What is free will?

[Jarhyn]

You remain confused over the distinctions between will and function, rationality and free will.

No, I have been very clear, concise, and precise about what I mean when I distinguish the definitions of "Free" and "will" in these discussions.

I have given you my operational definitions multiple times.

You are the one who appears confused over them, between your frequent vacillations over whether "will" exists in the system at all.

I have pointed at concrete situations where, operating with my definitions which do not create in any situation I have presented any contradictions or nonsensical statements, situations where one may observe that there is a will, and where they may observe the real freedom value of the will.

The brain operates according to its physical makeup, which is not chosen, not will

And then you make an unfounded assertion again.

I've told you what I mean by "free" and "will" and if you're going to attempt to talk to me about "free will" you're going to either damn well use that definition or you're not going to be talking to me but masturbating in your own face in front of the mirror PRETENDING you are talking to me.

You don't will your genetic makeup, neural architecture or electrochemical activity.

Assertion fallacies all of them.

If I will to go out to a "spreader event", I will my genetic makeup will incorporate COVID 19. If I will to train myself to react a particular way under stress I will my neural architecture. If I watch a movie, I will my electrochemical activity to be altered.

That will doesn't have the right regulative control to support a claim for free will

Not-even-wrong assertion fallacy.

Again, wills are not made free by the agent. Wills are made not-free by the state of reality.

You pick a will. Your will is "to see". You are blind. Your will is not free.

You pick a will. Your will is to have naturally blond hair. You have brown hair. You lack access to crisper, the knowledge of how to apply it to get your hair follicles to change behavior, the money to access it. Your will to change that part of your DNA is not free.

Someone has a will that is not "picked" yet, but which they are reading over inside their head. The will says "do this and kill people!" The knowledge they have says "if I kill people, I have an opportunity cost: doing so shall make a number of other wills definitely unfree" this they decide that they will not attempt it and thus the will is unfree.

I guess this is what is meant by "free won't" in previous parts of the conversation. It's impossible to make a will be free as freedom is a product of causal necessity at time(result), but it is absolutely possible for the agent to have another will, that happens to be free, to make some other will "certainly unfree"

Woot. Understood that position well enough to GROK it!

Anyway...

All of this has been explained, experiments, case studies, expert analysis, etc, provided, yet your comments suggest that you haven't understood a word.

Shiny Mirror on the wall...

As has been stated, nobody here is accepting your libertarian free will definitions so either you start discussing with the definitions we do accept or you are just masturbating into your own face and pretending to have a conversation

 

[The AntiChris]

Perhaps you can have a go at answering the question? Can a determined action be freely willed? Yes or no?

Sneaky!

You've asked [virtually] the same question 5 times so far.

On those previous 5 occasions you asked if a "determined action is freely willed". Which, given a compatibilist understanding of free will, cannot be answered without additional information (explained on every occasion).

Now, on the 6th time of asking, you've subtly changed the question to "can a determined action be freely willed". The answer, given a compatibilist understanding of free will, is of course "YES!". (if you hadn't noticed, that's the whole point of compatibilism!)

Is this what you were intending to ask on the 5 previous occasions? If not, why the change of tack?

If yes, how is it freely willed? How does it work?

Well if it wasn't established before, this now makes it crystal clear that you really don't understand compatibilism (or you're being deliberately disingenuous).

Did you really not understand Marvin's careful and meticulous explanation of compatibilism? Have you learnt nothing from many years of criticizing compatibilism?

Or are you just playing games?

 

[Jarhyn]

Perhaps you can have a go at answering the question? Can a determined action be freely willed? Yes or no?

Sneaky!

You've asked [virtually] the same question 5 times so far.

On those previous 5 occasions you asked if a "determined action is freely willed". Which, given a compatibilist understanding of free will, cannot be answered without additional information (explained on every occasion).

Now, on the 6th time of asking, you've subtly changed the question to "can a determined action be freely willed". The answer, given a compatibilist understanding of free will, is of course "YES!". (if you hadn't noticed, that's the whole point of compatibilism!)

Is this what you were intending to ask on the 5 previous occasions? If not, why the change of tack?

If yes, how is it freely willed? How does it work?

Well if it wasn't established before, this now makes it crystal clear that you really don't understand compatibilism (or you're being deliberately disingenuous).

Did you really not understand Marvin's careful and meticulous explanation of compatibilism? Have you learnt nothing from many years of criticizing compatibilism?

Or are you just playing games?

This is quite frankly a brilliant analysis.

I would add, I also point this out and rather frequently. He generally ignores it when I do and doesn't even bother to quote it. He has left this completely unaddressed, in fact, to the point I call it a "not-even-wrong". It's shaped like a question, but it doesn't actually parse sensibly.

It fails a modal logic test within the definitions offered.

How is it "freely willed"? It's NOT "freely willed". It is merely "willed". Putting "freely" after "is" implies the willing makes it free.

Thus, it is not a valid construction in compatibilism. The action of all other causal necessity which intersect the effects of the will EITHER make it "free" with respect to it's requirements or "not free".

The information you mention that is required is, again, "does the causal necessity of the system indicate that the requirement of the will SHALL be met?"

Then you can say, trivially, it is freely willed because it was willed and that will is free.

If you include details of why and what causal linkages, you can show the entire causal graph and say "it was freely willed because it was willed, it's requirements were (set of nerves activated in one of some set of affirmative patterns so as to cancel the existence of this other pattern(a) here while switching this pattern(s) in this/these way(s)), and (these events) caused (all that) as a result of..."

