Lets solve Free will once and for all!!

[Nimos]

@siti

I think it was us that talked about quantum mechanics?

Saw an interview between Neil deGrasse Tyson and Robert Sapolsky who don't think there is anything remotely like free will from what I understand. It's interesting to hear them speak because they come from different backgrounds, Robert is from biology. But anyway Neil ask the question about the quantum mechanics that we also talked about.

And apparently, someone has calculated that these have no effect, there is a little bit more to it, but again my quantum mechanics understanding is rather limited .
Based on a calculation of neural decoherence rates, we argue that that the degrees of freedom of the human brain that relate to cognitive processes should be thought of as a classical rather than quantum system, i.e., that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with the current classical approach to neural network simulations. We find that the decoherence timescale s ( ∼ 10 −13 − 10 −20 seconds) are typically much shorter than the relevant dynamical timescales ( ∼ 10 − 3 − 10 − 1 seconds), both for regular neuron firing and for kink-like polarization excitations in microtubules. This conclusion disagrees with suggestions by Penrose and others that the brain acts as a quantum computer, and that quantum coherence is related to consciousness in a fundamental way.

The paper is here, I don't understand any of it
The Importance of Quantum Decoherence in Brain Processes

And the interview is here if you are interested and to get a better explanation

 

[Stan77]

Sorry don't understand what you mean, to many poetic phrases, im not native English speaking, so prefer direct speech, I even suck at it in my own language

But if you can rewrite it that would be appreciated.

Come on Nimos At some point you will need the language of the heart viz. poetry. It begins where mathematics fails, you see.

 

[Nimos]

Nice video but how do you know that both do not exist? There are paradoxes throughout our world where two things seemingly incompatible exist together and both are true.

I don't know, that is why im trying to get people's view on it, to see if there are convincing arguments

There are people in favor of compatibilism, that argue that they can co-exist. There are a lot of views about all these things, it's not as clear-cut

But you can see about that one here:

And obviously, there are people that argue against that as well

 

[Nimos]

Come on Nimos At some point you will need the language of the heart viz. poetry. It begins where mathematics fails, you see.

I just don't function well with it. I like examples and clear explanations of exactly what people mean, there is no room for poetry

 

[Stan77]

I just don't function well with it

Well we will have to work on it

 

[muhammad_isa]

It isn't. But you seem to get the meaning of determinism wrong and are jumping ahead so to speak..

No .. I DO understand what is meant by "determinism"..
..and it is deeply flawed.

It all relies on our perception of what an inevitable future means.
..and it doesn't mean what determinists think it means .. they think it implies we "have no choice",
but that is wrong.

ANY predefined mechanism you can describe, does not imply that we no longer make choices, and cars are all crashing on the highway.

 

[Nimos]

No .. I DO understand what is meant by "determinism"..
..and it is deeply flawed.

It all relies on our perception of what an inevitable future means.
..and it doesn't mean what determinists think it means .. they think it implies we "have no choice",
but that is wrong.

ANY predefined mechanism you can describe, does not imply that we no longer make choices, and cars are all crashing on the highway.

So how do you arrive at a choice?

Let's say chocolate vs vanilla ice cream, first of all, why did you choose the flavor you did? And secondly, how did your perception of the inevitable future help make that choice?

 

[bobhikes]

The time has come to settle whether we have free will or not

So had a somewhat interesting talk with ChatGPT about this, but can't help but feel that it has some restrictions or fallback safety mechanisms that limit it in regards to saying what is actually on its "mind". So thought I would raise the discussion here instead with my human brethren

There are several questions here:

1. Where does free will come from?
2. Do we have it?

Definition:
the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate; the ability to act at one's own discretion.

Let's assume we have free will or at least limited, given that we are bound by certain biological constraints, such as eating, sleeping etc. Let's go back in time and ask the question when did free will cease to exist?

Let's assume that it did somewhere with early humans, then the question is where did they get it from?
To me free will seems like a binary condition, either you have it, or you don't (ignoring biological constraints). The reason for this is that if we go back 10.000 years, I don't think humans back then had less free will than we do and the same if we go forward 10.000 years, humans in the future don't have more than we do.
How we can make use of our free will seems only limited by our knowledge. We can't travel to distant stars, because we lack the ability or understanding of how to do this, yet we are aware of the concept. Early humans probably weren't aware of such things, but I don't think that restricts their free will, their concepts of things they thought about were simply different than ours.

It seems strange to me how free will could evolve without also making an argument that early humans somehow only had part free will, which seems extremely weird to me. Im not even sure what an example of part-free will would be like.

To me, there are three options at least that I can come up with:

1. We don't have free will, it is merely an illusion
2. It spontaneously came into existence
3. Our definition of free will is incorrect.

If anyone else has other options I would be interested in hearing them?

