I would appreciate if you can give a few examples of not having free will.
Alright, that sounds like a good idea. I don't think there can be a sensation of having or not having free will, any more than there can be a sensation of drawing a conclusion from premises. In a loose sense, there might be an 'experience' of these things, in the sense that I might remember having done so. But if drawing an inference produces in me some sensation or other, that's totally accidental. Same goes, I think, for acting freely.
1) I throw a rock down a mountain and kill Tom. The rock does not have free will.
2) You throw me down a mountain, and I land on Tom, killing him. I had free will, but my will isn't part of what killed Tom, any more than is the will of Suzie who wasn't involved.
3) When you threw me down the mountain, you acted thus under duress. You still acted freely, though we might not want to say that you were morally responsible.
4) If you were being mind controlled by a sinister alien, then you're in no different a situation than and I was in (2): you didn't act at all. There are tricky but unimportant borderline cases to be found in the territory of influence by, say, drug addiction.
Here's another intuition of mine:
I throw a large rock down a steep mountain. At the bottom of this mountain, the rock strikes Tom and kills him. Carl, brother of Tom, sets out to find out why Tom died. He would and should not be satisfied to learn that a rock struck Tom. Carl would and should be satisfied to learn that I throw that rock. He should not seek any further, upon learning this. If, contra-factually, I did not throw the rock and it fell by chance, then Carl should be satisfied to learn this.
If asked why his brother died, Carl should answer 'Hen killed him by throwing a rock down a hill'. If, contra-factually, I did not throw the rock but it fell on its own, then Carl can rightly answer 'A rock fell on him', or pick arbitrarily from any one of the string of antecedent causes that precipitated Tom's death, or just say 'by chance' or 'by accident'. The specialness of myself in this story is due to the fact that I have free will, and that I threw the rock freely. The rock, the texture of the mountain, my parents and ancestors, and the great many necessary antecedents to Tom's death are all computational nexuses in what led to Tom's death, but I'm the only one that's special in this way (so being a necessary computational nexus isn't sufficient, but is perhaps necessary, to being the free cause of something).
I don't think there can be a sensation of having or not having free will, any more than there can be a sensation of drawing a conclusion from premises.
Huh. I thought the whole starting point of the debate was that people do have "a sensation of having ... free will" and argue what this free will thing is.
Example 1: sure, rocks are probably not interesting objects to ascribe free will to, though a good start. I am more interested in humans not having free will.
Example 2: this is not an example of NOT having free will
Example 3: this is not an ...
ErinFlight said:
Thinking about it, I realized that this might be a common concern. There are probably plenty of people who've looked at various more-or-less technical or jargony Less Wrong posts, tried understanding them, and then given up (without posting a comment explaining their confusion).
So I figured that it might be good to have a thread where you can ask for explanations for any Less Wrong post that you didn't understand and would like to, but don't want to directly comment on for any reason (e.g. because you're feeling embarassed, because the post is too old to attract much traffic, etc.). In the spirit of various Stupid Questions threads, you're explicitly encouraged to ask even for the kinds of explanations that you feel you "should" get even yourself, or where you feel like you could get it if you just put in the effort (but then never did).
You can ask to have some specific confusing term or analogy explained, or to get the main content of a post briefly summarized in plain English and without jargon, or anything else. (Of course, there are some posts that simply cannot be explained in non-technical terms, such as the ones in the Quantum Mechanics sequence.) And of course, you're encouraged to provide explanations to others!