Thursday, July 05, 2018

Limits of Reductionism

Almost forgot to mention I made it 3rd prize in the 2018 FQXi essay contest “What is fundamental?”

The new essay continues my thoughts about whether free will is or isn’t compatible with what we know about the laws of nature. For many years I was convinced that the only way to make free will compatible with physics is to adopt a meaningless definition of free will. The current status is that I cannot exclude it’s compatible.

The conflict between physics and free will is that to our best current knowledge everything in the universe is made of a few dozen particles (take or give some more for dark matter) and we know the laws that determine those particles’ behavior. They all work the same way: If you know the state of the universe at one time, you can use the laws to calculate the state of the universe at all other times. This implies that what you do tomorrow is already encoded in the state of the universe today. There is, hence, nothing free about your behavior.

Of course nobody knows the state of the universe at any one time. Also, quantum mechanics makes the situation somewhat more difficult in that it adds randomness. This randomness would prevent you from actually making a prediction for exactly what happens tomorrow even if you knew the state of the universe at one moment in time. With quantum mechanics, you can merely make probabilistic statements. But just because your actions have a random factor doesn’t mean you have free will. Atoms randomly decay and no one would call that free will. (Well, no one in their right mind anyway, but I’ll postpone my rant about panpsychic pseudoscience to some other time.)

People also often quote chaos to insist that free will is a thing, but please note that chaos is predictable in principle, it’s just not predictable in practice because it makes a system’s behavior highly dependent on the exact values of initial conditions. The initial conditions, however, still determine the behavior. So, neither quantum mechanics nor chaos bring back free will into the laws of nature.

Now, there are a lot of people who want you to accept watered-down versions of free will, eg that you have free will because no one can in practice predict your behavior, or because no one can tell what’s going on in your brain, and so on. But I think this is just verbal gymnastics. If you accept that the current theories of particle physics are correct, free will doesn’t exist in a meaningful way.

That is as long as you believe – as almost all physicists do – that the laws that dictate the behavior of large objects follow from the laws that dictate the behavior of the object’s constituents. That’s what reductionism tells us, and let me emphasize that reductionism is not a philosophy, it’s an empirically well-established fact. It describes what we observe. There are no known exceptions to it.

And we have methods to derive the laws of large objects from the laws for small objects. In this case, then, we know that predictive laws for human behavior exist, it’s just that in practice we can’t compute them. It is the formalism of effective field theories that tells us just what is the relation between the behavior of large objects and their interactions to the behavior of smaller objects and their interactions.

There are a few examples in the literature where people have tried to find systems for which the behavior on large scales cannot be computed from the behavior at small scales. But these examples use unrealistic systems with an infinite number of constituents and I don’t find them convincing cases against reductionism.

It occurred to me some years ago, however, that there is a much simpler example for how reductionism can fail. It can fail simply because the extrapolation from the theory at short distances to the one at long distances is not possible without inputting further information. This can happen if the scale-dependence of a constant has a singularity, and that’s something which we cannot presently exclude.

With singularity I here do not mean a divergence, ie that something becomes infinitely large. Such situations are unphysical and not cases I would consider plausible for realistic systems. But functions can have singularities without anything becoming infinite: A singularity is merely a point beyond which a function cannot be continued.

I do not currently know of any example for which this actually happens. But I also don’t know a way to exclude it.

Now consider you want to derive the theory for the large objects (think humans) from the theory for the small objects (think elementary particles) but in your derivation you find that one of the functions has a singularity at some scale in between. This means you need new initial values past the singularity. It’s a clean example for a failure of reductionism, and it implies that the laws for large objects indeed might not follow from the laws for small objects.

It will take more than this to convince me that free will isn’t an illusion, but this example for the failure of reductionism gives you an excuse to continue believing in free will.

Full essay with references here.

244 comments:

  1. to: Demihm Seinname

    New:

    o Scientists tend to be elitists. Just look at how they write papers. But they are not elite, except in a very narrow field.

    oThat field of study can be so narrow that its nearly useless in real life. In engineering we have the saying: “if you cant convince them outright, baffle them with bullshit.”

    o Those who understand math often claim an elite position - unwarranted. Math is overrated. See Richard Feynman below. Math is about counting beans. It can produce amazing results. But that can blind one as well. In actual work, the math used is rather simple. Numerical integration is actually counting beans.

    o All this results in very strange ideas about the world. The scientific view point is biased, female unfriendly, elitist, and often bullshit. An engineer, which I am, will not hold up a scientist as a brilliant genius.


    Feynman:
    “We have put together a fantastic array of tricks and gimmicks for counting numbers without actually doing it.”
    “relax you dont have to know mathematics, all you have to know is what it is.”



    ——- COMMENTS FROM BEFORE

    I fully agree. And I do have a solid back ground in science and tech (they are very similar, perhaps identical). Why do research scientists, and sci/tech people get hung up on this?

    o its their job. Reductionism is necessary to get something done.

    o They have not looked at scientific bias very much. Its rampant, and sci.tech people have the same biases as every one else. One obvious one is the bias against females. But there are so many others

    o Many topics in sci/tech are off the table. UFO s are one example. Platonism is another.

    o sci/tech people are narrowly focused. Its rare to find one that is broadly knowledgeable.

    o They adopt one world view and do not shift to other views. They likely do not understand Shakespeare’s Hamlet

    ———

    from: Demihm Seinname has left a new comment on the post "Limits of Reductionism":

    Before I plough through all the comments to search for the same question answered I have in mind while reading that claim about the absence of free will, I have to leave my note here:

    To me - as a non-natural-scientist - it sounds utterly odd to deny the possibility of free will by mentioning natural scientific theories about the movement of objects in space.

    If a planet moves or a particle or whatever is of the physicist's interest these objects are moved. If a person decides to move to point B instead of point A or point C it moves itself. The claim appears to be: "NO! That person is forced to move like the earth is forced to round the sun."

    I actually don't see the connection.

    I would say, the decision to favour one point in space is equivalent to e.g. decide a legal question in one way instead of the other or to cook spaghetti instead of making a salad. I don't see how gravity, electromagnetism and nuclear forces whether weak or strong come into play.

    I mean: Deterministic conceptions of the world are appealing since - I suppose- the beginning of humanity. But this argument's sense escapes me. Obviously because I am bad in math.

    However, to me this seems to be a category mistake. Why should it be meaningless to say: "It was my own decision to sign this contract and nobody forced me to do so" ?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Important - the world view of science is also part of engineering. I did not intend to say that engineers do not have the biases that affect science. We do.

    ReplyDelete
  3. "That is as long as you believe – as almost all physicists do – that the laws that dictate the behavior of large objects follow from the laws that dictate the behavior of the object’s constituents. That’s what reductionism tells us, and let me emphasize that reductionism is not a philosophy, it’s an empirically well-established fact. It describes what we observe. There are no known exceptions to it."

    There's just so much evasion in this statement that its truly puzzling that supposedly logical arguments like this are taken seriously at all. By evoking 'free will' we are clearly not taking about any old 'large objects'. Discussing large objects, as if the appearance of free will is simply a consequence of an object being large (ie non-quantum mechanical or classic in the physics sense) is a hopeless dodge. What we are discussing when we discuss free will very specifically pertains to conscious objects, not large objects, and there is no deterministic theory of consciousness worth anything in terms of predictability or even definition. that's a pretty unavoidable and one would think, undeniable, exception to determinism and its ability to debunk or eliminate free will.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Demihm Seinname, I would encourage you to plough through or skim through the comments because many of them were interesting to me and may be to you, and I think answers to your question were at least implied, but I will try to summarize.

