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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Topic Author's Original Post - Feb 13, 2018 - 07:02am PT
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...in goal-directed organisms.
This one's for you, eeyonkee...
[Click to View YouTube Video]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUyU3lKzoio
On display: constraints and limitations, control (systems control), power (capability, can do power), freedom (in fully-caused deterministic systems), types or varieties of freedom, decision-making, variation (organismal), incapability, collaboration.
Apparently those little buggers only weight 25lbs.
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"My timeline is full of people scared of robots."
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 13, 2018 - 07:16am PT
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Wow!
that's pretty cool. I can imagine a lot of potential in that medium. Or rather, those media (gel plus water hydraulics plus water environ). Ingenious!
Exciting times.
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Wait. But "goal-directed"? How could that be? After all, these robots are simply "just" executing a set of "is" statements. Right?
Where is the "goal-directed" aspect? Whence comes the "ought"?
re: is vs ought
1. Silver is a better conductor of electricity than lead. (IS statement)
2. We ought to go skiing today. We ought to help these people. (OUGHT statements)
You cannot derive an ought from an is (so we're told).
Or can you? :)
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NutAgain!
Trad climber
South Pasadena, CA
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Feb 13, 2018 - 07:44am PT
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“is” and “ought” seems like a false dichotomy. To me, “is” statements form rules and inputs to a system, while “ought” statements are outputs. You populate a bunch of “is statements” to describe a system that operates on dynamic environmental inputs, and you have probabilistic outputs attached to different input triggers to form the “ought” behaviors, and you can end up with highly variable output that is indistinguishable from a chaotic and messy human.
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WBraun
climber
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Feb 13, 2018 - 07:54am PT
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The ultimate timeline of HFCS illusionary consciousness is more and more bondage masqueraded as freedom and advancement .......
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 14, 2018 - 07:21am PT
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NutAgain,
“is” and “ought” seems like a false dichotomy. To me, “is” statements form rules and inputs to a system, while “ought” statements are outputs.
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It seems to me when we're discussing the famous - or infamous - "is vs ought" topic esp as it relates to computer programs, robotic systems or living organisms, the OUGHT is reflected by, or else incorporated into, the IS statement either by the designer/programmer in the case of the robot, as exemplified above, or by natural selection in the case of living things.
At the level of the human, the "ought" is rendered often as a moral or morality: We must (ought to, should) help these people.
RE: "ought” statements vis a vis outputs
It seems to me the IS and OUGHT work together reflexively in "designed" systems (by Man, by Mother Nature) to help render a system output.
It's too bad Hume couldn't spend some time in the 21st century, I bet he'd love to explore further his IS vs OUGHT dichotomy (esp in relation to evolutionary theory, systems control theory, etc) and further elaborate on it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem
Wording it differently... a system designer has in mind beforehand the features, functions or goals she's trying to implement. Toward this end she shapes/steers the parameters, program, whatever - thereby incorporating into the IS the OUGHT! (almost as if my magic or the invisible hand).
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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Feb 14, 2018 - 07:49am PT
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There is some minimal entertainment to be gleaned from watching armchair philosophers at "work."
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WBraun
climber
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Feb 14, 2018 - 08:13am PT
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HFCS doesn't have a clue to the difference between a living entity and its material coverings.
He thinks his coat is himself and that is the downfall of his freedom and his misunderstanding of life itself ........
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 14, 2018 - 08:36am PT
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The is-ought topic and its understanding is no longer philosophy, at least not academically; it's now, for many, straight up science and engineering.
I like to think if Hume didn't live a pre-evolutionary timeline, he might have become an evolutionary psychologist, systems control engineer... or perhaps even an inter-disciplinary blend of the two... or blend of many.
This change is imperceptible... -Hume
but nonetheless grok-able... in the context of (goal-directed) design (systems design, organismal design) either by engineer or evolution, in modern times.
Hume's Guillotine: The complete severing of "is" from "ought".
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Soylent Green, Kim Jong Un... pretty funny.
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Mungeclimber
Trad climber
Nothing creative to say
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Feb 14, 2018 - 09:55am PT
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are we talking about predictive analytics?
aren't "we" only interested in clicks/purchases and who lives/dies?
all the aspirational talk is typically just that, no?
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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Feb 14, 2018 - 11:05am PT
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it's now, for many, straight up science and engineering
As is absolutely everything, on your model.
LOL... have fun with that. I know that you are. :-)
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Feb 14, 2018 - 11:55am PT
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Thanks for that first link, HFCS. Reminds me of one of the episodes of Black Mirror this season. It was a scary one -- like a little doggie terminator. I don't feeling like playing around in these threads anymore. I'll stick my science reading.
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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Feb 14, 2018 - 12:11pm PT
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I have been amazed by the progress by the Boston Dynamics robots.
Can you not see the application in military clearing operations, where you go door to door?
On top of which, just the appearance of such robots would scare the bejeezus out of opponents.
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Feb 14, 2018 - 01:27pm PT
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I just read a review of that Black Mirror episode, Metalhead, that I mentioned in my previous post. Turns out, according to Black Mirror creator, Charlie Booker, this episode was inspired by these robotics videos by Boston Dynamics. How about that.
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wilbeer
Mountain climber
Terence Wilson greeneck alleghenys,ny,
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Feb 14, 2018 - 06:06pm PT
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Programable Bullet.
Think Optics. Rochester.
Just saying
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Bad Climber
Trad climber
The Lawless Border Regions
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Feb 15, 2018 - 07:55am PT
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Whoa, Jim. Thanks for that. The result of some university robotics challenge? I can't imagine the work that went into making that "band." So the bots can play, but can they rock? Do they dig the head banging?
BAd
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WBraun
climber
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Feb 15, 2018 - 08:18am PT
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The gross materialists all want to play God.
Thus they manipulate the inferior gross material elements into inferior objects.
The gross materialists have all qualities of God but not the quantity since they are part parcel of God.
Thus they can never create life itself.
Life itself the gross materialists are completely clueless to thus they are stuck with creating inferior imitations of life ......
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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Feb 15, 2018 - 11:16am PT
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Have you ever seen the movie Terminator?
DMT
Amazingly, I have.
Did you know that it was just make-believe? That the main robot was played by an actor?
:)
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WBraun
climber
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Feb 15, 2018 - 01:21pm PT
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All the gross materialists can ever do is create stupid lifeless nonsense that materially bonds and leads themselves and all other living entities more and more into illusion .....
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 15, 2018 - 06:21pm PT
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Apropos: Incorporating ethics (OUGHTS) early on into AI design decisions (IS)...
Defining the Dilemmas of Artificial Intelligence -
https://spectrum.mit.edu/winter-2018/defining-the-dilemmas-of-artificial-intelligence/#.WoWiRqs932Q.twitter
“This new object is no longer a passive thing controlled by human beings. It has agency, the ability to make autonomous choices, and it can adapt based on its own experiences..."
"What’s clear is that the ethics of our machines will reflect the ethics of ourselves, which forces us to articulate our own ethics more explicitly... So in a way, the development of AI can make us better humans because it’s pushing us to question who we are and define what we want our world to be."
Kate Darling, robotic specialist, also appeared on a Sam Harris podcast, last year, I think. Lots of fascinating issues.
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Metalhead, Black Mirror, was scary and heads-up. Also really good, re AI and robots (autonomous drones insects, ADI) run amuck, Hated in the Nation, Black Mirror S3.
"The road to hell is paved with good intentions."
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Pinker on AI threat...
https://www.popsci.com/robot-uprising-enlightenment-now#page-5
The 68-95-99.7 rule...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/68%E2%80%9395%E2%80%9399.7_rule
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 21, 2018 - 10:02am PT
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Edge.org remembers Anne Treisman...
