/sci/ - Science & Math

In purely objective terms, free will probably doesn't exist. But we still seem to have the capacity to make decisions and decide what to do. In other words, people should be held responsible for their actions.

I think that, as long as we don't learn the exact reasons behind our every decision, we have virtual free will.

Free will is a social construct. It is about instinctive game theory ingrained in our brain architectures.

Anticipating blame and praise changes decisions.

"you could have acted differently" is a recognition that the decision would have been made differently if the actor had put more priority on the reaction of others etc.

All of that is formalizable by game theory and implemented of course in physics.

>where does free will come from?

You just described it.

Quantum Physics.

>>6033815
>as long as we don't learn the exact reasons behind our every decision, we have virtual free will.
But if we did learn, our decisions would become more complicated and we'd need to be figured out once again.

>>6033810
>So where does free will come from?
From all the chemistry and physics, via reactions in sypapses, ribosomes, protein, and ATP.

>>6033845
>But if we did learn, our decisions would become more complicated and we'd need to be figured out once again.

lolwut

I don't know how to think about it. If I decide to skip all my classes and never do anything, I could technically say it wasn't my free will. But that just feels wrong, and incorrect.

>>6033851
You can't completely predict yourself because you're always one step ahead of yourself.

>>6033810
all your reactions are traced back to your synapses, which direct your other bodily chemistry functions. Chemistry plays very little part in your 'free will.' Your brain is so complex it constantly 'rewires' itself, in a sense, and I guess that's where its from

your brain is fucking magic dude

>>6033810
I've actually been thinking a lot about this today. We condemn people for committing crimes if they do it of their own free will, but what about people with schizoprenia? Or the University of Texas shooter who they realized had a brain tumor that impaired his thinking. Where does 'purposeful actions' shift into biological causes?

From the infinite creativity of abstract thinking and language and imagination and th pure altruism and compassion and idealism and love and care for others. Human consciousness is not explainable by the same algorithmic processes of basic science. That is a fact. No other animals or hominids like Neanderthal had human consciousness

>>6033814
>It is about instinctive game theory ingrained in our brain architectures.
I like this explanation the best so far. It's like we're programmed to make decisions iteratively and data from past decisions gets incorporated into future decisions. This fits with my thinking of life as an organic program.

>>6033810
>So where does free will come from?
What do you faggots not understand about this not being a philosophy board?

Come back with a well formed definition of free will and pose the question as a testable hypothesis.

>>6033973
Don't be scared of things that aren't all tidy and neat for you to solve

>>6033952
>No other animals or hominids like Neanderthal had human consciousness

Wow you're full of shit. Neanderthals buried their dead and made art.

>>6033814
Sup Davis/Alice.

>>6033980

“Whoever knows he is deep, strives for clarity; whoever would like to appear deep to the crowd, strives for obscurity. For the crowd considers anything deep if only it cannot see to the bottom: the crowd is so timid and afraid of going into the water.”

Suck it nerd. And you can't be tidy and neat or gross or messy about a thing that doesn't even make sense when trying to clarify. It's just a performative statement that means "I'm/He/You are responsible for your actions beyond all other explanations".

But this performative statement of course falls apart when you consider things like mental illness or drug addiction or...

It's just not worth considering because a "strict determinist" that somehow comes across the notion of a weird absolute "freedom of the judgmental capacity in line with absolute reason" wouldn't live any differentially regardless. He'd still "feel" the same control that anybody else does.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that it seems like a useless idea because we can't do much with a mechanic that is literally magical in relation to other mechanics in the universe. Whereas investigating illness and neurology and psychology actually gives us clues on how to be better people and influence others to be better.

>>6033878
Sure you can. It's called modeling. We just need to create/find the right model that lets us predict actions of the human brain.

>>6034000
But the awareness each person feels is singular to them. They have no idea what it's like to be somebody else, so they extrapolate to assume everyone operates similar to them. How would you devise an experiment to test someone's subjective experience?

>>6034013
But if I'm looking at the model as its working it winds up interfering with itself as it seeks to predict what I'll think and oh god my head hurts now.

>>6033989
> Neanderthals buried their dead

Possibly, but highly speculative. Also highly social creatures like dogs show an interest in the dead

>and made art.
So do primates and elephants.

Maybe they had some animal level of consciousness like the Cambridge definition, but without language and abstract thinking and a developed theory of mind, nowhere close to human.

>>6034018
>without language and abstract thinking and a developed theory of mind, nowhere close to human.
But you can't possibly know they didn't have language, or those other things. It seems likely that they did. Why wouldn't they?

>>6034025
Their social behavior and inability to improve their tools. They may have had some sort of proto-linguistic coomunication but not the infinite productivity of human language. The smartest animals today have the expert cognition Neanderthals had for using tools or learning and performing complex tasks. Being 'smart' in this way is not human consciousness though.

>Neanderthals rarely made contact with outsiders or traveled outside their small home territories. Although many Neanderthal sites have rare pieces of high-quality stone from more than 100 kilometers away, there is not enough to indicate trade or even regular contact with other communities.

