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Dagon comments on Open thread, Dec. 21 - Dec. 27, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
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I am confused about free will. I tried to read about it (notably from the sequences) but am still not convinced.
I make choices, all the time, sure, but why do I chose one solution in particular?
My answer would be the sum of my knoledge and past experiences (nurture) and my genome (nature), with quantum randomness playing a role as well, but I can't see where does free will intervene.
It feels like there is something basic I don't understand, but I can't grasp it.
That sum you speak of is encoded in a massive biological calculator called a brain. Free will is the introspective module of that computer as it examines it's own calculations, and that data affects the state of the network to be part of future calculations.
Is that actually the 'strange loop' that Hofstadter writes about?
Hofstadter (as I remember - it's been a long time) took it a step further, granting consciousness to our models of others, and to the models of us that we model in others, etc....