[ 3 / biz / cgl / ck / diy / fa / ic / jp / lit / sci / vr / vt ] [ index / top / reports ] [ become a patron ] [ status ]
2023-11: Warosu is now out of extended maintenance.

/sci/ - Science & Math

View post   
File: 75 KB, 750x600, Freewill_vs._Determinism.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
2966025 No.2966025 [Reply] [Original]

>That feel when you begin to realize more and more that hard determinism is true, and you can see where you are heading in life and know you don't have much of a choice but still you hope that there will be some deus ex machina event will come and change your life even though you know it wont.

>> No.2966029

>where i am heading in life

unemployed forever alone guy trolling on 4chan 24/7

>> No.2966039

It's a false dichotomy

You don't have free will but you can still make decisions.

>> No.2966042

>>2966039
>implying this is no contradiction

>> No.2966045

>>2966029
Close, I'm just going to end up as another middle class suburbanite like my parents.

>> No.2966053

>>2966039

Free will IS decisions. There is nothing else it could be.

I would love for someone to give me a good description of free will other than that.

>> No.2966057

>>2966053

No, no, no.

Free will would be the ability to create options.

If you have options, but have no means to alter or create new options, it's will without freedom.

A lab rat can choose to turn left or right, but he can't choose to not be in the maze.

>> No.2966059

>>2966042
You make decisions based on electrochemical processes in your brain in response to external stimuli. In that regard, there is no free will.


but you are still MAKING DECISIONS, and there is no way to know for certain what the result of these decisions will be . You can't predict the future. So the universe maybe deterministic but that's not depressing.

>> No.2966061

>>2966057
You're confusing freewill with physical freedom.

>> No.2966062

>>2966057

So then how could one create options? By what non-deterministic method could one arrive at the decision of what options to create?

>> No.2966068

>>2966053
>>2966042

>Implying our decisions don't have immediate causes in the form of desires.
>Implying your desire to eat isn't caused by hunger.
>Implying the only times you have resisted your desire to eat are not when 1) there is no food, or 2) you have desires which are stronger than it
>Implying you can control your desires

>> No.2966071

>>2966053
Free will all too often is taken as the ability to transcend the way in which things happen (you making decisions)

>> No.2966082

Coin chose to fall heads up, therefore coins have free will.

>> No.2966083

You don't need free will to make decisions. Even small AI programs make decisions. Decisions can be based purely on logic.

>> No.2966086

>>2966083

Then what do you need free will to do? What do humans, who we assume have free will, do that cannot be explained as a complicated, responsive decision making system?

>> No.2966090

>>2966082
thats a good illustration thanks.

shit happens. its not completely 'free' will. you have a degree of power within all hat shit that is happening simply because you don't know what shit will be ging down later as a result of you influencing the process of shit going down.

>> No.2966096

>>2966086
>What do humans, who we assume have free will, do that cannot be explained as a complicated, responsive decision making system?

Nothing. because its wrong to assume humans have free will.

assumptions are wrong.

>> No.2966123

>hard deternism
>true

Pick 1.

Hard determinism is more bullshit than biblical free will.

deal with it, masochist

>> No.2966130

>>2966123

If you're talking about quantum indeterminism, then fine.

If you're talking about people being full of magical free will fairies, then not so fine.

>> No.2966131

>>2966123
An argument would have been nice.

>> No.2966139

"Free will" COULD be interpreted as randomness in the choices we make. Meaning that in stead of any decision being deterministically based on the initial state of the universe, any decision has a random chance to turn out to be anything at all.

>> No.2966141

POINTLESS THREAD IS POINTLESS

>> No.2966172

>>2966141
>implying there's a point to anything
>implying the universe is decided on any end product
>implying its not just the building up and breaking down of atoms

>> No.2966178

>>2966172
He didn't imply any of that.

>> No.2966212
File: 25 KB, 400x277, sexy-russian-army-babe-uniform.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
2966212

>>2966178
I know I stretched it a little didn't I?

I was just trying to relate it to the free will discussion.

>> No.2966283
File: 14 KB, 450x300, ring-galaxy.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
2966283

I'm fine with that, because I can see where I'm heading.

And it's straight up.

And I'll drag humanity behind me. Kicking and screaming if I have to.

Per Ardua, Ad Astra.

