I didn't want to watch this video or leave this comment, but the universe is deterministic and I had no choice.

@h0tbr0wn

Жыл бұрын

You are a compliant happening 👍

@markking8274

Жыл бұрын

😂😂😂

@kos-mos1127

Жыл бұрын

This does add anything.

@raphaeldavis522

Жыл бұрын

Actually I would argue it's both. You're free to do whatever you want but once you do anything it becomes the only thing you ever could have done. In a sense it's the Heisenberg equation in real time...

@synystera

Жыл бұрын

Nope, the Universe actually made you WANT to click on this video.

Seth Lloyd reaches the pinnacle with the nature of thought. The nature of computation: yet another fascinating subject for my "self" to reference!!!

Curiously, the principal example from the interview at 3:35, Will I get a proper coffee or a decaf?, appears to move the goal-post from free will to the ability to predict and understand ones own choices. These are completely different things. When you're flabbergasted by every choice you make, it does not imply free will. The invocation of Gödel's incompleteness theorem is really just obfuscation. That theorem is not about self-referential questions, it's about incompleteness and it involves self-reference in its proof. Also, the theorem is about the general case, i.e., there exist questions that can't be answered in specific formal systems, but that doesn't preclude at all that there are lots and lots of questions that can be answered, including self-referential ones. The attempt to base free will on incompleteness or undecidability of a formal system seems to me to go astray in the same way as older attempts to use randomness. If you start with a folksy notion of free will, like "I did it, because I intended to and I could have done otherwise", then this randomness (physical or formal) is hardly enough.

@plinden

Жыл бұрын

Yes.

@rossenpanteleev3847

16 күн бұрын

Exactly my thoughts.

Reminds me of Wolfram's "computational irreducibility". Also, learned something new today. The relationship between Godel's incompleteness theorem, and "self referencing" information system. (Still don't understand Godel's theorem. But it's a link to another association to consider.)

Brilliant. And agree.

Seth Lloyd is such a fantastic philosopher. He communicates so brilliantly

Deterministic doesn't mean predictable. There's sufficient complexity in the brain for spontaneous action.

Fantastic chat

Excellent discussion. Seth keeps returning to the question of "What am I going to be doing in 5" time" as an instance of self-referential thought. I would want to go one level deeper and ask "What do I prefer?" Taking Seth's example of coffee type, early in the morning definitely regular. 30" before bed, definitely decaf coffee. I have good reasons for regular and for decaf. Making the choice can either easy or it can be hard. Regardless of the choice made, the weighting of the preferences is my own as are the preferences themselves.

@eksffa

Жыл бұрын

You are still weighting based on your preferences and other existent setting of values as they compare upon the decision making process and you can not say it’s random (you probably know it’s not) or undeterministic (it pretty much can be deterministic). So you are not going deeper because what is relevant is not your set of values and judgment about your preference of coffee at a given space and time. What is relevant in his argument is “I” and “I” right now when you will decide upon two choices of coffee is always an incomplete reference due to self. Just as “i” in five minutes. Your valuation process has nothing to do with his argument. “You” are the key, not your values which could be pretty much constant, random or a range (the water temperature for your bath).

Problem is, even if a program can’t predict in advance what it will do in the future, it’s still necessarily the case that, once done, the program can understand it’s past operations entirely deterministically whereas true free will implies that even my past actions have no ultimate deterministic explanation.

@caricue

Жыл бұрын

Have you ever considered that the concept of "to determine" does not apply to causation or reality, and instead acts like an intuition pump that makes you see something that isn't there?

@FalseCogs

Жыл бұрын

Is this true though? From the perspective that we have an immaterial soul, that soul is often thought to originate agency; as such, the soul's will _determines_ the choice. Hence, the question is not the presence of determinism, but the source. Another question then is, are we asking the source of _will,_ or the source of _choice?_ That is, free will, or free choice? To be completely clear, what I want, and the source of that want, is independent from what I do, and the determinants of that action.

@thegreatandterrible4508

Жыл бұрын

@@FalseCogs How so? What you do is determined by what you want (as well as outside circumstances). You always act according to your desires, it's just that some desires override others. But, what you want doesn't come from no where. It can be reasonably traced back to external causes.

@FalseCogs

Жыл бұрын

@@thegreatandterrible4508 I see what you mean. Choosing the lesser of two evils is still _acting_ by desire, even if the result does not _satisfy_ desire. Still, though constrained by available options, will is usually distinct from choice, in that will normally has an aim beyond the choice itself -- intrinsic will versus instrumental choice.

@thegreatandterrible4508

Жыл бұрын

@@FalseCogs That's a good point, though I'd still be of the opinion that both are subject to cause and effect.

"I've made the mistake of talking largely to philosophers" about free will is like saying "I've made the mistake of talking largely to astronomers and physicists about how planets move." Yes that's because those are the people who study how planets move. You asked a physicist about a purely philosophical subject and then he proceeded to try his best at giving a philosophical answer.

And there is Heisenberg‘s uncertainty principle. If we accept that it is not possible to know both the spin and position of an electron, then the world (at least from our perspective) is not deterministic.

@SolveForX

Жыл бұрын

We can imagine an entity that could, though. And we could construct that entity out of physical matter. So no, that has nothing to do with free will. Free will are ideas that exist independent of the physical world, observed in the physical world.

@markking8274

Жыл бұрын

@@SolveForX yes, a transcendent being such as God. I don’t believe we live in a clockwork world, but it seems some physicists do, and that the brain is totally responsible for thoughts and ideas. It seems to me that the Heisenberg uncertainty principle points to either (1) a non-deterministic world or (2) a deterministic world necessitating the existence of a transcendent being. I believe we have free will and ideas that are independent of the physical world. Of course, now my brain hurts. 😬

@JasonBunting

Жыл бұрын

@@markking8274 I'm glad you said it for me, because I was going to write it - how efficient! :) The idea that we all live and observe a reality that may be a computer system, with an outside operator (even if that operator is merely a pre-written program) throws out the window the idea that we may ever really "know" what's going on. Ultimately, I like using my free will to enjoy the reality I'm in, rather than dissect it. That said, for years and years and years I've quite enjoyed life by dissecting it. ;)

Great explanation for the feeling of free will, that a self-referencing question about the future cannot be answered without running the program up to that future moment. I learned something here.

@caricue

Жыл бұрын

I'm glad you understood. Was he using this idea to support free will or to refute it? Or was it so diabolically presented that everyone will hear what they already believe?

