lisper

Karma: 269

lisper Mar 4, 2016, 12:39 AM
0 points
in reply to: g_pepper’s comment on: Is Spirituality Irrational?
That’s not a valid argument for at least four reasons:
1. There are many perceptual illusions, so the hypothesis that free will is an illusion is not a priori an extraordinary claim. (In fact, the feeling that you are living in a classical Galilean universe is a perceptual illusion!)
2. There is evidence that free will is in fact a perceptual illusion.
3. It makes evolutionary sense that the genes that built our brains would want to limit the extent to which they could become self-aware. If you knew that your strings were being pulled you might sink into existential despair, which is not generally salubrious to reproductive fitness.
4. We now understand quite a bit about how the brain works and about how computers work, and all the evidence indicates that the brain is a computer. More precisely, there is nothing a brain can do that a properly programmed Turing machine could not do, and therefore no property that a brain have that cannot be given to a Turing machine. Some Turing machines definitely do not have free will (if you believe that a thermostat has free will, well, we’re just going to have to agree to disagree about that). So if free will is a real thing you should be able to exhibit some way to distinguish those Turing machines that have free will from those that do not. I have heard no one propose such a criterion that doesn’t lead to conclusions that grate irredeemably upon my intuitions about what free will is (or what it would have to be if it were a real thing).
In this respect, free will really is very much like God except that the subjective experience of free will is more common than the subjective experience of the Presence of the Holy Spirit.

BTW, it is actually possible that the subjective experience of free will is not universal among humans. It is possible that some people don’t have this subjective perception, just as some people don’t experience the Presence of the Holy Spirit. It is possible that this lack of the subjective perception of free will is what leads some people to submit to the will of Allah, or to become Calvinists.

lisper Mar 3, 2016, 6:12 PM
0 points
in reply to: CCC’s comment on: Is Spirituality Irrational?

The serpent wasn’t an authority figure. How could Eve have known that? Eve could have known that God was an authority figure

That’s a red herring. The question was not how she could have known that God was an authority figure. The question was how she could have known that the snake was NOT an authority figure too.

it’s a serious guess

Oh, come on. Even if we suppose that God can get bored, you really don’t think he could have come up with a more effective way to spread the Word than just having one-on-one chats with individual humans? Why not hold a big rally? Or make a video? Or at least have more than one freakin’ person in the room when He finally gets fed up and says, “OK, I’ve had it, I’m going to tell you this one more time before I go on extended leave!” ???

Sheesh.

everyone would recognise the man who could not grow crops, and know he’d killed his brother

You do know that this is LessWrong, right? A site dedicated to rationality and the elimination of logical fallacies and cognitive bias? Because you are either profoundly ignorant of elementary logic, or you are trolling. For your reasoning here to be valid it would have to be the case that the only possible reason someone could not grow crops is that they had killed their brother. If you can’t see how absurd that is then you are beyond my ability to help.

I don’t see how that follows.

Because “the good stuff” is essential to our survival. Humans cannot survive without cooperating with each other. That’s why we are social animals. That’s why we have evolved moral intuitions about right and wrong.

Yes, and over fourteen billion years, how many digits of pi can they produce?

What difference does that make? Yes, 14B years is a long time, but it’s exactly the same amount of time for a computer. However much humans can calculate in 14B years (or any other amount of time you care to pull out of your hat) a computer can calculate vastly more.

I’m South African

I’ve been to SA twice. Beautiful country, but your politics are even more fucked up than ours here in the U.S., and that’s saying something.

lisper Mar 2, 2016, 11:06 PM
0 points
in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: Is Spirituality Irrational?
That’s you pointing to a shared understanding of free and not you pointing to your private experience.

You’re conflating two different things:
1. Attempting to communicate about a phenomenon which is rooted in a subjective experience.
2. Attempting to conduct that communication using words rather than, say, music or dance.
Talking about the established meaning of the word “free” has to do with #2, not #1. The fact that my personal opinion enters into the discussion has to do with #1, not #2.

I think that humans do have desire that influence the choices they make

Yes, of course I agree. But that’s not the question at issue. The question is not whether we have “desires” or “will” (we all agree that we do), the question is whether or not we have FREE will. I think it’s pretty clear that we do NOT have the freedom to choose our desires. At least I don’t seem to; maybe other people are different. So where does this alleged freedom enter the process?

