h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

*nods*

Though I think there is a distinction between what I could call "strong" free will, which is what you are describing below, and "weak" free will, where instead of all the information that exists, the imaginary observer is just given as much information as he can collect - so he won't have information on Tom's mental state most of the time.

Strong free will I don't have a clue about, though I find the universe makes more sense if we (and, for that matter, everything else) does have it. Weak free will I think it's fairly clear that we have...

Hi guys, popping in again. I see there has been some discussion on the entry. Good stuff.

Some thoughts about defining free-will:
I think that defining free-will is not a simple thing. I would say, as I imply in the first paragraph of the entry, that free-will is that which makes the concepts of personal choice and responsibility possible/meaningful. That's not a hard definition, but then I don't think free-will is amenable to hard-definition, as I've said in the thread above.

Determinism/Superdeterminism
Determinism implies that if we set up or know the intial conditions leading to an event, we can predict the outcome of the event. Superdeterminism implies that these initial conditions are themselves completely predetermined, and in fact required. The person setting up an experiment has no choice in the setting of the conditions, or in whether she will do the experiment or not. The two are similar, but different in scope/implication. Superdeterminism could be thought
of as Determinism without boundaries in time or space.

The Remote Control
In the example you give, the observation of either outcome on the 'replay' is, perhaps surprisingly, no help. If we are in the same Universe as Tom, we can't tell if our results (positive or negative) are Superdetermined or not. The only way that we could remove this factor is by observing Tom from inside another Universe, which we can prove to be non-Superdeterministic. I'm unaware of suitable test of this, and even if we come up with one, either we have to ask Tom to test our Universe (and the same problem applies), or we have to ask someone else in yet another Universe to test our Universe, but then Universe number 3 needs testing, and so on ad infimitum.

Incidentally, I'm not totally sure that results A-A or A-B could answer our question, even if we could look from a Universe known to be non-Superdeterministic. That is because the outcome of a "rewound" event might be predetermined to be different from the original. Or not. We can't tell. We can argue from a materialistic/psychological basis that A-A and A-B indicate the presence or absence of free-will, but we can't prove this.I'm not sure if A-A would indicate a lack of free will (two predetermined non-free choices), or two identical free choices. Ditto. for a result A-B.

I'm glad the entry has stirred up some comment.

I'll call in again at some point.

Bye!

The reason why I say that you have to define free will as the philosophers define it is because determinism was originally posited as an attack on this definition of free will.

The other reason I think you have to define free will is cos of the misconceptions which arise from the imprecision of the word ‘choice’. What exactly do you mean when you say we have no choices in a deterministic universe? To my mind, ‘choice’ is a number of things. ‘Choices’ are the options we are faced with at any given moment, admittedly usually from A through Z and beyond rather that merely A and B. ‘To choose’ is the process by which we consider the options and eventually pick one of them. And a ‘choice’ is also the decision to pick either option A or B itself (as in ‘ I made a bad choice&#8217. Well, neither the theory of determinism nor free will denies us these. What I think is the problem is the reaction people have when told ‘You have no choice’, which immediately takes the first definition of choice and ruthlessly slashes the options to one. Which is not the point at all.

You say that free will is that which makes personal choice and responsibility posible/meaninful. Well, I disagree. I think it makes it arbitary. But how have the free willers get away with such an unattractive view of free will and at the same time persuaded us all that we have it? Well, as far as I remember, free will was thought up to explain why we, humans, are higher beings in the order of the universe (without, though not excluding, resorting to the argument that the bible tells us so). We are better cos we have free will, and nothing else does (The argument was never supposed to apply to calculators). It also explains why most people would be horrified if you told them that they have no free will, as it would take away their claim to be top banana (great PR job by the free willers). And the basis for the claim? Well, in the example of Tom above, the reason why Tom can still pick either option A or B the second time around is because there is an essential Tommness (which he has in common with all humans, but which……..you get the picture) which is basically divorced from all the influences of surroundings, body chemistry, history etc etc. His soul, if you like. So when Tom makes his decision, a part of him is FREE to pick option A or B time after time after time. Do I need to say that I am not against the idea of a soul and that I just think it wouldn’t be so separate from the rest of me? No, probably not.

