patrick.net

931e says

This universe is much too complex for anybody to deduce much at all.

Empirically false. Science works. The proof is modern life. Science got us to the moon, allowed us to create the modern world, doubled the human lifespan, made infant mortality almost unheard of.

Feigning ignorance is not humility, and it is not a virtue. One must know what one does know to learn what one does not know.

marcus says

You give one example of harm that comes from believing in free will, becasue believing in free will, leads people to suppose that the criminal was fully responsible for his actions.

marcus says

You give one example of harm that comes from believing in free will, becasue believing in free will, leads people to suppose that the criminal was fully responsible for his actions.

By the way, FortWayne is a perfect example of this. How could you even doubt that some people believe that "evildoers" should suffer for their crimes? You've argued with Fort Douchebag. You know what he believes.

"Empirically false. Science works. The proof is modern life. Science got us to the moon, allowed us to create the modern world, doubled the human lifespan, made infant mortality almost unheard of.

Feigning ignorance is not humility, and it is not a virtue. One must know what one does know to learn what one does not know."

You seem to be quite bold in your confidence in your understanding of what "science" has and can accomplish. I like it but its definitely unfounded.

Nobody knows the origin of life or how it all began. Nobody knows why we hallucinate every night as we sleep. Some of these things science cannot and will never prove in a scientific manner.

Dan8267 says

How could you even doubt that some people believe that "evildoers" should suffer for their crimes?

How could you possibly think I might possibly doubt that.

Are you not capable of trying to understand what the other person is saying?

marcus says

How could you possibly think I might possibly doubt that.

marcus says

You give one example of harm that comes from believing in free will, becasue believing in free will, leads people to suppose that the criminal was fully responsible for his actions. The 2 primary ways this argument fails are:

Sure sounds like you are arguing that the believe in free will doesn't have significant bad consequences.

marcus says

Are you not capable of trying to understand what the other person is saying?

Depends on how articulate they are. My interpretation of what you said was very reasonable. If it's not what you meant, then write more clearly and to the point.

Dan8267 says

Science got us to the moon, allowed us to create the modern world, doubled the human lifespan, made infant mortality almost unheard of.

931e says

You seem to be quite bold in your confidence in your understanding of what "science" has and can accomplish. I like it but its definitely unfounded.

One of the advantages of living in the Information Age is that all of mankind's knowledge is at your fingertips including historical knowledge.

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/apollo/apollo11.html

https://www.mercatornet.com/demography/view/we-have-doubled-the-human-life-span/19067

www.youtube.com/embed/0OtFSDKrq88

Dan8267 says

Dan8267 says

Science got us to the moon, allowed us to create the modern world, doubled the human lifespan, made infant mortality almost unheard of.

931e says

You seem to be quite bold in your confidence in your understanding of what "science" has and can accomplish. I like it but its definitely unfounded.

One of the advantages of living in the Information Age is that all of mankind's knowledge is at your fingertips including historical knowledge.

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/apollo/apollo11.html

https://www.mercatornet.com/demography/view/we-have-doubled-the-human-life-sp...

What field of science was utilized to develop the big bang theory?

931e says

Nobody knows the origin of life or how it all began.

www.youtube.com/embed/PqPGOhXoprU

www.youtube.com/embed/CJ5jh33OiOA

www.youtube.com/embed/jfq5-i8xoIU

Or if you don't have the attention span to learn the details, here's the executive summary.

www.youtube.com/embed/U6QYDdgP9eg

In any case, even questions that remain unanswered do not detract from the success of science. The honest man simply says, we don't know yet, but we're working on it. Nature does not give up its secrets easily, but if you want to understand nature, science is not only the best way, it is the only way.

Dan8267 says

Depends on how articulate they are. My interpretation of what you said was very reasonable. If it's not what you meant, then write more clearly and to the point.

Really ? Not to worry, I'm not going to continue. But this was clear, and already a clarification of what should have been clear in comment 99.

marcus says

You give one example of harm that comes from believing in free will, becasue believing in free will, leads people to suppose that the criminal was fully responsible for his actions. The 2 primary ways this argument fails are:

1) This is only one example of "evil" that can be attributed to believing in free will. It's easy to come up with compelling arguments as to the moral benefits of people taking responsibility for their actions (i.e. believing that they have free will)

2) IT was wrong anyway. Because people "judging" the criminal could learn that most or sometimes even all of the reasons for the criminals behavior are not their fault, without rejecting free will in an absolute way.

Dan8267 says

The honest man simply says, we don't know yet

True.

