She was correct to a point on that point. The problem with that is it removes the entire purpose of the free will debate, which is whether moral judgment can be justified. If I cannot tell whether your behavior is random or a free choice, how do I know whether you are morally good or bad?

It doesn't really matter to anyone* whether 1) they ate a chicken sandwich at 12:47pm today because it was a truly free choice or 2) they ate a chicken sandwich at 12:47pm today because it looked good because a lot of things happened that made it look good and like the right thing to eat for lunch.

*As far as I am aware.

I don't understand why we can't have moral judgement without free will. Or, if not moral judgement, we can still punish the immoral and reward the moral. Knowledge of the fact that we do so will be factored into decision making, even if that process is deterministic.

By the way, my technique for advocating for freewill by noting that a human can disobey the physicist's prediction is not thwarted if the physicist can only offer a probability. If he tells a million people with the same subatomic makeup that there is a 70 % chance that they will go to the movies tomorrow and those million are all free will advocates, then none will go. I suppose the physicist can claim that it might be a 3/10 to the millionth power shot that occurred so it isn't an ironclad disproof of no free will, but I'll take it.

Don't understand the big words but does this have anything to do with using probability to solve number theory problems?

Two things:

1) We do have moral judgement and we do punish/reward. So obviously we can do so.

2) The good/bad people cannot be blamed for anything if they couldn't have done any differently. If there is no free will, they could not have done any differently.

I think your example would demonstrate that people are willful when told what they should do by another human, which I don't think is particularly groundbreaking (except to those who think that people are reasonable).

It is not at all surprising that choosing 2000 mongeese is compatible with free will. What is at least somewhat counterintuitive is that being able to predict 1000 unseen choices on the basis of 1000 observations is also compatible with free will.

I don't think so. My idea relates to the connection between probability and logic. Namely, that probability collapses to classical logic when only probabilities 0 and 1 are considered. The number theory proofs that I know of relate to the connection between probability and measure theory. One shows that a certain probability is positive, which implies that the event (as a subset of the sample space) is nonempty, and this demonstrates existence of something.

The flip side is that society as a whole cannot be blamed for punishing the bad people either. If determinism is correct, neither the criminal nor the person punishing that criminal could have done any differently.

I get your point, but I have to take the contrary view. If determinism is correct then we think that we cannot hold someone morally responsible for their actions. Yet we obviously do so. Therefore if determinism actually is correct, then we have no choice but to hold people responsible for their actions. Determinism applies equally to those who pass moral judgement as it does to wrongdoers. Those who judge also lack the free will to avoid judging. The criminal might have no choice but to commit crime, but society also has no choice but to incarcerate the criminal (or administer whatever other punishment it deems fit).

This is misunderstanding the free will problem. The claim is that if we are just brains following the laws of physics, and if physics is deterministic, then given the exact same initial conditions preceding a decision, a given person will always make the same decision. Of course, we cannot recreate the exact initial conditions without a time machine, as the process is chaotic. Very tiny changes in initial conditions might affect the outcome. Maybe a carbon-14 atom decays and a neuron fires differently than it otherwise would, and the decision changes.

Telling the subjects about a physicists prediction is of course a much larger change in initial conditions, and invalidates the experiment.

If we learn that determinism is true, we may change our practices in light of that information. Determinism does not say that just because we have always done X, we will continue to do X in spite of new information.

It's not the "telling", it's the "knowing". Tigers, and present-day computers cannot "know" what they are predicted to do (or are 70% to do). "Charles Whitman could "know" and still not do anything about it. But most people if they "know" the prediction (regardless of whether they are told by a physicist, or they themselves are a perfect physicists, or God himself told them) can change the outcome. You could of course claim that the mere "knowing" changes the initial conditions and thus the prediction. Except what if I take THAT into account and still defy it? ad infinitum.

Probably relevant response I received a while back in rgt:

In the past, yes. Determinism is compatible with learning and reconsidering. That is kind of the whole point of pondering things. Generally, that is why we have the big lump of stuff atop our necks.

I, for instance, act somewhat differently (better, imo) than I did before I had my notions of free will removed. Of course, I am not to blame for this improvement. I really had no choice as notions of free will are incompatible with thinking correctly.

So, in a nutshell, behaviors are different when the initial conditions (which is what "knowing something"* entirely amounts to) change? That is compatible with free will of all sorts and also no-free-will of all sorts.

*Or knowing something else, or a combination of those two things or some third thing, or some combination of two or three of those three things, ad infinitum.

The predictor sees that if he doesn't tell her, she will eat the hot dog. He then sees that if he tells her she will, she won't eat the hot dog. It's like he flips a switch that makes his prediction false regardless of what it is. She could just as well be a machine programmed to light a red light with no predictor, light a green light if a predictor flips a red light switch, and light a red light if a predictor flips a green light switch. I'm not convinced this is anything more than a self reference joke like "This statement is false". On the other hand, I can't help feeling that this might very well be a valid and profound argument for free will.


PairTheBoard

If the behavior, in a simplified form, can be duplicated by a computer program or a logic circuit, it's not evidence for free will.

The difference between knowing and telling is giving information in a form the recipient can understand. So you tell English speaking humans things in English, and that becomes knowing. You tell the computer program things by entering the appropriate keystrokes (or other input) at the appropriate time, and then the program "knows" what you are telling it.

This behavior of being contrary probably has evolutionary roots, as a way of avoiding manipulation. Another way of doing this would be intentionally behaving (pseudo)randomly.

I think that you can define free will in a way that it is a tautology that nothing has it. But as the esteemed Brian the Mick points out, most people use the term as it applies to whether we can punish people for doing something because they can "decide" to do otherwise. The problem for those who say no to that is that they could also say something like "since I realize that there is no free will, I have decided to make no decisions and whatever will be will be." This might sound like a self reference joke but Frege would beg to differ.

Garret is stunned when Robbi unexpectedly calls his big bet with lowly J4o .

-Did Robbi's call with J4o versus Garret shock the poker world?
-What external deterministic forces could possibly have caused this anomaly?
-By calling with J4o versus Garret, did Robbi demonstrate free will?

I'll say yes, none were evident, yes.

That gal has big tits. And a nice smile.

Ferge, basic law V, Russell’s paradox, Hume’s principle. Pour into a glass and drink.

Let me know the outcome.

I probably shouldn't have used the word "joke". I had in mind some of my posts in the "Life is Being Drunk" thread. Frege certainly didn't consider self reference a joke when his Basic Law V was confronted by it in Russel's Paradox. And I understand Godel used self reference in the proof of his Incompleteness Theorem. For that matter I really don't see how your hot dog scenario involves self reference at all. It just has the feel of it as far as I can tell.

I think your hot dog scenario is more related to Newcomb's Problem which has proven far from trivial. If your scenario is original to you, maybe we should call it "Sklansky's Solution" (to Free Will).

Newcomb's Problem
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newcomb%27s_paradox


PairTheBoard

It's illusions all the way down.

They could say that. They do not have to though, and I'm not sure what the likelihood of saying it would be. I'd like to have a generous view of people and think that the vast majority of them would not be that silly.

I have similar thoughts about religions and afterlives. It is possible that some people need to have certain beliefs in order to function. I'm not sure though.