Some readers will mistakenly think that common Less Wrong views are more parochial than they really are.
I think the parochialism comes from high handed smack-talk like “The obvious answer to philosophically recondite issue is X, and all you need to see this is obvious is our superior rationality”. Best example here.
One of the easiest hard questions, as millennia-old philosophical dilemmas go. Though this impossible question is fully and completely dissolved on Less Wrong, aspiring reductionists should try to solve it on their own.
I get a similar vibe regarding QM (obviously many worlds), religion (obviously atheism), phil of mind (obviously reductionsim), and (most worrying) ethics and meta-ethics.
The fact the candidate views espoused are part of the academic mainstream doesn’t defray the charge of parochialism due to the tup-thumping, uncharitable-to-opponents and generally under-argued way these views are asserted. Worse, it signals lack of competence on the part of LW: given the views of virtually all domain experts on any of these things, your degree of confidence is better explained by inferior, not superior knowledge, and even if you happen to get the right answer, I doubt you’re p-reliable or tracking.
I don’t think there’s much value in pretending that issues like God (and the absence thereof) or the compatibility between determinism and (any logically coherent view of) free will haven’t been decisively answered.
Seriously now, the compatibility between free will and determinism is something that I was figuring out by myself back in junior high. Eliezer with his “Thou Art Physics” expressed it better and more compactly than I ever did to myself (I was instead using imagery of the style “we’re the stories that write themselves”, and this was largely inspired by Tolkien’s Ainulindale, where the various gods sing a creation song that predicts all their future behaviour), but the gist is really obvious once you get rid of the assumption that determinism and free will must somehow be opposed.
In every discussion I’ve had since, in any forum, nobody who thinks them to be incompatible can describe even vaguely what “free will” would be supposed to look like if it does not contain determinism inside it.
I think this is a case of exactly the problem I diagnosed above.
Compatibilism (and related views) have been mentioned at least since Hume, and have been discussed extensively in modern analytic philosophy. Although it commands a slender majority of philosophers of action, it is not like the entire philosophical community considers compatibilism obviously or decisively the ‘right answer’ (see here, and here for a long index of reasons/objections etc.). You’d be pretty hard pressed to find a single philosopher of action who considers free will a ‘solved problem’.
Yet it seems the less wrong community considers it solved based on a sequence of blog posts which merely explicates compatibilism: I couldn’t find any discussion of compatibilism which goes beyond undergrad philosophy level, no discussion of common objections to compatibilism, engagement with any thinkers arguing against, nothing.
The two best explanations I have for this is either compatibilism is just obvious and people of sufficient rationality can be confident that domain experts on free will who don’t buy compatibilism are wrong, or that the LW ‘solution’ is frankly philosophically primitive but LWers are generally too far on the wrong side of the Dunning-Kruger effect to appreciate why it isn’t the decisive answer to a ‘millenia old philosophical dilemma’ they think it is.
Surely the outside view would find the latter account much more plausible?
Although it commands a slender majority of philosophers of action, it is not like the entire philosophical community considers compatibilism obviously or decisively the ‘right answer’
Thanks for that poll. It’s a slender majority, but a very strong plurality, since the next most favourite option is less than half as popular, and if you examine only the ‘Accept’ answers instead of the ‘lean towards’ answers, the compatibilists are also much more certain in their belief, while the libertarians and no-free-willers tend to be uncertain much more often.
And the faculty is more definitely compatibilistic than the students, which seems to indicate education correlates with acceptance of compatibilism.
But more importantly: these people also seem to prefer to two-box in Newcomb’s problem. So why should I put much weight in their opinion?
A weak majority/strong plurality of relevant domain experts does not make the question decisively answered. I don’t have survey data on this, but I’m pretty sure none of the compatibilists (even those who ‘accept’ it), take the question to be obviously answered etc. etc.
But more importantly: these people also seem to prefer to two-box in Newcomb’s problem. So why should I put much weight in their opinion?
The majority of decision theory specialists two-box. I’m sure you can guess what I’m going to say about doman expertise and dunning-kruger effect here, too.
A weak majority/strong plurality of relevant domain experts does not make the question decisively answered.
Tell me, do you have any criterion over whether something is “decisively answered” other than how many “relevant domain experts” agree with it? If your definition of “decisively answered” is solely dependent on this, then we can just agree that we were using different definitions for the term.
The majority of decision theory specialists two-box.
So much for the decision theory specialists. Implement a real life version of Newcomb’s box, where you fill in the opaque box based on whether they said they’ll one-box or two-box. Assuming everyone follows what they said they should do, the one-boxers will just win, and the two-boxers will be weeping.
Tell me, do you have any criterion over whether something is “decisively answered” other than how many “relevant domain experts” agree with it? If your definition of “decisively answered” is solely dependent on this, then we can just agree that we were using different definitions for the term.
I take ‘decisively answered’ to mean something along the lines of “here is an account, which, properly understood, solves this problem to the satisfaction of reasonable people”. So (near) unanimity among relevant domain experts is necessary but not sufficient for this. I can’t think of anything in natural language we would call a ‘decisive answer’ or similar in which 40% or so of relevant domain experts disagree with.
So much for the decision theory specialists. Implement a real life version of Newcomb’s box, where you fill in the opaque box based on whether they said they’ll one-box or two-box. Assuming everyone follows what they said they should do, the one-boxers will just win, and the two-boxers will be weeping.
This is recapitulating a standard argument for one-boxing, and it is well discussed in the literature. The fact the bulk of people who spend their time studying this issue and don’t find this consideration decisive should make you think it is less a silver bullet than you think it is.
This is recapitulating a standard argument for one-boxing, and it is well discussed in the literature. The fact the bulk of people who spend their time studying this issue and don’t find this consideration decisive should make you think it is less a silver bullet than you think it is.