You get all this modal logic out of it, and the ability to sensibly understand what the neurons are doing and why.

Other times, what the "whole person" is doing and why.

Other times it lets you understand what the transistors are doing and why.

Other times it lets you understand what the dwarf objects are doing and why.

And in every situation here, being good at doing it makes your frontal lobe better at forming effective plans.

 

[fromderinside]

Perhaps you can have a go at answering the question? Can a determined action be freely willed? Yes or no?

Sneaky!

You've asked [virtually] the same question 5 times so far.

On those previous 5 occasions you asked if a "determined action is freely willed". Which, given a compatibilist understanding of free will, cannot be answered without additional information (explained on every occasion).

Now, on the 6th time of asking, you've subtly changed the question to "can a determined action be freely willed". The answer, given a compatibilist understanding of free will, is of course "YES!". (if you hadn't noticed, that's the whole point of compatibilism!)

Is this what you were intending to ask on the 5 previous occasions? If not, why the change of tack?

If yes, how is it freely willed? How does it work?

Well if it wasn't established before, this now makes it crystal clear that you really don't understand compatibilism (or you're being deliberately disingenuous).

Did you really not understand Marvin's careful and meticulous explanation of compatibilism? Have you learnt nothing from many years of criticizing compatibilism?

Or are you just playing games?

This is quite frankly a brilliant analysis.

I would add, I also point this out and rather frequently. He generally ignores it when I do and doesn't even bother to quote it. He has left this completely unaddressed, in fact, to the point I call it a "not-even-wrong". It's shaped like a question, but it doesn't actually parse sensibly.

It fails a modal logic test within the definitions offered.

How is it "freely willed"? It's NOT "freely willed". It is merely "willed". Putting "freely" after "is" implies the willing makes it free.

Thus, it is not a valid construction in compatibilism. The action of all other causal necessity which intersect the effects of the will EITHER make it "free" with respect to it's requirements or "not free".

The information you mention that is required is, again, "does the causal necessity of the system indicate that the requirement of the will SHALL be met?"

Then you can say, trivially, it is freely willed because it was willed and that will is free.

If you include details of why and what causal linkages, you can show the entire causal graph and say "it was freely willed because it was willed, it's requirements were (set of nerves activated in one of some set of affirmative patterns so as to cancel the existence of this other pattern(a) here while switching this pattern(s) in this/these way(s)), and (these events) caused (all that) as a result of..."

You get all this modal logic out of it, and the ability to sensibly understand what the neurons are doing and why.

Other times, what the "whole person" is doing and why.

Other times it lets you understand what the transistors are doing and why.

Other times it lets you understand what the dwarf objects are doing and why.

And in every situation here, being good at doing it makes your frontal lobe better at forming effective plans.

So what the branch does is determined by the mathematics used. That doesn't make sense. What you are said is the measurement determines the outcome.

If you don't believe this watch this Sabine Hossenfelder presentation of super-determinism.



Why not presume what you find is determined by the how you measure it.

Superdeterminism is presently the only known consistent description of nature that is local, deterministic, and can give rise to the observed correlations of quantum mechanics. I here want to explain what makes this approach promising and offer the reader some advice for how to avoid common pitfalls. In particular, I explain why superdeterminism is not a threat to science, is not necessarily finetuned, what the relevance of future input is, and what the open problems are.

 Superdeterminism


Er, bye bye free will. It's irrelevant

 

[Jarhyn]

What you are said is the measurement determines the outcome

Reading comprehension failure. Measurement doesn't determine outcome, outcome determines measurement.

"does the causal necessity of the system indicate that the requirement of the will SHALL be met?"

That is what is being measured. The system is being observed, and some fact about it recorded and compared to some description of the requirement's state (satisfied/not).

It is not determined by how you measure it, it is determined by whether the system satisfied it's extant requirement or not. This is a momentary universal binary.

There is an absolute, bounded set of situations that CAN "satisfy" the requirement for any given requirement. This means that none of it "depends on how it is measured" because the requirement itself is a concrete element with a concrete list of "satisfying conditions" created by the structure of the system.

It is not "subjective" that which satisfies whether the dwarf's will to open the door is free. It is a concrete measurement of "did the door open", the door being a concrete thing, and the door opening being a concrete thing, and the requirement itself having a concrete object shape with an absolute threshold. Note that the requirement is based on whatever physical arrangement of the dwarf and their list (both mechanical objects) get satisfied, not my "subjective" view of whether.

Again, you fail.

Also, Sabine, your reference, is a soft determinist no matter what she claims on the matter, as Pood pints out in this solid rebuttal wherein she admits we DO have a causal place in history (so, compatibilism).

Rebutting hard determinist Sabine Hossenfelder Note that hard determinism is, um, a philosophical stance.

Rebutting hard determinist Jerry Coyne

 

[DBT]

You remain confused over the distinctions between will and function, rationality and free will.

No, I have been very clear, concise, and precise about what I mean when I distinguish the definitions of "Free" and "will" in these discussions.

I have given you my operational definitions multiple times.

You are the one who appears confused over them, between your frequent vacillations over whether "will" exists in the system at all.

I have pointed at concrete situations where, operating with my definitions which do not create in any situation I have presented any contradictions or nonsensical statements, situations where one may observe that there is a will, and where they may observe the real freedom value of the will.