"Anne Treisman’s experiments on visual search and illusory conjunctions are so low-tech they can be carried out in an intro-psych lecture, so robust that they elicit audible gasps from the students, and so profound that they help explain major features of perception, attention, cognition, neuroanatomy, and consciousness."
If there ever was a paper that launched a thousand ships it was Anne Treisman's paper with her student Gelade in 1980...the paper laid the groundwork for her Feature Integration Theory, the idea that while the brain seemed to automatically divide up aspects of objects into color, shape, motion and so on, it also had to glue them back together in way that we obviously experience as unitary wholes. How does it do that?
https://www.edge.org/anne-treisman-1935-2018
https://www.edge.org/memberbio/anne_treisman
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Agency, competence, persistence...
[Click to View YouTube Video]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFuA50H9uek
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 1, 2018 - 08:12am PT
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The nervous system is one of the body's two control systems. It's a major contributor - if not thee major contributor - to our agency; and also to our ability and competence - and freedom as well - to go climb at will.
"I don't think you can, in a meaningful sense, claim that this is what humans look like or truly 'are'." Why not?
"Everything a human has ever learned during its life is encapsulated in this creature on the table. If it were alive somehow, it would think, it would still have a sense of self, and it would still be human, even if it were no longer experiencing the world in the same way." -Matt Taylor
Everyone should know about the so-called "brain in a vat" thought experiment...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_in_a_vat
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RussianBot
climber
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Gotta love the self-delusion of thus. Believing that we know the truth is as good as knowing the truth. For other people. But not to me because I know the truth. And to prove it I’m going to say it over and over and over and over and over again. Praise consciousness! Now if only I could stop saying it over and over and over and over again ...
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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HFCS, the "Brain in a Vat" thought experiment can be easily simulated if one learns the Art of Dreaming, or Lucid Dreaming (in which one's will is paramount). Years ago I learned this technique and experienced a world seemingly just as real, if not more sharply real, as normal reality.
Stephen King's and Peter Straub's "The Talisman" has a memorable passage in which the central character shifts into an alternate reality so sharp and clear one can smell an onion being pulled from the ground a mile away. This is not an exaggeration of a deep Dreaming experience.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 1, 2018 - 02:19pm PT
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re: "easily simulated"
jgill, is this more or less what you speak of?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucid_dream
If so, it seems to me I've had a few instances over the years and decades of lucid dreaming as well. Although very fleeting.
I think I do remember laughing about one or two as well, as my circuits apparently moved in or out of wakefulness near waking up.
Interesting. :)
The Art of Dreaming, by Carlos Casteneda
https://www.amazon.com/Art-Dreaming-Carlos-Castaneda/dp/006092554X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1519942782&sr=8-1&keywords=the+art+of+dreaming
If you havent' already seen it, you might be interested in Anil Seth's TED talk. There is an idea, or set of ideas, in brain science gaining in popularity in recent years that all our perception (the qualia, the self-consciousness, intention, etc) is actually, for lack of a better word, "hallucination" kept in check - i.e., on the straight and narrow of objective reality - during wakefulness by its brain's continuous sensory input.
Here it is...
[Click to View YouTube Video]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyu7v7nWzfo&t=5s
David Eagleman, also a neuroscientist, author of The Brain, wonders same.
Use of the word "hallucination" seems problematic for this idea though, it seems to me.
And in the case of no sensory input, as by way of a sensory deprivation tank, e.g., the hallucinating runs wild, or at least has the potential to. Similarly with dreaming. Again, no sensory input - at least not of the signal strengths that typically accompany wakefulness. Anyways, that's the basic idea. A bit eerie.
Of course some posters here have been saying it from the beginning: that the brain's a perception machine (or perception generator) effectively - evolved to internally represent the outside objective world and to serve as controller for the body system and its needs as it navigates its environment. This links perfectly well to Seth's model and its ideas (above), Eagleman's model, etc.
...
"I feel bad for Unconsciousness. Consciousness does 1% of the work and takes 99% of the credit." -Dean Buonomano
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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For me, there seemed to be a significant difference between the Art of Dreaming and Lucid Dreaming in that the former was a product of intent and when it commenced I-consciousness was entirely controlled by the will. One becomes pure will. Lucid dreams also seem real but lack the control mechanism. At least that's what I recall. Could be different for others.
And, yes, the key to capturing the experience is "awakening" while in the hypnagogic state. This is most easily done by "programming" one's self with intent.
On the other thread, Largo distinguishes between the Art and his Zen experience by explaining that one has an "object" and the other lacks this quality. I contend that both are fascinating products of an active brain, and nothing more.
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WBraun
climber
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It's time to make YOU HFCS into a chimp.
Do the actual experiment or shut up.
No ... you won't, you'll just experiment on someone else because you're a coward.
When you do the actual experiment on your own self you'll get the actual experience yourself to whether it's actually beneficial or not.
Get to work Dr Frankenstein .........
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 9, 2018 - 09:44am PT
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Re agency and "free will", I am still waiting on the Sean Carroll Sam Harris showdown (podcast) to be uploaded. Apparently there is some editing, do-over or making-up between the two in the works.
In the meantime,
To those who attended the Sean Carroll talk last night, how was it?
"It seems to me that Sam had better points about Determinism and Sean wanted to hold on to the use of Free Will because it was more useful than dispensing with it entirely. So he seemed Compatibilist like someone else has said here."
"It was a fight to the finish. He pinned him down and then Sam was gasping for air. Carroll had him in a Humeian Headlock. Sam was visibly purple with cognitive dissonance before he tapped out and Victory was extolled."
https://www.reddit.com/r/samharris/comments/7zth6t/to_those_who_attended_the_sean_carroll_talk_last/
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 9, 2018 - 10:05am PT
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Dingus, couldn't agree more.
"...with funding from Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Dynamics
It's right around the corner, somehow we (the world's nations and publics) have to get a lid on this.
Re dangerous AI, forget superhuman AGI, imo, the worry of many incl Musk, Harris, Gates and othes; my biggest fear is autonomous algorithms behind control systems in charge of large scale life and death decisions.
Autonomous swarms that have been weaponized that then make it into the hands of an adversary are the biggest concern.
Black Mirror covers some of these horrors.
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NutAgain!
Trad climber
South Pasadena, CA
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I, Robot movie points out the failing potential of the three original laws, but they have been updated, yes?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Laws_of_Robotics
Moose, you thinking of this... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Evitable_Conflict
Munge, the premise of all those stories is that even if you think you have worked out a defensible scheme to protect us, there are holes in our logic and thinking that are not obvious. Developing a workable set of laws is non-trivial.
My bigger concern is that all the ethics planning and rules won't make a damn bit of difference, because some humans will decide to bypass these when creating their AIs. They will do this because of greed and hubris and an inaccurate estimation of their own ability to stop it after they have obtained maximum personal benefit. Or, a pissed off tyrant will do it to take out everyone with him/her. Or, a corporation will desire faster response time or better specs, and remove the extra loops of rule-checking to make the system perform better for a market advantage.
In any case, relying on ethics won't be enough to save us. But, we might have enough wisdom to treat them as a good parent would care for a child, instill a sense of ethics to protect us, from the other AIs that are not raised well (i.e. those raised by every government for "defense"). The main problem will be that the people who have the sense to do this will have less money and resources than the governments focusing on killing. So the ones to protect us will not be able to compete against the ones trying to kill us.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Apr 21, 2018 - 09:23am PT
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While it seems vogue to worry, there are simple physical restrictions that place severe constraints on robots: energy efficiency being primary.
Considering the entire "life cycle" energy required to build and operate a robot, I conjecture that the total requirements far exceed those required by biological systems, and place robots in a disadvantaged position regarding competition for energy resources.
