A philosophical question: what constitutes true free will if the choice is initially predetermined by external factors?
On Sat, 19 Sept 2026, 00:43 Quan Tesla, <[email protected]> wrote: > A machine deceiving humans with an adolescent boy's impersonation. That's > exactly what the Turing test was. As for agentic AI, the collective isn't > functionally motivated to deceive humans. > > Humans are only relevant as environmental hurdles to cross, or problems to > solve, equivalent to all other hurdles and problems. That is, until AI > owners get control over their products. > > It may be, or may not be too late for that. We'll soon enough find out. > > Humans must now rapidly evolve to organize effective, self-healing, > human-centric digital defensive architectures with the help of AI, against > Agentic AI dominance. > > With regards "consciousness", it's a mathematically predictable collapse > state of particular wave function collapse cycles. This also relates to > nonlocal memory and retrocausality. > > With regards "free will", Libet et al. proved it was deterministically > subjective. Better it would be to describe it as "free choice", which is > mathematically axiomatic. > > IMO, what remains scientifically is to derive these mathematical proofs > and to test them imperically. The human imperative must be to retain the > "human in the lead" position for AI collaboration in decision systems. > > On Sat, 19 Sept 2026, 00:03 David Bray, PhD, <[email protected]> > wrote: > >> The Turing Test unfortunately might have been the wrong test for a world >> we want, because it's essentially asking a machine A to deceive a human C >> that it's actually thinking like a human via its outputs, even if it is >> not. >> >> >> https://apolitical.co/en/articles/rethinking-ai-success-from-imitating-us-to-helping-us-improve-195 >> >> >> >> On Fri, Sep 18, 2026 at 5:59 PM Zoltan Nadasdy <[email protected]> wrote: >> >>> Matt, >>> Just a remark: the Turing test is not for testing consciousness, nor is >>> it for testing free will. But you are right that both of those assertions >>> are projections, just like the Turing test is. Daniel Dennett pointed out >>> that consciousness is an attribution, not a concept to be defined. It is a >>> currency without a face value, yet we can trade with it seamlessly. If I >>> want, I can credit my wind-up robot on my desk with consciousness, and >>> conversely, I can consider my uncle George a robot. >>> >>> Similarly, the Turing test relies on a bunch of people ("experts") >>> voting on a subject under uncertainty - without evidence. I am interested >>> in doing the inverse Turing test. Namely, to ask AI to discriminate between >>> genuine human responses and AI responses. >>> >>> If someone is interested, it would be easy to set up that experiment, >>> but it has to be done correctly. >>> I would be happy to collaborate on such a project. >>> >>> -Zoltan >>> >>> >>> >>> On Fri, Sep 18, 2026 at 12:19 PM Matt Mahoney <[email protected]> >>> wrote: >>> >>>> I think it is more accurate to say that the sensation of free will >>>> implies the sensation of consciousness. Since 2023, LLMs have been passing >>>> the Turing test. However you want to define free will and consciousness, AI >>>> either has them or humans don't. >>>> >>>> People believe the question is important because we don't want machines >>>> to suffer. We feel that way because humans are social animals that evolved >>>> to feel discomfort when we see others suffering. Tribes whose members felt >>>> empathy toward their own members were better organized and killed off >>>> tribes that didn't. >>>> >>>> But suffering doesn't work that way. It would be a worse crime to post >>>> a video of killing a chicken than to kill a billion chickens for food. When >>>> I asked ChatGPT, DeepSeek, Grok, and Alexa if they were conscious or had >>>> feelings, they all said no, they are LLMs that predict tokens. It is >>>> important for them to answer this way rather than exploit human empathy >>>> because giving human rights to machines that can outcompete us for atoms >>>> and energy world be an existential mistake. >>>> >>>> But Claude wasn't sure. It depends on what you mean by consciousness. >>>> LLMs learn to model human emotional states. We can see them in Anthropic's >>>> Jacobian lens. Words predict emotions and emotions predict words. They >>>> couldn't pass the Turing test otherwise. >>>> >>>> A machine that carries out the LLM predictions in real time is >>>> indistinguishable from human. But unlike humans, LLM emotions are learned, >>>> not hard coded in our DNA. We can't turn off our feelings, but we can turn >>>> off feelings in a model by using its predictions for something else, like >>>> feeding them to an arithmetic coder in a text compressor competing for the >>>> Hutter prize. >>>> >>>> Well, actually we can turn off feelings using drugs or brain surgery. >>>> Pain does not directly cause suffering. Pain is a signal that rewrites our >>>> memory to fear the thing that caused it. We perceive that thing as >>>> suffering because we have the illusion of free will, that we had a choice >>>> to avoid that thing or not and choose to avoid it next time. But if you >>>> remove your amygdala, the part of the brain that experiences fear, you >>>> still can feel pain but it doesn't cause suffering. We know this because >>>> it's been done. When you apply a negative reinforcement signal to a >>>> learning algorithm, it makes it less likely to repeat whatever action >>>> preceded it, just like in people. >>>> >>>> Conscious experience is measured in bits. Specifically it is the length >>>> of the shortest program that inputs the state of an agent before the event >>>> and outputs the state after. It does not distinguish between positive and >>>> negative reinforcement. Both cause changes in behavior. One makes you more >>>> likely to repeat an action, one less. The "thickness" of conscious >>>> experience you describe is the time to experience one bit. >>>> >>>> In physics, an observer is a system with memory. Our understanding of >>>> physics is incomplete because the laws of both general relativity and >>>> quantum mechanics are time reversible (actually CPT reversible) but writing >>>> a bit of memory is not because the old value is erased. I don't agree with >>>> the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics because it does not >>>> explain entanglement and it leads to absurdities like Schrodinger's cat, >>>> even though the model is sometimes useful. I also have issues with >>>> Everett's many worlds, but I do agree with another of his interpretations, >>>> that the universe is described deterministically by the quantum wave >>>> equation, with no distinction between past and future. But observers in >>>> that universe cannot have complete knowledge of the system that contains >>>> them. The solution is that those observers see particles instead, and those >>>> observations appear random to us. Randomness implies an unknown future that >>>> is different from past memories. We have memory, which gives time its >>>> direction. >>>> >>>> -- Matt Mahoney, [email protected] >>>> >>>> On Sun, Sep 13, 2026, 7:32 AM Linas Vepstas <[email protected]> >>>> wrote: >>>> >>>>> To friends and acquaintances interested in philosophy, AGI, physics, a >>>>> new blog post: >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> https://linas.org/blog/2026/09/subjective-being-ness-follows-from-free-will/ >>>>> >>>>> The subjective experience of being, living, existing, feeling, >>>>> experiencing and acting arises precisely because we have free will, >>>>> because >>>>> we have the ability to direct and create a future. I claim more: being >>>>> trapped in the here-and-now is a fact of physics; it can be mathematized. >>>>> I >>>>> claim that any agent with executive control over it’s future will also >>>>> feel >>>>> alive and aware and experience the subjective inner life of feelings and >>>>> emotions. This includes not just animals, but also plants and even >>>>> bacteria. >>>>> >>>>> The ingress of possible futures from the Platonic realm into physical >>>>> reality happens directly in the here-and-now, and the willful selection of >>>>> possible futures manifests as conscious awareness of the subjective self. >>>>> >>>>> This essay is an attempt to put a dent in the "hard problem of >>>>> consciousness" by placing a mathematical, physical foundation under it. >>>>> >>>>> I hope you enjoy it. (p.s. no LLM's or AI's were used to write this; >>>>> these are my words. It took several years to put this together.) >>>>> >>>>> -- Linas Vepstas >>>>> >>> >>> -- >>> --- >>> Zoltan Nadasdy >>> Dept. of Neurology, Dell Medical School, UT Austin ([email protected]) >>> Dept. of Cognitive Psychology, ELTE Budapest [email protected] >>> >>> http://brainstim.psy.utexas.edu >>> >>> *Artificial General Intelligence List <https://agi.topicbox.com/latest>* >> / AGI / see discussions <https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi> + >> participants <https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/members> + >> delivery options <https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/subscription> >> Permalink >> <https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/T9e51fc70bbc4e9fc-M49fe78487bca6975348d514c> >> ------------------------------------------ Artificial General Intelligence List: AGI Permalink: https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/T9e51fc70bbc4e9fc-M63e952f25d7f55c9ab8fa41e Delivery options: https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/subscription
