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OccamsTaser comments on How would not having free will feel to you? - Less Wrong
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Slightly off-topic, but I don't want to start another free-will thread...
Would free-will represent an evolutionary cost?
If free will is to say that your decisions are not driven solely by your stimuli inputs, then it seems to me that a creature with free-will is by definition less responsive to its environment than a creature without it. A creature that is less responsive to its environment should be out-competed by a creature that is more responsive to its environment ceteris parisbus.
Even assuming that free-will is possible, is it likely, or would we expect "free-will" genes to get eliminated from the gene pool?
If we assume being reactionary to one's environment is purely advantageous (with no negative effects when taken to the extreme), then yes it would have died out (theoretically). However, freedom to deviate creates diversity (among possibly other advantageous traits) and over-adaptation to one's environment can cause a species to "put all its eggs in one basket" and eventually become extinct.
You seem to be ascribing magical properties to one source of randomness. What special 'diversity' is being caused by 'free will' that one couldn't get by, say, cutting back a little bit on DNA repair and error-checking mechanisms? Or by amplifying thermal noise? Or by epileptic fits?
(Bonus points: energy and resource savings. Free will and no DNA error checking, two great flavors that go great together!)
Free will is not the same as randomness.
Diversity that each individial agent is free to optimize.
In your usage, there is nothing distinguishing free will from randomness.
Huh? How is your link at all related?
What freedom to optimize does 'free will' give you that a RNG or PRNG of any kind, from thermal fluctuations to ionizing or cosmic radiation, does not?