If free will is a myth, someone should make a scientific justice system

Humans might be too close for people to have a detached perspective:

Imagine a scientist were to build a perfectly sentient and sapient AI, and you became friends with that AI. Then some malicious person programs the AI to kill your family. The scientist eventually tracks it down, purges the malicious code, and installs some better anti-tampering software. Should that AI be punished?
 
Olmstead said:
Humans might be too close for people to have a detached perspective:

Imagine a scientist were to build a perfectly sentient and sapient AI, and you became friends with that AI. Then some malicious person programs the AI to kill your family. The scientist eventually tracks it down, purges the malicious code, and installs some better anti-tampering software. Should that AI be punished?
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First, I don't think you can have it both ways, where an intelligence is both perfectly sentient and sapient, and also by definition a absolute slave to the determinism of programming. Kind of insuring an outcome with that dual premise, there. Wouldnt a "perfect" AI have "perfect" antivirus and malware defenses?

But to answer the question anyway, it would be akin to temporary insanity. The AI shouldn't be punished, but repaired as malfunctioning.
 
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Chanakya said:
If the exact same set of causes ends up having an effect that is "variable", then that's simply another way of saying that that effect is outside of the chain of cause and effect, isn't it?





More indeterminate and fluid how exactly? I don't mean all of the neurobiological details of the mechanism of it, that in any case I don't expect you to know fully; and nor do I know it fully; and nor, for that matter, do neuroscientists themselves know it completely yet, not even close: but how and why exactly would the process of thinking be indeterminate and fluid, as far as being subject to causality, as far as being subject to the chain of cause and effect? Think about it. It simply can’t. *
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Visualizing it as a chain is begging the question, methinks. It forces an invariable A then B then C progression.

What if you conceptualized it as an infinitely complex three dimensional web? Would you accept that the "chain" of cause and effect could remain, but have the effect be indeterminate? Synapses firing in the brain seem to be influenced by the subject's thoughts more than the other way around. Without knowing how this thinking thingy works, in the mechanical sense (and we solidly do not), is it skeptical to declare the firing neurons to be the cause of the effect of consciousness? Which one they are will screw badly with the "chain" conceptualization.



That there is no free will follows directly, and trivially, from a materialist paradigm
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It really, really doesn't, man. We can conceptualize multiple different models for indeterminacy consistent with materialism. Just abandoning the oversimplified chain model opens those doors wide.

...as I've said more than once (and hopefully explained it clearly enough in this post, in the short opening sentence of my post, to the point that you're now able to agree with me, hopefully).
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You can't just keep assuming our agreement on the very issue where we part ways. That's just baking in a forgone conclusion.

Sure, should science actually uncover evidence of something beyond materialism, then I'll be happy to jump ships and agree with that new evidence. But the balance of proof is weighed in completely on the side of materialism prevailing, and of there being no free will --- much like with the soul question, and the God question as well.

Like I keep saying, your insistence on looking on what we don’t yet know about all of the neurobiological basis of thinking and of consciousness, even as we’ve already found out a great deal, as some repository where free will might lurk, is akin to, like exactly similar to, the God of the Gaps thing.



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eta:

*To be fair --- heh, I’m trying out some "steelmanning" here! --- I suppose one way that one might have free will without also having supernaturalism and magic and all of that, is via quantum indeterminacy. We keep saying --- or at least, I keep saying, and since you don’t protest I’m assuming you agree to go along with that, for the sake of argument --- that we’re leaving out quantum indeterminacy outside of our reckoning when we’re considering this free will issue, in order that we may focus on the free will part. But the fact is that quantum weirdness is very much part of the real world. I had dismissed, in that other thread, both your suggestion, as well as GDon’s suggestion, that evolution might perhaps equip us with free will, by pointing out that evolution cannot possibly equip us to do magic; but I suppose it doesn’t have to be magic or supernatural stuff, and maybe there are ways to directly manipulate quantum weirdness without resorting to technology, and, who knows, that might actually equip evolution to provide us with something akin to free will.

But again, while conceivably possible, just maybe; but that’s all just wild speculation at this point. Again the burden of proof squarely demands that such speculation be evidenced, else rejected. We mustn’t, like the obscurantist charlatan Deepak Chopra, pretend to be talking sense when babbling on incoherently about quantum consciousness and whatnot.

But still, to be fair, I suppose QM might possibly offer some way of, just perhaps, fitting in free will after all. I doubt it, very much; and in any case the burden of proof is squarely on any claim of that kind; but still, I suppose there might be that possibility, just perhaps.
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Yes, materialism already has a metric **** ton of monkey wrenches bouncing around in it from QM alone. Just quantum entanglement; if it is what it appears to be, we are rewriting everything we thought we knew.

