Comments on: Solution to Determinism/Free Will

http://alittleweird.com/2009/10/03/solution-to-determinismfree-will/ reality bizarres the standard Sat, 18 Aug 2012 16:43:26 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.2.3 By: deusxmachina http://alittleweird.com/2009/10/03/solution-to-determinismfree-will/#comment-1702 deusxmachina Wed, 11 Nov 2009 05:16:07 +0000 http://alittleweird.com/2009/10/03/solution-to-determinismfree-will/#comment-1702 First, reality is NOT deterministic, it is stochastic. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stochastic BIG difference, considering they're antonyms ;) Secondly, because there are so many random variables in reality, the probability of a single quantum event occurring can't even be calculated. For example, if you have a quantum event analogous to a coin flip, you can know it'll be at least 49.99% heads and 49.99% tails, but you can never know truly what it's final probability is going to be. The rest is lost in statistical summation (which can't be calculated perfectly, anyways). That means that thermodynamics can't "know" if that extra 0.002% is purely randomly decided, or determined by some yet unknown conscious factor. Having 'true free will' once in every 5000 events (made up numbers here) doesn't seem like much, but a single human brain has billions of stochastic events going on simultaneously at any moment. Free will is still a very real possibility. The math says so. By: foobot3000 http://alittleweird.com/2009/10/03/solution-to-determinismfree-will/#comment-1701 foobot3000 Sun, 01 Nov 2009 14:51:15 +0000 http://alittleweird.com/2009/10/03/solution-to-determinismfree-will/#comment-1701 What if reality contains the capacity for both free will and determinism? In psychology we see that people are born with genetic predispositions toward certain mental diseases, however it is not an absolute fact that a person will develop said disease given the enviornment in which the person is born. I think it's the same type of thing in quantum mechanics, where simply oberving the experiment changes it. There are deterministic factors in the universe and there are varibles which can alter those factors. By: Nezz http://alittleweird.com/2009/10/03/solution-to-determinismfree-will/#comment-1698 Nezz Tue, 27 Oct 2009 07:17:43 +0000 http://alittleweird.com/2009/10/03/solution-to-determinismfree-will/#comment-1698 P.S. Damn it Sean, you need to add an Edit Button >_>... damn typos.... *sighs* By: Nezz http://alittleweird.com/2009/10/03/solution-to-determinismfree-will/#comment-1697 Nezz Tue, 27 Oct 2009 07:11:09 +0000 http://alittleweird.com/2009/10/03/solution-to-determinismfree-will/#comment-1697 What if Reality is not as complex as we think it is. Because so many things seems to perplex us in this world, I have been recently adopting a point of view that, to me, makes sense. It feels that as we progress in time, so does our mathematical models and physics laws. But why? Is it because we discover new and more things the more time we spend researching and experimenting? Or is it simply because as we continue to explore more (with earlier discoveries as our foundation) we begin to alter reality with our own perceptions and expectations of what me may find out in the ether and how we believe something may function. I guess what I am trying to say is that Collective Consciousness can be altering reality. When a new idea comes out, and the more people begin to accept this new idea, then the more our thoughts of acceptance alter reality to fit that new idea. Then something new comes along and our collective consciousness molds that new idea into our reality, while still keeping old ones a part of our reality as well. I dont know if that makes sense to you all, but thats what I have been looking into recently. No idea is right or wrong. It all has merit, because simply thinking "what if" puts it into reality as a measurable possibility. But the more people that go with one idea over an other establish it into reality by accepting it until something new until something more exotic is thought up and created to replace the old idea's. tl;dr version: As we grow more aware of our surroundings, we alter the physics behind them with our Consciousness by creating idea's on how we may think things behave. Sean, I dont know if you have ever played around with Mass Consciousness Experiments, but I have an interesting idea. It seems your efforts and procedures in winning the lottery were not entirely wrong. Maybe your will was just not strong enough to make it happen. What if you just needed a little help. A little more will power from us. I dont know how many readers you have to this site, but what if every night we look at a picture of you and Imagine/pray/will you winning. Maybe our collective thoughts are what you need :-) I think a lot of