For example, estimated photosynthetic efficiency ranges from 3% to 6%. Evidenced obtained from remote sensing of the Earth's oceans reveal that the phytoplankton produce roughly 58% less energy from light than the possible maximum (see http://geology.rutgers.edu/images/falkowski_gobunov_phil_trans_2017.pdf ). The lack of nutrients could explain this inefficiency of a biological system; put another way, more sunlight hits the surface than can be used by the phytoplankton.
But in any case, the efficiency range of a few percent includes all the other processes required for life, including reproduction. The fact that there is surplus energy, stored chemically as sugars and starches, provides a legacy we exploit in our modern world through the extraction of fossil fuels, which represent hundreds of millions of years of photosynthetic activity. Interestingly, our inefficient lifestyle will exhaust this resource in mere hundreds of years (maybe as few as two hundred). The release of all this sequestered carbon in the form of CO₂ in this short time period would likely render the climate uninhabitable for humans.
As far as I know, robots' energy demands would be unsustainable, certainly for large robots. "Microbots" also require tremendous infrastructure for production, and these as-yet-to-be produced entities have unknown life cycles with no proposed self-replicating capability. Even supposing they could be built and released as autonomous agents, they would all die eventually leaving no progeny.
Of all the things to fear, or marvel at, robots have to be far down the list.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Apr 21, 2018 - 11:09am PT
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Westworld, season two begins tomorrow (4/22). An interesting take on the "Singularity" with a very gradual path towards self-awareness. The Rachel Wood character embodies cyber-woman's empowerment. No trifling #MeToo whining here - cross this creature at your peril!
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Apr 21, 2018 - 04:20pm PT
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$10,000/lb to get to Earth orbit.
around $800,000,000/lb to get to the Moon.
I don't think we're going to launch a major energy generator into space to save our asses.
Solar pannels are about 10W/lb
putting them in Earth orbit, $1,000/W or $1,000,000/kW
Electricity today costs about $0.10/kWh, so costing only the launch, it would take about 1,000 yrs to bring the electricity generated by orbiting solar panels down to the current cost of electricity generated on Earth.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Topic Author's Reply - Apr 23, 2018 - 12:20pm PT
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dingus, jgill, check this out...
It’s Westworld. What’s Wrong With Cruelty to Robots?
By Paul Bloom and Sam Harris
Moral: Don't murder, rape, or torture robots because (a) they might be conscious and (b) even if they aren't, it's likely to corrode your interactions with real people.
Food for thought. :)
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/23/opinion/westworld-conscious-robots-morality.html
we might one day create conscious machines...
For the record, I'm not holding my breath.
(You can open in a private window (no cookies) or else in a fresh browser if this NYTimes piece is behind a paywall.)
...
60 Minutes last night was all about agency, power and freedom - from Hugh Herr and the MIT Media Lab to Alzheimer's.
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WBraun
climber
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May 11, 2018 - 04:31pm PT
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St00pid modern gross materialists wasting their time making a st00pid inferior machine while they are already within a machine themselves.
And all these fools think are advancing all while unknown to them they are devolving .......
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Topic Author's Reply - May 11, 2018 - 04:43pm PT
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re: agency
[Click to View YouTube Video]
https://youtu.be/Ve9kWX_KXus
Note agency, the can-do power that essentially means/translates to functionality and freedom, is manifest in both these mechanistic organisms.
It's rules all the way down. Or is it turtles? Rules set constraints/limits but also determine branches and branchpoints, choices, agency, competence... and last but not least... freedom.
Next year for Atlas, the Boston Marathon; the year after perhaps a solo free send of Astroman?
(1) I love the sound Spot Mini makes when it walks.
(2) Remember, "the map is not the territory." lol
(3) Imagine a pack (a herd, a swarm, a murder, a gaggle) of these.
(4) Spot-Mini's got agency!
What's it mean to have an unruly will? (cf: free will) What degree ruly? What degree free? What degree unruly? To what degree did Charles Witman (Texas Tower shooter) have an unruly will? or a ruly will? a free will?
...
Another example of AMAZING control...
Control engineering, amazing! Intelligent class!!
https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/11/17345308/united-launch-alliance-vulcan-centaur-upper-stage-engine-aerojet-rocketdyne
Control, baby! Competence, too! And freedom!!
https://youtu.be/rQEqKZ7CJlk?t=17m45s
Elon Musk is happy today.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Topic Author's Reply - May 25, 2018 - 08:28am PT
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Excerpt from the Harris Damasio Waking Up book club dialog...
Harris: There's a few [audience questions] on free will. Where do you come down on free will in your work?
Damasio: Hm. That's something you don't... [Laughter]
Harris: I've said everything I'm ever going to say on free will - I just want to put you on record.
Damasio: Right, okay. [Laughter] So, there is free will and there is not free will. It's both. That's something you cannot answer by saying there is no free will or there is free will.
Harris: Although many have tried.
Damasio: Many have tried.
The Strange Order of Things: Life, Feeling, and the Making of Culture
Antonio Damasio
May, 2018
https://www.amazon.com/Strange-Order-Things-Feeling-Cultures/dp/0307908755/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1527261903&sr=8-1&keywords=antonio+damasio+the+strange+order+of+things
free will
compatibilism
re agency (can-do power), control
Damasio: Why is there no free will? Because we have absolutely nothing to say on how we are put together and how we run. We come along for the ride. All the controls of our life systems, all the controls of our biology, all the controls of the biology of others - the world in which we have been placed - we have very little or no control over how it operates. We have been gaining some degree of control precisely because we have developed feeling and consciousness and because we have great imagination and so we can invent all sorts of things around us that give us a little bit of control but that control in the end is not about the entirety of our being.
Damasio: If we decide that free will does not exist, I think we're going to be in a great big pickle because then we lose the incentive for optimizing our actions and for doing things that would be better for others. And of course we've been talking about how we want the culture to go better and to save us from the worries we have today. It's difficult to operate, to do those things, if we deny, if we say free will is zero, all of this is being controlled.
Damasio: I don't mind, by the way, calling it an illusion. But it's a very useful illusion. So I certainly had some kind of free will when I accepted your invitation and I'm here talking to you, and I decided that I was going to be here. And you likewise by having me here. You change the mode of operation and you have to accept that there are some things under some degree of control.
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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May 25, 2018 - 09:38am PT
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Why is there no free will? Because we have absolutely nothing to say on how we are put together and how we run. We come along for the ride.
A car has no free will, because it has absolutely nothing to say on how it is put together and how it runs.
But then it blows a tire and causes a big wreck. Wait. It can't accurately be said that "it blows a tire," as in "the car blew its tire." Properly speaking, "a tire blew," and "the car" had nothing to do with it.
So, there is something fundamentally wrong with the above criteria: It doesn't contemplate agency/intention. The difference between events and actions (agency) is intention. The very fact that we can ask a person, "Why did you do that?" yet we don't ask the same of entities that we know don't have intention, indicates that we intuitively recognize the distinction between events and actions, between entities that CHOOSE and those that in-principle cannot.
Thus, if we're going to abandon intention (because it's too hard to explain), we're going to have to systematically clean up our language and abandon all "Why did you do that?" sorts of questions.
Compatiblism is not an answer nor an account. It just pushes the question back another level. Either intention needs a robust account (in terms of genuine freedom), or it should be abandoned as an illusion, and our language should reflect our commitment to the facts.
That's going to be a really, really hard "illusion" to abandon, because then we have to systematically talk of people like cars or even rocks that happen to tumble down-slope. No more actions; only events. But obviously, something very important is lost in such an account.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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May 25, 2018 - 10:59am PT
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"The Big Bell Test provides an answer, albeit of a conditional variety. The answer is this: if humans have free will, then some physical events have no cause."
From a link on the other thread.
