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Author Topic:   free will
dents
Inactive Member


Message 1 of 9 (16435)
09-02-2002 1:36 PM


hello everyone
i noticed some discussion re free will around here ... it was mostly about the fact that the free will and original sin are mutually exclusive ... hmmm i'm not sure if i'm getting the concept of original sin right, so i'll better skip this ... well, my question is: have you ever thought that our world is deterministic? like that everything in this world is following certain rules and if you know these rules and somehow collect all necessary information, you could predict the future? ..... e.g. you could predict what happens to the apple falling from the tree if you know the law of gravity plus some measures of the tree etc ... also more complex predictions could be made ... e.g. calculating how some molecules will react ... concerning the really complex ones i think there are computational problems .. and also that ppl don't know all the rules and that it's not possible to gather all the input data ... but this only means that we cannot predict the future -- not that it wasn't determined
also some related question for the religious folks: how would you distinguish a mind of a human from a mind of an extremely smart computer? wouldn't it be possible for a computer to act like a human?
well, hope you find it challenging
dents

Replies to this message:
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gene90
Member (Idle past 3823 days)
Posts: 1610
Joined: 12-25-2000


Message 2 of 9 (16437)
09-02-2002 3:08 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by dents
09-02-2002 1:36 PM


[QUOTE][B]so i'll better skip this ... well, my question is: have you ever thought that our world is deterministic? like that everything in this world is following certain rules and if you know these rules and somehow collect all necessary information, you could predict the future?[/QUOTE]
[/B]
Interesting line of thought but Quantum Mechanics makes it impossible. We can only have so much information about a particle and they do funny things. Plus we could not collect that much information about the universe without perturbing it in ways that could alter the outcome and finally we could (I suspect) not ever do enough computations and store enough data in a computer smaller than the universe itself running off an energy budget less than the free energy of the universe.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by dents, posted 09-02-2002 1:36 PM dents has not replied

Replies to this message:
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Me
Inactive Member


Message 3 of 9 (16497)
09-03-2002 12:40 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by dents
09-02-2002 1:36 PM


[QUOTE]Originally posted by dents:
[B]hello everyone
i noticed some discussion re free will around here ... it was mostly about the fact that the free will and original sin are mutually exclusive ... hmmm i'm not sure if i'm getting the concept of original sin right, so i'll better skip this . [/quote]
[/b]
You might be interested in a dialogue termed the 'Flew-Mackie Controversy'- a bit technical, but it concerns a proposal that an omnipotent god could make a race of people who, while free to sin, did not. It causes a lot of fun for the theologists, and is intended to illustrate that sin and free will need not be incompatible.
[quote][b]
.. well, my question is: have you ever thought that our world is deterministic? like that everything in this world is following certain rules and if you know these rules and somehow collect all necessary information, you could predict the future? ..... e.g. you could predict what happens to the apple falling from the tree if you know the law of gravity plus some measures of the tree etc ... also more complex predictions could be made ... e.g. calculating how some molecules will react ... concerning the really complex ones i think there are computational problems .. and also that ppl don't know all the rules and that it's not possible to gather all the input data ... but this only means that we cannot predict the future -- not that it wasn't determined [/quote]
[/b]
I see you are aware that an infinite amount of data would need to be gathered for each particle, even under classical physics, and that Heisenburg's principle still seems to apply. Nontheless, I also suspect that our universe is deterministic at some level. You might be interested in an experiment I once saw, though I can find no Internet reference - perhaps someone out there can help.
The set-up involves a wired-up subject sitting at a desk with two buttons, A and B. The subject must decide to press one, and then press it.
As well as the buttons, there is also a large clock dial with a sweep hand in front of the subject, and they are asked to note the precise time when they decide which button to press.
What happens is that, after a lot of repetitions, you get a good graph of the persons reactions. The funny thing is that the time at which the person makes the decision is not at the begining of the reaction - the muscles of the appropriate arm are well into their preparation sequence before the persons consciousness makes the decision to press the button. So much of what we think of as free will may actually take place below the level of consciousness - by the time we think about things they really are determined.
quote:

also some related question for the religious folks: how would you distinguish a mind of a human from a mind of an extremely smart computer? wouldn't it be possible for a computer to act like a human?

You must have heard of the Turing Test. I think that a lot of what you are interested in is covered in the subject of Consciousness and Mind. Would you like a few references?
http://www.law.berkeley.edu/...gpapers/PDFpapers/jabargh.pdf
http://www.u.arizona.edu/~chalmers/online.html

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by dents, posted 09-02-2002 1:36 PM dents has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 5 by dents, posted 09-04-2002 3:14 PM Me has not replied
 Message 6 by dents, posted 09-05-2002 7:18 AM Me has replied

  
Tranquility Base
Inactive Member


Message 4 of 9 (16538)
09-04-2002 2:50 AM
Reply to: Message 2 by gene90
09-02-2002 3:08 PM


Gene
Yes I tend to think of quantum mechamics as a potential mechanism for non-determinism too (from a Christian POV). QM rescued us from Calvin!

