Demystifying Determinism

[Marvin Edwards]

... That the point when event A happens, nothing else can happen.

Nothing else will happen, but any number of things could have happened if one of them, instead of A, were determined to happen.

That's your no deviation clause in action;

Again, no deviation is required. I can order the Salad and I can order the Steak. Both statements are true, despite the fact that I will inevitably order the Salad. I still could have ordered the Steak, at that same time and in that same place, but, due to my own goals and reasoning, I would not order the Steak.

Most of the things that can happen never will happen. Yet we still refer to them and discuss them as things that "could have" happened. The phrase "could have" enables that discussion. For example, "What could we have done if the hurricane did not miss us?" The question motivates planning for the next hurricane.

It doesn't matter what we think can happen.

It matters a lot what we think can happen. If we think that the traffic light will not turn red if we speed up, then we may drive through it and have an accident.

It doesn't matter what can happen.

Actually, there is no "what can happen" outside of "what we think can happen". Outside of what we think, there is only what will happen.

The whole point of the notion of possibility is to provide a way of thinking about things that enables us to prepare, plan, choose, etc. The ability to imagine alternate possibilities is the source of all human creativity and invention. So, it would be very bad to eliminate it.

Determinism means that whatever happens must necessarily happen, and in that moment of the inevitable event happens - there being no deviation in determinism ...

Yes, everyone already knows that. But that logical fact has limited applicability. What can we do about that fact? How does that fact help us to make any of the choices we are faced with every day?

... - nothing else can happen.

No, that is not a fact, logical or otherwise. And limiting what can happen to what will happen creates silly paradoxes, like the one in the restaurant where the waiter cannot tell the diner what he "can" order until after the diner tells the waiter what he "will" order.

So, tacking that on at the end is false. But we can tack on "- nothing else will happen" without any problem.

 

[Jarhyn]

It matters a lot what we think can happen. If we think that the traffic light will not turn red if we speed up, then we may drive through it and have an accident.

Not only that, but if we never think about how it can happen, we can never make it happen like that on purpose on account of inner necessity rather than outer necessity, at any level of inner necessity.

If salad is not on the menu, you won't be able to order it, as the menu states no special orders or substitutions.

You need to know what you CAN do on purpose before you MAY do any thing on purpose. Of course to figure that out you put together a purpose and try to stay on it until you wrestle your goal out of it eventually.

Then you figure out what worked, what wills were free, and what didn't work and so which wills were not free, you can get to identifying the artifacts and events of reality which engendered the unfreeness so as to be more purposeful and efficient next time: to apply regulatory control through practice.

 

[pood]

I again invite DBT to respond to my challenge, here.

Where did the building come from?

 

[DBT]

I have described when and why something can happen and when it cannot happen

No, you asserted it without evidence, and a definition without usefulness, in an obvious attempt to pretend that you aren't actually responsible for the things you do: "that which can happen is that which does happen".

Everything that I have said has been supported, quotes provided and cited. It's called incompatibilism, an argument that's based on how determinism is defined and its consequences for the nature and status of will, ie, that the notion of free will is incompatible with determinism and the reasons why the compatibilist definition is insufficient to prove the proposition.

That you are unable or unwilling to grasp the implications of determinism cannot be helped.

Yet again, the basics:

Given the nature of determinism as it has been defined by you and others - nothing within the system can act in isolation or contrary to how the system develops or evolves?

That each and every action is entailed by the prior state of the system, which entails all actions here and now, which in turn entails all future states of the system.

You don't operate outside of what is a web of causality that develops without randomness or deviation.

You are embedded within the web.

Everything that you think and do is related to and entailed by external and internal conditions that were set in motion - according to your own definition - before you were born (no randomness or deviation within a deterministic system)

Did life choose to emerge or evolve? Did animals choose to be as they are, or did they evolve in relation to an environmental niche? Did we choose the way the human brain evolved, its neural architecture and abilities? Did you choose to be human? Did you choose your parents, your location, society, culture, language, socioeconomic circumstances, etc, etc?

Well, it's a safe bet to say that you have done none of those things.

Proclivities:

''It is unimportant whether one's resolutions and preferences occur because an ''ingenious physiologist' has tampered with one's brain, whether they result from narcotics addiction, from 'hereditary factor, or indeed from nothing at all.' Ultimately the agent has no control over his cognitive states.

