Self-explaining Game of Life?

[Evgenii Rudnyi]

I have listened to Sean Carroll's Big Picture. His world view is
actually similar to the Game of Life, well, the rules are a bit more
complicated. Below is the link to the equation that he proposes.

Carroll claims that his equation describes human beings as well. He
takes a compatibilist position in respect to free will: free will is
compatible with the determinism. At the same time, he says that his
equation is the very strong intellectual achievement of the mankind.

I thought that it could be possible to invent some sort of the Game of
Life where during the system evolution one gets the rule of the game
printed on the screen. In my view, this should be somewhat analogous to
what Carroll says. Well, it is hard to say in what form the rules of the
game should appear, but this after all gives some freedom to invent such
a game.

I should mention that I mean nothing fancy. "Explaining" is meant in
pure epiphenomenal fashion: an equation spontaneously appeared on a
sheet of paper, nothing else.

What do you think? Could it be possible to invent a self-explaining Game
of Life in that sense?

Evgenii

P.S. Carroll's Game of Life:

http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2013/01/04/the-world-of-everyday-experience-in-one-equation/

[John Mikes]

Evgenii,

do you have some idea about  "LIFE", not the 'Game of it'? 

Are there disclaimers that may lead to a STATE - callable 'life'? 

I would not rely entirely on the biology, life may be much more and not quite(?) moelcularly bound. How is 'mentality' involved? Changes??? (and I mean: self induced ones!) 

We have a very limited image of Mother Nature. Is 'life' more, or less than our limited knowledge of 'nature'? 

Please do not forget: I am an agnostic and believe in many many facets of the Entirety we know nothing about, yet supposedly exist beyond our world. 

Is a 'self-induced change'  L I F E ? How induced? 

The question is exciting, I would learn more about it.

John Mikes

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[Evgenii Rudnyi]

John,

No, I do not know what life is. I guess, nobody does.

From what I have seen recently, I like:

"Life is a pure religious concept, based on delusion that there is
something in an organism that makes it alive."

Evgenii

Am 14.10.2016 um 21:08 schrieb John Mikes:
> Evgenii,
>

> do you have some idea about "LIFE", not the '*Game *of it'? Are

>> everything-li...@googlegroups.com. To post to this
>> group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com. Visit this

[John Mikes]

OK, Evgenii, I am game.

Do you have any closer(?) idea what ALIVE may mean? (and watch out,

the next question maybe about "ORGANISM") .

I would not go that deeply as to question a (pure???) religious concept.

Mit vorzüglicher Anerkennung   - (for 'best regards')

John Mikes

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[Bruno Marchal]

On 11 Oct 2016, at 19:43, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

> I have listened to Sean Carroll's Big Picture. His world view is
> actually similar to the Game of Life, well, the rules are a bit more
> complicated. Below is the link to the equation that he proposes.

Either it solves the measure problem, without using the quantum
solution (easy!), but in that case it is Turing equivalent with
"Universal Dovetailer", true (or provable) sigma_1 sentences, etc. And
then the task remains to deduce it from qG and qG*, to get the genuine
qualia relevant with the possible available quanta.

Not yet got the time to look at this. Busy times.

>
> Carroll claims that his equation describes human beings as well. He
> takes a compatibilist position in respect to free will: free will is
> compatible with the determinism.

Thanks God!

> At the same time, he says that his equation is the very strong
> intellectual achievement of the mankind.

Now I have a doubt.

>
> I thought that it could be possible to invent some sort of the Game
> of Life where during the system evolution one gets the rule of the
> game printed on the screen. In my view, this should be somewhat
> analogous to what Carroll says. Well, it is hard to say in what form
> the rules of the game should appear, but this after all gives some
> freedom to invent such a game.
>
> I should mention that I mean nothing fancy. "Explaining" is meant in
> pure epiphenomenal fashion: an equation spontaneously appeared on a
> sheet of paper, nothing else.
>
> What do you think? Could it be possible to invent a self-explaining
> Game of Life in that sense?