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dents
Inactive Member


Message 5 of 9 (16572)
09-04-2002 3:14 PM
Reply to: Message 3 by Me
09-03-2002 12:40 PM


hello You,
thanks, i appreciated that answer ... i think i should make couple of comments
* free will vs. original sin ... my current opinion is that they are technically exclusive because if someone makes free decisions then he/she could choose the right way and avoid sin (well, unless there are situations in which there is no such way .. but it seems there are no such situations because person in such poor situation could always sit down and do nothing which doesn't sound like a sin)
on the other hand i see the rationale for the other side ... ppl are not fully rational and do lot of mistakes (like they intend A and do B) some of which lead to sin .. and still could have free will (really?) ... like in that pulp fiction situation "ouch, i didn't mean to shoot out his brain but there was a bump on the road!" the gangster didn't intend to kill the guy (if i remember right) but he wasn't smart enough to think of the bumps .. i.e. what he did was different than his intension
the problem "at the other side" seems to be that we don't have the choice to become fully rational and anticipate everything .. we just have to accept our bounded rationality and do mistakes .. which means that we could choose our intentions but not always the actual results/deeds .. is that a free will?
and of course there are such poor kiddies who die without commiting any sin ... isn't that against the definition of original sin?
hmmm i think i need to think more about this .. and read the suggested reading .. also will comment that QM and AI things next time

This message is a reply to:
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dents
Inactive Member


Message 6 of 9 (16617)
09-05-2002 7:18 AM
Reply to: Message 3 by Me
09-03-2002 12:40 PM


* free will vs. original sin
hmm if you don't mind i would like to refine my answer a bit ..... i think that the free will could be stated either as
A1) "we are free do choose our deeds from number of possibilities and sinless life IS among them"
or
A2) "we are free do choose our deeds from number of possibilities and sinless life IS NOT among them"
further the original sin could be stated as
B) "it is not possible for us to choose sinless life"
looking at the statements the A1) and B) are clearly contradicting ... A2) together with B) is possible but it means there is no sinless path in our decission tree ... which means that there is no way for us to avoid sinning at least once and that it's not our fault ... perhaps we should be sorry only for that excess sin between our actual path and the best possible path
* QM vs deterministic world
if i'm getting it right then under QM things are described by probability functions .. e.g. there is chance C that particle P is currently residing in the space S ... then the fictional supercomputer would be calculating these probability functions ... e.g. probability function showing position of a rubber ball thrown against the wall .. 99.9999% would be in the "bounced back" area and 0.0001% in the "tunnelled through" area ... but it would be a real computational difficulty/impossibility as you stated before
what seems to be the possible disagreement here is that how much of the world is deterministic and how much is random ... hmm ... i think that vast majority is deterministic because that QM randomness usually gets aggregated and somehow cancels out ... the exception i could think of are the quantum physicists making bets on outcomes of their experiments ... but these are not the kind of events influencing our daily lives ... if we take our bodies then there don't seem to be any 1 atom small structures influencing what we do (maybe there are?) .. it rather seems that we are kind of deterministic biological computers with all that networks of neurons ... but back to QM ... i think that if the QM randomness is the only way in which god influences our lives then he influences them very little, almost not at all
* AI
i know about this more from sci-fi than elsewhere but i suspect there is no objective test to tell human from a very smart computer ... turing test takes a human interviewer to make the decision so it's not objective ... if there was such closed test then the computers would be taught how to respond and it wouldn't work anymore .....
i was rather trying to imply that it's not such a mad idea that humans are only kind of very smart computers

This message is a reply to:
 Message 3 by Me, posted 09-03-2002 12:40 PM Me has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 7 by Me, posted 09-05-2002 10:10 AM dents has replied

  
Me
Inactive Member


Message 7 of 9 (16628)
09-05-2002 10:10 AM
Reply to: Message 6 by dents
09-05-2002 7:18 AM


