EvC Forum: The Illusion of Free Will

An interesting subject came up in the "Does science ask and answer "why" questions?" thread:

1.6180339 writes:

Straggler writes:

All the evidence indicates that the entire notion of us consciously making non-deterministic choices is simply false rather than something that demands a mysterious explanation.

It is determined up to a point. The brain activity propagates before consciousness dictates a choice. However who's not to say some quantum entanglement is not going on? That there is indeed some spontaneous collapse of the wave form once a "observation is made" and a choice is made. It is still deterministic, but novel and spontaneous as well. Rather than completely dependent on prior conditions, the choice is chosen by the thinker/observer/subject/person/dude/conscious mind.
So even though it looks on the surface like the choice precedes consciousness, it is in fact spook action at a distance and the apparent time lag is simply our biological hard ware trying to catch up.

In Message 350

straggler writes:

Whatever you need to believe to get you through the day with your subjective notions intact I guess.....

Numbers writes:

However who's not to say some quantum entanglement is not going on?

Why would anyone say that is going on?

Straggler writes:

Do you think quantum computers will have free will?

Numbers writes:

Yes.

Cool!!! I feel a new thread coming on.....

If neither of them have done so, yet, I'd like to propose a thread that can address this.

I'd like to see more on how the Illusion (or a non-illusory manifestation of it as alluded to in 1.6180339's quantum entanglement) of Free Will may also help in understanding things like self-awareness.

Would computers never be able to have anything more than the illusion they had free will, if somehow we had something a little less negative in connotation than "illusion", perhaps along the way of disentanglement? How would we know the difference? What would it matter anyway?

Thank you.

- xongsmith, 5.7d

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