The block universe, free will, death, and Nietzsche

[pood]

But is not the "free will" depicted within the analogy of a film strip merely a representation and not genuine "free will"? The events portrayed by the film when played out are predetermined and lack the true spontaneity and agency associated with actual events. In the context of the Block Universe theory, what appears as free will is simply an illusion, as all events and decisions are already embedded within the fixed structure of spacetime. Our ability to perceive free will itself is embedded in the block. No?

I address this here.

 

[Jarhyn]

But is not the "free will" depicted within the analogy of a film strip merely a representation and not genuine "free will"? The events portrayed by the film when played out are predetermined and lack the true spontaneity and agency associated with actual events. In the context of the Block Universe theory, what appears as free will is simply an illusion, as all events and decisions are already embedded within the fixed structure of spacetime. Our ability to perceive free will itself is embedded in the block. No?

Why would you consider this to be the case? They are not predetermined events, but just determined by the structure and whatever defines the nature of the interactions.

Free Will in it is no more an illusion because there is still "time" even within the block, it just is not the "time" of the viewer themselves.

Abstracting the concept of time is a hard ask? But the point here is that whatever creates the block is constrained by regular rules, even if those rules may be only ascertained by the frames. Even if the frames were shuffled, they are still labeled with their times, even if the film itself was cut up and scattered, the viewer could say "this is the series of frames that proceeds according to this nature from this initial condition," and then re-rendering the block.

If you were to write on a frame, to deface it, you would not be looking at the same block universe anymore, because the block itself is defined, even as a block, by what happens HERE.

It still has and contains a dimension of time, still is as slave to whatever nature of interaction that produces it, none of it predetermined, but rather merely "determined" by the action that defines the shape.

 

[Gospel]

This means that while the sea battle WILL happen tomorrow, it does not HAVE TO happen. Contrast this with propositions like “all triangles have three sides.” This is a necessary truth about the world.

But in the Block Universe, everything happens (or happened) simultaneously, and from our perspective, we exist at moments in time within the block.

Even though I WILL buy a house five years from now, it is within my power NOT to do so — and, if I did NOT do so, then a DIFFERENT prior proposition about the future would be true — that five years from now, I will NOT buy a house.

In the context of the Block Universe, both the decision-making process and the outcome are already set. Therefore, if it is true that you will buy a house in five years, that event is already an immutable part of the block. The idea that you could choose otherwise is an illusion created by our perception of moving through time. So, whether you choose to buy the house or not after being given the outcome in advance, the entire process of you receiving that information, planning to change the outcome, and the final results are predetermined by the block.

 

[Gospel]

Why would you consider this to be the case? They are not predetermined events, but just determined by the structure and whatever defines the nature of the interactions.

Because the structures (everything they are), nature (everything it is), interactions (everything they involve), and so on, are all predetermined.

 

[Jarhyn]

Why would you consider this to be the case? They are not predetermined events, but just determined by the structure and whatever defines the nature of the interactions.

Because the structures (everything they are), nature (everything it is), interactions (everything they involve), and so on, are all predetermined.

No, they are all determined, without the "pre", by the nature of whatever defines the set.

In order to handle this without the insanities required to think about infinities, I'm going to reduce the problem to a much smaller finite example: a system with only two states per location, sixteen frames, and only four locations, whose nature is "modular count", you have to actually create a system with that nature, and you can't do it without some action of counting! You would have to start somewhere, and continue through the dance, and hold yourself to the laws of modular counting.

If I wanted to render this system, the block between the zero property and the wrap-around, I would still have to actually do the work of enforcing the rule onto the frames according to some starting position. The determination process would still have to happen.

If you want to view this system from a position without an independent time dimension (and good luck convincing me that's even a coherent proposal), time is created by and within the existence of the block itself, and the block isn't really considerable "as a block" because "block" assumes the existence of a reference frame.

If you assume the block existing as a holographic projection of something else (such as the initial conditions), even then it's determined by the nature of what projects it, which in my estimation requires sequential processes from the base condition and reliance on earlier states for determining later ones.

You can't get away from determination over time being a trait of the block itself. The jazz compositions were still written by their composers as much as they were written by anything else.

 

[pood]

This means that while the sea battle WILL happen tomorrow, it does not HAVE TO happen. Contrast this with propositions like “all triangles have three sides.” This is a necessary truth about the world.

But in the Block Universe, everything happens (or happened) simultaneously, and from our perspective, we exist at moments in time within the block.

Even though I WILL buy a house five years from now, it is within my power NOT to do so — and, if I did NOT do so, then a DIFFERENT prior proposition about the future would be true — that five years from now, I will NOT buy a house.