And btw: you seem quite willing to set QM aside "with a pin in it" for the sake of the discussion of free will. Why are you so resistant to sticking a pin in consciousness itself, since we know so little about it? Instead, you treat it as a trivial and predictable billiard ball, when it is the one thing we know the least about.
 
Thermal said:
First, I don't think you can have it both ways, where an intelligence is both perfectly sentient and sapient, and also by definition a absolute slave to the determinism of programming. Kind of insuring an outcome with that dual premise, there. Wouldnt a "perfect" AI have "perfect" antivirus and malware defenses?
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For the purposes of this discussion, I'm going to assume that the world works the way I think it works, and if an individual would always respond to the same stimuli in the same circumstances in the same way, it should theoretically be possible to program a response even in a human.

Anyway, I don't think a true AI can have perfect defenses to its "mind". A large part of sentience seems to be that it needs to be messy, adaptable, malleable ... A sentient AI would need to be able to learn. And if brain damage can change a person, that change could already be directed in some way, at least in theory.

Thermal said:
But to answer the question anyway, it would be akin to temporary insanity. The AI shouldn't be punished, but repaired as malfunctioning.
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Well, if my premises are correct, then the only difference I see between that AI and a human are time and efficiency of method. Whether someone is changed into a killer by an instant rearrangement of mechanical mind stuff or by a lifetime of experiences seems immaterial.

At that point, the real difference is that we "know" we can turn the AI back into our benevolent friend, but we don't know how or even whether we can turn the human killer into a productive member of society. But the issue is rarely framed that way.

Of course, that's just sci-fi talk and my premises could be wrong, but I think the thread that is actually about discussing "free will" might have devolved into a discussion on quantum mechanics.
 
Olmstead said:
For the purposes of this discussion, I'm going to assume that the world works the way I think it works, and if an individual would always respond to the same stimuli in the same circumstances in the same way,
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Then it's not a discussion; you've already baked your conclusion right into that puppy.

...it should theoretically be possible to program a response even in a human.
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As I keep harping on, this requires far more understanding about human consciousness than we have. We know a little about areas of the brain associated with certain kinds of activity during certain processes, but not enough to start swinging at programming. Although when we do, I've got this spouse that could use a dose of Manchurian Candidating.

Anyway, I don't think a true AI can have perfect defenses to its "mind". A large part of sentience seems to be that it needs to be messy, adaptable, malleable ... A sentient AI would need to be able to learn. And if brain damage can change a person, that change could already be directed in some way, at least in theory.
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Agreed, it certainly could. But could the resulting change be controlled, or would it leave a different free willed person?

Well, if my premises are correct, then the only difference I see between that AI and a human are time and efficiency of method. Whether someone is changed into a killer by an instant rearrangement of mechanical mind stuff or by a lifetime of experiences seems immaterial.

At that point, the real difference is that we "know" we can turn the AI back into our benevolent friend, but we don't know how or even whether we can turn the human killer into a productive member of society. But the issue is rarely framed that way.
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Well...agreed, at least in the whole. For this super AI, we would have to completely understand the workings of consciousness to build it. So until we get how our own works, and whether we have free will, we have a stonewall problem. Like, could we accidentally create an uncontrollable free willed AI that we couldn't reprogram? That's a similar "not often framed that way".

Of course, that's just sci-fi talk and my premises could be wrong, but I think the thread that is actually about discussing "free will" might have devolved into a discussion on quantum mechanics.
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Agreed that QM is going to lead us off on tangents away from the topic. But there are so many similarities that the temptation is high.
 
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Olmstead said:
... it should theoretically be possible to program a response even in a human.
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It is not just theoretically... it is done all the time... that is what brainwashing and inculcation and acculturation and education and propaganda and advertising and marketing and religions and nationalism and tribes etc. etc. do all the time, on the individual and population scales.

Brainwashing may not be as easy as programming an AI... but it is programming nevertheless...
 
jrhowell said:
How so?
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What do you mean? From what I pretty clearly recall from school, there is less neutral activity before a subject begins a mental or physical process than after, such as when a decision has been made and the neurons fire off to set the body's nervous system in action. Was it the volume of activity what you meant, or the timing, or the ability to differentiate which acts the neurons were part of, that you are questioning?
 
Thermal said:
What do you mean? From what I pretty clearly recall from school, there is less neutral activity before a subject begins a mental or physical process than after, such as when a decision has been made and the neurons fire off to set the body's nervous system in action. Was it the volume of activity what you meant, or the timing, or the ability to differentiate which acts the neurons were part of, that you are questioning?
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I see no evidence that neural activity is more influenced by thoughts than thoughts are influenced by neural activity.
 
jrhowell said:
I see no evidence that neural activity is more influenced by thoughts than thoughts are influenced by neural activity.
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Isn't that because they're the same thing? "Is the forest more influenced by trees than trees are influenced by the forest?"
 