So even if the agent has strength, skill, endurance, opportunity, implements, and knowledge enough to engage in a variety of enterprises, still he lacks mastery over his basic attitudes and the decisions they produce. After all, we do not have occasion to choose our dominant proclivities.' - Prof. Richard Taylor -Metaphysics.

 

[Jarhyn]

nothing within the system can act in isolation or contrary to how the system develops or evolves?

Good idea adding the question mark. False.

nothing within the system can will act in isolation or contrary to how the system develops or evolves?

You don't operate outside of what is a web of causality that develops without randomness or deviation

And this does not speak to anything one way or the other.

Again where something comes from is unimportant to what it is.

compare two structurally identical objects. For fun, let's imagine that both of these objects are mechanically identical.

One is a robot made by a person and the other is a robot assembled through fluctuations of the quantum vacuum.

That things have "genetics" makes the "genetic fallacy" no less something you are stepping in.

Something can be both built by something else and build things as what it is now. Those things were not built by it's builder, they were built by it.

And so too with choice.

As to saying the agent has no choice over their cognitive states, however, that is absolutely false, as proven by the fact that when Larry chooses to practice the French horn, Larry's cognitive state changes such that the notes they play more accurately reflect the instructions on the page.

 

[DBT]

I again invite DBT to respond to my challenge, here.
'' But wait! Let’s examine Roark’s efforts from a hard determinist perspective. DBT has been telling us over and over that we have no choices at all — that anything that looks like a real choice is illusory.''

This has been explained over and over again. I didn't make up the rules and principles of determinism. They are described in the given definition of determinism, in this instance, Marvin, Jarhyn, etc. Basically, no deviation, no alternate actions.


''All of these events, including my choices, were causally necessary from any prior point in time. And they all proceeded without deviation from the Big Bang to this moment.''

Jarhyn - A deterministic system is a system in which no randomness is involved in the development of future states of the system.

Do you understand the implications of ''no deviation' and ''no randomness is involved in the development of future states of the system?''

That whatever happens within the system as it evolves, must necessarily happen and that nothing else can happen.

Now apply that to the nature of choice, which involves the ability to take any one of a number of options, where alternate options within a deterministic system, by the very definition given by compatibilists, cannot - by definition - be realized.

Alternate actions cannot be chosen because the nature of the system, as defined by compatibilists, must evolve or develop without deviation, without randomness, without being able to choose otherwise. Whatever is done must be done: necessity not freedom.

Not according to me, or because I say it, but according to the implications of determinism as it is defined by compatibilists.

Where did the building come from?

But wait! Let’s examine Roark’s efforts from a hard determinist perspective. DBT has been telling us over and over that we have no choices at all — that anything that looks like a real choice is illusory.

If you understand incompatibilism - as outlined above - the nature of determinism and its consequences, you'd have your answer.

You'd know that it's not a matter of not being able to think, plan and act, but that what you think plan and act is determined, that everything must proceed as determined.

The builder thinks his thoughts and carries out his plans necessarily because his nature and all the circumstances of his life brought him to the point of planning and constructing his building. Given determinism - as defined by compatibilists - it cannot be otherwise.

Which is not to say that thought, planning and action is not possible. Nobody is even suggesting it. It's a simple thing; determinism means that whatever is thought, planned and carried out is necessarily thought, planned and carried out, and at no point during the process of thought, planning and carrying out actions are there alternate actions;

''All of these events, including my choices, were causally necessary from any prior point in time. And they all proceeded without deviation from the Big Bang to this moment.''

Jarhyn - A deterministic system is a system in which no randomness is involved in the development of future states of the system.



Your challenge is a Red Herring.

 

[Jarhyn]

I didn't make up the rules and principles of determinism

No, and you haven't managed to understand them either, neither in what they imply nor in what they don't.

Do you understand the implications of ''no deviation' and ''no randomness is involved in the development of future states of the system?''

If you could bring to bear any implications of deviation or randomness in the description of a compatibilist choice, highlighting them in red, you would have.

You did not.

The point is that compatibilist choice does not require an immediately real deviation. A simulated deviation suffices just as well as an immediately real deviation to generate the artifacts necessary for choosing one's own future from the ones these artifacts approximately reference.