>> No.2966719

>>2966139

You're wrong. If you cool water enough it has to freeze. And if you send certain impulses down the optic nerve into the brain, the gooey neurons that make up the brain have to chemically react in one way. Those chemicals are our thoughts and emotions and personality and actions. Claiming that there is some magical force in the brain that can let us "choose" how our brain chemicals will react to impulses is just as ridiculous as claiming you can make a pot of water boil only with the force of your mind, or that Randy Johnson can make a pitch stop in midair and return to him just because he "chose" for it to do so. The impulses that play on the brain are bound by the exact same laws of physics as the baseball in flight.

To change them would require nothing short of magic.

You're scoffing, just as you were destined to scoff from the moment the universe burst into existence billions of years ago. "After all," you say to your computer monitor, whilst arrogantly stroking your luxuriant beard, "I can choose to stand up or remain sitting! I'm sitting here right now, making the choice! I can do either one! I know what it feels like to freely choose!"

That feeling that you can choose to do something different than what you wind up doing is just a chemical side-effect, an impression of the emotions that feels like something it really isn't, just as a certain formation of clouds can look like a castle or a tree branch can look like it's flipping you the bird. You're getting an impression of something that isn't really there.

>> No.2966739

>>2966719
Too unreal.

Doesn't make sense.

I won't believe in it or anything.

You do not exist, but only I do.

>> No.2966747

Can someone post that dan dennet video about free will and determinism being compatible?

>> No.2966749

>>2966025

>Implying I don't have a soul.

>> No.2966753

>>2966719
angsty mad teenager detected.

go crawl back into your nihilistic hole, little boy.

>> No.2966763

>>2966753
U MAD that he's made you aware of reality?

>> No.2966764

>>2966739
>>2966753

Not at all, it's true, you want a better example?

When you were a babe at your mother's crotch, you had a brain built on the genes handed down by your parents! And they got theirs from their parents, all the way back to the first life formed by an accidental cell mutation! And everything you've seen or heard in your life since was fired into your brain as electrical nerve impulses from your eyes and ears. We can measure those impulses! They are physical things! And each of those impulses, what you called 'sights' and 'sounds' threw certain chemical switches in your brain, all of which can also be observed and measured! And those switches, as they turn as predictably as gears in a clock, are what we call 'thoughts' and 'emotions!' And what you know as your 'self' is just the accumulation of chemical changes made to a genetic blueprint! We could change it in a lab

>> No.2966768
File: 44 KB, 300x300, 1295460494622.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
2966768

>that feel when you realize you will never be more than intellectually average because everyone extraordinary was cultivated from a very young age

>> No.2966769

>>2966719
>, just as a certain formation of clouds can look like a castle or a tree branch can look like it's flipping you the bird. You're getting an impression of something that isn't really there.

Depends.

The observer's reality is subjective.

>> No.2966777

>>2966764
Then why are you here posting all of this.

Why haven't you shot yourself yet?

>> No.2966785

>>2966719
I wonder if this has anything to do with my deja vu I have all the time.

might not be supernatural at all

>> No.2966791

>>2966785

>might not be supernatural at all

>might

Full retard

>> No.2966804

>>2966791
full retard detected

>> No.2966815

Your brain is a computational machine that always chooses the option it calculates should make you happiest. Does this destroy free will?

I think it depends on how you define free will. From what does your mind need to be free from to be considered free?

The mind cannot be free from itself, so if this is what your "free will" requires then it cannot be true. I don't see the big deal. Let's pretend you have an soul that works non-deterministically by magic, is it free from itself (how could it be)? Can it choose to do something that won't make it happiest, in other words- Can it choose to do something it doesn't choose to do?

tl,dr: free will is only an illusion if you're retarded enough to have ever thought of free will as something which is logically impossible, soul or no soul.

>> No.2966832

>>2966764
You're coming off as a douchebag aspie.

>> No.2966846

How is belief in determinism any different from belief in fate? Sounds like superstitious bullshit to me.

Also this doesn't mean I believe in free will or souls, false dichotomy logical fallacy, fuck you.

>> No.2966867

>>2966846
>How is belief in determinism any different from belief in fate?
Compare their scientific bases and you shall find out.

>> No.2966884

>>2966832
You must believe in souls.

>> No.2966886

>>2966846

Determinism entails a causal relation between events.
Fate entails an end which you will inevitably tend toward.

