Except that the system is manifestly deterministic: there either is a spectral gap, or not, since the Wang tiles either tile the plane, or not. There’s no possibility that the measurement of the spectral gap might come up either way.
The t parameter doesn’t distinguish between past and future, however. It’s the people within the universe that experience the indeterminism.
No. What I’m asserting is that there’s a U[sub]t[/sub] for any t, but generally, U[sub]t[/sub] is not sufficient to derive U[sub]t+1[/sub], and is, instead, logically consistent with various possibilities U[sub]t+1[/sub][sup]1[/sup], U[sub]t+1[/sub][sup]2[/sup], …, U[sub]t+1[/sub][sup]n[/sup].
Well, I have shown an example where a deterministic universe doesn’t imply the existence of a lookup table. But of course, since you must be right, that means that such a universe can’t exist!
While I would no doubt enjoy the trip to Stockholm, I really doubt the Nobel committee is going to accept ‘because otherwise, begbert2 would be wrong and he’s really stomping his foot and insisting he’s not’ as a justification.
I wonder what’s the more disconcerting option here—that you believe your posturing, or that you believe anybody else could believe your posturing. Anyway, excuse me if I don’t take the word of someone who’s once read a pop-sci book on the topic as gospel on the matter.
I’m not intent on proving the universe is deterministic; I’m assuming this for simplicity, but my argumentation works just as well in an indeterministic world. And of course, showing an example of a possible universe in which there’s no lookup table pretty handily disproves your assertion that there must be a lookup table for each deterministic universe.
Coming from somebody who until a few posts ago didn’t even know what Frankfurt cases were, even though they claimed familiarity with the discourse on free will, that bothers me even less than your allegations of my incompetence regarding Gödel’s theorem and the like.
The universe can be both deterministic and unpredictable. If certain quantum events are truly random, and there are no hidden variables involved, then you have a strange, hybrid universe, where all events are exactly predictable (except for the random events, which are completely unpredictable). The sequence of events that make up any history would be fixed, and leave no room for ‘choice’; but they would also be unpredictable. Run the history again, and the random events will occur differently (radioactive atoms will decay at different times, for example) and a different history will result.
You can’t change anything, but you can’t predict anything, either.
This doesn’t help us with free will, since there is no way of choosing between outcomes- but it does mean that you can’t predict the present state of the universe by looking at the Big Bang.
As I understand it, what you’re describing would generally not be called a deterministic universe. Determinism, like “lacking peanuts” requires the entire universe in question to adhere to it, or the label doesn’t qualify. A single random event, anywhere, is enough to cause a universe to be described as nondeterministic.
I think if you broke it down to the most finite reasons for human behavior it might suggest that freewill does not exist. I believe it is not the same for everyone. The more criteria we have to base decisions the more free will we have. When the criteria and knowledge of actions vs reactions becomes so finite and intermingled that it can no longer be deciphered free will would probably be the best way to describe it.
In which case you haven’t demonstrated that there is undecideability here.
It might be instructive to point out that in the article you referenced the issue in question is related to the halting problem. As everyone who understands it knows, the halting problem doesn’t inject metaphysical randomity into the universe by its very existence. It’s simply a recognition that while we’d like to be able to generically analyze a Turing machine and determine in finite time whether the Turing machine in question will terminate in finite time, there sadly is no way to write an algorithm that will do this. I mean, there’s also a nifty proof proving this depressing fact, but when the dust settles, that’s all it is; it’s just a proof of something that can’t be done.
Presuming that that article was right (and I certainly can’t be arsed to bother independently research this stuff just for your benefit), then if this thing is like the halting problem then that’s all it is - somebody’s nifty proof that there is no generic way to analyze the available data in reasonable time to determine the solution they want. Now, I don’t know why this would be - because I don’t care. But if this is actually the case, then this ‘spectral gap’ stuff, like every other named thing you bring up, cannot possibly punch holes in determinism or causality like you wish it would.
Not in any version of nondeterminism that I’ve ever heard of.