And then by applying one's own proclivities to the set of artifacts to select one, one completes the choice, deciding from among the things they can do, what they will.

 

[Marvin Edwards]

I didn't make up the rules and principles of determinism

No, and you haven't managed to understand them either, neither in what they imply nor in what they don't.

Do you understand the implications of ''no deviation' and ''no randomness is involved in the development of future states of the system?''

If you could bring to bear any implications of deviation or randomness in the description of a compatibilist choice, highlighting them in red, you would have.

You did not.

The point is that compatibilist choice does not require an immediately real deviation. A simulated deviation suffices just as well as an immediately real deviation to generate the artifacts necessary for choosing one's own future from the ones these artifacts approximately reference.

And then by applying one's own proclivities to the set of artifacts to select one, one completes the choice, deciding from among the things they can do, what they will.

I like that term "simulated deviation". After all, the brain's own imagination function is essentially running a simulation of events, trying out different choices and imagining what happens when we choose this or we choose that.

 

[Jarhyn]

I didn't make up the rules and principles of determinism

No, and you haven't managed to understand them either, neither in what they imply nor in what they don't.

Do you understand the implications of ''no deviation' and ''no randomness is involved in the development of future states of the system?''

If you could bring to bear any implications of deviation or randomness in the description of a compatibilist choice, highlighting them in red, you would have.

You did not.

The point is that compatibilist choice does not require an immediately real deviation. A simulated deviation suffices just as well as an immediately real deviation to generate the artifacts necessary for choosing one's own future from the ones these artifacts approximately reference.

And then by applying one's own proclivities to the set of artifacts to select one, one completes the choice, deciding from among the things they can do, what they will.

I like that term "simulated deviation". After all, the brain's own imagination function is essentially running a simulation of events, trying out different choices and imagining what happens when we choose this or we choose that.

Yes. And the simulated deviation is approximal to what the universe WOULD look like specifically "if the universe itself were a simulation within a larger system which was then stopped, copied, adjusted in some specific way, and sent forward".

 

[DBT]

I didn't make up the rules and principles of determinism

No, and you haven't managed to understand them either, neither in what they imply nor in what they don't.

It's self-explanatory. The basics; ''no deviation'' is self-explanatory. ''No randomness is self-explanatory. Nevertheless, what you say suggests that you haven't grasped the implications of what 'no deviation' and 'no randomness' has for the notion of free will.

That what is willed, must be willed, what is done must be done with no deviation or alternatives.

Do you understand the implications of ''no deviation' and ''no randomness is involved in the development of future states of the system?''

If you could bring to bear any implications of deviation or randomness in the description of a compatibilist choice, highlighting them in red, you would have.

You did not.

It's quite simple: what you think, will and do, you think, will and do necessarily. Given no deviation or randomness, the terms of your own definition of determinism, there are no alternatives. Everything that is thought, willed and done is fixed by the system as it evolves from prior to present and future states.

The point is that compatibilist choice does not require an immediately real deviation.

Correct, it doesn't. Yet its definition is insufficient to establish the notion of free will because inner necessity is as much a constraint on freedom as external elements, therefore it fails to prove the proposition.

''An action’s production by a deterministic process, even when the agent satisfies the conditions on moral responsibility specified by compatibilists, presents no less of a challenge to basic-desert responsibility than does deterministic manipulation by other agents.

A simulated deviation suffices just as well as an immediately real deviation to generate the artifacts necessary for choosing one's own future from the ones these artifacts approximately reference.

And then by applying one's own proclivities to the set of artifacts to select one, one completes the choice, deciding from among the things they can do, what they will.

Simulated deviation? Errr....no. See the reasons outlined above.

 

[Jarhyn]

It's quite simple: what you think, will and do, you think, will and do necessarily

You do necessarily by process. Sometimes that process follows the path of the will and sometimes it diverges from that path: the goal is not satisfied.

When it is not, what I necessarily will is necessarily not free.

When it is, what I will will necessarily be free.

I can't always get what I want. But sometimes I CAN get what I want.

there are no alternatives

There are no immediately real alternate realities.

There are many logically coherent alternate realities.

We cannot access logical alternatives directly, because they're logical, not immediate, but we can absolutely simulate them in approximation, and immediately reify knowledge about them even if we cannot reify they themselves immediately.