It is a standard result in mathematical logic that this is what
happens already in elementary arithmetic. Even just he polynomial
diophantine equation are like that.

And we are always confronted to our first person self localization
relatively to an infinity of "competing on your continuation"
universal machines "execution".

What is Sean Carroll theology? If it is an Aristotelian, it has to
provide the relevant non computationalist theory of mind to make it
internally consistent.

I can't insist more to study the mathematical theory of self-reference
(Gödel, Löb, ...) and its relation with the theory of computability
(Turing, Church, Post, Kleene, ...). Incompleteness makes basically
the rationalist and mystic theory of Moderatus of Gades (and quite
many variants) coherent, and somehow necessary.

You have to extract physics from self-reference if you want benefits
from the G - G* difference and manage the quanta and the qualia, the
sounds and the senses, the justifiable sense and the probable theology
which includes the natural science as a sort of limiting bord of the
universal mind (the mind of the universal machine).

Correct me if I am wrong, but from what I read before Sean Carroll
still assumes the theology of Aristotle (the belief in "Primary
Matter", or in its more modern epsitemological version "physicalism"),
doesn't he?

Bruno

>
> Evgenii
>
> P.S. Carroll's Game of Life:
>
> http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2013/01/04/the-world-of-everyday-experience-in-one-equation/
>

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[Bruno Marchal]

On 15 Oct 2016, at 14:32, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

> John,
>
> No, I do not know what life is. I guess, nobody does.
>
> From what I have seen recently, I like:
>
> "Life is a pure religious concept, based on delusion that there is
> something in an organism that makes it alive."

That's consciousness, and if that is an illusion then everything is.
Such a "definition" of life is eliminative materialism.

With computationamism the material composing the organism can itself
be described by a delusion of a universal person brought by an
infinity of universal machine. We can say then that Matter is a pure
religious concept based on the universal number delusion that there is
something made up of something when there might plausibly be only a
statistics on number's (sharable) dreams.

Bruno

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[Evgenii Rudnyi]

John,

At the level of common sense everything looks clear. Yet, when we start
to consider the question scientifically, something strange happens: the
common sense answer disappears, yet there is no other answer.

Evgenii

Am 15.10.2016 um 17:51 schrieb John Mikes:
> OK, Evgenii, I am game. Do you have any closer(?) idea what *ALIVE*
> may mean? (and watch out, the next question maybe about *"ORGANISM")
> .*

[Evgenii Rudnyi]

Bruno,

I would say that Carroll believes that matter exists. He looks
suspicious of ideal mathematical objects existing in Platonia, even
though there is no explicit discussion about this in his book.

Hence, it looks like normal physicalism. Well, Carroll refers to his
theology as poetic naturalism.

https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/poetic-naturalism/

The difference, in my view, is not that big though.

Evgeny

[Bruno Marchal]

Hi Evgenii,

On 15 Oct 2016, at 21:07, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

I would say that Carroll believes that matter exists.

I guess you mean Matter. That is the belief in matter existence *and* in the idea that all things accepted as existing, like life, consciousness, taxes and death ... arise from that matter 3p activity.

He looks suspicious of ideal mathematical objects existing in Platonia,

Me too, to be precise, except as a poetical description of arithmetical realism. 

Arithmetical realism does not need to commit onesefl in Platonia, it is the belief (shared by all scientists) that after death 2+2 is still equal to 4, or that "2+2=4" does not refer to the human mind.

Without accepting arithmetical realism, a life-insurance makes no sense, even for a solipsist.

His "one equation" use arithmetical realism, and much more.

Only strong version of ultrafinitism contradicts arithmetical realism. Even the belief in a biggest natural number does not, as I have explained once (due to the consistency of RA + there is a biggest natural numbers). In fact, RA + there is only one natural number, still works (by just never using that axioms, though).

even though there is no explicit discussion about this in his book.

