Interesting survey but note that the Bohm model, the one most clearly deterministic, has a grand total of zero endorsers. (“No model preferred” had more and that choice does not reject randomness.) 42% Copenhagen. 24% the information interpretation which specifically states that the actual possibility that occurs is a random event. So just right there the majority believe in a model that has randomness at its base. Next, at 18% is many worlds (every quantum event results in all possible ?an infinite number? of outcomes actually occurring, every subsequent event branching out another set of worlds that exist) which is sometimes billed as deterministic but I am not seeing it as meeting your precise definition. There are in fact many ways out of box A into a wide number of alternative boxes at every point. In many-worlds there is not only one way that the system can go to get out of that box, there are many ways, many worlds, and they all end up actually existing. Behind it is another group of indeterministic models, objective collapse, which are “indeterministic and reject hidden variables” …
And specific to the question your cite highlighted -
So let us be very very clear: the consensus among modern physicists is overwhelming that there is no hidden determinism and that randomness is a fundamental concept in nature.
FWIW I hear “shut up and calculate” as more profound than you do. It is a recognition that our models are in fact poetic metaphors written in mathematics for a reality that is outside our actual perceived experiences. Making other language metaphors simply fails. Our perceptual hardware is built for a Newtonian world.
Moving on to your attempt to clarify about what is and is not a “decision”. I am sorry that I am now more confused than I was. If I am understanding what you posted you are defining a “decision” as requiring “a belief” that can be updated by experience? Let’s accept that “belief” is any stored information putatively about the environment however it was entered. So an action qualifying as a “decision” is requisite upon the entity being able in some form to learn? And if so then thus by extension, a sentient intelligence that has no long term memory is not making decisions? So, let us imagine that H.M. who had as result of surgery for his epilepsy no ability to form new declarative memories, in fact had no ability to form any new long term memories at all. When asked what he wanted for breakfast, the eggs with bacon or the waffles, and he said “waffles” he was not making a “decision”?
As to your response to the Laplace Industries supercomputer question … sorry but the response feels like a bit of a cheat. The computer’s task is to run a calculation that can state the positions and vectors of every particle in the universe at any time t from the Big Bang, which in a deterministic universe it could do, not to be the universe or even parts of the universe itself. It is not being the universe, it is predicting it. How would it with that as its task know that there was anything to simulate that was what a human mind like in order to be curious to simulate it and run a human mind “simulation”? It is not tasked with curiosity; it is tasked with reporting the state of every particle in the universe at every and any point in time. That’s not enough?
No, the question is not based on the computer experiencing human mind information processing for itself, it’s if absolute knowledge from an outside vantage point of where every particle will be at every and any point in time and with what vectors (the “physics of it” that are “how this world of ours actually functions”) informs what the emergent properties of experience are, or even awareness that they had occurred.
Let’s take a real world example to illustrate. The aplysia is a sea slug that has only 20,000 neurons. Their connections have been pretty well mapped. They have modelled out in very specific ways what changes occur in response to different learning paradigms and can say with certainty that if they do X to a sea slug starting off in condition A, then condition B will result. Are they any closer to knowing what it feels like to be an aplysia learning?
Heck even taking your imagined several kilo-brain example running a human brain inside itself … let’s run that hypothetical in reverse. Do you know what your hypothalamus is experiencing right now?
I tell ya, if anything helps me relate to the everyday, it’s appreciating superposition uncertainty at the quantum level and its implications for a Deterministic model.
And I didn’t know about “hidden variables” as a scenario. The cosmological constant of QM, eh? The ol’ “unknown unknowns” approach. Good stuff.
It’s clear: you guys* know Kung fu.
This is where I get hung up. As I stated way upthread, humans must fight epistemic arrogance - thinking we know more than we can/do. There is also an appreciation for the Paradox at the heart of all Big Questions which, per the physicist survey “leave randomness irreducible” to many folks who think about this stuff. Past a point, this is fun to ponder, but leaving me stuck in line at the ice cream parlor
Should the discussion of FW vs D continue? I hope so, and know that overall it will never stop - it’s what we humans do.
But I can’t / don’t want to re-argue this debate this deeply as I am picking my ice cream. However, I can pause, remind myself “man, there’s a lot of forces bubbling under the surface of Conscious me as I consider how to act.” In my case, that means briefly considering my choices and implications of those choices (I can do what I want, but maybe feel bad later; I can note the Special Flavor and say it was predetermined they offer it that day, etc).