I should update slightly towards that direction, yes, but I have to note that the poll you gave me are not just about people who study the issue, but people who also seem to have made a career out of discussing it, and therefore (I would cynically suggest) perhaps wouldn’t like the discussion to be definitively over.
e.g. Theologists and Priests are perhaps not the best people to poll, if you want to determine the existence of God.
Ah, but I just remembered atheism was one of the things you complained about being treated as obviously correct by most of us here? Because the domain experts about God (Theologists and Priests) haven’t come to same conclusion?
This is recapitulating a standard argument for one-boxing,
I don’t feel a pressing need to be non-standard: One-boxing wins, two-boxing loses—that’s all one needs to know for the purpose of choosing between them.
I should update slightly towards that direction, yes, but I have to note that the poll you gave me are not just about people who study the issue, but people who also seem to have made a career out of discussing it, and therefore (I would cynically suggest) perhaps wouldn’t like the discussion to be definitively over.
Sure, but I gather there are other things you can discuss in decision theory besides Newcomb’s problem, so it isn’t like the decision theorists need an artificial controversy about this to keep their jobs.
There are dissimilarities between decision theorists and (say) theologians, priests etc. Decision theorists are unlikely to have prior convictions about decision theory before starting to study it, unlike folks who discuss religion. The relevant domain expert in ‘Does God exist’ would likely be philosophers of religion, although there is a similar selection effect. However, for what it’s worth, I doubt atheist philosophers of religion would consider the LW case for atheism remotely creditable.
This is an elementary logical fallacy. Because someone is bad at completely unrelated task X, tells you zero information at task Y. We are however given that they are domain experts, and as such are competent at the task at hand.
I don’t think there’s much value in pretending that issues like God (and the absence thereof) or the compatibility between determinism and (any logically coherent view of) free will haven’t been decisively answered.
There are plenty of reasons for putting forward you conclusions as non decisive: (edited)
I ‘might’ also be wrong about the Earth not being flat. That still doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t consider the shape of the earth decisively answered.
The pertinent point is that all informed opinion considers it decisiley answered. That is not the case with
the two issues you cited as having been decisevly answered by EY.
They’re insufficient for me. Other people may find them sufficient.
The pertinent point is that all informed opinion considers it decisively answered
So, according to you, it seems I shouldn’t pronounce something decisively answered unless “all informed opinion” considers it decisively answered.
Don’t you see the paradox in this? How is the first person to consider it ‘decisively answered’ supposed to call it ‘decisively answered’, if he/she must first wait for all other people to call it ‘decisively answered’ first?
he/she must first wait for all other people to call it ‘decisively answered’ first?
No they needn’t. They only need wait for the point to be reached where an overwhelming majority agree with an answer.
Having noted that , they can correctly state that it has been decisevely answered. They only need others
to agree with the anwer, not for others to agree that the question has been decisvely answered.
They only need wait for the point to be reached where an overwhelming majority agree with an answer
I don’t think that “decisively answered” need have anything to do with democracy—for example I’m sure that if you poll Czech scientists about the existence of God, you’ll get a different distribution than if you ask Iranian scientists. Even if they’re equally informed, political considerations will make them voice different things.
The policy you suggest seems designed to minimize conflict with your academic peers, not designed to maximize effectiveness in the pursuit of understanding the universe.
Churchill said democracy was the worst system apart from all the others. Do you have an alternative way of establishing Deciiveness that improves on the Majority of Informed Opinion?
’m sure that if you poll Czech scientists about the existence of God, you’ll get a different distribution than if you ask Iranian scientists
Neither of those subsets would get me the majority of informed opinion. I believe I have already solved that problem.
Churchill said democracy was the worst system apart from all the others.
Churchill’s exact quote was “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time” He was talking about forms of government, not methods of understanding the universe.
Do you have an alternative way of establishing Deciiveness that improves on the Majority of Informed Opinion?
As a sidenote, let me note here that even on the issue you argued about, this “majority” seems to actually exist. The majority of philosophers are compatibilists, according to Thrasymachus’s linked poll above.
And there seems to be an > 80% percentage (an overwhelming majority) against libertarian free will. According to your own argument then, even if you don’t find compabilism a “decisive answer”, you should find libertarianism a “decisive failure of an answer”.
But getting back to your question: “Do you have an alternative way of establishing Deciiveness that improves on the Majority of Informed Opinion?”
Well, even if we don’t speak about things like “Science” or “Testing” or “Occam’s Razor properly utilized”, I think I’ll prefer the “Majority of Informed Opinion that Also Has IQ > 130 And Also One-Boxes in Newcomb’s Dilemma”.
Churchill’s exact quote was “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time” He was talking about forms of government, not methods of understanding the universe.
I was only drawing a loose analogy.
The majority of philosophers are compatibilists, according to Thrasymachus’s linked poll above.
Then Hobbes decisively solved it, not EY. OTOH, if you are talking about EY’s specific form of compatibilism..
then he has no majority on his side.
Well, even if we don’t speak about things like “Science” or “Testing” or “Occam’s Razor properly utilized”, I think I’ll prefer the “Majority of Informed Opinion that Also Has IQ > 130 And Also One-Boxes in Newcomb’s Dilemma”.
Why is it an improvment to make it parochial? Can’t you see that it trivialises the claim “EY has decisevely solved FW” to add the rider ”..by the LW/EY definition of decisivness”. I could also claim to have solved it by my definition. Parochialism devalues the currency.
Can’t you see that it trivialises the claim “EY has decisevely solved FW”
Downvoted, because I never made that claim, and nobody has made that claim. I said FW/determinism has been solved, I didn’t present EY as the originator of compatibilism, any more than I would have assigned the invention of atheism to him.