Hence, it looks like normal physicalism.

It is my feeling too, from its preceding talks.

Well, Carroll refers to his theology as poetic naturalism.

I guess he is not aware that mechanism is incompatible with materialism, because its reduction of life to matter activity is based implicitly on Mechanism. So he is inconsistent. 

I got more and more evidence that the "God/Not-God?" debate is a fake internal Aristotelian debate hiding the original greco-indian question "Universe/Not-Universe". (Universe = primary universe, it is Aristotle's notion of universe, used implcitly by everybody since the closure of Plato Academy).

Given that the empirical observations confirm Mechanism (thanks to QM-without collapse and/or quantum logic), I would say that the empirical evidences are on the side of Mechanism: there are no Matter or Primary Universe. 

I looked at his "one equation", which indeed is a "copy of nature", which is forbidden with computationalism, as it makes impossible to get the qualia from any third person description of the observable reality.

No problem for physics per se, but it is nonsensical in mechanist metaphysics. Adding "poetical" will not help, imo.

When he says that no experiment ever done here on Earth has contradicted his model, he just put all first person experiences under the rug. Being conscious, assuming mechanism, does contradict his model. And without mechanism, he can no more make his materialist reduction in his implicit way, and in the best case, his model is incomplete.

Maybe Xeuxippes was right after all. Plato should have fired Aristotle ... :)

I'm afraid Sean Carroll slips dangerously toward materialist eliminativism, and Dennet's idea that consciousness is an illusion (which makes no sense, as we have already argued here).

https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/poetic-naturalism/

The difference, in my view, is not that big though.

I agree.

Bruno

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[John Clark]

 Evgenii Rudnyi <use...@rudnyi.ru> wrote:

​> ​

I have listened to Sean Carroll's Big Picture.

​I read his book too.​

 

​> ​

His world view is actually similar to the Game of Life, well, the rules are a bit more complicated. Below is the link to the equation that he proposes.

​

Carroll's equation

​is​

 ASTRONOMICALLY more complicated than Conway's

​ ​

rules for the Game of Life;

​the beauty of Conway's rules is that although very simple they are ​

Turing complete

​ and thus can lead to arbitrary magnitudes of complexity. And Carroll's equation doesn't explain Dark Matter or initial conditions, such as why Dark Energy has the value it has and isn't 10^120 times stronger, nor does it explain the behavior of neutrinos or tell us what the conditions are at the center of a Black Hole. Having said that I do admit that Carroll's equation can predict most of the things that happen in everyday life, although it would take one hell of a lot of calculations to do so.    ​

​> ​

Carroll claims that his equation describes human beings as well. He takes a compatibilist position in respect to free will

​

The one problem I have with Carroll's book is that he talks a lot about "free will" without giving us even a hint at what that term is supposed to mean; tell me what it means and I'll tell you if human beings have that property or not, and I'll tell you i

​f​

a roulette wheel or a Cuckoo clock

​ has that property too.​

​> ​

No, I do not know what life is. I guess, nobody does.

​You know what life is you just don't have a definition, but you have something much better, examples. After being given a few examples of things that are alive and things that are not it's easy to put most new objects in the correct category, although a few times, such as with viruses, it's a judgement call. Carroll gave us neither a definition of "free will" nor a set of examples of things that have it and things that don't, so I have no idea what the term means.   

John K Clark   ​

 

[Bruno Marchal]

On 16 Oct 2016, at 19:32, John Clark wrote:

 Evgenii Rudnyi <use...@rudnyi.ru> wrote:

​> ​

I have listened to Sean Carroll's Big Picture.

​I read his book too.​

 

​> ​

His world view is actually similar to the Game of Life, well, the rules are a bit more complicated. Below is the link to the equation that he proposes.