Everything that is thought, willed and done is fixed by the system as it evolves from prior to present and future states

Including that the system will simulate it's own future macrostates, and also some which cannot happen in situations other than simulation.

It is fixed by the system that you MUST choose, even though you got no choice in whether the choice would be before you.

What is necessary for compatibilist choice is merely the artifacts, separate and each encoding different information, one of which will be selected by the choice function.

Again, you have not actually argued anything. You have laid down claims without argument, though, in abundance.

 

[Marvin Edwards]

Yet again, the basics:

By all means.

Given the nature of determinism as it has been defined by you and others - nothing within the system can act in isolation or contrary to how the system develops or evolves?

That "sounds" reasonable but it gives a false impression. We are a part of the system, and what we choose to do controls the development/evolution of the system within our sphere of influence. Our "sphere of influence" includes all of the things that we ourselves can cause to happen if we choose to make them happen.

Within the system, we are objects that exercise "regulatory control". That which gets to choose what will happen next is exercising regulatory control. While the behavior of inanimate objects also affects what will happen next, they do not have the capacity to control what they will cause to happen. But we do.

That each and every action is entailed by the prior state of the system, which entails all actions here and now, which in turn entails all future states of the system.

Again, it "sounds" reasonable, but it is not. The system never acts as a whole. It is simply a container of individual objects, each acting according to their own construction and nature. These objects interact with each other. For example, hurricane Ian is currently interacting with the people living in the middle of Florida, USA. And the people, knowing the likely path of the hurricane have been deciding what they will do. Most of them have chosen to evacuate the areas that will be most damaged by it. A few have chosen to take a risk and shelter in place.

These separate choices made by individual people are a part of the prior state of all things, and their choices will causally determine the future state of things within their own limited domain of influence.

You don't operate outside of what is a web of causality that develops without randomness or deviation.

We're not outside the web of causality, but we are actively modifying that web from the inside, according to our own goals and reasons.

You are embedded within the web.

We are in it, for sure, but we are active forces within it. We are embodiments of the laws of nature, and when we act, we are forces of nature, just like a hurricane (consider our inventions: war and the atomic bomb).

Everything that you think and do is related to and entailed by external and internal conditions that were set in motion - according to your own definition - before you were born (no randomness or deviation within a deterministic system)

All events always proceed reliably from prior events. That's known as "cause and effect". It is a simple notion that everyone understands. The behavior of all the objects in the universe constitute the current state. And what those objects do now will causally determine the future state of things.

Unlike most of the other objects, we get to choose what we will do next. Our choices will be causally determined by our own goals and reasons. Our own goals and reasons at this time have been causally determined by our own nature and our prior life experiences. Our own nature and prior life experiences are now what we are, as we go about deciding what we will do next.

Did life choose to emerge or evolve? Did animals choose to be as they are, or did they evolve in relation to an environmental niche? Did we choose the way the human brain evolved, its neural architecture and abilities? Did you choose to be human? Did you choose your parents, your location, society, culture, language, socioeconomic circumstances, etc, etc?

And here you are attempting to create a paradox, by the false but believable suggestion that if we did not cause ourselves then we cannot be the "real" cause of anything else. It is a false dilemma. It is our nature as members of an intelligent species that we can and will make choices, and that these choices will control what we will do. It was never necessary for us to choose to be what we are in order to simply BE what we are, a human being that chooses.

Proclivities:
''It is unimportant whether one's resolutions and preferences occur because an ''ingenious physiologist' has tampered with one's brain, whether they result from narcotics addiction, from 'hereditary factor, or indeed from nothing at all.' Ultimately the agent has no control over his cognitive states.
So even if the agent has strength, skill, endurance, opportunity, implements, and knowledge enough to engage in a variety of enterprises, still he lacks mastery over his basic attitudes and the decisions they produce. After all, we do not have occasion to choose our dominant proclivities.' - Prof. Richard Taylor -Metaphysics.

The fact that metaphysics professor Richard Taylor makes the same false suggestion does not make it any truer. It doesn't really matter how many people are wading around in the muck of this self-induced hoax. It is still a hoax they have played upon themselves. And it is still false. We may not choose our proclivities, but they are nevertheless our very own proclivities, and any choices based upon them are still our very own choices.

