[SEQ RERUN] Thou Art Physics

[MinibearRex]

Today’s post, Thou Art Physics was originally published on 06 June 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

If the laws of physics control everything we do, then how can our choices be meaningful? Because you are physics. You aren’t competing with physics for control of the universe, you are within physics. Anything you control is necessarily controlled by physics.

Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).

This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we’ll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky’s old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was Living in Many Worlds, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.

Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day’s sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.

[Shmi]

Not sure why the word “timeless” is at all needed in the argument.

[MinibearRex]

When is it used in the argument?

[Shmi]

Now, as expected, the notion of “timeless physics” is causing people to ask, “If the future is determined, how can our choices control it?” The wise reader can guess that it all adds up to normality; but this leaves the question of how.

Determinism does not require timelessness.

[MinibearRex]

I found that, but I wouldn’t quite call it part of the argument. It’s a summation of the context in which the blog post was written. Eliezer wrote about timeless physics. People started asking how “free will” fit into all this. Eliezer wrote a post about the relationship between determinism and free will.