I like the theory but its simply that... a theory. There is no replicable evidence in the hard traditional scientific sense to support the theory.

Meaning we cannot replicate the creation of the galaxxy and everything in it to provide hard evidence our calculations are correct.

I find it perplexing that we can feel so confident of a theory that is based on an occurrence that took place over 5 billion years ago and billions of miles away. Yet somehow we cannot solve health complications that take place within our own bodies.

Billions of dollars in research & 100s of thousands of the brightest scientists trying to crack cancer but we see similar results to the 1980s still today.

When I look at the whole picture I just feel conpletely silly believing the big bang theory wholeheartedly based on our inability to effectively solve problems much closer to home.

Dan8267 says

Dan8267 says

Science got us to the moon, allowed us to create the modern world, doubled the human lifespan, made infant mortality almost unheard of.

931e says

You seem to be quite bold in your confidence in your understanding of what "science" has and can accomplish. I like it but its definitely unfounded.

One of the advantages of living in the Information Age is that all of mankind's knowledge is at your fingertips including historical knowledge.

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/apollo/apollo11.html

https://www.mercatornet.com/demography/view/we-have-doubled-the-human-life-span/19067...

What field of study developed the big bang theory?

931e says

What field of science was utilized to develop the big bang theory?

Several, most prominently astronomy. What does that have to do with this discussion? And why are you asking me? Do I look like Google?

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Big_Bang#Origin_of_the_Big_Bang_model

The basis of the Big Bang premise, that the universe had a beginning, was speculated upon for hundreds of years with early astronomers, such as Johannes Kepler, arguing the universe was finite in age. Edgar Allen Poe in 1848 wrote that the Universe was cyclic in nature, expanding and contracting from a single primordial state.[5] Poe also believed that time and space were one, nearly 100 years before Albert Einstein would prove it so. In 1927 Belgian physicist and Catholic priest Georges Lemaître proposed an expanding model of the universe to explain the observed redshifts of spiral nebulae with Edwin Hubble providing the observational evidence of redshifting galaxies in 1929. Einstein, having deliberately implied that there was a Big Bang in his theory of general relativity, proved that the mathematical evidence pointed towards a starting point of time and space. It was Georges Lemaître who was intelligent enough to notice Einstein's implication, and so it was Lemaître who had officially announced the Big Bang model. At the time, however, it was not called "the Big Bang". Lemaître called it his fireworks theory because he envisioned an explosive beginning. The term "Big Bang" did not come about until years later, when it was coined by Fred Hoyle, who was a proponent of the steady state model and used the term "Big Bang," alleged to be in a derogatory sense.

Dan8267 says

931e says

What field of science was utilized to develop the big bang theory?

Several, most prominently astronomy. What does that have to do with this discussion? And why are you asking me? Do I look like Google?

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Big_Bang#Origin_of_the_Big_Bang_model

The basis of the Big Bang premise, that the universe had a beginning, was speculated upon for hundreds of years with early astronomers, such as Johannes Kepler, arguing the universe was finite in age. Edgar Allen Poe in 1848 wrote that the Universe was cyclic in nature, expanding and contracting from a single primordial state.[5] Poe also believed that time and space were one, nearly 100 years before Albert Einstein would prove it so. In 1927 Belgian physicist and Catholic priest Georges...

You eat it up pretty good... hook, line, AND sinker

9dc9 says

You eat it up pretty good... hook, line, AND sinker

Honey, if you think you are successfully trolling, you are even more pathetic than you already look. You have upset no one and accomplished nothing. However, if it is your intent to disrupt this thread, then permaban bitch.

Dan8267 says

9dc9 says

You eat it up pretty good... hook, line, AND sinker

Honey, if you think you are successfully trolling, you are even more pathetic than you already look. You have upset no one and accomplished nothing. However, if it is your intent to disrupt this thread, then permaban bitch.

Not trolling... just stating that it sure seems like you believe everything published by mainstream science.

That seems like a limited but common perpsective. No need to get emotional with the name calling buddy ;)

Registering an new account after being banned is trolling. @Patrick, you need to bring back delete for trolling.

Oh, and troll, you still have failed to invoke emotion other than pity.

Dan8267 says

The age old concept of free will is incorrect. People believe in it because they are evolved to believe in agents of will and to attribute morality to will. That doesn't mean the actual universe has ever implemented free will. It hasn't.