​

Carroll's equation

​is​

 ASTRONOMICALLY more complicated than Conway's

​ ​

rules for the Game of Life;

​the beauty of Conway's rules is that although very simple they are ​

Turing complete

​ and thus can lead to arbitrary magnitudes of complexity.

Yes, like the combinators, or elementary formal arithmetic. Actually, by the incredible work of Putnam, Davis, Robinson, Matiyasevich, just one degree four diophantine polynomial is Turing Universal (so that by assuming Church's thesis, Hilbert's tenth problem is unsolvable).

And Carroll's equation doesn't explain Dark Matter or initial conditions, such as why Dark Energy has the value it has and isn't 10^120 times stronger, nor does it explain the behavior of neutrinos or tell us what the conditions are at the center of a Black Hole. Having said that I do admit that Carroll's equation can predict most of the things that happen in everyday life, although it would take one hell of a lot of calculations to do so.    ​

Well, if we assume computationalism, Carroll's equation does not solve the mind-body problem. 

The Turing-complete proposition above does, in the case the probability one defined from self-reference gives a structure defining the observable of measure one. As the quantum does that well (Gleason theorem), we need to get enough close to the quantum to lift it on arithmetic.

But incompleteness does provide the nuances needed, and they have a quantum-like enough structure already which confirms computationalism.  Intuitively, we can already grasp that when we observe ourselves+environment below the computationalist substitution level, we get infinities of "world/computations" interfering statistically. 

​> ​

Carroll claims that his equation describes human beings as well. He takes a compatibilist position in respect to free will

​

The one problem I have with Carroll's book is that he talks a lot about "free will" without giving us even a hint at what that term is supposed to mean; tell me what it means and I'll tell you if human beings have that property or not, and I'll tell you i

​f​

a roulette wheel or a Cuckoo clock

​ has that property too.​

You have yourself propose a definition, and I have proposed some variety of notion. 

Free-will is when someone is self-determined. A kid told me that it is the ability to eat chocolate even before dinner, being quite determined on the actions to be enacted.

Despite a Turing machine can solve Carroll-like equation she can't solve any equation determining in advance its future behavior, but then she can, with respect to some goal, ponder and choose among different future actions, and determines its course of action. You need some amount of free-will (that, will + free) to smoke the first cigarette, and you need some free-will to smoke the last one.

Adding randomness or non-causal-ness, can only lower free-will. 

​> ​

No, I do not know what life is. I guess, nobody does.

​You know what life is you just don't have a definition, but you have something much better, examples. After being given a few examples of things that are alive and things that are not it's easy to put most new objects in the correct category, although a few times, such as with viruses, it's a judgement call. Carroll gave us neither a definition of "free will" nor a set of examples of things that have it and things that don't, so I have no idea what the term means.   

The animals  plants, which might react only instinctively from immediate measurement might have much less free-will than dogs, gorilla and humans. I guess you need more than a cerebral stem + a cerebellum, you need a brain (that is a reasonable limbic system and a "higher cortex").

Free-will is a double-edged gift. It makes possible for an entity to hurt another, or even itself.

In moral, free-will is needed to get a notion of personal responsibility, and guilt is a symptom that we (the high mammifer, like cats, ..) have it.

All judges use the free-will notion to distinguish the 4 following cases of a man killing a woman with his car:

1) seemingly because the woman jumped on the road in front of him, and he could not avoid her,

2) seemingly because he decided to finish all bottles of wine at the party before leaving it with his car, and then drove like a nut.

3) seemingly because he hated her, as she decided to break with him, and in rage use his car to kill her "purposefully".

4) seemingly because he is a psychopath and seems to appreciate killing woman in a way or another, for sexual pleasure.

Most people can guess what a reasonable judge would decide among "acquitted, jail, hospital and asylum" for those guy.

Free-will might be related also to the dilemma of the prisoner, in game theory, and perhaps an ability to diagonalize on our own habits. It might ease adaptation and enrich the relationship (in procedural abilities).