Let me ask this - in your version of nondeterminism, can your grandfather suddenly decide to not marry your grandmother, causing you to poof out of existence? Or could a random event in the past suddenly cause him to be crushed by a passing airplane, causing you to poof out of existence? Because if not, then the past is fixed - what has happened has already been determined. Which is to say, in a nondeterministic universe, the past is determined, but the future isn’t. Which means that every nondeterministic universe must, as part of its inherent makeup, distinguish between moments in the past and moments in the future.
(I suppose I should concede that you could have a universe where moments throughout time change randomly - and the changes either propagate forward in time or simply don’t, resulting in momentary ‘hiccups’ in history where things went weird for moment and then went back to normal, including the memories of everyone who remain unchanged from back before the discontinuity appeared. But if this sort of thing is happening it starts blowing holes in causality, which makes free will -the subject under discussion- rather moot.)
Which can’t possibly happen in a deterministic universe.
No you haven’t. And don’t throw a hissy fit.
Don’t throw a hissy fit.
Don’t throw a hissy fit.
It would if you’d done so, but you clearly haven’t. What you’ve demonstrated is that there can be no deterministic universe -or nondeterministic one, for that matter- that has continuous time. That’s not the same thing.
And I’d be happy to discuss free will in a nondeterministic world. It does add a layer though - a discussion of how nondeterminism/undecideability/randomity does not and cannot increase free will, by definition. Meaning that we need to rely on the deterministic bits of the universe, the ones with causality, to provide it for us.
The thing is, though, you’ve talked about things I do know about, and know quite well. And you’re completely wrong about them. You come off like a person who thinks that strange noises in a house mean there are real ghosts - the things you mention are real, but the extrapolations you make based off of them are absurd. You’ve been demonstrating real and pervasive misunderstanding of literally everything you’ve brought to bear to support your argument - which is unsurprising, because your argument is pretty clearly wrong and unsupportable by correct analyses.
So when a quick google told me that you were blatantly taking Frankfurt’s argument out of context, well, it’s clearly more of the same.
But it doesn’t help for us to make snide comments at one another. So, in the unlikely event you’re willing to play along, I’d like to ask one simple question:
Suppose for a second that the universe really did include truly random events that eventually reconciled into non-random results - like pouring marbles into a sink, you don’t know how they’ll roll but you know they’ll end up stuck in the sink trap eventually. How does that increase free will? The random parts are random. And the nonrandom parts give you nothing that determinism doesn’t give you already.
I love that this thread hasn’t completely devolved into me and HMHW talking past one another.
It comes down to what your definition of free will is.
A lot of the arguments for humans not having free will involve examining the thought processes in one way or another, and declaring something like “my thought processes are making the choices, which means I’m not.” If you think of the mechanics of the brain and the physics and causality that operates it as being something external to you, then clearly an external force is controlling you. But if you think of your brain and the mechanics of it as being you, then it’s still you making the decisions, and the option for you to be making them freely of your own will opens up again.
And if the problem is that you’re worried that the brain mechanisms are too simple, making you predictable, and that that’s somehow an abrogation of your free will, well, it comes back to your definition of free will again. I’m suuuper predictable in a lot of ways - I hate spicy food, for example, and react very predictably to it. I don’t feel that this means I don’t have free will though.
So, you’re really intent on claiming that something that as far as we know is actually the case in the real world must be metaphysically impossible, just because it doesn’t fit your definition of determinism? That’s some seriously misplaced faith in the sway your definitions hold about the world…
The model universe I’ve shown is very simple; there are no reasons at all to believe it shouldn’t be possible. In that model, which is completely deterministic, there is no lookup table for universal states. So, quite simply, determinism doesn’t imply the existence of such a lookup table.
You just don’t want to show off, I guess.
It doesn’t. At several points in this thread, I’ve quite clearly stated that indeterminism doesn’t help with free will.
I’ve been thinking about this for a bit, and am willing to back up a step.
The thing determinism tells us is that when speaking of the universe, there is a DET(x) function representing the fact that for every time t, there exists a mapping from that time t to a specific unique universal state. This is inherent to the definition of determinism - if you can’t map each and every t to a specific unique universal state, then the state of the universe isn’t determined at that point - and determinism likes the state of the universe to be determined. That’s its thing.
