If belief in determinism causes someone to make poorer choices
If determinism is actually true, this condition is false. Belief in determinism is correlated with worse outcomes, but one doesn’t cause the other; both are determined by the state and process of the universe. Minds thinking about counterfactuals is just part of the (determined) universe, and their conclusions are also determined. Free will is an illusion that some kinds of brains create after the fact to explain what happened to themselves.
Note that I don’t actually know this is true, nor how I’d prove or disprove it. My intuition (which may be just a side-effect of the universe) is that there is something about me that makes decisions which influence future experiences. Since I can’t think of any evidence that would shift my beliefs, I’m going to call it a modeling choice rather than a truth. I prefer (or am destined to prefer) a semi-free choice model, where there is a thing that has beliefs which correlate with the branch of the universe it finds itself experiencing. It doesn’t matter whether counterfactual me experience something else, or if they don’t exist, or if the causality is illusory. The correlation is so strong and clear that I’m forced to (heh) act like it’s causal.
Belief in determinism is correlated with worse outcomes, but one doesn’t cause the other; both are determined by the state and process of the universe.
Wait, how does determinism obviate cause and effect? A timeless universe would, but deterministic causation is still causation, right? Not that it matters for the point at hand.
(I’d prefer a better term than “correlated”, there’s still some logical determination going on there. Not sure what to replace it with, though.)
The point is, it doesn’t matter if we live in a deterministic universe. Our values are still best served by pursuing them with our full effort, even if from some omniscient outside perspective the whole thing were predetermined. If modeling ourselves as deterministic would diminish our efforts, we’d be making a mental mistake.
If we do live in a deterministic universe, then free choice is simply what the unfolding of the determination feels from the inside. As far as I can tell, the ontological details don’t make much empirical difference and our intuitions are well-optimized for performance. I think I’ve somehow managed to update for the possibility of a timeless universe on the intuitive level but the difference is so small it’s hard to tell. Feel free to stick with what you have, I guess.
Belief in determinism is correlated with worse outcomes, but one doesn’t cause the other; both are determined by the state and process of the universe.
Read literally, you seem to be suggesting that a deterministic universe doesn’t have cause and effect, only correlation. But this reading seems prima facie absurd, unless you’re using a very non-standard notion of “cause and effect”. Are you arguing, for example, that it’s impossible to draw a directed acyclic graph in order to model events in a deterministic universe? If not, what are you arguing?
I mean to say that the idea of cause and effect is … different, in a purely deterministic universe. Every state of the universe exists in a 4D (or more) volume, the idea that time is different from other dimensions is illusory. There is one state at a time and another state at another time. This may be what you mean by “timeless universe”—if every state is determined, then time is no different from distance.
Much like we can call configurations of atoms that don’t have a lot of empty space between them “joined”, we can call clusters earlier in time “causal” for those later in time. But this is map, not territory. There is likely some underlying complexity-reduction that does mean the whole shebang (universe from big bang to heat death) comprises fewer bits than a naive encoding, and this can be modeled as causality—patterns of time-adjacent configurations. You can draw the graph that models the events in a particular way, but that’s just a modeling choice rather than a reality.
(and to reiterate, this isn’t my preferred conceptualization of the universe, but I can’t think how to disprove it. Same for simulation or Boltzmann brains or other acknowledgement that my perception and memory is darned limited—I don’t prefer them as guiding models, but I can’t disprove them. I’ll even agree that determinism is prima facie absurd, much like the earth being round or the implications of special relativity are absurd. )
Certainly. Decision-making itself is also a process that occurs in the map, not the territory; there is no contradiction here. Some people may find the idea of decision-making being anything but a fundamental, ontologically primitive process somehow unsatisfying, or even disturbing, but I submit that this is a problem with their intuitions, not with the underlying viewpoint.
(If someone goes so far as to alter their decisions based on their belief in determinism—say, by lounging on the couch watching TV all day rather than being productive, because their doing so was “predetermined”—I would say that they are failing to utilize their brain’s decision-making apparatus. (Or rather, that they are not using it very well.) This has nothing to do with free will, determinism, or anything of the like; it is simply a (causal) consequence of the fact that they have misinterpreted what it means to be an agent in a deterministic universe.)
If someone goes so far as to alter their decisions based on their belief in determinism
You’re mixing levels. If someone can alter their decisions, that implies there are multiple possible next states of the universe, and that strict determinism is wrong. If the universe is actually determined, nobody alters any decisions, they just experience the decisions they are calculated to make.
You’re mixing levels. If someone can alter their decisions, that implies there are multiple possible next states of the universe
This is incorrect. It’s possible to imagine a counterfactual state in which the person in question differs from their actual self in an unspecified manner, which thereby causes them to make a different decision; this counterfactual state differs from reality, but it is by no means incoherent. Furthermore, the comparison of various counterfactual futures of this type is how decision-making works; it is an abstraction used for the purpose of computation, not something ontologically fundamental to the way the universe works—and the fact that some people insist it be the latter is the source of much confusion. This is what I meant when I wrote:
Decision-making itself is also a process that occurs in the map, not the territory; there is no contradiction here.
So there is no “mixing levels” going on here, as you can see; rather, I am specifically making sure to keep the levels apart, by not tying the mental process of imagining and assessing various potential outcomes to the physical question of whether there are actually multiple physical outcomes. In fact, the one who is mixing levels is you, since you seem to be assuming for some reason that the mental process in question somehow imposes itself onto the laws of physics.
(Here is a thought experiment: I think you will agree that a chess program, if given a chess position and run for a prespecified number of steps, will output a particular move for that position. Do you believe that this fact prevents the chess program from considering other possible moves it might make in the position? If so, how do you explain the fact that the chess program explicitly contains a game tree with multiple branches, the vast majority of which will not in fact occur?)