Again your empty claim that you know exactly what people mean.
But it is an incontrovertible fact that people make choices about what to do and therefore have agency in this world.
As far as morality: given that they make choices based on parameters like "how much attention should I pay to other people", "How ok is it to make other people suffer", and given that they can change these parameters, we are socially totally justified to assign blame to people who set these parameters to the wrong values.

Dan8267 says

Dan8267 says

Do amebas? If so, then show me the distinction between viruses, which you say don't, and amebas which you say do.

If not, then do earthworms? If so, then show me the distinction between amebas, which you say don't, and earthworms which you say do.

If not, then do flies? If so, then show me the distinction between earthworms, which you say don't, and flies which you say do.

If not, then do lizards? If so, then show me the distinction between flies, which you say don't, and lizards which you say do.

If not, then do dogs? If so, then show me the distinction between lizards, which you say don't, and dogs which you say do.

If not, then do monkeys? If so, then show me the distinction between dogs, which you say don't, and monkeys which you say do.

If not, then do chimps? If so, then show me the distinction between monkeys, ...

I can totally answer these questions: the ability to make a choice (repeating for the 15th time for Dan) requires to hold a sufficiently powerful knowledge representation of the world and how it works, so as to project alternatives, pick one and execute it.

Amebas do not have a nervous system, so they are excluded.
Worms and flies probably do not have a good representation of the world including alternatives. They are mostly reacting to stimuli.
Lizards have probably a very simply representation that offer them some limited choices, so have a limited amount of freewill.
All other animals you mentioned have freewill in, probably to various degrees.

Volcanoes definitively do NOT have free will according to my definition.
Computers can have it.
Humans definitively DO have it, according to my definition.

Dan8267 says

You are making the argument that somehow decision making by neural networks is materially different than that made by digital gates, gears, genetic code, plate tectonics, thermodynamics, or electrodynamics. That seems damn magical.

Magical to you because you are unable to acknowledge the simple difference between a machine that makes a choice and a machine that doesn't.
It's a simple enough difference of function. A shovel doesn't make a choice. A chess program makes choices about what move to make.

A machine that constantly makes choices about what to do in the world around it has freewill (my def).

Heraclitusstudent says

Amebas do not have a nervous system, so they are excluded.

Computers don't have a nervous system, and you said they can have free will. This contradicts the above statement.

Heraclitusstudent says

Lizards have probably a very simply representation that offer them some limited choices, so have a limited amount of freewill.

Oh, so now free will is free-ish will. That's clearly not what all people talking about free will for thousands of years meant.

I think you are confusing the concept of free will with the concept of consciousness. They are very different things. Consciousness can be throttled. Nature allows that. Nature doesn't allow for free will as doing so requires breaking causality.

All you are really trying to argue is that we should stop calling free will by that name and instead call conscious decision making free will. Again, this is disingenuous. I have no problem that conscious decision making engines use their world-view in their decision making. That has nothing to do with the subject of free will. Get another term for that.

[stupid comment limit]

Heraclitusstudent says

Magical to you because you are unable to acknowledge the simple difference between a machine that makes a choice and a machine that doesn't.

It's a simple enough difference of function. A shovel doesn't make a choice. A chess program makes choices about what move to make.

A chess program's choices are still deterministic. It has no more ability to deviate from pre-ordained results than a shovel has. A chess program is following instructions that are literally executed by digital circuitry, which does not have free will, and the atoms in those circuits are obeying the exact same laws of electrodynamics as the shovel. The chess program's decision to move the queen when the heuristic of state B has a greater value than it does with state A is every bit as mechanical as the shovel's decision to crack when the force applied by the resistance of snow is greater than the electric force holding the atoms of iron or plastic together. It is literally the exact same force at work and the exact same laws of nature.

A computer is a very sophisticated object, but it ultimately is blindly following the laws of physics no different from a shovel or a human.

Heraclitusstudent says

A machine that constantly makes choices about what to do in the world around it has freewill (my def).

I don't care what you're definition is. If you define free will as a smelly asshole, lots of people and animals have free will. That does not change the fact that the concept people have talked about for the past few thousand years using the term free will is inherently flawed. This thread is about that concept, not about the term free will. If you want to repurpose the term to refer to something completely different, open another thread. I'm not going to argue arbitrary nomenclature with you. It's the concept that is important, not what arbitrary series of letters you use to name it.

Dan8267 says

Artificial Intelligence

Indeed. I guess the atheists finally got bored, without any resolution.

Dan8267 says

Computers don't have a nervous system, and you said they can have free will. This contradicts the above statement.