answers in this world can quite simply be that we are in control of reality, right down to the physics we observe. -Nezz By: jack http://alittleweird.com/2009/10/03/solution-to-determinismfree-will/#comment-1695 jack Wed, 21 Oct 2009 18:10:42 +0000 http://alittleweird.com/2009/10/03/solution-to-determinismfree-will/#comment-1695 I disagree. Who wants to agree anyways? To say that life is deterministic is way too certain a tone. Just because there are other scientific tests with simple formulas may produce complicated results, does not mean that we follow that rule. The application is too much of a leap, if I understood it. Maybe life is deterministic, but not entirely. To say there's fate, but there must be some doubts that may change it. What if, perhaps some other force may change the natural order of what is deterministic? Just guessing, and never want to accept a random future that's already laid out. By: X-Master http://alittleweird.com/2009/10/03/solution-to-determinismfree-will/#comment-1694 X-Master Wed, 14 Oct 2009 06:44:19 +0000 http://alittleweird.com/2009/10/03/solution-to-determinismfree-will/#comment-1694 Sothilde: I was going to mention Descartes. But only because he thought that his senses where deceiving him, where as you have hit on something much deeper, that our own minds/thinking are the deceivers when we load them up with assumptions, beliefs, and other preconceived notions of reality. But either way, truth can be considered a multi-faceted diamond, each facate a path that is neither superior nor inferior to any other path, but all eventually lead to the same place in the end. By: Sothilde http://alittleweird.com/2009/10/03/solution-to-determinismfree-will/#comment-1693 Sothilde Mon, 12 Oct 2009 15:41:07 +0000 http://alittleweird.com/2009/10/03/solution-to-determinismfree-will/#comment-1693 Sean: I understand your way of tought, but one of the points I was trying to make is that by that way of thought you can never get to the truth about reality. You can upgrade one theory with the next, but it is intrinsic to this method that it's impossible to arrive at a final theory, a "truth". Every "better" theory could be exchanged with something completely different as new evidence turns up. So if it's truth that you're looking for, you'll never find it that way, you can only find things that work up to a different degree. Breaker: Who says that the result is indecisiveness or complete uncertainty? I experience it as just the opposite, because what you have done is REMOVE every uncertainty out of your view of reality! It requires a whole different way of arriving at truth, but that's something you have to experience for yourself. Once you can really EXPERIENCE reality withouth assumptions, that it could or could not be materialistic for example, once my story goes from only a logical derivation or abstract thought to an experience, quite literally a new world opens for you. I can only describe my own experience in this unfortunatly. I never met anyone else who in his attempts to understand the world really made this step, from interchanging different theory's, to accepting that this method can only result in another faith. This was a really tough decision to make for me, because it feels like you throw out of the window everything you've accomplished so far. But somehow, when you don't believe or assume anything about reality anymore, you start seeing it how it really is, you so to say remove a veil of beliefs that cloud your judgement and perception. As far as I can see now, one way to arrive at truth is not in any way by logical inference (as I pointed out already in my previous posts) but by increased consciousness of reality itself. Let me try to explain. A real, PRACTICAL certainty (or "truth") I have is for example that I'm sitting at a table right now, typing this message. This is a direct consciousness of reality, that I'm sitting at a table right now. I must emphasize, because that's the really crucial point, that this is a PRACTICAL certainty, it can never be a philosophical certainty. You can always throw arguments against it like for example Descartes did, that you could be dreaming that you're sitting on the table, or that you might have schizophrenia and be hallucinating this table (think of the movie A Beautiful Mind) etc. But at the end of that philosophizing, you're still sitting at that table! You have to grasp that last tought, really understand it, it is all about that principle of certainty. I always get criticized massively on this point because people fail to understand what it is I'm aiming at. What you could for example throw against it, is that I'm thereby making assumptions of my own, namely that I'm not hallucinating and that experience can be trusted. Also, for example someone who is colorblind sees a whole different table, there