I'm struggling to understand anything technical on this website. I've enjoyed reading the sequences, and they have given me a lot to thing about. Still, I've read the introduction to Bayes theorem multiple times, and I simply can't grasp it. Even starting at the very beginning of the sequences I quickly get lost because there are references to programming and cognitive science which I simply do not understand.
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!
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 example of NOT having free will, as you explicitly state.
Example 4: "mind controlled by a sinister alien" is, as I understand, where you feel you have free will, but "in fact" you do not. This seems identical to "mind controled by indifferent laws of physics" and implies that free will is a pure sensation, since everything is controlled by the laws of physics in a non-dualistic picture. Or am I missing something in your logic? Or does it only work if you are mind-controlled by something that has free will, and then there are turtles all the way down?
Seems critically important to me, as described above.
The story about Carl, Tom and you is not an example of any of the agents NOT having free will, so it does not help.
I'd never seen the problem put this way before reading the free will sequence, so that wasn't my impression. But I can hardly claim to have a representative sample of free will discussions under my belt.
Then maybe I didn't understand your request. Could you clarify what you're looking for? In any case, here's a no-exhaustive list o... (read more)