Free will is not the ability to chose what we will, it is the ability to choose comma. The word "free" can be kept to make clear that we assume the entity is not stuck in a hole, or in jail, etc.

Bruno

John K Clark   ​

 

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[Evgenii Rudnyi]

Am 16.10.2016 um 19:32 schrieb John Clark:
...

>> No, I do not know what life is. I guess, nobody does.
>
>
> ​You know what life is you just don't have a definition, but you
> have something much better, examples. After being given a few
> examples of things that are alive and things that are not it's easy
> to put most new objects in the correct category, although a few
> times, such as with viruses, it's a judgement call. Carroll gave us
> neither a definition of "free will" nor a set of examples of things
> that have it and things that don't, so I have no idea what the term
> means.

Indeed, I have pretty good tacit understanding what life is. I guess,
everybody has such tacit knowledge. The problem comes when one tries to
express such knowledge explicitly.

Evgenii

[John Clark]

On Tue, Oct 18, 2016 at 12:57 PM, Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

​> ​

Well, if we assume computationalism, Carroll's equation does not solve the mind-body problem. 

​Nobody has the answer to the mind body problem because nobody ​knows exactly what the question is.

 

​

​>> ​

The one problem I have with Carroll's book is that he talks a lot about "free will" without giving us even a hint at what that term is supposed to mean; tell me what it means and I'll tell you if human beings have that property or not, and I'll tell you i

​f​

a roulette wheel or a Cuckoo clock

​ has that property too.​

​> ​

You have yourself propose a definition, 

​I said I have only seen 2 definitions of free will that were not gibberish: 

1) "Free Will" is a ASCII sequence that represents a noise some homicides like to make with their mouth.

2) "Free Will" is the inability to always predict what you will do before you do it even if the environment is predictable. By this definition your computer has free will because when you ask it to multiply 96854 by 79446 it doesn't know what answer it will tell you until it does so, and it will only do so when it finishes the calculation.   

 

​> ​

Free-will is when someone is self-determined.

​Then if we have free will our senses are redundant as they provide useless information about things outside ourselves which has nothing to do with how we behave. And if  we are self determined and our senses don't effect our behavior then why did we evolve senses? I don't know about you but I am not self-determined, if I see a brick wall directly in front of me I don't keep walking and crash into it. ​

 

 

​> ​

A kid told me that it is the ability to eat chocolate even before dinner,

​If the kid couldn't see where the ​chocolate was he couldn't eat it, and if the kid couldn't taste it he wouldn't even want to eat it.

​> ​

Adding randomness or non-causal-ness, can only lower free-will. 

 

​Tell me what "free-will" means and I'll tell you if the above is true or not. And 

non-causal-ness

​ and randomness are the same thing, so if it wan't random then it happened due to cause and effect. You're either a ​cuckoo clock or a roulette wheel because there are only 2 possibilities, event X happened due to cause and effect OR it did not happen due to cause and effect.    

​> ​

The animals  plants, which might react only instinctively from immediate measurement might have much less free-will than dogs, gorilla and humans.

 

​Tell me what "free-will" means and I'll tell you if the above is true or not.

 

​> ​

In moral, free-will is needed to get a notion of personal responsibility

​No it is not. A serial murderer leaves death and grief in his wake so if civilization is to continue he must be punished to prevent him from murdering again and as a deterrent to prevent others from doing similar things; and that would be true regardless of what that odd term "free will" means.

​> ​

All judges use the free-will notion to distinguish the 4 following cases of a man killing a woman with his car:

1) seemingly because the woman jumped on the road in front of him, and he could not avoid her,

​The man should not be punished because doing so would not prevent similar occurrences in the future. ​

 

 

2) seemingly because he decided to finish all bottles of wine at the party before leaving it with his car, and then drove like a nut.