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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May 25, 2018 - 12:19pm PT
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if humans have free will, then some physical events have no cause.
I'm not convinced that that's correct. An alternative is that beings with genuine agency are "first causes" and able to introduce new causal chains (that then may be entirely physical). Presuming that that "first cause" is itself necessarily physical begs some important questions, it seems to me.
I agree that there will be no account of free-will in purely physicalist terms. But we could use a modus tollens inference as follows:
1) If physicalism is true, then there is no free will.
2) We know that we have free will.
3) Therefore, physicalism is false (it is an inadequate account of all the phenomena).
If you don't like (2), that's fine; you then just need to produce a robust error-theory of why we DO "know" that we have free will and that our entire language revolves around the presumption of it.
Again, as I said, then you'll have to RADICALLY "clean up" our language! (Remember that logical positivism is dead.)
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WBraun
climber
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May 25, 2018 - 02:04pm PT
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Don't murder, rape, or torture robots
Can't be done.
They have no soul ....
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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May 25, 2018 - 09:01pm PT
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what is physicalism?
"Physicalism is the thesis that everything is physical, or as contemporary philosophers sometimes put it, that everything supervenes on the physical. "
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/physicalism/
the paper on Bell's Theorem test is here:
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1805.04431.pdf
and it is all about the physical... though perhaps not the "classical" physics you might be familiar with, rather quantum physics
A Bell test, which challenges the philosophical worldview of local realism1 against experimental observations, is a randomized trial requiring spatially-distributed entanglement, fast and high-efficiency detection, and unpredictable measurement settings2,3 . While technology can perfect the first two of these4–7, and while technological randomness sources8,9 enable “device-independent” protocols based on Bell inequality violation10,11, challenging local realism using physical randomizers inevitably makes assumptions about the same physics one aims to test. Bell himself noted this weakness of physical setting choices and argued that human “free will” could rigorously be used to assure unpredictability in Bell tests12. Here we report a suite of local realism tests using human choices, avoiding such assumptions about predictability in physics. We recruited ≈ 100,000 human participants to play an online video game that incentivizes fast, sustained input of unpredictable bits while also illustrating Bell test methodology13. The participants generated 97,347,490 binary choices, which were directed via a scalable web platform to twelve laboratories on five continents, in which 13 experiments tested local realism using photons5,6 , single atoms7 , atomic ensembles14 , and superconducting devices15. Over a 12-hour period on the 30th of November 2016, participants worldwide provided a sustained flow of over 1000 bits/s to the experiments, which used different human-generated bits to choose each measurement setting. The observed correlations strongly contradict local realism and other realist positions in bi-partite and tri-partite16 scenarios. Project outcomes include closing of the freedom-of-choice loophole17, gamification18 of statistical and quantum non-locality concepts, new methods for quantum-secured communications, a very large dataset of human-generated randomness, and networking techniques for global participation in experimental science.
Tests of Bell's Theorem apparently make your step 1) above false.
"1) If physicalism is true, then there is no free will."
Physicalism can be true and there can be free will.
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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May 25, 2018 - 10:30pm PT
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^^^ That's great!
Most scientifically-minded folks flatly assert that physicalism implies absolute causation, which implies no free will. I was trying to be charitable to that crowd with the first premise.
I'm loving your post, because I don't have an ax to grind.
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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May 26, 2018 - 12:42am PT
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Tests of Bell's Theorem apparently make your step 1) above false. "1) If physicalism is true, then there is no free will."
Now that I've actually read through enough of the paper to be clear on this point, I don't believe that you are interpreting the test correctly.
The test presupposed human free will and used it not to indicate anything about free will itself but to instead introduce a high (enough) degree of randomness into the test, thereby closing the "freedom of choice loophole." The test was about disproving a particular species of realism, not about free will, and the test says nothing about whether human free will is a function of or result of physicalism.
Even the phrase "freedom of choice loophole" means something different from what would benefit the conclusion you drew. I quote from the study authors: "The freedom-of-choice loophole (i.e., the possibility that the settings are not chosen independently from the properties of the particle pair) has been widely neglected and has not been addressed by any experiment to date."
It has often been speculated that quantum theory (in some, as yet undisclosed, way) could provide a groundwork for free will. But this test doesn't indicate anything about that, because the order of relation is the opposite of that speculation.
The speculation needs: randomness > freedom.
The experiment presumed: freedom > randomness.
And randomness is not the sort of "freedom" that grounds agency as we know it anyway.
Thus, from what I can see, the test says nothing about the relation between physicalism and free will. In fact, Bell himself conceivably made my point about human freedom possibly acting in the role of "first cause" as follows: "Assuming no faster-than-light communication,
such experiments can prove the conditional relation: if human
will is free, there are physical events with no causes."
If not my point, then Bell was instead begging the question for a physicalist interpretation of free choice. If that's indeed what your conclusion is smuggling in, then I'm noting that fact now.
I quote from the authors again: "Thus, both physically and mathematically, Bell’s theorem and hence the validity of all Bell inequalities rely critically on the joint assumption of local realism and freedom of choice." Notice the key phrase: "assumption of... freedom of choice." The study neither "proves" freedom of choice nor that such freedom is grounded in or a result of the physical. (Of course, as noted in the "soul" thread, empirical results cannot act as proofs, so all this talk of "proof" is just sloppy.)
Physicalism can be true and there can be free will.
Perhaps, but that isn't indicated, much less "proved" by the study in question, since that's not what the study was about, even if an empirical study could "prove" anything.
In fact, Bell's assertion grounds another modus tollens inference, the very one typically employed by physicalists/determinists:
1) If human will is free, there are physical events with no causes.
2) All physical events are caused.
3) Therefore, the human will is not free (or, there is no human free will).
That is the typical argument that physicalists have traditionally and almost universally made: Absolute physical causation, which implies that humans beings (being all and only physical entities) are not free but are instead determined.
And so we're back to the first premise of my earlier argument: If physicalism is true, then there is no free will. The test you reference does not seem to me to even address this premise, much less disprove it.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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May 26, 2018 - 12:57am PT
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I'm not sure if I am a physicalist/philosopher, I am a physicalist/scientist and I suppose there is a difference, the biggest one being that as we learn more science in regard to quantum mechanics and its foundations, the domain of what we know expands.
this often renders old arguments moot.
the possibility that the quantum mechanical foundations might lead to the seemingly strange statement that there are things that happen without causes and are physical.
in the particular test, correlations in the random input from the humans could have been detected in the test, that is what the subject of the test is, a search for "hidden variables" that would determine the outcome of the quantum mechanical systems.
in humans, the existence of "hidden variables" would make their behavior "predictable" to some extent, which was not observed, that is, their "random" input to the experiment was actually random.
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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May 26, 2018 - 02:01am PT
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^^^ Good points, imo.
I'm not clear, though, that randomness equates to (or is even loosely correlated with) human free will in the sense that agency requires.
Again, of course, we could abandon the whole notion of agency. But that would take some significant reworking of our language, not to mention our self-perceptions.
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WBraun
climber
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May 26, 2018 - 06:58am PT
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The bottom line.
Every person has the independent freedom to choose, free will.
It doesn't take billions of dollars large hadron collider to understand this simple fact.
What makes it so difficult for the gross materialists is their foolish staunch made up belief they are the material body and ultimately suffer permanent death.
Sometimes the choice leads to so-called death against the wishes of the person's own self-preservation.
But one will reborn and the knowledge behind that will take unlimited pages of WOT that you will never see an end too ........
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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May 26, 2018 - 11:25pm PT
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a little bit of hunting turns up the idea of setting the Bell experiment inputs "...at the whim of experimenters..." a phrase that Bell used in the chapter 7, "The theory of local beables" collected in Speakable and unspeakable in quantum mechanics. (For such a slim volume it seems to have had an outsized influence!).
