Not by itself.
The claim is that an indeterminate action that is produced by a deliberative thought process demonstrates free will.

We don't know how often quantum randomness affects our decisions or thoughts, if at all.

"True" free will is only possible if there is some kind of "you" apart from the physical world. Otherwise it's just your grey matter obeying the laws of physics. Whether those laws are deterministic or not doesn't matter.

This!!!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_p..._consciousness




PairTheBoard

Not necessarily. Randomness can underly everything at a fundamental level, but our macroscopic experience could be non-random. The whole idea of “winning poker” is based on exactly this notion. The result of any given poker hand is essentially random, even for high level pros. Even if a pro is good enough to get his stack in any time he has say a 70-30 edge or more and folds otherwise, the result of any particular hand will still be random. The pro, even in this hypothetical can go on a downswing. However his win rate over say 1 million hands will be quite non-random.

In similar vein, at the quantum level observations are random. It is perfectly possible for all the oxygen atoms in a room to assemble themselves at one corner of the room and suffocate anyone in the room. The location of an individual oxygen atom is a random variable. The behavior of a large agglomeration of oxygen atoms, on the other hand is very much non random and quite predictable.

Randy Random got such little attention from his bride, Vicky Variance, that he changed his name to Pete Predictable - much to the chagrin of his parents Mr. and Mrs. Probability.


PairTheBoard

PairTheBoard

Then their movement isn't random imo...

Watching this now.

Freewill and Determinism don't have to be exclusive to each other. Example: you're inside of a bubble and can control the bubble's velocity using pressure, let's just say. The bubble happens to be in a tubing and cannot exit, it is also forced to flow downward one direction. In this case both freewill and determinism co-exist.

It's interesting that a piece of material small enough to remain suspended in the air will move about approximately like Brownian motion.

I think your use of the term "predictable" is a little misleading. It's tempting to say that a random variable with very small variance is "predictable", but I don't think that's the common understanding of the word. It's still a random variable and certainly not perfectly predictable in the sense of being deterministic. A coin flipped a million times will come up heads close to 50% with high probability but the "prediction" that it comes up heads exactly 500,000 times will nearly always be wrong. Same with your win rate in poker.

Not only will a random variable with extremely small variance not be deterministic but if its outcome is used as the initial condition of a chaotic process, the result down the line of that process will be quite "unpredictable".

You can produce a real life example of a quantum event changing reality in profound ways. For example, take a device that counts when some radioactive material emits a particle. Use it to make a crucial 50-50 decision at the final table of a winner-take-all poker tournament with a $10 million prize. Guess right and you're rich. Guess wrong and you're not. Your life takes a major fork based on the inherently random outcome of a quantum event.

Schrodinger's cat can relate.

PairTheBoard

PairTheBoard

Predictable in a statistical way. If you flip a fair coin 1 million times, I am quite confident in predicting that the percentage of heads will be between 49.8 and 50.2. If you care to wager on it, I would even give you 10:1 odds that I am right. If you would care to go to a billion flips, I would narrow my betting range to 49.995 to 50.005 percent heads. Make it 1 trillion and I am willing to go 49.9998 to 50.0002 percent. The point is that the percentage of heads is determined completely at random. Yet it is very predictable assuming large numbers of trials.

That is exactly analogous to the situation with the oxygen atoms in the room. The position of any given atom at a given time is random. The behavior of the agglomeration of oxygen atoms at any given time is quite predictable— we can predict for example the uniformity of oxygen concentration throughout the room, the speed with which the atoms move (assuming temperature is known), and the average force and frequency with which the atoms will hit the walls of the room (measured macroscopically as pressure). You might object that we cannot do so with zero uncertainty, and that is true. The answer to that is that when we spoke of 1 million, 1 billion or even 1 trillion coin flips, those were SMALL numbers. The uncertainty shrinks to zero as the number of atoms increases. A macroscopic sample of oxygen has on the order of 10^23 atoms. The uncertainties due to randomness are lower than what the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle gives for minimum uncertainty and is exceedingly small compared to practical limits to measurement precision. The behavior of such systems indeed is fully predictable even though the individual components behave randomly.

I choose to believe in freewill.

I also believe that you can't have a free society if you don't believe in free will as a society. Our society works because we hold people to a set of objective standards or morality and we assume that people have the free will to follow those standards, or if they dont then it was their decision not to there is a punishment for that transgression. You cant hold a person accountable for something they were predestined to do.


Discipline doesn't exist without free will. The whole concept of discipline is choosing to control your natural dispositions and not become a slave to your base desires, but if you believe in predeterminism then your base desires are what define you so there is no moral failing for succumbing to them. Its just "who you are".


Also its one thing, to learn about freewill v predeterminism when you are an adult, but how can you raise a child to believe that free will doesn't exist while also setting behavior standards for your child. How can you expect your child to change their bad behavior while also teaching them that they have no control over their behavior?


Whether or not freewill actually exists or not, we need to believe it exists in order to maintain our complex free society.

This sounds like the difference between the "Many-worlds theory" vs "Copenhagen interpretation". It seems like under the Many-worlds theory there is free will, because every possibility exists and your choice determines the path taken. While under Copenhagen theory, though a choice must be made first, there is only one path - therefore free will is voided. (I hope I got that right, it's been a long time)

In short, the answer is yes, or no, depending on the true nature of the universe.

Not quite. Even the Copenhagen interpretation leaves room for free will (at least potentially). That interpretation says that a coherent state which is a superposition of many possible outcomes undergoes decoherence during the act of measurement. The result of the measurement is a definite number, but the actual measured value cannot be determined ahead of time by examining the state of the system. Only the probability of getting each possible value can be determined from the state of the system.