    Free will as a legal concept makes sense and is acceptable to almost everyone. That is, if no one forced you to do something, you are responsible for the consequences of that action (either for reward or punishment). Hence the legal term, "of my own free will."

    Free will to do something that will break the known laws of physics is a concept that I think most here would reject, but some religions claim is possible. Example: a long time ago there was a primitive TV show about Superman ("Faster than a speeding bullet; able to leap tall buildings in a single bound; look, is it a bird? A plane? It's Superman!). There were cases in which impressionable children jumped out of high windows to see if they too had such powers. Tragically they did not. Their will did not enable them to fly.

    The last type of free will which I know of and the one that is being discussed here is the ability to make different decisions based on exactly the same circumstances, and not by flipping a coin or some other random means. For example, not jumping out of the high window one day, and the next deciding to jump. People may say, well, I could if I wanted to--but would they ever want to (again, under the same neutral circumstances, not due to some tragedy)? That one is more slippery. Making a decision randomly because you don't know what to do does not count.

    Putting it another way, if you knew all the relevant facts and concerns and could predict exactly what would happen to yourself and everything else as a consequence of making any of the choices for a particular decision, would you be able to choose the worst choice instead of the best? If so, you would be perhaps demonstrating the kind of free will that is being discussed here. I say perhaps, because you might have some brain disorder which made you think the worse choice was the best. Assuming you have perfect rationality and use it to determine the best choice (by whatever standards are important to you) and then can make the worst choice, then congratulations, you have done something no rational machine would do. I don't think I have free will in that sense. My decisions are based on the best information I have and the best thinking I can do (in the state I am in at the time). (They still are often wrong, but given exactly the same knowledge and circumstances and no memory of previous trials, I would do the same thing. Of course with knowledge of previous failures I try to do better the next time.) However, many people seem to think they have this ability.

    If one lacks this ability, one has to recognize that everything one does would be predictable years in advance by a smarter person who knew what all the circumstances would be, except for random influences (and there does seem to be some randomness in this universe). So rerunning my life from the beginning with memory wiped would, except for some random luck, produce all the same failures and successes. This bothers some people to the point of being unacceptable or inconceivable (surely they would do better with the same hand dealt to them again?). I comfort myself with the thought that, if I didn't try to make the best choices, that rerun would be even worse than the original.

    This of course has been my opinion, and others may disagree and probably will.

    Here's a decision I am making due to memory of past behavior: I write too much here and will not comment again for at least three days.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I've read most of the words above and I still can't understand why anyone wants to defend free will.

    ReplyDelete
  6. JimV - I dont think mere "competence" measures much. An Indy race car is very competent, out performing human runner by 10 to 1, at least. So is an F35. But these devices have a very narrow focus. So does Alpha go and Watson. humans are widely competent and can master these devices and control them easily.

    But that is not the measure of success in a turing test. Iis the test casual or focused - does the human seek to discover a bot and pick it out from humans. Causal - its easy to "pass" the Turing test. Maybe my email from Amazon confirming a buy is from a human. Dont know. Dont care. Its not.

    Focused - different story. A focused human can invoke the "20 questions" game and find the bot after maybe 3 question, or 6. That would be easy pickings. Easy, no matter how big the bot's knowledge base is. 10^15 bytes? Not big enough to fool a determined human.



    ReplyDelete
  7. EXPERIMENTAL TEST FOR FREE WILL.

    Of course that is nearly impossible. But... a thought experiment.

    The biggest tech and cultural challenge humans can face - alien contact, right here. Who would you pick for the contact team? Old line deterministic reductionists? Some of course. More likely the top minds in the world in physics, bio, humanities, comp sci, math, chem, psych, poly sci, and more.

    Know what? There aint gonna be many reductionists in that crew.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Dear Jim,

    My apologies.

    Perhaps I should have clarified that the definitive ‘Turing-test’ between a logician and any Turing machine TM suggested in my post was with respect to the following argument originally considered by Turing:

    "Let us fix our attention on one particular digital computer C. Is it true that by modifying this computer to have an adequate storage, suitably increasing its speed of action, and providing it with an appropriate programme, C can be made to play satisfactorily the part of A in the imitation game, the part of B being taken by a man? … In short, then, there might be men cleverer than any given machine, but then again there might be other machines cleverer again, and so on."

    … A. M. Turing (1950), Section 5 and Objection (3), Computing Machinery and Intelligence, Mind 49: 433-460.

    What I intended to demonstrate was that the algorithmically computable architecture of any Universal Turing machine has inherent limitations which constrain it from answering the (particular) Query 1 in a finite time; whereas the human brain is not constrained similarly.

    Of course, this was with respect to only my interpretation of the question that I felt Turing sought to address in the above quote from his 1950 paper; where he ostensibly seems to query only whether the brain of a human being considered as a species (and not that of any individual human in particular) is demonstrably superior or cleverer than the mathematical reasoning ability of any Universal Turing machine in general (and not that of only some individually architectured machine).

    Kind regards,

    Bhup

    ReplyDelete
  9. Sabine,

    The question of free will, in fact, means the unresolved question of the causality of processes and the self-organization of matter.
    In 2017 the results of the competition FQXi Essay Contest (2016-2017): Wandering Towards a Goal were summed up.
    In fact, none of the participants answered in essence this question. There was a mention of the principle of least action, without specifying a mechanism for its implementation. Some participants simply pointed out that this question is not answered in the modern concept of science. Others, of course, offered to seek an answer and found causality in mathematics. But we must be interested in physical science, not abstract.

    In my opinion, there is no problem with causality if you do not use the ideal properties of matter and fields, as I already wrote (reference). Those. instead of probabilistic methods of quantum mechanics, it is necessary to use parametric quantum mechanisms for the proceeding processes in soliton-like structures. They already use the same parametric resonance for the study of "black holes", where it is impossible to verify anything. But in physical science, in fact, parametric resonance is "forbidden", because space is empty.
    However, empty space is only an assumption, and it is not proved, despite many attempts to prove it. Rather, experiments show that space is not empty, and is filled with "virtual" or "quasiparticles", named so as to emphasize their immateriality and ideal properties. But, for example, electrodynamics cannot exist without specific parameters of the medium that fills the non-empty space.

    The successes of quantum mechanics are attributed to the "free will" and probabilistic methods of the formation of the wave function. But is it?
    For example, consider three equations that are widely used: Schrodinger (quantum mechanics), Klein–Gordon (quantum mechanics and solitons) and Mathieu (causal classical parametric resonance and solitons).
    All these functions are periodic, they can use different wave functions, and their results can be practically identical. The results can be obtained in the form of a Fourier transformation, and are represented by the same quantum numbers that are numbers of numbers of harmonics or subharmonics. Therefore, the success of quantum mechanics can be explained by the results of causal quantum parametric processes, rather than randomness and probabilities. This is a more realistic and interesting option.
    At the resonance frequencies of the quantum pilot waves ща de Broglie (solitons, turbulence vortexes of the superfluid medium of the physical vacuum), for example, of electrons, it can be not local interaction between the elements of matter, including entanglement. Dispersion properties of elements can determine the direction of the energy action - the direction of the action of the force.
    «The main topological feature of a superfluid is a quantum vortex with an identifiable inner and outer radius.» [ https://www.phys.hawaii.edu/~yepez/papers/publications/pdf/2009PhysRevLettVol103No084501.pdf ]

    Particles (solitons) decay not accidentally, they decay because they do not have the appropriate conditions for their existence (their necessary external disturbance). And it is no accident that there is no theory of particle stability based on probabilistic principles. The theory of particle stability can be created only on the basis of quantum mechanics using the causal classical parametric resonance. For example, a pilot wave of de Broglie changes its parameters quantum-parametrically due to a change in the disturbing speed of motion. In this theory, there is no collapse of the wave function, because ideal properties of the superfluid medium are not used. In this theory, there is no collapse of the wave function, because ideal properties of the medium are not used. Therefore, there is no need to discuss the existence of "free will", because all processes have a physical cause.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Thanks for this. I tried a few times to make this distinction, and it seems some of you agree with me. Kaku is muddled. Whatever the perceived details of prior states and events, they still function as causation. All inputs do.