The brain operates according to its physical makeup, which is not chosen, not will

And then you make an unfounded assertion again.

I've told you what I mean by "free" and "will" and if you're going to attempt to talk to me about "free will" you're going to either damn well use that definition or you're not going to be talking to me but masturbating in your own face in front of the mirror PRETENDING you are talking to me.

You don't will your genetic makeup, neural architecture or electrochemical activity.

Assertion fallacies all of them.

If I will to go out to a "spreader event", I will my genetic makeup will incorporate COVID 19. If I will to train myself to react a particular way under stress I will my neural architecture. If I watch a movie, I will my electrochemical activity to be altered.

That will doesn't have the right regulative control to support a claim for free will

Not-even-wrong assertion fallacy.

Again, wills are not made free by the agent. Wills are made not-free by the state of reality.

You pick a will. Your will is "to see". You are blind. Your will is not free.

You pick a will. Your will is to have naturally blond hair. You have brown hair. You lack access to crisper, the knowledge of how to apply it to get your hair follicles to change behavior, the money to access it. Your will to change that part of your DNA is not free.

Someone has a will that is not "picked" yet, but which they are reading over inside their head. The will says "do this and kill people!" The knowledge they have says "if I kill people, I have an opportunity cost: doing so shall make a number of other wills definitely unfree" this they decide that they will not attempt it and thus the will is unfree.

I guess this is what is meant by "free won't" in previous parts of the conversation. It's impossible to make a will be free as freedom is a product of causal necessity at time(result), but it is absolutely possible for the agent to have another will, that happens to be free, to make some other will "certainly unfree"

Woot. Understood that position well enough to GROK it!

Anyway...

All of this has been explained, experiments, case studies, expert analysis, etc, provided, yet your comments suggest that you haven't understood a word.

Shiny Mirror on the wall...

As has been stated, nobody here is accepting your libertarian free will definitions so either you start discussing with the definitions we do accept or you are just masturbating into your own face and pretending to have a conversation

Arrogant and rude. Smoke and mirrors. Waste of time. Determined events are, by the accepted definition, fixed by initial conditions and antecedents ever after, each state determining the next, no actions being subject to wish or regulation through the 'power of will,' thereby there no claim to be made for free will. Will has no freedom within a determined system.

Goodbye any claim to free will....all that remains is a carefully crafted definition - compatibilism - which was designed to give an impression of compatibility between free will and a system that allows no freedom of will.

If will is to be deemed free, will requires agency, the ability to make a difference. An ability that will does not have within a system that fixes all actions prior to the emergence will, which is equally fixed.

These are the consequences of determinism.

 

[Jarhyn]

That wasn't addressed to you.

So? It was still fucking stupid, so I responded. Either rebut or recant. I don't care about what you have time for or not.

Maybe take the time to do the simple exercise of trying my definitions out in sentences and seeing if you can break the modal logic of them in ways that still "parse" acceptably and meaningfully.

no actions being subject to wish or regulation through the 'power of will,' thereby there no claim to be made for free will

As I keep pointing out there need be no "regulation": the dwarf arguably does not get any choice over how they choose and do not need to for their "will" to have "freedom property".

Instead of holding surety, perhaps hold doubt in your own views? I know that's hard for someone who has believed something so long, so strongly, but it's really the only way to learn, especially later in life.

Goodbye any claim to free will

And again you miss the point and show you do not understand in the least.

Freedom and will are separate, and this is not a valid construction of language, at least in the compatibilist mode.

We have claims to will, supported by "easy" observations: he has a list, it has a requirement which reality shall either converge towards or diverge from.

And so freedom is really just answering the question "well did that happen? Did the system converge or diverge?"

There is a neural surface somewhere which if presented ONE of a bounded finite SET of patterns will be "satisfied" this is a concrete, mechanical requirement no different in objective concreteness from "does the line output on the limit switch output above or below the activation energy of this other transistor?"

It just happens that making a game and predicting whether based on a model the will would diverge from requirements on the basis of other factors without having to calculate out the whole thing allows us to not pick wills that are likely to diverge, and so to not waste effort trying to satisfy some unattainable requirements.

Will requires no "ability to make a difference", it just requires to be what it is in the moment: an arbitrary list of tasks held by a turing-capable system unto a requirement.

All it requires to be free is that it SHALL have it's requirement met.

Inventing more spurious and nonsensical expectations around the use of those words is stupid and every compatibilist here rightly rejects your attempts to shoehorn unnecessary bullshit into the process.

A system contains " int value=2000000;while(cancel_token){If(value<3){break;}value--;}if (value < 3) return SUCCESS; return FAILURE; "

This will is usually free to "success" unless the thread is interrupted and terminated before (return success).

It is unarguably a will based on my definition (list of actions unto a requirement), and in any deterministic execution, you have an unarguable fact for any given entry into this will: it MUST either return success or not return success in EVERY instance. It is unambiguous, it is concrete, and it is in every instance of entry unambiguous and not subjective as to what it did.

 

[DBT]

Perhaps you can have a go at answering the question? Can a determined action be freely willed? Yes or no?

Sneaky!

You've asked [virtually] the same question 5 times so far.

I was hoping for an answer. If you recall, you kept asking your question over and over, even though I pointed out that what you asked was not a yes or no question. Mine is.

On those previous 5 occasions you asked if a "determined action is freely willed". Which, given a compatibilist understanding of free will, cannot be answered without additional information (explained on every occasion).

