All we’d need to have were very good proxy variables. If we follow a person closely enough and determine that four variables–current body core temperature, the eye blinking rate, their Monstro Cognitive Association Index score, and whether that person has urinated in the last two hours–allows one to predict with <1% error rate whether this individual will think about urination when subjected to a flash of yellow, then we’ve just created an excellent model explaining one aspect of that person’s thoughts and behavior.
Maybe it takes a thousand variables to predict whether a particular person will think of “salami” when presented with the same stimulus, with the same error rate. It’s very difficult for us to consider a model with so many variables. But is it impossible for someone with superhuman intelligence?
This knowledge is something that can be acquired, though. If I take enough physicochemical and neurologial measurements of an individual and determine, down to the minute, when they will first sense the fulness of their bladder, have I just robbed this person of free will? And if I add in a few psychometric variables and predict what their thoughts will be once they feel the urge to pee, just how willful can we say this organism is?
Whether an omniscient being (without the ability to see the future) can perfectly predict someone’s actions is something we can’t determine. Any real being - no.
I’m moving towards my wife in order to kiss her. Easy prediction, right? But if I hear a fly I might get distracted. If the dog barks in another room I might get distracted. If two cars crash down the street I may get distracted. If there is an earthquake I may get distracted. That is a lot of stuff to monitor.
I can’t even predict what my dog will do. She had been wanting to get into a closet in our living room. We thought it was to get some toys there. But after we gave them to her she still persisted. Then I noticed a gingerbread house kit we had given our kids - but never opened - like ten years ago. She smelled the gingerbread through sealed plastic. Now I suppose the right detecting equipment could have picked up the scent, but how much detecting equipment should we surround ourselves with 24/7? So, even if we can theoretically predict what she was going to do, we can’t do it practically.
Information theory determines how much energy is required to do computations. The faster the computation, the more energy is required. I shudder to think how much energy would be required to predict someone’s actions in time. We’d have to throw in a few nuclear power plants with the detecting hardware. Which might make predicting easy, since with all this stuff our subject won’t be able to move.
The energy to compute and ensure the behaviour of an atom would be greater than the amount the atom contains. Non free will is limited by this. So I say Free will.
If upfront I know that you are very distractable by fly buzzing, dog barking, cars crashing, and earthquakes, then it will be quite easy for me to predict that you will be interrupted while carrying out a particular action (kissing your wife) when any of these stimuli occur. Even if I don’t know this about you, I can still make a very good WAG that these noises will bother you, because you are a human being. Most human beings would find these things bothersome.
You cannot because you have the senses and knowledge of a contemporary human being. But an individual who possesses keener senses or technology may very well be able to predict what your dog will do. Just like a college student today can predict quite confidently how a bacterium will behave, while a college student from the 1850s would struggle greatly. The latter wouldn’t know what things to look for, nor possess the ability to make the right measurements.
As for my own furry friend, I am pretty good at predicting her behavior. I can predict whether my cat will lick the food off of my plate based on when her last feeding was and how alert she is. Am I always going to guess correctly? No. But my error rate is not evidence of her free will. It just means I need more than two variables to predict her feeding behavior with absolute certainty.
I’m guessing you’re not a programmer.
There are two questions here. One, which you seem to be addressing, is whether it is possible to write a program that will predict what a person does. The second is whether it is really possible to do this prediction in something like real time, so that the person with this ability can predict my next action.
I doubt the first is possible. I know the second isn’t.
To illustrate the importance of states, let’s refine the kissing example. A fly buzzes in my ear. Do I get interrupted? Well, it depends if the kiss is going to be a peck on the cheek type or a lustful type. And that depends on my history and hormone levels. Even if you make an exact copy of my brain, which solves the programming problem, you are not going to be able to wire it up to the rest of me, so the copy will not even be able to predict what I do.
While most random numbers generated by computers are only pseudo-random, it is possible to generate really random numbers by taking the fourth decimal place of an internal temperature reading or voltage. I bet our brains do something like this also.
So, like I said, even if it were possible to predict an action with a big enough program and enough inputs, we could never do it in real time so for practical purposes the result will be equivalent to us having free will. And I suspect we’d be iterating this program forever. Oops, forgot to get instruments to record the smells. Oops, can’t monitor hunger levels. Oops, didn’t record the exact location of the toys.