One of the arguments for how we have free will is that we can still act upon our desires and intentions, yet if the Universe is determined by physical laws, particles, atoms whatever, and these make up everything like how planets form, how the Universe function, then it seems rather unlikely that human desires and intentions isn't also govern by these as we are also part of it. At least an argument for why these are beyond or not influenced by the very same rules that everything else seems to be would be interesting to hear.

That free will spontaneously came into existence seems very unlikely to me.

Could it be, that the human brain simply evolved far enough for us to be able to comprehend the illusion of free will? Said in another way, we reached the point of the brain being able to fool itself?

(Im not interested in hearing that God did it. He could do anything am interested in people who want to offer naturalistic suggestions or views)

Especially where do you think free will came from?

Are there ways you could see free will evolve? And could that potentially mean that humans in the future have more or less free will than we do?

We have conditional will, all life must have it. Unlike a computer or machine that fails in a new environment are functions never shutdown.

Say your a fish and your hungry but you see a predator right by your feeding ground how long do you wait or do you go in another unknown direction. Life has to many variables not to have limited choice if it wants to survive. Even plants roots don't make straight lines

How it works is life can adjust the thresholds to make a decision or it can wait until variables change to make a new decision. Time is created by life and doesn't exist without it.

Time creates the first option of choice and levels of pain and happiness creates the second option through thresholds.

 

[Bear Wild]

I don't know, that is why im trying to get people's view on it, to see if there are convincing arguments

There are people in favor of compatibilism, that argue that they can co-exist. There are a lot of views about all these things, it's not as clear-cut

But you can see about that one here:

And obviously, there are people that argue against that as well

I watched both videos you presented. The one in this post is good and at least he sited Patricia Churchland who I feel is more compatible to my worldview. But first on the discussion presented by Sapolsky. HE did amazing research with baboons and wrote an amazing book called behave but I do not agree with him one free will nor his views on spirituality. First he considers someone like my to be schizotypal meaning i have mental disorder that can perpetuates the risk of schizophrenia in a population because I have had mystic experiences. This is pathologizing what he does not like to demean others he disagrees with. He is anti-religion without recognizing he is perpetuating his religion but cant see it in himself. but that is ok because he has no free will. His evidence is everything that happens is evidence so to claim free will you have to prove on a neuron basis that something happens that is spontaneous and not connected to other neurons. Thus one cannot argue with him since everything supports his view.

So how can a decision occur that was not written from the very beginning of the big bang. Kevin Mitchell give a different argument from the scientific point of view in his book free agents how evolution gave us free will. Oh no two scientists with different opinions? Is the world going to come to an end? How to reconcile this.

First the myth of Oedipus and myths of the Vikings do play a role but it is not evident unless you understand the context of the myths and not the individual myths isolated. They both tell us that most of our lives are determined by the fates or by the Norns or from the deterministic most of our decisions are made for us from our internal and external environments. I cant explain fully Oedipus right now but in the case of the Norns the exception is you can choose the way you die. Thus there is still a small but real aspect of free choice at least in the myths.

As for humans our unconscious brain runs almost everything we do with the conscious brain being aware of what we do and making adjustments. There is science to support this but the mistake is to believe that the unconscious brain does not have free choice. The unconscious brain is very aware of everything it is just that our conscious brain which is limited. So yes when it comes for a decision to be made there are multiple things leading up to the point of the decision that have already occurred. What I argue however is at the point of decision their are multiple things merging including our conscious and unconscious awareness as well as genetics, environment and physiologic states. At that point a decision is maid integrating all of this which is the action of the individual and not from something outside of the individual. We are both imbedded and yet autonomous at the same time and thus have a degree although limited of free will.

 

[Nimos]

We have conditional will, all life must have it. Unlike a computer or machine that fails in a new environment are functions never shutdown.

Say your a fish and your hungry but you see a predator right by your feeding ground how long do you wait or do you go in another unknown direction. Life has to many variables not to have limited choice if it wants to survive. Even plants roots don't make straight lines

How it works is life can adjust the thresholds to make a decision or it can wait until variables change to make a new decision. Time is created by life and doesn't exist without it.

Time creates the first option of choice and levels of pain and happiness creates the second option through thresholds.

I think what you are referring to are instincts.

an innate, typically fixed pattern of behaviour in animals in response to certain stimuli.

As long as the fish isn't aware of the predator my guess is that it will go for the food if it is hungry. They instinctively flee the moment they are aware of the predator going for them.

Think wildebeest:

They are big and many, the moment a lion turns up they all run, despite they could easily overpower the lions. In order to have a conditional will, you still need to be able to think rationally and weigh options against each other. If the wildebeest "worked" together they could get the 100 strongest ones and just trample the lions.