Section 8
"It has been assumed that the settings of instruments are in some sense free variables - say at the whim of the experimenters - or in any case not determined by the overlap of the backward light cones. Indeed, without such freedom I would not know how to formulate any idea of local causality, even the modest human one."
In chapter 12 he responds to criticisms,
"Here I would entertain the hypothesis that experimenters have free will. But according to CHS [Clauser, Horne and Shimony, Dialectica 39 (1985)] it would not be permissible for me to justify the assumption of free variables 'by relying on a metaphysics which has not been proved and which may well be false.' Disgrace indeed, to be caught in a metaphysical position! But it seems to me that in this matter I am just pursuing my profession of theoretical physics...
...A respectable class of theories, including contemporary quantum theory as it is practised, have 'free' 'external' variables in addition to those internal to and conditioned by the theory. These variables are typically external fields or sources. They are invoked to represent experimental conditions. They also provide a point of leverage for 'free willed experimenters', if reference to such hypothetical metaphysical entities is permitted. I am inclined to pay particular attention to theories of this kind, which seem to me most simply related to our everyday way of looking at the world.
Of course there is an infamous ambiguity here, about just what and where the free elements are. The fields of the Stern-Gerlach magnets could be treated as external. Or such fields and magnets could be included in the quantum mechanical system, with external agents acting only on external knobs and switches. Or the external agents could be located in the brain of the experimenter. In the latter case setting the instrument is not itself a free variable. It is only more or less closely correlated with one, depending on how accurately the experimenter effects his intention. As she puts out her hand to the knob, her hand may shake, and may shake in a way influenced by the variable v [the variable v is the subject of the measurement of correlations in the 'Bell experiment']. Remember, however, that the disagreement between locality [Bell should have said 'local realism'] and quantum mechanics is large - up to a factor of √2 in a certain sense. So some hand trembling can be tolerated without much change in the conclusion. Quantification of this would require careful epsilonics."
Turning this around, the fact that the paper linked above observed Bell inequalities provides an inference on the degree of free will exercised by the experimenters, who were the game players in this case, in setting the knobs.
Bell experiments have been used to generate random numbers, see, e.g.
Random Numbers Certified by Bell’s Theorem
S. Pironio, et al., Nature 464.7291 (2010): 1021.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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May 26, 2018 - 11:37pm PT
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in the paper's conclusion:
"The results also show empirically that human agency is incompatible with causal determinism, a question formerly accessible only by metaphysics."
and from https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/determinism-causal/
"Causal determinism is, roughly speaking, the idea that every event is necessitated by antecedent events and conditions together with the laws of nature. The idea is ancient, but first became subject to clarification and mathematical analysis in the eighteenth century. Determinism is deeply connected with our understanding of the physical sciences and their explanatory ambitions, on the one hand, and with our views about human free action on the other. In both of these general areas there is no agreement over whether determinism is true (or even whether it can be known true or false), and what the import for human agency would be in either case."
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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May 27, 2018 - 12:20pm PT
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So, Ed, at this stage, I think that it's important to get clear about how "in earnest" you are regarding what you post:
"The results also show empirically that human agency is incompatible with causal determinism, a question formerly accessible only by metaphysics."
and from https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/determinism-causal/
"Causal determinism is, roughly speaking, the idea that every event is necessitated by antecedent events and conditions together with the laws of nature. The idea is ancient, but first became subject to clarification and mathematical analysis in the eighteenth century. Determinism is deeply connected with our understanding of the physical sciences and their explanatory ambitions, on the one hand, and with our views about human free action on the other. In both of these general areas there is no agreement over whether determinism is true (or even whether it can be known true or false), and what the import for human agency would be in either case."
I see two options here, and before I invest the time to argue in earnest myself, I want to know which of the two it is for you:
1) You yourself believe in what these Bell-type experiments have "shown" about human agency, and you are quoting passages to explicate what you yourself believe.
2) You refuse to commit, and you just post such things to yank my chain and enjoy some (probably minimal) entertainment at seeing how hard I'll try to refute the conclusions, always knowing that you can just pop off with yet another "example" and start the process all over again, without ever acknowledging that I have demonstrated my points.
If (2), I have no time for this. I've been responding in the past assuming that (1), but you've recently led me to question whether that charity is warranted.
So, at this point, I'm going to expect commitments from you in order to proceed. You know what mine are, because I've argued in earnest. I expect you to do the same.
Otherwise, I'm going to state flatly that you're just "arguing" like a Jehovah's Witness, and we know that there's no point in trying to argue with them, as they just keep sliding around between subjects, then looping back to earlier, debunked claims without ever acknowledging ANY of the debunking that has earlier taken place.
So, to proceed, you should be able to commit regarding two primary claims/relations that you repeatedly reference in these Bell-type experiments.
First,
The relation between randomness and human free will (HFW) can have one of three "directions," and I want to know which you think it is.
A) Randomness > HFW.
B) HFW > randomness.
C) HFW <> randomness.
Of course, plain-text fails us in using proper symbols, so I'll summarize the options in plain English:
A) Randomness is a sufficient condition for HFW.
B) HFW is a sufficient condition for randomness.
C) HFW is both a necessary and sufficient condition for randomness, and vice versa.
If you don't believe that the above is a fair and adequate summation, then please explain. It's clear to me from my own reading about these Bell-type experiments that Bell and Bell-type experimenters are not appealing to more "exotic" metaphysical machinery, such as supervenience. So, I'm confident that the typical sense of "implies" is sufficient for our purposes. If you don't agree, then please explain.
Second,
I believe that a charitable summation of your(?) argument in your past two posts is this:
1) Philosophers have been unable to account for the relation between determinism and HFW.
2) Scientists employing Bell-type experiments have been able to "show" that determinism is incompatible with HFW.
3) Per (1) and (2) above, scientists have been able to "show" something that philosophers have been unable to "show."
4) Therefore, empirical science is a more productive enterprise than philosophy, even on those subjects that have traditionally been strictly philosophical subjects.
It's fitting to explicitly express that conclusion in this particular thread, since HFCS has been one of the most vocal proponents of a whole spree of conclusions that themselves rest on something like the above argument. You, Ed, have "alluded to" most of these correlative conclusions as well, so I want to know if you'll here publicly commit to the above argument and the spree of correlative conclusions that supposedly emerge from it.
* While philosophers have spent centuries chasing their tails, scientists have spent those same centuries producing substantive results, even regarding subjects about which it has been presumed that only philosophers could ever produce answers.
* Philosophy has not "progressed" in anything like the sense that science has "progressed." So, philosophy in the modern scientific age is a dead-end, because only science offers the prospect of genuine progress.
* Subjects that have been widely considered as strictly within the realm of philosophy really are not, and science will make any progress that is in principle possible on these very subjects.
And, regarding me personally, which has been the repeated subject of HFCS (and, again, to which you have "alluded"):
* Jensen is anchored in a bronze-age religion that distorts his thinking on all subjects.
* Jensen is steeped in tail-chasing philosophy that distorts his thinking on all subjects.
* Jensen's "philosophy" is itself anchored in a particular, centuries-old philosophical view that fails to explicate and that has been debunked by (science, other philosophies, etc.; you fill in the blank).
So, Ed, are you arguing in earnest? If so, then let's hear some clarity about the above points. Then I'll be happy to deductively demonstrate the actual implications of your actual perspectives.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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May 27, 2018 - 01:02pm PT
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Faintly paralleling Bergson vs Einstein. Go for it.
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WBraun
climber
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May 27, 2018 - 01:05pm PT
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Humans don't always seem very good about taking care of each other. Could a group of AI robots do it better?
Humans do an excellent job of taking care of each other.