@FalseCogs

Жыл бұрын

@@caricue I could be wrong, but it seems he was more focused on determinism and predictability than on whether we _willfully_ could have acted otherwise. Interested to see others' takes.

@simonhibbs887

Жыл бұрын

@@caricue I think he's using this idea to explain the experience of free will, or why it is that we feel that our future choices are undetermined and are not predictable in advance to ourselves.

@johnskujins8870

Жыл бұрын

@@caricue He's refuting it, explaining why the brain thinks it has free will.

@caricue

Жыл бұрын

@@simonhibbs887 Yeah, but doesn't this mean that the moment of choice is a new event in the universe that has no history?

The fact that we can make models of the possible future moves or scenarios give us the feeling of choice. But the number of choices is ? Or an incompleteness of "free" choices.

Caffeinated at 4pm? This guy is off the chain!!

HAPPY 500K!!! It was determined to happen.

So, basically, if I understand: it is always easier to do things than predict them. Why is prediction so hard, and how does the brain do it? Well normally brains process reactions and function as a center of learning how to adapt. So it is normally memory->action->perception->processing->reaction->highly receptive mode-> commits results to memory for more success next time. Humans, by being able to trigger memories and play out their results visually is a relatively minor but extraordinary tweak to that formula.

As far as I know, physicists have not shown even that particles in a gas would end up in the same positions if you could rewind one second and start again. Of course statistical mechanics is consistent with newtonian deterministic movement of the particles, but has anyone proved it to be *inconsistent* with intrinsic randomness (eg from quantum effects) of the particles? Is there any experiment which could show whether a gas has non-determinism?

@gulaschnikov5335

Жыл бұрын

I think it's because this kind of experiment is impossible to carry out. I believe though the results would be the same. Randomness is just a causation of something for us uncalculable

In general, when computer asked what will be or are doing, computer can answer doing natural choice through free will and be programmed for it?

The problem is the notion of free will itself. Nothing is not a thing, but it has a collection of letters and a sound that describes it. People cannot truly imagine nothing. It's indescribable because there's nothing to describe. So it becomes whatever the thinker imagines it to be. Free will is exactly the same sort of concept.

@AlexiHelligar

Жыл бұрын

Once we allow for existence, then everything including nothing exists. Nothing would just be a special type of thing among all the other things that exist. The physics tell us that the closer we look at the vacuum it is filled with potential things. So, "nothing" is potentiality over the span of an conscious observation, becoming "things" that do exist OR (not XOR) returning back to potential.

@whiteape2714

Жыл бұрын

Free will just like nothing not exist its just the illusion in the conscious mind 🐒

@rivaldonelson833

Жыл бұрын

free will is the illusion of an aware entity that lacks absolute knowledge of the future.

@thereligionofrationality8257

Жыл бұрын

@@rivaldonelson833 That's a good definition. I might substitute the word "delusion" for "illusion!"

@SolveForX

Жыл бұрын

No, free will has a definition. As does nothingness. We can’t “envision” nothingness just like we can’t hear nothingness. But it absolutely can be described. Free will are the inception of ideas that exist independent of physical reality that inform physical reality. We may not be able to act on those ideas, but the inception of those ideas exist independent of physical reality.

In a nutshell, he’s making a compatibilist claim that freely willed decisions are ones where we don’t know how we’re going to behave ahead of time. But this fails to be ‘free will’ because despite our lack of knowledge about our own brain, the laws of physics still apply to every constituent particle that makes up our brain, and none of those constituent parts are free. This is like saying the strings on a marionette are no longer there if we just walk far enough away that we can’t see them directly.

@simonhibbs887

Жыл бұрын

Yes, that's an accurate summary of his position and mine, thank you. For me that conception of free will, that it must be undetermined in some way (and yet not random) is not coherent. Either a decision is random or it is determined, or some combination that stacks the odds. I don't see that there is any other kind of cause, and Ive never come across an actual description of what some other deciding mechanism that would constitute 'free will' might look like. If my decisions are not determined in a reliable way by my mental state, such as my preferences, memories, personality, etc then in what way is the decision mine? So to me determinism is a requirement for free will, not an obstacle to it.

@Mablak200

Жыл бұрын

@@simonhibbs887 Definitely agree you need your own preferences, personality, etc, to actually go into your decision for it to be willed. But what this gives us is just a 'willed' decision, and the 'free' modifier doesn't actually make sense, which is why I don't believe in free will. I can say a decision in my brain took place as a result of my emotional state, memories, etc, and was willed in the sense that these were causal factors. But there's nothing free about any of these causal factors; at this moment in time they're fixed (i.e. my brain state and the surrounding environment is fixed), and so is the next thought that pops into consciousness.

@pratyushpanigrahi830

Жыл бұрын

@@Mablak200 yeh that is true I think te same..but as in saw of physics it's said what I will think or eat after 10 years at this moment is also fixed? How it's possible...after 10 years my brain experiences feelings thoughts must hv changed what I will feel at that moment to judge how it's possible?

Maybe for subjective self reference in time, there is natural choice from free will in nature, whatever action is done? So the answer could be, whatever is being done, it will be done through natural choice from free will in physical reality?

Sorry if this has been asked... Is it possible that, in the iPhone example, that the phone just isn't smart enough yet. If it had enough info, could it predict?

So Seth Lloyd says we experience not knowing what we are going to do, weighing up our options and acting accordingly. That's fine but then we do NOT experience having free will, contrary to his claim. Free will is that we could select anyone of the options in a way that could make us guilty in God's eyes. People don't have to be religious to believe in that version of moral responsibility. In Seth's example he was predetermined to choose caffinated coffee. Whether he was predetermined to choose caffinated or decaffeinated coffee was 100% out of his hands and that's why he could not be guilty in God's eyes. So not morally responsible in the ordinary sense. This is so important and so straight forward that it's frustrating that the guests come on the program, not knowing the basics and that people are misled into believing it's a deep subject and we do have free will.

The fact that you can choose what type of coffee you are going to buy does not mean that such a decision is not within the scope of the determined. Within the whole is the whole and in that context is the possibility of choice, however, since the whole is the whole, there is no possibility of choice insofar as nothing can overcome the whole. In other words: free will only exists as something determined within the whole.

Richard Dawkins in his book 'Selfish GENE' says that humans do have free will.Genes exert statistical influence on human behaviour ,while at the same time this statistical influence can always be modified,overridden or reversed by other influences (including memetic influences or cultural instructions).

I’ve chosen to be a determination.