 

[Bear Wild]

Im saying that i don't think the hamster (crab) is able to do it, I don't think it has the brain capacity to do it. Rather it is guided by its instincts. I don't think it understands the idea behind a choice or the consequence of choosing one thing over another. I don't think these connections are made in the brain in the same way as with humans.

Said in another way, animals without this capacity are following patterns (instincts).

How do you know that a hamster or crab or fox are purely instinctual?

 

[Stan77]

How do you know that a hamster or crab or fox are purely instinctual?

Once upon a time i happened to cross paths with a bear in the wild. I tried to pacify her with all my charms but she still growled and chased me.

 

[bobhikes]

I think what you are referring to are instincts.

an innate, typically fixed pattern of behaviour in animals in response to certain stimuli.

As long as the fish isn't aware of the predator my guess is that it will go for the food if it is hungry. They instinctively flee the moment they are aware of the predator going for them.

Think wildebeest:

They are big and many, the moment a lion turns up they all run, despite they could easily overpower the lions. In order to have a conditional will, you still need to be able to think rationally and weigh options against each other. If the wildebeest "worked" together they could get the 100 strongest ones and just trample the lions.

Not at all, it is the sensors all life has to navigate their environment this is done by pain to pleasure in humans but to live you have to sense the environment. The simple amoeba needs to determine environmental changes like heat, hunger, and other environmental qualities. If it is hot it will get a sensation, if it is cold it will get a different sensation. Instinct interprets the sensation and creates its action but the variable is when is it to hot and when is it to cold. This is where the amoeba has the ability to either wait and see if the temperature changes or set the threshold for when to act.

 

[Bear Wild]

Once upon a time i happened to cross paths with a bear in the wild. I tried to pacify her with all my charms but she still growled and chased me.

Well you never know with bears. They seem to have a free will of their own no matter how charming or gracious we are to them. I love bears but definitely keep a distance.

 

[Stan77]

Well you never know with bears. They seem to have a free will of their own no matter how charming or gracious we are to them. I love bears but definitely keep a distance.

Tell you what, now i am not sure if it was bear or a fox.

 

[Bear Wild]

I think what you are referring to are instincts.

an innate, typically fixed pattern of behaviour in animals in response to certain stimuli.

As long as the fish isn't aware of the predator my guess is that it will go for the food if it is hungry. They instinctively flee the moment they are aware of the predator going for them.

Think wildebeest:
View attachment 89909
They are big and many, the moment a lion turns up they all run, despite they could easily overpower the lions. In order to have a conditional will, you still need to be able to think rationally and weigh options against each other. If the wildebeest "worked" together they could get the 100 strongest ones and just trample the lions.

Both fish and wildebeest have behaviors well beyond the innate. Just because we do not want to recognize them does not exclude their existence.

 

[muhammad_isa]

Let's say chocolate vs vanilla ice cream, first of all, why did you choose the flavor you did?

..it doesn't matter. It could be because I felt like chocolate, and I felt like it because I'd been hyponotized
or whatever.
The fact is, that I CHOSE it !

And secondly, how did your perception of the inevitable future help make that choice?

Huh?
I think you misunderstand me.

It is our perception of a "fixed future", which the determinists claim takes away our power to choose, that is flawed.
It simply does NOT, even though it appears to .. THAT is the "illusion" .. our flawed conclusion due
to perception of the passing of time.

 

[siti]

Complexity shouldn't affect whether something is determined or not as I see it. I think you could compare it to a computer, there is a lot going on under the hood and at first glance looking at all the numbers and we didn't know better, it would look like "chaos" or random things going on. Yet it is following very strict rules that we gave it, it is simply too complex for us to understand at that level. So even though it looks extremely complex and we can't understand it at that level, we have means of knowing exactly what it does. And if the Universe also follows strict rules, I don't really see a huge difference,

All that makes sense to me...

except we weren't the "creators" and we currently don't have a very good interface to understand it.

...unless we ARE the interface for understanding it???!!! (He said in a wild speculative tone).

But couldn't the example with the computer work here as well? or we could look at something like the weather, even though we can predict it to some degree, we still struggle a lot with it. But if you go back 200 years it was a lot more difficult. But the weather follows natural laws and they are complex, but if we multiply that complexity by a lot, why wouldn't we get the Universe?

I think (I actually do think sometimes) its because to get the universe, or even the weather for that matter, with great precision requires that we know the initial conditions with impossible precision...this is the well-know butterfly effect...chaos theory and all that...

But you are right in saying that knowing and being (as it were) are not the same...just because we don't know something doesn't mean that that is not how it is.....