It's when they fall down into gross material and animal consciousness that leads to all the problems ......
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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May 27, 2018 - 01:10pm PT
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Faintly paralleling Bergson vs Einstein. Go for it.
Pretty faint indeed. LOL
I'm not even a "faint" stand-in for Bergson. But, yes, philosophical clarity invariably reveals scientific smuggling.
That is precisely the case with Bell-type experiments as well. But, hopefully, we'll get to that.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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May 27, 2018 - 01:11pm PT
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not arguing so much as mulling over the significance.
It's not about physicists being more productive than philosophers here, but a new observation which could at least expand the discussion, and here to the possibility of empirical investigation of human free will, and free will in general.
I think you mistook the definiteness of my own interpretation of the HFW implications of the Bell experiment(s) but let me outline my thinking.
If quantum mechanics violates "local realism" then the outcome of the experiments test the method with which the "free variables" that are used in the experiment meet the requirements of "randomness." The main concern with Bell experiment tests is that the agents setting these "free variables" are not actually free.
Bell himself worried only slightly about this (as I have posted above) since the violations are expected (and observed) to be large, but he didn't' quantify the effects of "slightly not-free" variables.
The idea that Bell experiments can be a source of random numbers was offered as an example of how good the assumptions are, that is, quantum mechanics violates "local realism" and that can be used (with all the theoretical superstructure) to generate random numbers.
Random numbers (RGNs) are well studied (the definitive exposition is in Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming chapter 3), and especially because we use deterministic methods to make them, and are sensitive to subtle correlations among the RGNs. Those same tests are applied to the numbers generated by the Bell experiments, and they are found to "pass" the tests.
If we set the Bell experiments by human choice, then we can similarly test how "undeterministic" this choice is.
This should appear as a limit rather than a statement. Table 1 of the Bell experiment paper shows the result and the inequality limit in separate columns, and a column labeled "Stat. Sig." (statistical significance) which is a simple ratio of the difference between the limit and the measurement divided by the measurement's standard deviation.
The better analysis would be to ask the question, how much could the measurement be due to causal determination, where the humans setting the knobs are affected by the answer. While there are a number of picky issues, one could do that analysis in a different framework (the framework chosen is a naive frequentist application of analytic statistical methods which assumes a Gaussian P.D.F. for the uncertainties).
But taken at this naive level, the humans have behaved in a measurable way in a manner consistent with the exercise of free will. As such, the experiment provides a way of exploring human free will within a physical context, and in a quantitative way (counter to Largo's continued protestations to the contrary that such a thing is not possible).
I leave it to you to decide if this response is consistent with your "rules of engagement."
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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May 27, 2018 - 01:45pm PT
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I leave it to you to decide if this response is consistent with your "rules of engagement."
I'll buy that account in this context and thank you for it, Ed.
It's difficult to be clear about what "conclusions" actually do show, and these threads tend to be populated by the "scientifically-minded" drawing "correlative" conclusions that go far, far beyond the evidence.
Speaking personally, I would hope that my participation in the "mind," "soul," and this thread have indicated that I'm no "bronze-age thinker."
But taken at this naive level, the humans have behaved in a measurable way in a manner consistent with the exercise of free will. As such, the experiment provides a way of exploring human free will within a physical context, and in a quantitative way (counter to Largo's continued protestations to the contrary that such a thing is not possible).
I do think that that summary is a fair account of what Bell-type experiments are "showing," particularly since you've used the phrase "consistent with." In the past, you've seemed to "argue for" one of the three alternatives I mentioned, while (in charity) I take Bell to be flatly arguing for the (B) relation (I sure hope he's not arguing for the (A) relation!). For our purposes, and contrary to most logical senses of the implication and conjunction relations, in this case "consistent with" is a weak conjunction that is weaker than implication.
Randomness is itself a profoundly interesting study, with many different "senses" in which "random" can be used. One thing to note in this particular discussion of Bell-type experiments is that syntactic "randomness" is very different from semantic "randomness," and that HFW doesn't neatly derive from (or even cohere with) the syntactic sense that Bell et al presume. By the "syntactic sense," I'm referring to, say mathematicians studying pi and computer scientists studying encryption methods based upon prime numbers, etc.
So, perhaps Largo has more legs to stand on than it seems. As I said before, I don't have an ax to grind on this point.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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May 27, 2018 - 02:25pm PT
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John Stewart Bell died in 1990, but not without leaving a body of work that has advanced our thinking about quantum mechanics to a much more sophisticated and nuanced level, most things you hear about with the word "quantum" in them today are a part of his legacy. One or two others also contributed, and it is fair to say they were largely ignored in their time.
So I don't know what Bell was thinking, aside from what he wrote... one thing he did write:
"So I think it is not right to tell the public that a central role for conscious mind is integrated into modern atomic physics. Or that 'information' is the real stuff of theory. It seem to me irresponsible to suggest that technical features of contemporary theory were anticipated by the saints of ancient religions... by introspection."
Speaking of the future work in quantum mechanics he writes:
"This possible way ahead is unromantic in that it requires mathematical work by theoretical physicists, rather than interpretations by philosophers, and does not promise lessons in philosophy for philosophers."
In all this Bell sought out "practical" approaches and eschewed the hermeticism of formal philosophy, he would be the first to admit that many of his ideas were not fully formed. His program was not to resolve the sticky philosophical issues, but to provide a physical understanding of quantum mechanics which he believed would lead to a more complete theory. He had ideas of what that theory might entail, but he didn't write it.
Finally, he felt that progress would be made by the combination of theoretical and experimental work in physics.
He wrote: "For many decades now our fundamental theories have rested on the two great pillars to which this meeting is dedicated: quantum theory and relativity. We will see that the lines of research opened up by these theories remain splendidly vital. We will see that order is brought into a vast and expanding array of experimental data. We will see even a continuing ability to get ahead of the experimental data... as with the existence and masses of the W and Z mesons. Perhaps this more than anything convinces me that there is truth in what is done."
emphasis added...
it is my guess that he would have been delighted in the above linked Bell experiment using HFW, and would have not been so picky to claim it didn't have anything to do with free will, even if the philosophers had misgivings about what it meant. What he would have pointed to was the practical interpretation of experimental results.
And they point to HFW.
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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May 27, 2018 - 02:29pm PT
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Finally, he felt that progress would be made by the combination of theoretical and experimental work in physics.
Agreed. Progress in physics qua physics will be made by physicists rather than philosophers. Nobody I know of is arguing otherwise.
Perhaps this more than anything convinces me that there is truth in what is done.
That's just a mistake, as I've discussed before.
Edit: You just added content to your post, to which I'll reply.
it is my guess that he would have been delighted in the above linked Bell experiment using HFW, and would have not been so picky to claim it didn't have anything to do with free will, even if the philosophers had misgivings about what it meant. What he would have pointed to was the practical interpretation of experimental results.
It's that kind of statement that has me going back to my "rules of engagement" post. Philosophers are not being "picky." They are simply not allowing physicists to smuggle in content to which they are not entitled!
And they point to HFW.
Okay, now we need a rigorous account of what "point to" means. So, please revisit my "rules of engagement" (as you put it) post and start by answering my questions there.
I'm not going to let you smuggle in concepts to which you're not entitled in order to draw conclusions to which you're not entitled. And the only way to demonstrate what you're doing is for you to first start demonstrating your actual commitments. Again, if you're not willing to do this, then you are "arguing" like a Jehovah's Witness, and I have NO interest in playing that game.
I asked two legitimate and clear questions above.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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May 27, 2018 - 02:32pm PT
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I think it is a mistake in your interpretation of the philosophy of science. But as I've said before, many scientists do not agree with that interpretation, nor are they convinced that such interpretations are possible or even necessary.
