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On April 19 2010 19:46 Badjas wrote:Show nested quote +On April 19 2010 18:36 Ota Solgryn wrote:On April 19 2010 17:47 Badjas wrote:On April 19 2010 17:40 Ota Solgryn wrote:
The set of rules that have been made by man that "governs" the events throughout universe history are pretty lacking.
Also, the universe is not made of particles nor is it made of waves, it is made of something in between. This particle/wave duality gives a great amount of randomness, thus you cannot predict everything perfectly and thus your decision was not predetermined. Randomness to the human mind is the lack of knowledge on the cause of the observed. (In my opinion) Take a dice roll. Build a device that will throw a device in the exact same way every time, and keep obvious factors like wind and shocks out of the experiment. The dice should roll the same side up. (Depending on how well you can exterminate unknown factors.) A dice is nice and coarse for this to work. Predicting the pattern of waves of the sea as they crash on the shores, that's a rather more difficult task. (edit typo) No. Your example with the dice is just an example of where you make the system simple enough so that the classic newtonian rules of physics apply, which are very simple rules that are very easy to predict stuff from, if the system actually follows these rules. If the system gets more complex and/or at the atomic level the newtonian physics no longer apply. The OP talked about how his decision was predetermined because particles throughout time have been interacting in such a way that he finally made a 9 pool. In such a system that works at an atomic level there is no way of predicting the outcome because there is randomness in the universe (most scientists agree on this). Why is it random? The accepted physics rules states that all matter is particles if you look at them in the past, i.e. they can be said to have this and that size, be at this and that position with this and that speed/velocity. On the contrary all matter consists of waves in the future, i.e. they do not have a well defined position, size or velocity, they do however have some sort confined space in which they can are, so it is possible to predict their position, but not precisely. This is also why a simple or well defined system in which the waves are within a very small space, can be predicted to some degree, which is the case with the dices. Finally the present is then the strange system where we have a particle/wave duallity which which is hard to comprehend. The string theory pretty much states the same things just in different ways. The reason why these theories have not revolutionized the scientific world is because these theories run in to problems, albeit different from the kvantum mechanics, but just as severe when trying to calculate and predict physical systems on the atomic level. The only beef I have with what you write, is that you speak as if what you are saying is the truth. Also, [citation needed] on the 'most scientists agree' part. What you say about the dice example, I agree with. It is the exact reason I brought it up. In my belief, it has all to do with the amount of knowledge of a system. (And I do not claim that we will ever know all about the universe.) Knowledge is of course only meaningful in the context of an (human) observer and it is the human observer which has the concept of randomness (and /perhaps/ it is a universal property in a certain way).
Yes, you are right. I could find citation but I really do not have the time or patience. But it would be more optimal.
But then again, I could just cite one physics book and all would be fine. I just can't remember the name of it right now. Maybe I'll find it later when I get home.
You are also right about that it is the limits of the observer that might be what leads to apparent randomness. But science has to believe what, at the time, have been proved and accepted, otherwise there is no science. And as far as I know from classes and various books, the generel concensus is that the physics world is random and unpredictable.
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I just now watched the video and I think the problem with it is that it shows everything as being too linear. In the beginning, it was linear. But only up until the point where it spawned something that is able to go in more than one way. Specifically, I'm talking about the ability to rationalize (i.e. animals). When that happens, everything isn't so linear, you have options and choices and based on how you decide to act the outcome will be different.
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Arbiter, you posting that out of free will or is the professor manipulating you?
Anyway I read the short description of the book. I am opposed to the view that a non-free will implies that people are not responsible for their actions. Free will has a meaning on a more abstract ground which is totally out of context when regarding the evaluation of one's actions in society. Guess I should read the book to see what the professor's actually saying in this regard before jumping to conclusions on a short description.
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Y'know, if there is a god(s), for that/those god(s) to be considered "infinite," he/they would only need to be slightly bigger than the universe itself.
time=distance
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United Kingdom2674 Posts
On April 19 2010 20:55 Badjas wrote:Guess I should read the book to see what the professor's actually saying in this regard before jumping to conclusions on a short description.
That's a splendid idea.
I really recommend it for anyone who is relatively new to the free will problem.
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didn't read the entire threads but are we on physics now??? I thought he was asking about free will...
I don't know about physics having much to do with this, but does the fact that one day all our behaviors and thoughts can be predicted and caused by certain neurotransmitter in our brain mean we don't have free will?
what is free will really?
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_and_mathematics
The game of Go is one of the most popular games in the world and is on par with games such as chess, in any of its Western or Asian variants, in terms of game theory and as an intellectual activity. It has also been argued to be the most complex of all games, with most advocates referring to the difficulty in programming the game to be played by computers and the large number of variations of play.[1] While the strongest computer chess software has defeated top players (Deep Blue beat the world champion Garry Kasparov in 1997), the best Go programs routinely lose to talented children and consistently reach only the 1-10 kyu range of ranking. Many in the field of artificial intelligence consider Go to be a better measure of a computer's capacity for thought than chess.[2]
The game complexity of Go is such that describing even elementary strategy fills many introductory books. In fact, numerical estimates show that the number of possible games of Go far exceeds the number of atoms in the known universe.