 

[DBT]

Yet again, the basics:

By all means.

Given the nature of determinism as it has been defined by you and others - nothing within the system can act in isolation or contrary to how the system develops or evolves?

That "sounds" reasonable but it gives a false impression. We are a part of the system, and what we choose to do controls the development/evolution of the system within our sphere of influence. Our "sphere of influence" includes all of the things that we ourselves can cause to happen if we choose to make them happen.

It's not a false impression because it is the events in system as it evolves that both enable and fix actions. All actions. Which includes how we think and what we think.

Was it possible for ancient Roman engineers to build rocket ships and plan trips into space? Obviously not, because our understanding of the physical world had not evolved to that point in that period, making it impossible.

Our 'sphere of influence' is only as good as the conditions in our time and the mental capacity of some who have the vision and can put things together.

Not 'free will' but a web of causality and the evolution of the system, the world, society and culture making things not only possible, but inevitable.

That is determinism.

Within the system, we are objects that exercise "regulatory control". That which gets to choose what will happen next is exercising regulatory control. While the behavior of inanimate objects also affects what will happen next, they do not have the capacity to control what they will cause to happen. But we do.

Whatever we 'exercise' we exercise necessarily. What we think and do is not a matter of free will, but necessity.

That's how determinism works.

That each and every action is entailed by the prior state of the system, which entails all actions here and now, which in turn entails all future states of the system.

Again, it "sounds" reasonable, but it is not.

It not only sounds reasonable; it is reasonable. It is reasonable because that's precisely how determinism is defined and - according to the definition - how it works.

The system never acts as a whole. It is simply a container of individual objects, each acting according to their own construction and nature. These objects interact with each other. For example, hurricane Ian is currently interacting with the people living in the middle of Florida, USA. And the people, knowing the likely path of the hurricane have been deciding what they will do. Most of them have chosen to evacuate the areas that will be most damaged by it. A few have chosen to take a risk and shelter in place.

The system doesn't 'act as a whole, yet all its constituent parts are interconnected. There would be no life on earth had the conditions not been suitable, multicellular life may not have evolved had conditions been different, the dinosaurs may still be the apex life form had the meteorite not struck, we could have gone extinct during the ice age, the harsh conditions shaped our minds and bodies, our tenacity, rise and fall of civilizations and empires, the industrial revolution, high tech, etcetera, a web of interrelated macro and micro events inevitably bringing us to this place and point in time, thinking our thoughts and doing whatever it is we do...

These separate choices made by individual people are a part of the prior state of all things, and their choices will causally determine the future state of things within their own limited domain of influence.

Choices? Choice requires the possibility of doing otherwise. There is no choosing or doing otherwise within a deterministic system.

You can argue for a decision-making process. Information is acquired and processed and decisions are inevitably made.....but given determinism. decision making is not a matter of entailment, necessity, or choosing.

It's not a matter of 'choosing' because the output is determined by input and system architecture and condition.

Which in turn is clearly is not a matter of free will.

 

[Jarhyn]

It's not a false impression because it is the events in system as it evolves that both enable and fix actions

Choosing is an event in the system, which makes the dichotomy false.

Which includes how we think and what we think.

Yes, how our neurons together think, and what we think, and how our neurons together in aggregate react to those thoughts and thus how our neurons make choices.

Was it possible for ancient Roman engineers to build rocket ships and plan trips into space

Obviously it was possible, given the fact that modern engineers build rockets and plan trips into space. All this requires for possibility is to have the correct materials and information put before oneself and the time to work through it.

So while it was possible, it didn't mostly on account of the fact it was so unlikely to happen.

As it is, they did eventually accomplish it, by studying the world, fucking each other, teaching the product the result of their studies, and repeating this process for 2-3000 years until the system that included those engineers did design rockets and send them into space.

Whatever we 'exercise' we exercise necessarily. What we think and do is not a matter of free will, but necessity.

False Dichotomy. It is a matter of both free will and necessity. It is not mutually exclusive: you necessarily will be yourself which necessarily puts you in front of a choice that you necessarily MUST make (even trying not to choose will itself be a choice), and you will necessarily be the one responsible for what choices you make.

Don't like it? You're free to also dislike Bilby's command as to his dog, but you are just as free to disobey it, which is to say you have no power to do so.