Grounding the concept of color in external reality isn’t trival

I never said it was. In fact, the difficulty of grounding color perception in objective reality actually supports my position. One would expect that the grounding of free will perception in objective reality to be at least as difficult as grounding color perception, but I don’t see those who support the objective reality of free will undertaking such a project, at least not here.

I’m willing to be convinced that this free will thing is real, but as with any extraordinary claim the burden is on you to prove that it is, not on me to prove that it is not.

lisper Mar 2, 2016, 10:36 PM
0 points
in reply to: entirelyuseless’s comment on: The Philosophical Implications of Quantum Information Theory
Yes, of course that’s true. But collapse is only an approximation to the truth. It is a very good approximation in many common cases. But the Aharonov experiment is interesting precisely because it is a case where collapse is no longer a good approximation to the truth, and so of course if you view it through the lens of collapse things are going to look weird. To see why collapse is not always a good approximation to the truth, see the references in the OP.

lisper Mar 2, 2016, 6:37 PM
0 points
in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: Is Spirituality Irrational?

I thought you made an argument that physical determinism somehow means that there’s no free will because physics is causes an effect to happen.

No, that’s not my argument. My argument (well, one of them anyway) is that if I am reliably predictable, then it must be the case that I am deterministic, and therefore I cannot have free will.

I actually go even further than that. If I am not reliably predictable, then I might have free will, but my mere unpredictability is not enough to establish that I have free will. Weather systems are not reliably predictable, but they don’t have free will. It is not even the case that non-determinism is sufficient to establish free will. Photons are non-deterministic, but they don’t have free will.

That’s an appeal to the authority of your personal intuition.

Well, yeah, of course it is (though I would not call my intuitions an “authority”). This whole discussion starts from a subjective experience that I have (and that other people report having), namely, feeling like I have free will. I don’t know of any way to talk about a subjective experience without referring to my personal intuitions about it.

The difference between free will and other subjective experiences like, say, seeing color, is that seeing colors can be easily grounded in an objective external reality, whereas with free will it’s not so easy. In fact, no one has exhibited a satisfactory explanation of my subjective experience that is grounded in objective reality, hence my conclusion that my subjective experience of having free will is an illusion.

lisper Mar 2, 2016, 6:25 PM
0 points
in reply to: gjm’s comment on: Is Spirituality Irrational?

Where are you heading with these questions? I mean, are you expecting them to help achieve mutual understanding,

I’m not sure what I “expect” but yes, I am trying to achieve mutual understanding. I think we have a fundamental disconnect in our intuitions of what “free will” means and I’m trying to get a handle on what it is. If you think that a thermostat has even a little bit of free will then we’ll just have to agree to disagree. If you think even a Nest thermostat, which does some fairly complicated processing before “deciding” whether or not to turn on the heat has even a little bit of free will then we’ll just have to agree to disagree. If you think that an industrial control computer, or an airplane autopilot, which do some very complicated processing before “deciding” what to do have even a little bit of free will then we’ll have to agree to disagree. Likewise for weather systems, pachinko machines, geiger counters, and computers searching for a counterexample to the Collatz conjecture. If you think any of these things has even a little bit of free will then we will simply have to agree to disagree.

lisper Mar 2, 2016, 6:02 PM
−1 points
in reply to: entirelyuseless’s comment on: The Philosophical Implications of Quantum Information Theory
So I read the paper, and it is kind of a cool experiment, but it does not show that “future choices can affect a past measurement’s outcome.” Explaining why would require a separate article (maybe time to re-open main!) But the TL;DR version is this: if you want to argue that A affects B then you have to show a causal relationship that runs from A to B. If you can do that, then you can always come up with some encoding that will allow you to transmit information from A to B. That’s what “causal relationship” means. But that is (unsurprisingly) not what Aharonov et al. have done. They have merely shown correlations between A and B, and then argue on purely intuitive grounds that there must have been some causal relationship between A and B because “Bell’s theorem forbids spin values to exist prior to the choice of the orientation measured.” While this is true, it’s misleading because it implies that spin values do exist after a strong measurement. But that is not true. There is no fundamental difference between a strong and a weak measurement. There is a smooth continuum between weak and strong measurements, and at no point during the transition from weak to strong does the spin value begin to “actually exist” (a.k.a. wavefunction collapse).