In the context of the Block Universe, both the decision-making process and the outcome are already set. Therefore, if it is true that you will buy a house in five years, that event is already an immutable part of the block. The idea that you could choose otherwise is an illusion created by our perception of moving through time. So, whether you choose to buy the house or not after being given the outcome in advance, the entire process of you receiving that information, planning to change the outcome, and the final results are predetermined by the block.

Consider any event of the past — say, some major event, like Oswald assassinating Kennedy.

This assassination is, was, and always will be, contingently true (unlike three-sided triangles) because it was always within Oswald’s power to refrain from pulling the trigger. The fact that he DID pull the trigger is (now, from our indexical frame of reference) a fixed, immutable fact of the past. It is set in stone.

The block universe just treats the future the same as the past — fixed, and immutable. However, I never hear anyone saying, “because Oswald shot Kennedy, it was necessary that he do so — he had no power to refrain from doing so.” Well, maybe hard determinists say that.

So it is with the future — what will be, will be. That’s a line from an old popular song. The line, correctly, is not, “what will be, MUST be.”

What fixes the past, present, and future, in part is our actions — our free actions. The concern about the inevitability of the future, under the block world, goes back to what I said in my previous post — a nagging but false intuition that to be truly free, we ought to be able to CHANGE the future. But under modal logic and a proper understanding of of the block world, this intuition is as misplaced as saying that to be truly free, we ought to be able to change the past. Yet no one that I know of thinks we lack compatibilist free will because we are unable to change the past.

 

[Gospel]

Maybe I'm not quite grasping Block Universe theory, which is why I'm having trouble with the responses. Could you two kindly let me share my understanding using my own analogy? Then, if you're up for it, explain how free will fits into that analogy? If my analogy falls short, I'll gracefully accept temporary defeat in reaching an understanding.

It's like everything except time is on a vinyl record, and time plays the vinyl (all integral parts that make up the Block). The needle represents our current position in time. Some of the record has already been played (the past), some is yet to be played (the future), and some is being played right now (the present). What we experience is the interaction between the needle and the vinyl. We cannot see what will be played next; we only know what has already been played because we observed it. Although we can make predictions based on our observations and take actions we believe may influence the future, these attempts to change the future and the perception that we can change it are themselves part of the record. They are always being played in the present, and their outcomes are predetermined.

How can we demonstrate that the future is changeable without access to it anyway?

Please note that I don't actually believe the Block Theory is more than a theory, and I'm not an advocate for or against it. I'm just a slightly below-average intelligence yet curious individual.

 

[Jarhyn]

Maybe I'm not quite grasping Block Universe theory, which is why I'm having trouble with the responses. Could you two kindly let me share my understanding using my own analogy? Then, if you're up for it, explain how free will fits into that analogy? If my analogy falls short, I'll gracefully accept temporary defeat in reaching an understanding.

It's like everything except time is on a vinyl record, and time plays the vinyl (all integral parts that make up the Block). The needle represents our current position in time. Some of the record has already been played (the past), some is yet to be played (the future), and some is being played right now (the present). What we experience is the interaction between the needle and the vinyl. We cannot see what will be played next; we only know what has already been played because we observed it. Although we can make predictions based on our observations and take actions we believe may influence the future, these attempts to change the future and the perception that we can change it are themselves part of the record. They are always being played in the present, and their outcomes are predetermined.

How can we demonstrate that the future is changeable without access to it anyway?

Please note that I don't actually believe the Block Theory is more than a theory, and I'm not an advocate for or against it. I'm just a slightly below-average intelligence yet curious individual.

Ok, so, look at the vinyl record. That's a good example for this: when the record was produced, could it have possibly be produced with that tune without at some point before it ended up on the record, it having been created by a temporal process?

At some point, it was determined by process, unless you're talking about the idea of the record. After the fact, when it is printed in reproduction by a stamp, whether it is "the record" is defined not by whether it came from that stamp, but whether it's artifacts were according to the process that created it.

I could make a record by having 1000 people roll 100 dice with enough sides to encode a momentary fourier transform that will each simultaneously be assigned to some frame... But this is not a song that is going to have continuity according to any kind of "rule of time"; it will not appear that the past follows the future.

This can create a block that can be read temporally, with predetermination, but as you can see, it would require a god writing all of it in advance at the same time to produce something with continuity... Which is something we around here reject as a premise.

I would further argue that to enforce continuity between moments process that produces this record "from the side" would itself have each individual moment Started from the initial condition and held to be assembled... That the only way to make the block "at the same time" as a joinder of different moments would be to run through to each moment independently.

If I understand right, LLMs use a very similar trick to accomplish the result of recursion despite being mono directional (instead of remembering their past as a memory, they just recalculate what their past must have been every moment... Inefficient, sure, but it's way easier to train.)

So really it's creating a block by creating a huge number of redundant determinations by course.