Thermal said:
Visualizing it as a chain is begging the question, methinks. It forces an invariable A then B then C progression. What if you conceptualized it as an infinitely complex three dimensional web? Would you accept that the "chain" of cause and effect could remain, but have the effect be indeterminate? Synapses firing in the brain seem to be influenced by the subject's thoughts more than the other way around. Without knowing how this thinking thingy works, in the mechanical sense (and we solidly do not), is it skeptical to declare the firing neurons to be the cause of the effect of consciousness? Which one they are will screw badly with the "chain" conceptualization.





It really, really doesn't, man. We can conceptualize multiple different models for indeterminacy consistent with materialism. Just abandoning the oversimplified chain model opens those doors wide.



You can't just keep assuming our agreement on the very issue where we part ways. That's just baking in a forgone conclusion.



Yes, materialism already has a metric **** ton of monkey wrenches bouncing around in it from QM alone. Just quantum entanglement; if it is what it appears to be, we are rewriting everything we thought we knew.

And btw: you seem quite willing to set QM aside "with a pin in it" for the sake of the discussion of free will. Why are you so resistant to sticking a pin in consciousness itself, since we know so little about it? Instead, you treat it as a trivial and predictable billiard ball, when it is the one thing we know the least about.
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Thermal, you're conflating complexity with indeterminacy.

Complexity, no matter how dizzyingly complex, does not equal indeterminacy.
 
jrhowell said:
I see no evidence that neural activity is more influenced by thoughts than thoughts are influenced by neural activity.
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Inconsequential to the discussion, but when a subject decides to make any physical movement at all, it is the only time that we can identify specific neutral activity, because we can see it's movement as it originates in the brain and fires down the central nervous system to the related motor function. We can positively identify effect activity, but we can't identify cause activity (we can identify activity related to sensory input, but right back to the gray 'synapse soup' for the actual thinking part). Not really anything worth arguing about though.
 
Chanakya said:
Thermal, you're conflating complexity with indeterminacy.

Complexity, no matter how dizzyingly complex, does not equal indeterminacy.
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No, I'm not. I'm totally with you on that distinction. What I am pointing out is that by visualizing it as a chain, you hard wire your conclusion into your thinking. The reason that is a sticking point is that you keep not responding to the major criticism: you are denying science. Science says, beyond any shadow of a doubt (to borrow your phrase), that there is no persuasive evidence for determinism. You and others flatly deny this. Do you see what that makes your entrenched position? Begins with a W, ends with OO.

That's right, bitter though it may taste, denying free will wholesale is woo slinging, just sporting a sciencey-looking pocket protector instead of crystals. We can lobby for what we think is more likely based on our personal philosophies, but neither side can claim to drop a gravel, and certainly not dismiss science and declare it resolved beyond a shadow of a doubt.
 
Thermal said:
No, I'm not. I'm totally with you on that distinction. What I am pointing out is that by visualizing it as a chain, you hard wire your conclusion into your thinking.
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In what way? It doesn't matter whether it is a univariate chain --- to take the chain metaphor rather literally, in fact taken broadly it includes your web, but still --- I was saying, regardless of whether it is a univariate chain, or a multi-variate Ishikawa, or, as you say, a multi-cause multi-effect web; and also regardless how many gazillions of variables there are on either side of the equation: complexity does not tantamount to indeterminacy.

This is what you'd said to me, "What if you conceptualized it as an infinitely complex three dimensional web? Would you accept that the "chain" of cause and effect could remain, but have the effect be indeterminate?" Isn't it clear that you think that you can somehow escape the implications of the chain-of-causality argument, by introducing this web idea, and in the belief the multiplying, exploding, the complexity of the system, will somehow --- magically! --- make for indeterminacy? The fact is it won't.


The reason that is a sticking point is that you keep not responding to the major criticism: you are denying science. Science says, beyond any shadow of a doubt (to borrow your phrase), that there is no persuasive evidence for determinism. You and others flatly deny this. Do you see what that makes your entrenched position? Begins with a W, ends with OO.

That's right, bitter though it may taste, denying free will wholesale is woo slinging, just sporting a sciencey-looking pocket protector instead of crystals. We can lobby for what we think is more likely based on our personal philosophies, but neither side can claim to drop a gravel, and certainly not dismiss science and declare it resolved beyond a shadow of a doubt.
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This is exactly like god botherers institing that atheists are "denying science" by insisting there's no god, because there's no research paper that concludes that there's no god. Like I said, you're doing the God of the Gaps thing, this time trying to reach into that web of causality to perhaps find your free will lurking there. But it's just a web of straws, I'm afraid.

There is no place, at all, within the exorable chain of cause and effect that might let in free will. (Well, other than the steelmanning thing I myself went out of my way to spell out, but that's wild speculation at this point, albeit not necessarily impossible.)