    Wade Tarzia has left a new comment on the post "Limits of Reductionism":

    Michiu Kaku posted a short Youtube on physics and free will where he states that the existence of randomness suggests free will. This seemed to me to be a glaring problem because I thought this merely reduced prediction rather than proved free will, so I e-mailed him about that but have not yet received my answer. :-)

    ReplyDelete
  11. to: Unknown

    To me this seems to be an antiquated point of view:

    "The conflict between physics and free will is that to our best current knowledge everything in the universe is made of a few dozen particles (take or give some more for dark matter) and we know the laws that determine those particles’ behavior. They all work the same way: If you know the state of the universe at one time, you can use the laws to calculate the state of the universe at all other times. This implies that what you do tomorrow is already encoded in the state of the universe today. There is, hence, nothing free about your behavior."

    If thoughts are transmitted through electricity they are electricity. With software performed by a computer it's obviously the same. Hence both can be explained in the same way as ... you might explain a bromine substitution?

    The claim to work on a theory of everything looks like the search for god. And by the way, the most naive, crude and unreflected thoughts about the existence or non-existence of god I've heard from people with a natural scientific background.

    Yet, on the other hand I probably miss the connection if obviously highly educated and undoubtedly intelligent people elaborate something which appears absolutely nonsensical to me.

    Thus of course I can say: Well, this is obviously not your domain and therefore it is no wonder that your claim is more pseudo than intellectual. But before that maybe someone can explain the missing link to me and than I might experience a new interesting point of view.

    Up to now - this idea of equating free will with matter (as far as I believe to understand this) looks rather silly (to me).

    ReplyDelete
  12. New comments, hoo.

    To JimV: Thank you for your summary. So I can assume now that an artificial concept of free will is the preferred subject for the discussion?

    If I choose to "bury" free will and mean the idea out of a thought experiment I should clarify it. Since the meaningful and highly important (and in my opinion essential) legal concept of free will could accidently be buried together with that sophistic toy.

    But still one can ask: What does "free will" - even that synthetic version - have in common with physical objects?

    Anyway you're right. I intend to read some of the comments. But later. Enjoy your absence ;-)

    ReplyDelete
  13. Unknown, in response to "...MW insists that this world actually exists. In an interpretation where all possibilities, however unlikely, actually exist ..."

    I don't agree that MWI insists that all possibilities exist. If an electron has a 50% probability of having either positive or negative spin about a chosen axis, then MWI says it will be up in one branch of a Multiverse and down in another. Now suppose we have a million such electrons in some event. MWI says each has that 50-50 chance. It does not insist how these choices will combine--that is up to Probability and Statics. The Law of Large Numbers says that the population of a million electrons will very probably have a ratio close to 50% of up to down. In different branches the numerator of that ratio will consist of different electrons. That is all that the MWI insists.

    There is a finite number of sub-atomic particles in our light cone, and so a finite number of particle choices for any event, and a finite number of events since the Big Bang. This makes it probabilistically plausible that not all possible outcomes of such combinations of choices has occurred or will occur.

    In particular, the MWI does not insist that the very unlikely event that all million electrons decide to go spin-up will occur. It has a chance (miniscule) of occurring, as it does in a single Cophenhagen universe, and more opportunities in a MWI Multiverse, but no certainty. If the mere potential of an extremely unlikely event is sufficient to give you pause, there may be an argument there (both under MWI and CI), but in every universe in which I have studied Probability and Statistics I will object that the MWI does not make that insistence, nor does that insistence derive logically from the one it does make. (And suppose a million electrons do all decide to spin the same way, how likely is that in turn to give me a brain fart at the right instant? Probabilistic events combine probabilistically. I do not think there is a branch of a Multiverse in which all the casinos lose money.)

    ReplyDelete
  14. Yeah, the discussion is nice.
    And so far as I've read until now I want to note that the proposition: 'There is no free will because either the world is determinated or completely unpredictable thus either a will cannot be free or no will can exist because it has nothing to rely on' is ok, so far.

    And in this context it appears valid to state as a conclusion that 'free will' cannot exist which means the term has no meaning.

    It also is especially valid to state: 'Free will' is a meaningless term in physics.

    And that's it. Quite banal.

    Maybe a physical argument can support that claim. But it remains useless.

    A senseful meaning of 'free will' happens in practical philosophy and her sister theology, in ethics, in law, in society. And there 'freedom' has different dimensions. The fruitful one is the positive freedom which comes with a lot of boundaries (anybody's freedom) from which physical ones are only aspects. And the most senseful way to guide the own actions is to decide to hedge in the personal freedom in a social way. Of course anybody has to meet a lot of obstacles for the scope of the individual freedom. But the freedom is to make up your mind for choosing to be asocial or the oposite. (Obviously Kant and a Hegel are speaking:) And of course, the freedom is something to be gained and nothing for granted. In this tiny little non-physical realm free will takes place if it is going well.

    This has only vaguely something to do with 'analogously applied' natural laws but very directly with social rules with differently distinctive binding effects.

    Rescuing an argument for or against an ideological concept of a (today mostly drug driven capitalistic) 'free will' (relying on negative, solipsistic freedom of the strongest) is equal to playing the air guitar without playback.

    Insofar I agree that this debate may be buried without losing a lot (except one didactically interesting philosophical problem).

    But the way to get there in this article seems not very convincing to me.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Second (consecutive) response to Unknown re MWI:

    After thinking about it some more and consulting the Internet on MWI I see I just made a bad argument. It depends on the flavor of MWI and it turns out there is not just one flavor. There may be (I am not sure, did not find an explicit description of this) a flavor in which all 2^N combinations of N 50-50 choices are considered to occur, in reality, with no interferences or "dead" branches. (I think most MWI people would say the single-photon two-slit experiment shows interference among branches.) Hawkings said that MWI is just conditional probabilities and not "real" ("whatever that is") and that he accepts MWI in that sense.

    A better argument (maybe) is to say that if this flavor exists I don't like it. It implies for example that there is a branch of the Multiverse in which casinos always lose money and yet keep being built (its inhabitants must surely not have metaphysical free will, at least among the casino-builders!), and even an extreme case in which quantum mechanics does not empirically exist (the choice is always the same, QM statistics cannot be detected). A lot of things would not make sense, in various branches of that Multiverse. Most of the branches would however be in statistical agreement with statistically-deterministic QM, such as the one we would seem to be in (as would the average).

    ReplyDelete
  16. mls

    First-order Peano arithmetic is not a categorical theory.

    1. Perhaps a reasonable starting point for addressing:

    (a) whether or not the first-order Peano Arithmetic PA is categorical (admits any non-standard models); and

    (b) what constitutes as the satisfiability and truth of PA formulas under an evidence-based interpretation;

    may be Theorem 7.1 and Corollary 7.2 in the following paper which appeared in the December 2016 issue of Cognitive Systems Research:

    The Truth Assignments That Differentiate Human Reasoning From Mechanistic Reasoning: The Evidence-Based Argument for Lucas' Goedelian Thesis

    Theorem 7.1 A PA formula [F(x)] is PA-provable if, and only if, [F(x)] is algorithmically computable as always true in N.