lisper Mar 2, 2016, 5:18 AM
2 points
in reply to: torekp’s comment on: The Philosophical Implications of Quantum Information Theory
Just FYI, I am Ron Garret. Also just FYI, the Aharonov study does not show that future choices can affect a past measurement’s outcome. If this were possible, you could use it to send yourself information about the future of (say) the stock market and become the richest person on earth.

lisper Mar 1, 2016, 11:17 PM
0 points
in reply to: gjm’s comment on: Is Spirituality Irrational?

rudely patronizing

Sorry, it is not my intention to be either rude or patronizing. But there are some aspects of this discussion that I find rather frustrating, and I’m sorry if that frustration occasionally manifests itself as rudeness.

you can never say “with 100% certainty will not” about anything with any empirical content

Of course I can: with 100% certainty, no one will exhibit a working perpetual motion machine today. With 100% certainty, no one will exhibit superluminal communication today. With 100% certainty, the sun will not rise in the west tomorrow. With 100% certainty, I will not be the president of the United States tomorrow.

Nothing about [a pachinko machine] seems decision-like at all.

a thermostat has (in a very aetiolated sense) beliefs.

Do you believe that a thermostat makes decisions? Do you believe that a thermostat has (a little bit of) free will?

Perfectly reliable prediction is not possible in principle in our universe. Not even with a halting oracle.

I presume you mean “perfectly reliable prediction of everything is not possible in principle.” Because perfectly reliable prediction of some things (in principle) is clearly possible. And perfectly reliable prediction of some things (in principle) with a halting oracle is possible by definition.

lisper Mar 1, 2016, 10:41 PM
0 points
in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: Is Spirituality Irrational?
No, not even remotely close. We seem to have a serious disconnect here.

For starters, I don’t think I ever gave a definition of “free will”. I have listed what I feel to be (two) necessary conditions for it, but I don’t think I ever gave sufficient conditions, which would be necessary for a definition. I’m not sure I even know what sufficient conditions would be. (But I think those necessary conditions, plus the known laws of physics, are enough to show that humans don’t have free will, so I think my position is sound even in the absence of a definition.) And I did opine at one point that there is only one reasonable interpretation of the word “free” in a context of a discussion of “free will.” But that is not at all the same thing as arguing that there is only one reasonable definition of “free will.” Also, the question of what “I” means is different from the question of what “free will” means. But both are (obviously) relevant to the question of whether or not I have free will.

The reason I brought up the definition of “I” is because you wrote:

You ontological model that there’s an enity called physics_2 that causes neurons to do something that not in their nature or being is problematic

That is not my position. (And ontology is a bit of a red herring here.) I can’t even imagine what it means for a neuron to “do something that not in their nature or being”, let alone that this departure from “nature or being” could be caused by physics. That’s just bizarre. What did I say that made you think I believed this?

I can’t define “free will” just like I can’t define “pornography.” But I have an intuition about free will (just like I have one about porn) that tells me that, whatever it is, it is not something that is possessed by pachinko machines, individual photons, weather systems, or a Turing machine doing a straightforward search for a counter-example to the Collatz conjecture. I also believe that “will not with 100% reliability” is logically equivalent to “can not” in that there is no way to distinguish these two situations. If you wish to dispute this, you will have to explain to me how I can determine whether the reason that the moon doesn’t leave earth orbit is because it can’t or because it chooses not to.

lisper Mar 1, 2016, 6:57 PM
2 points
in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: Is Spirituality Irrational?
I think this is a difference in the definition of the word “I”, which can reasonably be taken to mean at least three different things:
1. The totality of my brain and body and all of the processes that go on there. On this definition, “I have lungs” is a true statement.
2. My brain and all of the computational processes that go on there (but not the biological processes). On this definition, “I have lungs” is a false statement, but “I control my breathing” is a true statement.
3. That subset of the computational processes going on in my brain that we call “conscious.” On this view, the statement, “I control my breathing” is partially true. You can decide to stop breathing for a while, but there are hard limits on how long you can keep it up.
To me, the question of whether I have free will is only interesting on definition #3 because my conscious self is the part of me that cares about such things. If my conscious self is being coerced or conned, then I (#3) don’t really care whether the origin of that coercion is internal (part of my sub-conscious or my physiology) or external.

lisper Mar 1, 2016, 6:42 PM
4 points
in reply to: CCC’s comment on: Is Spirituality Irrational?

