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!
True, and EY seems to be taking up Isaiah Berlin's line about this: suggesting that the problem of free will is a confusion because 'freedom' is about like not being imprisoned, and that has nothing to do with natural law one way or the other. I absolutely grant that EY's definition of free will given in the quote is compatible with natural determinism. I think everyone would grant that, but it's a way of saying that the sense of free will thought to conflict with determinism is not coherent enough to take seriously.
So I don't think that line makes him a compatibilist, because I don't think that's the notion of free will under discussion. It's consistent with us having free will in EY's sense, that all our actions are necessitated by natural law (or whatever), and I take it to be typical of compatibilism that one try to make natural law consistent with the idea that actions are non-lawful, or if lawful, nevertheless free. Maybe free will in the relevant sense a silly idea in the first place, but we don't get to just change the topic and pretend we've addressed the question.
And he does a very good job of that, but this work shouldn't be confused with something one might call a 'solution' (which is how the sequence is titled), and it's not a compatibilist answer (just because it's not an attempt at an answer at all).
I'm not saying EY's thoughts on free will are bad, or even wrong. I'm just saying 'It seems to me that EY is not a compatibilist about free will, on the basis of what he wrote in the free will sequence'.
What exactly is the notion of free will that is under discussion? Or equivalently, can you explain what a "true" compatibilist position might look like? You cited this paper as an example of a "traditionally compatibilist view," but I'm afraid I didn't get much from it. I found it too dense to extract any meaning in the time I was willing to spend reading it, and it seemed to make some assertions that, as I interpr... (read more)