    Corollary 7.2 PA is categorical with respect to algorithmic computability.

    2. The paper addresses the philosophical challenge that arises when conventional wisdom (e.g., footnote 52 in Appendix A) accepts formal mathematical propositions---such as, for instance, Skolem's compactness theorem---as true under an interpretation, either axiomatically or on the basis of subjective self-evidence, without any specified methodology for evidencing such acceptance.

    3. It shows that Tarski's classic definitions admit finitary evidence-based definitions of the satisfaction and truth of the atomic formulas of PA over the domain N of the natural numbers in two, hitherto unsuspected and essentially different, ways:

    (1a) In terms of classical algorithmic verifiability; and

    (1b) In terms of finitary algorithmic computability.

    4. It further shows that:

    (2a) The two definitions correspond to two distinctly different assignments of satisfaction and truth to the compound formulas of PA over N, only one of which is finitary; where

    (2b) The PA axioms are true over N, and the PA rules of inference preserve truth over N, under both the interpretations.

    5. Moreover, the paper traces the root of all such challenges to the yet prevailing non-finitary assumption ([HA28], pp.58-59) that an assertion such as;

    `There exists an x such that F(x) holds'

    usually denoted symbolically by:

    `(Ex)F(x)'

    can always be validly inferred in the classical logic of predicates from the assertion:

    `It is not the case that: for any given x, F(x) does not hold'

    usually denoted symbolically by:

    `~(Ax)~F(x)'.

    [HA28] David Hilbert & Wilhelm Ackermann. 1928. Principles of Mathematical Logic. Translation of the second edition of the Grundzuge Der Theoretischen Logik. 1928. Springer, Berlin. 1950. Chelsea Publishing Company, New York.

    Regards,

    Bhup

    ReplyDelete

  17. I agree with Demihm Senneime about the social imperative. But living asocially is an aberration in social mammals. The feedback from the tribe/society is part of the causation of individual feelings, thoughts, and actions. In many species, non-cooperation results in punishment, ostracism, or premature death.

    In a sense, the pack/tribe/society is the responsible "unit", and it follows the (evolutionary) propensities which further it's well-being and replication. If it develops maladaptive behavior given environmental conditions, risk of dying out likely increases. The "nature laws" mentioned apply to biology as well as to physics! Social behavior is physical too.

    Steve Kurtz

    RE:
    The fruitful one is the positive freedom which comes with a lot of boundaries (anybody's freedom) from which physical ones are only aspects. And the most senseful way to guide the own actions is to decide to hedge in the personal freedom in a social way. Of course anybody has to meet a lot of obstacles for the scope of the individual freedom. But the freedom is to make up your mind for choosing to be asocial or the oposite. (Obviously Kant and a Hegel are speaking:) And of course, the freedom is something to be gained and nothing for granted. In this tiny little non-physical realm free will takes place if it is going well.

    This has only vaguely something to do with 'analogously applied' natural laws but very directly with social rules with differently distinctive binding effects.

    ReplyDelete
  18. JimV, thanks for the thoughtful response and subsequent clarification. I don't much like that version, or any other, of the MWI. But it appears to be popular and even ascendant, apparently among working physicists (according to polls at conferences), the science media, and among sci-fi fantasy inspired tech fan boys whose enthusiasms dominate the inter-web. And I put Sean Carroll (the subject of my original question to Sabine) solidly in the third category. (rather than work on physics he apparently would rather write movie screenplays and alternate worlds fantasy sci-fi. no kidding.)

    To get back to my original point (the incoherence of embracing both MWI and the illusion of free will, as Carroll does), I agree with your statement that "A lot of things would not make sense, in various branches of that Multiverse." This is because statistical/probabilistic explanations lose their grip for highly unlikely events. (I mean genuinely unlikely events, not those that only seem unlikely, eg uncanny coincidences and lottery winners happen all the time, somewhere.) Under traditional Copenhagen, exceedingly unlikely events simply do not occur, precisely for the reason you alluded to: there exists only this universe with its paltry 10^80 atoms. So only relatively likely outcomes ever exist, and statistical explanations maintain their traction. If a genuinely unlikely event did occur in our universe (a shattered teacup spontaneously reassembles and jumps back up on the table), a statistical explanation would be of little explanatory value. We could only say, shit happens. All bets are off with MWI, since many exceedingly unlikely events are not just possible, but real, somewhere; these events, being real, require explanation. But under MWI, all we can say is "shit happens", not just for the odd extremely unlikely event that happens in our universe, but all the time in some multiverse "somewhere".

    So to return to my original question, wither determinism when most everything that could happen does happen, somewhere?

    ReplyDelete
  19. “…what you do tomorrow is already encoded in the state of the universe today. There is, hence, nothing free about your behavior.” (deterministic précis)

    In other words, the conditional probability of the future given the past is exactly one and this does not vary in relation to the time interval between some given past and any hypothetical future. One may reasonably judge this proposition to be improbable given the incredible magnitude of the entities at play in the universe within any time increment and further, given the nested complexity of subsystem causal factors that may affect transient processes. Our experience accustoms us to processes with more noise, imprecision and uncertainty.

    Feynman noted that sometimes a hard won and well proven physical theory gives you an answer about the universe that you don’t like for some reason. His comment was basically, “Well to bad. Get over it!”

    Alternatively, as we find with Dr. Hossenfelder’s essay “The Case for Strong Emergence,” you may have the ability and persistence to find a potential lawful loophole in the underlying deterministic theory and, in some measure, free the future from the past.

    Or, one could try to find examples of strong emergence that withstand contrary argument. On page eight of her essay Dr. Hossenfelder cites one that fails muster: “The chief of CERN speaks the word “Go,” and in response someone pushes a button which will set into motion two proton beams that collide and produce a Higgs-boson.” You can read her counter-argument and use it to evaluate the following variant.

    ReplyDelete
  20. Consider that the property of being symbolic is not a physical property. Its measure is not defined in terms of more fundamental physical properties and, as far as I know, it is not a featured in physicist's “remarkably simple description for our universe that explains almost everything we observe.” Despite this, symbolic interaction plays a notable role in physical dynamics within our postal region.

    As a commonplace example, on one of life’s many byways the flashing red light of a railway crossing brings a semi-truck moving 100 km/hr. to a prompt halt. On its face this seem a magical interaction – shine a little red light on the truck and – Presto! – all of its 63,000 kilograms transfer their momentum to global warming. Physical laws have been followed, but as a rough equation the energy of the input (the red light) is exceeded by that of the result (the halting truck) by a factor of more than 10^7.

    Whether that is relevant or not, we have in this example two relatively complex systems with their own independent histories and entailments (causal relations). The crossing hardware has its sensors, energy source, scheduled maintenance and approved budgetary line item. Similarly, the semi has its own more complicated mechanism & mechanic, a licensed driver, delivery schedule, etc. The point here is that both systems are embedded within more extensive systems and it is difficult to describe their outer bounds. Yet, between these two weighty endeavors, in one time and place, there is this slender thread of causal connection, a signal sent with presumption of its meaningful reception. This interaction is markedly different than that of two pool balls on felted slate.