The serpent wasn’t an authority figure.

How could Eve have known that? See my point above about Eve not having the benefit of any cultural references.

Why do you think one is okay and the other one is not?

Because the kitten is acting in self defense. If the kitten had initiated the violence, that would not be OK.

Because it’s really boring

Seriously?

he sought to avoid what it from every other person in the world

No he didn’t. He was cursed by God (Ge4:12) and he’s lamenting the result of that curse.

he thinks they’d have reason to want to kill him.

Yes, because he’s cursed by God.

I’d always understood the Flood story as they weren’t just thinking evil, but continually doing (unspecified) evil to the point where they weren’t even considering doing non-evil stuff.

If that were true then humans would have died out in a single generation even without the Flood.

Simulate the algorithm with pencil and paper, if all else fails.

But that doesn’t work. If you do the math you will find that the even if you got the entire human race to do pencil-and-paper calculations 24x7 you’d have less computational power than a single iPhone.

perfect knowledge of the future—does not necessarily imply a perfectly deterministic universe.

Of course it does. That’s what determinism means. In fact, perfect knowledge is a stronger condition than determinism. Knowable necessarily implies determined, but the converse is not true. Whether a TM will halt on a given input is determined but not generally knowable.

I don’t actually know GW-the-myth.

Sorry about making that unwarranted assumption. Here’s a reference. The details don’t really matter. If you tell me your background I’ll try to come up with a more culturally appropriate example.

the question of whether two things are the same must also become fuzzy, and non-binary

Indeed.

lisper Mar 1, 2016, 6:13 PM
2 points
in reply to: gjm’s comment on: Is Spirituality Irrational?

I don’t think that’s at all clear

How would you define it then?

a clear majority of philosophers

This would not be the first time in history that the philosophical community was wrong about something.

Do I need to keep repeating in each comment that all I claim is that arguably chess-playing programs have a very little bit of free will?

No, I get that. But “a very little bit” is still distinguishable from zero, yes?

nothing a pachinko machine or the weather does seems at all decision-like

Nothing about it seems human decision-like. But that’s a prejudice because you happen to be human. See below...

I would be happy to reconsider in the face of something that behaves in ways that seem sufficiently similar to, e.g., apparently-free humans despite having very different internals.

I believe that intelligent aliens could exist (in fact, almost certainly do exist). I also believe that fully intelligent computers are possible, and might even be constructed in our lifetime. I believe that any philosophy worth adhering to ought to be IA-ready and AI-ready, that is, it should not fall apart in the face of intelligent aliens or artificial intelligence. (Aside: This is the reason I do not self-identify as a “humanist”.)

Also, it is far from clear that chess computers work anything at all like humans. The hypothesis that humans make decisions by heuristic search has been pretty much disproven by >50 years of failed AI research.

I have pointed out more than once that in this universe there is never prediction that reliable, and anything less reliable makes the word “impossible” inappropriate. For whatever reason, you’ve never seen fit even to acknowledge my having done so.

I hereby acknowledge your having pointed this out. But it’s irrelevant. All I require for my argument to hold is predictability in principle, not predictability in fact. That’s why I always speak of a hypothetical rather than an actual predictor. In fact, my hypothetical predictor even has an oracle for the halting problem (which is almost certainly not realizable in this universe) because I don’t believe that Turing machines exercise free will when “deciding” whether or not to halt.

it is just a restatement of incompatibilism.

That’s possible. But just because incompatibalism is a tautology does not make it untrue.

I don’t think it is a tautology. The state of affairs for a reliable predictor to exist would be that there is something that causes both my action and the prediction, and that whatever this is is accessible to the predictor before it is accessible to me (otherwise it’s not a prediction). That doesn’t feel like a tautology to me, but I’m not going to argue about it. Either way, it’s true.