I may have tapped out, but don’t you dare make this into an opportunity to misrepresent me. I will still disavow any false statement you assign to me. I’m very territorial about what I have actually said, vs what people attempt to falsely assign to me.
In every discussion I’ve had since, in any forum, nobody who thinks them to be incompatible can describe even vaguely what “free will” would be supposed to look like if it does not contain determinism inside it.
We haven’t met, then. I’m natuarlistic libertarian and therefore an incompatibilist. I may not be right, but so long as I am not completely wrong, EY does not have “the” answer.
Anyway, on to the refutation of “FW requires determinism”..
II.1.i Introduction
Compatibilism comes in a stronger form, which does not have a traditional name; We will call it supercompatibilism. According to supercompatibilism, free will is not only capable of existing alongside causal determinism, it cannot exist without determinism.
Here is case that free will requires causal indeterminism.
PRO: “Free will requires the ability to have done otherwise under the very same circumstances, which is only possible in a universe with some degree of indeterminism.”
The following argument goes against the usefulness of indeterminism to free will:-
ANTI: “Freedom of a kind worth wanting requires rationality, and rationality mean following rules. Causal Determinism would ensure that the rules are followed. Indeterminism would disrupt the process of rational thought, and result in a capricious, irrational kind of freedom not worth having. An individual cannot call an action his or her own unless they can account rationally account for it, and unless it was caused by their own intentions. Reasons are causes, so to be rational is to be determined.
We will now argue against the ANTI argument, taking it a sentence at a time.
II.1.ii Objection 1: “Freedom of a kind worth wanting requires rationality”
Yes, but it is by no means limited to rationality. free will of a kind worth wanting must facilitate the whole gamut of human behaviour, including creativity, imagination, inventiveness etc.
II.1.iii Objection 2: “Causal Determinism would ensure that the rules are followed.”
Casual Determinism only guarantees that everything follows the laws of nature, not that anything follows the laws of thought. If you believe the universe is deterministic, you have to admit that any lapse of rationally is just as determined as everything else. Indeed, we are more likely to look for a deterministic — in the sense of an external cause —explanation for uncharacteristically irrational behaviour than for rational behaviour — so-and-so was drunk, drugged, etc.
II.1.iv Objection 3: “Indeterminism would disrupt the process of rational thought, and result in a capricious, irrational kind of freedom not worth having.”
Is that so ? Computer programmes can consult random-number generators where needed, including ‘real’ ones implemented in hardware. (like this) The rest of their operation is perfectly deterministic. Why should the brain not be able to call on indeterminism as and when required, and exclude it the rest of the time ? And if random numbers are useful for computers, why should indeterministic input be useless for brains ? Is human rationality that much more hidebound than a computer ? Even including such faculties as creativity and imagination ? Pseudo-random numbers (which are really deterministic) may be used in computers, and any indeterminism the brain calls on might be only pseudo-random. But it does not have to be, and if we assume it is not, we can explain realistically why we have the sense of being able to have done otherwise.
And is it so great to be compelled into rule-following rationality ? If you asked some what 5 and 7 make, you would expect the answer 12. But if you asked them the same question ten times in a row, you would expect them to object at some stage, and stop answering, unlike a pocket calculator which will spit out the same answer ad infinitum. Surely the choice of whether or not to follow a set of rules is part of rationality ?
II.1.iv Objection 4: “An individual cannot call an action his or her own unless they can rationally account for it and unless it was caused by their own intentions”
It is true that we would not consider an individual to ‘own’ a an action or decision if it had nothing to do with his beliefs and aims at the time he made it — that is, if we assume that indeterminism erupts in-between everything that happened to make him the individual he is, and the act itself.
But, we libertarians claim. an act is also not an individual’s own if it entirely attributable to causes lying outside him, ultimately traceable to circumstances before he came into existence.
There is no need to be disheartened. If the causal origins of our actions cannot lie before our births or after our decisions have been made, they can still lie, just where they should: during our lifetimes.
Our actions can be determined by our preceding mental state, providing that our mental state is not itself entirely attributable to causes outside of ourselves. This means that, although we can pin actions to immediate purposes, we cannot trace back a chain of purposes-for-purposes ad infinitum.
I do not think that is any loss, since determinism fares no better. All purposes may be causes, but not all causes are purposes. The deterministic causal chain, if traced back, is bound to encounter factors which do not rationally explain, any more than a random occurrence does. Moreover, this process of looking for ultimate rational explanations is unusual to say the least. Our normal attitude is that John and Mary have their reasons, which are very much part of who they are, and that’s that.
II.1.v Reasons are causes, so to be rational is to be determined.
Is it the case that our actions are determined by our reasons, so that indeterminism must entail irrationality?
The reasons we have for actions might be said to cause those actions, but there are a number of differences between reasons and causes, and in any case reasons are not determining causes, as will be argued.
Whereas any event can involve causation, only a small subset of entities in the universe, rational agents, can base their actions on reasons.
Causes lie in the past, whereas reasons are generally directed towards some future state of affairs.
A causal statement is not a direct substitute for a rational justification. If I kick someone and am asked why I did it, it is no justification — for all that it is true — to say that nerve signals from my brain caused my leg to flex.
A Causal chain can continue back to the Big Bang, but a rational explanation for behavour cannot. An individual must explain their behaviour in tersm of their own aims an desires. Once they start claiming they were caused to behave in a certain way, by their environment, genes,etc, they are no longer offering reasoned explanaion.
Causal explanation is ‘classical’ — everything is brought under a uniform, impersonal set of laws. Rational explanation is ‘romantic’ — people have their own unaccountably individual reasons for doing things. There is no single right answer to “what should I do”, as it depends on what you as an individual want to do — nor is there any single right answer to “what should I want”.
