"Illusion" might be the wrong word.

"Incorrect interpretation (model?)" might be more correct.

Something or other about determinism being a fickle thought experiment wherein introducing an outside authority negates the concept entirely…

Which may be interesting to a very deranged few, me atop the list I fear.

Not earnest of course. I just tend to see things to their conclusion…. And I post to verify if that conclusion is logical.

Is an action determined if an intermediary introduced which prevents that action?

If so what business is it called determined?

Now if we incorporate that intermediary into that system which produced the final action, which was predetermined with the intermediary taken into account….
My drift

I can keep going or I could have stopped after my first post… I added nothing since then.. but it’s sterile and I like the taste.
“Patches o hoolahan”

What was proven in Bell's 1964 paper is that the hypothesis of hidden variables (which is equivalent to the hypothesis that quantum systems can be modeled using probability theory) is not consistent with the hypothesis of locality. There are interpretations of the mathematics of quantum theory (such as the Bohmian interpretation) which reject locality. These interpretations are deterministic, in the sense that most people understand the word "deterministic".

What you say is entirely true, but I think you are giving short shrift to the implications of non-locality. The whole hidden variables debate arose mainly because many physicists, most prominently Einstein, objected to the notion of inherent randomness in quantum interactions. Hence the idea that such interactions are not really random, but rather are completely determined by aspects of the system that are unaccounted for. These physicists were certainly looking for a way out of randomness, but non-locality almost certainly was not an acceptable way out. In fact, they were more likely to accept randomness than non-local interactions.

Einstein in particular developed his most famous theories based entirely on the notion that all interactions are local — hence the postulate in relatively that no speeds greater than light speed are possible. Non-locality would allow for instantaneous interactions. This is a major deal as it implies that there is no way to consistently order events in time in a way that all observers would agree upon. In a non-local universe it makes no sense physically to say event A happened before event B. Some observers would say A happened first, others would say B happened first, still others would observe them to happen simultaneously.

At a bare minimum, to talk about causation, the cause must precede the effect in temporal sequence. However with non-locality, we cannot actually definitively state that one event precedes another. Thus, we cannot really speak of causation in such a universe. It is hard to say that a universe where cause and effect make no sense is in any way deterministic.

We have will, not free will. Nothing is free in that sense and is kind of a red herring. Everything in the universe has trillions of forces working on it ... including people.

It seems to be a common claim that Bell proved there are no hidden variables. But neither did he prove this, nor was this what he concluded from his own work. He was, in fact, an advocate of Bohm's interpretation.

There are also misconceptions surrounding the dichotomy that follows from Bell's work. Hidden variables do not prevent randomness. The Bohmian interpretation agrees with all the experimental results of quantum mechanics. Despite the so-called "hidden variables", randomness lives on. It is intrinsic and irremovable, as we know it to be. (If I hide a quantity and make it impossible to discover, then it is intrinsically random.) On the other side of the issue, the kind of nonlocality implied by Bell's work is of a limited nature. One does not need to assume everything is nonlocal.

But the more relevant issue to me is this. Bell assumed hidden variables. This assumption took on a particular mathematical form. To be precise, he assumed we can model the experiment using probability theory. This assumption is what fails if we assume total locality. When we assume locality, we are rejecting probability theory. This fact flies under the radar because physicists don't use rigorous probability. But it is exactly what Bell proved.

Moreover, probability theory is an extension of classical logic. In fact, when we are assuming locality, we are rejecting classical logic. Hence, the need for so-called "quantum logic" and "quantum probability". In science, we combine experiment, mathematics, and interpretation. Sometimes these conspire to present us with a contradiction. In that case, we usually revise either our mathematics or our interpretation. This situation is the only one in which the mainstream response has been to reject logic itself. That is at least as radical, if not more radical, than assuming some limited form of nonlocality.

Regardless of whether Bohm's interpretation is "right", what I find interesting is this. As an interpretation, it agrees with all the mathematics of quantum theory. It agrees with all the experimental results. Every interpretation does, of course. Thus, the parts of other interpretations that are not in Bohm's do not follow from experiment. An example is the notion of wave function collapse. Another is the ill-defined sort of "intrinsic randomness" that is bandied about. These things are not experimental consequences. They are part of an interpretive layer that lies atop everything else.

Great to hear from you again. Hope your research has gone well. What a pleasure reading your posts.

This is news to me that mainstream physics has rejected classical logic and probability to accommodate locality and quantum effects. Exactly what do they modify in classical logic to do this. Do they substitute a sliding scale for the law of the excluded middle?

Also, from what I remember the last time we looked at Bohm's model, it's deterministic based on a Universal Schrodinger wave function that depends on unknown initial conditions. Are the unknown initial conditions where the "intrinsic randomness" you mentioned come in? Are those initial conditions just unknown or might they be intrinsically uncertain or even indeterminate?


PairTheBoard

Is it unknown initial conditions when I stagger into a pub and order a ghostship ale?! I think not.

Try discussing something worthwhile. Not esoteric ramblings more suited for the Book of Ecclesiastes.