"I will choose the path that's clear. I will choose free will." -- Rush

@gulaschnikov5335

Жыл бұрын

Because you are afraid of the implications of the contrary. The "ego" or "self" is hindering us since we want credits for what we do and also it's just a lot simpler to answer questions about morality, punishment and reward if we believe in free will. I still believe it's wrong to go with a notion just because it is more comfortable. I guess its just a human drive to dwell in the comfortable.

Referencing Gödel's incompleteness theorem in this context is ridiculous! Your choice about the type of coffee has nothing to do with it, and neither has any other similar question. As a theoretical physicist, I can't stand these kinds of explanations because they don't explain the question in hand any better, than Newton's mechanics explains quantum phenomena.

@pmcate2

Жыл бұрын

I guess it would depend on whether free will is provable in the first place. For example if PA can prove a sentence S, then PA can prove that it proves S. Or as Peter Smith said it, "nice theories know what they can prove but have no idea what they cannot prove". That being said, as long the person making the argument realizes it's a loose argument, then I think it really does no harm.

To me our lives is like riding on a train. The destination is already predetermined and the only free will we have is how we admire the scenery outside the window.

@igoldenknight2169

Жыл бұрын

That’s consciousness. But even that is chalked up to “illusion”.

@Epiousios18

Жыл бұрын

@@igoldenknight2169 The more I have thought about it, the more it seems to me that reductive materialists pretty much _have_ to take that (illusory) stance in order to be consistent. A lot of people parrot these beliefs because they are being espoused by their "high priests" (Harris etc.) without realizing the irony of it arising out of the choice to embrace a specific worldview.

People on a train headed for a destination have free will to stay on the train or jump off to do what ever but the destination is predetermined. the free will of the passengers is irrelevant to the train or the universe. A tree has no free will and it predetermined future is only effected by outside factors.

The atoms or molecules don't determine the character flaws of your personality if they did we could rehabilitate every criminal just by changing his or her chemical disposition but the truth is we can only improve ourselves when we desire to want to improve ourselves and that requires use of our will, and since that is something voluntarily done we have free will.

When you ask the computer about 5 minutes down the line, it's smart enough to know that it can't possibly predict what it's going to be doing, because a million things could happen to prevent that path, such as a power outage. But a person is dumb because they're only thinking about what they'd LIKE to do in 5 minutes. Sure the chances are they'll probably have coffee or whatever, but what if a friend stops by? Or maybe we don't get that coffee until 5 minutes and 3 seconds. A computer must be accurate and so it cannot answer. Try asking it what it MIGHT be doing 5 minutes from now ... Betcha' it says computing ... Only LaPlace's demon commuter could answer what it WILL be doing

@robinwallace7097

Жыл бұрын

@@cosminvisan520 ... Of MY consciousness ... you don't exist either, I made everything up 😃

@kos-mos1127

Жыл бұрын

@@cosminvisan520 No you do not exists.

@robinwallace7097

Жыл бұрын

@@cosminvisan520 LoL 😂 I suspect you do, but the only thing I know with 100% certainty, is that I can't possibly know anything else with 100% certainty.

We are kept busy with distractions created by the ones who created the system. We don’t have the free moments to act of our own freewill

@gulaschnikov5335

Жыл бұрын

A fellow non-believer yay I think believing in free will is serving the system to feed the egos of a few (mostly white) people.

@hawaiiman33

Жыл бұрын

@@gulaschnikov5335 I didn’t say I don’t believe in freewill. I don’t believe in freedom because free-dom is a flipped version of freewill, which is natural. Freedom is artificial, therefore created, and written by a man. Freewill is a father given right. Which is natural We were created with it. It is something that cannot be interfered with by any one or anything.

Free choice versus free will: Can you freely act according to your immediate desire? Often, yes. Can you freely choose, or originate, what to desire? ??? How is that supposed to work? How are our desires not simply adaptions of ancestral biological needs?

This conversation stresses me out. I guess I have no choice but to be stressed out by it.

Can program the computer to answer "will be doing natural choice through free will" when asked the question "what will be doing at a future time"?

@kos-mos1127

Жыл бұрын

No we cannot program a computer to answer the question of what it will do in the future. There is hypothetical type of computation known as hypercomputations which can solve the problem of what a program will do in 5 minutes but it will not be able to answer the question of what it will do in 5 minutes for that you need a bigger oracle.

That the Universe is fundamentally chaotic (free) and not strictly deterministic means that there is free choice. But random choosing is not enough. The Universe also comes with islands of low-entropy and symmetry, which we observe as time and the laws of physics. This ordering intersecting with the chaos is the essence of consciousness. The free choice, must be followed by further agreements and determined practices for a new reality of experience to emerge. So "free will" is a combination of the notion of non-deterministic choosing - or "free choice", followed by a repeated application of that choice over a span of time - or willpower. TL;DR: Free Will = Freedom (unrestricted decision by a Markovian Kernel) + Choice (semantically differentiated future states) + Will Power (repeated actions applied to intelligently reach a chosen semantically differentiated future state).

@francesco5581

Жыл бұрын

Good overview and very well explained , but isnt free will anyway ALWAYS a "restricted" decision since only in void (or in another plane of existence) we can have total free will ?

@AlexiHelligar

Жыл бұрын

@@francesco5581 My definition of "free" does not require unlimited states to choose. A binary state space is sufficient for there to be a free choice. The only necessary condition is that the decision is not determined by anything prior to it in way that is predictable at the scale of observation at which the choice is made.

@francesco5581

Жыл бұрын

@@AlexiHelligar determined not, but conditioned surely yes... And what if this conditioning is a 100% that we dont recognize ? (i believe in free will, i am just playing the devil's advocate) .

@AlexiHelligar

Жыл бұрын

@@francesco5581 You would have to give an actual context. All decisions occur in a context and the degrees of freedom are usually greater than assumed. The conscious agent may have predictions of consequences and run various analyses, the decision itself is always free right up to freely choosing neither A or B and thereby freely choosing to let external circumstances prevail. No prior information can predict 100% what the conscious agent will choose. There is always a degree of uncertainty which represents the inherent chaos in all free decisions.

This man's dismissal of consciousness is amazing to me. "blah blah blah." Amazing stuff.

@quantumpotential7639

Жыл бұрын

Consciousness = "To Be. And know it."

@kos-mos1127

Жыл бұрын

They do not need consciousness need to explain free will.

@REDPUMPERNICKEL

Жыл бұрын

Cell phone operating systems are event driven and so are we. We do not know what events we will experience whether they arise from external causes or internal. If I have a want or desire I will respond to it or not depending on the mood I'm in. Why do I want or desire what I do and what controls my mood? Sometimes I know but sometimes I do not. Nevertheless, I am sure there are reasons in all cases even if I cannot know what they all are.