I agree that one AA decision doesn't prove determinism, but if at every moment Tom made a choice in his life were analysed? But then, really this was never supposed to be subjected to an actual experiment, it is a philosophical construct. I dunno, a what do youcallit, a thought experiment (chucks out scientific terminoligy as to the manner born). So the debate about wheather it's provable or not isn't important. A word about your use of pre-determined:you say in one of your postings that predictability isn’t important. Well, yes, you are right there. Clearly free will is impossible to predict, and for determinism you would have to know everything, absolutely everything (the technical name for such a being is God, but determinism does not have anything to say about Her existence), which is as virtually impossible to predict as to make no difference. What is important is to say that determinism is not about pre-destination/pre-determination. I read somewhere, probably in a popular science book so feel free to sneer, that the constants we think of as being…constant, from the beginning of the universe until now, aren’t. The universe is making it up as it goes along. Which rules out pre-destination, but not determinism, which only needs Tom’s situation and history to be exactly the same at each moment of choice after we have rewound him back from the future. If you tell me that history doesn’t remain the same, but is in a state of constant flux (or say that we have no way of telling if that is true or not….. sun went round the Earth not so long ago etc etc) I shall of course retire gracefully from the lists on this one (but….doesn’t prove that Tom wouldn’t make the same decision given the same circs, and doesn’t help free will either).

Moving on to quantum physics. Your article seems to imply that first there was quantum physics and then determinism was evolved to combat it, which had a knock on effect on the centuries old certainty of free will. I don’t think this is true. I thought that first there was the big argument between free will and determinism who, having fought themselves to a standstill, were confronted by quantum theory………………..

Yes, quantum theory has posed a problem for the determinists. But it doesn’t help the free willers much either (unless you argue that the absence of determinism proves the existence of free will). Correct me if I am wrong, and believe me I could be, but quantum physics basically says that at a sub-molecular??? level, particles behave randomly and unpredictably, and are not determined at all. The determinist answer to this is, of course, that above this sub-molecular level things do, so ner. End of argument. Now I am not above saying, since I don’t know nothing about quantum, that it is possible therefore that at the moment of Toms (2nd) choice, a particle will bounce a different way and Tom will decide differently accordingly, BUT this is not free will, it is complete randomness, and is more scary and worrying than determinism and free will put together.

Don't understand your definition of strong and weak free will, which seems to have more to do with the observer than Tom. Sorry. Don't see why the universe makes more sense if we have free will either. Explain, please?

Sorry, that first reply thingy seems to have come out abit garbled *sigh*.
Hope it is still readable.

Well, as to the first, perhaps an example is in order?

take a coin, and toss it into the air. It will come down either heads or tails. In some sense, that's a choice.

The coin has no strong free will - if you have total information about the coin, and the air currents, then you can predict which way up it will land. If you do the rewind thing, then it will always land the same way.

But it does have weak free will. If I toss a coin into the air, and ask you to call which side it wil land, before it lands, your accuracy will be roughly 50%. So, to you, the coin has free will. To a super-computer with several laser beams tracking the coin's flight, it probably doesn't.

If you have strong free will, you have weak free will, but if you have weak free will, then you don't have strong free will. You're entirely right - weak free will is a property that depends on who is observing, as well as who is being observed. If you don't like relative truth, you'll despise it...

as an aside, the phrase is "to the manor born" - referring to manor houses and suchlike...

Dear god, you are right! About the phrase I mean. Can I claim a totally inability to spell and save face abit? Moving swiftly on......
OK, like the explaination. Totally disagree, of course, as I don't think free will has anything to do with predictablity. But there you go.

Actually it's 'to the manner born' - meaning one behaves as if that was the way one had been born to behave. 'To the Manor born' is a recent misquotation of the original phrase, which I think was started by the TV show 'To the Manor born' which was so titled as a bad pun.
I think anyway...

It's a great article and obviously sparks a bit of yap, so I think it _should_ find it's way into the Guide. I don't know why it's been subbed but isn't in there already, but that's neither here nor there.

But.

It's an opinion. On how to solve a problem, basically, but it's an opinion when it comes down to it. TPTB aren't particularly fond of including opinions in the Guide. Perhaps Joolsee, you could refocus the title of the article to 'Dealing with a predetermined life' or some suchlike.

The actual text is great though.

Cheers

Yeah - but leave free will in the title - 'Free Will vs Predestination - A Lifestyle Choice' or something

This entry was stamped as Edited a while ago, so I've moved this thread out of Peer Review.