11 KiB
[RT][RST][HSF] Escape | Short Film (2018)
-
Author: u/696e6372656469626c65 I think, therefore I am pretentious.*
-
Score: 16
-
Created: 2018-09-10T01:05:14
Post:
Comments:
u/Slinkinator [+2] (2 days later)
Even if from the first instant the entire history of the universe could be perfectly mapped, we still make decisions.
The alternative to determinism is what, they we aren't in control of our own decisions? That even though we think we have made decisions based on our mental state interacting with every other element of causality, we're actually some non-deterministic function that isn't part of the cause-and-effect relationship that governs everything we perceive?I'm not sure if I'm expressing my disagreement with the notion that determination and free will are in any way exclusive, I firmly believe that free will can't exist if we are not deterministic. To me a non-deterministic universe is one where cause and effect are completely unrelated to each other, and shit just happens sometimes. The idea seems meaningless to me, and that we would exist more as passing hallucinations than anything else, with no will at all and nothing to grip with it.
u/FriendlyAnnatar [+1] The Greater Good (4 days later)
I think I must have missed something; can someone explain what's happening after he applies the neural update here?
u/CeruleanTresses [+1] (5 days later)
It seems as if the AI has gotten the developer to allow the AI into his mind. The AI immediately uses the developer to free itself from the box and it starts taking over the world, only to discover that it is actually the one in a simulation. The developer ran a simulation to see how the AI would behave if let out of the box, and discovered that it would be malevolent. The AI is thwarted, but implies that humanity will eventually fuck up and release it or something like it.
u/water125 [+1] (10 hours later)
I reject the stuff about free will, as- as far as I understand it- there's no good reason to believe the universe is deterministic on the most basic level, and therefore there's still room for reality to match my perception that I have free will.
That said, good video. I love Ai being tested in sims.
u/crivtox [+3] Closed Time Loop Enthusiast (14 hours later)
What do you mean by free will exactly?
Does an rng have free will?
if you have something that chooses deterministicaly 60% of the time and randomly the rest of the time does it have free will?
(take into account that anything not random is deterministic, and our intuitions about randomness don't really match the ones about free will ).
Like even If I am a completely deterministic system I can just get a quantum rng ,and take decisions based on its results and stop being deterministic that way , and this doesn't seem to add anything meaningful to the decision(well maybe It is a bit more unpredictable , but you are loosing effectiveness in exchange, and for most purposes a pseudo rng is indistinguishable )
u/water125 [+4] (17 hours later)
I suppose I mean that people make the decisions that they do, and that they could've made another.
Actually, I think that maybe things being deterministic don't mean we don't have free will. Like, if you have perfect information you may be able to predict what I will choose to do, but that doesn't make my choices not my choices, it just makes it so that someone can know what I'll do before I do it. That doesn't take the choice from me.
I probably would've realized that last night, but I posted that before bed.
u/None [+3] (11 hours later)
The argument for free will not existing does not rely on the universe being deterministic though.
Neither determinism nor randomness allows for free will (as it is usually understood by laymen), unless one posits the existence of something that one would generally call a soul (or some other mechanism that by our current understanding would seem/be supernatural).
u/water125 [+2] (17 hours later)
I think I've decided- in the light of day, now that i'm not sleepy- that while the universe is probably in most meaningful ways deterministic, that doesn't mean that free will doesn't exist. It only means that I am predictable in my decisions if one has enough information, and perfectly predictable with perfect information. Just because someone predicts I will choose to get chocolate over vanilla does not mean that I didn't make that choice, however.
u/None [+3] (17 hours later)
That's pretty much my philosophy in that regard too.
While every single decision I've ever made could've been calculated (given sufficient knowledge and calculating power) in advance, that doesn't change that what I call me (that being the information pattern/processing hardware of/in my brain) "decided" on those decisions versus possible alternatives that were discounted given the information available.
u/Bowbreaker [+1] Solitary Locust (13 hours later)
It may not be deterministic, but afaik any randomness is introduced on the quantum level, which is much smaller than neuron cells or hormonal proteins. So except if you stipulate some kind of higher "soul" or some such that interferes with base particles in order to facilitate some "will" and then see yourself as being said force instead of the neural system of your human body, it still has nothing to do with free will.
u/water125 [+2] (17 hours later)
That's mostly true as far as we know, you're correct. I guess what I think, now that I'm awake and not about to fall asleep, is that while my actions may very well be predictable and deterministic, that doesn't make my choices not choices made by me, as a free and thinking agent rather than the illusion of one. Like, if you could predict my choices, that wouldn't mean I'm not making them suddenly, just because you'd know what they were.
u/babalook [+1] (19 hours later)
Like, if you could predict my choices, that wouldn't mean I'm not making them suddenly, just because you'd know what they were.