Please consider the possibility that other people besides yourself have thought about this stuff

Of course. As soon as someone presents a cogent argument I’m happy to consider it. I haven’t heard one yet (despite having read this ).

It means you will not choose B, which is not necessarily the same as that you cannot choose B.

That’s really the crux of the matter I suppose. It reminds me of the school of thought on the problem of theodicy which says that God could eliminate evil from the world, but he chooses not to for some reason that is beyond our comprehension (but is nonetheless wise and good and loving). This argument has always struck me as a cop-out. If God’s failure to use His super-powers for good is reliably predictable, then that to me is indistinguishable from God not having those super powers to begin with.

You can see the absurdity of it by observing that this same argument can be applied to anything, not just God. I can argue with equal validity that rocks can fly, they just choose not to. Or that I could, if I wanted to, mount an argument for my position that is so compelling that you would have no choice but to accept it, but I choose not to because I am benevolent and I don’t want to shatter your illusion of free will.

I don’t see any possible way to distinguish between “can not” and “with 100% certainty will not”. If they can’t be distinguished, they must be the same.

lisper Mar 1, 2016, 5:04 PM
2 points
in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: Is Spirituality Irrational?

Free has many different meanings.

Are you seriously arguing that “free” in “free will” might mean the same thing as (say) “free” in “free beer”? Come on.

What ontological category does physics have in your view of the world?

That’s a very good question, and it depends (ironically) on which of two possible definitions of physics you’re referring to. If you mean physics-the-scientific-enterprise (let’s call that physics1) then it exists in the ontological category of human activity (along with things like “commerce”). If you mean the underlying processes which are the object of study in physics1 (let’s call that physics2) then I’d put those in the ontological category of objective reality.

Note that ontological categories are not mutually exclusive. Existence is a vector space. Physics1 is also part of objective reality, because it is an emergent property of physics2.

lisper Feb 29, 2016, 7:29 PM
2 points
in reply to: gjm’s comment on: Is Spirituality Irrational?

I prefer notions of free will that don’t become necessarily wrong if the universe is deterministic or there’s an omnipotent god or whatever.

That’s like saying, “I prefer triangles with four sides.” You are, of course, free to prefer whatever you want and to use words however you want. But the word “free” has an established meaning in English which is fundamentally incompatible with determinism. Free means, “not under the control or in the power of another; able to act or be done as one wishes.” If my actions are determined by physics or by God, I am not free.

I don’t think they have any processes going on in them that at all resemble human deliberation

And you think chess-playing machines do?

BTW, if your standard for free will is “having processing that resembles human deliberation” then you’ve simply defined free will as “something that humans have” in which case the question of whether or not humans have free will becomes very uninteresting because the answer is tautologically “yes”.

So there are two parts to this

I’d call them two “interpretations” rather than two “parts”. But I intended the latter: to qualify as free will on my view, decisions have to be made by the conscious part of a conscious agent. If I am conscious but I base my decision on a coin flip, that’s not free will.

“actually possible” is pretty problematic language; what counts as possible?

Whatever is not impossible. In this case (and we’ve been through this) if I am reliably predictable then it is impossible for me to do anything other than what a hypothetical reliable predictor predicts. That is what “reliably predictable” means. That is why not being reliably predictable is a necessary but not sufficient condition for free will. It’s really not complicated.

Why make it part of the definition?

Because that is what the “free” part of “free will” means. If I am faced with a choice between A and B and a reliable predictor predicts I am going to choose A, then I cannot choose B (again, this is what “reliably predictor” means). If I cannot choose B then I am not free.

lisper Feb 29, 2016, 3:06 AM
2 points
on: Is Spirituality Irrational?
Here’s a firsthand account of someone having the sort of spiritual experience I’m referring to in the main article.

lisper Feb 29, 2016, 3:01 AM
2 points
in reply to: gjm’s comment on: Is Spirituality Irrational?
Free will is a useful notion because we have the perception of having it, and so it’s useful to be able to talk about whatever it is that we perceive ourselves to have even though we don’t really have it. It’s useful in the same way that it’s useful to talk about, say, “the force of gravity” even though in reality there is no such thing. (That’s actually a pretty good analogy. The force of gravity is a reasonable approximation to the truth for nearly all everyday purposes even though conceptually it is completely wrong. Likewise with free will.)

