According to Robert Sapolsky, human free will does not exist

[pood]

We can roughly predict what a falling raindrop will do but we cannot account for all variables — wind speed, for example, which may hurl a raindrop off its course. And we cannot account for all the variables of wind speed — too complicated

It’s much much worse than that IMO. At formation, we can’t know if a given raindrop will even make it to the ground before it evaporates or combines with another drop or drops.
Again, we’re down to what constitutes a prediction and how accurate it needs to be to qualify as correct.

Right. Which is why the universe is fundamentally unpredictable, as is, of course, human behavior.

 

[pood]

A hammer and a feather were dropped on the moon at the same time and hit the ground at the same time.

 

[pood]

That should be Galileo, not Newton.

 

[Elixir]

Which is why the universe is fundamentally unpredictable, as is, of course, human behavior.

I am amazed how good our crappy weather forecasts are. Some things are more “predictable” than others, if predictability is a measure of human ability rather than of the nature of an event.

 

[Elixir]

A hammer and a feather were dropped on the moon at the same time and hit the ground at the same time.

… assuming they were dropped at the same distance from the lunar surface, and the feather wasn’t pushed around by photons hitting it more than the hammer was, and that the ground was absolutely uniform, and.., and…
Nothing is totally predictable by humans, but close enough that we can land machines on other planets such that they sometimes arrive in working condition.

 

[pood]

A hammer and a feather were dropped on the moon at the same time and hit the ground at the same time.

… assuming they were dropped at the same distance from the lunar surface, and the feather wasn’t pushed around by photons hitting it more than the hammer was, and that the ground was absolutely uniform, and.., and…
Nothing is totally predictable by humans, but close enough that we can land machines on other planets in working condition.

Exactly. Even on the moon in a vacuum there will be variables that cannot be accounted for.

 

[Elixir]

Exactly. Even on the moon in a vacuum there will be variables that WE cannot be accounted for.

?

 

[pood]

Exactly. Even on the moon in a vacuum there will be variables that WE cannot be accounted for.

?

Well, yes, that we cannot account for.

 

[Elixir]

Exactly. Even on the moon in a vacuum there will be variables that WE cannot be accounted for.

?

Well, yes, that we cannot account for.

I don’t mean to be such an annoying pedant, but that was exactly my original beef with one of Steve’s representations.
Of course he is correct on the application scale; hence the NWS allotting a 50% chance of precipitation here tomorrow, despite terabytes of relevant information.

 

[BSilvEsq]

As to randomness it is science not just engineering. QM is based on the fact at the quantum scale we can only predict statically. A wave function is a probability distribution.

Yeah, predicting quantum raindrops would be a trick. Fortunately for the prediction business, raindrops are massive objects that largely adhere to Newtonian mechanics.

Here is my question: Does Newtonian mechanics dictate what I will eat for dinner tonight, what time I will go to sleep, when I will awaken, what I will do tomorrow, what road I will travel, when I will die?

I believe Newtonian mechanics does dictate all of the above at its core. But, that would mean that my future is inexorably fixed -- as in fatalism, predetermined, etc. To my small mind, that also would mean that I lack Free Will to determine what to eat this evening. [And, before the detractors chime in, there is no modal fallacy in play if the presumption of Newtonian mechanics is that the future events are inexorably fixed by antecedent events].

If the answer is no, I can see how I might have Free Will. If the answer is no, that also leads to a truly chaotic state of affairs -- and not simply as a matter of prediction, but also as a matter of actuality. That, however, begs the question of how Free Will can exist in an universe in which human thought is indeterministic, random, and chaotic.

It seems to me that true Free Will (i.e., the Libertarian variation, and not the version that simply states that any unpredictable future decision is free) cannot exits unless we view humans as, somehow, divorced from nature and imbued with superhuman abilities. It is very spiritual and almost religious -- with a scientific fig leaf.

 

[pood]

 

[pood]

Newtonian mechanics does not “dictate” anything, It has no dictatorial powers. Strictly speaking, it is not even correct.