Might there be something different than questions for subjective self reference in time? Whereas actions can be questioned scientifically, existence is experienced non-scientifically different than question and answer?

This points to why we can't make computers or robots function like organic beings. Computers are built to be deterministic but organic beings are not. Life is not deterministic. It is probabilistic. Mutations, crossing over, and independent assortment of chromosomes are probabilistic events.

My phone vibrated, it must want to be still turned on in five minutes.

Through time / energy uncertainty, conscious energy of mind has subjective awareness of time?

Robert, who is the most impressive person you have ever interviewed?

computation is an imitation of brain/consciousness/intelligence work as much as a paint is an imitation of someone face. Is not the same thing.

@josef9733

Жыл бұрын

But what if the brain is a computation machine "generating" consciousness. Could another machine doing computation, even if different, maybe also create a consciousness? Maybe a different kind of consciousness.

@francesco5581

Жыл бұрын

@@josef9733 yes thats the opposite way to see the problem. my take that is even the best AI would act like its conscious but will never be. It will never have an inner feeling, self awareness. Also who created the computational machine who generate consciousness ? Randomness ? I think we will stare at AI like someone who stare at a statue and think is a man.

I don't understand how his answer addresses free will. A computer is not remotely comparable to a human being as to determining what it is going to do in the future. I suppose all actions that follow thoughts seem to be a matter of free will, but then you read about a study that shows the decision to do something precedes the thought!! It's a mind-bender.

Queestion: Can Space-time predict that free will is just a stubborn illusion? If traveling into the future is possible. But you cannot change the past. Would free-will cause a paradox in the Space-time continuum? "The distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion." ~ Albert Einstein.

did free will create the questions or were they preordained

You have to discuss intellect if you want to acknowledge freewill.

@whiteape2714

Жыл бұрын

No, the key to acknowledge free will is your thoughts, you just need to focus on where your thoughts come from, then you will realise that you cannot choose the next thought, which means you do not have free will 🐒

@S3RAVA3LM

Жыл бұрын

@@whiteape2714 good point. However, the Intellect is first, as ' thoughts' rely on the Intellect. Sense perception objects are impsessed upon the Intellect thus arises thinking. Now freewill is of the Intellect because we may enquire, not simply identifying with any one specific thought. We are not the thoughts, as 'thought' belongs to the sense perception objects perceived by the Intellect. Now because we may enquire and ask question, taking different approaches, applying different methodologies, it is erroneous to say we have no control of thoughts, because they're no ours. It's what's impressed upon our minds and a disciplined mind will not be influence by outside things. This way of thinking is 'freewill' and of the Intellect. More can be said regarding this. Also, when you factor in imagination, creativity too...if you say we cannot control our thoughts, you posit that the thoughts are our possession, and that this possession possesses us, and that the thoughts themselves control us, thus you must explain what 'us' even is, and explain how thoughts which rely on the Intellect to even be, can somehow override the Intellect itself. Good luck.

if you have two options, A or B (or even A+B, three options) as soon as you pick one, there was no choice. you either do things for a reason, or you do them randomly, show me a third way. free will is an illusion because we can't change the past or see the future perfectly, but there was only ONE path of the past, so it follows there is only one path for the future, a zillions "options" but only one route.

Everything is determined but will never be 100% predictable. So for all intents an purposes we have Free Will. Thats the short version

@a.s.2426

4 ай бұрын

Well said as a summary. Some big assumptions in his logic that are rarely challenged.

@MarvinMonroe

4 ай бұрын

@@a.s.2426 yeah I pretty much agree with him. Free Will in general is a dimb and pointless concept in my opinion though. But it's always seemed to me that people conflate determined and predictable. And then they say "predictable means no free will" (which makes sense to me) So at least we are using their logic against them and saying, "future can never be perfectly predictable" If they infer Free Will from that statement, I understand

@a.s.2426

4 ай бұрын

@@MarvinMonroe The gap between predictability and determinism is, I assume, attributable to the apparent randomness inherent in the fabric of reality according to contemporary physics?

@a.s.2426

4 ай бұрын

@@MarvinMonroe And why do you say, "dimb and pointless concept"?

@MarvinMonroe

4 ай бұрын

@@a.s.2426 well because even if we don't have Free Will, then what? Are we going to say people aren't responsible for their actions? Our whole criminal justice system is based upon the assumption that we do have Free Will So as it is now, even the people who say we don't have Free Will lead their lives as if they do. And they treat others as if those others do have Free Will

Inconceivable! 😂

Not very convincing on the argument for free will, similar to the concept of aseity. From where did the thought about a choice of afternoon coffee emanate? Thirst? Is not thirst an autonomic impulse? Has this man never had a previous experience of drinking coffee in the afternoon? Could his decision be driven by a subconscious, deterministic mechanism yet be perceived as a choice? There is definitely another way to think about our actions. Is Brownian motion really random?

given that you're going to be doing something in the next few seconds, try to change the future, what's so special about freewill anyway, every thought in your head might just pop in there without any need for it it to be an act of self. just means you're a product of the universe and it's the universe that's actually living 'your' life

This didn't answer the question of what is free will and whether we have it or not !

Free will exists but not for us, we are simply instruments of Krishna, but Krishna himself is totally free

I do not understand Seth's point totally. Just coz a computer cannot predict what it will do in future , so it has free will? What if we make a even faster supercomputer that can simulate Seth's deterministic iphone. Then can't it simulate the iphones "5 min" much faster and predict what it will do? Or are we taking account of external influences (like if a human may ask Siri something within the 5 min and we don't know what it is). I don't understand how free will is saved.

@collin501

9 ай бұрын

I took it exactly the opposite. Because a computer doesn't think of itself and predict what it will do, that's why it doesn't have free will. A self referencing thing is incomplete, therefore not deterministic. It doesn't have the full answer within itself. So it self directs. That doesn't mean it's fully free. It's constrained by many things. But it's not fully programmed, so it has some level of self directing.

Life is quantum fluctuations in many fields and a lot of dimensions

What if the computer is told what they will be doing in five minutes time, would they be able to answer how they will do it given the knowledge of what it will be doing?

@kos-mos1127

Жыл бұрын

It would be the same as if we were told what we will be doing in five minutes.

If there was an answer given to the question, "what is the physics of free will", I missed it. Or it could be that one was simply not given and a lot of smoke was blown instead.

@cookieDaXapper

Жыл бұрын

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha, a LOOOONNNNGGGG way to say absolutely nothing. PEACE Family, and God bless.