There's just no way to step away from the block instantiating time, if the "future" necessarily depends on the "past".. or the left depends on the right, and so on

 

[bilby]

The idea that you could choose otherwise is an illusion created by our perception of moving through time.

Nah, it's an observation about our perspective, which includes (but is not limited to) movement through time. Jt's no more (or less) illusory than any other observation.

When compatibilists talk about free will, they are talking about responsibility. Is it reasonable to punish person A for a crime?

The answer is yes, as long as the crime wasn't predictable until it was decided upon within the criminal.

And (one of) the benefits of punishing person A for such an event is that it reduces the probability of person B making the same criminal choice at some future date.

We know that if we ask person B "why didn't you steal the cash, when you had every opportunity to do so", he might reply that he was worried that he could be punised like person A was.

The unavoidable fact that B did not commit a crime had, as an essential precursor, the punishment of A.

It doesn't matter one whit that A was always a criminal, and B was always law abiding, from a god's eye view of all of spacetime - because nobody has that god's eye perspective.

Compatibilist free will is an unavoidable consequence of imperfect knowledge about the future, because that knowledge (despite its inconsistencies and imperfections) is unavoidably part of the precursor conditions that inevitably lead to that future.

 

[Gospel]

But is not compatibilist free will itself a predetermined part of the structure of spacetime? The existence of free will, as an unavoidable consequence of imperfect knowledge about the future, is an inherent part of the block. No?

 

[Gospel]

Within the predetermined structure, our internal states—our motivations, desires, and reasoning processes—are also part of the block. When we make decisions, these decisions are determined by our internal states, which are themselves fixed within the block. This includes our concept of right and wrong and our reactions to them.

 

[Jarhyn]

predetermined

Not predetermined. Just "determined".

Predetermined: "I the god of fate say that you will say ABCD in 5 seconds; even if you try not to, the fact I said it compels you to that outcome like a magnet following a vector of force, like an apple falling from a tree"

Determined: you make a decision, think about things yourself, time passes, and because of who you happen to be you say "ABCD" absent any diefic decree.

 

[Gospel]

I understand now; I was using the wrong term. I did indeed mean 'determined.' It seems 'predetermined' carries connotations that I wasn't aware of. No, I wasn't suggesting there's a wizard behind a curtain.

 

[Jarhyn]

I understand now; I was using the wrong term. I did indeed mean 'determined.' It seems 'predetermined' carries connotations that I wasn't aware of. No, I wasn't suggesting there's a wizard behind a curtain.

But my point is that determination requires the constant conjunction. There's no shortcut to creating a continuous series of sequentially hierarchical events without some rule being applied on earlier states to evoke the later ones. You can't just say "show me what happens at frame 1000" without, somewhere at some point, frame 1-999 being calculated into frame 1000.

You are an inextricable part of what defines "what happens next", I guess, is my point.

 

[Gospel]

I think we're discussing two aspects of determinism.

When I say our internal states—motivations, desires, and reasoning processes—are part of the block, I mean they are determined by prior states within the block. This includes our concepts of right and wrong and our reactions to them. These states evolve based on preceding events and the laws of nature governing these transitions.

You’re arguing constant conjunction. The sequence of events from frame 1 to frame 1000 following a continuous, hierarchical order where each frame is calculated based on the previous ones.

When we make decisions, these are determined by a continuous chain of prior events. We are indeed an inextricable part of 'what happens next.' Our decisions and actions are outcomes of the cumulative effects of earlier states.

Regrettably, I think that free will is not separate from the determinism that exists within the Block Universe. Both our perception of free will and the concept itself are determined and exist within the same spacetime as everything else in the Block Universe.

 

[Jarhyn]

I think we're discussing two aspects of determinism.

When I say our internal states—motivations, desires, and reasoning processes—are part of the block, I mean they are determined by prior states within the block. This includes our concepts of right and wrong and our reactions to them. These states evolve based on preceding events and the laws of nature governing these transitions.

You’re arguing constant conjunction. The sequence of events from frame 1 to frame 1000 following a continuous, hierarchical order where each frame is calculated based on the previous ones.

When we make decisions, these are determined by a continuous chain of prior events. We are indeed an inextricable part of 'what happens next.' Our decisions and actions are outcomes of the cumulative effects of earlier states.

Regrettably, I think that free will is not separate from the determinism that exists within the Block Universe. Both our perception of free will and the concept itself are determined and exist within the same spacetime as everything else in the Block Universe.

Well, my point here is that you can read the block and make an observation about what time and locations are involved in some event. The responsibility is generated by whatever evokes the existence of the block as it is, but these are observable by any outside observer. Part of how you design "new" blocks comes from analysis of responsibility in existing blocks.

