My connection between randomness and free will is that I think free will wouldn't be possible in a deterministic system since everything happens as a consequence of previous events rather than as a consequence decision making.
What is decision-making but a physical process occurring in your brain? Consider reading Thou Art Physics.
Eliezer wrote:
The thoughts of your decision process are all real, they are all something. But a thought is too big and complicated to be an atom. So thoughts are made of smaller things, and our name for the stuff that stuff is made of, is "physics".
I agree that decision making is a physical process occurring in our brain, but I think that by calling it "physical" we are also implying that there is certainty in the mechanics of that process and that its just that we can't yet reach it or explain it.
What I was trying to say when I wrote "determinism is a special case of randomness" is that there must be non-certain processes in physics and that would explain, in my mind, why we can make arbitrary decisions that seem to change the determinate course of physical processes.
Any "fundamentally" random process can be seen as a deterministic process. Since it will have a single outcome, we can set it as the only outcome possible, and yield a fully deterministic process which is indistinguishable from the original, random, process. In other words, we can say that a fundamentally random process is a deterministic process which relies on hidden variables which are unreachable for us.
Would you agree then that probability doesn't exist because it is just the product of us not reaching those hidden variables, but if we could reach them then everything would be certain?
If so, t seems that probability, like free will and time, is also an illusion.
Consider reading Free Will Is as Real as Baseball.
Thank you, great article.
There’s a lot we don’t understand about consciousness, but none of the problems we face rise to the level that we should be tempted to distrust our basic understanding of how the atoms and forces inside our brains work.
I don't consider myself as proposing the existence of free will as an ideological issue, but I am having trouble connecting a causal mechanical system only (that I would call deterministic).
I don't see it makes sense that arbitrary decision making exists (or even us being conscious of this conversation) if it was possible without any effort just by letting events run their course.
Could you elaborate on what you mean by "special case of randomness"? As far as I can tell, you don't ever really explain this within the post, from which I infer you probably think it obvious enough to not be worth explicitly saying. Whenever an author thinks this, however, it is usually untrue, and in fact I found (and still find) whatever you were trying to say completely non-obvious. I think it would greatly help discussion if you were to put a brief explanation of your idea within the post; that way readers won't be left floundering.
I think I am confusing some terms above (randomness, probability, certainty, etc.) I will rethink and try to explain it by editing.
If mathematicians measure randomness with probability, then there must be some things that have a 100% occurrence probability
Er... what? I think you need to state your train of thought in more detail; at the moment it doesn't seem precise enough to engage with.
Yes, I think I am confusing randomness, with probability and certainty. I will try to clarify above by editing my post.
Alternatively randomness could be a special case of determinism. Imagine a deterministic universe that branches into two different universes each time someone in the universe flips a coin. In one branch the coin lands head and the other it lands tails. To the people living inside the universe it would appear like a fundamentally random process, but in fact the universe is entirely deterministic.
In any case this doesn't have anything to do with free will. If you let a random number generator make your decisions for you, that's not free will.
My connection between randomness and free will is that I think free will wouldn't be possible in a deterministic system since everything happens as a consequence of previous events rather than as a consequence decision making.
I think that in the two branch universes above it is still random on which side the heads or tails would fall therefore it still seems random together or forked.
I was trying to reconcile the fact that in a deterministic universe there could be life with free will, but I am going full circle now and am starting to think that everything is really random, if not I don't see how there could be free will in a deterministic universe.
If mathematicians measure randomness with probability, then there must be some things that have a 100% occurrence probability (in the current universe above atomic levels I presume), which now I see as special cases of randomness rather than opposites to randomness, and these lead us to think that there is determinism.
I think we may have this cognitive bias (deterministic views of reality) because it is extremely helpful to use these 100% probability occurrence things to model the universe rationally, learn, and to predict the future, but it is not the whole story or at least a complete description of reality.
What do you think?
EDIT 1: Thank you all for the comments below. I recognize I am naive in this topic.
Although I am not convinced yet, I think my possible argumentative error is:
P1: I observe free will in the behavior of living things.
P2: Deterministic physical mechanical processes don't permit free will.
C: Therefore physics must include random processes.
I think I only see a solution of free will in randomness, but maybe there are other solutions ( I will read the Free Will Sequence here on LW!)
EDIT 2: After reading some articles of the Free Will Sequence I realize the problem of investing energy around free will questions if free will is just a mistake in our thinking process.
It is something like why ask about time travel if time doesn't exist? or, why explore the mechanics of randomness vs determinism if randomness doesn't exist and thus the dichotomy "randomness vs determinism" doesn't exist in the first place?
A valid point; although I never thought that everyone else were similar to each other; just that I never seemed to fit in the model that other people had. And they certainly weren't thinking as I was.
if this were a venn diagram I would imagine many slightly overlapping circles, rather than one around everyone else and one around me.
I think the underlying flaw pointed out on the "Generalizing From One Example" fallacy you mentioned above is the premise that out of a specific example it is possible to conclude how others behave. If this is so, then if you conclude others think different, the same way, or different between themselves based on your own experience then you are going through the same false process I think.
Excellent layout of the real problem: the control mechanism, rather than the creation of AI itself.
I started this Reddit on Ethereum where AI may be recreated first:
http://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/3430pz/an_ethereum_enabled_possibility_what_happens_when/
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Why do you want to rescue free will?
I don't have an attachment to free will I think its a mental construct like time. What I think is that we make decisions and we seem to arbitrarily change the course of things, even if they are physical processes, I think there must be a component of randomness in physics that enables this.