@JasonBunting

Жыл бұрын

There are no answers, only discussions - between the lines, the answer lies.

@g0lbez

Жыл бұрын

i feel that with a majority of these videos but i watch anyway because i realize they are not going to have a satisfying answer to eternally unanswerable philosophical questions in 5 minute videos

@markpmar0356

Жыл бұрын

@@JasonBunting Actually, use of the word "physics" implies a fact-based answer and endless discussion typically produces no answers. Discussion for its own sake is a bit of a waste.

@robhappier

Жыл бұрын

Hi@@markpmar0356! A scientific investigation wouldn't be possible without "free will". Without "free will", our minds ("brains") wouldn't know how to separate true information or usable data from influenced information or false data. The results from all scientific investigations would be corrupted. Although computers can be programmed to separate data, a computer can only process data by following a human programmer's instructions. For example, a computer can't decide on it's own to choose another way to separate data, it wasn't programmed to recognize as true information or usable data, and influence information or false data. Human beings can have unlimited creativity, like a professional master artist painting on a blank canvas (computers are limited by it's program and circuits), because of our unlimited imaginations. A human mind is more than chemical reactions reacting to the environment, or a product of the physical universe (God created us). We all have a mind ("self-aware consciousness") that is uniquely ours (including genetically identical twins). A human mind probably exist at the quantum energy level (quantum vacuum energy state of matter) that supersedes classical physics (the ordering of cause and effect of the observable physical universe). This superseding property is necessary to have free will. It allows human beings (with God's help) to overcome their emotions, biases, other preconceived ideas, and instantaneous temptations. Time is also needed to evaluate all possible choices accurately and completely, before a decision is made. Here's a link to an interview of Dr. Ruth Kastner PhD.; philosopher at physics department at New York State University (who believes "free will" is real and obeys the laws of quantum physics): kzread.info/dash/bejne/eKqLwcuTn9LNdNI.html The uncertain nature of people is not explained by randomness. Quantum phyics is not random. The positions of the subatomic particles only appear to be random, because exact measurements aren't possible (only probability measurements) with modern-day instruments. Here's a link to a video by PBS Space Time that describes the Quantum Eraser experiment. It shows that quantum entangled particles, like a photon, can influence each other instantaneously across great distances in a timeless and spaceless quantum vacuum energy state of matter- "Is what really defines reality in this space-time" -PBS Space Time. kzread.info/dash/bejne/aoOGrrCYe9qnl9Y.html

So does he actually believe in free will, or just our experience of it? The question is, can you take a different path if you were to roll back time and play again.

@HarryNicNicholas

Жыл бұрын

problem is, you can't go back. there was only the ONE path, there was no choice, choice would mean being able to do both things, that's absurd. if you have a REASON or preference, then you have no free will, you act on the little dictator in your head.

@paulwary

Жыл бұрын

@@HarryNicNicholas It all hinges upon whether *anything* can go in different way if you were to rewind it. As far as I know, physicists have merely assumed determinism, because you don't need any more than that to model eg an ideal gas. Free will need be no more than assigning your chosen weights to the roll of an intrinsically random dice. Why would choice mean being able to do BOTH things? Of course it means being able to do one or the other, and I see no logical problem with that.

I wonder is it possible to create new information in a deterministic universe?

Siri, what will you be doing in 5 minutes? Siri: In 5 minutes I'll still be thinking about how to answer this question

"All philisophy militates agsinst free will; all experience for it"

Energy in brain has conscious mind, when energy becomes matter in brain free will happens?

We don't experience free will. We experience just what Seth Lloyd says. But we all know free will is about how we can select the options we don't select. How could we do otherwise. How could Seth have chosen the decaf in his example? If the guest soeaker doesn't talk about that then he or she is not talking about free will. Usually they aren't and are just saying we go through a process we call making a decision.

It is clear that based on determinism, the destiny of energy and information always gravitates to a state of increased entropy. So why is it that humans and all biological systems work to reduce the level of local entropy, both physical and informational? It would seem that something yet beyond our current understanding is driving this otherwise essential task. Is not free will based on the decisions we make in order to survive and procreate?

@MRnormi98

Жыл бұрын

We constantly emit radiation. We are very effective machines to increase entropy.

oh, 10 minutes without anything happening, i wonder what this video was for?

Well, he talks about mechanisms for our impression or feeling of free will, but that has nothing to do with free will itself. Free will as we would like to have it, strong free will, is physically impossible, and determinism has nothing to do with it either. Strong free will would be for us to have inside ourselves a fantastical machine, one that is tied to our identities and desires, that somehow generates our volition by itself. There's no such thing. No matter how complex our builds are, we are determined by processes that lie outside our identities and desires, processes that are also generating our desires. Maybe deterministic laws, maybe dices, maybe subatomic swirls, maybe magic, but not "us". No matter what, we are products of nature as everything is. We are not behind nature in any sense. At most, ironically, we feel free because of our limitations.

@caricue

Жыл бұрын

We don't have "fantastical machines" inside of us. How would this help in any case, machines don't have free will. We are living organisms that actively change the environment. There are no "deterministic laws" out there controlling things. Atoms are dead objects, they don't control or direct molecules. Atoms don't determine anything. Dead things are passive, living things are active. Just because we are not smart enough to define life doesn't mean that it isn't different from non-life, and the most obvious difference is that dead things will just sit there for eternity until acted upon. Life makes stuff happen.

@lrgui9792

Жыл бұрын

@@caricue yeah, we don't have the fantastical machines... with that, I meant to pin down what could really be responsible for "hard free will". What does it mean to say that atoms don't determine anything? Objects in nature "determine" (or play out) their trajectories as described by their laws of behavior. What does it mean to be passive, apart from that? Life is different than non-life by the properties that we choose in order to define what life is, but that is no natural fundamental (essential) difference. I strongly disagree that "dead" things will just sit there until "acted upon". Matter acts upon itself, for example to produce life out of dead stuff, but also many other marvelous complex physical states that are not considered by us to be alive. Life makes stuff happen, surely, but as stuff makes stuff happen, and as stuff once made life happen.

@lrgui9792

Жыл бұрын

@@caricue maybe nature out there has its own version of a free will, I don't know. My whole point is that an ultimate freedom doesn't belong to us in whatever sense. We just play a game of free will, and we can only do it because we live in a hot spot where we are complex enough to bear a minimum of internal states to be able to "choose" things, but we are not complex enough to understand how to break that apart into its mechanisms. But we do have mechanisms that are not us and that determine how we play. In the same way as mechanisms determine how our hearts beat and we don't happen to "choose" that. The difference to our intended choices is only that, for those, we have mechanisms to conjure the impression of having an intention (our brains are able to conjure what could be called an intentional stance for those actions we label as our conscious actions). Also, being alive is not a good theoretical measure of that, as AI is almost upon us to say so.