    To prove that this symbolic interaction is indeed an example of top-down causation and hence an emergent property and that it therefore, in some measure, validates free will, one need simply prove that the significant parts of this phenomenon cannot be reduced to a “higher-resolution,” small-scale theory of atoms and constituents. It is apparently bad form to ask physicists to prove the converse, but to be fair, it’s their turf and they have earned the high ground.

    Consider that a signal is nature’s most novel phenomenon. Its existence is maximally improbable as its list of necessary precursor ingredients is most lengthy. That is, implicit in the ontology of ‘signal’ is a spatial and temporal depth of relationship between enduring, complex autopoietic entities.

    There may be a mathematics which can prove whether or not the extensive phenomenon of signal can be precisely mapped onto a system of atomic particles and constituents. I can only suggest that it seem improbable.

    And finally, it is wrong to reduce an argument about reductionism to simply one of free will. Free will and consciousness are exotic blossoms far out on the branch, the real question lies closer to the root. Does the evolving complexity of universe we observe require a very small measure of discrete determinative moments wherein the question of what happens next is an actual question that the universe yet to calculate?

    Perhaps the conditional probability of the future given the past is only .999999…

    Thanks, would appreciate reflection.

    ReplyDelete
  21. Part 1 of 2

    Free will (FW) is a concept that serves a moral purpose: to justify assigning responsibility, credit, or culpability for acts. The desire to believe oneself is “free” is just a rephrasing of that: it is assigning to one’s self responsibility, claiming credit for actions (and sometimes accepting blame...)

    Part of the moral or ethical calculus of FW is that it does not excuse harmful outcomes; a freely-acting agent is responsible for the outcome of their choices; they can be held accountable for them. FW does not confer authority to choose actions without accountability.

    Those wishing to avoid blame generally aver to impulse (“I could not help myself”), interference (“I didn’t want to, but it/they made me”), or ignorance (“If I had known, I would have chosen differently.”)

    So: for FW to be exercised, there must be deliberation, absence of interference, and knowledge of choices and how to achieve them. Otherwise, even the most diligent defender of FW would insist choices are not really free. Accidents or coerced, unknowing decisions are not considered “free”.

    FW posits that agents are able to select choices without limitation absent interference or ignorance.

    Problems become apparent right away because FW does not include the ability to change the laws of nature.

    Interference is unavoidable. Agents are (at least in large part) material objects; subject to physical limitations; meaning there is always some interference from physical reality. Even if we stipulate that agents have the ability to act nondeterminately, they live surrounded by determinant things. Their material bodies are determinate objects. Choices (however freely made) have determinate consequences.

    Even if choices can be made freely, these choices can determinately imperil the agent’s survival.

    Even more important however, is ignorance. We can conceive of agents freely choosing actions which will cause the agent’s death; not because the agent wants to die but because the agent is willing to give their life for some “higher purpose”. (My purpose here is not to discuss whether such “higher purposes” exist; it is sufficient to recognize that many do believe in them.)

    But ignorance severely limits an agent’s options: no agent can choose something they are unaware of. To choose something, the agent must have knowledge of it (including memory and reasoning), and of how to achieve their choice.

    Even if the agent has knowledge of a choice, they will inevitably be ignorant (to some degree) of the full consequences of that choice. Agents inevitably act in the face of some degree of uncertainty: uncertain of all their options or all the consequences of each option. The knowledge a freely-acting agent needs includes the knowledge that their information is limited.

    Given the deterministic milieu in which they act; even perfectly free agents never act with complete freedom; their options are inevitably limited and the consequences unclear. Even if FW exists in the purest, freest form, agents exercising it are themselves bound by the facts of the world around them.

    sean s.

    ReplyDelete
  22. Part 2 of 2

    Related to the preceding problems of FW is that agents must have awareness of their ability to choose and awareness of their responsibilities. Agents must act consciously. Consciousness is a separate concept, and in some ways a simpler concept. Even if FW does not exist, consciousness does. FW on the other hand, requires consciousness.

    Without going to great depth, I will treat consciousness as “recursive self-awareness”. A conscious person is not only aware of themselves, they are aware that they are aware of themselves, and they are aware of their awareness of their awareness of their awareness of themselves ad nauseum. A conscious person is aware of being a conscious person; it might not be foremost in their minds at all times, but that conscious awareness is always there while they are conscious.

    When challenged about a decision, we expect agents to be able to answer a question: “Why did you do that?” or why did they make that choice? And we expect them to be able to provide a good reason.

    But isn’t “a good reason” merely a cause leading to the choice? Does that mean even FW is causal? It seems to be; otherwise FW would be limited to completely inexplicable choices.

    FW would exist at the intersections of information (knowledge and memory), reason, and consciousness. It would be the ability of an agent to be aware of options and their consequences, and accept responsibility for the agent’s choices.

    Stated this way, FW is not clearly contrary to determinism. FW does not oppose determinism, FW opposes irresponsibility. The freely acting agent accepts responsibility for their choices and acts under that awareness.

    It is not incidental that many objections to determinism focus on its reduction of us to mere “meat machines” robotically dancing on the strings of natural laws. Objections to determinism are really objections to irresponsibility.

    I think the real issue is not FW vs. Determinism; but on whether the idea of personal responsibility is valid. Does determinism negate responsibility?

    That is, of course, not a question particularly suited to a Physics blog.

    sean s.

    ReplyDelete
  23. Late for a free will post. Darn it!

    In case anyone is still reading these comments and think that free will of the strong libertarian sort that is discussed here can make sense; it cannot. Free will in the strong sense, that is not compatible with determinism or randomness, requires that we can create ourselves, that we are "causa sui". Which we obviously cannot since we would then already exist! I'll leave it to Friedrich Nietzsche:

    "The causa sui is the best self-contradiction that has been conceived so far. It is a sort of rape and perversion of logic. But the extravagant pride of man has managed to entangle itself profoundly and frightfully with just this nonsense. The desire for “freedom of the will” in the superlative metaphysical sense, which still holds sway, unfortunately, in the minds of the half-educated; the desire to bear the entire and ultimate responsibility for one’s actions oneself, and to absolve God, the world, ancestors, chance, and society involves nothing less than to be precisely this causa sui and, with more than Baron Münchhausen’s audacity, to pull oneself up into existence by the hair, out of the swamps of nothingness…"

    The hypothetical case of strong emergence that Sabine here advances would lead to random unpredictability at best. The same goes for her earlier interesting case of the "The Free Will Function". That being said I find these theories fascinating in their own right and they are clearly products of an intellect vastly surpassing mine.

    ReplyDelete
  24. Great comment by Kosmos. And now for something completely different.

    In response to Bhup's Turing-Machine-confounder (involving Godel et al): the sense I am getting from it is that there is a some sort of magic (sorry if that seems pejorative, I can't think of a quicker way to express it) of non-algorithmially-computable functions which you think humans can do but Turing Machines can't. I counter your admittedly two orders of magnitude better knowledge of such things with my simple evolutionary-algorithm hammer: if an answer exists, a random search will find it eventually (and since it is algorithmically-verifiable, a Turing Machine can in principle find it with the evolutionary algorithm and verify it).

    By the way, going back to your first comment on Dr. Hossenfelder's function, and assuming (probably falsely) that you are still wondering about that, yes Dr. H's function could be continued to -x and would match up, but so would an infinite number of different functions, including f(x)=0 for x<0--there would be no discontinuity in derivatives of any order. So there is no way to determine uniquely from x>=0 behavior what the earlier behavior was (or vice-versa).