might be optical illusions, so what is so certain about it? My response to that is, again, at the end of those thoughts, when you've debunked my entire story philosophically (which is not very hard to do), you're still sitting at that table (whether it be a black & white one or a colored one)!!! It is not a philosophical point I'm trying to make, I'm aiming at the central place that this principle takes in life, in your experience. It takes assumptions, philosophizing to take away that certainty, in the daily life of a healthy person it is there, steady as a rock. Now the whole point of that story is that I have experienced that when you become more conscious of yourself, you become more conscious of reality itself. This was a real eye-opener for me, a massively important point. What I mean with becoming more conscious of yourself is for example trying to grasp what thinking really is, what it really means/is to feel something, or what exactly you do when you imagine something. And I don't mean theorizing about these things, that takes assumptions, then you're back at CREATING a reality instead of perceiving it! It is trying to grasp the "thing in itself" (which Kant assumed to be impossible by the way, if you're familiar with the Critique of Pure Reason), that is true understanding. In doing that, your own consciousness and the processes that go on in it become as direct a perception, as much of a certainty, as the table I'm sitting at right now. Ofcourse me writing this probably doesn't have much value to you as such. You can only believe it or not, it can never be more than faith to you!! I can never tell you the truth about reality, unless you can see it for yourself! Thereby I don't claim at all to know the truth about reality, that is a very lengthy and difficult process, you're constantly grasping in the dark, slowly building a greater awareness and consciousness or reality, slowly ariving at truth that is a direct perception, not a theory! An association I get now is that I would not at all be suprised if the endpoint of this search (or a certain point along the way at least), is that what people call "enlightenment", whatever that may be, but that is just an interesting side-note. I should again emphasize this whole story aims at people who want to know TRUTH. It is a really difficult and bumpy road, which requires a lot of self-work. If what you want out of life is to invent the quantumcomputer and win a nobelprize or to simply be happy with your friends & family, by all means go live in the world created/believed by the scientific community or whatever world you want to live in (become a christian?). I don't see anything wrong with believing this or that, everyone should do whatever feels he has to, or what he thinks is best for him. But if you want to know the truth, I cannot but conclude that you'll always be deluding yourself that way. You could argue that what you arrive at this way can only ever be your own truth, and you would be quite right. But I am lucky enough to know a few other people of who I found out they are at more or less the same road I'm on now. One is an actor and artist, who has instinctively always lived his life the way I describe here, which I was quite happy to find out about! It was also an enormously pleasant suprise to me to find that we have more or less the same ideas about life and of reality, that our "own truth" is more or less the same!! I add this only as an illustration that even though you may arrive at your own truth, this doesn't mean it can't be an objective truth. I'm not saying that this is the case, I don't know that, but it's a nice pointer. Also interesting to note is that I've arrived where I am now by tought, by analyzing thinking itself to the point where I had to conclude that I can never find truth by only thinking (theorizing). He arrived there by sheer intuition, maybe there are other ways too... Anyway, these are just interesting things to think about, not at all relevant to my story. By: breaker http://alittleweird.com/2009/10/03/solution-to-determinismfree-will/#comment-1692 breaker Sat, 10 Oct 2009 16:29:12 +0000 http://alittleweird.com/2009/10/03/solution-to-determinismfree-will/#comment-1692 Sothilde: no problem about spelling, I just thought I should point it out because it didn't look like it was just a typo. I guess you could argue that materialism requires faith, but the opposite, indecisiveness, is not very useful, whether in everyday life or a scientific setting. If you want to know the truth about the nature of reality, then yes, materialism is the best way to go. I'm not saying you should never change that, I'm saying go with what makes the most sense. If that changes, so should your beliefs. Personally I don't care if what we have is free will or not. But I think determinism is the best explanation