Anyhow, cats are simpler creatures than dogs.
I am a programmer, though this is not my job title. I use programming language to build empirical models of water chemistry. Model-building is something I’m quite familiar with.
These are opinions based on your own subjective experience and limited vantage point. Sorry, but “I can’t imagine it, thus it is not possible!” is not a compelling argument.
You’re making my point for me. None of the things you listed that determine your distractability–the nature of the kiss, your history, your hormones–counts as “free will”. They are external variables which can be quantified, measured.
If I know what makes you tick and what influences your decision-making, then yes, I can predict what you’re going to do. The fact that I, monstro, cannot do this for you, Voyager, does not mean that you have free will. Not any more than the inability of pre-historic men to predict the weather was evidence of the Earth’s free will.
Let’s say I kidnap you one day. Lock you up in my mad scientist basement and strap you into an instrument that detects and visually represents ultra-sensitive neural activity. Over a few months, I’m able to pinpoint where every concept is stored in your brain. I can look at a real-time scan of your brain and literally read your thoughts, based on what neurons are stimulated.
Let’s say that my “thought detector” works faster than your consciousness. I’m able to read your mind before you’re even aware of what you’re thinking. Moreover, I’m even able to read thoughts that never make it into your consciousness.
For every decision I put in front of you, I can make a very accurate prediction about what you’re going to do before you do.
I will concede that such technology sounds very “sci-fi”. But is it impossible? What laws of physics would be violated?
Why do you believe this?
This is where you lose me.
I know that there are natural systems that I will never be able to model very well, just because they are enormously complex. And state government doesn’t afford me with the start-of-the-art technology needed to handle these complexities. But that doesn’t mean there’s some supernatural consciousness controlling these systems.
It seems you’re equating free will to the ability to behave randomly. But I’m arguing that you never act randomly. You may respond to pseudo-randomly occuring stimuli (flies buzzing). But that does not mean that your reactions to those random events can’t be predicted.
The idea that we aren’t agents of free will is at the foundation of the social sciences. The fields of genetics and neuroscience constantly provide evidence that our behavior results from genes interacting with the environment and that consciousness is not the control center we tend to think it is.
What field of science supports the notion of free will?
Whenever this topic comes up, I always recommend two books. Sam Harris’s Free Will and David Eagleman’s Incognito. These gentlemen argue against free will (the former more explicitly than the latter) from the perspective of neuroscience, not physics or philosophy.
I think people use the term “free will” when they actually mean something else. So before we get into the weeds too much, what do you mean by free will? I define it as the ability to not only act under one’s volition, but also the ability to act in a manner independent of factors external to one’s conscious awareness. As long as one’s behavior hinges on factors that are not under their conscious control, they really can’t say they are free in any meaningful way. They may be a puppet dancing on a really long string–a string that can sway in the pseudo-randomly blowing wind. They may feel free, but they are always limited by a string they aren’t sophisticated enough to detect.
Someone arguing from a philosophical or metaphysical standpoint may define free will in some other way. Personally, I don’t care so much about how deterministic the universe is. I’m perfectly fine conceding that there may be something about entrophy that makes it very difficult to understand, thereby making a perfect model of the universe an impossibility. But the notion of free will in human beings does not follow even assuming the universe is unpredictable. We could live in the craziest, most rando universe imaginable, while also being automatons that are quite predictable.
Doesn’t non-free will argue that all outcomes are predictable? It can’t be half way, or just a probability. You aren’t arguing that all atoms will behave according to plan?
If there is any unconscious component to behaviour then you are arguing no free will is involved?
I don’t see why that would be so. If something happens randomly in the universe (ore even in my brain) that affects whether or not I will choose pizza or hamburgers for dinner, how does that mean my choice for one over the other was chosen freely?
Because, as a conscious being, that’s how you experience it. Same with the converse. If I was able to prove to you that everything you did was completely deterministic and predetermined, how would that knowledge change how you experience and enjoy the world? You would still have the pleasure of going through your dinner options and picking the item that would please you most. If I’ve got a computer crunching away somewhere that knew in advance what you would pick, it doesn’t change your experience one iota.