    In response to Unknown, apology for not addressing your original point (determinism of MWI). My answer to that is that by the definition of determinism (start with an initial condition, evolve the system through time according to some model, predict at each time what the conditions could be and the probabilities of the conditions if there is more than one set, yada, yada, yada), MWI is deterministic. Granted within the class of deterministic models it is a strange one and perhaps deserves some sub-classification of its own. I also like to mention Dr. Aaronson's Edge essay of a couple years ago when the subject of determinism comes up: he said we would stop talking about determinism and only talk about what we could determine empirically, which is predictability.

    In response to Don Foster (another person with at least two orders of magnitude more advanced knowledge than I have), your example of the railroad-crossing brought to mind another example of large-energy consequences to small energy inputs: a massive object balanced on a point-like surface, tipped over by a small horizontal push. (Probably you have gotten that response many times before, sorry.) I don't see much more to it than that, myself, but maybe I am not thinking about it deeply enough. The universe is certainly more complex than I could ever comprehend.

    Finally, on the subject of metaphysical free-will, I should have said earlier that one way of stating it is, are we or are we not, machines? That offends some people, who define free will as, I make my own decisions; there are rules (speed limits, comment moderation, laws of physics, etc.) which I take into account, but they leave a space of possible actions and I am the one who chooses my actions from within that space. I am not just a machine!

    Perhaps we could met halfway by considering again my favorite example, AlphaGo. AlphaGo was given the rules of Go (as we are given rules by our society). It (version 3) studied the game by playing against itself and came up its own ideas on how to win. When a game starts, and the human world champion puts a white stone on the board, it must put a black stone on the board, but nobody tells it where to place the stone. It decides for itself. If you have free will, so does AlphaGo! (In a more limited context.)

    ReplyDelete
  25. @Sabine
    You say in response to user Katie:
    "I have an AI and I scan your brain and the AI makes a prediction for your behavior in the next, say 5 minutes after completion of the calculation. We then record what you actually do in then next 5 minutes and compare this with the prediction. ... let's say the two results agree in all trials to 99.99% accuracy, I'd say you don't have free will."

    I'm rather worried you do not realize how wrong your thought experiment is. The state of my brain by no means predicts my behaviour, neither in 5 minutes nor in 5 years! If someone comes into the room, or a bomb explodes nearby, my behaviour will differ. In order to predict my behaviour, you would also need to record the state of the environment, in principle the state of the entire universe.

    Another question: I think any discussion of "free will" should start from a tentative definition of the subject matter. Not a rigorous one perhaps, but a soft definition that we can still change on our way to understanding the issue. But we must start from somewhere, and no definition just meddles an already difficult question.

    best

    ReplyDelete
  26. opamanfred;

    "I think any discussion of 'free will' should start from a tentative definition of the subject matter. Not a rigorous one perhaps, but a soft definition that we can still change on our way to understanding the issue. But we must start from somewhere, and no definition just meddles an already difficult question."

    Indeed. There's a lot written here about FW but little in the way of a definition; especially a definition to which physics concepts can apply.

    Many here regard FW as an illusion; it may well be but it's no more an illusion than the illusion that these comments are meaningful without a clear, applicable definition of FW.

    The best I can come up with is that "free will" is a phenomenon that arises when consciousness evaluates options and prompts decisions (or indecision).

    I don't see how physics would apply to that definition, and I am not aware of a better one.

    sean s.

    ReplyDelete
  27. JimV, clearly we are using the same words but meaning entirely different things.

    I make one last comment: yours is an idiosyncratic definition of "determinism" wherein:
    1) most everything that CAN happen, DOES happen, at least under MWI;
    2) it is indistinguishable from the usual definition of indeterminism, wherein the outcome of any event is probabilistic

    If your definition of determinism includes the opposite of determinism, then surely the world is deterministic. Irony intended.

    ReplyDelete
  28. Re: Unknown's comment.

    "So to return to my original question, wither determinism when most everything that could happen does happen, somewhere?”

    Try this logic:
    Agree that if infinite possibilities, whatever can be *must be* someplace/time. However, the circumstances/conditions surrounding each occurrence are still necessary! That’s determinism.

    Steve Kurtz

    ReplyDelete
  29. Re: Don Foster's comment:

    Re:
    "Consider that the property of being symbolic is not a physical property. Its measure is not defined in terms of more fundamental physical properties and, as far as I know, it is not a featured in physicist's “remarkably simple description for our universe that explains almost everything we observe."

    SK:
    Seems to me that being symbolic is not exempt from physical laws. Caloric throughput is required to create and maintain it. External referents are also required for the symbol to have any meaning. So both internal and external physics are involved.

    Re:
    "Does the evolving complexity of universe we observe require a very small measure of discrete determinative moments wherein the question of what happens next is an actual question that the universe yet to calculate?"

    SK:
    To the best of our knowledge, the universe doesn’t calculate anything! Determinism doesn’t require calculation nor intention. It’s just the way things work. Emergence is sometimes claimed as cause-free, but that seems to me to be a speculation *caused by* the lack of perfect knowledge of the variables in complex systems. Humans are uncomfortable with uncertainty. ;-)


    Steve Kurtz

    ReplyDelete
  30. Kosmos…

    I don’t find your invocation of causa sui holds up as an argument against the possibility of strong emergence. Consider the precedent…

    Looking at any physical interaction we find that it is simply one part of the universe interacting with another part. Thus, the universe is “is generated within itself” and it is reasonable to conclude that despite its present complexity, it has managed to, “…pull (itself) up into existence by the hair, out of the swamps of nothingness…" The question here is whether the process is causally continuous or is instead punctuated by some hypothetical, emergent dynamic that changes the causal equation.

    I am finding the notion of determinism to be a very deep rabbit hole much widened by the passage of broad intellect but still having only pinhole light at the end any of its many branching tunnels. Two hundred and twenty-five plus comments here and what’s the answer?

    Perhaps we should recuse ourselves from judgement on the possibility of freewill due to a possible conflict of interest or lack of impartiality. (insert smiley emoji of your choosing) As I mentioned earlier, I see free will as an exotic flower far out on the branch and the real question is more systemic and lies closer to the root. Simply put, can the same state of initial conditions lawfully evolve to different end states? Well, no! It has been stated that, according to the best of current physical theory, the conditional probability of the future given the past is (1) independent of the time interval between the two. What lawful exception would allow it to be even one part in 10^50 less?

    And I need to say that the Nietzsche quotation reads more like a rhetorical bludgeoning than a pole star of rational thought.

    ReplyDelete
  31. Unknown, I think you are probably right, that what I gave was not the standard definition of determinism which I thought it was. I go mostly by what the authorities say (in questions of definitions), and I have seen some of them say that QM is deterministic, meaning the wave-function equation is. Then later on this site (in a different post) I read Dr. Hossenfelder to say that QM is not deterministic (due I guess to the probabilistic aspect). (Dr. Carroll might be one of those from whom I got the impression that it is deterministic, sort of.)

    Looking for more information on that issue, I found an answer that I liked (and so I stopped looking):

    "Whether quantum mechanics is considered to be deterministic is a matter of interpretation, summarized in this wiki comparison [link removed in copying] of interpretations. The wiki definition of determinism in this context, which I [the author, not me] think is entirely satisfactory, is

    Determinism is a property characterizing state changes due to the passage of time, namely that the state at a future instant is a function of the state in the present (see time evolution). It may not always be clear whether a particular interpretation is deterministic or not, as there may not be a clear choice of a time parameter. Moreover, a given theory may have two interpretations, one of which is deterministic and the other not."

