Are you an atheist?

[Jon]

Are you saying predestination? Everything is pre-determined? No free will?

Yes. Our brains operate within the laws of physics. And that means what comes next depends on what came before, all the way back to the Big Bang.

 

[Jon]

FIRST, since we do not know the precise workings of the human mind, even though we may be able to guess at someone's most likely actions, the fact that we cannot do so with real accuracy suggests that we still have available to us a range of behavioral variations that might as well be free will, since we cannot predict a person's actions.

No debate that prediction is either hard or impossible. But there is no behavioural variation. You choose either path a) or b) (or n). Only before something happens is there possibility of multiple different behaviours. But that does not mean what came before does not impact on that. Let me explain.

For this, I will ignore the atomic level, which is really the basis of this no free will argument. But my explanation will still make a point. Imagine you are at the top of a cliff. You have several choices: a) Jump, b) Reconsider jumping and enjoy the view, c) Phone a friend d) Go home. To make your decision, you observe the spin of some electrons. It's all random. You decide on Going home. But in order to make that choice, you had to be at the cliff top in the first place. Or in other words, what you did beforehand determines the possibilities of what you may do next. Cause and effect.

SECOND, because things occur at the molecular level, and memory has to change the brain in a permanent way (otherwise we would forget something as soon as we learned it), we have to consider that chaos theory comes into play. Including sensitive dependence on initial conditions. At longer term, sensitive dependence on prior conditions. We would have to know EVERY INFLUENCING EVENT in a person's life to predict actions. We have enough trouble remembering our own personal history in precise detail. Therefore I believe that what we have is technically indistinguishable from free will.

Prediection not required for something to be true. Imagine a simulation which runs entirely on cause and effect. Whether or not you can predict the future in that simulation does not have any influence on whether or not the simulation runs on cause and effect.

I do know early influences in my life altered future behaviours. But really, I am again talking about at the molecular level, where the entire Universe is one big table of colliding atoms. It just helps sometimes to scale up to the aggregate of atoms (e.g. a whole person) to make an easier to understand example.

Edit: No Christ, no Christmas. Thank God for cause and effect (and therefore also Christ!). Was God the first cue ball?

 

[jpl458]

@jpl458 - if I may step into that question, Jon and I have debated the issue a few times, as have others.

My take is two-fold.

FIRST, since we do not know the precise workings of the human mind, even though we may be able to guess at someone's most likely actions, the fact that we cannot do so with real accuracy suggests that we still have available to us a range of behavioral variations that might as well be free will, since we cannot predict a person's actions.

SECOND, because things occur at the molecular level, and memory has to change the brain in a permanent way (otherwise we would forget something as soon as we learned it), we have to consider that chaos theory comes into play. Including sensitive dependence on initial conditions. At longer term, sensitive dependence on prior conditions. We would have to know EVERY INFLUENCING EVENT in a person's life to predict actions. We have enough trouble remembering our own personal history in precise detail. Therefore I believe that what we have is technically indistinguishable from free will.

There is a fine line between behavioral psychology and fortune telling. Somewhere in the gap lies free will.

@jpl458 - if I may step into that question, Jon and I have debated the issue a few times, as have others.

My take is two-fold.

FIRST, since we do not know the precise workings of the human mind, even though we may be able to guess at someone's most likely actions, the fact that we cannot do so with real accuracy suggests that we still have available to us a range of behavioral variations that might as well be free will, since we cannot predict a person's actions.

SECOND, because things occur at the molecular level, and memory has to change the brain in a permanent way (otherwise we would forget something as soon as we learned it), we have to consider that chaos theory comes into play. Including sensitive dependence on initial conditions. At longer term, sensitive dependence on prior conditions. We would have to know EVERY INFLUENCING EVENT in a person's life to predict actions. We have enough trouble remembering our own personal history in precise detail. Therefore I believe that what we have is technically indistinguishable from free will.

There is a fine line between behavioral psychology and fortune telling. Somewhere in the gap lies free will.

