Re: Making your mind up

On 2024-04-06 5:22 AM, LDagget wrote:

Martin Harran wrote:
 

On Fri, 5 Apr 2024 16:29:20 -0500, DB Cates <cates_db@hotmail.com>
wrote:

 

On 2024-04-05 11:05 AM, Martin Harran wrote:

There was quite an interesting discussion a few weeks ago on Free Will
vs Determinism but it died a death, at least in part due to the
departure of some contributors to the Land Beyond GG. I'd like to take
up some of the issues again if anyone is interested.
>
One point made by Hemidactylus that didn't get developed any further
was the way that we sometimes give a lot of time and effort into
making a decision - he gave the example of buying a car. It's also
common for someone to want to "sleep it on it" before making a
decision where the decision is important but it is not clear what
decision is best. If a decision is essentially predetermined then what
is the point of that time and effort or sleeping on it?

>
Do you not see that this argument depends on the belief that there was
an *option* to make the decision earlier under different conditions
(lack of 'thinking it over' and/or 'sleeping on it'). IOW that free will
exists. You are 'begging the question'.

 

It's actually the complete opposite, I am starting with the assumption
that there is no free will and asking what then is the point in
deliberating over the various options. You seem to be taking things a
bit further and saying that if determinism exists then there aren't
any options to begin with but that is just a variation in emphasis, it
doesn't address the question of why we spend so much time pondering
those options when they don't even exist.

 You missed his point. Consider writing an algorithm controlling a robot walking down a path.
The robot comes to a fork in the road. Does it take the left fork or
the right fork?
The robot has no free will. It can, however, process data.
The algorithm can have layered complexity. Scan left, scan right,
process data. Simple-minded algorithm scans 1 sec each way, sums up
some score of positive and negatives and picks the best. If it's a
tie, it might kick the random number generator into gear.
Alternatively, it can get into a loop where it keeps scanning left
and right until one "choice" passes a threshold for "better" that
is not just a greater than sign, maybe 10% better or such. From
the outside, this is "pause to think". With a little imagination,
one can add much more complexity and sophistication into how the
robot chooses. It can be dynamically adjusting the thresholds. It
can use it's wifi connection to seek external data. It can find that
its wifi signal is poor at the fork in the road so back up to where
it was better.
 Map "go home and sleep on it" to some of that or to variants. Map it into Don's words. The robot could not "choose" left or
right until its algorithm met the decision threshold, i.e. it
didn't have a legitimate option yet. (hopefully he'll correct
me if I have abused his intent too far)

It's not the way I would have made the argument, but it covers my point pretty well
I would like to make the point that my view of determinism does not lead to a fixed future except in the very short term. I think it is fairly clear that random, probabilistic variability is part of our universe and this makes prediction of just which deterministic future we end up in impossible. But Random variation stuck on top of determinism doesn't offer much comfort to the 'little invisible, supernatural man in my head pushing my brain around' crowd.

 To an outside observer lacking full knowledge of the algorithm,
it looked like it had a choice but inexplicably hesitated.
The same general retort will apply to most all of your retorts.
 An added thing to consider is where "consciousness" comes into play.
All the data the robot is scanning can be processed by sub-processors
that generate most of the information needed to produce a choice
before the central processing algorithm distributes instructions to the subroutines that activate whatever it is the robot needs
to do to locomote down a path. Fill in the blanks.
 

--
--
Don Cates ("he's a cunning rascal" PN)