Does Evolution Have An Objective?

Cheers for the link. I find myself very conflicted about freewill. It seems just so inherently obvious that we do possess freewill of a type that seems incompatible with any serious thought about the matter. I suppose the "obvious" should be rationally rejected. But......... I get that. I think. But Mr Jack seems to be talking about a much more stringent form of determinism where imperfect information is not the problem. If "total knowledge" of all things past and present results in the ability to derive immutable knowledge of all things future I still don't see how "choice" is anythng but an illusion?There are no options to choose. There is just the predetermined . No?

No, I decide what choices it can make not what choices it will make. In fact, I could go further and write a completely deterministic program that makes choices I don't know what are but that's by the by.

I don't see how the possibility of alternative choices matters. We have freewill because we decide; how we decide is irrelevant.

That's not "completely deterministic". I call shenanigans.

You are advocating decisions that are independent of choice? If there is only one predetermined path what are you deciding between?

Because you still have the choice, even if the choice you make is predetermined. The thing that is an illusion is the feeling that you could have chosen differently.

It's making my head hurt trying to follow this.Are you saying that deciding is an action we can perform, like eating or running, and that being able to perform this action means we have freewill, like being able to perform the action of running means we have legs? And that, further, it doesn't matter if we are predetermined to decide, like it doesn't matter if we are predetermined to run?

To think the big bang boils down to my shoe color selection this morning. I once mistakenly wore both brown and black brogues to work. Maybe I should of chose to turn on the closet light while getting dressed.

Hmmmm. This seems a bit like saying that I have "chosen" to live on Earth rather than Mars.The fact that it is in effect impossible for me to live on Mars would, by most common usage, make the use of the word "choice" somewhat inappropriate here. The fact is I quite like the idea of living on Mars under certain practical conditions.If it is imposible to choose differently I would dispute that a "choice" has genuinely been made. But at this point I guess it all boils down to the semantics of what one means by the word "choice". I am operating on a sort of instinctive and unstated definition (which I hope you will "get" even if not subscribe to) but I appreciate this may not count for much.

Yes, it is. The response depends on the inputs. Consider a chess playing AI, I would determine how it chooses it moves but not how it would respond to a particular move from its opponent. Any learning algorithm will do this.

That's only partially deterministic. That's not completely deterministic. That's not completely deterministic.

Given that it seems blindingly obvious that a system that works by obeying a set of unwavering rules is wholly deterministic, you can't just say "it's not" without explaining why.

Well, he's just saying it is without explaining why, and you're just saying its blindingly obvious without saying why.If the decision are not determined in the programming of how it chooses, then its not completely deterministic.If it is completely deterministic, then its going to make the same move for each input and therefore its isn't really making the decision itself.

'Programming' and 'inputs' are basically the same thing.
They both affect future decisions.If you reset the AI and give it the same programming and inputs: you will get the same decisions. Time after time.Edited by Panda, : No reason given.

The programming is the determination of how it chooses its moves, the input is the move that the opponent made. Indeed. Then its not actually making a decision.