 

[jpl458]

Above I said I don't belive in ghosts, regular or holey, that would include fortune telling. when a fortune telling scam was butsted years ago Letterman said "You think they would have seen that comming".

 

[The_Doc_Man]

But there is no behavioural variation.

Sorry, but we have too many cases in the news where someone suddenly does something totally unaccustomed for that person's previous patterns. This is a sign of chaotic behavior... much variation based on too many inputs. When someone displays chaotic behavior, it is usually totally not predictable. You can deny that predictability is a sign of free will but it comes down to doing something for no obvious reason. Maybe you don't like calling it "free will" but we always have choices. Sometimes "Hobson's choice" and sometimes real choices. But life is full of choices.

Consider when I play poker and have a marginal hand. I am free to fold, check, call, or raise and might do so for ANY hand I play that isn't the stone-cold nuts. In bridge, when taking a finesse, I can evaluate WHY I think that play will succeed or fail and thus play either for "the hook" or "the drop" to succeed.

Lots of choices for us to make. Jon, what element of predestination persuaded YOU to found a web site? (Thanks to either you or whoever was the influencer for going that way, by the way...)

 

[Isaac]

Granted. But it is EQUALLY easy to imagine that in the face of the unknown among primitive people, inventing a God would be easier than being willing to wait to invent the science needed to explain the unknown. Did God create us in HIS own image, or did we invent God in our own image? This is a case of relativity, of frame of reference. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Which came first? The deity inventing Man, or Man inventing a deity?

Yeah, I hear ya on that. It could be seen as plausible that man invented God to help understand things, I personally think man invented a lot of things about God (a God that really was, but was misunderstood) in order to help him understand things.

For example, man invented a lot of the religious trappings of a relationship with God. The key is to ditch the religion and get the relationship

 

[ColinEssex]

I didn't say my God was the right god. I just said there can only be one absolute truth, not multiple conflicting ones.

So what made you choose from dozens of faiths or religions? It seems to me that a pin in a list is one way.
Col

 

[Jon]

So what made you choose from dozens of faiths or religions? It seems to me that a pin in a list is one way.

Birthplace is the biggest determinator of what religion you support. If you are born in Pakistan, you are 97% likely to become a Muslim.

 

[Jon]

Sorry, but we have too many cases in the news where someone suddenly does something totally unaccustomed for that person's previous patterns. This is a sign of chaotic behavior... much variation based on too many inputs. When someone displays chaotic behavior, it is usually totally not predictable. You can deny that predictability is a sign of free will but it comes down to doing something for no obvious reason. Maybe you don't like calling it "free will" but we always have choices. Sometimes "Hobson's choice" and sometimes real choices. But life is full of choices.

Consider when I play poker and have a marginal hand. I am free to fold, check, call, or raise and might do so for ANY hand I play that isn't the stone-cold nuts. In bridge, when taking a finesse, I can evaluate WHY I think that play will succeed or fail and thus play either for "the hook" or "the drop" to succeed.

Some misunderstandings of what I mean there. Yes, people can have chaotic behaviour, and hard to predict. But like my example of a simulation, being hard to predict might just mean you don't have tools yet sophisticated enough to do that prediction.

We have choices, but are they illusions of choice? Just like in my example of standing at the top of the cliff, your choices are limited to those possibilities given what came before. You can't jump off a cliff if you are not already at the cliff. Same applies to the molecular level in the mind.

When you play poker, you had to decide to go play poker. i.e. that decision was the cause, playing poker was the effect. But within your own mind, there had to be a flow of electricity that led to that decision. And for that electricity flow, it can only happen give the immediate prior state of your mind, and so on all the way back to the Big Bang.

Jon, what element of predestination persuaded YOU to found a web site? (Thanks to either you or whoever was the influencer for going that way, by the way...)