And then, to reward myself for pausing, and considering, I can add sprinkles
*I don’t know if you’re philosopher boys or girls.
When I have regrets about certain outcomes (or decisions), I remind myself that without that regret, that outcome is likely going to keep repeating itself. Regret is what will keep me from doing the same thing over and over again. So I embrace the feeling, however painful it feels in the moment.
Oh sure, the path to whatever wisdom I hope to acquire is littered with my bad choices. A quick Checking of Regrets before jumping yet again moves from nice-to-have to must-have in order to even become wisdom.
In most of the cases where you decide to climb a mountain, especially one of the ones you can walk up without pitons and ropes and hammers and stuff, there’s no single step you are likely to take that will make it impossible for you to attain your goal. So you keep reassessing as you go. You make corrections.
Someone else with the same goal might pick a different path, but they tend to converge.
I appreciate that Hellestal knew his/her schedule would likely not allow much comment today, and mine will also be constrained for a bit, but I do appreciate the effort to clearly define the terms.
Of most pertinence in the link between thoughts about whether or not our universe actually is completely causally deterministic and discussions about FW for various values of the latter term is the meaning of the words “agent” and “decision” for as H. wrote
It is the reduction of potential possible pathways made after consideration.
What then counts as “possible” and what as “consideration”? Is “consideration” what is implied by requiring some updating map, i.e. learning and memory of some sort, as requisite for something being a decision?
If a system is truly causally deterministic and there is only one way out of box A possible is there ever anything other than one path possible? If there is only one path possible what is “consideration” other than an epiphenomenon? Or is “consideration” a real thing because it is a process experienced?
We really do need “decision” defined in as clear a manner as “causal determination” is defined to proceed. (FWIW an “agent” can be defined as that which decides.)
Anyone up to offering one up?
FWIW imprecision in terms and definitions is an endemic issue in science. A recent one I read about is the fuzzy definition of “species” - prviously defined as reproductive isolation but now increasingly groups understood to be separate species are recognized to hybridize with regularity as part of normal evolution. From behind the wall this bit is most relevant here:
So many things in the real world are matters of degree.
In terms of defining a decision, I am sure folks will offer precisely thought-out approaches as appropriate. In terms of the OP, I think of a decision as something leading to the things I say and do every day. I see a decision coming from a combination of different levels of thought, instinct, habit, context and other factors.
ETA: darn, I didn’t notice the post count. This attempt at parenting humor only has a chance of working if it follows the bad puns on the same page. Sigh.
I understand why quantum mechanics always comes up in these threads. It makes people think of “randomness”, which seems to be an alternative to a deterministic view of the universe.
But the continual misconceptions about many-worlds are very difficult to deal with. I’m better at explaining the banking system than I am quantum interpretations. But from Hugh Everett’s PhD dissertation:
He’s contrasting this deterministic Process 2 with a supposedly random and discontinuous Process 1. He then explores a non-exhaustive list of various interpretations (“Alternatives”) of quantum processes, and ends up defending Alternative 5:
This is the complete abandonment of the “probabilistic” and mysteriously discontinuous Process 1, in favor of the (determinsitic) Process 2 (“without any statistical concerns”).
Many-worlds is just another way of describing the Theory of the Universal Wavefunction, and that idea entails – in Everett’s own words! – the “complete abandonment” of the probabilistic Process 1 in favor of the deterministic Process 2. In this conception, the laws of the universe as a whole are presumed to follow the deterministic evolution of that universal wave function.
He literally mentions “all of physics” here, again his own words.
This is simply mistaken.
The “boxes” of an Everettian conception of quantum mechanics are states of the universal wavefunction. And the evolution of that wavefunction is by a deterministic process.
This comes straight from the original source.
Unfortunately, people often look at popular descriptions of the many-worlds interpretation with the result that they fundamentally misunderstand it. The false belief here is that World A leads to both World B and World B’, since the universe “splits” – the popular trap here is to view that as not one arrow out of box A in the flow chart but two arrows, one of which leads to B and the other which leads to B’ in the flow chart.
That is an utter misconception.
