Re: Making your mind up

On 2024-05-02 6:56 AM, Martin Harran wrote:

On Sat, 27 Apr 2024 10:56:54 +0200, Arkalen <arkalen@proton.me> wrote:
 

On 27/04/2024 09:20, Martin Harran wrote:

On Fri, 26 Apr 2024 12:42:17 +0100, Ernest Major
<{$to$}@meden.demon.co.uk> wrote:
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On 26/04/2024 08:27, Martin Harran wrote:

On Wed, 24 Apr 2024 08:45:37 -0700, Mark Isaak
<specimenNOSPAM@curioustaxon.omy.net> wrote:
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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:
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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:
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Martin Harran wrote:
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On Fri, 5 Apr 2024 16:29:20 -0500, DB Cates <cates_db@hotmail.com>
wrote:

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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?
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The robot has no free will. It can, however, process data.
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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.
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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.

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Determinism isn't the same as the decision being made for them.
Determinism is the decision being inevitable, given both the conditions
and the agent. Change the conditions or the agent, and the decision may
be different.

>
I don't see how that matters, according to determinism, those changes
in conditions and/or agent have in turn been determined by previous
events. That is where you get into an endless regression leading us to
the conclusion that I just quoted to Mark that "… as soon as the Big
Bang took place 13 billion years ago, the entire history of the
universe was already settled."

>
Right but "everything is predetermined because causes lead to effects
and you can trace back the process to the initial conditions of the
Universe" is very different from "everything is predetermined because
effects will happen regardless of a cause".
>
The first allows one to use causal language, the other one is plain
false (because it uses causal language and says things with it that are
incorrect).

 I don't really grasp what you mean by that second version, if effects
will happen regardless of a cause then predeterminism doesn't apply by
definition.
 In regard to the first one, tracing everything back to the beginning
of the Universe, why stop there? What caused the Universe? ISTM that
this runs into the same issues as Aquinas's first cause argument - you
either have to accept endless regression or some specific point where
whatever existed didn't have a prior cause.
  

There is a third take on determinism that repudiates causal
language entirely, saying "events follow each other according to a
certain pattern but we can't call them 'cause' and 'effect' because that
language relies on the counterfactual of 'what if that cause hadn't
happened' but no such counterfactual exists".

 That sounds like a cop-out.
 

>
Asking "why do we ponder when the decision is predetermined" is the
second; it's suggesting that the decision being predetermined means it
has no relationship (be it causal in the first interpretation of merely
correlative in the third) to the pondering. But that is very obviously
not the world we live in: whether predetermined or not, future events
are correlated with past events.

 Yes, but correlation is not necessarily causation. Go back to the
example I gave way back; the fact that I am a Catholic is correlated
with me being born into a Catholic home but that is not the cause of
me being one today -some of my siblings born into that same home have
not chosen to discard their Catholicism.
 

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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.

>
You are making the assumption that the decision is always the same with
the pondering as it would be if have if the pondering has not occurred,
i.e. that the brain processes involved in the pondering had no causal
effect.

>
No, I'm not making that assumption. The pondering may change the
decision but it's nstill only changing to a decision that is already
determined. The question I'm asking is in terms of Cost vs Benefits -
if determinism is true, what benefit is gained from the cost in terms
of brain activity of that pondering?

>
You're framing *pondering itself* as a decision - should I ponder on
this decision or not? What are the costs and benefits? And that's fair
because the choice to ponder or not and for how long *is* a decision we
make. But if your take is that determinism means that the outcomes of
decisions are predetermined regardless of what we do, then the same is
true of the decision to ponder or not. There is no "cost-benefit
analysis", it's just the inevitable outcome of past events.

 Evolution often takes an unnecessarily complicated path but there is
generally an underlying reason for that. For example, the recurrent
laryngeal nerve in a giraffe is several meters long to join two parts
of the body that are only centimetres apart. We know the reason for
that, however, that as the giraffe's neck lengthened, it was easier
for the nerve to also grow longer, rather than having to create a new
connection. I can't see any benefit or good reason for lengthening the
decision making process and placing extra demands upon the organ that
already uses 20% of our energy total.
 

>
If you want to think of "pondering" as an evolutionary adaptation that
"cost-benefit analysis" is a relevant metric to you can do that, it's
just a different perspective on the same phenomenon. But can't apply one
perspective to "pondering" and the opposite perspective to "the decision
being pondered" in the same sentence.
>
It would be like saying "why does natural selection favor dark moths
when whether they get eaten or not is predetermined?". Yeah, it's
predetermined... *in part by the moth's color*.

 "In part" is the key there. Conditions obviously influence the
decisions we make but that doesn't mean the decision is inevitable.  I
see echoes of probability in QM in our day to day lives. The chances
of a child born into a black, inner-city ghetto ending up in jail are
a lot higher than for a white child born to prosperous parents in an
affluent neighbourhood. Clearly, every child born into a black,
inner-city ghetto does not end up in jail and I think that is at least
in part down to people ultimately having free choice to go a different
direction from the one that conditions are sending them towards.
 

How do you know it is not inevitable? Not having *all* the relevant data you can only go with probabilities. That is due to our ignorance, not a failure of determinism.
Now, I *do* see a failure of *pure* determinism in the way the universe seems to work. There are some sub atomic events that appear to be truly random. They can occasionally have some gross effects over the long-term and extremely rarely immediate gross effects. So in the long term, determinism has some built-in random variation.
So I see determinism as local and immediate. Locally, say in your brain, the physical conditions *now* predict almost perfectly what the conditions will be 1/10 second from now. There is some extremely tiny chance that a random event that took place within 300,000 km (1/10 light-second) altered that prediction delectably. Any random effects from more distant (earlier) random events are reflected in the actually existing local conditions. The longer term the predictions, the probable they are accurate but in most cases they would be very close.

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and since it is way too
complex to do consciously, the processing (probably) works best when the
brain is otherwise at rest.

>
Are you seriously suggesting that the brain is at rest when we are
sleeping?

>
Relatively, yes.  And not just when sleeping, but when relaxing over
dinner, doing routine tasks, etc.

>
"The brain shows an intrinsic activity that remains independent of
external stimuli or tasks. This high level of continuous activity in
the brain is described as spontaneous, intrinsic or resting state
activity. The term resting state activity is rather paradox since it
signifies the opposite of what the term itself says: the brain is
never really at rest, and if it is at rest, it is dead, brain death,
as the neurologist says."
>
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/learning-the-unwell-brain/201601/the-brain-is-always-active
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One exception to that is your suggestion of a
random number generator when the two options look more or less equal
but your problem is that that randomness is very antithesis of
determinism.

>
I don't think that's true. A process can be both random and determined.
But that hinges on definitions of random, and is outside my area of
competence.

>
Sorry, I don't even know what you mean by that.

>
Not a problem. It's not a topic I will pursue.

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