There are variouspostsinthesequences that directly address this confusion; I suggest either reading them or re-reading them, depending on whether you have already.
I mean to say that the idea of cause and effect is … different, in a purely deterministic universe. Every state of the universe exists in a 4D (or more) volume
You are taking determinism to mean eternalism, and it doesn’t.
If determinism is actually true, this condition is false. Belief in determinism is correlated with worse outcomes, but one doesn’t cause the other; both are determined by the state and process of the universe. Minds thinking about counterfactuals is just part of the (determined) universe, and their conclusions are also determined. Free will is an illusion that some kinds of brains create after the fact to explain what happened to themselves.
Note that I don’t actually know this is true, nor how I’d prove or disprove it. My intuition (which may be just a side-effect of the universe) is that there is something about me that makes decisions which influence future experiences. Since I can’t think of any evidence that would shift my beliefs, I’m going to call it a modeling choice rather than a truth. I prefer (or am destined to prefer) a semi-free choice model, where there is a thing that has beliefs which correlate with the branch of the universe it finds itself experiencing. It doesn’t matter whether counterfactual me experience something else, or if they don’t exist, or if the causality is illusory. The correlation is so strong and clear that I’m forced to (heh) act like it’s causal.
Wait, how does determinism obviate cause and effect? A timeless universe would, but deterministic causation is still causation, right? Not that it matters for the point at hand.
(I’d prefer a better term than “correlated”, there’s still some logical determination going on there. Not sure what to replace it with, though.)
The point is, it doesn’t matter if we live in a deterministic universe. Our values are still best served by pursuing them with our full effort, even if from some omniscient outside perspective the whole thing were predetermined. If modeling ourselves as deterministic would diminish our efforts, we’d be making a mental mistake.
If we do live in a deterministic universe, then free choice is simply what the unfolding of the determination feels from the inside. As far as I can tell, the ontological details don’t make much empirical difference and our intuitions are well-optimized for performance. I think I’ve somehow managed to update for the possibility of a timeless universe on the intuitive level but the difference is so small it’s hard to tell. Feel free to stick with what you have, I guess.
Read literally, you seem to be suggesting that a deterministic universe doesn’t have cause and effect, only correlation. But this reading seems prima facie absurd, unless you’re using a very non-standard notion of “cause and effect”. Are you arguing, for example, that it’s impossible to draw a directed acyclic graph in order to model events in a deterministic universe? If not, what are you arguing?
I mean to say that the idea of cause and effect is … different, in a purely deterministic universe. Every state of the universe exists in a 4D (or more) volume, the idea that time is different from other dimensions is illusory. There is one state at a time and another state at another time. This may be what you mean by “timeless universe”—if every state is determined, then time is no different from distance.
Much like we can call configurations of atoms that don’t have a lot of empty space between them “joined”, we can call clusters earlier in time “causal” for those later in time. But this is map, not territory. There is likely some underlying complexity-reduction that does mean the whole shebang (universe from big bang to heat death) comprises fewer bits than a naive encoding, and this can be modeled as causality—patterns of time-adjacent configurations. You can draw the graph that models the events in a particular way, but that’s just a modeling choice rather than a reality.
(and to reiterate, this isn’t my preferred conceptualization of the universe, but I can’t think how to disprove it. Same for simulation or Boltzmann brains or other acknowledgement that my perception and memory is darned limited—I don’t prefer them as guiding models, but I can’t disprove them. I’ll even agree that determinism is prima facie absurd, much like the earth being round or the implications of special relativity are absurd. )
Certainly. Decision-making itself is also a process that occurs in the map, not the territory; there is no contradiction here. Some people may find the idea of decision-making being anything but a fundamental, ontologically primitive process somehow unsatisfying, or even disturbing, but I submit that this is a problem with their intuitions, not with the underlying viewpoint.
(If someone goes so far as to alter their decisions based on their belief in determinism—say, by lounging on the couch watching TV all day rather than being productive, because their doing so was “predetermined”—I would say that they are failing to utilize their brain’s decision-making apparatus. (Or rather, that they are not using it very well.) This has nothing to do with free will, determinism, or anything of the like; it is simply a (causal) consequence of the fact that they have misinterpreted what it means to be an agent in a deterministic universe.)
You’re mixing levels. If someone can alter their decisions, that implies there are multiple possible next states of the universe, and that strict determinism is wrong. If the universe is actually determined, nobody alters any decisions, they just experience the decisions they are calculated to make.
This is incorrect. It’s possible to imagine a counterfactual state in which the person in question differs from their actual self in an unspecified manner, which thereby causes them to make a different decision; this counterfactual state differs from reality, but it is by no means incoherent. Furthermore, the comparison of various counterfactual futures of this type is how decision-making works; it is an abstraction used for the purpose of computation, not something ontologically fundamental to the way the universe works—and the fact that some people insist it be the latter is the source of much confusion. This is what I meant when I wrote:
So there is no “mixing levels” going on here, as you can see; rather, I am specifically making sure to keep the levels apart, by not tying the mental process of imagining and assessing various potential outcomes to the physical question of whether there are actually multiple physical outcomes. In fact, the one who is mixing levels is you, since you seem to be assuming for some reason that the mental process in question somehow imposes itself onto the laws of physics.
(Here is a thought experiment: I think you will agree that a chess program, if given a chess position and run for a prespecified number of steps, will output a particular move for that position. Do you believe that this fact prevents the chess program from considering other possible moves it might make in the position? If so, how do you explain the fact that the chess program explicitly contains a game tree with multiple branches, the vast majority of which will not in fact occur?)
There are various posts in the sequences that directly address this confusion; I suggest either reading them or re-reading them, depending on whether you have already.
You are taking determinism to mean eternalism, and it doesn’t.