I can't tell if my inference from free will to consent falls into (4) or (6).
The practical problem Ahmad lays out hinges on how/what we infer from an
inability to give consent (also practically critical in any financial or
healthcare context). What would it mean to increase or decrease the degrees of
freedom available to a fetus as a data field? Is that even a coherent
conception *if* a person is an unfolding of well-defined physical (chemical,
biological, ...) rules? At what point *can* such an iteratively constructed
thing execute a *reducing* operator like [con|dis]sent? In addition to at what
point in its longitudinal ontogeny can it execute the reduction, we have to ask
what structure does the thing have to have in order for the operator to be
available? E.g. I think it's consensus that hydrocephalic people, regardless of
age, are unable to [dis|con]sent entirely. Which of the 6 categories does that
put us in?
On 8/20/26 7:56 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
The usual fork in conversation about free will falls into these categories:
1. One party is a dualist and so the conversation is doomed. There can be no
grounding.
2. One party invokes quantum mechanics to say some spooky action at a distance
gives the human consciousness special powers. Penrose is a sophisticated
version of this.
3. One party invokes psychological necessity. That free will must exist or
goals would be an illusion and goals are needed to function.
4. One party invokes social requirements that there must be responsibility and
whatever the natural requirements are of that, we must pretend to believe them
because without them there would be chaos.
5. There’s the view that science needs independent experiments for there to be
science. So, minds must be independent from material. This is a corollary of
#1, #3, #4.
6. That it is a useful fiction in communication. I would strongly argue that
it is not useful and actively destructive to actually understanding how humans
behave. People don’t just use free will as a light symbol binding any more
than they use belief in God as a light symbol binding for spirituality or
placeholder for community and cooperation.
That paper addresses #2. QM is a model quantitatively consistent with
determinism. That is not a claim about how the universe really is, but it is
makes #2 pointless as a tool in argument: In addition to the absence of
evidence for Penrose’s theory of consciousness, QM itself isn’t useful for
advancing a materialist view of free will, in principle.
Now in the last year or so, there’s strengthening practical evidence that
intelligence doesn’t need sustained consciousness at all. It might even be a
burden.
P.S. I did not open my private repo that has the computational bits for that
paper. I’ve been getting hit lately with exploits too. I think it is
probably the pissed-off Ais. 😊 If anyone would like Lean 4 / Mathematica / Z3
codes I will make a private account or send a tarfile.
*From: *Friam <[email protected]> on behalf of glen <[email protected]>
*Date: *Thursday, August 20, 2026 at 6:04 AM
*To: *[email protected] <[email protected]>
*Subject: *[FRIAM] consent (was Re:New philosophy book)
I've attempted to stay out of this YAFWD (yet another free will discussion - I
wanted to put useless in there ... maybe YAUFWD, easier to pronounce?). But
then I struggled through this winded artifact:
https://3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2026/08/algorithms-before-the-cradle-part-ii.html
<https://3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2026/08/algorithms-before-the-cradle-part-ii.html>
I couldn't really follow the iterations *from* Jon's concept of openness (my
word, I think), even after a few private rounds with Mistral. So I gave up. But
reading the Ahmad piece put me smack into my prior *feels* w.r.t. TESCREAL and
the SciFi Fanboi fascism we see from the likes of Thiel and Karp (and their
K-Hole spelunker buddy Musk).
Then I'm hit with Marcus' piece on openness. Yes, I tried to read it. I feel
stupid for making the effort ... not only do I feel stupid because I don't
understand ... like 98% of the words, but also for wasting my time trying to
read it ... knowing full well in advance that I will not understand it.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
But such linguistic prestidigitation only cements my concern that it can be ...
no *WILL BE* exploited to justify the violation of consent. It already is, I
think. There is no free will, so we may as well do whatever dastardly deeds The
Algorithm has in store for us. Did I murder a couple dozen people? Help
genocide some brown people? Bah! *I* didn't do that. You only *think* I did it.
And if they did not consent to their genocide, it doesn't matter because
there's no such thing as consent.
Or, if there is such a thing ... whatever object pointed to by that token, it's
definitely NOT what you might think it is. Such thoughts make me giggle a bit
when I sign the document at the clinic. Do you even know what this document
says? What my signature means? Pfft. Our tech and AI overlords have such sights
to show you.
On 8/19/26 2:06 PM, Santafe wrote:
I guess, at the end, for all these real-world cases where choices are hard both
to make and to understand or evaluate, does having a tag named “free will” add
something material to our ability to settle where we are in relation to it?
--
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