That reasons are not determining causes is established by the fact that one can have multiple reasons for multiple courses of action. If one accepts the slice of cake, one pleases the hostess; if one rejects it, one sticks to ones diet. If reasons and actions are chosen in pairs there will always be a reason for ones action irrespective of what is actually chosen. This is still true if a choice is made randomly. If one does choose a reason-action pair randomly, it is admittedly true that a reason-for-the reason cannot be given. But it is always the case that chains of reasoning cannot be pursued to infinity; they have to stop somewhere (or be circular). Since real-world reasoning is constrained in this way, limited amounts of indeterminism would not render people any less able to provide chains of reasoning than they are anyway, even though it remains the case that complete indeterminism entails complete irrationality.
If reasons are not determining causes, are they causes at all? It would certainly be a peculiar situation if reasons were causally completely detached from the actions they explain. At least the neural correlates of reasons need to be causes. Reasons themseleves arguably belong to a different language game so that it is a category-error to substitute talk of reasons directly for talk of causes an vicer-versa. This need not imply any ontological dualism, but rather a kind of anomolous monism.
It is sometimes said that we are free to do what we want, but not to choose what we want. The approach sketched so far is pretty much the opposite of this. If we have clear reasons for doing something and are in a rational frame of mind our actions follow almost inevitably. Freedom lies in the fact that our basic aims and goals, our basic nature is not inevitable, We might not have done as we did because we might not have been that kind of person. Freedom is not mere caprice, not does it lie in being the puppet of circumstances, it is self determination, a gradual evolution of selfhood.
Downvoted for being atleast twenty times more long-winded than necessary, and still failing to describe what a “free will” without determinism would look like.
Computer programmes can consult random-number generators where needed, including ‘real’ ones implemented in hardware.
Pseudo-random, but I’ll let that trivial point slide. The more significant point is that those random numbers are utterly meaningless in themselves—the meaning and worth of a program lies in those aspects that are not random, or in how it deterministically uses a random variation. We can use a pseudo-random generator to use in a cryptographical program, or in an artistic program, or in a mutation-simulation program—but that pseudo-randomness is only meaningful in how it’s deterministically used.
Downvoted for being atleast twenty times more long-winded than necessary, and still failing to describe what a “free will” without determinism would look like.
Hmmm. Well, that’s in the full lenght version of which this is an extract.
I notice that EYs disquisition, which is problably longer, doesn’t suffer from the problem of being “too long”.
Pseudo-random, but I’ll let that trivial point slide
Which instance of “random” do you think should have been pseudo random? Note that there are devices commercially marketed as supplying “real” randomness based on quantum physics.
The more significant point is that those random numbers are utterly meaningless in themselves—the meaning and worth of a program lies in those aspects that are not random,
Says who? Are you saying that the use of randomisation in software is always a misttake, that programmers
who feel it is necessary are just incompetent?
that pseudo-randomness is only meaningful in how it’s deterministically used.
It is true that a random number is no good in itself, but equally you can’t solve
every problem with pure determinism. So the value of a deterministic+random algorithm
is in its determinsm+randomness.
Which instance of “random” do you think should have been pseudo random?
The instance I quoted. But as I said the point is trivial.
Are you saying that the use of randomisation in software is always a misttake
I don’t think I used the word “mistake”, at all. I didn’t even imply that it’s sometimes a mistake, let alone always.
It is true that a random number is no good in itself, but equally you can’t solve every problem with pure determinism.
Please name three problems you can’t solve with determinism but you can solve with random-number generators. Besides encryption which depends on secrecy and therefore depends on not knowing what will come out, I can’t think of any.
Moreover, randomized algorithms are occasionally useful in a classical computer, since they give good expected performance even for some classes of degenerate inputs.
Which instance of “random” do you think should have been pseudo random?
The instance I quoted. But as I said the point is trivial.
So you are saying that the sentence
“Computer programmes can consult random-number generators where needed, including ‘real’ ones implemented in hardware.”
Should have read
“Computer programmes can consult pseudo- random-number generators where needed, including ‘real’ ones implemented in hardware”.
Are you aware that your change renders the sentence contradictory? The point of real randomness generators is that, given certain assumptions about physics, they are not pseudo?
I don’t think I used the word “mistake”,
If you had used it, I would have had no need to ask the question. I was trying to put you vaguely negative comments about the use of randomness in software on a more precise basis.
Besides encryption which depends on secrecy and therefore depends on not knowing what will come out,
I dont see why an example that works should be excluded becuase it works.
Another example I like is the way ethernet works: when two MAC’s try to send simultaneously, then result
is garbled and they need to back off and retry. However, backing off according to a deterministic algorithm would
lead to another collision on the retry, ad infinitum. Backing off for a random time solves that simply.
I dont see why an example that works should be excluded becuase it works.
The reason encryption requires randomness is not relevant to free will.
The reason MACs need to back off for a random time likewise does not seem relevant to free will either.
I think I’ll tap out at this point. I don’t think there’s anything I can contribute to this discussion beyond what I’ve already said.
The reason encryption requires randomness is not relevant to free will.
I don’t see what you mean. Randomness is relevant to FW because determinism is, prima facie. (Compatibilists feel the need to argue that it in fact isn’t, rather than taking it as obvious). Randomness is relevant to solving
problems. A kind of FW that allows you to solve problems is worth having. If you want a more obviously relevant example, consider that evading a predator with random moves is more effective than adopting a potentially
predictable “evasive pattern delta”
To have an opinion about free will, you must first observe the existence of the issue.
Most people do this with introspection: The world outside you seem to conform to \ while inside you, it seems that indeed you control every movement and thought.
Lord Kelvin has voiced the above statement quite poetically.
