that the device is a "frustrator" beforehand does not lead to any surprising outcomes. 3. To simplify the speaker is asking you to do two things masked as one thing. a. predict something about the bulb at 12:00 b. do something that would negate your above prediction (turn on/off another bulb at 11:55). There is no surprise there. The final event is completely determined and known before hand. I'm just curious to know who originally came up with this device.

The simple-device-problem is still "easy" to solve. In fact the light bulb above the box will turn on if I decide to turn my light bulb on. That means I only have to predict how I will decide. Since there is no reason to turn my light on, it will stay off. Ir if there is a reason for me to turn it on, then I can predict if I will turn it on.

this is a sophistic argument. the inherence of the system would still be an aspect that falls under determinism and could therefore be computed.

If we had all knowledge of our book of life, how could we challenge this book if the fact that we are going to do so is already written in this book? Or do we not actually have full knowledge, or does knowledge exclude predictions? If that's the case, the scientific method is not the ideal way to obtain knowledge?

The fact that we make a decision alone prevents us from having free will. One cannot choose to do what one does not choose to do. Therefore, that which is not chosen was never truly an option to begin with.

Why should we expect a static answer to a dynamic question?

Nothing says I can't put a wall between the box and my light bulb. Put wall between box -> Predict the light will be on -> ??? -> Profit.

The answerlies in the definition of free will. If you define free will as "someting that can not be predetermined"than it can not exist alongside determinism. But if we say that free will is "using the brain to decide what to do based on the information recieved by the senses and memory" then determinism is compatible with free will.

I have two problems with problem two: 1. One can know the solution for the question even if you cannot communicate it. (Especially by that convoluted means) For example one could know that there would be on even though you could only communicate that it would be off or vise versa. 2. There are special situations where the predictions would be completely correct, either by chance or by choice. For example I predict the light would be off and turned off and disabled the fuze box or breaker for the power supply. Both lights would be off. 2.1 There could be a massive solar flare that would knock out all electricity in the area of the experiment. (Did not want to use a meteor strike, "It hits too close to home... :)".

The issue with the frustrator is that its designed to do the opposite of what we choose… soo we still make a choice…. This assume we had a choice in the first place. We choose to think of the light being on or we choose to think of the light being off