I'm afraid it is free will proponents that are denying science; much like it is God believers that are denying science. There's no place for either in a rational scientific worldview --- at least so far we know so far.

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And, heh, you're doing some classic projecting here I'm afraid, Thermal. This lobbing at the rational side the allegation of "denying science", and of finding science and rationality "bitter", and all the rest of it. The fact is that, like I said, and completely beyond any shadow of doubt, free will is illusory.

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(I need hardly spell out that that is basis what we know so far. Nothing at all is "beyond shadow of doubt", not even something as commonplace as what we know of gravity, and everything, including this, is subject to complete revision should compelling evidence be forthcoming. So yeah, that shadow certainly lurks --- and, who knows, QM may turn out to be where it's been lurking all of this while.

But that aside, nah, a materialist paradigm leaves no place for free will, other than in wishful thinking, and in refusing to let go of bias.)
 
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Leumas said:
It is not just theoretically... it is done all the time... that is what brainwashing and inculcation and acculturation and education and propaganda and advertising and marketing and religions and nationalism and tribes etc. etc. do all the time, on the individual and population scales.

Brainwashing may not be as easy as programming an AI... but it is programming nevertheless...
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There is a massive chasm of difference between strongly influencing behavior and programming it. Winter Soldiers are solidly fantasy.
 
Chanakya said:
In what way? It doesn't matter whether it is a univariate chain --- to take the chain metaphor rather literally, in fact taken broadly it includes your web, but still --- I was saying, regardless of whether it is a univariate chain, or a multi-variate Ishikawa, or, as you say, a multi-cause multi-effect web; and also regardless how many gazillions of variables there are on either side of the equation: complexity does not tantamount to indeterminacy.

This is what you'd said to me, "What if you conceptualized it as an infinitely complex three dimensional web? Would you accept that the "chain" of cause and effect could remain, but have the effect be indeterminate?" Isn't it clear that you think that you can somehow escape the implications of the chain-of-causality argument, by introducing this web idea, and in the belief the multiplying, exploding, the complexity of the system, will somehow --- magically! --- make for indeterminacy? The fact is it won't.





This is exactly like god botherers institing that atheists are "denying science" by insisting there's no god, because there's no research paper that concludes that there's no god. Like I said, you're doing the God of the Gaps thing, this time trying to reach into that web of causality to perhaps find your free will lurking there. But it's just a web of straws, I'm afraid.

There is no place, at all, within the exorable chain of cause and effect that might let in free will. (Well, other than the steelmanning thing I myself went out of my way to spell out, but that's wild speculation at this point, albeit not necessarily impossible.)

I'm afraid it is free will proponents that are denying science; much like it is God believers that are denying science. There's no place for either in a rational scientific worldview --- at least so far we know so far.

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And, heh, you're doing some classic projecting here I'm afraid, Thermal. This lobbing at the rational side the allegation of "denying science", and of finding science and rationality "bitter", and all the rest of it. The fact is that, like I said, and completely beyond any shadow of doubt, free will is illusory.

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(I need hardly spell out that that is basis what we know so far. Nothing at all is "beyond shadow of doubt", not even something as commonplace as what we know of gravity, and everything, including this, is subject to complete revision should compelling evidence be forthcoming. So yeah, that shadow certainly lurks --- and, who knows, QM may turn out to be where it's been lurking all of this while.

But that aside, nah, a materialist paradigm leaves no place for free will, other than in wishful thinking, and in refusing to let go of bias.)
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Bias, you say? Let's look at the evidence, and come to a conclusion.

Free will is experienced by humans. We think. We choose.

Determinism is at odds with this universal experience. But the materialist paradigm suggests that we know of no other option. Therefore it dismisses the actual evidence as illusory.

Whether or not you agree, can you see the argument that no-free-will is identical to posing the brain-in-a-vat dilemma? To many of us, that is an unpersuasive argument. Simply not understanding the unique process of consciousness is not enough to dismiss the only evidence we actually have: our very consciousness. The Sum that follows from Cogito.

I'm willing to "stick a pin in it", till we know more about how the process of consciousness physically :) works. I'm not willing to forgo science and leap to an oversimplified explanation that leads to basically concluding that nothing is real. That conclusion alone leads me to think there is a bit of a problem in the way it was arrived at.
 
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Thermal said:
Bias, you say? Let's look at the evidence, and come to a conclusion.

Free will is experienced by humans. We think. We choose.

Determinism is at odds with this universal experience. But the materialist paradigm suggests that we know of no other option. Therefore it dismisses the actual evidence as illusory.
Whether or not you agree, can you see the argument that no-free-will is identical to posing the brain-in-a-vat dilemma? To many of us, that is an unpersuasive argument. Simply not understanding the unique process of consciousness is not enough to dismiss the only evidence we actually have: our very consciousness. The Sum that follows from Cogito.