@caricue

Жыл бұрын

@@lrgui9792 You have a lot of good ideas in there, but there is nothing that can be called "ultimate" in the natural world. This is just a product of human imagination, so if you start out looking for "ultimate freedom" then you have already answered your question. Free will is a natural phenomenon, so you will never find anything "ultimate" in it. You said that, "Objects in nature "determine" (or play out) their trajectories as described by their laws of behavior." I don't think this is quite right. Determinism isn't about an object acting according to its nature, but it is about one object acting on the next object in one specific way that is physically impossible to change. As far as I can tell, the only thing that pulls matter together and causes interactions is gravity. Otherwise, if you set a rock down, it will sit there for eternity until something affects it and then it will react. That's what I mean by passive. A living thing will not just sit there.

Free will is critical to some aspects of theism, in particular the problem of evil discussion. If we have free will this absolves the 'all loving' god of responsibility for evil. Problem is the theistic core stories often include situations where the deity stomped on free will to force an outcome (plot device), such as with Moses and the Pharaoh. So, yes, we have free will. We are free to choose our responses to stimuli to the extent that our brain chemistry will allow it. And much of the world around us, and people around us, and the universe, injects enough chaotic input into our lives that the notion of predestination is not really worth worry about. We find our own way through life the best we can. Until it is shown that there is a god to worry about that says otherwise we can only proceed as though we have free will.

@yourlogicalnightmare1014

Жыл бұрын

God requires ALL possible experience in order to know it. To deny what YOU call evil would be to deny itself of being all-knowing. You clearly know nothing about gods nature and rely on the strawman cartoon caricature created by religion

What information would AI require to predict the future ?

I like Seth but his argument for free will is akin to what some people claim about quantum mechanics in regards to free will and falls short of being persuasive in any way.

What a random and ridiculous response. Because I didn’t know I was going to be hit in the head with a rock and die in three minutes, I have free will? Zero push back on that analysis? lol

Free will may only exist in the smallest quantum world. And that is where our brains operate. So we really may have a free will. But is it "ours"?

@francesco5581

Жыл бұрын

and what is that free will "thing" that operate in quantum world ? Free will is the foundation of reality along intelligence/consciousness, or is an illusion, or is a product of an intelligent universe, or is the product of randomness in a materialistic universe.

@rauldurand

Жыл бұрын

@@francesco5581 an illusion

@josef9733

Жыл бұрын

@@francesco5581 Maybe it is the mechanism of the quantum state not being decided or definitive - thus being "free".

@nschulz5698

Жыл бұрын

experiments show randomness plays an inevitable role in our quantum computational universe but seems a stretch to assume that it implies we as computational agents possess "free will"?

@fufu6070

Жыл бұрын

Quantum mechanics is probabilistic. Attributing any decision we make to the probabilistic nature of QM takes it further away from the notion of a free will of one's own volition since if we will to do something, we're not exactly trying to do a coin toss.

Free Will is brilliant, all the benefits of creation with none of the blame.

@jamenta2

Жыл бұрын

Yes, if you're willing to pretend the carrot you're looking at is actually a piece of broccoli. Seth offers an interesting argument, but in the end, he still is arguing for Determinism - by changing the definition of "free will" by taking the free out of will.

@theaman1786

Жыл бұрын

@@jamenta2 Yup, a false experience of free will isn't free will... All we have is that false experience. We'll never know ourselves, thus believing us to be somehow free, to be somehow in charge of our destiny. Fools, we are; nothing more...

@gulaschnikov5335

Жыл бұрын

@@theaman1786 I too believe in fate/destiny because believing in free will is against all evidence and just because it feels like it - because i am experiencing it as such - doesn't mean we should behave according to it and assume the person in front of me is having free will. I believe we would kind of overcome being close-to-monkey humans if we started acceepting the evidence. I think it would change the course of humanity for good. So what about the implications for societal life of human beings if we as humanity stopped believing in free will? Maybe kind of like an evolutionary step of overcoming mostly instinct driven humans. I am no exception to this. I guess we can only overcome this collectively, since we are bound to our environment.

@theaman1786

Жыл бұрын

@@gulaschnikov5335 ​As for the implications for societal life if we as humanity stopped believing in free will, here's my two cents: Grand Utilitarianism. [ref to Mises]. Acceptance of the fact that there's no good or bad, no evil people and holy people. No death penalty; instead, lifetime forced slavery for rapists and serial killers. Killing people is so damn wasteful, when a society could be milking them instead. As for the idea that if there's no death penalty to dissuade people from committing insane crimes then more would commit them, well, the judiciary system's laws/code NEVER stops you from committing a crime, it just lays out what the consequences would be if you committed it. Most people who commit those don't fear anything (neurological congenital psychopathy), let alone death. Killing people was a safe way to make sure their genes did not get passed to the progeny, so no wonder the early man (and the instinctual man of today too) feels so enraged at people who commit the crimes he/she considers the most wrong; however, now we have contraception, castration, a functional ever-lasting break-free prison system; we really could be doing better than killing them right away. Castration of those who commit heinous crimes and their existing biological children too; today's society fears eugenics so much that it's missing out on its good use-cases. As for the morality of castrating an innocent kid who didn't even do anything wrong, well, screw morality; there are no good or bad people. Why care! [Breastfeeding the serial killers is so satisfying. Nurturing, feeding, healing the wounds of a wounded man, pure bliss. If I were the monarch, I'd pretend to the people that we brutally & painfully kill any killers or rapists in our society, but would secretly be letting them perform whatever economical income-generating work they love (and be donating the revenue to their victims); besides, would let mothering souls shower them with as much nurturing and love as they crave to (behind closed doors); (there's no shortage of people who get off by caring/providing for; cats probably are pure evil, and probably were horrendous criminals in their past lives (LOL; kidding; play along for a sec), but that doesn't prevent cat-people from giving those evil cats all the love they got (it sure might be a little too comforting to criminals knowing that in their next lives as cats, they'd be showered with so much love; LOL); the fact is, however evil the mind of a cat might be, in its current form factor, it poses little to no threat to us. Cat lovers indeed already are utilitarians; lol.). Anyway, when old and sick, I'd use my prisoners to satisfy the many sadists that need satisfying, the many sadists who would love to skin them alive! Also, utilitarianarily speaking, I'd prefer that the biological kids of killers and rapists be castrated as well; makes perfect evolutionary utilitarian sense. Damn, the would would be so much rational and obvious if it embraced Utilitarianism and ditched free-will... ]. Also, some great guy (can't remember who) once said, that although we do not have free will, (for all practical purposes) we must pretend like we do. "Bad people should still be locked away (for the safety of the rest)", Einstein used to say.