So there is, must be, such a mapping; a function from t to specific universal states. However, there doesn’t need to be causality. The states don’t necessarily need to be predicated from a prior state in a deterministic universe; they just are. Because determinism.
I called this mapping a lookup table because absent causality, that’s the only clear way to visualize it - if the state of the universe at each instant is completely arbitrary and not predicated on anything that came before or comes after it, then the only determining factor of its value is was DET says it is. So it functions as a lookup table.
But technically it doesn’t necessarily have to be an actual lookup table - despite necessarily acting like one. It’s really just a mapping. It could be a mapping from a continuous input set to a possibly-discontinuous output set if you like. Whatever. The mapping necessarily exists.
If you find things about lookup tables, specifically, that stick in your craw, that’s fine. Forget the lookup table; that was just an explanatory instrument. Consider it a mapping instead, if that helps you get past this.
I just fucking explained what the halting problem is in the very post you quoted. I know you’re desperate to pretend that you know things and I don’t, but you don’t have to be so pathetically transparent about it.
(You’re right that I don’t want to show off, though. Nobody in this thread wants to hear me tediously explaining what boring abstract mathematical and compsci proofs and theorems actually are, and then re-explaining them over and over again when you try to claim they poop unicorns. Heck, I feel bad enough about lapsing into formal logic a few posts up.)
Okay. Do you realize that there is nothing whatsoever that distinguishes your model from the balls-in-sink example? Presume for a moment that we can’t perform any reduction on the process of the balls rolling into the drain - their path is random, so all we know is where the balls start, and all we can do is watch them roll. That’s your irreducibility. And because there are multiple random paths it could take, there’s your logical undecidability. And that’s your model.
If irreducibility + undecidability = free will, how does that happen? Because even if we grant that undecideability exists in a deterministic universe for the sake of argument, it’s random. It’s not determined by the previous states; it’s not determined by knowledge and preferences; it’s just happening, for no discernible reason. And it comes to naught, boiling out to the same determined result, so there’s even less impact. So what does it give us? Momentary unpredicatability? Randomity and fifty cents will give you that and a cup of coffee besides.
You know, I’m done with this. I think I have been exceedingly patient with your ignorance, but that’s over now. I’ve produced academic research on the role undecidability plays in physics; they gave me a PhD (in part) for that. So I’m really not going to continue justifying myself to some random guy on the internet who’s so far been wrong every time he’s tried to say what Gödel’s theorem is.
If you want to continue to believe you know it all, well, more power to you.
Indeterminism doesn’t work for responsibility. If something happens merely randomly, there is no sense to saying that it happens because of something—if it did, it wouldn’t be random. In order to have genuine freedom, genuine responsibility for one’s actions, therefore, a model based on randomness won’t do.
So responsibility is an important part of free will. I presume we’re talking about responsibilities held by the agent, yes? The chunk of physical matter that includes a brain. That’s the thing that’s supposed to be responsible, I presume?
If not sheer boring deterministic causality, as the brain shoves electrons and chemicals around and triggers things like bodily action, what links the agent with the actions they’re responsible for?
To his credit, he promptly came back and engaged in calm discussion, cutting out (for at least a moment) his continual spate of snide ad-hominems about the fact that I don’t believe you can do magic with the halting problem. And I consider THAT a victory. I like calm discussion and would like it to continue.
By the way, what’s your opinion on free will? Do we have it? Do we want it? What is it? Can it be used to make julienne fries?
Outside observer here that has read about 10% of each post (due to length) but think I might be following the basic issue.
Does this sum it up? begbert2:
Either universe is 100% deterministic, or it includes some randomness which essentially means it’s 0% deterministic
HMHW:
Additional possibility (if we ignore random momentarily) is:
100% deterministic but at the same time transition from state N-1 to N is incalculable unless the entire set of states from 0 to N-1 is included in the calc.
begbert2:
Regardless of whether one agrees with the incalculable transitions from state to state, that does not help the issue of free will.
HMHW:
True in that it’s still deterministic when taken as a whole, but the incalculable from state to state seems to be one of few (or only) openings we have for any kind of chance at having something that might remotely get us to a kind of free will.