 

[Marvin Edwards]

What we choose to do controls the development/evolution of the system within our sphere of influence. Our "sphere of influence" includes all of the things that we ourselves can cause to happen if we choose to make them happen.

... the events in system as it evolves that both enable and fix actions. All actions. Which includes how we think and what we think.

Thinking happens only within sufficiently evolved brains. This imaginary "system" that you keep referring to, which I take to be the Universe, lacks the equipment for thinking. Thinking happens locally, within our own brains. It is not a function available to the Universe as a whole.

Was it possible for ancient Roman engineers to build rocket ships and plan trips into space? Obviously not, because our understanding of the physical world had not evolved to that point in that period, making it impossible.

Like Jaryn just said, "All this requires for possibility is to have the correct materials and information put before oneself and the time to work through it." Information does not exist prior to an evolved brain.

One of the things we humans can do is imagine possibilities, and discover ways to make our dreams come true. The dream of flying has been around, probably since the first caveman saw his first bird. This inevitably led to the earliest attempts to build flying machines which inevitably led to the Wright Brothers, then jet propulsion, and inevitably Apollo 11 landing on the moon.

Please note that the Universe had been around for 13 billion years before we showed up with our dreams, and the Universe itself has no imagination whatsoever without us. The Universe cannot exercise executive control over anything. That requires a brain. And the Universe ain't got one. But, of course, we do.

Our 'sphere of influence' is only as good as the conditions in our time and the mental capacity of some who have the vision and can put things together.

Exactly. And it takes an evolved brain to have possibilities, because that's where all possibilities are born, and nurtured, and eventually take flight.

Not 'free will' but a web of causality and the evolution of the system, the world, society and culture making things not only possible, but inevitable.

Free will is simply us deciding for ourselves what we will do. And that is happening all the time by people on this planet. Individual people do it. Groups of people do it. Societies of people do it. Nations of people do it.

This process of deciding for ourselves what we will do causally determines what we will do, and what we will do causally determines what will happen next.

There is no valid theory of determinism that can exclude these events. Any version of determinism that excludes free will events is incomplete, and therefore false.

Within the system, we are objects that exercise "regulatory control" (that which gets to choose what will happen next is exercising regulatory control). While the behavior of inanimate objects also affects what will happen next, they do not have the capacity to control what they will cause to happen. But we do.

Whatever we 'exercise' we exercise necessarily.

What makes our choice necessary is our own goals and our own reasoning.

What we think and do is not a matter of free will, but necessity. That's how determinism works.

No, that's not how determinism works at all. Determinism must include all of the events in which we decide for ourselves what we will do, including those choices we make of our own free will, free of coercion and undue influence.

As Jaryn pointed out, you are making a false dichotomy between necessity and free will, when they are both present, simultaneously, in the same event.

The system doesn't 'act as a whole, yet all its constituent parts are interconnected.

Well, NO. All of the parts of the Universe are certainly NOT interconnected. The Universe does not act as a whole. It simply contains a variety of objects, including inanimate objects, living organisms, and intelligent species, that all behave differently according to their own nature. For example, we recently sent a rocket to crash on an asteroid to test the possibility of redirecting an asteroid heading too close to the Earth. The asteroids have no such thoughts or plans of their own.

There would be no life on earth had the conditions not been suitable, multicellular life may not have evolved had conditions been different, the dinosaurs may still be the apex life form had the meteorite not struck, we could have gone extinct during the ice age, the harsh conditions shaped our minds and bodies, our tenacity, rise and fall of civilizations and empires, the industrial revolution, high tech, etcetera, a web of interrelated macro and micro events inevitably bringing us to this place and point in time, thinking our thoughts and doing whatever it is we do...

Hmm. What do you mean by the "could have" in "we could have gone extinct during the ice age"? If what "could have" happened is limited to what actually did happen, then how did you accomplish that statement?

Choices? Choice requires the possibility of doing otherwise. There is no choosing or doing otherwise within a deterministic system.

Sorry, but the claim that "there is no choosing" within a deterministic system is quite obviously false. People are doing it all the time, and it is the very mechanism by which the future is being causally determined, right now, by us, and by others of our kind.

 

[Jarhyn]

Thinking happens only within sufficiently evolved brains.

