[OT] Plato's Pub and Philosophical Society

[Jack Simth]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
Yes, this was the crux of the problem. There is absolutely nothing logical or philosophical about the responses (the QM post comes close, but not quite). The original post about this was not meant as an end-all, beat-all argument, but more as a topic to discuss.

All right, then, um..

I do not ever make a conscious choice between eating food and not eating food. According to the laws of nature, the cells in my body will begin to die without a constant supply of energy (in the form of glucose). So, I eat food. I do not eat it because I actively set out to eat it. Just a few examples for contemplation.

How then could you explain the monks who deprive themselves for spiritual enlightenment or those who suicide? If everything is determined by the laws of nature, which state that things want to survive, then they cannot be explained. They can, however, if you postulate that the people involved have free will.
If you postulate that they do not have free will, and do so as a result of social and economic pressures, then you must also explain why most people don't.
If you postulate that people do what they do because of their genetic makeup and how they were raised, then you must also address how the child of a child beater will often not become a child beater him- or her- self, despite the very strong tendency for the furtheration of the parents' habits that is known to exist.

[Chronon]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
It is probably time to give this thread a more appropriate title.

Yes, you're probably right. See new title above...

[dogscoff]

Cool, a pub. Just in time, with the demise of the Cantina I have nowhere to drown the sorrows inflicted by the Iraq thread.

*dogscoff orders and downs four pints of strong lager, all the while considering whether his actions are simply the deterministically inevitible results of an uncountable accumulation of absolute probablity events in the vast atomic pinball game that is the entirity of space/time since the Big Bang, or whether the essence of consciousness actually resides in the largely unexplored realms of quantum mechanics, thus scientifically proving that the human mind is greater than the sum of its parts and releasing decision from the deterministic constraints of cause and effect, implying that free will does exist and making tomorrow's hangover entirely his own fault.

Even though Fyron hasn't got his Comprehensive Deterministic Universal Modeller (C-DUM) working yet, everyone predicts that dogscoff will soon fall drunkenly off his chair. He does.

[ March 20, 2003, 15:46: Message edited by: dogscoff ]

[Alpha Kodiak]

It finally all came together for me, and now I understand. We are all doomed to play SEIV forever (or at least until SEV comes out) because of all of the events that have happened in the past. We have no choice, it is simply the way it is. So if someone gives any of us grief for playing the game too much, we should just respond that you can't fight nature, that this is the way things must be. I think I like this theory....

[Suicide Junkie]

How about this:
Is it possible for a computer program (such as an AI routine) to have free will?

If so, a copy or close variant of that program, running in an organic neural net/brain would also provide free will.

[dogscoff]

Is it possible for a computer program (such as an AI routine) to have free will?

Quite probably. All that mucking about with electrons that goes on inside circuitry probably involves QM.

You should have a read of Rob Schrab's Scud: Dispoible Assassin. It's a great read and there is a really nice concept about all of human history being predetermined by God, but then a Robot (without sould and therefore unconstrained by Destiny) messes everything up.

Not the same thing at all, I know, but it made me think of it and it's a damned good comic.

[Suicide Junkie]

Quite probably. All that mucking about with electrons that goes on inside circuitry probably involves QM

How do you mean? By generating errors? They're pretty rare, except when using windows, and that's not due to QM, its due to QA.

I think we could also use a good definition of Free Will, and what it means to say one thing has it while another dosen't.
If an AI compares random numbers to decide whether to go left or right, is that free will? It will be chaotic and unpredictable...