Hi Brent,
We have discussed this a long time ago. Ah, perhaps it was on the FOR
list.
Free-will can only diminish when indeterminacy is added.
It is a product of awareness of ignorance on oneself, that an high
level construct. I appreciate infinitely both Kochen and Conway, but
on "free will" they make the beginners' error, like Penrose makes the
beginners error on Gödel.
You can use the self-duplications iteration thought experiment to
illustrate that indeterminacy is not needed, and even annoying if too
big, to let free will develop itself.
Or to let the will develop itself. free-will is an oxymoron. Do you
believe in free free-will ? :)
Bruno
On 12 Mar 2010, at 00:04, Brent Meeker wrote:
My apologies. I forgot that Lawrence National Laboratories no
longer hosted the physics archive. I should have cited:
http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0604079
The Free Will Theorem
Authors: John Conway, Simon Kochen
(Submitted on 11 Apr 2006)
Abstract: On the basis of three physical axioms, we prove that if
the choice of a particular type of spin 1 experiment is not a
function of the information accessible to the experimenters, then
its outcome is equally not a function of the information accessible
to the particles. We show that this result is robust, and deduce
that neither hidden variable theories nor mechanisms of the GRW type
for wave function collapse can be made relativistic. We also
establish the consistency of our axioms and discuss the
philosophical implications.
And here's a later, stronger version that uses some weaker premises.
http://arxiv.org/abs/0807.3286
Brent
On 3/11/2010 2:16 PM, John Mikes wrote:
Brent, nice statement:
"But it's certainly not a deterministic universe"
I have to take your word, because the reference you gave said:
"NOT FOUND"
So what kind of a 'universe' is it? bootstrap, self reflecting
autodidacta? Creator-made?
John M
On 3/11/10, Brent Meeker <meeke...@dslextreme.com> wrote:
On 3/11/2010 1:26 PM, m.a. wrote:
Bruno and John,
The confusion is my fault. I copied the
URL from a Kurzweil page heading when I should have gone to the
article itself, so the wrong feature appeared. This is the one I
requested comments about:
http://www.physorg.com/news186830615.html
(Excerpts)
PhysOrg.com) -- When biologist Anthony Cashmore claims that the
concept of free will is an illusion, he's not breaking any new
ground. At least as far back as the ancient Greeks, people have
wondered how humans seem to have the ability to make their own
personal decisions in a manner lacking any causal component other
than their desire to "will" something. But Cashmore, Professor of
Biology at the University of Pennsylvania, says that many
biologists today still cling to the idea of free will, and reject
the idea that we are simply conscious machines, completely
controlled by a combination of our chemistry and external
environmental forces.
To put it simply, free will just doesn’t fit with how the physical
world works. Cashmore compares a belief in free will to an earlier
belief in vitalism - the belief that there are forces governing
the biological world that are distinct from those governing the
physical world. Vitalism was discarded more than 100 years ago,
being replaced with evidence that biological systems obey the laws
of chemistry and physics, not special biological laws for living
things.“I would like to convince biologists that a belief in free
will is nothing other than a continuing belief in vitalism (or, as
I say, a belief in magic),” Cashmore told PhysOrg.com.
There seems to be an evolutionary rightness and inevitability to
the idea that free will is taking its place as just another
illusion like vitalism, religion, aether, absolute time and space,
geocentric universe, single-galaxy universe and so on. But I think
people will have an even tougher time dealing with the
implications of strict determinism. It's an idea that could tear
through the entire fabric of society even though acceptance
needn't change one's behavior in the slightest respect. marty a.
But it's certainly not a deterministic universe.
_http://xxx.lanl.gov/PS_cache/quant-ph/pdf/0604/0604079.pdf_
Brent
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