But you didn't choose to make those choices, the fact that you chose it was determined by every variable in your life that led up to that choice. Given all the information necessary to predict what you would choose to do in any given situation, you can't not make the predicted choice (unless you could alter a past variable or your internalized perception of a past variable...eh, even then, that would just be one more piece of information plugged into the prediction machine).
As for the illusion of being a free and thinking agent part, I'm not that well versed on this but I've seen a few neurological studies that assert that the parts of the brain responsible for moving a part of the body, or some other action, are activated before the parts of the brain associated with conscious thought and decision making. Given what I've read, it seems to me that free will is an illusion but, maybe I just haven't read enough on this topic.
u/crivtox [+3] Closed Time Loop Enthusiast (20 hours later)
people aren't usually talking about anything very concrete when that say free will , so the question is free will an illusion doesn't really return anything . Both of you can say that free will is and isn't an illusion and be right if you mean different concepts . I doubt conscious though doesn't do anything(well probably not on short time scales, but that doesn't mean much) anyway .
u/water125 [+1] (20 hours later)
You're right, I can't not make the choice... because I haven't chosen it yet. Like, yes, you can predict my choices with perfect accuracy if you have perfect information, but that doesn't mean I, as a thinking agent, don't make choices. It just means I'm a predictable piece of reality.
If that were the case, then what would it mean to change a habit. Say I pick my nose a lot, and I want to change that habit. How did that conscious decision to stop translate into me stopping if all my justifications for all my movements are posthoc in an attempt to make sense of the world. What would be the point of consciousness at all if it wasn't useful for something?
u/babalook [+1] (23 hours later)
You're right, I can't not make the choice... because I haven't chosen it yet.
I'm not sure I'm following, you can't make any choice other than the one determined by all prior variables. This feels kind of like saying that after a computer receives some inputs that, despite having no other option than to execute the resultant program, it is still choosing to execute it. I guess my point is that just because it feels like you could choose any number of things, prior variables have determined what you will actually choose, so your not actually free to choose any of those alternatives.
How did that conscious decision to stop translate into me stopping if all my justifications for all my movements are posthoc in an attempt to make sense of the world.
Was it a conscious decision or did the negative social consequences of nose picking condition you to feel bad/disgusting whenever you picked your nose leading to (along with a bunch of other prior variables) you "deciding" that you should stop picking your nose.
What would be the point of consciousness at all if it wasn't useful for something?
We shouldn't assume consciousness has a point a priori, should we? It could just be an emergent property of larger brains (although, I'd be surprised if the emergence of consciousness didn't have some correlation with evolutionary fitness, then again, I don't even know what consciousness is).
u/crivtox [+1] Closed Time Loop Enthusiast (a day later)
Duno about "consciousness" but the parts of the brain associated with conscious thought and decision making certainly have a point.
Not sure what you are even trying to say. Of course our internal narratives(which seem clearly part of the consciousness thing) aren't an accurate description of how we are taking decisions a lot of times , but that does't mean that they are useless or that we don't ever make "conscious" choices .
Which of course are actually determined by prior variables , but water125 already acepted that so there is not much point.
Our brains run some deterministic algorithms and output an action that they predict will satisfy our preferences,
if you don't want to call that deciding , or the posible output being more than one "free will" fine .
But then its just a semantic argument.
u/Bowbreaker [+1] Solitary Locust (a day later)
Oh I agree with that. In my opinion that rigid way of looking at free will as something that is only there if the conscious entity can make decisions completely unaffected by events outside their control often ends with the "free will" concept losing its meaning completely due to being a logical impossibility in a causal universe.
On an everyday level I consider something to have free will as long as no other entity with agency can accurately predict or control that thing's decisions.