It's a simple question relating to the agency of will. If will has no agency, how is it free? If you say yes, the will does have agency, the question is how? How does will have agency?

So what is it, yes or no? Or, if you believe there is another option, describe that option.

Now, on the 6th time of asking, you've subtly changed the question to "can a determined action be freely willed". The answer, given a compatibilist understanding of free will, is of course "YES!". (if you hadn't noticed, that's the whole point of compatibilism!)

Is this what you were intending to ask on the 5 previous occasions? If not, why the change of tack?

The wording doesn't change what is being asked. The question is related to, as described above, the agency of will within a determined system and the implications for freedom of will if will has no agency, that will is set by antecedents and cannot make a difference to the progression of events.

If yes, how is it freely willed? How does it work?

Well if it wasn't established before, this now makes it crystal clear that you really don't understand compatibilism (or you're being deliberately disingenuous).

I am pointing out why compatibilism fails. I understand the definition perfectly well, but as a incompatibilist argue that it is not adequate to establish its proposition, that will is indeed free.

That is what you have yet to grasp; that incompatibilists for the reasons given, do not accept compatibilism.

Did you really not understand Marvin's careful and meticulous explanation of compatibilism? Have you learnt nothing from many years of criticizing compatibilism?

Or are you just playing games?

It is you playing games. The compatibilist definition is rejected by incompatibilists for the reasons that have been described over and over.....yet you still play the game of 'let's pretend he doesn't understand compatibilism'

Did you not read what was provided and explained?

 

[DBT]

That wasn't addressed to you.

So? It was still fucking stupid, so I responded. Either rebut or recant. I don't care about what you have time for or not.

Maybe take the time to do the simple exercise of trying my definitions out in sentences and seeing if you can break the modal logic of them in ways that still "parse" acceptably and meaningfully.

no actions being subject to wish or regulation through the 'power of will,' thereby there no claim to be made for free will

As I keep pointing out there need be no "regulation": the dwarf arguably does not get any choice over how they choose and do not need to for their "will" to have "freedom property".

Instead of holding surety, perhaps hold doubt in your own views? I know that's hard for someone who has believed something so long, so strongly, but it's really the only way to learn, especially later in life.

Goodbye any claim to free will

And again you miss the point and show you do not understand in the least.

Freedom and will are separate, and this is not a valid construction of language, at least in the compatibilist mode.

We have claims to will, supported by "easy" observations: he has a list, it has a requirement which reality shall either converge towards or diverge from.

And so freedom is really just answering the question "well did that happen? Did the system converge or diverge?"

There is a neural surface somewhere which if presented ONE of a bounded finite SET of patterns will be "satisfied" this is a concrete, mechanical requirement no different in objective concreteness from "does the line output on the limit switch output above or below the activation energy of this other transistor?"

It just happens that making a game and predicting whether based on a model the will would diverge from requirements on the basis of other factors without having to calculate out the whole thing allows us to not pick wills that are likely to diverge, and so to not waste effort trying to satisfy some unattainable requirements.

I don't have all night to spend repeating explanations that you are either incapable of understanding or reject out of hand...your lack of manners, cowardly insults and multiple posts are a reflection on your character and waste of your own time.

 

[Jarhyn]

I don't have all night to spend repeating explanations

Then don't. Cast some doubt on your own position for once and actually do the math we keep telling you may be done.

The Dunning Kruger exists on the other side of the table as evidenced by the fact that WE can argue over details, and no matter what we present, you just baldly assert straw men, red herrings, and not-even-wrong questions.

I was hoping for an answer. If you recall, you kept asking your question over and over, even though I pointed out that what you asked was not a yes or no question. Mine is.

As it is, pood and I both pointed out your "question" was not a valid question in the first place, on the basis of improper modality:

You will get no answer to "how is it freely willed" because that constriction implies the will makes it free. "How is it willed" is easily answered with respect to the Turing machine: this instruction is this binary pattern, that activates these transistors which then operate on the data this way, and then the result ends up here.

How CAN the will be free is answered by looking at the will: this instruction is executed following this other instruction resulting in branch A rather than branch B following an entry to the function. IF that happens THEN the will is "free". That is how the will can be free.

If will has no agency, how is it free?

And then back to the broken construction and the modal fallacy. Wills are a general class of thing that can be free and which can also be not.

Further "agents have wills". It is NOT "wills have agency".

In this case the processor is the agent. And ignoring for a moment the microcode of modern processors... Is immutable and unmodifiable. It has a singular will with NO requirements beyond "be as is" much like the rock. At the very best you can say "agents have wills".

Agents with nontrivial wills have agency. Agents without wills (with merely the natural will) just sit there like rocks, "being as is".

but as a incompatibilist argue that it is not adequate to establish its proposition

See this is your problem: your unwavering belief. I don't necessarily argue "as a compatibilist". I argue as someone who has made observations, and whose observations happen to be considered "compatibilistic". You argue specifically as "an incompatibilist".

Again no compatibilist here is so silly as to utter something as nonsensical as "will is free". It depends entirely on the will and the context of it's execution whether it is free.

This has been explained MANY times. Until you stop making this mistake there is no choice but ascertain that not only do you not understand "free" and "will" but you do not understand enough to understand that you do not understand.

It is the valley of Dunning Kruger that you are living in, I'm afraid.