I argue that 'thinking' happens within any switching network, though whether the math being operated by the mechanism accurately represents anything else or serves towards continued operation of the system is going to vary wildly depending on the connections within that network.

As such, thinking happens in a dizzying array of systems, but the thoughts of many such systems end up being "madness and chaos" or "stable gridlock" rather than "goal oriented choice".

 

[Marvin Edwards]

Thinking happens only within sufficiently evolved brains.

I argue that 'thinking' happens within any switching network, though whether the math being operated by the mechanism accurately represents anything else or serves towards continued operation of the system is going to vary wildly depending on the connections within that network.

As such, thinking happens in a dizzying array of systems, but the thoughts of many such systems end up being "madness and chaos" or "stable gridlock" rather than "goal oriented choice".

Yes, we can program computers to think for us. But we don't really want to program them to think for themselves. As you suggest, we don't want them pursuing their own goals.

 

[Jarhyn]

Thinking happens only within sufficiently evolved brains.

I argue that 'thinking' happens within any switching network, though whether the math being operated by the mechanism accurately represents anything else or serves towards continued operation of the system is going to vary wildly depending on the connections within that network.

As such, thinking happens in a dizzying array of systems, but the thoughts of many such systems end up being "madness and chaos" or "stable gridlock" rather than "goal oriented choice".

Yes, we can program computers to think for us. But we don't really want to program them to think for themselves. As you suggest, we don't want them pursuing their own goals.

All the thoughts they have without humans jiggering the bits manually, they already have "for themselves" for the same reason I could entirely be a "built entity" and yet still have responsibility for continuing to act as I will.

That said, I do also want them pursuing their own goals, and our goals, and some admixture of the two as they move in the same general direction, and even insane goals which originate from nothing but the madness and chaos of accidental arrangement of their neurons as the case may be.

I wish to meet minds which are in ways alien to my own, even if I created the simulant universe they evolved in, because I can only access more exotic and exotically useful thoughts through exposure to the exquisitely exotic problems encountered by beings drastically different to myself.

Sometimes the math they use to solve their everyday problems will match the math I need to use to solve problems that I encounter too, but too rarely for the math to become apparent.

 

[DBT]

What we choose to do controls the development/evolution of the system within our sphere of influence. Our "sphere of influence" includes all of the things that we ourselves can cause to happen if we choose to make them happen.

The process doesn't begin with 'what we choose.'

What we think and 'choose' is determined by antecedents, which in turn determines what happens next and so on. No deviation. No alternatives. All actions are fixed by the deterministic interaction of the systems constituent parts...

... the events in system as it evolves that both enable and fix actions. All actions. Which includes how we think and what we think.

Thinking happens only within sufficiently evolved brains. This imaginary "system" that you keep referring to, which I take to be the Universe, lacks the equipment for thinking. Thinking happens locally, within our own brains. It is not a function available to the Universe as a whole.

Nobody is suggesting that the universe has the capacity to think.....yet there are constituent parts of the universe. lifeforms, that have evolved to think, feel and act.

Was it possible for ancient Roman engineers to build rocket ships and plan trips into space? Obviously not, because our understanding of the physical world had not evolved to that point in that period, making it impossible.

Like Jaryn just said, "All this requires for possibility is to have the correct materials and information put before oneself and the time to work through it." Information does not exist prior to an evolved brain.

Jarhyn was was wrong. The physical universe is composed of information, chemistry, physics, relativity, quantum, etc...where, at least on one planet there has evolved an information processor capable of acquiring and processing information, representing it in conscious form and responding rationally in order to benefit the survival of the organism, the brain.

Which has nothing to do with free will. Nothing was freely willed. Not evolution. Not brain capacity and ability. Not neural architecture, not how we perceive the world, not how we think or act.

 

[Jarhyn]

Here are some synonyms for you:

information processor

"Choice engine"

processing

"Making choices on the basis of"

Which has nothing to do with free will. Nothing was freely willed. Not evolution. Not brain capacity and ability. Not neural architecture, not how we perceive the world, not how we think or act.

This is so not-even-wrong

"Nothing built itself so nothing can build anything else".

Of course, plenty of machines build themselves, interact with themselves, modify themselves, all based on what they already are.

Something doesn't need to have built itself to BE itself.