To reach a somewhat more accurate description (still not perfect but much better), we can say that World A and World A’ exist simultaneously right on top of each other. They seem to be identical worlds. Nothing new is “created” when the world “splits”. World A and World A’ always existed from the beginning. The universe continues to evolve deterministically according to its fixed rule. There is one arrow out of every box. World A and World A’ exist on top of each other, looking exactly like. But World A becomes World B, and World A’ becomes World B’, and this is where the “split” happens where events diverge. It’s not that there is suddenly more “stuff” in the universe, where one box suddenly becomes two boxes. It’s just that this quantum moment is where where A and A’ – having existed like perfect twins until now – finally depart from each other. Our problem being inside the universe is that we simply do not know whether we exist in World A, or whether we are the us who live in World A’, because the two worlds are twins until the observation.
There are lots and lots of difficulties with the many-worlds interpretation. Can the deterministic evolution of a universal wave function actually explain what we believe to observe? Can two different worlds legitimately decohere, so that the state of one of the worlds be totally uncorrelated with the state of another world for all future “time”? If that can legitimately happen, then how many worlds are there? Must it necessarily be infinite, or can it possibly be finite? These are all legitimate questions, big picture Great Debates type stuff, and there aren’t really any great answers for any of them.
What is not a hard question is whether the MWI is deterministic. This is not a Great Debate in the slightest. This is basic GQ type stuff. The answer is yes, the MWI is deterministic, quite obviously and unambiguously.
Naturally, none of the above necessarily dictates that we live in an MWI-style world.
The appeal of the MWI is its simplicity (properly defined). How do we interpret the universe? With the MWI, we say the universe is the deterministic evolution of the Schroedinger equation. We don’t need anything else. What’s much, much more difficult is to explain the appeal of this particular kind of simplicity, and why we define simplicity in this particular way. That is very hard to do. It takes a lot of time.
6 is not any “more clearly” an even number than 8.
And in exactly the same sense, Bohmian mechanics is not any “more clearly” deterministic than MWI.
Both 6 and 8 are unambiguously even. Both the Bohmian interpretation and the MWI are unambiguously deterministic. And there are plenty of complexity problems with the Bohmian setup that does not seem to afflict many-worlds. From a previous thread:
There are very specific and very strong reasons why people who are inclined to determinism (such as me) are also inclined to the MWI over the pilot-wave interpretation. I might even venture to say that the same “instincts” that guide us to determinism are what guide us toward MWI and away from the pilot-wave theory.
I can assure you, I have heard that and other similar phrases offered up in the most startlingly unprofound, closed-minded, and intellectually incurious way imaginable. From physicists.
Of course, I must admit that my very limited personal experience is not a representative sample.
I am confused by your confusion.
Nowhere in my definition of a “decision” did I make a distinction between long-term and short-term memory.
There was a very good reason for that.
The word “learning” does not necessarily imply permanence. This basic truth is seen every semester on college campuses, in which students cram two days for a final to get a barely sufficient grade, and then summarily eject from their minds whatever material they learned in the first few weeks of break. Short-term memory is more than sufficient for everyday decision-making. It still represents very real learning, even when only temporary.
We can take your own hypothetical to its logical limit. What if a person had no ability to form any new memories at all, including short term memories? Such a person would have no ability to form any memory from the continuity of the sensory input they received this second, from the sensory input they received even a nanosecond later. Literally none of it would be retained. Their conscious experience, to whatever extent we can imagine it, might be nothing more than a shock of sensory input added to their own internal emotional state.
Do you really think he would he say “waffles” if he had no short term memory? When he wouldn’t even remember that the question had been asked? When he wouldn’t even remember that one word of the question had been followed by another word because he couldn’t even retain that much?
In everyday language, would you really say such a poor soul had the legitimate ability to make decisions? Maaaaaaybe, if you stretch the word a little.
If it is “predicting” the universe from the beginning, then I would in fact argue that it is being a universe.
This and many of my responses below are more of those “obvious” things that are legitimately not obvious, and would take more effort than it would likely be worth to work through. But one hint toward the larger argument: the machine could make a mistake. The hardware could screw up. In which case, it would ultimately be a much, much, much different universe that played out if it were an early enough mechanical error. That is why I said “it is being a universe”, indefinite article.