>> No.2966892

>>2966025
Sounds like you have a self-fulfilling prophecy and not a determinism problem.

>> No.2966899

>>2966832

And what are you coming off as? Some retard that thinks humans are able to do something incredible, which is to re-make the physical universe in ways they see fit. It may have been destiny for a stone to roll to a certain spot and stay there, but this power of "will" lets a human actually interrupt that destiny by picking up the stone and sticking it in his pocket.

It only demonstrates how ridiculous this is when we notice that the only observable instance in all of the universe where this power is exercised is via one particular species living in one short span of time on one particular tiny speck of a planet out in the vast ocean of nowhere.

That would suggest that human beings are not only unique in their physiology, but actually harness a sort of energy that is stranger and, in some ways, more powerful than that found in the stars that dwarf their planet. We're back to the ridiculous geocentrism that says all of the universe revolves around us humans. As if there was something special about us. Every thing we are destined to do was decided 13.7 billion years ago when the big bang happened. Particles shot out, formed stars, went supernovea and thanks to nucleogenesis formend heavy elements, and life formed. Bu no matter what the particles that make up your body are still on the exact same course, the exact same explosive aftershock, as the were when they were first formed. There is nothing you can do about it, or anything. Everything is destined to be.

>> No.2966928

>>2966892
>you have a self-fulfilling prophecy
Nice projection, brah.

>> No.2966949

>>2966899
>he thinks he a small little human on a tiny speck in a cosmic sea has the universe figured out
>laughingelfman.jpg

>> No.2966955

>>2966039
Except the decision you make is predetermined.

>> No.2966959

>>2966025
I think hard determinism requires the universe to have atleast 1 fixed variable. Currently, that's alpha. But if it can be shown that the universe over time has no fixed variable, then determinism is done.

>> No.2966968

>>2966899
>>2966764
>>2966719
Do you have an email?

I'd like to debate with you a little bit.

>> No.2966976

>>2966959
alpha what?

>> No.2966980

Are we truly aware?
Is this not a dream?

>> No.2966988

>>2966928
Eh

OP:
>and you can see where you are heading in life and know you don't have much of a choice

Perhaps you should learn to read?

>> No.2966994

I think most of /sci/ accept that free will is a product of a deterministic mind, and that a lot of them won't see conscious as anything more than the output of the brain- the Conscious mind never does the calculation, it only receives the results. It doesn't make any decisions, either, it simply sees the brain telling it it is making a decision, and then the decision is made.

>> No.2967000
File: 111 KB, 247x248, oooooooooaaaaaaahhhh.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
2967000

>>2966867
>compared scientific basis
>no scientific basis for either
>my reaction image

>> No.2967003

>>2966976
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_constant

>> No.2967008

Determinism is a poisonous thought. Even if it were true, it does nothing to make you happier, or more fulfilled. Act like you have a choice, and you'll feel better. You guys forget that ideas are at our service, not the other way around.

>> No.2967010

>>2966994
I don't accept it. All I'm wondering is whether /sci/ is motivated to accept one speculation over another because you don't want to accept responsibility for your lives or because you think it makes you hip and edgy communists.

>> No.2967020

>>2967000
trips = truth

total thread derailment, maximum overtroll

>> No.2967025

>>2967010
OH YOU

Seriously though, do you believe this? if so, why aren't you a follower of determinism?

>> No.2967031

>>2967000
Determinism's scientific premise is that everything's causally linked.

reaction.jpg

>> No.2967038

>>2966886
>Fate entails an end which you will inevitably tend toward.
The ultimate fate being the heat death of the universe. I doubt humans can engineer their way of that.

>> No.2967043

What if the brain is like radio or television receiver?

>> No.2967047

>>2967038
>their way of
I bet we could engineer something that could engineer something that could though.

>> No.2967050

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17835-free-will-is-not-an-illusion-after-all.html

problem determinism

>> No.2967053

>>2967043
like the conscience is?

That would make no practical difference whatsoever, unless the method of transmission were compromisable

>> No.2967059

>>2967043
The brain is a receiver in a sense that it takes input from the environment. So, yeah, we're all just watching TV and the universe is the channel.

>> No.2967060

The afterlife is a natural part of the universe.

Each afterlife is different to each species or planet.

>> No.2967063

>>2967047
U MAD?