    Note: in the course of my search, it seemed that the authorities tended to agree that MWI is a deterministic interpretation--but you'll have to argue with them on that, which is I guess what you were trying to do all along. I'm sorry I butted in. (Another fine, for me.) (Fines here are payable via the Donations button.)

    ReplyDelete
  32. Re Steven Kurtz’s comment:

    SK:
    Seems to me that being symbolic is not exempt from physical laws. Caloric throughput is required to create and maintain it. External referents are also required for the symbol to have any meaning. So both internal and external physics are involved.

    DF:
    Succinctly put. The question is about the physical laws and whether they actually model a universe in which symbolic interaction has a role in its dynamic progression. I don’t whether Sabine’s “…laws that determine those particles’ behavior.” (QFT?) are malleable enough to imprint the deeply networked dynamic of symbolic interaction. I suspect that they are not.

    SK:
    To the best of our knowledge, the universe doesn’t calculate anything! Determinism doesn’t require calculation nor intention. It’s just the way things work. Emergence is sometimes claimed as cause-free, but that seems to me to be a speculation *caused by* the lack of perfect knowledge of the variables in complex systems. Humans are uncomfortable with uncertainty. ;-)

    DF: I am uncomfortable with a physical theory wherein the conditional probability of the future given the past is exactly (1) independent of the time interval between the two. I don’t believe it works that way and struggle to work my way off its deeply embedded hook. ;-)
    As to the word calculate, maybe a bad choice, a mathematical metaphor. “There's something happening here, what it is ain't exactly clear.”

    And thanks.

    ReplyDelete
  33. Hi Don

    I haven't read all the comments so maybe we have the common problem of using different definitions. I have to say that I don't know what strong emergence even means. Something emerges from something and suddenly gets new behaviour? From where does that new behaviour come? It has to come from somewhere. Information can't create itself because then it would already have to exist; self-creation doesn't solve anything. From where do the new values in Sabines function come?

    I define a strong version of free will as an agent not being rule-based, where the agent can choose between A or B and the choice is not determined nor random but "originated" by the agent. That is impossible. Unpredictable non-probabilistic randomness might not be considered rule-based, but neither is the outcome up to the agent.

    As to the universe itself, it simply exists and has always existed. :-)

    ReplyDelete
  34. Hi Kosmos,

    Once again, I would like to set aside the particulars of free will and consider the general proposition in so far as I understand it:

    “If you know the state of the universe at one time, you can use the laws to calculate the state of the universe at all other times. This implies that what you do tomorrow is already encoded in the state of the universe today. There is, hence, nothing free about your behavior.” (BackReaction - 7/5/2018)

    Thus, free will aside, the general proposition is – given the state of the state of the universe at any arbitrary ‘present’ moment, there is only one very singular state of the universe at any moment thereafter. My intuitive sense is that this is not the way thing work and we both know how little weight that represents on the physicist’s scale of “truthiness.”

    Physical theory may require a more explicit definition of emergence, but here is a general one and two more explicit:

    “In philosophy, systems theory, science, and art, emergence occurs when "the whole is greater than the sum of the parts," meaning the whole has properties its parts do not have. These properties come about because of interactions among the parts. In mathematical shorthand, W = P + I” (Wiki – Emergence)

    “Usage of the notion "emergence" may generally be subdivided into two perspectives, that of "weak emergence" and "strong emergence". In terms of physical systems, weak emergence is a type of emergence in which the emergent property is amenable to computer simulation. This is opposed to the older notion of strong emergence, in which the emergent property cannot be simulated by a computer.” (Wiki)

    In her FQXi essay, “The Case for Strong Emergence,” Dr. Hossenfelder uses a more explicit definition:

    “A physical theory is strongly emergent if it is fundamental, but there exists at least one other fundamental theory at higher resolution…”

    If we accept either of the latter definitions, it is my supposition that physical theory still runs directly into the limits of mathematical logic posed by Gödel's incompleteness theorems:

    “Gödel said that every non-trivial (interesting) formal system is either incomplete or inconsistent:
    1. There will always be questions that cannot be answered, using a certain set of axioms;
    2. You cannot prove that a system of axioms is consistent, unless you use a different set of axioms.” (Simple English Wiki)

    This circumspection with regard to theory is echoed by John Stewart Bell:

    “I use the term “beable” rather than some more committed term like “being” or “beer” to recall the essentially tentative nature of any physical theory. Such a theory is at best a candidate for the description of nature. Terms like “being”, “beer”, “existent”, would seem to me lacking in humility. In fact, “beable” is short for “maybe-able.” – Beables for Quantum Field Theory, J. S. Bell

    Limits aside, one must truly be in awe of the breadth, exacting description and utility of theoretical physics. And still, there is imperfect consensus on the theoretical particulars of the future vis-à-vis the past.

    In a fat pencil rendering, here is a questing step toward the “maybe-able” of strong emergence. We posit the general case for emergence as:

    P1 + P2 = E

    Wherein P1 and P2 are identifiable properties that are conserved (ongoing) in E and E is a property not present in either precursor property.

    Question: Given the above definition and given that E is the property of being a cyclical dynamic; in the most general case, what are P1 and P2?

    Thanks...

    ReplyDelete
  35. "Information can't create itself because then it would already have to exist; self-creation doesn't solve anything."

    What makes a particular set of matter "information" anyway? Language emerges; is language a quantum effect? Atomic? Molecular? If no, no, and no, then from whence language?

    Things cannot create themselves, but new things can arise from the interaction of things that do "pre-exist".

    sean s.

    ReplyDelete
  36. Don Foster has a lot right in my view. Without going after P1 and P2, this simple statement he quotes at the beginning of his post of 7/26 is sufficient even for laymen:

    “If you know the state of the universe at one time, you can use the laws to calculate the state of the universe at all other times."

    The "If" is impossible given both a possibly boundless universe and limited human perceptive abilities. The "laws" are human constructs based upon those limited perceptions, and it is hubris to think that we could ever be sure we knew them all. So a predictive future based upon that thought experiment is untenable.

    Steven B Kurtz
    Amherst MA

    ReplyDelete
  37. I think Sean S. best describes my concept of free will, but I don’t think the scientists view it in the same plane that we do.

    Many worlds interpretation (MWI) supports free will, else there would only be one world. If anyone thinks free will is related to MWI, then our understanding of the term “free will” is orthogonal to each other and is a definitional problem. Like I said before, our words confound us and quite often, deliberately so, to identify those outside of our tribe to keep them out.

    The Turing Test has nothing to do with free will. It’s only about whether or not we can be confused whether a machine is human. The fact that I can be easily be confused has nothing to do with free will. Since I have anthropomorphized machines that give me pleasure (cars, stereo equipment, etc.) for over half a century, my idiosyncrasy has inspired me to learn how they work. My feelings about them have nothing to do with the machines themselves, but only reflect something about me.

    I have also unfortunately experienced loved ones suffering from brain damage due to aging. Yes, they “loop” repetitively, but I don’t get why damaged brains are viewed as being informative on the free will issue. Again, I think there’s a definitional disconnect between us. My most salient observation of them is that they’ve regressed to the point that they’ve lost their Theory of Mind capabilities, which us parents recognize as our primary jobs in raising our children. It is not a capability that we are born with, but must be taught. That doesn’t mean one can’t learn it without careful parenting, but I suspect it would require much pain to learn it without loving teaching.

    That pain can result in incredibly beautiful compassion. Or it can result in creating a horrific monster.

    That’s the space where I view the concept of free will existing, and is obviously not the same space that the scientists mean.

    So I still don’t think any of this discussion can make any sense until free will is defined.