 

[pood]

Perhaps you can have a go at answering the question? Can a determined action be freely willed? Yes or no?

Sneaky!

You've asked [virtually] the same question 5 times so far.

On those previous 5 occasions you asked if a "determined action is freely willed". Which, given a compatibilist understanding of free will, cannot be answered without additional information (explained on every occasion).

Now, on the 6th time of asking, you've subtly changed the question to "can a determined action be freely willed". The answer, given a compatibilist understanding of free will, is of course "YES!". (if you hadn't noticed, that's the whole point of compatibilism!)

Is this what you were intending to ask on the 5 previous occasions? If not, why the change of tack?

If yes, how is it freely willed? How does it work?

Well if it wasn't established before, this now makes it crystal clear that you really don't understand compatibilism (or you're being deliberately disingenuous).

Did you really not understand Marvin's careful and meticulous explanation of compatibilism? Have you learnt nothing from many years of criticizing compatibilism?

Or are you just playing games?

This is quite frankly a brilliant analysis.

I would add, I also point this out and rather frequently. He generally ignores it when I do and doesn't even bother to quote it. He has left this completely unaddressed, in fact, to the point I call it a "not-even-wrong". It's shaped like a question, but it doesn't actually parse sensibly.

It fails a modal logic test within the definitions offered.

How is it "freely willed"? It's NOT "freely willed". It is merely "willed". Putting "freely" after "is" implies the willing makes it free.

Thus, it is not a valid construction in compatibilism. The action of all other causal necessity which intersect the effects of the will EITHER make it "free" with respect to it's requirements or "not free".

The information you mention that is required is, again, "does the causal necessity of the system indicate that the requirement of the will SHALL be met?"

Then you can say, trivially, it is freely willed because it was willed and that will is free.

If you include details of why and what causal linkages, you can show the entire causal graph and say "it was freely willed because it was willed, it's requirements were (set of nerves activated in one of some set of affirmative patterns so as to cancel the existence of this other pattern(a) here while switching this pattern(s) in this/these way(s)), and (these events) caused (all that) as a result of..."

You get all this modal logic out of it, and the ability to sensibly understand what the neurons are doing and why.

Other times, what the "whole person" is doing and why.

Other times it lets you understand what the transistors are doing and why.

Other times it lets you understand what the dwarf objects are doing and why.

And in every situation here, being good at doing it makes your frontal lobe better at forming effective plans.

So what the branch does is determined by the mathematics used. That doesn't make sense. What you are said is the measurement determines the outcome.

If you don't believe this watch this Sabine Hossenfelder presentation of super-determinism.



Why not presume what you find is determined by the how you measure it.

Superdeterminism is presently the only known consistent description of nature that is local, deterministic, and can give rise to the observed correlations of quantum mechanics. I here want to explain what makes this approach promising and offer the reader some advice for how to avoid common pitfalls. In particular, I explain why superdeterminism is not a threat to science, is not necessarily finetuned, what the relevance of future input is, and what the open problems are.

 Superdeterminism


Er, bye bye free will. It's irrelevant

For the second time you post a Hossenfelder video. That’s nice, I think Sabine is great. But I’d like to point out a few things.

First, she thinks that superdeterminism is not just an interpretation of QM, but a replacement for it, a deeper theory. Fine. Except almost no physicist agrees with her that superdeterminism is true. So it’s really disingenuous to pretend that this is somehow all settled.

Superdeterminism requires violations of statistical independence. That is, there must be correlations between measurement settings and hidden variables that determine measurement outcomes. If that is true, then science goes out the window (I know Sabine argues otherwise, but again, almost no physicist agrees with her). It means, for example, that nature since the Big Bang has somehow conspired to make it be the case that in the far future, all measurement settings will be correlated in such a way as to show that QM is indeterministic whereas in fact it is deterministic. Does that sound even remotely plausible? To Sabine it’s fine and dandy but most other physicists find it ridiculous. To me it sounds like the scientific equivalent of religion’s Last Thursdayism.

I don’t know why Sabine writes, “Superdeterminism is presently the only known consistent description of nature that is local, deterministic, and can give rise to the observed correlations of quantum mechanics.” That simply isn’t so. Many Worlds does the exact same thing, but Sabine doesn’t like Many Worlds. Why? She says it’s not scientific! But then by her own standards neither is superdeterminism. We have no test that can distinguish between MWI and SD and Copenhagen. Except Copenhagen and MWI don’t bear the additional unparsimonious violation of statistical independence. Again, almost no other physicist agrees with Sabine about superdeterminism. I know of only two, as a matter of fact, one of whom is a co-author with Sabine on her papers concerning superdeterminism.

Sabine has gotten into some rip-snorting online arguments with other physicists about this subject, one of whom pissed her off so much that she banned him from her blog. Maybe he touched a nerve?

Finally, there’s this. And I’m trying to hunt down the exact quote from her on this, so far without success. Sabine always inveighs against free will. She thinks, for example, and quite mistakenly as I have discussed in another post, that free will requires that we be able to “change” the future. It requires no such thing. But at one point Sabine wrote that compatibilism was just fine and dandy with her — even under superdeterminism! So there ya go: Sabine, like Farah has I have demonstrated, is arguing against libertarianism and not compatibilism.

 

[The AntiChris]

The wording doesn't change what is being asked.

Of course it does.

"Is X free?" is not the same as "can X be free?".

If yes, how is it freely willed? How does it work?

