timtyler comments on Ingredients of Timeless Decision Theory - Less Wrong

43 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 19 August 2009 01:10AM

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Comment author: SforSingularity 19 August 2009 06:54:51PM *  0 points [-]

Free will is counted as one of the great problems of philosophy. Wikipedia Lists it as a "central problem of metaphysics". SEP has a whole, long article on it along with others on: "compatibilism", "causal determinism" , "free will and fatalism", "divine foreknowledge", "incompatibilism (nondeterministic) theories of free will" and "arguments for incompatibilism".

If you really have "nuked the dead donkey" here, you would cut out a lot of literature. Furthermore, religious people would no longer be able to use "free will" as a magic incantation with which to defend God.

Comment author: timtyler 19 August 2009 07:56:19PM -2 points [-]

Free will seems like a pretty boring topic to me. The main recent activity I have noticed in the area was Daniel Dennett's "Freedom Evolves" book. That book was pretty boring and mostly wrong - I thought. It was curious to see Daniel Dennett make such a mess of the subject, though.

Comment author: gwern 20 August 2009 08:06:42AM 1 point [-]

As it happens, I'm reading through Freedom Evolves right now; up to chapter 3, and while I don't quite buy his ideas on inevitability, it so far doesn't strike me as a mess?

Comment author: timtyler 20 August 2009 08:45:26AM -2 points [-]

I liked the bit on memes. Most of the rest of it was a lot of word games, IMO.