I'm willing to "stick a pin in it", till we know more about how the process of consciousness physically :) works. I'm not willing to forgo science and leap to an oversimplified explanation that leads to basically concluding that nothing is real. That conclusion alone leads me to think there is a bit of a problem in the way it was arrived at.
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First, I see you've dropped the web thing now, heh. Sorry, don't mean to rub it in or anything, swear; but, all of that, it looks to me very like desperately clutching at straws in order to not have to face where it's all leading, rather than following on where the trail leads.

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And as far as the highlighted, finally! You do recognize, then, finally, that materialism leads inexorably to a no-free-will position. Great; because that is all I'm saying.

Now is the materialist paradigm itself justified, given science, given rationality, all of that? I happen to think it is. And I'm hopeful that, even though you clearly disagree at this point, but we can discuss our way to your agreeing with that idea as well. But that's a whole separate discussion; and it'll probably prove to be a long haul, necessarily involving like lots of back-and-forths, and, if it's to be really meaningful, then probably requiring us to look up references to bolster our respective arguments. So I'm suggesting we let that go, for now ----- although if you'd really like to do this, and start a new thread, then I'll go along with you on it, absolutely.

For now, I'm satisfied with your recognizing that materialism leaves no place for free will.
 
Chanakya said:
First, I see you've dropped the web thing now, heh. Sorry, don't mean to rub it in or anything, swear; but, all of that, it looks to me very like desperately clutching at straws in order to not have to face where it's all leading, rather than following on where the trail leads.

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And as far as the highlighted, finally! You do recognize, then, finally, that materialism leads inexorably to a no-free-will position. Great; because that is all I'm saying.

Now is the materialist paradigm itself justified, given science, given rationality, all of that? I happen to think it is. And I'm hopeful that, even though you clearly disagree at this point, but we can discuss our way to your agreeing with that idea as well. But that's a whole separate discussion; and it'll probably prove to be a long haul, necessarily involving like lots of back-and-forths, and, if it's to be really meaningful, then probably requiring us to look up references to bolster our respective arguments. So I'm suggesting we let that go, for now ----- although if you'd really like to do this, and start a new thread, then I'll go along with you on it, absolutely.

For now, I'm satisfied with your recognizing that materialism leaves no place for free will.
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Chanakya, babe, I love ya, but you are frustrating me out of my mind.

In the hilited, I am showing why the conclusion cannot not be arrived at, not agreeing that it does. It basically requires as much magic as any theology requires. Kind of like the multiverse theory, where the undetectable universes are as magical as any god. Or Dark Matter, whose very existence is defined as "undetectable" requires god-like magic.

When a conclusion requires magic, you believe in the magic. When a conclusion requires magic, I stick a pin in it and with a nod to Asimov, say "insufficient data for a meaningful conclusion". Our respective positions are irreconcilable.
 
Olmstead said:
Humans might be too close for people to have a detached perspective:

Imagine a scientist were to build a perfectly sentient and sapient AI, and you became friends with that AI. Then some malicious person programs the AI to kill your family. The scientist eventually tracks it down, purges the malicious code, and installs some better anti-tampering software. Should that AI be punished?
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Why don't you answer that question, and explain how you arrived at your answer?

Better yet: Why don't you tell us whether you believe free will is a myth, and then tell us how that informs your answer in the case of human beings?
 
Thermal said:
Chanakya, babe, I love ya, but you are frustrating me out of my mind.

In the hilited, I am showing why the conclusion cannot not be arrived at, not agreeing that it does. It basically requires as much magic as any theology requires. Kind of like the multiverse theory, where the undetectable universes are as magical as any god. Or Dark Matter, whose very existence is defined as "undetectable" requires god-like magic.

When a conclusion requires magic, you believe in the magic. When a conclusion requires magic, I stick a pin in it and with a nod to Asimov, say "insufficient data for a meaningful conclusion". Our respective positions are irreconcilable.
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Doesn't quite gel with what you actually said, in that last post. I mean, you're clearly saying there that materialism does lead to no-free-will, but what you're contesting, at that point, is whether materialism itself reflects the real world accurately.

Nor, for that matter, does that gel with your reasoning itself agreeing with me, and in spite of yourself, in terms of your thing about the web. I'm thinking, while the reasoning leads you agree, but, somehow, you keep holding back, against reason. I mean, haha, that thing about calling all of this magic, insisting that it is this that's anti-scientific!




...But hey, let's chill. Not to beat this to death any more, right?

Fun talking, man. Cheers!
 
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Chanakya said:
Doesn't quite gel with what you actually said, in that last post. I mean, you're clearly saying there that materialism does lead to no-free-will, but that you're contesting is whether materialism itself reflects the real world accurately.
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Ok, agreed. What I should have said was "ITT, materialism is being presented as..." and on and on. There are materialistic models that allow for free will.