 

The man should be punished because doing so would prevent similar occurrences in the future,  ​

 

​> ​

 3) seemingly because he hated her, as she decided to break with him, and in rage use his car to kill her "purposefully".

The man should be punished because doing so would prevent similar occurrences in the future.  ​

 

 

4) seemingly because he is a psychopath and seems to appreciate killing woman in a way or another, for sexual pleasure.

 

The man should be punished because doing so would prevent similar occurrences in the future

​.​

​A​

nd that would be true regardless of what that odd term "free will" means. 

John K Clark ​

 

 

[John Mikes]

Bruno,

it was the third reading when I realized that I do not understand what you wrote. 

as for "...

"Life is a pure religious concept, based on delusion that there is something in an organism that makes it alive."

standing for consciousness? 

I do not feel it. 

JM 

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[Bruno Marchal]

On 21 Oct 2016, at 21:45, John Mikes wrote:

Bruno,

it was the third reading when I realized that I do not understand what you wrote. 

as for "...

"Life is a pure religious concept, based on delusion that there is something in an organism that makes it alive."

That's a quoted quote: I did not say that. I guess you know that.

I oppose that indeed. I guess they mean by organism some colony of molecules, made of atoms, but those does not exist except as local convenient stable hallucination. You know that with computationalism, matter belongs to the category of the mind. It is the border of the universal mind, which is the mind of the universal (in the Church-Turing sense) machine, or number.

standing for consciousness? 

I do not feel it.

I was alluding to the popular idea that "being alive" = "feeling alive", which is more an attribute of a conscious person/entity than of a piece of matter, or a number, or anything describable at the third person.

Life, unlike consciousness, does not pose any conceptual problem. Self-reproduction, self-regeneration, embryogenesis, are easily managed by the second recursion theorem of Kleene, as I explained and illustrate in some papers, and it the long version of the thesis.

As for a definition of life, my favorite one is "capable of self-reproduction", even if this make cigarette alive. Like a virus, a cigarette has to inject you what will make you behave for paying people to make cigarette. Its life cycle involve humans, like most machines today, still.

Consciousness is more problematical, because it seems that a third person explanation makes it non necessary, like if a person does not really exist, which is (arguably) eliminative nonsense.

But once we just listen what the machine say, we find that she is already aware of many things that she cannot justify, or even cannot define, yet is still lived in the sense that they can introduce words to pint on them, and they can project such things on others, etc.

Colin McGinn, a philosopher of mind, has defended the thesis that consciousness is a natural mystery. Computationalism is close to that view, except that it is more an arithmetical mystery than a natural one. Machines are limited, but the machine can be aware of those limitations, and bet on what might be, or not, beyond themselves.

Bruno

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[Bruno Marchal]

On 18 Oct 2016, at 23:20, John Clark wrote:

On Tue, Oct 18, 2016 at 12:57 PM, Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

​> ​

Well, if we assume computationalism, Carroll's equation does not solve the mind-body problem. 

​Nobody has the answer to the mind body problem because nobody ​knows exactly what the question is.

 

Well, in the computationalist theory, the problem consists to associate the first person experiences and the feeling of a sensible reality with the true and the provable arithmetical sentence.

​

​>> ​

The one problem I have with Carroll's book is that he talks a lot about "free will" without giving us even a hint at what that term is supposed to mean; tell me what it means and I'll tell you if human beings have that property or not, and I'll tell you i

​f​

a roulette wheel or a Cuckoo clock

​ has that property too.​

​> ​

You have yourself propose a definition, 

​I said I have only seen 2 definitions of free will that were not gibberish: 

1) "Free Will" is a ASCII sequence that represents a noise some homicides like to make with their mouth.

That seems gibberish to me.

2) "Free Will" is the inability to always predict what you will do before you do it even if the environment is predictable. By this definition your computer has free will because when you ask it to multiply 96854 by 79446 it doesn't know what answer it will tell you until it does so, and it will only do so when it finishes the calculation.  