You said that a chess-playing computer has (some) free will. I disagree (obviously because I don’t think anything has free will). Do you think Pachinko machines have free will? Do they “decide” which way to go when they hit a pin? Does the atmosphere have free will? Does it decide where tornadoes appear?

When I say “real free will” I mean this:
1. Decisions are made by my conscious self. This rules out pachinko machines, the atmosphere, and chess-playing computers having free will.
2. Before I make a decision, it must be actually possible for me to choose more than one alternative. Ergo, if I am reliably predictable, I cannot have free will because if I am reliably predictable then it is not possible for me to choose more than one alternative. I can only choose the alternative that a hypothetical predictor would reliably predict.
I don’t know how to make it any clearer than that.
What links here?
- g_pepper's comment on March 2016 Media Thread by ArisKatsaris (Mar 2, 2016, 5:17 AM; 2 points)

lisper Feb 28, 2016, 6:56 AM
2 points
in reply to: gjm’s comment on: Is Spirituality Irrational?

an example that doesn’t even vaguely gesture in the direction of making my point

Sorry about that. I really was trying to be helpful.

I haven’t, as it happens, been claiming that free will is “objectively real”. All I claim is that it may be a useful notion.

Well, heck, what are we arguing about then? Of course it’s a useful notion.

chess

A better analogy would be “simultaneous events at different locations in space.” Chess is a mathematical abstraction that is the same for all observers. Simultaneity, like free will, depends on your point of view.

lisper Feb 27, 2016, 8:11 PM
4 points
in reply to: turchin’s comment on: The Philosophical Implications of Quantum Information Theory
None of this is original research on my part. My only contribution is pedagogical. QIT doesn’t make any predictions that QM doesn’t make because it’s an interpretation, just another way of looking at the math. But the reason it’s a better way of looking at the math is that it solves the measurement problem. It explains measurement in terms of entanglement. It reduces two mysteries to one. IMHO that’s progress.

lisper Feb 27, 2016, 5:39 PM
2 points
in reply to: gjm’s comment on: Is Spirituality Irrational?

It is not always best to make every definition recurse as far back as it possibly can.

Of course. Does this mean that you concede that our desires are not freely chosen?

I have read both books.

Oh, good!

I do not think chapter 7 of TFoR shows that theories with high predictive power but low explanatory power are impossible

You’re right, the argument in chapter 7 is not complete, it’s just the ⁸⁰⁄₂₀ part of Deutsch’s argument, so it’s what I point people to first. And non-explanatory models with predictive power are not impossible, they’re just extremely unlikely (probability indistinguishable from zero). The reason they are extremely unlikely is that in a finite universe like ours there can exist only a finite amount of data, but there are an infinite number of theories consistent with that data, nearly all of which have low predictive power. Explanatory power turns out to be the only known effective filter for theories with high predictive power. Hence, it is overwhelmingly likely that a theory with high predictive power will have high explanatory power.

In this world, would you accordingly say that first-me is choosing much less freely than second-me?

No.

First, I disagree with “Free will means unpredictability-in-principle.” It doesn’t mean UIP, it simply requires UIP. Necessary, not sufficient.

Second, to be “real” free will, there would have to be some circumstances where you accept the bribe and surprise me. In this respect, you’ve chosen a bad example to make your point, so let me propose a better one: we’re in a restaurant and I know you love burgers and pasta, both of which are on the menu. I know you’ll choose one or the other, but I have no idea which. In that case, it’s possible that you are making the choice using “real” free will.

in the second case I am coerced by another agent, and in the first I’m not

Not so. In the first case you are being coerced by your sense of morality, or your fear of going to prison, or something like that. That’s exactly what makes your choice not to take the bribe predictable. The only difference is that the mechanism by which you are being coerced in the second case is a little more overt.

You may prefer notions of free will with a sort of transitive property

No, what I require is a notion of free will that is the same for all observers, including a hypothetical one that can predict anything that can be predicted in principle. (I also want to give this hypothetical observer an oracle for the halting problem because I don’t think that Turing machines exercise “free will” or “decide” whether or not to halt.) This is simply the same criterion I apply to any phenomenon that someone claims is objectively real.