Regarding founding the website, I had no input from others. I was always fascinated by the bulletin boards in the very very early internet, before even the web browser. I used to love Compuserve, and some other similar platforms. So, given that I was a Microsoft Access consultant, I decided to create my own entity. And it all led from there. I've probably created about 60 different websites over the years, but this is the most enduring. I'm full of ideas, most of them failures. But some did well. For example, I wrote a book called The Instant Computer Consultant and sold over $100K worth, of which 97% was profit. The only fees I had were credit card transactions. And I set up a website so delivery was automated. Price of the ebook package was $97 per copy. I used to like watching those emails come in: ICC Sale was the notification email subject line, and I set up a cash register "ching" each time it came in. Oh the good times!

I also set up an Access database repair service, where someone could send their database for analysis, they would get a report within 3 minutes detailing what was recoverable, the cost etc. I wrote 600 lines of code in Automate (a macro language for Windows), and combined this with a Visual Basic program I got written by a Ukrainian programmer, that analysed the database and what could be recovered. Each enquiry had the database be automatically repaired before the report went out. So, if they went ahead with the recovery, I just attached the database after payment. It was very much automated and a super-fast service. Sales came from all over the world. Unfortunately, lots of people ripped me off. They paid for it, got their repair and then just cancelled the credit card transaction with their bank. I lost many thousands of pounds through peoples lack of integrity. Nice!

 

[Isaac]

So what made you choose from dozens of faiths or religions? It seems to me that a pin in a list is one way.
Col

There is only one choice that is accompanied by overwhelming evidence and testimonies - and I like evidence and testimonies!

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Jon, the issue of free will is not going to be decided (or, IMHO, decidable) until first we unravel the mysteries of the brain's form of programming, whatever it is. I think that consciousness is a higher-order state that isn't part of the primary wiring of the brain. It is an emergent condition that comes about due to interconnections that develop in the brain.

Just like "state of matter" is a first-order state of something. But we find that second-order states exist. For example, magnetism exists as a higher order state of alignment of magnetic domains within metal crystals. Superconductivity is a higher order state of electron orbital alignment when things get cool enough to silence the background noise of energetic electrons, thus allowing electrons to "resonate" like a wine glass resonates from an external noise. Or music - really, just a sequence of noises of different types - that somehow becomes pleasing as the whole sequence even though the individual components are just sounds, some of which are even a bit harsh or jarring. Like drums and cymbals and brassy trumpets.

That is why I don't believe that the wiring of the brain tells the whole story. And that is why I am skeptical of the validity of biochemical predestination.

 

[Jon]

I debate that there is even consciousness. To me, it is just a feeling we get of self awareness. It is not something in the ether that operates outside of physics. And for that reason, AI could also potentially fall under the (false) definition of consciousness.

 

[Isaac]

At this point everything seems up for debate. Why assume that anything really exists, rather than it simply being things we are experiencing through our thoughts? And we are back to the matrix. Now if only we could eliminate the sense of unpleasantness we get from pain, there would be little to no reason to wake up in the morning, which prompts me to recommend CS Lewis' book, the Problem of Pain.

In a sense, (especially in the everything-is-reduced-to-our-sensing-of-it outlook), pain is a gift - perhaps in fact it's the only aspect that gives us the gift of Good things by contrast.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

I debate that there is even consciousness. To me, it is just a feeling we get of self awareness

This quickly descends into a dual interpretation of the meaning of consciousness. One can be conscious of pain - which is a form of self-awareness. But the ability to ruminate on or predict the future and the ability to remember the past go beyond the simpler definition of "conscious."

The ability to abstractly envision, design, and implement programs goes far beyond simple self-awareness. The ability to (even dimly) envision a deity goes far beyond self-awareness. The ability to think outside of your own box is proof that there is more to it than self-awareness. Compassion is thinking outside of YOUR box and into someone else's box. So, for that matter, is ideological hatred.

 

[jpl458]

Yeah, I hear ya on that. It could be seen as plausible that man invented God to help understand things, I personally think man invented a lot of things about God (a God that really was, but was misunderstood) in order to help him understand things.

For example, man invented a lot of the religious trappings of a relationship with God. The key is to ditch the religion and get the relationship

"Man created God is his own image and likness", Voltaire

 

[Isaac]

"Man created God is his own image and likness", Voltaire

Voltaire is the last person I'd take God-advice from though to be honest