Now, the keyword here is ‘seem’. Your argument hitches on an anecdote from your own, non-optimal cognitive machinery.
What EY did was point at this ‘seem’ and explain it. He did not point at free will and explained it, he explained why the cognitive machinery hands you the anecdote. And then from there you can crank the handle of modus ponnens and conclude that ‘free will’ goes in the same category as ‘redness of red’.
Also on a technical note you forego that you live 80 milliseconds in the past (sensory lag to synch toe-tips to retinas) and you have more subconscious processes than conscious ones, processes you can only rarely consciously affect. This gives nondeterminism a low prior.
To have an opinion about free will, you must first observe the existence of the issue.
There needs to be a prima facie case. I don’t think it is restictied to intospection though.
Most people do this with introspection: The world outside you seem to conform to \
Which could include nondeterminism. It is not as though anybody can predict evey physical occurence.
while inside you, it seems that indeed you control every movement and thought.
Movements occur on the outside.
Lord Kelvin has voiced the above statement quite poetically.
Where?
Now, the keyword here is ‘seem’. Your argument hitches on an anecdote from your own, non-optimal cognitive machinery.
I didn’t base my agument solely on introspection. In fact, very little of the quoted passage leans on introspective evidence. And everything hinges on non-optimal congitive machinery, including what you are saying.
What EY did was point at this ‘seem’ and explain it.
Things would seem the way they seem if what he says is correct, and they would seem the way they
seem if what I say is correct. You have no grounds for saying that he has the explanation other than that you
happen to like it.
He did not point at free will and explained it, he explained why the cognitive machinery hands you the anecdote. And then from there you can crank the handle of modus ponnens and conclude that ‘free will’ goes in the same category as ‘redness of red’.
Whatever that is. I’m a qualiaphile, BTW.
Also on a technical note you forego that you live 80 milliseconds in the past (sensory lag to synch toe-tips to retinas) and you have more subconscious processes than conscious ones, processes you can only rarely consciously affect.
I think the parochialism comes from high handed smack-talk like “The obvious answer to philosophically recondite issue is X, and all you need to see this is obvious is our superior rationality”. Best example here.
I get a similar vibe regarding QM (obviously many worlds), religion (obviously atheism), phil of mind (obviously reductionsim), and (most worrying) ethics and meta-ethics.
The fact the candidate views espoused are part of the academic mainstream doesn’t defray the charge of parochialism due to the tup-thumping, uncharitable-to-opponents and generally under-argued way these views are asserted. Worse, it signals lack of competence on the part of LW: given the views of virtually all domain experts on any of these things, your degree of confidence is better explained by inferior, not superior knowledge, and even if you happen to get the right answer, I doubt you’re p-reliable or tracking.
I don’t think there’s much value in pretending that issues like God (and the absence thereof) or the compatibility between determinism and (any logically coherent view of) free will haven’t been decisively answered.
Seriously now, the compatibility between free will and determinism is something that I was figuring out by myself back in junior high. Eliezer with his “Thou Art Physics” expressed it better and more compactly than I ever did to myself (I was instead using imagery of the style “we’re the stories that write themselves”, and this was largely inspired by Tolkien’s Ainulindale, where the various gods sing a creation song that predicts all their future behaviour), but the gist is really obvious once you get rid of the assumption that determinism and free will must somehow be opposed.
In every discussion I’ve had since, in any forum, nobody who thinks them to be incompatible can describe even vaguely what “free will” would be supposed to look like if it does not contain determinism inside it.
I think this is a case of exactly the problem I diagnosed above.
Compatibilism (and related views) have been mentioned at least since Hume, and have been discussed extensively in modern analytic philosophy. Although it commands a slender majority of philosophers of action, it is not like the entire philosophical community considers compatibilism obviously or decisively the ‘right answer’ (see here, and here for a long index of reasons/objections etc.). You’d be pretty hard pressed to find a single philosopher of action who considers free will a ‘solved problem’.
Yet it seems the less wrong community considers it solved based on a sequence of blog posts which merely explicates compatibilism: I couldn’t find any discussion of compatibilism which goes beyond undergrad philosophy level, no discussion of common objections to compatibilism, engagement with any thinkers arguing against, nothing.
The two best explanations I have for this is either compatibilism is just obvious and people of sufficient rationality can be confident that domain experts on free will who don’t buy compatibilism are wrong, or that the LW ‘solution’ is frankly philosophically primitive but LWers are generally too far on the wrong side of the Dunning-Kruger effect to appreciate why it isn’t the decisive answer to a ‘millenia old philosophical dilemma’ they think it is.
Surely the outside view would find the latter account much more plausible?
Thanks for that poll. It’s a slender majority, but a very strong plurality, since the next most favourite option is less than half as popular, and if you examine only the ‘Accept’ answers instead of the ‘lean towards’ answers, the compatibilists are also much more certain in their belief, while the libertarians and no-free-willers tend to be uncertain much more often.
And the faculty is more definitely compatibilistic than the students, which seems to indicate education correlates with acceptance of compatibilism.
But more importantly: these people also seem to prefer to two-box in Newcomb’s problem. So why should I put much weight in their opinion?
A weak majority/strong plurality of relevant domain experts does not make the question decisively answered. I don’t have survey data on this, but I’m pretty sure none of the compatibilists (even those who ‘accept’ it), take the question to be obviously answered etc. etc.
The majority of decision theory specialists two-box. I’m sure you can guess what I’m going to say about doman expertise and dunning-kruger effect here, too.
Tell me, do you have any criterion over whether something is “decisively answered” other than how many “relevant domain experts” agree with it? If your definition of “decisively answered” is solely dependent on this, then we can just agree that we were using different definitions for the term.
