Timeline for What is the rigorous definition of free will?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
21 events
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| Jul 12, 2023 at 12:38 | comment | added | Roger V. | @NotThatGuy I specified in my comment what I mean by random - it is what you call unpredictable. Taking again the analogy with a random signal - when you listen to a radio, you don't know what word/sentence is going to come out next, and this is why you obtain information. If you indeed knew in advance what you are going to hear, there would be no point listening - you wouldn't learn anything new from it. What you call randomness (and what is meant colloquially) is is a specific type of probability distribution - when all the options are equal and uncorrelated. | |
| Jul 12, 2023 at 12:32 | comment | added | NotThatGuy | @RogerVadim Acting randomly wouldn't match the colloquial understanding of free will, as randomness may be "free", but it isn't "will". If you're acting randomly, then you aren't acting in line with your desires and goals and reasoned thoughts. Your actions would be arbitrary. A lack of predictability may be a necessary condition of free will, but it isn't a sufficient condition. (By "random" I mean truly random: lacking any pattern, conditions or causal determination, whether known or not, whereas I'm not sure whether you mean that, or just unpredictable.) | |
| Jul 11, 2023 at 20:45 | comment | added | Roger V. | @Dcleve it is not clear what you are trying to do. But I do have expertise in physics. | |
| Jul 11, 2023 at 19:51 | comment | added | Dcleve | @RogerVadim This is just applying falsification testing to your answers. | |
| Jul 11, 2023 at 19:43 | comment | added | Roger V. | @Dcleve no, you confuse a few rather different things. | |
| Jul 11, 2023 at 18:56 | comment | added | Dcleve | @RogerVadim — that prior answer is also incorrect. It is not a computational limit that prohibits gas particulate modeling, it is that the HUP makes all gas particle interactions themselves unpredictable in principle. And the Schroedinger equation is a probability envelope. ITS determinism still does not allow a deterministic prediction of timing or vector of a decay. | |
| Jul 11, 2023 at 18:47 | comment | added | Roger V. | @Dcleve I covered QM in the answer to another question, linked above. Any randomness in chromosome behavior is covered by statistical mechanics (also discussed in the answer linked.) | |
| Jul 11, 2023 at 18:41 | comment | added | Dcleve | Our world is not deterministic. Heisenberg uncertainty prevents that. As does QM. The timing of a decay, and the vector of its products is stochiometric. The intersection of that vector with a chromosome is therefore not deterministic, nor is any cancerous consequence. Indeterminacy leverages up as a minimum to the level of organisms. | |
| Jul 11, 2023 at 14:18 | comment | added | Roger V. | @NotThatGuy great points! Free will does mean acting randomly, as opposed to acting in a predictable way (as they teach in information science - all meaningful signals are random signsls. A predictable signal carries no information.) In this sense companies or ads influencing people or predicting their behavior does not mean that they stop people from acting randomly, but only modify the probabilities. | |
| Jul 11, 2023 at 14:05 | comment | added | NotThatGuy | @RogerVadim Well, I don't think free will as a concept makes any sense to begin with. But that's probably a good question for you to answer, given your proposed definition. Also, it seems like someone acting randomly would meet your definition of free will, which probably isn't ideal. | |
| Jul 11, 2023 at 13:39 | comment | added | Roger V. | @NotThatGuy do people lose their free will when you put a gun to their head and force them to comply? Or do they choose to comply in a situation, where they do not have much of a choice anyway? | |
| Jul 11, 2023 at 13:34 | comment | added | Roger V. | @NotThatGuy regarding the physical limitations of prediction, see the answer to another question linked. Regarding the company predictions, see my answer to the comment by at_Cubic above. | |
| Jul 11, 2023 at 13:04 | comment | added | NotThatGuy | If we develop a sufficient understanding of the brain to perfectly predict your actions, would that mean you'd stop having free will, or would you never have had free will? If someone can perfectly predict your actions, but they're locked in a bunker and can't influence your decisions, would you have free will? If a company can relatively-well predict whether you'd respond to an ad and uses that to influence your behaviour, do you have free will? | |
| Jul 11, 2023 at 13:02 | comment | added | NotThatGuy | If you remove the last sentence of your answer, then it seems the natural conclusion to what you said would be that we don't possess free will. It's only there that you introduced prediction, but one might otherwise have supposed that determinism implies predictability (at least theoretically, whether we currently have the technology to predict that or not.) | |
| Jul 11, 2023 at 12:50 | comment | added | Pertti Ruismäki | @RogerVadim Yes, you are free to ignore me, but simply asking you a question forces you to decide whether to ignore me or answer. | |
| Jul 11, 2023 at 8:05 | history | edited | Roger V. | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jul 11, 2023 at 7:55 | comment | added | Roger V. | @PerttiRuismäki No, you only try to influence my decisions - but I am free to ignore you completely. | |
| Jul 11, 2023 at 7:43 | comment | added | Roger V. | @Cubic Publicity and propaganda make no way of making you make this or that decision - it always remains your own. Saying that you were influenced by propaganda is but a poor attempt to abrogate your own responsibility for your bad decisions. Likewise, predictability that you mean is only statistical. | |
| Jul 11, 2023 at 7:06 | comment | added | Cubic | Reading your idea of "free will" strictly means that free will can not exist as it contradicts observations anyone can readily make in their every day life. People are predictable and influenceable. There are entire industries that only exist because of that. | |
| Jul 11, 2023 at 6:38 | comment | added | Pertti Ruismäki | Of course anyone can influence your decisions by giving you reasons to act in a certain way. But no-one but you can actually make your decisions. Free will is free from the wills of others. | |
| Jul 11, 2023 at 5:41 | history | answered | Roger V. | CC BY-SA 4.0 |