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sereboi comments on Righting a Wrong Question - Less Wrong
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Sereboi, I think once again we're miscommunicating. You seem to think I'm looking for a compromise between free will and determinism, no matter how much I deny this. Let me try an analogy (stolen from Good and Real).
When you look in a mirror, it appears to swap left and right, but not up and down; yet the equations that govern reflection are entirely symmetric: there shouldn't be a distinction.
Now, you can simply make that second point, but then a person looking at a mirror remains confused, because it obviously is swapping left and right rather than up and down. You can say that's just an illusion, but that doesn't bring any further enlightenment.
But if you actually ask the question "Why does a mirror appear to switch left and right, by human perception?" then you can make some progress. Eventually you come to the idea that it actually reverses front and back, and that the brain still looks to interpret a reflected image as a physical object, and that the way it finds to do this is imagining stepping into the mirror and then turning around, at which point left and right are reversed. But it's just as valid to step into the mirror and do a handstand, at which point top and bottom are reversed; it's just that human beings are more bilaterally symmetric than up-down, so this version doesn't occur to us.
Anyway, the point is that you learn more deeply by confronting this question than by just stopping at "oh, it's an illusion", but that the mathematical principle is in no way undermined by the solution.
The argument I'm making is that the same thing carries through in the free will and determinism confusion. By looking at why it feels like we have choices between several actions, any of which it feels like we could do, we learn about what it means for a deterministic algorithm to make choices.
I don't know whether this question interests you at all, but I hope you'll accept that I'm not trying to weaken determinism!
This makes sense, somewhat and now that i realize your not trying to defend compatibilism and can shift gears a bit. I really think that the whole situation might just be a veridical paradox, both being true equally. So in a way i would like to concede to compatibilism, however compatabilist attempts at solving the paradox are pathetic. Not sure if you have heard of Dialetheism, its a growing western philosophy that recognizes true contradictions. If compatibilism is a true contradiction than there will never be an explanation for how it works. It will just have to be accepted as such. The problem for most rationalists is that it takes the wind out of their sails. Also who decides something is a veridical paradox? Graham Priest has several books on the topic which challenges Aristotle's Law of Non Contradiction which is what we base most western debate off of. Perhaps it is time to start rethinking the wheel of some rational solutions..
here is a WIKI link to read more on dialethesim
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialetheism
Well, I wouldn't give up that easily! The default assumption should be that there's an underlying consistent reality, that paradoxes are in the map, not the territory (as was the case with the simple "mirror paradox" above). Assuming that an apparent contradiction is fundamental ought to be the last resort.
Think about free will for a while— focusing on what the act of choosing feels like, and also on what it might actually consist of— and then check Eliezer's proffered resolution. It's much less naive than you're expecting.
Do they also not challenge Aristotle's Law of Non Contradiction?
that would be funny were it a paradox.