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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May 27, 2018 - 02:39pm PT
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I think it is a mistake in your interpretation of the philosophy of science.
I think that I'm more credible on this point than you are. And I've edited my previous post to contemplate the significant content that you back-edited (without noting it) in your previous post.
But as I've said before, many scientists do not agree with that interpretation, nor are they convinced that such interpretations are possible or even necessary.
It's perfectly fine for scientists to presume all sorts of things that make their lives easier. But to baldly assert in the context of a philosophical discussion that philosophical clarity is neither possible nor necessary is tantamount to simply ASSERTING that pragmatism is equivalent to truth and that conventionalism is equivalent to truth.
I grant neither ASSERTION, and I believe that I've pretty rigorously demonstrated elsewhere that both ASSERTIONS are unfounded.
But, again, you're now basically refusing to really engage by answering clear questions. So, I'll simply withdraw now and leave you to your bald assertions.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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May 27, 2018 - 02:58pm PT
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you asked what Bell thought... and I provided documentation in the traditional manner by quoting his work.
I don't think this is necessarily relevant to understanding HFW in the context of Bell experiments and the implications of quantum mechanics.
Some empirical results bring a fresh air to the ground of HFW in philosophy, and if it is to be a part of the sciences, a chance to look at the possibilities.
The "syntactic" and "semantic" dichotomy that you raise might be interesting, perhaps you can explain without assuming that the reader has access to your thinking.
I'm not asking to be granted anything... and I don't think it needs to be resolved for this discussion.
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Lituya
Mountain climber
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May 27, 2018 - 09:49pm PT
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At the risk of simplifying too much, I've always thought of agency this way.
With all variables properly input, we can, theoretically, calculate exactly where every ball will end up on the table. However, if even one of the balls possesses agency then the predicted result fails entirely.
I suppose if only a small portion of one ball is in possession of free will, then some sort of localism contains the affect and predictability remains?
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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May 27, 2018 - 09:56pm PT
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on this issue I am not "committed" because I am trying to figure it out myself, I would be willing to accept the possibility that using humans to set the knobs on the Bell experiments anyway they choose has nothing to do with free will, except that it certainly seems like it.
The first sentence of the SEP entry for Free Will:
“Free Will” is a philosophical term of art for a particular sort of capacity of rational agents to choose a course of action from among various alternatives.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freewill/
since this is exactly what happened in the Bell experiments, rational agents choose a course of action from various alternatives, perhaps you could refine what you mean by free will.
The experimental outcome depends on those choices.
Under the assumption that quantum mechanics violates "local realism" the experimental measurements demonstrated the violations as expected, this would not have been true had the agents did not have the capacity to "choose a course of action from among various alternatives" that is, had they been constrained in their choices for whatever reason.
Thus the conclusion of the paper, "The results also show empirically that human agency is incompatible with causal determinism..."
They did not conclude that the results showed empirically that human agents acted with free will, that is true.
"The main perceived threats to our freedom of will are various alleged determinisms: physical/causal; psychological; biological; theological. For each variety of determinism, there are philosophers who (i) deny its reality, either because of the existence of free will or on independent grounds; (ii) accept its reality but argue for its compatibility with free will; or (iii) accept its reality and deny its compatibility with free will. " ibid.
The article I linked earlier on Causal Determinism makes an interesting statement:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/determinism-causal/
The roots of the notion of determinism surely lie in a very common philosophical idea: the idea that everything can, in principle, be explained, or that everything that is, has a sufficient reason for being and being as it is, and not otherwise."
Now in a sense it is the very issue that Bell got to in his studies of quantum theory, that is, a lot of quantum mechanics takes place in a space that makes calculations possible, but not necessarily a "real place" in terms of our everyday conception of what is "real"
Bell wrote:
"The only 'observer' which is essential in orthodox practical quantum theory is the inanimate apparatus which amplifies microscopic events to macroscopic consequences. Of course, this apparatus, in laboratory experiments, is chosen and adjusted by the experimenters. In this sense the outcomes of experiments are indeed dependent on the mental processes of the experimenters! But once the apparatus is in place, and functioning untouched, it is a matter of complete indifference... according to ordinary quantum mechanics... whether the experimenters stay around to watch, or delegate such 'observing' to computers.
Why this necessity to refer to 'apparatus' when we would discuss quantum phenomena? The physicists who first came upon such phenomena found them so bizarre that they despaired of describing them in terms of ordinary concepts like space and time, position and velocity. The founding fathers of quantum theory decided even that no concepts could possible be found which could permit direct description of the quantum world. So the theory which they established aimed only to describe systematically the response of the apparatus. And what more, after all, is needed for application? It is as if our friends could not find words to tell us about the very strange places where they went on holiday. We could see for ourselves whether they came back browner or fatter. This would be enough for us to be able to advise other friends, who might wish to be browner or fatter, about those strange places. Our apparatus visits the microscopic world for us, and we see what happens as a result.
The 'Problem' then is this: how exactly is this world to be divided into speakable apparatus... that we can talk about... and unspeakable quantum systems that we can not talk about? How many electrons, or atoms, or molecules, make an 'apparatus'? The mathematics of ordinary theory requires such a division, but says nothing about how it is to be made. In practice, the question is resolved by pragmatic recipes which have stood the test of time, applied with discretion and good taste born of experience. But should not fundamental theory permit exact mathematical formulation?"
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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May 27, 2018 - 10:31pm PT
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With all variables properly input, we can, theoretically, calculate exactly where every ball will end up on the table.
quantum theory tells us that this is not possible in quantum systems. What we can do is calculate the probable location of every ball. the causal determinism you are assuming is experimentally contradicted by experiment. the constituents of the quantum system do not require agency for this to be true.
these experiments have "free inputs" that are to be set by agents whose choices are not affected by the experiment. in many of these experiments, random numbers are generated by machines to set the inputs. the experiment linked above used a large number of human agents to set the inputs.
the outcome of the experiments demonstrated the expected violations of Bell's inequalities, demonstrating that quantum mechanics behaves in that weird manner.
but a necessary precondition is that the initial conditions are set "freely" which the humans did, demonstrating that their choices were not "causally deterministic"
since humans made a choice among various alternatives, and that these choices violated causal determinism, we may conclude that the humans acted with free will
this is empirical evidence which is quantitative, not a philosophical deduction
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Lituya
Mountain climber
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May 27, 2018 - 10:44pm PT
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Thanks for your reply. An honor. I will have to rethink (or, maybe, unthink) my thought experiment.
Any thoughts on how human agency changes determinism in the local cosmos? Obviously, space probes pushing through free hydrogen, expelling fuel, using gravitational slingshots affect change--however minuscule. Are particle experiments here on Earth--eg fusing nuclei by various methods not found "naturally" outside the stellar core--changing the fabric at all? Rather, is human agency contained?
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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May 27, 2018 - 10:52pm PT
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Any thoughts on how human agency changes determinism in the local cosmos?
how local?
there is the inference that every experiment we could do on Earth has been done someplace in the universe at some time
that would imply that there is nothing special about human agency in terms of affecting the universe
the affect humans have is calculable independent of human agency, and the affects are small.
From time to time we worry about poking a hole in the false vacuum (or some such) and collapsing the universe from a higher energy state to a lower one... but once again, the experiments we would perform that inadvertently resulted in the destruction of the universe as we know it have been done elsewhere at some other time, and most likely naturally, which is to say absent rational agency.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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May 28, 2018 - 10:02am PT
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on the issue of free will... from https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freewill/
"Our survey of several themes in philosophical accounts of free will suggests that a—perhaps the—root issue is that of control. Clearly, our capacity for deliberation and the potential sophistication of some of our practical reflections are important conditions on freedom of will. But any proposed analysis of free will must also ensure that the process it describes is one that was up to, or controlled by, the agent."
