XiXiDu comments on Rationality Quotes: February 2010 - Less Wrong

2 Post author: wedrifid 01 February 2010 06:39AM

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Comment author: XiXiDu 05 February 2010 11:45:29AM *  1 point [-]

I should have checked the lesswrong wiki before posting this. And of course read the mentioned posts here on lesswrong.com.

One of the easiest hard questions, as millennia-old philosophical dilemmas go. Though this impossible question is fully and completely dissolved on Less Wrong...

Anyway, for those who care or are wondering what I have been talking about I thought I should provide some background information. My above drivel is loosely based on work by Björn Brembs et al.

"Our results address the middle ground between simple determinism and randomness that is currently not well understood or characterized. We speculate that if free will exists, it is in this middle ground." This leads me to believe that the question of whether or not we have free will appears to be posed the wrong way. Instead, if we ask 'where between chance and necessity are we located?' one finds that this is precisely where humans and animals differ. Humans may not have free will in the philosophical sense, but even flies have a number of behavioral options they need to decide between. Humans are less determined than flies and possess even more options. With this small reformulation, the topic of free will becomes the new biological research area of studying spontaneous behavior and can thus be discerned from the philosophical question.

PLoS ONE: Order in Spontaneous Behavior

Maybe a misinterpretation on my side. But now my above comments might make a bit more sense, or at least show where I'm coming from. I learnt about this via a chat about 'free will'.

Hope you don't mind I post this. Maybe somebody will find it useful or informative.

Comment author: XiXiDu 14 February 2010 07:57:32PM 0 points [-]

There is more here: Brains as output/input devices

Faced with novel situations, humans and most animals spontaneously increase their behavioural variability...

Controlling external events: the input

Thus, competitive success and evolutionary fitness of all ambulatory organisms rely critically on intact behavioral variability as an adaptive brain function. But relative freedom from environmental contingencies is a necessary, but most often not a sufficient criterion for such accomplishments. Tightly connected to the ability to produce variable behavior is the ability to use the effects of these behaviors to control the environment. The incoming stream of sensory information is noisy and fluctuates for any number of reasons. Any covariance between the behavioral variations and those of sensory input indicates that the latter are con-sequences of the behavior and can thus be controlled be the animal. This function is so paramount, that we humans express our delight over control of our envi-ronment (including other people) already as children, by e.g., shrieking in excitement when Daddy jumps after a “boo” or proudly presenting Mom with “look what I can do!”.

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