Well if it wasn't established before, this now makes it crystal clear that you really don't understand compatibilism (or you're being deliberately disingenuous).

I am pointing out why compatibilism fails.

No you're not. You're asking a dumb question.

I understand the definition perfectly well,

If you did you'd know the questions you ask make no sense.

I'm quite prepared to answer any question you have on any aspect of compatibilism if you genuinely want clarification, but not inane "what is it?" or "how does it work?" questions.

That is what you have yet to grasp; that incompatibilists for the reasons given, do not accept compatibilism.

Let me reassure you that I'm fully aware that incompatibilists do not accept compatibilism.

What I'm not at all convinced of is that you have the faintest clue about compatibilism.

 

[Jarhyn]

Except almost no physicist agrees with her that superdeterminism is true

So, I actually discuss this in terms of "just so" determinism, in I think ALL the threads. Just find "just-so determinism" and you will get the post up, along with some others.

Essentially she has taken an unfalsifiable position, because of a quirk of system theory: all systems are describable once resolved as deterministic, even if there were dice rolls that remove all concept of meaningful will beyond the (randomly falling) dominoes. Snakes and ladders is deterministic, even if the result is 'random' every game. you could roll the dice a hundred times, write their values on a paper, and then select an index on the paper and viola, you have a deterministic seed on the game. A single index determines result.

If you use an infinite normal series to produce your indexed table, your series describes all possible games. (Actually, the result is finite but large)

This is a universal fact of systems theory, completely inescapable.

Really one needs to ask "is it meaningfully different from the definitions of 'stochastic' though?"

The answer there is 'no'. It has no impact on the fact that we must model stochastically and we have individual limitations in our freedom assessments such that "provisional freedom" is not "real freedom". There is still as much 'real freedom' as there is 'real causal necessity's, but we don't deal in that, reality deals that to us and we are to accept it!

 

[fromderinside]

What you are said is the measurement determines the outcome

Reading comprehension failure. Measurement doesn't determine outcome, outcome determines measurement.

"does the causal necessity of the system indicate that the requirement of the will SHALL be met?"

That is what is being measured. The system is being observed, and some fact about it recorded and compared to some description of the requirement's state (satisfied/not).

It is not determined by how you measure it, it is determined by whether the system satisfied it's extant requirement or not. This is a momentary universal binary.

There is an absolute, bounded set of situations that CAN "satisfy" the requirement for any given requirement. This means that none of it "depends on how it is measured" because the requirement itself is a concrete element with a concrete list of "satisfying conditions" created by the structure of the system.

It is not "subjective" that which satisfies whether the dwarf's will to open the door is free. It is a concrete measurement of "did the door open", the door being a concrete thing, and the door opening being a concrete thing, and the requirement itself having a concrete object shape with an absolute threshold. Note that the requirement is based on whatever physical arrangement of the dwarf and their list (both mechanical objects) get satisfied, not my "subjective" view of whether.

Again, you fail.

Also, Sabine, your reference, is a soft determinist no matter what she claims on the matter, as Pood pints out in this solid rebuttal wherein she admits we DO have a causal place in history (so, compatibilism).

Rebutting hard determinist Sabine Hossenfelder Note that hard determinism is, um, a philosophical stance.

Rebutting hard determinist Jerry Coyne

Didn't say that. I said "Why not presume what you find is determined by the how you measure it." That is the answer for slit findings. You'll find that is in agreement with Sabine's argument on relativity versus quantum mechanics. She comes down on Einstein's side by the way.

As for flavor of determinism that's writer's choice justified. I'm a hard determinist defined by one input to one output. Sabine considers her self as a super determinist. Her justifications.

You can play all you want in the mosh pit of self rationalization. It doesn't change the originator's rationale. One of the more obvious outcomes of measurement in QM is that how you measure determines what you get.

Why must one get a different result just because of perspective. IOW we are pitting coherence of output against incoherence of output. That is a problem resolved by looking at how measurement works. That is why I echoed her claim on measurement. Either one changes what one is looking at or how one approaches measuring what one is looking at.

I see Hobson.

 

[Jarhyn]

Why not presume what you find is determined by the how you measure it.

And then you misunderstood the slit experiment findings.

It is not determined by how it is measured, it is determined by what happened. It is not the "measurement" that determined it, but rather the constraining interaction.

In the double slit experiment the fundamental difference is that the particle has an interaction thus constraining the probability wave.

It is not about the "measurement", but rather about the "interaction".

Again you fail to understand the implications that "freedom" is about "what actually happened", not about "what someone thinks may happen" even if we have some idea of what we think may happen.

As I've discussed, the dwarf has "one systemic input one systemic output" yet still has a will and that will is still concretely free or concretely not-free determined by the actual physical arrangement of the machine at the time of execution.

It is nothing about "how you measure". To even have this conversation, the "real measurement" literally has to be considered by a "hypothetical superphysical god" who measures not by operating the system but by pausing it and looking at it's state, not by "interacting" as per the slit experiment.

It pertains to observing instantaneous state.

Of course, humans can't do that. Godel's Incompleteness Theorem states we cannot but moreover physics itself prevents us from looking because for us looking changes things.

When I observe whether the door is locked, I'm not observing whether a thing "returned" true or false. I'm not using the physical interactions of the system to "measure", as in a report and an interaction. Rather I'm discussing instantaneous field states observed universally and noninteractively.