Nor, for that matter, does that gel with your reasoning itself agreeing with me, and in spite of yourself, in terms of your thing about the web. I'm thinking, while the reasoning leads you agree, but, somehow, you keep holding back, against reason. I mean, haha, that thing about calling all of this magic, insisting that it is this that's anti-scientific!
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What I have been saying is that I totally get your respect for cause and effect, and I'm with you, right up till we hit that fork in the road where we choose "I conclude that everything is an illusion" or "we have insufficient data for a meaningful conclusion".


...But hey, let's chill. Not to beat this to death any more, right?

Fun talking, man. Cheers!
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Dig it. Happy New Year!
 
Thermal said:
Ok, agreed. What I should have said was "ITT, materialism is being presented as..." and on and on. There are materialistic models that allow for free will.



What I have been saying is that I totally get your respect for cause and effect, and I'm with you, right up till we hit that fork in the road where we choose "I conclude that everything is an illusion" or "we have insufficient data for a meaningful conclusion".




Dig it. Happy New Year!
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You too. Happy New Year!
 
theprestige said:
Why don't you answer that question, and explain how you arrived at your answer?

Better yet: Why don't you tell us whether you believe free will is a myth, and then tell us how that informs your answer in the case of human beings?
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I did. No free will. Resentment makes no sense. Completely utilitarian justice system.

Then you tell me that I can't make decisions based on having no free will if I don't have free will, because you think that being an ignorant puppet of the universe makes more sense than being an aware puppet of the universe.

You don't have an answer for the AI, because you know it's equivalent, and you can't reconcile that with the idea of personal responibility.
 
I’ll just leave this here:

https://reason.com/2022/08/31/11000...andemic-only-17-were-arrested-for-new-crimes/

And repeat my opinion that a scientific justice system would be an improvement regardless of either your position on or the truth about free will.

I still haven’t clarified my older post but basically I think the benefits of treating criminality humanely far outweigh the side effects like people gaming the system, partly because those gaming the system would basically be scamming their way into things like…. job training…. That’s not that much of a downside imo.

Still confused about why there is so much pushback on the idea that ‘the belief that we have free will’ (along with everything we communicate to one another) can be a component of the set of inputs in a deterministic system of decision making.

It seems to me that it’s the opposite of the brain in a vat idea. We have no reason to suppose the brain in a vat situation is true. The idea that our thought processes are mainly deterministic is the other way around; we have no reason to think they aren’t. Nobody can even propose a way they would not be (ie where would any decision come from if not the state arrived at by a history of inputs?). The fact that it’s spectacularly complex doesn’t make it magical, and I have yet to see a concept of free will that doesn’t look like a post-it stuck on top of deterministic processes.

Unless you simply use ‘free will’ as the term to describe how we feel about our decisions, it doesn’t seem to me to be a coherent idea.
 
When a "Scientific justice system" is proposed, does that mean one with guidelines informed by science, or some theoretical way of removing a human judge from the decision? It's appealing to imagine a perfectly impartial algorithm where you input the findings and it spits out the approproate consequences .

But I think it's a false hope. In practice, it has a good chance to inherit the biases of whoever designs the algorithm. As well, I don't think you can plan a good response for every possibility. However well thought-out the system is, a case can arise where the established outcome is obviously not ideal or may even be unconscionable. Trying to skip the human judgment call is how we get the follies of zero-tolerance policies and mandatory minimum sentences.

Sent from my SM-S901U using Tapatalk
 
Leumas said:
What is that?
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I have thought about that question myself. I think it basically means revenge, but for people who want to pretend that they are above such petty concerns.

A better goal is perhaps the common good. Justice is a pound of flesh.

If free will is nothing more than a roll of the dice, it isn’t really a choice.

Still, a rabid dog should be put down. As a kindness, and for our own safety.
 
Puppycow said:
I have thought about that question myself. I think it basically means revenge, but for people who want to pretend that they are above such petty concerns.

A better goal is perhaps the common good. Justice is a pound of flesh.

If free will is nothing more than a roll of the dice, it isn’t really a choice.

Still, a rabid dog should be put down. As a kindness, and for our own safety.
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Government justice systems may have started as a way to de-personalize revenge, to prevent indefinite cycles of personal revenge. The consequence, whatever it was, generally served as a deterrent to committing crimes as well. Though being originally inspired by revenge there's an element of cruelty that often still remains.