Lets go over that last sentence again. Just ONE single board game has more possible outcomes than the total number of atoms in the known universe.
Now let's also consider that fact that this is a turn based game, as compared to starcraft which is done in REAL TIME. Imagine the possible number of game states for a game like that (guessing it would be multiple times the number of atoms in the universe).
Basically what I'm trying to say is, if there is such a thing as predeterminism, that the links of cause and effect are so complex, the number of causes (atoms in the universe) far exceeds the number of eventual outcomes (events unfolding around us). What you end up with is an infinite tree graph, always increasing and expanding, never decreasing.
When you compare two different moments in time, one right after another, the difference in possible outcomes is astronomically different. There will never even be close to the same number of molecules in the universe as there are possible outcomes (ideas exist even if they've never been encountered/materialized). The ratio is so skewed, I don't think a computer could ever come close to calculating a number big enough to represent it.
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Hahaha I love this topic because I went through this exact same train of thought like 5-6 years ago. This question is probably the reason I decided to become a physics major <3
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United Kingdom2674 Posts
On April 19 2010 21:33 SkylineSC wrote:
didn't read the entire threads but are we on physics now??? I thought he was asking about free will...
I don't know about physics having much to do with this, but does the fact that one day all our behaviors and thoughts can be predicted and caused by certain neurotransmitter in our brain mean we don't have free will?
what is free will really?
The classical problem associated with free will relates to causal determinism. It is natural to chracterise the possession of free will as something like the ability to have done otherwise than one did. But if all events are determined by antecedent causes then my own actions are determined by antecedent causes and it would seem it was not possible, after all, that for any action of mine I could have done otherwise than I did.
That is a basic statement of the problem as it has been framed in philosophy.
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It amuses me how people can confuse themselves over semantics. That's what happens when you mix different concepts together. "Free will" would be an attribute that is part of how we conceptualize our lives as human beings whereas things such as things such as atomics and particles is a way to conceptualize the existance of everything. You speak about the latter while still using the attribute of "free will" from the former. How you end up interpreting it doesn't really have any meaning since it's a mismatch; you try to talk about free will in an area where talking about will is void.
You see, all the things that can be explained by science as things that go on without our conscious knowledge when we act and think are all part of how we see humans and human behaviour, just not explicitly. There will always be different connections of cause and effect in everything that goes on in the universe, but this does not change the way we act, it just explains it. This explanation is not a reason, it's just a different conceptualisation of our actions. So, it has no impact on the discussion of free will, since the actions are still many and determined by humans, who just happen to be made up of atoms, particles and whatnot.
If you look at other things that have raised doubt about free will, you have something such as fate. This idea still operates within our conceptualization of human lives, not assuming that people are seperate from what we consider them to be, but simply that in some abstract way our actions are controlled and determined by something else, this rendering us without actual free will to do as we like.
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While it is true, they are different concepts; if either one is right, the other is wrong. Either we really do have free will (since physics tells us that everything is predetermined and is wrong), or we do not have free will (since physics tells us that everything is predetermined and is right).
I mean, that is unless you think we have "souls" or something of the like which defines us as human beings instead of just biological machines evolved to reproduce in the most efficient way possible..... We obey the laws of physics (whether we will ever truly understand these laws is up for debate), and therefore, it leaves a scary thought that everything truly is predetermined.....
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There aren't any "hidden variables" in quantum mechanics by the way, so any determinist interpretation of physics on the quantum level is wrong. If you look at a two-slit interference pattern caused by one particle passing through the slit at a time, there's not something "hidden" in the particle that determines which slit it goes through because if there were that leads to other predictions that are not consistent with reality.*
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_paradox
along with
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_inequality
(You can go read J. S. Bell's paper on the EPR paradox if you like: http://www.physics.princeton.edu/~mcdonald/examples/QM/bell_physics_1_195_64.pdf )
*There are a few people who question this, as you can see in the wikipedia article on Bell's inequality. By far the majority interpretation though is that quantum mechanics is truly random.
My understanding is that nothing in physics as we understand it today precludes free will.
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But, IMPERVIOUS, once again you let the words confuse you. You say that we "obey" and that how we explain physics is about "laws". You could instead have said that we "operate" within the "workings" of physics, and would have had a different effect if you tried to transfer it directly to things that it does not relate to. Similarly, instead of saying our actions are "predetermined" because of causal links, you could say that our actions all consist through a "serious of connections".
It's not about right or wrong, it's simply a matter of understanding different aspects of the same thing. Really, these are just words used to explain different things and make them easier for us to understand. It does not mean that it changes the way we act and think, and has no impact on our conceptualization of human life, among other things the idea of "free will".