It has been suggested by one pair of researchers that these stones may instead be "gifts" brought by adolescents wishing to join a new community (some form of "marrying out" was essential due to the small size of Neanderthal territories). In their view, this lack of trade could indicate that Neanderthals may have lacked some cognitive abilities for dealing with strangers, such as "cheater detection" and the ability to judge the value of one commodity in terms of another. Neanderthals had a smaller cognitive part of the brain and this would have limited them, including their ability to form larger groups. [6]The quality of tools found at archaeological sites is further said to suggest that Neanderthals were good at "expert" cognition, a form of observational learning and practice acquired through apprenticeship that relies heavily on long-term procedural memory.[7]

>Neanderthal toolmaking supposedly changed little over hundreds of thousands of years. The lack of innovation was said to imply they may have had a reduced capacity for thinking by analogy and less working memory. The researchers further speculated that Neanderthal behavior would probably seem neophobic, dogmatic and xenophobic to modern humans.[7]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal_behavior

If there were no freewill then it wouldn't be fair to punish people for their actions. So the villagers would light their torches and come up the hill armed with pitchforks, scythes and clubs to interrupt my experiments. And I don't want to go through that again!

>>6033810

It stems from the fact that there are an infinite/exponentially growing number of outcomes for the combination of all scenarios.

Fractal butterfly effect

>>6033810
>Every reaction in every synapse, ribosome, protein, ATP, etc. can be explained by the laws of chemistry and physics. So where does free will come from?
[citation needed]

>>6033810
If you define free will as "something incompatible with physics", then of course free will does not exist.

I'm a compatibilist.

I think that free will is an "illussion". A biological mechanism having purpose not to make us feel insane.

>>6034056

I dont get this argument yes it would...

1. To condition them not to do it again: Positive/Negative enforcement
2. To stop them doing it again: Because it is against social contracts

If someone is damaging the fabric of social rule it makes perfect sense to stop him, it doesn't fucking matter if he is calculating his actions rationally or not.
>>6034189

Firstly that is assuming the systems involved in the cognitive system/behavior is chaotic (which it probably is but still).
And that isn't freewill, that is just being unable to predict decisions.

>>6034194
>biochemical reactions that depend entirely on physics
>being ignorant enough to actually demand a citation on this

>>6034056

Are you just puppeting some retarded shit you heard?


Lets think of an example of another species;
-If some creature is hindering the sociality/survival rates from some mutation it makes sense for them to punish/kill it, it doesn't matter if he chose it or not.

Ends justifies the means etc

>>6034215

He is retarded, but i think it may have an underlying point.

There is no evidence or proof of cause and effect, its just an assumption of science.

Free will comes from the chance that we can dictate the order in which these separate events can occur, by willing them to happen in a particular order. The problem with this is that there are many outside factors that cut down on one's willingness to give in to chance, further entrenching us in the idea that we do not possess free will.

>>6034217
So your autism deems you fit for euthanasia?

>>6034218
>There is no evidence or proof of cause and effect
Stop and think about what you just wrote for a moment

>>6034219
The chance here is that there can and will be an unpredictable event given that we've changed the order. Or that there is a predictable event of our choosing instead of due to natural course.

>>6034220

Depending on our decision procedure and rules of society, perhaps.


>>6034221

Are you new to science?
Have you seriously not come across any philosophy of science or the problem of induction yet?

I know its hard to believe, but it is how it is...

>>6034221
The supposition is a condition of life and thus our claim to truth of this. Cause and Effect don't necessarily disagree with me but there isn't any concrete proof besides isolated mutually exclusive events that portray this phenomenon.

>>6034223
Damn, bro, that's harsh. I don't even want to debate this with you anymore than I already have, but I will.

The apparent nature of such a statement, the hindering sociality/survival statement, depends almost entirely on the notion that we can even come to a unanimous decision about what hinders "sociality" or "survival rates".

Like...awkward dude over there is going to ruin the party with all his awkwardness. KICK HIM OUT!

Or

That huge, strong, smart guy has an ugly face and I can't stand to look at him for more than 2 seconds. KILL HIM or else none of us will ever be able to look another human in the face. OH WAIT.

>>6034226
>depends almost entirely on the notion that we can even come to a unanimous decision

No it doesn't.
Literally no decision procedure we use in society is unanimous.

I know it sucks, but it is how it is ya feel.


I mean both those examples you brought up basically already happen in society.
Think about 'piggy' from lord in the flies if you know the story.

I mean that story is a perfect example of how human nature if not directed and controlled by rules based on order can spiral out of control.

>>6034215
>biochemical reactions that depend entirely on physics
>depend entirely on physics
[citation needed]
Seriously, you just missed my point completely, didn't you? I'm affraid you'll have a hard time even defining what physics is.

>>6034226
That's not how the lawmaking process works at all...

>>6034013

the thing is that models that approach object that they try to represent, loose informative ability that they need to give us;
its like maps; world size maps are accurate but of no use to a man, but they are not more informative than the region they are mapping
tl;dr we cant use brain model to learn about brain

Ahhh, determinate vs free will eh? It never ends...

>>6033897

I'm going with this one.

>>6033810
I know a bit on the question.
According to the neural network model, humans couldn't solve some tasks they can solve (by which I mean unalgoritmisable (I'm not sure if this is the right way to write this word as English is my third language) tasks), in example, proving theorems. Basically the only currently proposed way to solve this is accounting for quantom random slightly skewing the transfering data in the brain.
Basically, quantum physics IS your free will.