emhs comments on Timeless Control - Less Wrong

19 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 07 June 2008 05:16AM

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Comment author: emhs 10 September 2014 08:03:14AM 0 points [-]

Human choice: why it exists, despite being inside of physics. Intelligence is the decision-making process. This is how our actions are determined. The experience of this decision-making process is called alternately "choice" and "free will". The causal relationship of our environments to our actions extends from observation, through our mental state and decision-making process, to our actions. If I use a different decision-making process, I make different decisions. This is still entirely inside of physics, but it hasn't been explained away. It can even be absolutely deterministic, when viewed from a third-person perspective. Saying we don't have "choice" is about as helpful as anything in the debate about free will