This means that while there is in fact a freedom value, we can never ever look directly at it, at least for our own. Thanks Godel...

To be fair, there's a slight statistical chance that looking at the dwarf's freedom will alter it, but I can look at it with much more confidence on behalf of the statistical smoothing created by transistor activation thresholds: there's no reasonable way a change in that microstate will actually impact the simulation's microstate which is in our universe determined by a macrostate.

In short I'm not discussing "measuring", I discussing "extraphysically observed instantaneous field states".

 

[DBT]

The wording doesn't change what is being asked.

Of course it does.

"Is X free?" is not the same as "can X be free?".

''Is x free'' assumes that x can be free.

If yes, how is it freely willed? How does it work?

Well if it wasn't established before, this now makes it crystal clear that you really don't understand compatibilism (or you're being deliberately disingenuous).

I am pointing out why compatibilism fails.

No you're not. You're asking a dumb question.

As the question is relevant to the issue of freedom of will within a determined system, it is your objection or denial of the validity of the question that is dumb.

I understand the definition perfectly well,

If you did you'd know the questions you ask make no sense.

That's what I said about the question you repeatedly asked me. Just because you don't understand the question (or pretend not to) doesn't mean the question makes no sense.

A hint; it's a question of the nature of freedom and the role of will with a determined system.

I won't ask again because it's obvious that you cannot understand what is being asked.....as straightforward as it it.

I'm quite prepared to answer any question you have on any aspect of compatibilism if you genuinely want clarification, but not inane "what is it?" or "how does it work?" questions.

It is directly related to the role of will and the nature of freedom within a deterministic system - compatibility - as explained numerous times. If free will is real and has a role to play, you need more than a semantic construct that has no relationship to the world as it works.

That is what you have yet to grasp; that incompatibilists for the reasons given, do not accept compatibilism.

Let me reassure you that I'm fully aware that incompatibilists do not accept compatibilism.

Thank goodness for that much. Small mercies...

What I'm not at all convinced of is that you have the faintest clue about compatibilism.

I do understand it, far better than you. Which is why I am an incompatibilist. What you don't appear to understand, regardless of all the material I have quoted by other incompatibilists, is that I am not saying anything different.

Therefore you are claiming that incompatibilists don't understand compatibilism, which is absurd.

I put it to you that you don't really understand either one. If you really understood compatibilism, you'd understand its fatal flaws and shaky foundation.

 

[Marvin Edwards]

I put it to you that you don't really understand either one. If you really understood compatibilism, you'd understand its fatal flaws and shaky foundation.

The compatibilist proposition is simply that free will is a meaningful concept within a deterministic world.

The proof goes like this:

P1: A freely chosen will is when someone chooses for themselves what they will do, while free of coercion and other forms of undue influence.
P2: A world is deterministic if every event is reliably caused by prior events.
P3: A freely chosen will is reliably caused by the person's own goals, reasons, or interests (with their prior causes).
P4: An unfree choice is reliably caused by coercion or undue influence (with their prior causes).
C: Therefore, the notion of a freely chosen will (and its opposite) is still meaningful within a fully deterministic world.

Compatibilism is simple. It begins with the recognition that free will is a deterministic event, just like every other event in the causal chain. However, the meaningful and relevant causes of that freely chosen will happen to be located within us. Our own goals and reasons, our own thoughts and feelings, our own beliefs and values, our own genetic dispositions and prior life experiences. All of that makes up who and what we are. And all of that is the determinant that causally necessitates the chosen intent. In other words, the meaningful and relevant cause is us, and no other object in the physical universe.

 

[DBT]

I don't have all night to spend repeating explanations

Then don't. Cast some doubt on your own position for once and actually do the math we keep telling you may be done.

The Dunning Kruger exists on the other side of the table as evidenced by the fact that WE can argue over details, and no matter what we present, you just baldly assert straw men, red herrings, and not-even-wrong questions.

I was hoping for an answer. If you recall, you kept asking your question over and over, even though I pointed out that what you asked was not a yes or no question. Mine is.

As it is, pood and I both pointed out your "question" was not a valid question in the first place, on the basis of improper modality:

You will get no answer to "how is it freely willed" because that constriction implies the will makes it free. "How is it willed" is easily answered with respect to the Turing machine: this instruction is this binary pattern, that activates these transistors which then operate on the data this way, and then the result ends up here.

How CAN the will be free is answered by looking at the will: this instruction is executed following this other instruction resulting in branch A rather than branch B following an entry to the function. IF that happens THEN the will is "free". That is how the will can be free.

If will has no agency, how is it free?

And then back to the broken construction and the modal fallacy. Wills are a general class of thing that can be free and which can also be not.

Further "agents have wills". It is NOT "wills have agency".

In this case the processor is the agent. And ignoring for a moment the microcode of modern processors... Is immutable and unmodifiable. It has a singular will with NO requirements beyond "be as is" much like the rock. At the very best you can say "agents have wills".

Agents with nontrivial wills have agency. Agents without wills (with merely the natural will) just sit there like rocks, "being as is".

but as a incompatibilist argue that it is not adequate to establish its proposition

See this is your problem: your unwavering belief. I don't necessarily argue "as a compatibilist". I argue as someone who has made observations, and whose observations happen to be considered "compatibilistic". You argue specifically as "an incompatibilist".

Again no compatibilist here is so silly as to utter something as nonsensical as "will is free". It depends entirely on the will and the context of it's execution whether it is free.