If it’s merely simulating a human, while it’s also approximating differential equations, while it’s also calculating the financial statements for the company, while it’s also running spreadsheets for financial analysis, then I would not say “the computer” would sense anything.
The human being inside the computer? The one being simulated?
That human being inside the machine would be seeing green, in as real a sense as we do.
They are an aplysia (mind) learning.
Of course not, no more than my superbrain knows what its own version of its own hypothalamus is experiencing.
But we have enough brain that we can understand the aplysia’s neurons, and the superbrain has enough brain that it can understand our hypothalamus. It is vast enough to consciously consider the whole of us inside itself, just as we are vast enough to consider the whole of the aplysia. But it cannot consider its own processes fully, because its own processes are what it’s using for the consideration. It’s not too hard to run a virtual machine of Windows 95 on a modern Windows 10 machine with standard hardware. But you’re going to hit much more serious problems if you’re trying to run a virtual machine of a nearly modern OS right in the middle of your modern OS.
From the previous post now:
I’m still not sure what to make of this, so I’m going to be asking some dumb questions. I know they’re dumb questions, but I also don’t know exactly what you’re asking – where on the spectrum the dumb questions become more legitimate questions – so I’m going to start dumb and then try to get more interesting and hope I get interesting enough that you can see where I’m coming from. (I might fail entirely at this, with all of the questions mired inescapably in dumbness.)
You seem to collapse all subjective experience into the same broad category.
But do you use your relative level of anger as a radar to walk around the house at night? Can you avoid the walls in pitch black, just based on how angry you are, because you know that you’re really angry when you get really close to walls?
There are many subjective experiences that have nothing to do with mapping the territory we see around us, that is, with correlating the state of our mind with the state of the outside world that we might navigate it better. Rather, subjective experiences like anger contain information about what we want to accomplish, and what we want to avoid – information about our “objective function”, so to speak.
So my question is, what category of subjective experience does eff-doubleyuu fall into? Do we use the feeling to recognize where the walls in our house are? Or do we use it to evaluate our own internal feelings about what we want to do – our “objectives”?
Lest it sound like I’m beating up on physicists, I should say that the smartest person I personally know is a physicist.
And whatever troubles physicists might possibly have thinking through the most important issues in their field pale in comparison to the problems of economists disinclined to think carefully about the economy.
Before doubling back to many worlds in specific let’s first highlight again question one of that poll of physicists. The percent who think there is hidden determinism, zero; the percent that believe that randomness is “only apparent”, 9%. The overwhelming majority beliefs? Randomness is irreducible and/or is a fundamental concept in nature. For this thread that is the point that matters. If they are right (and I do not know enough to judge whether or not they are) then at its base the universe is not deterministic.
BTW it is of note that 18% of these physicists endorse many worlds … yet at most half of that 18% believe that many worlds implies even that randomness is only apparent.
If I have time and energy I’ll post a separate thread to explore the implications of many worlds. We have several excellent physics-heads here. For the purposes of this thread I’ll leave that there is a possibility that Everett may not be using the same precise definition of determinism that you put forth and minimally that it seems that half of those who endorse that concept do not agee that it even implies that randomness is only apparent.
“Shut up and calculate” could also be its own thread. Minimally I would agree with those who say that creating models like many worlds is all well and good … but it does not seem that it produces any predictions different than the consensus beliefs that are falsifiable. As such its value is not much to science and my position is that until an alternate theory creates some falsifiable predictions that would differentiate it from reigning models the proper response is indeed that phrase. Just MHO.
But let us return to “decisions”. Short term memory of some sort E. coli has. It is comparing concentration of chemical A at t+1 to what it was at t (a brief memory of sorts) and altering behavior as a result of that comparison.
A hypothetical person does not even need to be asked btw … just both put near him, one to one side and one to the other … if he reaches for one and not the other, is he deciding … or not?
I did ask several specific questions yesterday that also may seem stupid but I think are important to developing a clear definition of “decision.”
Let me go through them again.
I proposed that decision implies a the reduction of potential possible pathways made after consideration. Does that seem like a fair starting point?
Memory and maps can certainly be part of “consideration” but need not be all that qualifies as such.
If so then a path taken can only be a decision if other alternatives were possible. Using your precise definition of causal determinism and this definition of “decision” then if no other alternatives were ever actually possible then no decision was actually being made no matter how much memory went into the apparent “consideration.” There is no choice being made and one never fell out of the sky.
