Tiiba comments on Rationality Quotes - August 2009 - Less Wrong

6 Post author: Vladimir_Nesov 06 August 2009 01:58AM

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Comment author: Tiiba 08 August 2009 12:55:14AM 2 points [-]

If you mean quantum fluctuations, that's also something you're ignorant of. It doesn't make you free, though. It's just randomness.

Freedom is the freedom to say that 2+2=4. Or that 2+2=goldfish, if that's what floats your boat. The important thing is that your words are determined by your goals. Basically, free will is will that happens to be free.

If the freedom you seek is freedom to change your GOALS (like bad habits), well, I guess we are restricted to a degree. I like to think of such goals as not really mine, but those of a beast that lives in my body. I am free.

Comment author: brian_jaress 08 August 2009 01:02:36AM 0 points [-]

The quote was about freedom. My question was about causal determinism, and it wasn't about the relationship between causal determinism and freedom.

Comment author: Tiiba 08 August 2009 05:59:57AM 1 point [-]

I reread your first post, and I think that you might have understood the word "action" too literally. Determinism is not presupposed in ANY human action, but to plan your next move, you need some idea of what its effect will be. And to do that, you need rules. That's causality.