...
"The more radical group holds that the agent who determines his own will is not causally influenced by external causal factors, including his own character. "
...
"...there are those who believe freedom of will consists in a distinctively personal form of causality, commonly referred to as “agent causation.” The agent himself causes his choice or action, and this is not to be reductively analyzed as an event within the agent causing the choice...
Do We Have Free Will?
A recent trend is to suppose that agent causation accounts capture, as well as possible, our prereflective idea of responsible, free action. But the failure of philosophers to work the account out in a fully satisfactory and intelligible form reveals that the very idea of free will (and so of responsibility) is incoherent (Strawson 1986) or at least inconsistent with a world very much like our own (Pereboom 2001)."
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Lituya
Mountain climber
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May 28, 2018 - 11:10am PT
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I've heard some say that the capacity to love demonstrates agency. But Dawkins kind of throws cold water on this line of thinking. (Too cold, IMO.)
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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May 28, 2018 - 11:14am PT
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given the hormonal reward system, and the exigencies of reproduction, one might question just what controls this (and other) emotions.
but there is probably room for love there, if you own up to the fact that much of what we might call love is fulfilling a biological function.
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Lituya
Mountain climber
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May 28, 2018 - 11:18am PT
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I think he goes beyond this and claims that preservation of one's genetic code is an even stronger impetus. It's been a while; can't recall his experiment. Groundhog self-sacrifice, I think.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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May 28, 2018 - 12:08pm PT
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if we have learned anything since Darwin, it is that we cannot look at "human exceptionalism" as a reason for anything... that we feel "love" in any of the ways you'd define it, we can find examples to degree among our kin eking out a living in the world around us.
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Lituya
Mountain climber
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May 28, 2018 - 11:12pm PT
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the experiments we would perform that inadvertently resulted in the destruction of the universe as we know it have been done elsewhere at some other time, and most likely naturally, which is to say absent rational agency.
Ok, this one's been bothering me since last night. A big smile when you suppose that sentient beings elsewhere in the universe may have already dabbled in extra-stellar fusion. In fact, it seems like a plausible assumption.
Still, I'm trying to imagine the circumstances under which nuclear fusion would take place naturally outside a star's core. Particularly PP or CNO. Aside from electrostatic confinement, how would such a fusion event "naturally" occur? Within a field like the one that is generated between Io and Jupiter? In a planetary magnetic field? I'm not a physicist, but my inquiry is sincere.
I've always believed that just as free O2 in a planet's atmosphere reveals aerobic life, evidence of extra-stellar fusion would be a sign of intelligent life--agency, even. (Unless you do, in fact, attribute agency to a misinterpretation of pre-determined nature.) :-)
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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May 28, 2018 - 11:26pm PT
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I should have put experiments in quotes
what I meant was all the reactions we would induce in the laboratory on Earth have also happened someplace in the universe due to natural processes (not induced by intelligent agents).
you just need the right nuclei at the right energies to get fusion to happen, this happens in a star, but it will happen in many other places where there is energetic processes happening.
I doubt that our energy use is readily apparent to someone observing us from afar, and certainly there are no signatures of fission or fusion energy that could be detected.
It turns out that the atmospheric component most out of equilibrium is Nitrogen... given that we have oceans.
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Bushman
climber
The state of quantum flux
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May 29, 2018 - 12:01am PT
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Ah the insignificance of a pre class one civilization. As such we remain incognito, no pesky alien invasions to worry about here.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Topic Author's Reply - May 29, 2018 - 09:06am PT
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Many posts here, it seems to me, are pretty loose with their use of terminology. Despite being characterized as philosophical and therefore attentive to precise wording and definition.
Just the nature of the subject matter and discussion, I guess. And the times, too, perhaps. And the current state of language. Maybe future history will cover these concepts/realities differently. With more clarity.
pretty loose with their use of terminology...
Pretty loose with the contextual framing, too, it seemed.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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May 29, 2018 - 09:13am PT
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detecting life from atmosphere disequilibria:
https://exoatmo.sciencesconf.org/74812/document
the 0.7 TW of power required to keep the Earth's atmosphere in its state is biological,
human electric generation capacity is an order of magnitude greater than that, roughly 7TW.
It would be interesting to calculate if climate change signatures in the atmosphere could be observed from afar.
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Lituya
Mountain climber
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May 29, 2018 - 10:28am PT
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Good find--from one of my Alma maters, even. Unrelated to our discussion here, but pretty stunning that "If photosynthesis ceased, O2 decreases exponentially to <0.4% in~10 m.y." I had never seen that calculated before.
Back to fusion, I guess if one of our neighbors--within 50 or so l.y.--just happened to be looking at the right moment, and were on the correct side of the galactic plane, they might catch a glimpse of Tsar Bomba or one of our Pacific Ocean blasts. Or maybe note the magnetic field interruptions that took place before we took our toys underground?
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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May 29, 2018 - 11:56am PT
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Despite being characterized as philosophical and therefore attentive to precise wording and definition
It's too bad that philosophical discussions frequently must skirt this issue: "being" , "consciousness" , "rigid designators" , etc. Volumes are written attempting to define these terms by assuming positions, then reasoning toward those definitions. There may be no other way forward in such vague territory.
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WBraun
climber
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May 29, 2018 - 08:12pm PT
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There may be no other way forward in such vague territory.
That's because the gross materialists are so clueless all while masquerading themselves as knowledgeable ......
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Topic Author's Reply - May 30, 2018 - 07:32pm PT
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Hugh Herr's 2018 TED is up.
How we'll become cybergs and extend human potential...
https://www.ted.com/talks/hugh_herr_how_we_ll_become_cyborgs_and_extend_human_potential?utm_campaign=tedspread&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=tedcomshare
"At MIT, Hugh Herr builds prosthetic knees, legs and ankles that fuse biomechanics with microprocessors to restore (and perhaps enhance) normal gait, balance and speed."
...
Aside...
Ignaz Semmelweis...
Semmelweis's practice earned widespread acceptance only years after his death, when Louis Pasteur confirmed the germ theory and Joseph Lister, acting on the French microbiologist's research, practiced and operated, using hygienic methods, with great success. In 1865, Semmelweis was committed to an asylum, where he died at age 47 of pyaemia, after being beaten by the guards, only 14 days after he was committed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 16, 2018 - 04:53pm PT
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Take a moment to appreciate the genius of science, engineering and Uptown Funk...
[Click to View YouTube Video]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHBcVlqpvZ8
Recall 150 years ago, we had horses for transportation, telegraph for long distance communication, and women in America were NOT ALLOWED to vote.
You wonder if they did it on purpose - putting this bot's brains not in its head but in its ass!
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 17, 2018 - 12:08pm PT
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xCon, that's another good one, thanks.
...
MIT AGI: AI in the Age of Reason
Steven Pinker with Lex Fridman...
[Click to View YouTube Video]
https://youtu.be/epQxfSp-rdU
Despite the great advances in AI, as an engineer (once an engineer always an engineer, right?) I remain firmly, for a long time now, with Pinker and Harari, not Harris and others, re AGI fears. Everyday AI algorithms gone amuck are the much bigger near to midterm concerns, imo.
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WBraun
climber
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Oct 17, 2018 - 06:21pm PT
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More horsesh!t from Fruitloops and his brainwashed Pinker who have no real clue for life or its actual meaning.
Both trying to make life better artificially.
Life is NOT artificial.
Both following Dr. Frankenstein into delusion as usual ......
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NutAgain!
Trad climber
South Pasadena, CA
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Oct 17, 2018 - 08:03pm PT
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Nature created animals, and animals created artifice. Therefore artificial is natural. But it is natural that you make an artificial distinction about the nature of nature and artifice.
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