>> No.2967066

>>2967031
The real crux is that the reaction is non-linear. The same way that the brain can buffer itself from it's varying impulses allows for a near infinite level of reactions, such that the true mapping from an action to a reaction is chaos.

As such, chaos leaves you with a deterministic system thats impossible to predict.

Whether people consider the impossible to predict synonymous with free will is a semantic question.

>> No.2967079

>>2967050
>While there was an RP before volunteers made their decision to move, the signal was the same whether or not they elected to tap. Miller concludes that the RP may merely be a sign that the brain is paying attention and does not indicate that a decision has been made.

Or, perhaps, that a decision has been made to not make the movement?

>work from premise an experiment was invalid
>do an experiment of your own
>conclude that ambiguous result shows experiment was invalid
>???
>Pop Science

>> No.2967082

>>2967066
>varying impulses allows for a near infinite level of reactions

That's pretty interesting.

makes me think and gives me hope

>> No.2967086
File: 9 KB, 256x192, index.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
2967086

>>2967050
<---- Problem, Free Will.

>> No.2967087

>>2967079
>find article that supports view different from your own
>rationalize to yourself it must be retarded pop science or pseudo-scientific bullshit

>> No.2967099

>>2967087
>implying that a single experiment with vague results is enough to prove a view that you support

>> No.2967105

>>2967087
>mfw I worked for newscientist.com for 3 months and I'm still subscribed to it

I notice that instead of attacking my point, you simply choose to attack me. Far be it from me to suggest that it's because you haven't a valid response, but..
um...
actually, you don't, do you.

>> No.2967116

>>2967099
>>2967105
what a bunch of dicks

>> No.2967125

>>2967079
>Or, perhaps, that a decision has been made to not make the movement?

keep grasping at straws, bro.

>> No.2967147

ITT: no one knows what they are talking about

>> No.2967159

Determinism relies on physics.
Our understanding of the physic of the universe is shitty.

therefore, determinism is done

>> No.2967162

>>2967159
physics*

>> No.2967167

>>2967116
>ad hominem

What a retard.

>>2967125
Tell me why that isn't an interpretation that isn't as, or more valid than the article's or GTFO my /sci/.

>> No.2967169
File: 27 KB, 400x300, val-kilmer-salton-sea_l-786963.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
2967169

>>2967082
A good movie for the 'level of reaction' is the Salton Sea.

>> No.2967174

>>2967159
Gravity relies on physics
Our understanding of the physic of the universe is shitt.

therefore, gravity is done

>> No.2967181

>>2967147
Except for you, who definitely doesn't know.

?

>> No.2967195

>>2967181
You are retarded.

All of /sci/, 100% of it, does not know what it is talking about.

> ?
makes you come off as some sort of retarded iranian or something.

>> No.2967196

>>2967167
>>2967167
Are you choosing to be ignorant?

>mfw

>> No.2967205

>>2967196
>ask for information
>you imply that I'm being ignorant

Here you have two options

1. Continue to make poor arguments, slowly killing the part of me that cares about education.
2. Grow up and provide me with some kind of response that I can analyse and respond to.

>> No.2967220

>>2967195
So, is this a paradox?

How can you state within the set, that the whole set doesn't know the state of the set?

>> No.2967265

>>2967220
Everything is a paradox.

>> No.2967268

First can someone define free will?

>> No.2967339

>you can see where you are heading in life

Nope. Chaos theory means the future is unpredictable, even if reality is deterministic.

>> No.2967360

>>2967339
>unpredictable, even if reality is deterministic
Dat contradiction

>> No.2967366

>>2967360
well at least now know that determinism is bullshit.

>> No.2967396

>>2967205
So you're not choosing to be ignorant, you just are?

>> No.2967399

>>2967265
Wrong. Nothing is a paradox. Everything just is.

>> No.2967405

>>2967360
Its not a contradiction if you understood the semantic definitions

lrn2chaos

>> No.2967421

>>2967399
Prove that everything just is without hipster philosophical bullshit.

>> No.2967428

>>2967421
Ok. Everything: 1 Nothing: 0

Now, lets try to find nothing. ... Ok then.

>> No.2967512

>>2967428
That doesn't prove paradoxes don't exist.

>> No.2967530

>>2967512
I'm not proving paradoxes don't exist.

I'm proving everything is.