Re: Making your mind up

On Fri, 26 Apr 2024 09:32:27 -0700, Mark Isaak
<specimenNOSPAM@curioustaxon.omy.net> wrote:

On 4/26/24 12:27 AM, Martin Harran wrote:

On Wed, 24 Apr 2024 08:45:37 -0700, Mark Isaak
<specimenNOSPAM@curioustaxon.omy.net> wrote:
 

On 4/22/24 2:12 AM, Martin Harran wrote:

rOn Thu, 18 Apr 2024 18:36:48 -0700, Mark Isaak
<specimenNOSPAM@curioustaxon.omy.net> wrote:
>

On 4/7/24 8:01 AM, Martin Harran wrote:

On Sat, 6 Apr 2024 10:22:18 +0000, j.nobel.daggett@gmail.com (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)
>
To an outside observer lacking full knowledge of the algorithm,
it looked like it had a choice but inexplicably hesitated.

>
It is *you* who have missed the point. What you have described above
is an algorithm to process data and arrive at a decision; what I was
asking about is why we delay once all the information that is
available or likely to be available *has been processed*. Once all the
information has been input in your algorithm there is no reason for
the processor to continue analysing unless you add in some sort of
rather pointless "just hang about for a while" function; no matter how
many times your algorithm runs with a given set of inputs, it will
reach the same decision.

>
The answer to that is simple: Once all information is in, it has *not*
all been processed. The decider may have thought about price, quality,
ease of cleaning, subjective appreciation of pattern (for both self and
one or two others), and availability, but there are undoubtedly
tradeoffs midst all that data that cannot be expressed in six-variable
differential equation, much less in something that you could decide by
reasoning. Furthermore, there are innumerable other factors that the
decider probably did not consider on the first pass (how does it look in
various other lightings? What, if anything, would it imply about our
social status? Is it going to remind me of Aunt Agatha's horrible
kitchen?) All of that processing takes time,

>
Which goes back to the question I have already asked here about the
underlying principle of Cost versus Benefit in Natural Selection; if
the benefits from a trait or characteristic outweigh its cost, then
that trait Is likely to be selected for; if the cost outweighs the
benefits, then it will likely be selected against; if cost and benefit
more or less balance out, then it is really down to chance whether or
not the trait well survive.
>
What you have said above highlights that there is significant cost
involved in this pondering in terms of brain resources. Can you
identify any benefits that would outweigh the cost of such pondering
when the final decision is predetermined?

>
I think you can identify such benefits yourself. For example, suppose a
tribe is faced with a decision of moving elsewhere or staying in a
marginal environment. Pondering the pros and cons can be life-saving.

 
It can only be life-saving if they have control over the decision
(free will). If the decision is made for them (determinism), then the
pondering makes no difference.
 

As
for the cost, that is part of the predetermination (if, indeed, the
decision is predetermined).

 
I have asked the question in the context of decisions being
predetermined or at least beyond the control of the people making
them.

>
I get the feeling that predetermination means, to you, that if I am
predetermined to choose to buy this house (say), then no matter what I
think, or even if I don't think at all, I will end up deciding to buy
that house. I could move to Tibet, scramble my brain with acid, and
spend all my conscious time playing Candy Crush, and still, in a day or
two, the though will come to me, "I need to buy that house."
>
That's not how predeterminism works. In a predetermined world, I find
myself in need or want of a house, contact a realtor who shows me
available listings; I visit those houses which are in good price range
and neighborhoods; probably I am influenced by external factors such as
the amount of traffic I had to fight through to get there or how hungry
I am at the time. The good and bad points of the different houses being
fed into my mind, I eliminate some obvious non-candidates, and let my
gut guide me to the best of the remaining.
>
That is predetermination at work.  Note that it appears, to all
observers, exactly the same as non-predetermination. That's why the Free
Will issue has never been resolved.

No, that is not at all how determinism works. It does not say that if
you move to Tibet you will somehow feel the to buy that house inn the
USA. What determinism says is that if you move to Tibet, you will
decide to buy a different house but that decision has not been a free
will one, it was a result of your conditions changing (moving to
Tibet). Your change of country, however, was also not a free will
choice, it in turn was the result of other conditions and preceding
events:

"If determinism is true, then as soon as the Big Bang took place 13
billion years ago, the entire history of the universe was already
settled. Every event that's ever occurred was already predetermined
before it occurred. And this includes human decisions. If determinism
is true, then everything you've ever done - every choice you've ever
made - was already predetermined before our solar system even existed.
And if this is true, then it has obvious implications for free will.

Suppose that you're in an ice cream parlor, waiting in line, trying to
decide whether to order chocolate or vanilla ice cream. And suppose
that when you get to the front of the line, you decide to order
chocolate. Was this choice a product of your free will? Well, if
determinism is true, then your choice was completely caused by prior
events. The immediate causes of the decision were neural events that
occurred in your brain just prior to your choice. But, of course, if
determinism is true, then those neural events that caused your
decision had physical causes as well; they were caused by even earlier
events - events that occurred just before they did. And so on,
stretching back into the past. We can follow this back to when you
were a baby, to the very first events of your life. In fact, we can
keep going back before that, because if determinism is true, then
those first events were also caused by prior events. We can keep going
back to events that occurred before you were even conceived, to events
involving your mother and father and a bottle of Chianti.

So if determinism is true, then it was already settled before you were
born that you were going to order chocolate ice cream when you got to
the front of the line. And, of course, the same can be said about all
of our decisions, and it seems to follow from this that human beings
do not have free will."

https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/determinism-classical-argument-against-free-will-failure/

That full article is well worth a read, he covers a range of issues
including the arguments between determinists like Einstein and
indeterminists like Heisenberg and Bohr.