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I have no idea why people are bring physics to the equation of free will. I am not a physicst and nowhere near it, but I think the question we should ask is a biological one which is within our reach instead of physical determinism which encompasses the existence of our entire universe.
Are we just biological programs that simply feel like we have free will through consciousness? Or are we fully in control of our own decisions. Not that this question is really relevant since we act as if we have free will and are molded by our environmental choices, so either way it's not going to change the way we live at all, it's just going to make us more humble, that's all.
Thanks for the link two_down, but I currently am not subscribed to Nature so I can't access the article T__T.
Btw the lardy goose, that argument is tautological and wrong, the problem with determinism is that it controls the action of our microscopic particles, and our microscopic particles control our macrocosm, and if the action of our neurochemicals and neuroparticles is determined and cannot be changed, you cannot have free will since the actions are predetermined and determine the whole actions of the individual(alas no control). It might work as a philosophical argument, but biology says otherwise. Free will implies you have a choice in what you do, and since the neurons can't act in any other way I do not see the part where this any choice + you have to factor in consciousness into it. I guess my arguments may be wrong and fallacious, but I do feel there is a fallacy in that line of argument.
You can have no determinism and still have no free will, and that's why I think the question of free will is a question of biology and not physics.
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On April 20 2010 03:28 Asjo wrote:
But, IMPERVIOUS, once again you let the words confuse you. You say that we "obey" and that how we explain physics is about "laws". You could instead have said that we "operate" within the "workings" of physics, and would have had a different effect if you tried to transfer it directly to things that it does not relate to. Similarly, instead of saying our actions are "predetermined" because of causal links, you could say that our actions all consist through a "serious of connections".
I drop a ball. It falls to the floor. It has obeyed the law of gravity. It has also operated within the workings of gravity. It means the same thing, it just sounds nicer to any argument against the science behind it if you use less concrete wording.....
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On April 20 2010 03:47 lMPERVlOUS wrote:Show nested quote +On April 20 2010 03:28 Asjo wrote:
But, IMPERVIOUS, once again you let the words confuse you. You say that we "obey" and that how we explain physics is about "laws". You could instead have said that we "operate" within the "workings" of physics, and would have had a different effect if you tried to transfer it directly to things that it does not relate to. Similarly, instead of saying our actions are "predetermined" because of causal links, you could say that our actions all consist through a "serious of connections". I drop a ball. It falls to the floor. It has obeyed the law of gravity. It has also operated within the workings of gravity. It means the same thing, it just sounds nicer to any argument against the science behind it if you use less concrete wording.....
It's not whether it's more or less concrete. It's that by using certain wording you get a specific transferred meaning. You decide to read into this meaning, which is really just based on semantics rather than actual conceptualization of human behaviour.
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And what is human behavior? Is it not caused by the chemical reactions in our brains?
There has been a lot of proof showing that certain chemicals do specific things to us. We cannot predict everything, however, there is an immense amount of research done which proves correlation. More research is needed, but it definitely shows that our behavior is strongly influenced by chemicals in our brains, if not completely causing every one of our actions.
Chemical reactions are the physical interactions between molecules. These abide by laws of physics. A pretty simple analogy would be looking at bowling. You throw the ball down the lane, and you attempt to hit the pins, knocking down 0-10 of them. The amount you knock down is determined by the strength you threw the ball, the angle it hits the pins, the rotation of the ball, and the placement of the pins, air resistance, etc.....
By looking at which pins were knocked down, where they came to rest, and where the ball ended up coming to rest, you can possibly identify how the ball was thrown.
Looking at atoms again, for each chemical reaction that takes place, you could backtrack it, just like the bowling ball, and figure out which direction, and with what spin, it had. You could do this with every atom in existence, if you knew exactly how the laws of physics worked at the atomic level. You could look back billions of years.
Recapping - Human behavior is at minimum influenced by chemical reactions in our brains (if not completely controlled by it). Chemical reactions are based on physics at the atomic level. Physical interactions can be predicted, and backtracked, if the precise laws and situation is known. If it can be backtracked, then it means that the way that previous interactions happened shape future interactions. If this is the case, then the "free will" people think so highly of may not even exist.....
It's a pretty simple, logical argument..... And the outcome of it sucks.....
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i like the way you think man. I'm a philosophy major...
You need to read up on "Determinism"
This is largely accepted in the ivory tower. quite interesting
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On April 19 2010 14:59 phosphorylation wrote:
there is an inherent randomness in the movement of atoms (physics)
so nothing can be predicted from the past state (at least not compeltely accurately)
whether this implies that we have free will or not -- i will let the philosopher answer this
because i am not entirely sure
NO this is NOT free will
This leaves us with 2 options. either one determinism or random shit.
Either we are guided by physics - no free will
Or we are guided by randomness - no free will
any combination of this still faisl to give us free wiil
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EPT
