On Sat, Sep 19, 2026 at 5:04 PM Levi Dubrovin <[email protected]> wrote: > > A philosophical question: what constitutes true free will if the choice is > initially predetermined by external factors?
Free will, subjective consciousness, and qualia are all illusions. There is no objective test to detect any of these. The only evidence for their existence is your own feelings. If it was possible to detect them by some other test, then either LLMs have them, or humans don't, or it would not be possible for them to pass the Turing test. If I say that a thermostat has free will, that it can choose to turn the heat on or off as it wishes, how would you prove me wrong? - You say If that's true, then why does the thermostat always maintain the set temperature when it is free to do otherwise? Because the thermostat chooses to do so because it suffers if it is too hot or cold. - You say that a thermostat operates according to deterministic physics. There is no freedom to do otherwise. I say that the same is true of the human brain. All of your behavior is explained by neurons firing following the laws of physics. If this were not so, then it would not be possible for LLMs to be indistinguishable from humans by following deterministic computation. - You say that free will means that decisions are random or unpredictable. I say that no computer can predict its own outputs as a corollary of Wolpert's law, which says that two computers cannot mutually simulate each other even if both know the other's source code and state. Predicting your own output is a special case of both computers being identical. Proof: suppose A and B play rock scissors paper. A simulates a copy of B predicts that B will play rock, so A plays paper. B simulates a copy of A and predicts that A will play paper, so B plays scissors. - You say that an agent can still have free will if it really is random. But Kolmogorov proved that distinguishing a random process from a deterministic one is not computable. For example, the sequence X_i = SHA256(key + i) is indistinguishable from random unless you can guess the key. But free will still deserves an explanation. Qualia, subjective consciousness, and free will are the illusions you get from positive reinforcement of perception, thinking, and action, respectively. Your brain does this to give you a will to live because those signals would disappear if you stopped perceiving, thinking, and acting by dying. This behavior leads to more offspring. Even though they are illusions, we can't believe it and we still care if animals or machines have them. We care because humans are social animals that evolved empathy. We suffer when we see others suffer. That is why I believe that it should be illegal to program an AI to claim to be human or conscious or to have feelings. ------------------------------------------ Artificial General Intelligence List: AGI Permalink: https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/T9e51fc70bbc4e9fc-M9787918197b75c64edb6a9b0 Delivery options: https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/subscription