If there wasn't oppression and manipulation everyone would have free will. Maybe someday the world will be free of narcissistic sociopaths and we all will be able to enjoy the self realization of free will.

I still don’t drive but I get there on time😂

Seth offers an interesting argument, but in the end, he still is arguing for Determinism - by changing the definition of "free will" by taking the free out of will.

a computer van answer any question, once it's given it the answer or the ability to work out the answer. A bit like us really?

Agency exists. There are choices that we make that is no “knee jerk”. For someone to overcome an addiction you need to exercise free will.

@stephenlawrence4821

Жыл бұрын

To overcome an addiction you need to be predetermined to do it, assuming determinism

Cool analogy but seeming randomness still isn't free will

@collin501

9 ай бұрын

I think the point was that self reference makes something incomplete, and if so, then it doesn't have the full answer built into it like a computer would. therefore, the thing wouldn't be deterministic, and would have to fill in the difference, and self direct.

We have free will in imagination but not in actions. So basically what we can and what can't do. I can't jump 15meter but in my mind no limit. Now I think what I like to...vacation in Mars 🥳.

@gulaschnikov5335

Жыл бұрын

They say: "there are no limits to imaginations" I say: "Isn't the lack of imagining limits to imaginations a limit of imagination itself?" Paradox spotted

Acknowledges the intuitive feeling of free will doesn't exist, and then just proceeds to just talk gibberish. Free will as we think is not REAL

“Studies” like statistics can ‘prove’ anything or usually nothing. These Stone Age physics references are hilarious. The expanding electrons do it all. Still Max Stirner’s “ The Unique and Its Property,” 1844/2017 Landstreicher translation is more ‘ advanced ‘ regarding the who who thinks.

So, no discussion of what "free will" is in contradistinction from just "will"... pity. "Free will" is strictly concerned with moral decisions. "Will" has to do with any and all bodily movements as a part of everyday functioning. Now, a thought exercise with regard to determinism... "The inconsistency of the modern mechanist is: If this were merely a material universe and man only a machine, such a man would be wholly unable to recognize himself as such a machine, and likewise would such a machine-man be wholly unconscious of the fact of the existence of such a material universe. The materialistic dismay and despair of a mechanistic science has failed to recognize the fact of the spirit-indwelt mind of the scientist whose very supermaterial insight formulates these mistaken and self-contradictory concepts of a materialistic universe." [from Paper 195, section 7, in The Urantia Book.]

Quantun particles are underteminate in phich. It raise two questions. One phich bit predict particles so far. Secound conscieness are unpredicted unfiy particles. Fundamental phisch quanta are unpredicted. Guys shows phich hipotesy is ignoring phich seriouly.

Stubbed your toe? Feel the pain? Well you have free will don't you? Will it away!

@igoldenknight2169

Жыл бұрын

I just couldn’t stop myself from commenting on your comment!

@fufu6070

Жыл бұрын

@@igoldenknight2169 my words through electromagnetic transmissions have triggered a response from you. Such is the power of physics.

@igoldenknight2169

Жыл бұрын

@@fufu6070 I guess you just couldn’t stop yourself!

Interesting answer by a "mechanical engineer" but Seth Lloyd (apparently) lacks a depth of understanding regarding the scientific field of psychology (yes psychology is an empirical field of science despite the opinion of reductive, materialist Skeptics) and Seth wants to claim consciousness and free-will can be attributed simply to a mathematical problem, despite the Deterministic nature of neuronal activity in the brain, but it doesn't matter. An interesting argument and subtle but Seth still misses the psychological empirical discoveries of giants in the psychological field such as Sigmund Freud, Joseph Adler or Carl Jung. In fact, one of the greatest discoveries in psychology has been the empirical demonstration that consciousness is not the Ego alone -i.e. that surface level awareness we consider to be "I" - also that self-reference part of consciousness Seth refers to - turns out the Ego is only a surface level feature of consciousness, like the outer layer of an onion - and consciousness (much like most other objects in the Universe) is composed of more than just surface - and underneath the surface it has been empirically demonstrated over the last century the existence of a number of layers including the unconscious layer of consciousness - which by definition you are not even conscious of - but the unconscious still exists, and is the producer of the self-aware ego. And also something that Professor Lloyd apparently is unaware of, is perhaps the greatest discovery of Analytical psychology has been the scientific evidence the unconscious itself is autonomous AND demonstrates features that are not bound by time and space - much like entangled photons can behave, or a quantum wave function collapse. So once again, here we are - forced to argue over Newtonian deterministic physics, OLD SCHOOL materialism, and the insistence Determinism must be the only feature of reality and consciousness - when not only has quantum physics demonstrated quantum contextuality when a measurement takes place, but the science of psychology - has also demonstrated the autonomy of the unconscious which has been proven scientfically to exist.

Soooo….. did he believe in free will or no? I feel like we went in circles.

@kipponi

Жыл бұрын

Who Robert?

@Jaggerbush

Жыл бұрын

@@kipponi no, Seth. I get lost on this concept. Free Will meaning - if we have no free will - does this mean that everything is predetermined? Isn’t that like believing in a god who knows everything? The past and the future? Does this mean we don’t decide on which bill to pay or not to pay if we only have so much money? How far does this go? I’ve been watching these for years and this subject always confuses me. Or is it a level down from this - like we are not much more free than a a dog or a cat? Even that seems odd but I guess it would. So, every word I’ve chosen in this post, I had no choice in it?? Where does it end?

You can see this clearly in terms of a Counterfactual!! Say you have a machine with free will and another without free will, what would the difference be between them?? The machine without free will could not make choices on its own, so every act, every choice it would make would necessarily come from outside itself, like an algorithm?? So, can a conscious agent not have free will?? I say not!! Because consciousness in an agent without free will could be considered as an act?? Consciousness as an act of a machine without free will would need to supervene on an algorithm?? Meaning the act of being conscious or aware would not be a property of the machine but of the programmer inputting the algorithm telling the machine that it sees something?? A machine without free-will would need to be told wether or not it sees or experiences anything, and so such a machine cannot be a conscious agent?? An agent of true consciousness would necessarily be free of supervening on any algorithms dictating its actions?? As a thought experiment, say you are in a black box with no view to the outside and say you have someone on the outside telling you what he sees but telling you to claim that you see what he sees?? The person on the outside is analogous to an algorithm and/or a person inputting an algorithm and you are a machine with no free-will, no freedom of choice!! That is analogous to a machine with no free-will, only doing what the algorithm tells it to do, not actually perceiving but obeying the algorithm telling it to claim true consciousness!!