So if we accept that definition then, again, what counts as possible and what as consideration?
If I am tied down and being tube fed and I am considering all I want about how I don’t “want” to be tube fed, that I “want” to be allowed to die, that I would like to have my body not digest the food, but my refusing to eat is not possible, am I making a decision ingest and digest the food?
I am sorry that you misunderstand the aplysia example but no being able to predict exactly what changes will occur in response to learning paradigm A in the aplysia is not being the aplysia. Predicting the outcomes in even every detail does not require being the entity. The question I have asked is if knowing all the outcomes informs about what experiences occur without actually becoming the entity/process itself. I believe that the answer is no.
Lastly I group all subjective experience in the broad group of subjective experience. Within that group are a wide variety of experiences of course. In terms of your question, sorry but it is a bit nonsensical to my read. The experience of FW is how a sentient intelligence experiences “consideration.” That sentient intelligence uses its “maps” and other memories and multiple often conflicting current states, and other higher order objectives, as part of that consideration. To the degree that consideration is something that actually exists.
Perhaps what I am trying to say about subjective experience can be clarified (or perhaps further obfuscated by … who knows?!) by returning to the Spinoza allusions.
Let’s substitute the word “universe” for what he called “God”, as in his usage both are pretty much the same.
My understanding of Spinoza includes that the universe (“God”) is, in parallel, both Thought and Extension. Neither one causes the other; they are different levels or attributes of the same thing and exist at different “modes” (such as a mind and a body). One to put that in more modern terms is that the universe is both information and physical stuff. Neither one more primary or more real than the other.
Does matter result in information? Or is matter the result of information (the premise of the information interpretation of quantum mechanics)? Or are those nonsensical questions because at all levels when one exists the other exists as well: neither is primary or first cause. The Spinozan “finite mode” of body (brain inclusive of course) and mind with its experiences is just one level of these attributes of the universe (with the “infinite modes” being labeled Infinite Intellect vs Motion and Rest).
Anyway. It is mostly fun asides.
My take is that it is highly likely that the universe is not at its base causally deterministic and that that tells us little about the experience of FW. The randomness that is fundamental to nature however provides small random variations in every start condition, which in the massive nonlinear dynamic system of the universe, heck of each of our minds, results in chaotic systems. These systems from the point of those random factors on are causally deterministic but for all practical purposes are predictable only in terms of attractor basins of various depths … predispositions to certain outcomes that can be impacted by various factors that alter the fractal landscape. At the level of human minds I doubt nondeterministic factors play much of a role but when a sentience is considering among options that it perceives as “possible” and the ball is rolling down the tracks in the mind that may be a one step will follow the other as a sum result of wiring, past experiences modifying that wiring, current states, current higher order processes, so on … that process, which is part of having a sense of of sentient self with all of its evolutionary fitness pluses for certain social creatures of certain cognitive capacities, must be, is unavoidably, experienced as FW, and will, inexorably, lead to impacts on other outcomes. Within societies those outcomes will include rewards and punishments. Within that level of analysis FW is real and the consequences experience to the very self and to others from decisions made are real.
And none of this, IMHO, helps us as sentient selves make any better decisions, or leads to more or less compassion or empathy, than the mantras of “Grant me the serenity to …” or “Do not do unto others as you would not have them do to you” already do.
I think I get all that. Fundamentally, you are walking through the arguments and examples related to decisions, FW, randomness.
What’s fascinating is that you readily roll with Free Will as being illusory in various scenarios. I can’t comment on the implications of that, but observe it, and readily roll with it myself. That approach fits in a deterministic world, but can be considered separately it we accept a separate reality for Thought.
The reference to Spinoza: you are discussing the two independent realities he accepts as separate dimensions of our reality: Matter and Thought.
Questions:
if we are “breaking out” reality to two separate planes, Matter and Thought, we are considering a new model. People deciding that the world is perfectly Deterministic can be happy - all of their stuff holds in Matter-Reality. AND the questions of FW and consciousness and decisions can be discussed on Thought-Reality terms. I think. ?