That is correct.

 

 

​> ​

Free-will is when someone is self-determined.

​Then if we have free will our senses are redundant as they provide useless information about things outside ourselves which has nothing to do with how we behave.

Of course not, as our self is determined by itself together with previous sense experience recorded. Only when people have a strong feeling of self-determination will they say "no matter what", despite possible sense impression, like a guy determined to do skying, despite some pain in its leg.

And if  we are self determined and our senses don't effect our behavior then why did we evolve senses?

Indeed.

I don't know about you but I am not self-determined, if I see a brick wall directly in front of me I don't keep walking and crash into it. ​

 

You gave me that impression.

 

​> ​

A kid told me that it is the ability to eat chocolate even before dinner,

​If the kid couldn't see where the ​chocolate was he couldn't eat it, and if the kid couldn't taste it he wouldn't even want to eat it.

​> ​

Adding randomness or non-causal-ness, can only lower free-will. 

 

​Tell me what "free-will" means and I'll tell you if the above is true or not.

It is more or less the definition you gave above. technically it is when a program emulates itself on alternate consistent extensions. It use Kleene second recursion theorem or variant of it (if you remember my DX = XX posts).

And 

non-causal-ness

​ and randomness are the same thing,

I have many different interpretation of the term "randomness", like the different algorithmic randomness notion (Martin-Löf, Solovay, Chaitin), which all, technically are defined up to some constant, on one part, and then the randomness which comes from arbitrariness (with the coin sequence FFFFFFFFFFF... as favorite random sequence, which can be rare, in measure theoretical sense.

Non-causal-ness is not a notion clear to me, because "causal" has to be a derived higher-order notion when we assume (Digital) Mechanism (alias computationalism).

so if it wan't random then it happened due to cause and effect. You're either a ​cuckoo clock or a roulette wheel because there are only 2 possibilities, event X happened due to cause and effect OR it did not happen due to cause and effect.  

There are degrees of complexity, in the feasible, and degrees of unsolvability, in the non computable.

As the machine cannot determine herself, from her self-referentially correct, resp. probable, points of view, she will have to consider quite complex intermediate between the cuckoo clock and the roulette wheel, like people and their psychology. To know if Maria is OK for going to the movie tonight, neither the cuckoo clock, nor the roulette wheel can help.

 

​> ​

The animals  plants, which might react only instinctively from immediate measurement might have much less free-will than dogs, gorilla and humans.

 

​Tell me what "free-will" means and I'll tell you if the above is true or not.

Always the same John. 

 

​> ​

In moral, free-will is needed to get a notion of personal responsibility

​No it is not. A serial murderer leaves death and grief in his wake so if civilization is to continue he must be punished to prevent him from murdering again and as a deterrent to prevent others from doing similar things;

and that would be true regardless of what that odd term "free will" means.

​> ​

All judges use the free-will notion to distinguish the 4 following cases of a man killing a woman with his car:

1) seemingly because the woman jumped on the road in front of him, and he could not avoid her,

​The man should not be punished because doing so would not prevent similar occurrences in the future. ​

 

 

2) seemingly because he decided to finish all bottles of wine at the party before leaving it with his car, and then drove like a nut.

 

The man should be punished because doing so would prevent similar occurrences in the future,  ​

 

​> ​

 3) seemingly because he hated her, as she decided to break with him, and in rage use his car to kill her "purposefully".

The man should be punished because doing so would prevent similar occurrences in the future.  ​

 

 

4) seemingly because he is a psychopath and seems to appreciate killing woman in a way or another, for sexual pleasure.

 

The man should be punished because doing so would prevent similar occurrences in the future

​.​

​A​

nd that would be true regardless of what that odd term "free will" means. 

OK, let me add a 5) he killed the woman because it get a brain disease and confuse the woman with a djihadist going to explose itself.