So much for the decision theory specialists. Implement a real life version of Newcomb’s box, where you fill in the opaque box based on whether they said they’ll one-box or two-box. Assuming everyone follows what they said they should do, the one-boxers will just win, and the two-boxers will be weeping.
I take ‘decisively answered’ to mean something along the lines of “here is an account, which, properly understood, solves this problem to the satisfaction of reasonable people”. So (near) unanimity among relevant domain experts is necessary but not sufficient for this. I can’t think of anything in natural language we would call a ‘decisive answer’ or similar in which 40% or so of relevant domain experts disagree with.
This is recapitulating a standard argument for one-boxing, and it is well discussed in the literature. The fact the bulk of people who spend their time studying this issue and don’t find this consideration decisive should make you think it is less a silver bullet than you think it is.
I should update slightly towards that direction, yes, but I have to note that the poll you gave me are not just about people who study the issue, but people who also seem to have made a career out of discussing it, and therefore (I would cynically suggest) perhaps wouldn’t like the discussion to be definitively over.
e.g. Theologists and Priests are perhaps not the best people to poll, if you want to determine the existence of God.
Ah, but I just remembered atheism was one of the things you complained about being treated as obviously correct by most of us here? Because the domain experts about God (Theologists and Priests) haven’t come to same conclusion?
I don’t feel a pressing need to be non-standard: One-boxing wins, two-boxing loses—that’s all one needs to know for the purpose of choosing between them.
Sure, but I gather there are other things you can discuss in decision theory besides Newcomb’s problem, so it isn’t like the decision theorists need an artificial controversy about this to keep their jobs.
There are dissimilarities between decision theorists and (say) theologians, priests etc. Decision theorists are unlikely to have prior convictions about decision theory before starting to study it, unlike folks who discuss religion. The relevant domain expert in ‘Does God exist’ would likely be philosophers of religion, although there is a similar selection effect. However, for what it’s worth, I doubt atheist philosophers of religion would consider the LW case for atheism remotely creditable.
This is an elementary logical fallacy. Because someone is bad at completely unrelated task X, tells you zero information at task Y. We are however given that they are domain experts, and as such are competent at the task at hand.
There are plenty of reasons for putting forward you conclusions as non decisive: (edited)
Not sounding as though you are suffering from the Dunning Kruger effect
Academic Modesty.
You might actually be wrong. No one who calls themselves a rationalist should confuse “Seems true to me” with “is true”.
Are those separate points?
I ‘might’ also be wrong about the Earth not being flat. That still doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t consider the shape of the earth decisively answered.
They may overlap. Are they bad points?
The pertinent point is that all informed opinion considers it decisiley answered. That is not the case with the two issues you cited as having been decisevly answered by EY.
They’re insufficient for me. Other people may find them sufficient.
So, according to you, it seems I shouldn’t pronounce something decisively answered unless “all informed opinion” considers it decisively answered.
Don’t you see the paradox in this? How is the first person to consider it ‘decisively answered’ supposed to call it ‘decisively answered’, if he/she must first wait for all other people to call it ‘decisively answered’ first?
No they needn’t. They only need wait for the point to be reached where an overwhelming majority agree with an answer. Having noted that , they can correctly state that it has been decisevely answered. They only need others to agree with the anwer, not for others to agree that the question has been decisvely answered.
I don’t think that “decisively answered” need have anything to do with democracy—for example I’m sure that if you poll Czech scientists about the existence of God, you’ll get a different distribution than if you ask Iranian scientists. Even if they’re equally informed, political considerations will make them voice different things.
The policy you suggest seems designed to minimize conflict with your academic peers, not designed to maximize effectiveness in the pursuit of understanding the universe.
Churchill said democracy was the worst system apart from all the others. Do you have an alternative way of establishing Deciiveness that improves on the Majority of Informed Opinion?
Neither of those subsets would get me the majority of informed opinion. I believe I have already solved that problem.
Churchill’s exact quote was “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time” He was talking about forms of government, not methods of understanding the universe.
As a sidenote, let me note here that even on the issue you argued about, this “majority” seems to actually exist. The majority of philosophers are compatibilists, according to Thrasymachus’s linked poll above.
And there seems to be an > 80% percentage (an overwhelming majority) against libertarian free will. According to your own argument then, even if you don’t find compabilism a “decisive answer”, you should find libertarianism a “decisive failure of an answer”.
But getting back to your question: “Do you have an alternative way of establishing Deciiveness that improves on the Majority of Informed Opinion?”
Well, even if we don’t speak about things like “Science” or “Testing” or “Occam’s Razor properly utilized”, I think I’ll prefer the “Majority of Informed Opinion that Also Has IQ > 130 And Also One-Boxes in Newcomb’s Dilemma”.
I was only drawing a loose analogy.
Then Hobbes decisively solved it, not EY. OTOH, if you are talking about EY’s specific form of compatibilism.. then he has no majority on his side.
Why is it an improvment to make it parochial? Can’t you see that it trivialises the claim “EY has decisevely solved FW” to add the rider ”..by the LW/EY definition of decisivness”. I could also claim to have solved it by my definition. Parochialism devalues the currency.
Downvoted, because I never made that claim, and nobody has made that claim. I said FW/determinism has been solved, I didn’t present EY as the originator of compatibilism, any more than I would have assigned the invention of atheism to him.
I may have tapped out, but don’t you dare make this into an opportunity to misrepresent me. I will still disavow any false statement you assign to me. I’m very territorial about what I have actually said, vs what people attempt to falsely assign to me.
Do you think there is any novelty to EY’s compatibilism?
We haven’t met, then. I’m natuarlistic libertarian and therefore an incompatibilist. I may not be right, but so long as I am not completely wrong, EY does not have “the” answer.