Absence of nervous system in Amebas => no choice for Amebas.
The same is not true in a computer for obvious reasons.
This is the kind of silly answer you get all the time from Dan. Not addressing anything that is argued, but trying to force his way throwing massive amounts of BS in all direction.

Dan8267 says

Oh, so now free will is free-ish will.

Dan has some limited amount of intelligence. It doesn't mean that intelligence is not a well understood concept. It just mean there are border cases.

Dan8267 says

I think you are confusing the concept of free will with the concept of consciousness.

No I'm not. I defined it clearly, and everything I said is related to this definition.
There is a link with consciousness which I'm not going to debate with you. I don't have that much time.

Dan8267 says

Heraclitusstudent says

This is like saying: it doesn't matter that there are high level languages and APIs, all developers should code in machine language because that's all it is eventually.

No, it's not at all like saying that. It is useful to use a high-level language because developer are more productive that way.

Using a high level language is more productive for a simple reason: some concepts are more easily understood on a higher layer. i.e. the layer matters.

Let's take an other example: you would expect arithmetic to be correct at the CPU level using machine language. However I could write a program that "manually" calculates sums, multiplications, divisions, manipulating only arrays of characters '0', '1', ...'9'.
This software layer in turn could have a bug that means that it would give the wrong results.
Or it could work, and have unlimited precision, compared to the limited precision of CPU arithmetic.

The point: here different layers have different characteristics. The layer you use to look at a problem matters.

Heraclitusstudent says

Dan8267 says

Computers don't have a nervous system, and you said they can have free will. This contradicts the above statement.

Absence of nervous system in Amebas => no choice for Amebas.

The same is not true in a computer for obvious reasons.

This is the kind of silly answer you get all the time from Dan. Not addressing anything that is argued, but trying to force his way throwing massive amounts of BS in all direction.

Pointing out a contradiction in another person's argument is certainly not b.s.

You argue that a nervous system is a requirement for free will, then you say something without it can have free will. This is a direct contradiction. If a nervous system isn't required for a computer to have free will, then why should it be a requirement for an amoeba to have free will?

Heraclitusstudent says

Dan8267 says

Oh, so now free will is free-ish will.

Dan has some limited amount of intelligence. It doesn't mean that intelligence is not a well understood concept. It just mean there are border cases.

A weak insult does not prove your point. Some things form a continuous spectrum and others do not. There are not degrees of pregnancy. Free will, as talked about for thousands of years, cannot be throttled. And if it could, your job of demonstrating its existence would be much, much harder. You'd have to provide a means of measuring it, or one could just assert that dogs and starfish have more free will than humans.

Heraclitusstudent says

Using a high level language is more productive for a simple reason: some concepts are more easily understood on a higher layer. i.e. the layer matters.

Once again you have entirely missed the point. You argued that a computer could have free will. I argued that the digital circuitry in the computer is essentially the same mechanism as a cell blinding following the laws of electrodynamics. Organic molecules and digital gates do what they do precisely because they are following the same laws of the electromagnetic force. So if a computer can have free will, so can a single-celled organism.

You then tried to argue that the knowledge contained in a high-level program, using chess as an example, makes free choices. However, the high-level program is not what is executed by the computer. Low-level machine language is executed by digital gates. If the chess playing program is making free choices then it is doing so with simple binary logic gates. The high-level language and the source code are not at play. They don't even have to exist on the computer running the chess program. So whatever choice is being made by the computer is being made mechanically and without the slightest deviation from blind obedience to causality as specified in the laws of nature. This is no different if you replace the binary logic gates with neurons, gears, or any other physical device.

This is the central point of my argument, and it is something you refuse to address.

Heraclitusstudent says

Let's take an other example: you would expect arithmetic to be correct at the CPU level using machine language. However I could write a program that "manually" calculates sums, multiplications, divisions, manipulating only arrays of characters '0', '1', ...'9'.

This software layer in turn could have a bug that means that it would give the wrong results.

Or it could work, and have unlimited precision, compared to the limited precision of CPU arithmetic.

The point: here different layers have different characteristics.

Your analogy is flawed for several reasons. First, any mistake in logic you make in a high-level language is simply carried out in machine language code that reflects that exact same error in logic. Second, there are no characteristics in the upper layers that aren't generated by the lower layers. Atoms aren't sentient, but collections of atoms can form a sentient system. Sure. I've said that many times. However, sentience does not violate the laws of nature. Free will does. Atoms cannot violate the laws of nature, and thus cannot be used to build systems that do.