of reality, so that is the model I use. I don't use it because I want the universe to be that way-- in fact, I would rather have free will. You're arguing for complete uncertainty, and while it's bad to delude yourself, it's good to have some theory of reality that you can accept (not accept blindly, or in the face of counter-evidence, that is.) By: Sean http://alittleweird.com/2009/10/03/solution-to-determinismfree-will/#comment-1691 Sean Sat, 10 Oct 2009 12:23:03 +0000 http://alittleweird.com/2009/10/03/solution-to-determinismfree-will/#comment-1691 Interesting posts... I'd like to bring up a logical way to remove most assumptions in adopting a model of reality: Adopt the model that explains the most phenomenon. (EDIT: and if two explain the same, then choose whichever is more simple) If I have two models, and they explain the evidence in two different ways, then I should see if one model can explain more evidence than the other. Whichever model can explain the most, wins. Wolfram's model is compatible with everything currently in science, AND can explain the uncertainty we see in quantum physics. AND can explain gravity and general relativity. Therefore, until a better model is found, it makes sense to put Wolfram's model at #1 on the list. A consequence of Wolfram's model is that free will doesn't exist, and everything is deterministic. Now, we can't actually TEST this. It's simply a side-effect of Wolfram's amazingly powerful model. However, since Wolfram's model is currently #1, that puts determinism at #1 (until a better model can be found). Thanks for the intelligent and thought-provoking comments, always refreshing to read :-). By: Sothilde http://alittleweird.com/2009/10/03/solution-to-determinismfree-will/#comment-1690 Sothilde Fri, 09 Oct 2009 12:35:37 +0000 http://alittleweird.com/2009/10/03/solution-to-determinismfree-will/#comment-1690 I'm sorry about any spelling errors, english isn't my mother tongue and I wrote that last piece rather quickly. "Materialism is what is left when you have no faith" No: "I don't know, it could be this way could be that way" is what is left when you have no faith (or make no assumptions as I like to phrase it) I agree on your other points. But the whole core of the matter is that materialism is an un-disproveable theory itself. You can't call up evidence in either direction in these matters, because evidence is only just what it is: a certain fact (or it contains certain facts). Only when you attach an interpretation to it, it gets a certain meaning. But that interpretation has to happen within a certain context of thought, and on the basis of that context of thought lies a certain assumption. Let me give an example: Modern research in neurology has shown by brain scans that there is a very strong correlation between certain cognitive functions and activity in certain regions of the brain. This is a fact. When you want to interpret it, when you want to attach meaning, you must start assuming. When you want to assume materialism, you can conclude from this fact that the brain is the cause of these cognitive functions, that it creates them. When you want to assume for example such-and-such form of consciousness-matter dualism, you can conclude from the same fact that the activity in the brain has in such-and-such way a connection with consciousness. By the way, these assumptions are in 9 out of 10 cases hidden assumptions, you have search for them and make them explicit in yourself. They often show themselves in "yeah, but this just seems like the most logical or realistic option to me". What is at the core of that "most realistic option" feeling, is that it correlates with your whole view of reality more than other options. And your view of reality is an assumption, a belief (unless it is a direct perception within a thought context that is completely free of any assumptions, but that is a whole different story, and that would make this a very very long [and off-topic] post). I'm also not saying materialism is a bad thing in itself, that completely depends on what you want out of life. If you want to know the truth about the nature of reality (which a small subset of the population, including me, seems to experience as their single goal in life), then materialism is a bad thing, because you are not finding out the truth about reality, you are finding out the logical consequences of assuming materialism. And yes, if the core of your thought to reject materialism is "I want a free will so I reject this theory", that doesn't make much sense. Then you are doing the same thing the materialist does, you make an assumption first and then start thinking. Only you make the opposite assumption. You should make no assumption and see things for wat they are, which is a nice and solid beginning (at least, if truth is what you're looking for).