But (again)...my hunch is that it is not just knowing that cannot be sufficiently precise, perhaps even the "setting" of the initial conditions was not that precise either...e.g. as far as I know, it is impossible - even in principle - to predict exactly when a single atom of a radioactive element will decay...that is the kind of thing I meant by "quantum indeterminacy" earlier...the half life is a bulk property and works when there are lots of atoms...but also in principle, a single atom decaying unpredictability could initiate a chain reaction that was itself entirely unpredictable...and a chain reaction could, I presume, knock the bit of the universe where it happens "off the rails" and change the course of the evolution of the universe thereafter...I'm probably not heading in a useful direction with this...but I'm keeping it in, because I am fairly sure its right...

Regarding free will, does it matter? If we have free will we can still make choices, but they are with limited information, meaning that we are more likely to make incorrect ones. But if we don't have free will, then we simply act according to the available information and given they are too complex for our brain to understand we get things wrong, but as we get better and better information we simply reduce the amount of errors we make, but we are still acting upon the same available information. Because I completely agree that how we think about things affects the future state of the brain, that seems rather logical to me.

So the question comes down to two things I think

1. Are "quantum effects" (a) really implicated in consciousness and (b) really indeterminate? I think we might get an answer to this in time.

2. Are we genuinely able to change them with genuinely purposeful deliberateness? Because even if the answers to 1 are all positive, we could still be conscious automatons simply responding as nature requires whenever we make a "choice".

I agree

If we someday reach the conclusion that we have no free will at all, then all morality goes out the window and the most rational way of dealing with human issues, might be to find a way to scan humans before birth and get rid of them, either through forced abortion or DNA manipulation. At least that would reduce the amount of moral issues

I'm not sure that all morality goes out with free will - maybe morality will simply become whatever is the most rational way of dealing with human issues...for us that's a scary thought - but 'dog eat dog' works pretty well for lots of animals that don't seem to be troubled by 'morality'...not saying we should revert, but maybe we could find a way forward that leaves both animalistic behavior and irrational moral strictures behind us, regardless of whether we truly have free will or not.

Maybe that is what humans will do in the far future


Yeah, that is a huge question. Do we simply lack better measuring tools or do we eventually reach a level where there will always be fluctuations that simply can't be measured and therefore not predicted?

Exactly - are the fundamental limits of precision limiting what can be known, or delimiting what can be? I'm guessing its probably both (but at different levels).

 

[Nimos]

How do you know that a hamster or crab or fox are purely instinctual?

I don't think they are purely instinctive, but to say they have a free will equal to that of humans I think would be incorrect. I think animals or at least some of them are curious which, I think could be a good candidate for the requirement to develop what we call free will. But animals simply haven't evolved the brain capacity for it.

But again, if we assume that free will evolved, then it must have done so gradually. And if we compare humans to animals like a cat or dog, we are both curious about new things. So let's assume that our early ancestor's brains were slightly above that of a cat or dog, which means that we as them would react to things in our environment we were curious about, which led to wanting to explore, but also it requires to make a choice should you go investigate it? or not? And at this early stage, it might not have been much more complex than that of a cat, but given our brain, we simply approach these things differently we examine and see connections between things differently than animals, so maybe over lots of time and as the brain got smarter and smarter, we got better at understanding and learning about these things we are curious about, whereas cats and dogs brains never managed to evolve, beyond simply being curious. Obviously, just guessing I simply don't buy that free will, if it exists, just popped into existence.

Besides that as far as I know there is a wide consensus between scholars that animals do not have free will.

 

[Nimos]

Not at all, it is the sensors all life has to navigate their environment this is done by pain to pleasure in humans but to live you have to sense the environment. The simple amoeba needs to determine environmental changes like heat, hunger, and other environmental qualities. If it is hot it will get a sensation, if it is cold it will get a different sensation. Instinct interprets the sensation and creates its action but the variable is when is it to hot and when is it to cold. This is where the amoeba has the ability to either wait and see if the temperature changes or set the threshold for when to act.

I don't think that is entirely true.

I do agree that all lifeforms react to the environment, but where humans can do things that go against "common sense", I don't think animals do this unless they are trained to do it over a long period of time, but then that is more of a behavioral change in them rather than them making a conscious decision, they are doing it because they get a reward. At least from what I know, if you look at police dogs, they are constantly given a reward whenever they do something that they were trained for, I don't think the dog has any clue why on Earth it is doing it.

Humans and all other animals fear fire, yet we can also deal with it, we evaluate the situation and then act accordingly. Animals just panic and run away.

So my guess is that the amoeba doesn't wait to see if the temperature changes, it reacts and does what it does because its sensory system tells it that it is in an unpleasant environment. I don't even think it understands the concept of temperature, but it can sense that it is different just like we can. But again, I don't think even the cat thinks that way, that it wants to go into the sun for longer periods of time if it feels uncomfortable in it, unless there is something else drawing/forcing it. Maybe it saw a mouse, or there is a fire near it or a loud sound that scares it.