[QUOTE]Originally posted by dents:
[B]* free will vs. original sin
hmm if you don't mind i would like to refine my answer a bit ..... i think that the free will could be stated either as
A1) "we are free do choose our deeds from number of possibilities and sinless life IS among them"
or
A2) "we are free do choose our deeds from number of possibilities and sinless life IS NOT among them"
further the original sin could be stated as
B) "it is not possible for us to choose sinless life"
looking at the statements the A1) and B) are clearly contradicting ... A2) together with B) is possible but it means there is no sinless path in our decission tree ... which means that there is no way for us to avoid sinning at least once and that it's not our fault ... perhaps we should be sorry only for that excess sin between our actual path and the best possible path [/quote]
[/b]
Sin is a complex enough subject, and Original Sin makes it even more so!
It is hard to find a rational basis for defining sin - many ethical philosophers have worked on this subject. It can be defined very vaguely - as a kind of guilty intention, or very precisely, as in various religious bans. All of us are sinning according to some measure - I don't think we can avoid it!
I think Original Sin is a meaningless concept, invented to provide an answer to the 'problem of pain'. You may know this point, often stated as 'How can a god who is all-powerful and all-good preside over a world with so much pain in it?' Some answers say that individuals sin and are punished - this leads to the argument that cripples must have done something very bad, even if nothing obvious is known.
If you reject this fairly circular argument, you are left with the other idea - that we are punished for a sin which our forefathers committed. Again, this sounds like nonsense, but at least it gets round the problem a priest has when something bad happens to him!
[Quote][B]
* QM vs deterministic world
if i'm getting it right then under QM things are described by probability functions .. e.g. there is chance C that particle P is currently residing in the space S ... then the fictional supercomputer would be calculating these probability functions ... e.g. probability function showing position of a rubber ball thrown against the wall .. 99.9999% would be in the "bounced back" area and 0.0001% in the "tunnelled through" area ... but it would be a real computational difficulty/impossibility as you stated before
what seems to be the possible disagreement here is that how much of the world is deterministic and how much is random ... hmm ... i think that vast majority is deterministic because that QM randomness usually gets aggregated and somehow cancels out ... the exception i could think of are the quantum physicists making bets on outcomes of their experiments ... but these are not the kind of events influencing our daily lives ... if we take our bodies then there don't seem to be any 1 atom small structures influencing what we do (maybe there are?) .. it rather seems that we are kind of deterministic biological computers with all that networks of neurons ... but back to QM ... i think that if the QM randomness is the only way in which god influences our lives then he influences them very little, almost not at all [/quote]
[/b]
You may be interested in a recent experiment which seems to show atomic-level effects at a macro level:
Page not found | American Institute of Physics
Those who study quantum mechanics seem to believe that events at this level are truly random, but I am not sure this is so - I think there is something fundamentally wrong with the theory. But I have little chance of working in this field, let alone proving anything! I do not know of much work being done in the shadowy area where quantum becomes classical, which should be very interesting.
quote:
* AI
i know about this more from sci-fi than elsewhere but i suspect there is no objective test to tell human from a very smart computer ... turing test takes a human interviewer to make the decision so it's not objective ... if there was such closed test then the computers would be taught how to respond and it wouldn't work anymore .....
i was rather trying to imply that it's not such a mad idea that humans are only kind of very smart computers

I cannot remember the name of an AI researcher who, when asked if he knew of any practical thinking machine, replied 'Yes, me.'. I certainly think that we are a 'kind of smart computer', and further, that if we create and program a machine in a similar complex manner to the brain (possibly using a neural net?), it has a good chance of developing consciousness. The HAL 9000 is still a favourite character of mine!

This message is a reply to:
 Message 6 by dents, posted 09-05-2002 7:18 AM dents has replied

Replies to this message:
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Brad McFall
Member (Idle past 5033 days)
Posts: 3428
From: Ithaca,NY, USA
Joined: 12-20-2001


Message 8 of 9 (16641)
09-05-2002 12:17 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by dents
09-02-2002 1:36 PM


You are probably getting the SIN correct. Elaboration later

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by dents, posted 09-02-2002 1:36 PM dents has not replied

  
dents
Inactive Member


Message 9 of 9 (17384)
09-13-2002 2:50 PM
Reply to: Message 7 by Me
09-05-2002 10:10 AM


* free will vs original sin
i would still stick to my previous statement ... free will and the original sin are incompatible regardless how the sin is defined ... or there is both free will and the original sin but that's only because the sin is on every possible path we could choose from ... is there any mistake in this reasoning?
btw how is the sin defined .. is it more about literal rules or one should decide him/herself?
btw what about the unlucky innocent babies .. isn't this denying the original sin?
* quantum mechanics world
ok i agree that quantum mechanics is widely accepted theory ... rather i would like to hear if you think it truly brings randomness into our lives .. and how much if so
* AI
i looked at the article and the psychology pov was bit new for me but interesting ... it rather states that we do lot of decissions automatically but if we really try we use some free will as well

This message is a reply to:
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