More "enlightened" systems, for lack of a better term, focus on what will serve as a deterrent without unnecessary cruelty, and possibly even more so on what will keep the criminal from reoffending. People bristle at that, but it's a good deal. I may want whoever victimized me to suffer, but am I willing to throw their next victim under the bus to get that satisfaction, if a different approach would otherwise avoid the person victimizing someone else?
 
theprestige said:
...and that true scientific justice can't demand ...
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"Scientific justice" is not an entity with agency, wether or not that agency is freely willed. It cannot make demands anyway. It's just two words you slapped together based, I am reasonable sure, on you happening to have a certain set of prefered political philosphies in the collection of particles we might call "your brain".

I think the sensible approach is to look at how humans do in fact interact, and how those interactions depend on how power is wielded etc. We can safely ignore whether there is, objectively, free will. The important thing is that there is, psychologically, the impression of free will.
 
Puppycow said:
I have thought about that question myself. I think it basically means revenge, but for people who want to pretend that they are above such petty concerns.
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Exactly... and to the ones who are not the rear-end of the luck spectrum.


Puppycow said:
A better goal is perhaps the common good.
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No such thing really... there will always be predators and prey... and the human species are pernicious predators who prey not just on other species but more so on their own.

Puppycow said:
Justice is a pound of flesh.

If free will is nothing more than a roll of the dice, it isn’t really a choice.
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See this post...


Puppycow said:
Still, a rabid dog should be put down. As a kindness, and for our own safety.
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Just substitute that term with correction/ rectification/ adjustment/ recalibration/ repair and it becomes very clear that "free-will" claptrap (whatever that might be) has absolutely no relevance whatsoever on the issue.

We evolved to avoid and act against danger.... we evolved to be a social animal... we evolved to correct/ rectify/ adjust/ recalibrate/ repair things that do or may pause danger or go broken.
 
Oystein said:
"Scientific justice" is not an entity with agency, wether or not that agency is freely willed. It cannot make demands anyway. It's just two words you slapped together based, I am reasonable sure, on you happening to have a certain set of prefered political philosphies in the collection of particles we might call "your brain".
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In that sentence, the justice system is a proxy for the promulgators of the system. It's a figure of speech. No need to be rude.
 
theprestige said:
How can you morally punish someone for a crime they did not choose to commit?
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Under the rules of determinism [if I am understanding that correctly] IF we exist in such a system, THEN the question really should be asking "WHY can we morally punish someone for a crime they did not choose to commit?", in which case the answer would have to be BECAUSE it has been predetermined that way.

Morals too, must be predetermined. Morals that change, must also follow that same rule.

I think the evidence for a predeterministic universe is strong enough to warrant being on the table of discussion.

The thought experiment I use re that, is along the lines of the following:

If this experience I am having as a human being, in a planet system, in a galaxy system, in a universe system is a simulated reality experience I as a mind [even alongside other minds] helped create and if I then used said machinery to have the human experience, and made it so that the experience hid knowledge from human-me that machine making me helped create something which was a simulated reality, human me could have a genuine experience of being human which the machinery creating entitles could find as very useful data.

They could even feedback what they learned from the useful data, to human me and human me would be under the impression that I was having original ideas.

If human me started to cotton on to the idea that I exist within a predetermined simulation experience, that data is useful to feedback to me, if the one of the reasons the simulation was created, was to see if any human could even contemplate the possibility, and since many humans do indeed contemplate the idea as being possible, the creators of the machinery can feedback ideas on how one might be sure that this is the case, and what one best do, if that is the case.

The 'feeding back' is where the idea of predetermination gets its legs.

Another satisfying reason for thinking I exist within a simulation that I helped to create and willfully consciously went into, for the experience - even at the price of losing all memory of ever having a prior existence - is that I can trust that I and my fellow engineers, had the best intentions in creating and utilizing said machinery, and I needn't be a victim of predestination.

Rather, I am required to participate as a co-creator, and figure out with my 'team' [invisible to human me - creator entity minds], what the game is about and how to best play it.

It doesn't matter that I am being prompted from subconscious sources, that I am barely conscious of. The 'team' is 'me' in another reality which created this one. I can go with that, because I am simply trusting a trustworthy process created by a trustworthy source.
 
If there's no free will, there's no purpose to examining the question of what we "should" do, because we're just going to do whatever we were going to do.

It's why I am not fond of any line of reasoning that presumes we're incapable of making choices. Go ahead and try not to make choices, see how that works out for you.

It's quite possible to question where our choices come from and whether we truly have agency. The paradox is, that if you assume we don't have agency, you're also assuming we have no ability to alter what we choose given that supposed revelation. So if it's a true assumption, it's useless by its nature.
 
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gnome said:
If there's no free will, there's no purpose to examining the question of what we "should" do, because we're just going to do whatever we were going to do.

It's why I am not fond of any line of reasoning that presumes we're incapable of making choices. Go ahead and try not to make choices, see how that works out for you.