That sounds like a lot of jargon, so consider a concrete case. Suppose you have an electron in a box (more technically an electron in a potential well). The box is say 1 micrometer in length. We assign coordinates to the system such that x=0 corresponds to one end of the box, x=1 um corresponds to the other end. We assume we have a detector we can use at any time we choose that will measure the position of the electron and give us a value for x.

We now note that before the measurement we cannot know what value we will measure. According to the CI the electron is in a state where itÂ’s position is at ALL possible values. Note too that the range of values possible is any real number. Due to quantum tunneling the electron can be found outside the box. Basically the electron is everywhere prior to the measurement. The amplitude of the electron is different at different locations though. This electron amplitude in macroscopic terms is simply the probability that the electron will be found at any specific location. The actual values of these probabilities depend on the state of the system and can hence be determined in advance, but there is no possible way to determine prior to the measurement what value the detector will show when you actually do the measurement. You get a definite value every time, but that value is random (within the limits of the probability distribution of the state).

Whether or not the random nature of the measurement result leaves room for free will is certainly an open question that we can reasonably disagree on. The main point is that the CI does not imply complete determinism.

Perhaps. I was taking more of a backward view. Under CI there is only a single path, while under MW many possibilities exist (though yes, only one from any given point).

Just to add, the notion of measurement/observation is a little outdated and leads to some interpretations involving conscious entity bringing reality into existence - tree falling in woods, moon not there when we don't look at it etc. The triggering factor as to whether the wave function collapses is what is, imo, best described as the 'in principle knowledge of' the which-path information. Since the information can be scrambled or identified after the passing of the object through a diffraction grating as per the delayed choice double slit modification, there is no ambiguity as to the direct causal factor. It cannot be said that the interaction of detector equipment or some other direct observational factor is causing the effect. The existence of the path-information, whether it can be known or not, i.e. 'in principle', is determining the outcome.

'Many-worlds' is obv fantasy with no evidence supporting it yet has somehow morphed its way into mainstream discourse like it's a thing, drifting from sci-fi into hard science. Same thing is happening with the gravitron which I noticed now often has the "predicted" tag dropped "it's only a matter of time before we discover it yo".

I don't think quantum indeterminacy need be the source of free will for it serve as an argument in favor of the possibility of free will. One argument against free will says every action must be caused by previous conditions - thus the universe is deterministic. But if an act of will is caused by previous conditions then it can't be free. It has previously been determined by conditions. Quantum indeterminacy is a counter example to this generalization. Therefore the above argument is flawed whether or not quantum indeterminacy has anything to do with free will. Quantum indeterminacy just shows that the above generalization has a counter example and therefore the flawed argument does not prove the impossibility of free will.

Quantum indeterminacy is a counter example to the premise, "every action must be caused by previous conditions". Free will may or may not exist. But if it doesn't exist it's not because of the above premise because the premise is false.


PairTheBoard

Does real randomness actually exist? Could humans make it? Could humans measure it?

The more stupid the monkey the more random the world.

You can argue that a coin flip is not "really random" because we merely lack the information required to calculate how the coin will land. Probability theory is a tool for handling that lack of information. Based on our previous experience with coin flips we set the prior probability for the coin at 50-50. Then as we learn more about the conditions of the flip we can update its probability using Baye's theorem.

Under determinism nothing is "really random". Like the coin flip, we merely view things as "random" and apply probability theory to them because of our lack of information about them. Thus your "stupid monkey" comment.

However, in what we believe about reality it's not that simple. With quantum indeterminacy there are things like the location of the electron in the box whereby its measurement actually is "really random". Even if we learned all the information possible to learn about the electron we could still not predict the measurement of its location beyond a probability distribution. It's not because we are "stupid monkeys". It's not like the coin flip.

Now the argument against free will goes like this. A willed act must either be "random" like the coin flip, so determined and therefore not "free". Or it's "really random" like with the electron and therefore not "caused" according to the person's "free will".

My objection to that argument goes like this. Quantum indeterminacy should teach us that reality is not so simple as the clockwork universe we once believed in. There is something deeper going on which allows for "really random" quantum events. We should therefore take that lesson and admit the possibility of yet another depth to reality, still unknown to us, that allows for creative acts of free will which are neither determined nor random in the sense of the electron. We simply don't know what the nature of this "third way" might be. If it does exist I suspect it has something to do with consciousness. Also something that lacks satisfactory explanation by way of physicalism.


PairTheBoard

Looking into the future and putting limits on what we will or will not be able to understand and comprehend?

From what I understand, when it comes to quantum indeterminacy they've "proven" there are no "hidden variables". The indeterminacy is inherent and not due to our lack of knowledge. So not subject to revision based on a better understanding in the future. Maybe they're wrong or maybe I misunderstand it. OTOH, maybe that's the way it really is.

However, when it comes to free will possibly being something neither determined nor "really random" I think that's an open question. Possibly unanswerable, possibly just unknown for now. The argument against it says it's incoherent. I think that argument begs the question. That is, the argument assumes its conclusion.


PairTheBoard

I think most people think of free will as a kind of power that gets applied at the instant a decision is made. I'm thinking that may be a naive view of it. I'm seeing a human life as a stream of free will. A human life is shaped by its environment and a simultaneous and continuous living free will responding to that environment.


PairTheBoard

As I argued in a previous thread on this topic, the most precise and binding definitions of "free will" in existence are probably legal ones. Distinguishing between e.g. the criminally sane and insane (or whatever the modern terms are) has nothing to do with quantum mechanics.