Sentience and free will are not the same thing. One does not imply the other, and they do not have the same characteristics.

Not having ever delved deeply into this question before, other than touching on it in a college philosophy course, I have to admit I was more interested in reading the arguments philosophers and scientists have made, than in reading every back and forth between Dan and Heraclitusstudent. I won't bother making an argument at this point, based on what I found, but I will say this. Even the idea that we may not have free will is very provocative, at least to me. More so now, for whatever reason than when I thought about it long ago.

It gets me thinking (even more than I already did) about what I can do to improve the biology of my brain, by meditating, by reading more, by practicing self discipline in certain decisions in situations that I see on a regular basis, and possibly even through the use of supplements.

OF course, if I do this because of being triggered by this thread, then I guess my reading this thread was always in the cards for me, since it may make some arbitrarily small difference in who I am, and yet still impact on some future decisions. That is, if indeed we have no free will.

I will share this one which is interesting, although not addressing the question of your argument. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/06/theres-no-such-thing-as-free-will/480750/ Harris' view is is included in the piece.

If one believes this thesis (that believing we have free will is beneficial), then it's not too big a leap from there to seeing the value of seeing ourselves as having some agency, perhaps something along the lines of a soul (but not requiring it's existence to outlive us in any form we might imagine).

marcus says

I have to admit I was more interested in reading the arguments philosophers and scientists have made, than in reading every back and forth between Dan and Heraclitusstudent.

The back and forth did go on way too long for such few actual points. A lot of repeating.

However, what philosophers say on free will doesn't matter. Just because they are famous, doesn't mean they are right. I'd go with modern science over philosophical diatribes any day. And what Sam Harris and other scientists have said or published is far more convincing.

marcus says

If one believes this thesis (that believing we have free will is beneficial

I would argue that the belief in free will has done considerable harm and no good. It's used as a justification for inflicting needless suffering on others because "they deserve it".

However, even if there were a net benefit to believing in a false idea, to advocate such a belief in something you know is false is to say that people should be manipulated and that honesty is not the best policy. I would disagree with that assessment. Ultimately lies are self-defeating. Any moral foundation based on lies can be corrupted by other lies. Only moral foundations based on truth can withstand any assault.

Dan8267 says

However, what philosophers say on free will doesn't matter. Just because they are famous, doesn't mean they are right

In many cases they are making rigorous logical arguments.

Dan8267 says

Ultimately lies are self-defeating. Any moral foundation based on lies can be corrupted by other lies.

This is true, but what if it's true that believing we have agency and free will, makes it true in some way ?

Also, what if believing we have no free will is truly damaging to many people not enlightened enough to not become fatalists becasue of the belief (see Atlantic article I linked a couple comments back).

And finally, since there is in fact no way to prove there is no free will, which even Harris seems to admit (he just wants to take it as an axiom). If we don't know, then it's not a lie. I believe that the reason that both you and Sam Harris insist that it's provable (actually Harris doesn't - he invokes his meditation experiences as proof - which is ironic) that we have no free will is linked to the fact that your bias of atheism disables you from being in the most honest possible - "I don't know" camp, when it comes to certain matters. And no, I'm not invoking super natural phenomena. I'm just embracing mysteries that are not yet understood, and the "I don't know" truth that I live by, when I in fact don't know.

Dan8267 says

I'd go with modern science

Modern science still knows very little about consciousness, human intelligence or how the complex sense of self we possess occurs.

Dan8267 says

Pointing out a contradiction in another person's argument is certainly not b.s.

You argue that a nervous system is a requirement for free will...

....for an ameba. Any 4 yrs old kid can understand why a living being requires a nervous a nervous system to think while a computer doesn't.
Dan could generate enough BS to fertilize the Sinai.

Dan8267 says

Free will, as talked about for thousands of years, cannot be throttled.

An assertion without any support is not an argument. I wasn't talking of your definition obviously but mine.

Dan8267 says

Organic molecules and digital gates do what they do precisely because they are following the same laws of the electromagnetic force. So if a computer can have free will, so can a single-celled organism.

A computer can have free will because it can contain a complex representation of a given universe, including a simplistic one like a chessboard.
A single celled organism cannot.
I think this is obvious and only an idiot would need to push the point more than we have already.

marcus says

Modern science still knows very little about consciousness, human intelligence or how the complex sense of self we possess occurs.

Yet it still knows vastly more than all of philosophy and religion. So once again, you're better off with the cutting edge of science than thousands of years of philosophy and religion. At least science is on the right track.