Is the future inevitable?

I am having difficulty following your premises here to your conclusion that there is randomness in the universe. Why would we not observe the same thing if the universe were pseudo random with hidden variables just like the random number generator in a computer?

I do. Randomness means that the output can not be know except as a probability. If you re-define random as knowable with enough information and brain power that simply applies determinism. Yes. No. It depends. We don't even know whether people have free will, let alone machines, or even - outside a daft religious idea - whether the term has any meaning. If it does exist at all, it's bounded. One thing is for sure though, if our world is deterministic, then whatever freewill is, we haven't got it.

I don't think so. I think that it does depend on what freewill is.You can think of freewill as "no one can predict what I'm going to decide to do!"
In this sense, I would agree with you.
However, in this sense, I don't even want freewill anyway. There's lots of things I do that I would be very upset if other people could not predict my actions. Like loving my wife tomorrow, or choosing whether or not to purposefully drive into a tree on my way home tonight.
I want other people to be able to predict my choices on those questions... every day, and all the time.OrYou can think of freewill as "the ability to make conscious decisions about your future actions based on your own personal past experience."
In this sense, I don't agree with you.
Regardless of whether or not we find out the universe is deterministic... I can consciously make decisions to plan my actions based on my own personal past experiences right now... so it doesn't make a difference. It's inconsequential to this sort of idea of freewill.Edited by Stile, : I grammar good.

I don't go for either of those alternatives. I just say that if our world is predetermined, I can't change the outcome. If I can't change the outcome, i do not have choice - all I have is the appearance choice.

Hi Stile, But scientist can. Scientist can know what your going to do up to 7 seconds before you do it. Granted it for now it is a simplistic experiment, but the foundations of this research is beginning to show our subconscious and body are pulling the strings. But are you making conscious decisions or merely being alerted after the fact of what your body and subconscious was going to do anyway? As current research is beginning to show.
But wait.......
It gets even better than that!
**best Morpheus voice**
What if I told you our brains may be influenced by the the bugs living in our digestive tracts.The most extreme example of brain control is the Zombie ant fungus A fungus that makes the ant bite and hang on vegetable material, so the fungus can propagate itself. Certainly a case of reality being stranger than fiction. I know, I know a ant brain compared to a human brain no comparison. But still intriguing that the human microbiome is now being studied to realize how much this collective organism affects us. Their cells out number ours 10 to 1. Perhaps, but more and more it is beginning to look like human beings are like machines that have a brain that responds to our hormones, biochemistry, pheromones, tactile receptors, our internal gut flora biochemistry, conditioning,subconscious and who knows what other influences.At the end of the day it is as you say a matter of how you look at it.

I'm not sure this is any more convincing. Let's consider what they're actually demonstrating here. Someone was told to do something as soon as they'd decided which of two things to do and when. Retroactively analysed, we can see that certain sorts of brain activity beginning up to 7 seconds before the did the thing predict the outcome.Fantastic. How is that brain activity supposed to be distinguished from 'beginning to make a willful decision'? There's no requirement that the timelag between beginning to make a conscious decision and completing it be less than 7 seconds, is there?Edited by caffeine, : No reason given.

Thats rights Tangle,
Kind of humbling that from the big bang, the formation of the universe stars, galaxies, planets;to the formation of Earth, life and man.... and every conceivable event thereafter that has resulted in you posting that

But to get back to some highschool philosophy, there's two options available:1. Your actions are predictable based on past events, and therefore pre-determined, which you consider incompatible with free will.2. Your actions are not predictable based on past events, and therefore random and arbitrary. Random behaviour means living by the flip of a metaphorical coin - there's still no room for free will.

How do you arrive ar that position? 3. Your actions sometimes predictable based on....whatever ... sometimes not.4. Your actions even when upredictable are not random or arbitrary.Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.

As I understand it, no. The salient point I think is that the areas of the brain, that have been mapped that are responsible for non conscious thought are lighting up and indicating the choice of Right or Left ...before the person presses the freaking button.

quote:

---

2).Next, we addressed the
key question of this study, whether any brain region encoded the
subject’s motor decision ahead of time. Indeed, we found that two
brain regions encoded with high accuracywhether the subject was about
to choose the left or right response prior to the conscious decision
(threshold P 0.05, family-wise error—corrected for multiple spatial
and temporal comparisons;

---

Then the person selects a letter that corresponds to time when they made the choice for the purpose of showing how soon the area lit up before the person chose.
In my view it is still your brain and you are still the one pressing the button. So who cares, it is just a matter of how you look at it imo.
However it you care to check it out:
I saw a very interesting documentary on PBS in October called
"The Brain with Dr. Eagleman The Brain with David Eagleman | PBS
Episode 3 is called "Who is In Control?" They had a interesting experiment where a subject was placed in a scan and a hat/head piece put on the subject that could stimulate areas of the brain.
By using a combination of mapping and stimulation technology the neurologist was able to have the subject make choices several seconds before the subject reported making the choice. The mind blowing part being they did not make the choice even though they where adamant afterwards they did. For some reason it seems the conscious mind maintains the illusion of control no matter what.I dont expect this to convince anyone though. Check it out and judge for yourself. It's a interesting series.

That's not really a coherent sentence. You'll have to elaborate on how something can be neither predictable nor arbitrary, because I don't see any alternative.

That's not all. I put up a Christmas tree, and you know, I really didn't have to. I could have done it tomorrow, or not at all. I could have played the Dice Man game and left it to chance. But instead I did it today - despite my wife asking for it last week. It was predictable that it would happen, but a betting man would would have put money on the first Saturday in December. It's all a bit silly isn't it.

Okay. True.
And I agree with you.I'm just saying that if you want to call "the ability to make conscious decisions about your future actions based on your own personal past experience" an "appearance of choice" than I don't care. I can still make conscious decisions about my future actions based on my own personal past experience... and it doesn't matter if it's determined or not.

Like I said, that's fantastic!
I want people to be able to predict some of the things I do.And, well, I always make a choice in my brain first... then I actually move or talk or something like that.
I wonder if they can measure when "a choice is made" and when "my brain acknowledges that a choice is made" rather than "I move my hand as a reflection of that choice." That would be interesting The only time I'll be upset is when the Scientists tell me I'm going to choose the red pill, and I'm unable to make a conscious decision to go against what they say and choose the blue pill anyway.If *that* ever happens... then I'll have to change my ideas about what freewill is.If that *never* happens... then I'm perfectly content with identifying freewill as "the ability to make conscious decisions about future actions based on past experience."

I just don't think it's necessary to add the qualifiers 'past experience' - if you can't make decisions based on anything at all that will change a predetermined outcome then you don't have free choice.But, as you say, it doesn't matter if we don't know any better. Except, of course, the entire concept of sin is then defunct - for those that believe in that stuff.