Anyway, on to the refutation of “FW requires determinism”..
II.1.i Introduction Compatibilism comes in a stronger form, which does not have a traditional name; We will call it supercompatibilism. According to supercompatibilism, free will is not only capable of existing alongside causal determinism, it cannot exist without determinism.
Here is case that free will requires causal indeterminism.
PRO: “Free will requires the ability to have done otherwise under the very same circumstances, which is only possible in a universe with some degree of indeterminism.”
The following argument goes against the usefulness of indeterminism to free will:-
ANTI: “Freedom of a kind worth wanting requires rationality, and rationality mean following rules. Causal Determinism would ensure that the rules are followed. Indeterminism would disrupt the process of rational thought, and result in a capricious, irrational kind of freedom not worth having. An individual cannot call an action his or her own unless they can account rationally account for it, and unless it was caused by their own intentions. Reasons are causes, so to be rational is to be determined.
We will now argue against the ANTI argument, taking it a sentence at a time.
II.1.ii Objection 1: “Freedom of a kind worth wanting requires rationality”
Yes, but it is by no means limited to rationality. free will of a kind worth wanting must facilitate the whole gamut of human behaviour, including creativity, imagination, inventiveness etc.
II.1.iii Objection 2: “Causal Determinism would ensure that the rules are followed.”
Casual Determinism only guarantees that everything follows the laws of nature, not that anything follows the laws of thought. If you believe the universe is deterministic, you have to admit that any lapse of rationally is just as determined as everything else. Indeed, we are more likely to look for a deterministic — in the sense of an external cause —explanation for uncharacteristically irrational behaviour than for rational behaviour — so-and-so was drunk, drugged, etc.
II.1.iv Objection 3: “Indeterminism would disrupt the process of rational thought, and result in a capricious, irrational kind of freedom not worth having.”
Is that so ? Computer programmes can consult random-number generators where needed, including ‘real’ ones implemented in hardware. (like this) The rest of their operation is perfectly deterministic. Why should the brain not be able to call on indeterminism as and when required, and exclude it the rest of the time ? And if random numbers are useful for computers, why should indeterministic input be useless for brains ? Is human rationality that much more hidebound than a computer ? Even including such faculties as creativity and imagination ? Pseudo-random numbers (which are really deterministic) may be used in computers, and any indeterminism the brain calls on might be only pseudo-random. But it does not have to be, and if we assume it is not, we can explain realistically why we have the sense of being able to have done otherwise.
And is it so great to be compelled into rule-following rationality ? If you asked some what 5 and 7 make, you would expect the answer 12. But if you asked them the same question ten times in a row, you would expect them to object at some stage, and stop answering, unlike a pocket calculator which will spit out the same answer ad infinitum. Surely the choice of whether or not to follow a set of rules is part of rationality ?
II.1.iv Objection 4: “An individual cannot call an action his or her own unless they can rationally account for it and unless it was caused by their own intentions”
It is true that we would not consider an individual to ‘own’ a an action or decision if it had nothing to do with his beliefs and aims at the time he made it — that is, if we assume that indeterminism erupts in-between everything that happened to make him the individual he is, and the act itself.
But, we libertarians claim. an act is also not an individual’s own if it entirely attributable to causes lying outside him, ultimately traceable to circumstances before he came into existence.
There is no need to be disheartened. If the causal origins of our actions cannot lie before our births or after our decisions have been made, they can still lie, just where they should: during our lifetimes.
Our actions can be determined by our preceding mental state, providing that our mental state is not itself entirely attributable to causes outside of ourselves. This means that, although we can pin actions to immediate purposes, we cannot trace back a chain of purposes-for-purposes ad infinitum.
I do not think that is any loss, since determinism fares no better. All purposes may be causes, but not all causes are purposes. The deterministic causal chain, if traced back, is bound to encounter factors which do not rationally explain, any more than a random occurrence does. Moreover, this process of looking for ultimate rational explanations is unusual to say the least. Our normal attitude is that John and Mary have their reasons, which are very much part of who they are, and that’s that. II.1.v Reasons are causes, so to be rational is to be determined. Is it the case that our actions are determined by our reasons, so that indeterminism must entail irrationality?
The reasons we have for actions might be said to cause those actions, but there are a number of differences between reasons and causes, and in any case reasons are not determining causes, as will be argued.
Whereas any event can involve causation, only a small subset of entities in the universe, rational agents, can base their actions on reasons. Causes lie in the past, whereas reasons are generally directed towards some future state of affairs. A causal statement is not a direct substitute for a rational justification. If I kick someone and am asked why I did it, it is no justification — for all that it is true — to say that nerve signals from my brain caused my leg to flex. A Causal chain can continue back to the Big Bang, but a rational explanation for behavour cannot. An individual must explain their behaviour in tersm of their own aims an desires. Once they start claiming they were caused to behave in a certain way, by their environment, genes,etc, they are no longer offering reasoned explanaion. Causal explanation is ‘classical’ — everything is brought under a uniform, impersonal set of laws. Rational explanation is ‘romantic’ — people have their own unaccountably individual reasons for doing things. There is no single right answer to “what should I do”, as it depends on what you as an individual want to do — nor is there any single right answer to “what should I want”.
That reasons are not determining causes is established by the fact that one can have multiple reasons for multiple courses of action. If one accepts the slice of cake, one pleases the hostess; if one rejects it, one sticks to ones diet. If reasons and actions are chosen in pairs there will always be a reason for ones action irrespective of what is actually chosen. This is still true if a choice is made randomly. If one does choose a reason-action pair randomly, it is admittedly true that a reason-for-the reason cannot be given. But it is always the case that chains of reasoning cannot be pursued to infinity; they have to stop somewhere (or be circular). Since real-world reasoning is constrained in this way, limited amounts of indeterminism would not render people any less able to provide chains of reasoning than they are anyway, even though it remains the case that complete indeterminism entails complete irrationality.