Bruno

John K Clark ​

 

 

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[John Clark]

On Mon, Jan 2, 2017 at 2:10 PM, Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

 

​>> ​

"Free Will" is the inability to always predict what you will do before you do it even if the environment is predictable. By this definition your computer has free will because when you ask it to multiply 96854 by 79446 it doesn't know what answer it will tell you until it does so, and it will only do so when it finishes the calculation.  

​> ​

That is correct.

​Then "free will" is a pretty trivial attribute, ​even my $9 hand calculator has it

​ ​

​

​>>T​

hen if we have free will our senses are redundant as they provide useless information about things outside ourselves which has nothing to do with how we behave.

​> ​

Of course not, as our self is determined by itself together with previous sense experience recorded.

​Then a windup toy car has free will , where it will go is determined by its internal state (how much the spring is wound up) and by the number and nature of obstructions in the external environment. ​An electron has free will too, where it will go is determent by its internal charge and by external electric and magnetic fields. By that definition I can't think of anything that doesn't have this thing you call "free will", and that makes the concept completely useless.  

 

​> ​

Non-causal-ness is not a notion clear to me, because

​ [...]

Did you just say "because"? Not clear to you? ​

 

​You're using the notion of ​

causal-ness

​ right now!​

John K Clark

​

[Bruno Marchal]

On 03 Jan 2017, at 04:45, John Clark wrote:

On Mon, Jan 2, 2017 at 2:10 PM, Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

 

​>> ​

"Free Will" is the inability to always predict what you will do before you do it even if the environment is predictable. By this definition your computer has free will because when you ask it to multiply 96854 by 79446 it doesn't know what answer it will tell you until it does so, and it will only do so when it finishes the calculation.  

​> ​

That is correct.

​Then "free will" is a pretty trivial attribute, ​even my $9 hand calculator has it

OK, you are right, I read your definition to quickly. Free will, or just will, is the ability to make the conscious choice together with the inability to determine the choice well in advance. It is simply the will, in a situation where we have enough potential freedom to make sense of that will.

It is your definition above together with a reflexive loop around. If not, we need to give free-will trivially to everything indeed.

Bruno

​ ​

​

​>>T​

hen if we have free will our senses are redundant as they provide useless information about things outside ourselves which has nothing to do with how we behave.

​> ​

Of course not, as our self is determined by itself together with previous sense experience recorded.

​Then a windup toy car has free will , where it will go is determined by its internal state (how much the spring is wound up) and by the number and nature of obstructions in the external environment. ​An electron has free will too, where it will go is determent by its internal charge and by external electric and magnetic fields. By that definition I can't think of anything that doesn't have this thing you call "free will", and that makes the concept completely useless.  

 

​> ​

Non-causal-ness is not a notion clear to me, because

​ [...]

Did you just say "because"? Not clear to you? ​

 

​You're using the notion of ​

causal-ness

​ right now!​

John K Clark

​

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[John Clark]

On Tue, Jan 3, 2017 at 12:48 PM, Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

 

​>> ​

"Free Will" is the inability to always predict what you will do before you do it even if the environment is predictable. By this definition your computer has free will because when you ask it to multiply 96854 by 79446 it doesn't know what answer it will tell you until it does so, and it will only do so when it finishes the calculation.  

​> ​

That is correct.

​Then "free will" is a pretty trivial attribute, ​even my $9 hand calculator has it

​> ​

OK, you are right, I read your definition to quickly. Free will, or just will,

​I have no problem with "will", the meaning is clear, I want to do some things and don't want to do others. However people seem to mean something entirely different when they say "free will", but I'll be damned if I know what it is.​

 

​​

​> ​

is the ability to make the conscious choice

​What does consciousness have to do with it? I choose X not Y because I wanted to, and I wanted to for a reason or I wanted to for no reason. It always comes back to a Cuckoo Clock ​or a Roulette Wheel, take your pick.

 

​

 John K Clark​

 

​