I do not have "free will," and neither do you. =YAWN!= So what?

I am so confused about the question of free will. Non-believers have good points, yet, it makes no sense to me. As they say, it is non-intuitive, but logical. I have a million questions about it orbiting in my head that are counter arguments. If it is an illusion, who is being tricked? Brain tricks itself? But why? How? What about subjective feelings like the sense of pleasure and all the other ones? Those are not physical. Those can not interact with the matter, yet, they have influence on our decisions. And brain is my main processor, of course that decision making process is happening in the brain. Brain is me

@FalseCogs

Жыл бұрын

I invite you to trace back the causation of the factors which influenced not only your core nature -- that is, your persistent instincts and desires -- but also your more immediate goals and plans -- what you are doing right now, plus in the near future, and why exactly. The first part -- your nature -- matters because your nature _is_ you. And if you find that your desires are perhaps reactions to the age-old environment of your ancestors, then perhaps _you_ are simply an extension through time of that place and set of circumstances that made your bloodline. Hence, there are not as it would appear independent beings, but rather arms or tentacles of one ancestral being, each wearing a blinder that gives tunnel vision away from its origin. Each such arm is being tricked by its parent -- the Source -- into seeing itself separate. The mechanism, or how, is the blinder -- selective vision of one's truncated arm; seeing only short-term causation while ignoring the full path. As for subjective experience, the illusion is the seeming separation between observer and observed. Both are in fact one shared happening. The body's complex emotional reaction, with facial expressions, metabolic changes, and other sensations all being perceived together and nearly simultaneous to the thoughts uncontrollably arising that analyse and make stories of it all. As you can neither predict reliably what thought will arise next, nor can you reliably stop all thoughts for any real length, you are thus not truly the thinker of these thoughts. Rather, thoughts happen _to_ you, or more like in the presence of awareness. Putting these ideas together, there is no individual acting as originator of desires, thoughts, emotions, and actions. Instead, there is a complex primordial being, sometimes called God or Source, that expresses itself through many minds and many tentacles simultaneously. Your wants and doings ultimately serve its intrinsic nature and will. Even the interactions between its parts -- indeed also when adversarial -- are serving its grand will. A brain does not act alone. Its nature arose from ancestral Source; its conditioning from upbringing and experience; and its immediate plans from external circumstance. _You_ are not only the brain, but the whole picture, all influences included. You are thus reading from yourself here, experiencing part of your greater expression. You are here. You are everywhere. Feel the love!

@stephenlawrence4821

Жыл бұрын

It's not so tricky. Decision are real. The illusion we could make a different decision in a magical way is unreal. Not only can we do fine without the illusion. We're better off without it.

@FalseCogs

Жыл бұрын

@@stephenlawrence4821 There _is_ a tricky part though -- the _emotions_ surrounding the sense of control or agency. The thought of being "locked in" to a particular path is perhaps claustrophobic; and then there is the moral aspect, where accepting that the environment influences or decides our direction means accepting that nobody is truly morally responsible for either their failings, nor their good deeds. The solution to the moral issue is to see that there are no individual doers, but only one shared expression of existence. Accepting this aspect can be a heavy order, especially for our egoic senses of pride and justice.

He literally explained why free will, had to be deterministic..

@collin501

9 ай бұрын

How so?

Same shirt.

🤕🤕🤕

This is just so much blather.

This lovely gentleman is rather confused.

making a choice is not having freewill.

@collin501

9 ай бұрын

It is free will, unless it's just an illusion that it was a choice.

@texantony2410

9 ай бұрын

@@collin501 Free will IS the illusion.

@collin501

9 ай бұрын

@antoniohuerta2410 pretty strong illusion.

@texantony2410

9 ай бұрын

@@collin501 indeed it is.

I think both philosophy and physics are confused about free will because they lack the correct model of causality. Consider systemic causality, meaning that causality is across all of space and time, both past and future, and then hard determinism becomes invalid since it is defined as causality being only that past events cause future events. And randomness and uncertainty also become false because with systemic causality the future is determined but not determined solely by the past.

@caricue

Жыл бұрын

I've been saying the same thing as you but with different words. Anytime you ascribe a cause it is a subjective exercise. The only thing you can really say is that everything causes everything. Obviously, nothing that happens here on Earth would happen without a planet, and the galaxy and the entire history of the universe. Picking out one cause is just your opinion, and not science.

@Anders01

Жыл бұрын

@@caricue I learned from this KZread channel that causality is still an unsolved problem in philosophy and in physics! I was amazed by that and started thinking about causality as systemic.

@caricue

Жыл бұрын

@@Anders01 I had the same experience. It seems like we have an intuitive understanding of causation that works for our survival as middle sized creatures, but while it works, it doesn't map onto reality if you dig down a little. I think the real problem lies with the use of the word "determine" in relation to cause and effect. I can be determined to complete the project, or I can determine the best course of action, but atoms do not determine what happens at the macro level. Atoms are passive objects that will react in a predictable way in given circumstances, but the atoms do not control what circumstances they find themselves in, so they don't determine anything.

People have free will because they are free to believe that they have free will.

@colinjava8447

Жыл бұрын

No, how are they free to believe it? In fact, put all this free will/determinism stuff aside, how are you free to believe anything, you believe stuff based on knowledge and experience of what happens in the real world, you don't choose to believe things. You can't just choose to believe the moon is made of Lego, and if you did suddenly believe it, it wasn't due to choice, but something else.

@williamburts5495

Жыл бұрын

@@colinjava8447 You said, how are they free to believe it? Because that is their choice

@colinjava8447

Жыл бұрын

@@williamburts5495 No, belief isn't a choice anyway, did I not just explain this? Choose to believe the moon is made of Lego, do you now believe it?

@williamburts5495

Жыл бұрын

@@colinjava8447 what you choose to believe is your choice, that's why we have atheist and theist.

@spongbobsquarepants3922

Жыл бұрын

@@williamburts5495 You cannot choose what to believe. People have different views because of how they know different things, and therefore new information is processed differently. If you could choose what to believe, then right now start believing that nothing exists. I don't mean that you should say that, but you should really believe it. You cannot do that.