Is that close?
I’ve answered these questions so many times in the course of this thread. The least you could do is actually read my posts; I’m getting really tired of constantly repeating myself, and I think the discussion has just about run its course when I’m basically just explaining the same old thing over and over again to you.
It’s close, yes. The only thing I’d want to add is that, since every explanation you could come up with for a given choice being made includes the process by which that choice was made, if one takes into account computational irreducibility, and the outcome of that choice wasn’t logically fixed beforehand thanks to undecidability, the reasonable conclusion is that it’s the process of choice that is responsible for producing a certain outcome. Anything indispensable to an explanation must be a necessary element of it; and here, it’s the process of choosing that’s indispensable. Consequently, it’s the reason why a given outcome occurs. In asking ‘why did you have cereal this morning instead of ham and eggs?’, it just won’t suffice to point to the boundary conditions of the universe and the laws of physics, as it does in naive deterministic/compatibilist models; I can’t get rid of the agent choosing, and thus, owning their actions in what seems to me to be a pretty simple and solid sense.
What we call a “choice” is when we’re presented with options, and based on past experience and just the kind of guy i am, i make an informed decision. It’s completely a red herring talking about whether the universe is deterministic or not, since no one can even propose a kind of indeterminism where my actions are uncoupled from the past yet informed by the past.
Simply the concept of free will is at best ill defined, and tells us nothing useful about the nature of our mind or the universe. But we’ve been talking about it so long as a species it’s too late to reframe the discussion.
To answer OP’s subject question, it sure feels like I have free will. I think that’s the important thing. If we are on some pre-determined course I suppose there is nothing we can do about it.
What if instead of deciding what to do on a major decision, we roll a die instead and abide by the result? But if the whole world is pre-determined then the die is too.
To answer OP’s more elaborate question, it sounds like they are trying to say men with more testosterone are more likely to be a criminal and aren’t responsible for what they do. To answer that I’d say we are have negative impulses sometimes. But we are all responsible for our actions and I just hope that our brains beat hormones.
If the incalculable transitions in question merely needed you to carry out the steps from 0 to N-1 first, then there would be no difference between my position and HMHW’s - despite repeated baseless assertions to the contrary, there’s nothing about determinism that states you can hop from 0 to N-1 without considering the steps in the middle. And suffice to say, the compatiblist model of free will very explicitly includes the idea that agents and their minds are active participants in the decision-making process. On that he and I agree - the only disagreement is that he insists that compatiblism does not include the agent and their minds, in an admirably consistent campaign to tell me what I’m thinking.
No, the place we truly diverge is that HMHW insists that there exists logical undecidability - which means that even if you do include the entire set of states from 0 to N-1 in the calc, you still can’t calculate N. The idea here is that in his model there’s libertarian free will - your past doesn’t decide your future, and right up until the very last moment you have multiple possible outcomes that you can choose that are all equally consistent with the prior universal state - no given outcome is predetermined.
And he says that this is somehow compatible with determinism. I take issue with that, because I think the word means something: in a deterministic model all states are determined for all times.
So, again: the compatiblist position agrees with HMHW that causality exists and the brain and its knowledge, preference, mood and so forth are all integral to decision making. The point of divergence is that he wants there to be some possibility of variance that can effect the outcome - without it being the result of randomity.
Well, you could have mild randomity - something akin to a coin being flipped if there’s a tie, and only on a tie. In that case your decisions are mostly informed by the past, but if you really don’t care, as in literal complete lack of preference, then you could go either way.
Of course this situation wouldn’t come up all that often, and it would be a stretch to say it adds any significant amount of free will.
The debate worked a lot better when it was the gods determining things, rather than causality. When the question was whether the gods’ foresight and/or their willingness to actively manipulate us robbed us of agency it gave us two separate parties vying for control of our lives: us and them.
When the gods were replaced by causality as the thing potentially determining our futures, the argument actually switched - the sides became us and nothing, with the “determinism” side actually being the one where we get to make our own decisions this time. The fact the sides swapped has never really been clear to all parties in these discussions, causing confusion ever since.