If reasons are not determining causes, are they causes at all? It would certainly be a peculiar situation if reasons were causally completely detached from the actions they explain. At least the neural correlates of reasons need to be causes. Reasons themseleves arguably belong to a different language game so that it is a category-error to substitute talk of reasons directly for talk of causes an vicer-versa. This need not imply any ontological dualism, but rather a kind of anomolous monism.
It is sometimes said that we are free to do what we want, but not to choose what we want. The approach sketched so far is pretty much the opposite of this. If we have clear reasons for doing something and are in a rational frame of mind our actions follow almost inevitably. Freedom lies in the fact that our basic aims and goals, our basic nature is not inevitable, We might not have done as we did because we might not have been that kind of person. Freedom is not mere caprice, not does it lie in being the puppet of circumstances, it is self determination, a gradual evolution of selfhood.
Downvoted for being atleast twenty times more long-winded than necessary, and still failing to describe what a “free will” without determinism would look like.
Pseudo-random, but I’ll let that trivial point slide. The more significant point is that those random numbers are utterly meaningless in themselves—the meaning and worth of a program lies in those aspects that are not random, or in how it deterministically uses a random variation. We can use a pseudo-random generator to use in a cryptographical program, or in an artistic program, or in a mutation-simulation program—but that pseudo-randomness is only meaningful in how it’s deterministically used.
(Edit)
Hmmm. Well, that’s in the full lenght version of which this is an extract. I notice that EYs disquisition, which is problably longer, doesn’t suffer from the problem of being “too long”.
Which instance of “random” do you think should have been pseudo random? Note that there are devices commercially marketed as supplying “real” randomness based on quantum physics.
Says who? Are you saying that the use of randomisation in software is always a misttake, that programmers who feel it is necessary are just incompetent?
It is true that a random number is no good in itself, but equally you can’t solve every problem with pure determinism. So the value of a deterministic+random algorithm is in its determinsm+randomness.
According to word count tool:
”Thou Art Physics” article: 1032 words
Your comment: 1495 words
But I’m not thinking of the number of words alone but the number of words per point of communicated meaning.
The instance I quoted. But as I said the point is trivial.
I don’t think I used the word “mistake”, at all. I didn’t even imply that it’s sometimes a mistake, let alone always.
Please name three problems you can’t solve with determinism but you can solve with random-number generators. Besides encryption which depends on secrecy and therefore depends on not knowing what will come out, I can’t think of any.
Since quantum algorithms are inherently random, these three problems qualify:
Solve the Deutsch-Jozsa problem in constant time.
Search an unstructured database in O(sqrt(n)) time.
Factorize integers in polynomial time.
Moreover, randomized algorithms are occasionally useful in a classical computer, since they give good expected performance even for some classes of degenerate inputs.
So you are saying that the sentence “Computer programmes can consult random-number generators where needed, including ‘real’ ones implemented in hardware.” Should have read “Computer programmes can consult pseudo- random-number generators where needed, including ‘real’ ones implemented in hardware”. Are you aware that your change renders the sentence contradictory? The point of real randomness generators is that, given certain assumptions about physics, they are not pseudo?
If you had used it, I would have had no need to ask the question. I was trying to put you vaguely negative comments about the use of randomness in software on a more precise basis.
I dont see why an example that works should be excluded becuase it works.
Another example I like is the way ethernet works: when two MAC’s try to send simultaneously, then result is garbled and they need to back off and retry. However, backing off according to a deterministic algorithm would lead to another collision on the retry, ad infinitum. Backing off for a random time solves that simply.
The reason encryption requires randomness is not relevant to free will. The reason MACs need to back off for a random time likewise does not seem relevant to free will either.
I think I’ll tap out at this point. I don’t think there’s anything I can contribute to this discussion beyond what I’ve already said.
I don’t see what you mean. Randomness is relevant to FW because determinism is, prima facie. (Compatibilists feel the need to argue that it in fact isn’t, rather than taking it as obvious). Randomness is relevant to solving problems. A kind of FW that allows you to solve problems is worth having. If you want a more obviously relevant example, consider that evading a predator with random moves is more effective than adopting a potentially predictable “evasive pattern delta”
To have an opinion about free will, you must first observe the existence of the issue.
Most people do this with introspection: The world outside you seem to conform to \ while inside you, it seems that indeed you control every movement and thought.
Lord Kelvin has voiced the above statement quite poetically.
Now, the keyword here is ‘seem’. Your argument hitches on an anecdote from your own, non-optimal cognitive machinery.
What EY did was point at this ‘seem’ and explain it. He did not point at free will and explained it, he explained why the cognitive machinery hands you the anecdote. And then from there you can crank the handle of modus ponnens and conclude that ‘free will’ goes in the same category as ‘redness of red’.
Also on a technical note you forego that you live 80 milliseconds in the past (sensory lag to synch toe-tips to retinas) and you have more subconscious processes than conscious ones, processes you can only rarely consciously affect. This gives nondeterminism a low prior.
There needs to be a prima facie case. I don’t think it is restictied to intospection though.
Which could include nondeterminism. It is not as though anybody can predict evey physical occurence.
Movements occur on the outside.
Where?
I didn’t base my agument solely on introspection. In fact, very little of the quoted passage leans on introspective evidence. And everything hinges on non-optimal congitive machinery, including what you are saying.
Things would seem the way they seem if what he says is correct, and they would seem the way they seem if what I say is correct. You have no grounds for saying that he has the explanation other than that you happen to like it.
Whatever that is. I’m a qualiaphile, BTW.
I need an argument agains that, and I have one.