    ReplyDelete

  38. Left out a "not", which of course changes my meaning entirely, as follows (Second sentence of second paragraph - don't know the mechanics of emphasizing text on this forum):

    I think Sean S. best describes my concept of free will, but I don’t think the scientists view it in the same plane that we do.

    Many worlds interpretation (MWI) supports free will, else there would only be one world. If anyone thinks free will is not related to MWI, then our understanding of the term “free will” is orthogonal to each other and is a definitional problem. Like I said before, our words confound us and quite often, deliberately so, to identify those outside of our tribe to keep them out.

    The Turing Test has nothing to do with free will. It’s only about whether or not we can be confused whether a machine is human. The fact that I can be easily be confused has nothing to do with free will. Since I have anthropomorphized machines that give me pleasure (cars, stereo equipment, etc.) for over half a century, my idiosyncrasy has inspired me to learn how they work. My feelings about them have nothing to do with the machines themselves, but only reflect something about me.

    I have also unfortunately experienced loved ones suffering from brain damage due to aging. Yes, they “loop” repetitively, but I don’t get why damaged brains are viewed as being informative on the free will issue. Again, I think there’s a definitional disconnect between us. My most salient observation of them is that they’ve regressed to the point that they’ve lost their Theory of Mind capabilities, which us parents recognize as our primary jobs in raising our children. It is not a capability that we are born with, but must be taught. That doesn’t mean one can’t learn it without careful parenting, but I suspect it would require much pain to learn it without loving teaching.

    That pain can result in incredibly beautiful compassion. Or it can result in creating a horrific monster.

    That’s the space where I view the concept of free will existing, and is obviously not the same space that the scientists mean.

    So I still don’t think any of this discussion can make any sense until free will is defined.

    ReplyDelete
  39. Liralen;

    ... our words confound us and quite often, deliberately so, to identify those outside of our tribe to keep them out.

    That is so true; I’m a fan of Wittgenstein who wrote that “philosophical problems arise when language goes on holiday”.

    I still don’t think any of this discussion can make any sense until free will is defined.

    Exactly. Unfortunately for most in this discussion, a meaningful definition of FW will deprive physics of much utility regarding FW. I have to admit I don’t see how MWI provides any value here either.

    “when the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail”. That applies here; time to put the hammers away.

    sean s.

    ReplyDelete
  40. Does the universe have any small capricious moments wherein what happens next is determined by immediate circumstance rather than some state of the universe say 3.5 billion years prior?

    As it happens, evolutionary biologists infer that 3.5 billion years ago there was a single-celled organism that became the direct precursor to all life on the planet. It had 355 genes and sophisticated cell functions and these are found today in every living organism, plant or animal.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_universal_common_ancestor

    Further, in May 2016, scientists reported that 1 trillion species are estimated to be on Earth currently with only one-thousandth of one percent described. This does not include a vast number of organisms that are known to have existed but are now extinct.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodiversityhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodiversity

    Thus, over a period of time that is geological and perhaps even cosmological in scale, we find a capacity to last that would expected in a meteor fragment, but here is surprisingly manifested in a complex, recursive dynamical process. Even more unexpectedly, associated with this cellular continuity of process, there is an ongoing, exponential diversification of complexity and response-ability within living organisms. How does this occur?

    In mutation we find that nature offers a method of biological diversification, but one that is also a direct challenge to its continuity:

    “There is increasing evidence that the majority of spontaneously arising mutations are due to error-prone replication (translesion synthesis) past DNA damage in the template strand. Naturally occurring oxidative DNA damages arise at least 10,000 times per cell per day in humans and 50,000 times or more per cell per day in rats.” (Wiki – Mutation)

    Considering that the most recent estimate of total cells the human body stands at 37.2 trillion and multiply that by ten thousand. This seems an overabundance of opportunity for divergence, but an unsupportable assault on continuity. Perhaps the numbers are wrong or we underestimate the robustness of the process and its ability to normalize such effects. Clearly we have gotten to the point of internet communication.

    Still, for some newly-minted varietal organism the real challenge to its continuity is its fitness in the field, its endurance within a particular habitat. For example, imagine a little hillside stage setting with some basalt rock outcroppings, bushes, ground cover and stunted trees. For this vast bulk of matter its many moments are proceeding directly according to precedent; one state unfolds precisely to the next. The rocks have vibrations you can set your clock to and even the chlorophyll antennae of the plants go through their intricate and ancient routine one electron volt at a time.

    That is our scene. Enter stage right: a young jack rabbit; enter stage left: a young coyote. For the next three seconds there ensues a frenzy of challenge and response, a pas de deux with the continuity of both organisms at issue. In this moment both coyote and rabbit are their genome’s most future leaning edge, sharp canine teeth versus a furry muscular haunch that is capable of explosive zigzagging changes of momentum. What happens next? When the coyote’s jaws snap shut do they close on flesh or air? Is it scripted or decided by the dynamics of present circumstance? My inclination is that a discriminative evolution requires the latter. What is the solution with the fewest assumptions?

    I don’t know if this prosy piling of sand makes for weight bearing argument. As to the rabbit, it zagged at the last instant lived for some future moment. As the writer of the script, I don’t consider this choice to be an example of free will. It was a conditioned response. I still remember Bambi and his buddy Thumper.

    ReplyDelete
  41. Free will is when a person decides for themselves what they will do, free of coercion or other undue influence. This is an empirical distinction used to distinguish a deliberate choice from a choice imposed upon the person against their will.

    This is an "operational definition". The operation is usually to determine moral or legal responsibility for an action.

    Thus, it is a meaningful and relevant definition of free will. It is meaningful because it correctly attributes responsibility to the person holding a gun to the unwilling victim's head, forcing them to participate in a crime. It is relevant because the behavior can either be deliberate (freely chosen) or coerced (constrained by force).

    Now let's look at the other definition, the one used in this article, and commonly used by many philosophers and scientists. They suggest instead that free will must imply freedom from reliable cause and effect, which logically implies causal necessity and deterministic inevitability.

    Is that a meaningful constraint? Well, no. What we will inevitably do is exactly the same as what we would have done anyway. It is us, just being us, doing what we do, and choosing what we choose. That is not a meaningful constraint.

    Is it a relevant constraint? Well, it's not that either. By their own arguments, it is not something that anyone or anything can ever be "free" from. In fact, it is so ubiquitous that it becomes a triviality, essentially a constant that appears on both sides of every equation, and can be subtracted from both sides without affecting the result.

    So, we have two definitions of free will. One which is operationally meaningful and relevant. And another which is impossible.

    The question then, is why have so many chosen the meaningless and irrelevant definition rather than the meaningful and useful one?




    ReplyDelete
  42. “If you know the state of the universe at one time, you can use the laws to calculate the state of the universe at all other times."

    Stephen Kurtz objected to this statement of principle on the grounds that the "if" is impossible. To paraphrase Archimedes similarly,

    "If I had a big enough lever and a place to stand I could move the Earth."

    Both "ifs" are impossible, but levers still work and the principle of determinism is still used in the equations which engineers use to design bridges and buildings and everything else. Which is to say, a bit of hyperbole in the statement of a principle does not necessarily invalidate the principle.

    There are other arguments that could be made against the first statement, however, involving quantum randomness and chaotic behavior, but as Dr. Hossenfelder stated in her post, those objections do not help the case for metaphysical free will. (I'm not sure anyone here is arguing whole-heartedly for metaphysical free will anyway. It is nebulous concept except to those who believe in it, much like "magic".)

    ReplyDelete