This has been explained MANY times. Until you stop making this mistake there is no choice but ascertain that not only do you not understand "free" and "will" but you do not understand enough to understand that you do not understand.

It is the valley of Dunning Kruger that you are living in, I'm afraid.

Belief? And whenever the term Dunning Kruger comes to mind, Sweetie, look carefully into your little shiny mirror.

The reasons why compatibilism fails has been carefully explained by numerous authors and my own input, experiments have been quoted and cited, the role of will explained, the implications that determinism has for freedom explained, the semantic foundation of compatibilist free will explained, etc, etc....but of course you cannot possibly consider or accept what is being explained or provided because you are emotionally invested in the ideology of compatibilism.

Nothing can be done. Enjoy your faith in compatibilism and the illusion of free will within a determined system that fixes all outcomes before you are aware of what you are going to do;

''Think of someone that you dislike. Let’s call this person X. Now, imagine that you were born with X’s “genetic material.” That is, imagine that you had X’s looks, body odor, inherent tastes, intelligence, aptitudes, etc. Imagine, further, that you had X’s upbringing and life experiences as well; so, imagine that you had X’s parents growing up, and that you grew up in the same country, city, and neighborhood in which X grew up, etc.

Would behave any differently from how X behaves?

Most people realize, perhaps after a moment of startled pause, that the answer to the question is “No.”

The question helps people realize that their thoughts and actions are determined entirely by their genetic and social conditioning. In other words, it helps people intuitively grasp the idea that free will is an illusion.''

Understanding that free will is an illusion means recognizing that people behave in the only way they know how. As such, it is important to realize that, when people act in harmful ways, it is because they are ignorant of the forces that actually shape their thoughts and behaviors.''

 

[DBT]

I put it to you that you don't really understand either one. If you really understood compatibilism, you'd understand its fatal flaws and shaky foundation.

The compatibilist proposition is simply that free will is a meaningful concept within a deterministic world.

The proof goes like this:

P1: A freely chosen will is when someone chooses for themselves what they will do, while free of coercion and other forms of undue influence.
P2: A world is deterministic if every event is reliably caused by prior events.
P3: A freely chosen will is reliably caused by the person's own goals, reasons, or interests (with their prior causes).
P4: An unfree choice is reliably caused by coercion or undue influence (with their prior causes).
C: Therefore, the notion of a freely chosen will (and its opposite) is still meaningful within a fully deterministic world.

Compatibilism is simple. It begins with the recognition that free will is a deterministic event, just like every other event in the causal chain. However, the meaningful and relevant causes of that freely chosen will happen to be located within us. Our own goals and reasons, our own thoughts and feelings, our own beliefs and values, our own genetic dispositions and prior life experiences. All of that makes up who and what we are. And all of that is the determinant that causally necessitates the chosen intent. In other words, the meaningful and relevant cause is us, and no other object in the physical universe.

Marvin, we have been through this a number of times. It's a matter of semantics, premises, brain function/the nature of decision making within a determined system, the role of will, agency, etc.....which does not point to free will as something that makes a difference within a determined system where all actions proceed as determined but not willed.

 

[Jarhyn]

''Is x free'' assumes that x can be free

Yes, it asks "from this observational perspective, given your current knowledge and lack of calculation, that the answer can be one or the other."

It ALSO is necessitated to concretely be "free" or "not free", and causal necessity says it always must have been one or the other. There is no point at which the answer is really arbitrary or determined by "how you look".

We are looking at it with the eyes of "god". Our observation doesn't determine it, it determines our observation. Nothing can make the unfree will free. Nothing can make the free will unfree.

You have to be very specific with what you mean by "can" here.

All it's assuming is that the observer has not looked so the observer does not yet know the truth. Their uncertainty does no damage to reality.

As the question is relevant

No, the question is clearly malformed. We have explained how and why it is malformed, or at least has been all but one of the times you have pitched it.

If free will is real

And see, you keep doing it.

You can address "free".

You can address "will".

You cannot address "free will" like this. I'm bothered enough when Marvin does it though at least in his case he is discussing "the concept of a "free will"" having meaning.

The reasons why compatibilism fails has been carefully explained by numerous authors

So you made numerous arguments from authority, all well rebutted by Antichris and Pood, who reveal them as arguing against a Straw-Man of libertarian free will...

experiments have been quoted and cited

Which are all between them Red Herrings as they blithely ignore the existence of the will and the reality of the freedom or lack thereof caused by the intersection of their requirement with the rest of reality...

As I have shown numerous times, systems do not need "awareness" of what they are going to do, need no "internal knowledge that they have a will", and do not even need to play the game of discussing provisional freedom for that will to be objectively, concretely "free".

All they need is a will with a requirement that shall be met.

The question helps people realize that their thoughts and actions are determined entirely by their genetic and social conditioning. In other words, it helps people intuitively grasp the idea that free will is an illusion

Well, I'm sure this helps trick people into a broken mode of thought, but it does nothing against my definitions. I would be X, I would have X's will, and that will would be just as free or not as if I actually were X.

I would then have just as much responsibility as X ever did to evaluate whether my wills are provisionally free, it would have just as much impact on me as it would on "original X", and that provisional freedom would either be "correct" or "incorrect".

I would still have wills and those wills would be free. My original wills would all cease being free in that moment though, dead as I was, made most certainly unfree by my strange metamorphosis.

I don't need libertarian free will to realize and observe that.