—> why only two Realities? Why isn’t the Reality of Forms part of a triumvirate? What is Number - i.e., the ideal of “Twoness” we see in every example of Two; the “brute fact” that 2+2=4 - what are those reducible to? I see trying to define them via Matter and/or Thought as difficult as the discussion we’re having in this thread trying to define FW, a Thought-Unit, in terms of Matter Reality. Heh, that actually made sense.
I have seen these Realities referred to as It (Matter), I (Thought), and We (Forms). I fully accept that Fools live where the map misses the territory, but it works at least as a conceptual model. Why doesn’t the model default to 3 levels of Reality?
Many Worlds: oy. I have yet to encounter any reading on this that leaves me thinking it is anything but sophistry. Talk about not helping in the everyday, it feels like 100% noodling. I will go check out that thread you link to in your last post.
Back to the OP: one reason I like the Spinoza Model is that a Thought Reality on its own plane allows for FW outside a Deterministic world - And “how those Realities overlap/integrate vs not” is a Big Question more than capable of holding a metric crap-ton of Paradox
So in the everyday, I can pause and contemplate a decision on the inputs I am getting on the Matter level, the Thoughts (and, to me, the Ideal Forms input, too), and take a moment to reflect on the Paradox / “randomness” about how these Realities come together in my Consciousness. By myself some time to think it through.
I’m good with that.
Man, these posts have gotten flippin’ ginormous and a bit opaque. I am sure we are chasing our tails alone!
Yeah sorry. Pretty busy right now and to steal from an old Lincoln witticism, if I’d had more time I’d have written a shorter post.
Not so much separate dimensions as different levels of.
The impetus for that digression (the cause of that effect? :)) was my reading Hellestal as stating that the physics, the how electrons work, is how this world of ours actually functions. And I think I could argue just as well that the dynamics of information is how this world of ours actually functions.
I think Hellestal does not actually disagree: if the information processing dynamics of the human brain was running on the Laplace supercomputer on some substrate of otherness it would not so be predicting what would occur to the matter of a human brain … it would be a human brain contained within it. Experience is in that way of thinking not “an illusion” … it is as real as electrons are.
Bottom line yes … to actually have this discussion without talk past each other you need to precisely define each term along the way.
Do you think Spinoza’s model is better served with the Forms level added?
It seems as valid an element in our experience as subjective thought.
Yes, the requirement that other levels of reality must be defined and exist wholly within the Matter/Deterministic level is at the heart of the debate. Again, in a very pragmatic way, I must simply acknowledge that I experience both my Thoughts and the “realness” of Forms like 2+2=4 as part of engaging my world.
ETA: an SDMB nit - your quote attributed to Lincoln has been attributed to many over the centuries. I hear it attributed to Oscar Wilde regularly.
You aren’t alone! I’ve been lurking for a while, trying to see if Hellestal’s arguments are more effective than mine at convincing DSeid that determinism isn’t all that nuts. Or at least, it’s no more nuts than FW–a concept which stopped making sense to me the moment I started learning about the ways our brains play tricks on us.
I suppose if I thought about determinism only in terms of the universe rather than the individual, I would understand why someone would find determinism to be fatalistic. Perhaps limiting it to the scale of the individual (while remaining agnostic about the universe’s inevitability) is my fragile psyche’s way of avoiding that fatalism.
I find discussions like this useful if only because I think it is important for people to critically evaluate their own feelings. Your feelings are real, but the thoughts that generate them are often inaccurate. David Eagleman’s “Incognito” exposed me to the lies we are constantly fed by our brains. What’s interesting is that these lies are almost always useful in some way. For instance, Eagleman argues that the feeling of consciousness being the locus of control is illusory, but it is an essential one for human cognition, particularly for processing novel complex information. I am open to the possibility that our species may evolve a consciousness that actually is the locus of control. I don’t know how this would manifest itself, but if we can get to that point, then I’d be much more comfortable differentiating our decision-making from, say, a cat’s and concluding that our will is “freer” than it is now.
I think as long as people recognize that choice is a function of a lot of stuff, not just what an individual purports they want, then they are adequately determinist. They can continue to believe they have control (because maybe they do…who knows?), but I think our brains make it so that we don’t have to remind ourselves of this. I think that’s perhaps why the question you’ve posed doesn’t seem that hard to answer. I’m not really into philosophy, however. I probably would have flunked out of a formal philosophy course. Too many definitions. Too many words.