It's quite possible to question where our choices come from and whether we truly have agency. The paradox is, that if you assume we don't have agency, you're also assuming we have no ability to alter what we choose given that supposed revelation. So if it's a true assumption, it's useless by its nature.
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Is it any more useless than the assumption/delusion that we do have free will? I don't see how.
 
I suppose it depends how you take the assumption. Taking any deliberate actions at all in life seems to have a built in assumption that you can make a choice. Or else you'd just sit there idle waiting for physics to make your body do things for you.
 
everyone acts as if Free Will is an actual thing.

It's a bit of mental masturbation to intellectually say it isn't.
 
gnome said:
If there's no free will, there's no purpose to examining the question of what we "should" do, because we're just going to do whatever we were going to do.
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You're conflating free will with volition, agency, the ability to assess outcomes and act accordingly. It's already been discussed here upthread.

Unless you're mentally impaired, or a child, or not in possession of relevant data, then you can assess outcomes, and act in consonance with that assessment. That volition, that agency, it carries responsibility, and it is grounds for culpability for the outcome of your actions.

But true, you can't possibly have acted differently than you actually did. On the face of it that may appear contridictory, but it isn't really, if you think about it a bit.

As far as I can see it, the free will question has nothing whatsoever to do with the question of taking and assigning responsibility. Those who imagine it does, IMV they're conflating agency and volition with free will.

When it comes to redress, to fines and jails and executions and the rest of it, then that is a separate question; but again, that question too has nothing whatever to do with free will per se.*


*Unless of course someone's approaching this from a religious perspective, and holding on to some cross-eyed biblical eye-for-an-eye thing. In that case you'd need to show such half-witted bible-sucklers the error in their thinking, and sure, discussing why they're wrong by explaining that there's no free will might be one way of going around doing that. To that limited extent I guess the free will quesiton might indeed be relevant. But bar that special case, I'd say, and IMV, to say that "You can't have responsiblity if/because you don't have free will" is exactly of the class of logical error as to say that "You can't have morals if/because there isn't a God".



The Great Zaganza said:
everyone acts as if Free Will is an actual thing.

It's a bit of mental masturbation to intellectually say it isn't.
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See above.

As I see it, to take the line you've taken above, is to say something like, "Everyone acts as if eternal life is an actual thing, and God is an actual thing, and God-given morals as well, and the consequences to abiding by or going against those God-given morals; and it is a bit of a mental masturabuation to intellectually claim otherwise." While acting "morally" means does need you to recognize the validity of morals, but it has nothing to do with whether those morals are absolute.

Likewise, what you're referring to here is recognizing the validity of volition, of agency, or the ability to assess outcomes and to act accordingly. Whether one has the ability to have acted differently than one in fact did ---- which is what free will amounts to (and no, one doesn't have that ability) --- is a completely separate question. An irrelevant question, actually, operationally speaking at any rate, in the same sense as the absolute-morals question in the preceding paragraph was irrelevant.

I don't need absolute morals in order to recognize that morals are a thing. And I don't need the ability of acting independently of precedent causes in order to recognize that acting responsibly is a thing, and in order to recognize that assigning responsiblity (and culpability) for one's actions is a thing.




eta: arthwollipot had said upthread (or possibly in another thread, actually, but whatever) that while we don't have free will, but it makes sense for us to act as if we do. I'd found that a very reasonable approach at that time. But having thought a bit about this, thanks to this thread (and the other thread on free will), I'm starting to agree with Olmstead that that apparently reasonable approach is actually incoherent. What is called for is not to pretend that we have free will despite knowing we don't have it; instead, what is called for is to clearly recongize the difference between free will and volition/agency, and to clearly understand what exactly free will amounts to (and let's not forget that at the end of the day it is as much of a religious idea as are soul and God).

What arthwollipot's approach does is make use of the commonly prevalent conflation between free will and agency, and works with that conflation instead of correcting it, and attempts a workaround for arriving at the correct solution despite acting with incorrect premises. To that extent it works, sure. But, and like Olmstead said upthread, and I'm starting to agree with him, this is actually an incoherent piece of reasoning, that somehow manages to apparently square the circle (by working from an error, and suggesting another error to correct the effects of the first error). Far better, and far more coherent, and far more accurate, to directly correct the original error itself, is what I've now started to come to see.
 
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this would be a fair point IF anyone acted as if there is an eternal life - but LITERALLY no one does.
Everyone who claims they do believe in a hereafter nevertheless act as if is doesn't.
Arguably, not even suicide bombers do - they do it so their families get a big check and prestige.

But everyone actually acts as if we had free will.
 
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gnome said:
I suppose it depends how you take the assumption. Taking any deliberate actions at all in life seems to have a built in assumption that you can make a choice. Or else you'd just sit there idle waiting for physics to make your body do things for you.
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But I won't be idly waiting, because physics already make my body do stuff, like "go get pizza because hungry". Free will doesn't have to be part of this equation.
 
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