 

[pood]

What shall I eat for dinner tonight? Ask Newtonian mechanics!

Jesus.

 

[Elixir]

Does Newtonian mechanics dictate what I will eat for dinner tonight, what time I will go to sleep, when I will awaken, what I will do tomorrow, what road I will travel, when I will die?

Well yeah, but...
I suspect it Newtonian physics dictates a lot of things that don't happen due to quantum mechanical interferences. Nonetheless, I think we have the "free will" to ignore the deterministic nature of things that lie within range of our senses, since it makes no difference.
I compare free will to a light bulb. It doesn't matter if it's burned out as long as it LOOKS like it's working.

What shall I eat for dinner tonight? Ask Newtonian mechanics!

Jesus.

Jesus isn't a mechanic and anyhow, you should have asked a Newtonian Chef!

 

[BSilvEsq]

As juvenile as some comments on these boards may be, I appreciate that some criticism occasionally helps me to refine my thinking -- or, at least, the way I describe it. As they say, even a broken clock is right twice a day, and even a blind squirrel sometimes finds a chestnut. And, I acknowledge that I may be the broken clock or blind squirrel.

In any event, when I say that Determinism and/or Newtonian mechanics does or compels X, what I should say is that "the mechanism sought to be described by the paradigm of Determinism or Newtonian mechanics compels X." In so saying, I express no opinion respecting the question of whether that mechanism truly exists or is accurately described -- i.e., whether the paradigm accurately describes reality. Indeed, I will go so far as to say that no paradigm expressed in words can ever perfectly describe reality, because words are simply symbols of the reality they are used to attempt to describe and the only perfect description of something is the thing itself.

 

[bilby]

You do nit see the future for any inertial frame. You can not see things that have not occurred.

You don't see YOUR OWN future. You can see events in a different order to that observed by someone in another reference frame, though. So you can see someone else's future.

 

[bilby]

You can’t predict anything in principle not just because of chaos theory but because of quantum indterminism. At bottom the raindrop is a a bunch of wave functions. So you go to the Born rule.

I wasn't Born yesterday.

 

[bilby]

The universe is inherently unpredictable in principle,

I knew somebody was going to say that.

 

[bilby]

As to randomness it is science not just engineering. QM is based on the fact at the quantum scale we can only predict statically. A wave function is a probability distribution.

Yeah, predicting quantum raindrops would be a trick. Fortunately for the prediction business, raindrops are massive objects that largely adhere to Newtonian mechanics.

Except then we cannot predict their behavior because of chaos theory,

I thought chaos theory pertained to vast numbers of interacting objects, not the behavior of a single object.
Silly me!

It often does. But a falling raindrop is NOT a single object; The system we are modelling is not just the raindrop, but also the falling - through an atmosphere made up of trillions of nearby gas molecules all moving turbulently, and hundreds of other raindrops, each evaporating water into (and condensing water out of) the air constantly during the fall.

It's easy to predict the frictionless fall of a spherical raindrop in a vacuum, as long as we assume that evaporation is negligible...

A further delusion from which I suffered is the idea that chaos THEORY was intended define limits to the predictability of huge numbers of interacting objects, rather than to deny the predictability of one object’s behavior.

No, chaos theory is about the predictability of the results of very simple mathematical equations, where it turns out that tiny variations in the starting value can lead to dramatic swings in the final result.

 

[bilby]

We can roughly predict what a falling raindrop will do but we cannot account for all variables — wind speed, for example, which may hurl a raindrop off its course. And we cannot account for all the variables of wind speed — too complicated

It’s much much worse than that IMO. At formation, we can’t even know if a given raindrop will make it to the ground before it evaporates or combines with another drop or drops.
Again, we’re down to what constitutes a prediction and how accurate it needs to be to qualify as correct. It does not speak to some inherently unpredictable behavior of water droplets, it speaks to the limits of our observational and analytic capabilities.

Chaos theory is a mathematical examination of those limits, and their consequences. Small errors in observation lead to massive errors in prediction.

That is, the behaviour of water droplets IS inherently unpredictable, and we can use mathematics to explain why.