At 40-45 minutes Chomsky discusses free will. Paraphrasing, he says science explains things either via determinism or stochastic processes (randomness). So if science is complete there is no free will. But if free will involves something other than determinism or stochastic processes then current science can't explain it.




PairTheBoard

^ Pretty obvious: Where there is determinism there is no freedom, and where there is randomness there is no will.

I think there's one more wrinkle per DurkaDurka in our last thread on this topic. That is, if there is free will there would be no way to tell it wasn't random. The problem is underdetermined. Seems to me some people were dubious about this point but DurkaDurka insisted on it as an expert on the philosophical position for libertarian free will.


PairTheBoard

Interesting.
Did you feel that you wrote that one post because it was inevitably forced upon you by a strict deterministic process that started 13 billion years ago with the Big Bang, or was it just random writing?

People who wonder if they have free will, have it. On the other hand, people who SAY they wonder about it yet don't realize that it means they have it, may actually not have it and may merely be zombies. So, I am a little scared.

Neither.

Our current understanding of physics contains randomness, and if that is true randomness, then certainly the initial conditions of the big bang did not lead us inevitably to this point. If this is correct, if we restarted the universe with identical initial conditions, and waited 13 billion years, it's highly likely that none of us would exist at all. Even if our galaxy, sun, and earth still form exactly as before, genetic mutations that led to humans would have happened differently.

But that does not mean the post itself was random. If the free will I definitely feel like I have is only an illusion, then the post is a result of a brain computation that is not random.

Thanks. I've been looking at infinitary logic lately (logic that allows countable conjunctions and disjunctions). I was reflecting on all our old conversations and thought I'd drop back in. It's much quieter than I remember, but nice to see a lot of the same people still around.

It is the distributive law of conjunction over disjunction that fails. As far as I know, it's not replaced by anything. The Wikipedia article is a good jumping-off point. But I believe the rejection of probability theory, as outlined in Bell's paper, can be also be used to demonstrate a violation of classical logic. What I have in mind is that some use of the law of large numbers can transform the probabilistic contradiction into a deterministic contradiction. Exploring this is on my back-burner to-do list.

What would be the difference between "intrinsically uncertain" and "indeterminate"? I believe you are right about the unknown initial conditions, but this is just one way of looking at it. For instance, the solution to a PDE might be uniquely determined by specifying initial conditions. But it might also be determined by specifying terminal conditions, or conditions on a hypersurface, or various types of boundary conditions, or some combination of these, for instance. Looking at any of these and saying "that's the source of the randomness" is rather arbitrary.

The last few posts brought to my mind a thought experiment. In this hypothetical, assume free will exists.

Our favorite experimental volunteer, Sleeping Beauty, has once again agreed to be our guinea pig. In this experiment, she sits alone in a nondescript room in front of a monitor. She is presented with two images. It doesn't matter what they are. Perhaps they are two distinct Rorschach inkblots. Or maybe they are pictures of animals, a lemur and a mongoose, perhaps. Whatever they are, let us call them Image A and Image B.

She is told to pick one. She can pick however she likes. After she picks, her memory of the experiment is erased, and she suddenly finds herself in front of the monitor, told to pick from between the two images. This is repeated numerous times. Each time she picks, Sleeping Beauty has no memory of any previous pickings and is completely unaware of how long she has been doing this.

After 2000 pickings, the experiment is over and her choices are tabulated and numbered. Choice 1 is the first choice she made, Choice 2 the second, and so on. We are told that among the even choices, she chose Image A 769 out of 1000 times. How confident should we be that among the odd choices we will see a similar ratio?

Don't see why its not clearcut that her picks were affected by something like how she was sitting rather than 50-50 randomness.

It looks like she has a partial preference for A and I would expect a similar ratio for her picks on the odds. I have a partial preference for chocolate ice cream and usually choose it when I get ice cream. But sometimes I choose vanilla. It seems like a free choice for me each time. I don't think you can predict what she chose on #351 so that makes each choice look random though not 50-50. But Durka Durka said you wouldn't be able to tell free will choices from random (or determined based on unknown varying conditions - David's point above). Maybe you have something more in mind.


PairTheBoard

Very. How confident should we be that among the first n/2 choices we will see a similar ratio to the second n/2 choices?

What does it mean if the odds are exactly the same as the evens and the first half is the same as the second?

What does it mean if they are different? Very different?

To me, it's clear-cut that the ratio among the odds will be similar to the evens, with very high probability. Whether we assume she has free will or not, the answer is the same. In fact, the reasoning that leads to this conclusion has nothing to do with Sleeping Beauty. It has to do with us, the information we have, and the symmetry that's inherent in that information. I can use my free will to thwart someone's prediction of what I will have for dinner tonight. But I cannot use it to violate the principles of logic and probability. I am still governed by the law of large numbers, for example.

Perhaps my thinking here is in support of Durka Durka's claim. But at the very least, I think it shows that just because we can predict a large aggregate with high probability, that does not preclude the possibility that free will is operating on the individual level.

No one is choosing an ugly lemur over a mongoose, especially if she is familiar with Rikki-Tikki-Tavi.

(the point is, even if she chooses B all 2000 times, it's still compatible with free will)