This is in fact how most bigger programs are debugged: you declare initial conditions, see what the block does, and find out where the block diverged from what you expected... Then you declare different initial conditions for the "Turing space" and see what happens there.

Sometimes you even change momentary conditions, at least as a programmer. This is something akin to looking at a frame before the next frame is rendered, and changing pixels on it before allowing the machine to render the next frame of the conjunction, albeit with a seemingly inexplicable event of change baked in.

The point here is that we have the observation of responsibility not just as critters within this constant conjunction, but as an observer outside it would be capable of deriving.

Of course, responsibility is not absolute and momentary, it's more like a branching river going back in time, and at every moment, the description of the river changes subtly: in one moment you are responsible for "having a bad idea" and in the previous and the next you are not responsible for "having a bad idea", but for "being a mind that engaged bad ideas", and in some later moment still, you are responsible for "engaging that specific bad idea", and so on.

At some point the responsibilities become far less understandable as to whether they will lead to "acting on a bad idea", or are ostensibly all themselves still "good ideas" with only a minor "chance" of leading to your bad idea. At some point, though, things start to go in a way where neglecting response will observably and reliably fail on us. This doesn't help the observer from outside the block do much to redefine the block, since it is just as out of their control what happens in the fundamental unmolested system, but it does allow designing a better fundamental system, and moreover and fare more meaningfully for US, allows us to understand that the nature of determinism creates such responsibilities that can be observed no matter whether someone is inside or outside of it.

 

[Gospel]

Introducing programming into the discussion about free will in the block universe is problematic because the programmer exists outside the program and exerts external influence on it. This differs from the block universe concept, where all influences and events, including our thoughts and decisions, are contained within the same spacetime framework.

 

[Jarhyn]

Introducing programming into the discussion about free will in the block universe is problematic because the programmer exists outside the program and exerts external influence on it. This differs from the block universe concept, where all influences and events, including our thoughts and decisions, are contained within the same spacetime framework.

I think rather the inverse? Programming is the one arena wherein a block universe can actually be observed and probed, especially since this exercise of external influence is optional (and as discussed, does not influence the definition of the uninfluenced case).

Take for example the start-up sequence of the 787. This process was designed to be deterministic -- and it happens to be the biggest deterministic system that I have intimate familiarity with; for all I am familiar with more extensive and deterministic processes, some of which are linked to "universe creation" within their domains, none of those are engineered as the 787 avionics package I handled on the GHS "time machine" debugger such that they created the kind of "block universe artifacts" we are discussing here.

The 787? That created blocks that could be examined after the fact, incredibly large artifacts containing a full recording of states. Imagine a record cutter running on about 10000 records all at the same time.

All the "responsibilities" within that process, a process completely free of user input, are contained within it. It's essentially just a grand experiment to actually get a block universe in your hot little hand, and one of the reasons I lean on the programming analogy so heavily: it takes the discussion out of the realm of abstraction and gives a concrete example that can be probed and understood directly.

Even then, the programmer/god can obserbe the responsibilities over time of the system. This is in fact why I call myself a "god", because I'm the "god" of that universe, handling the faithful artifact of the deterministic record, and creating new ones.

Once I trace responsibilities all the way to the initial condition, I can create an initial condition that leads somewhere else, has a different shape to its river. It's not that it's predetermined, it's still determined by course, though. I'm not changing the rules, just the location in "Turing space" that the rules will be applied to.

Even if I am the one who set up the initial condition, the processes of the system are responsible in their own moment for the actions they take, and this responsibility is not an illusion. They are as they were made, perhaps, and I am responsible for the "making" but they are just as responsible to the things within the system for their "being". Which is to say, "responsibility is not zero sum".

 

[Gospel]

Alright then. The entities within the 787 avionics package may be said to have responsibilities, but these responsibilities are determined by the initial setup and the rules set by the developer(s). A developer(s) within a block universe. This serves as an example of how "responsibility" is merely a label—determined within the block universe—that we assign to objects, concepts, and events within the system.

But let's say the developers, the entities within the 787 avionics package, and the package itself do not exist within a block universe, and instead, the entities within the 787 avionics package and the package itself constitute the block universe. The system's behavior would still be determined by the initial setup, the programming code, and the rules established by the developers. "Responsibilities" would remain just a label developers used to identify individual parts of the code's functions or purposes. The code itself would simply be executing what it was initially programmed to do. This doesn't change even if the code included instructions on how to and to identify "responsibilities".

 

[Jarhyn]

but these responsibilities are determined by the initial setup and the rules set by the developer(s)

Responsibility is not zero-sum. The developers are responsible for making other things that are themselves responsible for things in turn, but the responsibility of the developer/initial condition/whatever doesn't change the momentary responsibilities through the evolution of the system.

Causality still happens, the constant conjunction still happens, and things do what they will as they are in the moment.