lisper comments on Is Spirituality Irrational? - Less Wrong

5 Post author: lisper 09 February 2016 01:42AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (429)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: lisper 02 March 2016 06:25:43PM 0 points [-]

Where are you heading with these questions? I mean, are you expecting them to help achieve mutual understanding,

I'm not sure what I "expect" but yes, I am trying to achieve mutual understanding. I think we have a fundamental disconnect in our intuitions of what "free will" means and I'm trying to get a handle on what it is. If you think that a thermostat has even a little bit of free will then we'll just have to agree to disagree. If you think even a Nest thermostat, which does some fairly complicated processing before "deciding" whether or not to turn on the heat has even a little bit of free will then we'll just have to agree to disagree. If you think that an industrial control computer, or an airplane autopilot, which do some very complicated processing before "deciding" what to do have even a little bit of free will then we'll have to agree to disagree. Likewise for weather systems, pachinko machines, geiger counters, and computers searching for a counterexample to the Collatz conjecture. If you think any of these things has even a little bit of free will then we will simply have to agree to disagree.