First, the definition of determinism might be helpful.

Do we have free will?

Is it possible to distinguish between genuine and illusory free will?

Does it matter?

Here's an interesting question to consider: how is it possible for a computer to exist in a non-deterministic universe?

Is there a difference between lacking free will because of a deterministic universe and lacking free will because of an omniscient entity? If so, what? And does it matter?

If you believe that we do not have free will, then how can you justify hating someone? The person you hate didn't have a choice whether or not to be twatwaffle, did he?

Assuming a non-deterministic universe and no god: do we even have a will or are all our choices merely an amalgamation of experience and environment? If we do have a will, then what IS it, exactly, that causes it to run? Is the will moved by intelligence, or is it something higher, having no discernable cause?

Is it possible to have free will in a deterministic universe?

Is it possible that we do not have free will in a non-deterministic universe?

no u

If you believe that we do not have free will, you would justify hating a person that did not have a choice by not having a choice of whether to hate him or not. That is a pretty dumb question. If free will applies to someone else's actions, they apply to yours as well.

A deeply philosophical question requires a deeply philosophical answer.

Which I don't have.

I do believe in free will, but I don't believe we HAVE to have free will. If for some reason it turned out we don't have free will, so what? We'll keep on living our lives like we always do...

It depends on how much metaphysics you include in your definition of free will.

No.

No.

A non-deterministic system is still capable of producing the same results frequently, but it won't guarantee absolute consistency. This is why we need checksums, and why we don't have atom sized transistors.

Most physicists do not believe the universe is deterministic; most theologians don't believe God suppresses free will.

N/A

We are not marionettes. At the most basic level we are all capable of making judgments independently that attempt to maximize reward and minimize cost. Most of the issues we struggle with are NP-complete problems so our choices are flavored by whatever genetic algorithms we inherited and developed. Even if we don't have free will in a metaphysical sense, our decisions are still just as valid.

No.

No.

So, in summary:

Gotta admit that every now and then Jon`C has a good post, that was great

The universe is non-deterministic.

We have genuine free will.

Obviously, this can not be conclusively proven, nor could it probably ever be. However, for my own sanity, I have to believe the first two statements in my post are true.

I could post this, or I couldn't, or I could FLAPZAR.

Theology? On Massassi?

Silly Freelancer.

This isn't theology.

THIS IS SPARTA

Bah, on a more serious note; what's the difference between determinism/fatalism/predestination?

Assuming that they're all pretty similar, I think we have free will. Or at the very least it appears that we do, which also answers your question about whether it matters whether its genuine or not (it wouldn't). You lose me beyond that.

UltimatePotato, this is a serious thread.

Edit: This post made more sense before the Potato missed my sarcasm and added his "serious" portion.

who cares

Stephen Hawking.

future is pre determined. I dont think there are millions of alternative realities. (stargate spanked the idea for all it was worth, ruined it)

if(getThingFlags(source) & 0x8){
  do her}
elseif(getThingFlags(source) & 0x4){
  do other babe}
else{
  do a dude}

... a lack of alternate realities doesn't mean that future is predetermined. Jesus christ.

The problem I have with discussions about free will is that people consistently fail to come up with a logical definition of free will that makes any sense in the context of their arguments. It seems to me that free will is just an imaginary concept that appeals to magical thinking.

Straight over my head

Like how you could choose to hate someone for their actions even though they had no choice in their actions? Makes sense to me! Good OP!

Could a computer predict the future of a situation given all of the relevant variables and rules governing it? If a person were to repeat a scene in their life with the same memory, thoughts, and emotions they had the first time, would they make the same choices?

Even if our fate were decided already, we are incapable of comprehending all of the variables necessary to predict what that fate is. An omnipotent being would know me as the experiences that create me, all building on eachother while I persist making choices momentarily. He would see time unchanging while I experience new and different ideas each day.

I was destined and thus had no choice but to make this post and disagree with you.

er, that was odd. Firefox bug made it post a second time just now.

I'll just use this to clarify: I'm saying neither Fate nor Omniscience contradict Free Will. Not that they are all persistent.

We cannot know, therefore we should give up and focus on things that we can know.

I mean "know" in the truest sense of the word. Read An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding.

No

Omniscience contradicts free will if omniscience includes knowledge of the future.

Look at the movie Tron for example.

The Master Control Program thought that digitalizing Flynn would make it possible to destroy him.

Despite being hundreds of times more intelligent than a human being, the MCP did not have the ability to predict what Flynn would do, since he was a user. Users being people, are unpredictable.

Tron has nothing to do with this conversation, but I saw the word computer and hoped that this would somehow relate to the debate. I promise to work on my reading comprehension skills in the future, but this thread was way to in depth for my lazy ***.

If you are correct, and god exists, then he/she/it is not omniscient. Which is fine by me. God's not omniscient; just really damn smart.

How very Frank Herbert of you.

It is my opinion that foreknowledge of the decisions people make does not change the fact that they made a decision. By definition, if you apply your prescience to a situation it will change the outcome which would imply that the people involved are capable of reacting freely to the new stimulus.

Jesus knew I was going to post in this thread, but I thought it was a good idea and decided to anyway.

This. What do you mean when you say 'free will'? That ought to tell you whether we have it or not.

Could you clarify this? Are you saying that if, in a given situation I knew the choices all people would make, and if I intervened using that knowledge, I would change the outcome?

no

The thing is I don't think reacting freely and reacting deterministically are as mutually exclusive as most people assume. If you can follow the analogy, just because a cog is part of a machine does not mean that it's not the cog performing the function.

In other words a free will is not completely autonomous from the world. All will acknowledge that a will can be constrained by outside forces. Eg. a person can choose not to die, but if he is shot, his choice will be irrelevant. Even when a person decides what flavor of ice creme he wants, his choices follow rules, such as the interactions of his moods with the random memories of various past experiences. And if you examine it closely enough it becomes chaotic and possibly non-deterministic, that only puts it on par with something like the butterfly effect, which is something that happens every day to everything all the time. And really I think that is irrelevant, because if that is what people appeal to when they look for free will, all they have found is randomness, and that is a property that is not unique to sentient beings.

I view the will like this: We are all pieces intertwined into a four dimensional object. Our perspective of time is like us moving as a 3d plane down one axis. (You can visualize this by imagining 4d as 3d, 3d as 2d and so on.) Our existence and our choices effect the design of the object, but from a 4th dimensional perspective the object isot static. However the things we do are still part of the object and the object would be different with out us. The choices we make may be static from the 4D perspective, but they are very literally who we are. If we had made a different choice we would look different which would cause the entire object to be different. But we don't make that choice because that is *not* who we are.

I guess the question is, what does "free" really mean?

That was pretty convoluted. I hope some of you can follow it.

That's essentially what I was trying to get at too, but clearer.

Glad I didn't waste my time then!

Everything is pre-determined.... when Jesus was but a small baby, he dreamed of a future with Massassi Forums...

...he then wet himself and cried...:tfti:

You would. At the very least, if you revealed that you knew the choices every person would make, there would be at least one person who would do the opposite just to spite you.



You can visualize a person's life as a swept volume but it doesn't work that way in reality. If time could be so conveniently treated as a spatial dimension, causality violations would be unremarkable instead of impossible.

Edit:

When I'm talking about the Universe not being deterministic, I'm talking about it in terms of mathematics; i.e. quantum physics. A deterministic system is one that produces the same result for a given initial state. We know for a fact that, once you get to a small enough scale, the Universe ceases to be predictable. The human brain, at least, is susceptible to these unpredictable phenomena.